特蕾西·布里特·库尔：一砖一瓦

当我担任CEO时，我感觉非常孤独。充满挑战，也很艰难。我独自在外寻找资源和帮助，希望能找到能在这个位置上助我一臂之力的人。

When I was CEO, what I felt like was it was very lonely. It was challenging. It was hard. I was out navigating and trying to find resources, support. People would come before me who could help me in that seat.

特蕾西·布里特库尔是Cambric的联合创始人，这是一家专注于打造持久企业的长期投资合伙公司。她最为人所知的是曾在伯克希尔·哈撒韦与沃伦·巴菲特共事，先是担任他的财务助理，后成为Pampered Chef的CEO，并在多家伯克希尔旗下公司（包括本杰明·摩尔和卡夫亨氏）的董事会任职。她将投资者的纪律性与亲身运营经验相结合，对如何发展和维持伟大企业提供了独到的见解。

Tracy Britcoole is the co founder of Cambric, a long term investment partnership focused on building enduring businesses. She is best known for working directly with Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, where she served as his financial assistant before becoming CEO of Pampered Chef and serving on the board of several Berkshire companies, including Benjamin Moore and Kraft Heinz. She combines investor discipline with hands on operating experience, bringing a rare perspective on what it takes to grow and sustain great companies.

我们这里只投资一到两家公司。我们会考察500家，因此我们非常挑剔，只寻找拥有长远发展潜力的最高质量企业。我也认为很多投资者实际上并没有运营经验，所以如果你从未真正运营过企业，就很难进入一家公司并告诉他们应该如何运营业务。

We only invest in one or two companies here. We'll look at 500, so we're really selective at finding the highest quality businesses that have a long runway. I also think a lot of investors haven't actually been operators, and so it's really hard to go into a business and say, this what is you should go do to operate a business, if you've never actually operated a business.

在招聘方面，这个过程具体是怎样的？那些细节上的琐碎工作是怎么处理的？

When it comes to hiring, like what does that process look like? Like what does that nitty gritty look like in the detail?

我们非常推崇WHO流程。这是G. H. Smart写的一本书，名叫《WHO》。我认为，这是关于招聘最简单却最出色的一本书。

We very much ascribe to the WHO process. So by G. H. Smart, there's a book called WHO, W H O. It is, I think, single handedly the best simple book on hiring.

它包含几个组成部分，我们对其进行了扩充并加入了自己的内容。但首先是建立一个非常深入的职位计分卡。在我们看来，一个好的计分卡有三个关键组成部分。第一是，第二是，然后第三是

And there's a few components to it, we've augmented it and added our own. But the first is building a really in-depth scorecard for the role. And so a good scorecard in my our mind has three sort of critical components. The first is the second is and then the third are

会员可以访问本次对话的扩展版本，深入了解特蕾西用于构建持久企业的框架、定义和策略。立即注册fs.blogmembership。《知识计划》本集内容仅供参考。肖恩·帕里什或嘉宾表达的观点和意见仅代表其个人。本次对话中的任何内容均不应被视为投资建议、财务指导或买卖任何证券的推荐。

Members get access to an extended version of this conversation that goes further into frameworks, definitions, and strategies Tracy uses to build lasting companies. Sign up today at fs.blogmembership. This episode of the Knowledge Project is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by Shane Parrish or our guests are solely their own. Nothing in this conversation should be considered investment advice, financial guidance, or recommendation to buy or sell any security.

在做出投资决策前，务必自行进行尽职调查或咨询合格的财务顾问。现在是倾听和学习的时候了。

Always do your own due diligence or consult with a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions. It's time to listen and learn.

特蕾西，欢迎来到节目。

Tracy, welcome to the show.

谢谢。很荣幸来到这里。非常感谢。

Thank you. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate it.

我想从你最近在读什么书开始聊起。

I wanna start with what you're reading recently.

是的。关于传记方面，我刚读了琳达·盖茨不久前出版的视角转变的书，我觉得非常有趣。重读了阿尔文·洛利的《美国偶像》，我认为这本书在讲述转型及其影响方面非常引人入胜。最近还重读了凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆的自传。

Yeah. So on the biographies, I just read Linda Gates' view transition book that she just came out with not too long ago, which I thought was super interesting. Reread Alvin Lolly's, you know, American Icon, which I think is fascinating in terms of a turnaround and the impact of that. Recently reread Catherine Graham's autobiography.

是的。所以试试看。

Yeah. So try.

是的。太棒了。所以这是我最近的关注点，也是我最感兴趣的地方。另外还读了几本关于育儿的书。《焦虑的一代》显然很多人都在讨论，但这引发了我深入阅读更多关于孩子和自由放养孩子的书籍，比如如何思考育儿以及这个新世界的类似书籍。

Yeah. It's so amazing. So that's been my focus and where I've found the most interest recently. And then also several books on parenting. So The Anxious Generation, obviously, a lot of people are talking about, but that has spawned me going down a path on reading more about kids and free range kids, books like that, of how to think about parenting and sort of this new world.

你有几个孩子？

How many kids do you have?

我们有四个。

We have four.

哦天哪。好吧。他们多大了？

Oh gosh. Okay. What are the ages?

十岁、七岁、五岁和两岁。

10, seven, five, and two.

好的。我们请艾伦上过节目。我很好奇你从他的传记中得到了什么启示。

Okay. We had Alan on the show. I'm curious what you took away from his biography.

我认为这本书是指导企业转型的最佳之作。他在商业中进行转型的那个时期，挑战有多大，2008年2月、2009年2月的行业背景，福特，你知道的，汽车行业。我的意思是，真的非常具有挑战性。还有他执行时的纪律性，一切从...你知道，他的团队每周都带着绿色（积极成果）进来，尽管他试图让他们学会庆祝业务中的红色（问题）和挑战，并从中学习，犯错是可以的。所以我非常欣赏这种洞察力以及他的做法。

I thought it was single handedly the best book in navigating a turnaround. The time in which he did a turnaround in the business, how challenging it was, the landscape in 02/2008, 02/2009, Ford, you know, the auto industry. I mean, really, really challenging. And just the discipline with which he did it, everything from, you know, his team coming in and with green every week, even though, you know, he was trying to get them to celebrate having reds in the business and the challenges and how to learn from those and making mistakes is okay. So I really appreciated that insight and just how he did it.

我自己也曾在更小的规模上做过转型，但他对人员的关注、对纪律的重视、对建立持续改进、学习和允许犯错文化的专注，都让我印象极其深刻。我认为这真的非常开眼界，尤其是考虑到他当时所处的背景和他是如何做到的。

Having done a turnaround at a much smaller scale, I was incredibly impressed with his focus on people, his focus on discipline, his focus on building a culture of continuous improvement, learning, making mistakes. I thought that was just really eye opening and just how he did it in the backdrop at the time that he did it.

他提到的一件事至今仍让我记忆犹新，那就是他阐述了自己的经营理念。然后他说，如果你不参与其中，那就是选择不成为我们团队的一员。我觉得这种说法很有意思，把选择权交还给个人，让他们自己决定是否想成为团队的一部分。

One of the things that he mentioned that still sticks with me to this day is he laid out his operating philosophy. And then he said, well, if you're not partaking in that, you're choosing not to be a part of our team. And I thought that was a really interesting way of putting it back on the person that they're making a choice whether they wanna be part of the team or not.

是的。我完全同意。我认为当你在公司里设定文化、期望和运营体系时，你应该对员工说：这是你想参与的吗？如果不是，我们理解，你可以选择离开。但如果你想留在这里，就需要跟上步伐。

Yes. I couldn't agree more. I think when you're in a company and you set a culture and expectations and an operating system, then you say to your employees, is this what you wanna be part of? And if not, we understand that, and you can choose to lead the business. But if you wanna stay here, you need to get on board.

当我担任CEO时，我们正在进行转型，我经常对团队说——他们几乎让我别再提了——如果你在这个新文化和环境中，五天里有四天都不开心，那可能这里并不适合你。我们鼓励你继续前进。我们会把你提升为客户，或者采取其他方式。我认为你希望团队真正投入、专注并致力于推动成果，同时这也需要与他们产生共鸣，让他们关心这件事。

When I was CEO, we were going through transformation, and I said to our team often, and they almost told me to stop saying it was, if you're not having fun four days out of five in this new culture and environment, it's probably not right fit for you. And we encourage you to move on. We'll promote you to customer, whatever it may be. I think you want your team to be really committed, engaged, focused on driving the results, but also that it resonates with them and they care about it.

你提到的转型是指Pampered Chef吗？嗯。能详细说说吗？那是什么情况？

And the turnaround you're talking about is Pampered Chef? Mhmm. Can you walk me through that? What was that like?

那确实很有趣。我接手Pampered Chef这个职位时，之前没有任何运营企业的经验。我在伯克希尔工作了大约五年。我当时认为投资格局正在发生变化，未来在运营方面会创造更多价值，但很少有投资者真正具备运营经验，尤其是在收购方面。你在风投中看到更多这种情况，但在收购方面较少。

It was really interesting. So I took the role at Pampered Chef having no prior experience operating a business. I had been at Berkshire for about five years. I really had a view that the investing landscape was shifting and more value would be created going forward on the operating side, but that very few investors actually have operating experience, especially on the more buyout side. You see it more in venture, but less on buyout.

我认为如果我走出董事会，进入实战室，真正去运营一家企业，我会成为一个更好的投资者。所以我决定成为Pampered Chef的CEO。Pampered Chef是一家需要转型的企业。自伯克希尔收购它以来，它已经衰退了大约十年。但基本面仍然完好。

And I thought I'd be a better investor if I went and got out of the boardroom, got into the war room, and actually went and operated a business. So I decided to become CEO of Pampered Chef. Pampered Chef was a business that was in need of transformation. It had been in decline since Berkshire bought it for about ten years. And the fundamentals were intact.

它有一个非常强大的品牌和强大的渠道，所以业务的基础是存在的，但它迷失了方向。这与许多消费品企业的起伏类似，你在增长，但你的客户或世界发生了变化。在这种情况下，世界发生了巨大变化，互联网在21世纪初兴起，从根本上改变了业务模式。然后客户开始以不同的方式购物，转向线上购物。Pampered Chef最初是45年前由Doris Christopher在她家的地下室创立的，旨在通过直销模式为全国家庭提供高质量的厨房用品，满足这一需求。

It had a really strong brand and a strong channel, so the moot was really there in terms of the business, but it had lost its way. Not dissimilar from a lot of ebbs and flows of consumer businesses where you grow, but your customer changes or the world changes. And in that case, the world had changed quite significantly, and the Internet had come along in the early two thousands, which had fundamentally shifted the business. And then the customer started shopping differently and shopping online. Pampered Chef was originally started forty five years ago now by Doris Christopher in the basement of her home to really solve this need of providing high quality kitchenware products to families around the country through a direct sales model.

所以当时有顾问销售这些产品。因此，当我在2014年2月接手时，它已经经历了十年的衰退。这是一个非常有趣的机会，进入一个需要转型的企业，有机会重新思考商业模式和方法，但我之前从未做过。所以这对我来说是一个全新的角色，进入一个我不熟悉的行业。讽刺的是，我不会做饭，所以我必须学习基础知识。

So there were consultants who sold the products. So in 02/2014 when I took over, it had ten years of decline. So it was a interesting opportunity to come into a business that was in need of transformation, where there was this opportunity to rethink the business model, rethink the approach, but I'd never done it before. So it was a fundamentally new role for me to take on in an industry I didn't know. Ironically, I don't cook, so I had to learn the basics.

但这确实是一个非常好的机会。

But it was a really great opportunity to do that.

你刚才说的两点我觉得非常有趣。其中之一是价值创造从投资转向运营。请多谈谈这一点。

There's two things you said there that are really interesting to me. One of which was value creation moving from investing to operating. Tell me more about that.

我认为在收购方面的投资界很长一段时间里，你看到的是有机会以七、八、九倍的价格买入企业，然后几年后，通过一些小的改进，以十、十一、十二倍的价格卖出。我认为这种情况已经发生了变化，因为资本现在已经商品化了。卖家可获得的资本比以往任何时候都多得多。例如，在二十世纪八十年代，大约有二十到二十五家私募股权公司。到了2020年2月，美国接近有两万家。

I think for a long time in the investing world on the buyout side, what you saw was there was opportunity to buy businesses at seven, eight, nine times, and then, you know, a few years later, some minor improvements, sell them for ten, eleven, 12 times. I think that that has shifted because capital is now commoditized. There's a lot more capital available to sellers than there ever has been. For example, in the nineteen eighties, there were, you know, twenty, twenty five private equity firms. In 02/2020, we got close to 20,000 in The US.

因此，市场上的资本发生了重大转变。作为卖家，理所当然地，在与合作伙伴合作时获得了更多的价值，这意味着你必须在合作开始后创造更多的价值。而这意味着要更加注重运营。传统的私募股权，其焦点非常短期。你知道，你收购一家企业，你的重点是三到四年后将其卖出。

So significant shift in terms of the capital that was out there. As sellers, rightfully so, gaining more of that value when they're being partnered with, that means you have to create more value after the partnership starts. And that means more of a focus on operating. Traditional private equity, the focus is very short term. You know, you buy a business, you're focused on selling it three to four years later.

这样做的话，我认为最终发生的是你对企业做出了短期的决策。如果你真的要创造长期价值，我认为采取更长远的策略是有价值的。当我想成为一名运营者时，我知道我需要在公司中创造价值。一旦你与他们合作，我该如何思考这个问题，以及如何成为一个更好的运营者？这会让我成为一个更好的投资者。

And in doing that, I think what ultimately happens is you make short term decisions about the businesses. And if you're going to really create long term value, I think there's a value of having a longer term approach. When I wanted to go become an operator, it was, I know I'm gonna need to create value in companies. Once you partner with them, how do I think about that, and how do I become a better operator? It'll make me a better investor.

我想回到你之前提到的关于变化的环境和公司未能适应的问题。是自满吗？还是他们在用一张过时的地图运营业务？为什么公司很难适应现实？

I wanna go back to something you said earlier about the changing landscape and companies not adapting. Is it complacency? Is it they're running the business on a map that's outdated? Like, why is companies have a hard time adapting to reality?

我认为有几个原因导致这种情况发生。一是变化的速度越来越快，前所未有，当你经营企业、专注于客户和产品或服务时，还要关注外部世界和格局，这非常困难。有像新冠疫情、关税、供应链等问题，总有事在发生，现在又是人工智能。这对你的业务意味着什么，你该如何应对？

I think there's a few reasons it happens. One is, I think change is happening faster and faster than it ever has, and it's very hard when you're managing a business and you're focused on your customer and you're focused on your product or your service to also focus on this outside world and landscape. You have things like COVID, tariffs, supply chain. There's always something happening, now AI. What does that mean for your business, and how do you navigate it?

还有很多错误的开始。你不知道这个趋势是会持续下去，还是会很快消失。我认为作为领导者，应对这些挑战很困难。第二点是，大多数领导者通常是在企业中成长起来的。当你在一个企业里成长时，你会成为该企业、该领域、该行业的专家。

It's also a lot of false starts. You don't know, is this one here to stay, or is this something that's going to be gone quickly? And I think as a leader, that's challenging to navigate. I think second is if you think about most leaders, they usually grow up in a business oftentimes. And when you grow up in a business, you become an expert in that business, in that field, in that industry.

但有时你缺乏观察其他行业的视角，这些行业可能在你之前经历过不同但类似的情况。因此你失去了一些这种视角。你获得了深厚的经验，但那种全局观更难获得。对我们来说，问题是如何帮助领导者思考这一点，帮助他们预见可能具有挑战性的转折。我认为这些是领导者面临越来越困难的原因。

But sometimes you don't have the perspective of seeing other industries that perhaps have come before you that are different, but similar in terms of what happened. And so you lose some of that perspective. You gain the depth of experience, but that perspective is harder to have. And I think for us, it's like, how do we help leaders think about that, and help them see around the curves that might be challenging. But I think those are a couple of reasons that it's becoming more difficult for leaders.

让我们回到最开始。你在堪萨斯州的曼哈顿市的一个农场长大。是的，对吗？

Let's go back all the way to the beginning. You grew up on a farm in Manhattan, Kansas. Yeah. Is that correct?

是的。我上大学时，人们常问我是哪里人，我会说曼哈顿，因为在堪萨斯我们都这么回答。然后人们会开始问，哦，你是上东区还是哪里来的？我就说，其实没有上东区，我很快意识到说堪萨斯就够了，因为大多数人并不完全知道还有另一个小得多的曼哈顿。

Yeah. When I went to college, people would often say, where are you from? And I'd say Manhattan, because that's what you say in Kansas. And people will start to ask like, oh, are you from the Upper East Side or where? I'm like, well, there's not really an Upper East Side, and I quickly realized Kansas was sufficient in saying where I'm from because most people don't fully appreciate there's another Manhattan that's much smaller.

你记得在农场长大时学到的一些教训，以及你那么小就承担的责任，你现在如何将这些与为人父母联系起来思考。

What are some of the lessons you remember from growing up on the firm and the responsibilities that you had at such a young age and how you think about that in relation to parenting now.

我开玩笑说，我花了大半辈子想离开农场，但现在我想为我的孩子拥有一个农场，因为我认为这是一个非常有价值的环境，可以学习职业道德、承诺和解决问题，所有农场生活带来的东西。我爸爸拥有这个农场，他非常热爱它。所以我学到的第一课是，当你找到热爱的事物，它真的是一种激情，一种享受，你并不真的在工作。我爸爸比我见过的任何人都努力，你知道，深夜、清晨、整个夏天、整个冬天都在工作。他只会稍微休息一下，仅此而已。

I joke I spent much of my life trying to get off the farm, and now I want a farm for my own kids because I think it's such a valuable landscape to learn and to learn work ethic and commitment and problem solving, all the things that come with with being on a farm. My dad, you know, he owned this farm, and he loved it. And so the first lesson I learned, when you find something you love, it really is a passion and something that you enjoy, and you're not really working. My dad worked harder than anyone I've ever seen, you know, late at night, early in the mornings, all summer long, all throughout the winter. He took a small break, but that was about it.

对他来说，这不是工作，而是他所热爱的事情。那种热情是我很早就认识到并看到的。其次，我学到了很多独立性。在农场里。

For him, it wasn't working. It was what he loved. That passion was something that I recognized and saw early on. Second, I learned a lot of independence. On a farm.

农场的本质就是，你知道，需要自己解决问题。有很多固有的危险或风险。我11、12岁的时候就在农场里开车了，虽然还不一定上路。但我学会了如何应对陌生的情况，这对我来说是很早的重要一课。然后我还学到了，你知道，本质上是从很小的时候就开始接触商业。

Just the nature of it is, you know, figuring things out. There's a lot of inherent dangers or risk. I was driving when I was 11, 12 years old on the farm, not necessarily on the road yet. But I learned how to navigate unfamiliar situations, which was an important lesson for me early on. And then I also learned, you know, in essence, business from a very fundamentally young age.

大概在我三、四年级的时候，我开始经营自己的农贸市场摊位。所以我爸爸早上会带我过去，把我放下。我会经营一整天，他会在一天结束时来接我。我们变得非常忙，我开始雇佣我的朋友，我得到了实践。我是按小时付他们工资吗？

When I was probably in third, fourth grade, I started running my own farmer's market stand. And so my dad would take me down in the morning, drop me off. I would run it for the day, and he'd come pick me up at the end of the day. And we got really busy, and I started hiring my friends, and I got a practice. Do I pay them by the hour?

我是付他们佣金吗？还是付奖金？我怎样才能让他们发挥出最好的表现？我开始思考供需和定价。我看到当我们种西瓜时，季节初，西瓜很有限，每个卖8美元。

Do I pay them a commission? Do I pay them a bonus? How do I get the best, you know, performance out of them? I started thinking about supply and demand and pricing. I saw as we grew watermelons, beginning of the season, they were $8 each when they were very limited.

到了季节高峰期，我们有很多西瓜时，每个只卖2美元。学习商业的基础知识真的很有价值。即使只是一个农贸市场摊位，我每周都可以做得越来越好。我可以建立一个可重复、可扩展的系统的基础，以提高我的成功几率。我看到我们的农贸市场摊位从每周赚500美元增加到一千，再到1500美元，你知道，当我真正把它做大时，这对我来说太棒了，也是一次非常迷人的学习经历。

By the height of the season, when we had a lot, they were $2 each. Learning fundamentals of a business was really valuable. Even if it was a farmer's market stand, I could get better and better every week. I could build the foundation of how to have a, you know, repeatable, scalable system to improve my odds of success. And I saw our farmer's market stand going from making $500 a week to a thousand to 1,500 by the time, you know, I had really scaled it up, which was great for me and really just a fascinating learning experience.

这是你父母在帮助你，还是全是自我驱动的，比如自己阅读和应用？

Was this your parents helping you or all self driven, like reading and applying?

是的。绝对是自我驱动的。我爸爸，我是七个孩子中最小的。他之前结过婚，所以有四个来自第一次婚姻，三个来自我们的婚姻。我看到的是，他让我做很多事情，可能比普通孩子多得多，因为他年纪大了，他有七个孩子，他差不多什么都见过了。

Yeah. Definitely self driven. My dad, I was the youngest of seven kids. He had been married previously, so four from his first marriage and three from from ours. And what I saw on that was like, he just let me he'll only do a lot, probably more so than your average kid because he was older and he had seven kids and he's sort of seen it all.

而我哥哥负责打理生意中农业方面的部分。那不是我的热情所在，但商业方面我确实热爱。所以一开始规模很小，只是我自己的农贸市场摊位。但随着时间的推移，我逐渐经营起整个店铺，并越来越多地参与业务运营。我想他很欣赏这一点。

And my brother navigated sort of the farming part of the business. That wasn't my passion, But the business side, I did love. And so it started out small, my own farmer's market stand. But over time, it was running our whole store and running more and more of the business. And I think he appreciated it.

那也不是我父亲的热情所在。他热爱农业那一面。这是一个在相对安全的空间里真正学习、成长和尝试不同事物的绝佳机会，这真的很棒。

It wasn't my dad's passion either. He loved the farming side. And it was an opportunity to really learn and grow and try different things in relatively safe space, which was really amazing.

去哈佛的雄心是从哪里来的？

Where did the ambition come from to go to Harvard?

这并不像我原本以为的那样有规划或有条理。我知道我想离开农场。尽管我喜欢商业方面，但这很辛苦。那是非常非常繁重的体力劳动。我想离开农场，去做点别的事情。

It wasn't as structured or as disciplined as I would have thought. I knew I wanted to leave the farm. And as much as I like the business side, it was hard. It was very, very hard manual work. And I wanted to get off the farm and, you know, go do something else.

我不知道那别的事情具体是什么，但我知道我想离开。高中时，我认定教育是达成目标的途径，而且我一直成绩很好，参加了许多课外活动，并在农场管理了很多事务。但我想申请很多大学，我不知道是哪一所，也不知道是哪里。我只知道我能够申请所有这些学校，并且很可能能被其中一两所我感兴趣的录取。

I didn't know what that something else was, but I knew I wanted to leave. In high school, decided education was the way to get there, and I had always had good grades and done a lot of extracurriculars and managed a lot on a farm. But I wanted to apply to a lot of colleges, And I didn't know which one. I didn't know where. I just knew I could apply to all these schools, and I probably could get into one or two that I'd be interested in going to.

所以我基本上到处都申请了，因为那时我并不认识任何上过哈佛或其他学校的人，我指的是堪萨斯州以外的地方。所以这对我来说是一个绝佳的机会，让我可以尝试一下，看看会有什么结果。

So I just sort of applied everywhere, because I didn't know anyone at that time who had gone to Harvard or other schools, I mean, really outside of Kansas. And so it was a great opportunity for me to just put my hat in the ring and sort of see what would come from it.

然后你紧接着就去了哈佛商学院（HBS）。读完本科直接进入哈佛商学院，这个决策过程是怎样的？我猜你当时很清楚自己想要什么。

And then you immediately went to HBS after. What was the decision making process like to just do an undergrad and then right into HBS? You knew what you wanted, I assume.

我认为有几个因素。一是我有一位导师，她在另一所学校做过类似的事情，她极力主张如果我知道自己想做什么，这条路径会更高效，而且以后也不必再重新考虑。在那个阶段，我已经找到了商业领域。我发现了投资。我知道自己对那些领域充满热情。

I think there were a couple components. One is I had a mentor who had done something similar at a different school, and she had really advocated if I knew what I wanted to do, that it was a path that allowed more efficiency and also not having to revisit it later in life. At that stage, I had found business. I had found investing. I knew I was passionate about those areas.

我觉得自己有一个清晰的方向，知道自己想做什么。我现在也建议学生们，直接从大学进入商学院，你实际上是在三个维度上衡量自己。你需要确保自己在社交上准备好了。你将会和平均年龄比你大得多的学生在一起。学术上，你能为课堂带来有价值、有见地的东西吗？

I felt like I had a clear direction of what I wanted to go do. I also think going straight from college to business school, which I advise the students now, is you're really on three metrics. You need to make sure you're ready socially. You're gonna be with students who are much older than you are on average. Academically, can you bring something to the classroom that's valuable and insightful?

然后在职业方面，你将与比你更有经验的人竞争工作。在社交上，我一直觉得，你知道，我比同龄人更成熟。我想，在农场或家族企业长大的本质是，你往往能获得更多的独立性，心智成熟得也更快一些。第二，在学术方面，我没有经历过传统的职业生涯，但我从很小的时候就开始经营我们的家族企业了。

And then career wise, you're going to be competing for jobs with other people who have more experience than you. Socially, I'd always felt, you know, like I was older than my peers. I think the nature of growing up, again, in in a farm or a family business is you oftentimes just get more independence and you age a little bit quicker. Second, I think in terms of academically, I hadn't been in a traditional career, but I had run our family business from Yeah. You know, a young age.

所以我觉得我有可以借鉴的经验，这些经验会在课堂上对我有帮助并且是相关的。第三，从职业角度来看，我不知道该去哪里，但我觉得我能搞定，我并不太担心这个。这不是我去商学院的目的。我是去学习、成长，并在自己的专业知识和技能方面成为一个更好的人。

And so I felt like I had experiences to draw from that would help me in in the classroom and be relevant. And then third, from a career perspective, I didn't know where to go, but I felt like I'd figure it out, and I wasn't as worried about that. That wasn't what I was going to business school for. It was to to learn and grow and become a better person in terms of my own expertise and skills.

然后到了找工作的时候，我的理解是你给很多不同的CEO写了信。跟我说说这个。

And then when it came to finding a job, my understanding is you wrote a whole bunch of letters to different CEOs. Tell me about that.

实际上我从大学就开始给CEO们写信，我只是想学习。所以我给商业和金融界的不同CEO写信，问他们我能否去请教一下。我给贝尔斯登的艾斯·格林伯格写了一封信，他很客气地答应了。让我去拜访。于是我去了，到了交易层，和他坐了几个小时，他就我关于投资的想法回答了我的问题。

I actually started writing letters in college to CEOs, and I just wanted to learn. So I wrote letters to different CEOs in business and in finance saying, can I come and pick your brain? I wrote a letter to Ace Greenberg at Bear Stearns, and he graciously said, yes. Come down and visit. And so I came, went to the trading floor, sat with him for a couple of hours, and he just answered my questions as I thought about investing.

他，你知道，显然是金融界的传奇人物，但他很亲切，愿意花时间陪我。我认为这对我来说是重要的一课，因为人们愿意帮助别人，尤其愿意帮助年轻人。作为一名学生，我能够接触到那些原本可能会拒绝我的人，而且从他们的时间角度来看，他们或许本该拒绝。他们非常忙，但这真是一个非常好的机会。我在大学时也给沃伦·巴菲特写过一封那样的信，带一群学生去奥马哈，并通过那次机会对他有了一些了解。

He was, you know, obviously a legend in the finance field, but he was gracious and willing to spend time with me. And I think that was a huge lesson for me because people wanna help other people, and they especially wanna help young people. Being a student, I was able to get access to people who otherwise probably would have said no, and they probably should have in terms of their time. They were very busy, but it was a really great opportunity. I'd written one of those letters to Warren Buffett to bring a group of students out to Omaha in college and got to know him a little bit through that.

我其实并不是为了找工作而写信，我是为了学习而写信。毕业后，我已经有了一份全职工作等着我——我曾在一家公司实习，之后转为全职。通过学生团体访问认识了沃伦后，我决定给他写一封信。

I wasn't actually writing letters for jobs. I was writing letters to learn. And then when I graduated, I had a full time job lined up. I had been an intern and then come back full time at a company. When I met Warren over the student group visits, I decided to write him a letter.

就这样，我最终来到了伯克希尔。

And so that's how I ultimately ended up at Berkshire.

你在伯克希尔收获了什么？你在那里工作了十年，对吧？

What do you take away from Berkshire? You worked there ten years. Right?

我认为沃伦在学习和知识方面非常慷慨，他广泛分享——在年会上分享，在年度信中分享。我感觉自己获得了前排座位，真正理解并亲眼见证了这一点。但我觉得这些教训是永恒的，也是他通过那些格言相对一贯倡导的，这很棒，因为每个人都能从他那里学习。

I think Warren is very gracious with his learning and his knowledge, and he shares it widely. He shares it at annual meetings. He shares it at annual letters. And I feel like I got a front row seat to really understanding that and seeing it in action. But I think the lessons are timeless, and they're what he espouses relatively consistently through those maxims, which I think is great because everyone can learn from him.

但真正重要的是长期思考和长期复利的价值——复利是世界第八大奇迹，其价值巨大。如果你从结构上建立长期思维，这其中有很多价值。其次，是人的价值，找到正直、关心自己所做之事的人，然后给予他们正确的激励和鼓励。沃伦给予他周围的人，比如CEO们或其他人士，极大的自主权和高期望，但真正让人们拥有灵活性。我看到了这其中的价值。

But, really, the value of long term thinking and long term compounding, the eighth wonder of the world is compounding, and the value of that. And if you think long term and are set up structurally to think long term, there's a lot of value in that. Second, the value of people and finding the right people with high integrity, people who care about what they're doing, and then giving them the right incentives and the right encouragement. Warren gave those people around him, his CEOs or others, really great autonomy and high expectations, but really let people have flexibility. And I saw the value of that.

最后，就是持续学习和进步的价值。沃伦每天阅读，变得更聪明、更优秀。伯克希尔生态系统中的其他人也是如此。我觉得这与我从小在农场的经历产生了共鸣——我父亲虽然在不同领域，但也专注于变得更好和持续改进，而我在伯克希尔再次看到了这一点被强化。

And then lastly, just the value of continuous learning improvement. You know, Warren reads every single day, get smarter, gets better. Those in the Berkshire ecosystem do the same. And I think that was something that resonated with me from when I was a kid on the farm. You know, my dad also focused on getting better and continuous improvement in a different field, but it was something that I saw reinforced at Berkshire.

那为什么离开呢？

So why leave?

伯克希尔是一个非凡的地方。我的意思是，它是独一无二的，是绝无仅有的。我认为无论如何都不会再有第二个了。但伯克希尔在资本规模上非常庞大。

Berkshire is a phenomenal place. I mean, it's unique. It's one of a kind. I don't think there'll be another one by any means. But Berkshire is very large in terms of capital.

配置资本很困难。找到真正伟大的投资很难，但当你规模非常大时尤其如此。我看到了这个机会，可以用长期的方法帮助中型公司创造价值。尽管我非常喜欢在伯克希尔的时光，愿意永远待在那里，但我觉得有机会创造一些新的、特别的东西，服务于一个我认为目前没有得到很好服务的市场。

It's hard to deploy capital. It's hard to find really great investments, but it's also especially hard when you're very large. I saw this opportunity to help midsized companies with a long term approach with creating value. As much as I loved my time at Berkshire and would have been happy there forever, felt like there was this opportunity to create something new and special that was serving a market that really wasn't, I didn't think, being served well today.

你知道人们经常谈论产品市场契合度、销售策略或定价策略，但事实是销售的成功往往归结于更简单的东西——销售背后的系统。这就是为什么我使用并喜爱Shop Pay，因为没有人比Shopify更擅长销售。他们打造了全球第一的结账系统。使用Shop Pay的企业转化率提高了高达50%。这可不是四舍五入的误差。

You know people talk a lot about product market fit, sales tactics, or pricing strategy, but the truth is success in selling often comes down to something much simpler, the system behind the sale. That's why I use and love Shop Pay because nobody does selling better than Shopify. They built the number one checkout on the planet. And with Shop Pay businesses see up to 50% higher conversions. That's not a rounding error.

这是一个改变游戏规则的因素。注意力是稀缺的。Shopify帮助你捕捉它并将其转化。如果你正在建立一个严肃的企业，你的商务平台需要随时随地满足客户的需求——在你的网站上、实体店里、他们的信息流中，甚至就在他们的收件箱里。他们思考得越少，购买得越多。

That's a game changer. Attention is scarce. Shopify helps you capture it and convert it. If you're building a serious business, your commerce platform needs to meet your customers wherever they are on your site, in store, in their feed, or right inside their inbox. The less they think, the more they buy.

销售更多的企业在Shopify上销售。如果你认真对待销售，幕后的技术就和产品本身一样重要。升级你的业务，使用和我一样的结账系统。在shopify.com/knowledgeproject注册，享受每月1美元的试用期，全部小写。前往shopify.com/knowledgeproject，今天就升级你的销售方式。

Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. If you're serious about selling, the tech behind the scenes matters as much as the product. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/knowledgeproject, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/knowledgeproject, upgrade your selling today.

shopify.com/knowledgeproject。

Shopify.com/knowledgeproject.

介绍卓越的Paper Pro Move。它是一个纸质平板，一种数字笔记本，结合了纸张的熟悉感和平板电脑的数字功能。首先使用内置的数十种模板中的任何一种做笔记，然后将你的手写内容转换为文本并通过电子邮件或Slack分享。你甚至可以在桌面或移动应用程序上继续工作。过多的技术会将我们吸引进去，却隔绝了外界。

Introducing the remarkable paper pro move. It's a paper tablet, a digital notebook that combines the familiar feel of paper with the digital powers of a tablet. Start by taking notes with any of the dozens of built in templates, then turn your handwriting into and share it by email or Slack. You can even continue your work on the desktop or mobile apps. Too much technology draws us in and shuts out the world.

这款纸质平板则不会。它永远不会发出哔哔声或嗡嗡声，也不会试图吸引你的注意力。因此你可以将注意力完全集中在眼前的人或事上。它可以容纳你所有的笔记和文档，单次充电续航长达两周，却能轻松滑入你的夹克口袋。最重要的是，Remarkable的使命是帮助你更好地思考。

This paper tablet doesn't. It will never beep or buzz or try to grab your attention. So you can devote your focus to what or who is right in front of you. It can fit all your notes and documents and last up to two weeks on a single charge, but slips easily inside your jacket pocket. And most importantly, Remarkable's mission is about helping you think better.

这意味着没有应用程序、社交媒体或其他任何干扰。你可以免费试用Remarkable Paper Pro Move一百天。如果它不符合你的期望，你可以获得退款。访问remarkable.com了解更多信息，今天就获取你的纸质平板。让我们深入探讨一下CanBrick，比较伯克希尔框架与你们做法的不同之处。

That means no apps, social media, or any other distractions. You can try Remarkable Paper Pro Move for a hundred days for free. If it's not what you were looking for, you get your money back. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and get your paper tablet today. Let's dive into CanBrick a little, compare and contrast the framework at Berkshire and what you're doing that's different.

从某种意义上说，很难说有什么相似之处，因为伯克希尔是如此独特和非凡。它是独一无二的，我们不认为我们会以任何方式复制它。我们真正努力做的是专注于长期，建立一个具有长期视野的长期结构，以我们认为对公司、员工、客户以及最终对投资者有价值的方式收购和发展企业。其次是寻找具有某种护城河或竞争优势的高质量企业。优秀的企业很难找到。

It's hard to say what's similar in a sense because Berkshire is so unique and special. It's one of a kind, and I don't think we think that we're going to replicate that by any means. What we're trying to do is really focus on long term, creating a long term structure with a long term horizon to buy and build businesses with the right approach that we think is valuable to the companies, valuable to employees, customers, and ultimately investors. Second is finding high quality businesses that have some sort of moat or competitive advantage. Great businesses are hard to find.

当你找到一个具有护城河或竞争优势的优秀企业，并且拥有很长的跑道时，你就可以真正地对其进行投资。然后我认为，对我们来说，与伯克希尔相比，我们做得截然不同的一点是，我们在运营上更加亲力亲为。这源于我担任CEO时的经历。当我担任CEO时，我感到非常孤独。这很有挑战性。

And when you find a great business with a moat or competitive advantage and you have a long runway, you can really invest behind that. And then I think for us, in terms of one thing that we do distinctively different than Berkshire is we're much more hands on operationally. And that came from when I was CEO. When I was CEO, what I felt like was it was very lonely. It was challenging.

这很艰难。我当时在外面奔波，试图寻找资源和支持。我希望在我之前有人能帮助我坐在那个位置上。我一直在想，如果有人能告诉我如何进行出色的战略规划过程，或者如何提高我的招聘技巧，或者如何建立正确的文化，或者在管理企业的这些不同方面，优秀的标准是什么，那该多好。因此，当Brian、Humphrey和我创立Cambric时，我们真正想专注于如何建立一个系统，来帮助这些中型公司，并成为我们作为运营者时所希望拥有的资源。

It was hard. And I was out navigating and trying to find resources, support. People would come before me who could help me in that seat. And I kept thinking, like, it would be so nice if there was someone who could tell me how to do a great strategic planning process, or how to improve my hiring skills, or how to build the right culture, or what does great look like in these different aspects of managing a business. And so when Brian, Humphrey, and I started Cambric, we really wanted to focus on how do we build a system that we can help these midsized companies and be the resource that we wanted when we were operators.

我们构建的Cambric业务系统正是专注于这一点。

We built the Cambric Business System really focused on that.

这里面有太多内容需要解读了。我想回到第一个出发点，也许是长期主义。每个人都说长期主义。这已经变成了一种容易说出口的东西。那么说出口和付诸实践之间有什么区别呢？

There's so much to unpack there. I wanna go back to maybe the first jumping off point there, which is long term. Everybody says long term. It's become this sort of thing that's easy to say. And what's the difference between saying it and living it?

我从三个不同的角度来思考这个问题。第一是你是否有长远眼光？你是否具备长远的视野和视角？很多人可以说自己有长远眼光，他们或许确实有，但这只是其中一个方面。第二是你需要有一个真正能让你进行长远思考的结构。

I think of it in three different ways. One is do you think long term? Do you have a long term horizon and perspective? A lot of people can say I think long term, and they may, but that's only one component. The second is you have a structure that actually allows you to think long term.

因为如果你的组织结构天然就不允许或不鼓励长远思考，你就会让自己陷入长远视野与鼓励短期决策的组织结构之间的冲突。本质上，如果你的结构要求或激励你在三到五年内出售业务，你就会做出短期决策。第三点我认为，长远性有不同的程度。有五十年期限的长远，我认为这确实非常非常长远。然后还有不同程度的长远性可以被利用和思考。

Because if you naturally have a structure that doesn't allow for that or doesn't encourage that, you're going to be pitting yourself with your long term horizon against your structure that is going to encourage you to make shorter term decisions. In essence, if you're focused on selling a business in three to five years, you're gonna make short term decisions if your structure is going to require you or incentivize you to do that. And then the third is, I think, there's differing degrees of long term. There is the fifty year long term, which I think is really, really long term. And then there's differing gradients of that that can be utilized and be thought about.

我认为并非所有长远性都是等同的，也不认为必须考虑五十年才算是长远。我认为存在一些中间状态，既能让你利用这种视野和结构优势，又能保持一定灵活性，不会把自己永远束缚住。

And I don't think all long term is equal, and I don't think you need to do fifty years to be sort of long term. I think there are some in the in the middle that allows you to take advantage of that horizon, take advantage of that structure, but give you some flexibility where you're not locking yourself up forever.

即使你是个长远思考者，这也有点奇怪对吧？因为你在考虑二十五或五十年的长周期，但你必须今天就采取行动。

Even if you're a long term thinker, it's kind of weird. Right? Because you're thinking about a longer duration, twenty five or fifty years, but you have to act today.

是的。我们常说短期和长期需要平衡。你不能只考虑长期。如果只考虑长期，你可能连短期都过不去，因为你会错过当下的情况和短期动态。我们在Pampered Chef时，正在扭转业务局面。

Yes. We always say that there's a balance of short short term and long term. You can't only think about the long term. If you only think about the long term, you probably won't get out of the short term because you're gonna miss the situations of today, the short term sort of dynamics. When we were at Pampered Chef, we were turning around the business.

Brian是CFO，我是CEO，我们有一个管理团队帮助推动这场转型。转型进行了几年后，业务其实做得相当不错。然后在第三年，我们遇到了挫折。我们发现我们过于关注长期，过于关注长期战略举措、国际增长和新品类的投资。

Brian was the CFO. I was the CEO, and we had a management team that was helping us drive this transformation. And we were a couple years into the turnaround, and the business was actually doing quite well. And then in year three, we had this sort of setback. And what we saw was we were focusing too much on the long term, our long term strategic initiatives, our investments in international growth and new categories.

我们忽视了当下基础工作的扎实执行。我们原本以为，这些基础工作我们已经专注了两年，已经改善了，现在可以着眼于更长期的思考了。但现实是，你必须同时管理短期和长期。

We had lost sight of the fundamentals blocking and tackling of today. And what we had thought was, hey, we had focused on those for two years. We'd improved them. Now we could go set our sights on longer term thinking. But the reality is you have to manage the short term, and you have to manage the long term.

我认为对我们来说，当我们不得不重新聚焦，真正专注于今天的销售工作时，我们当前面临的挑战是为了给自己留出空间，同时也能思考长远发展。

And I think for us, as we had to refocus, really work on the sales today, the sort of challenges we are facing in the moment in order to give us the space to think about the long term as well.

你提到了基础执行（blocking and tackling），我认为这里可以探讨我们如何陷入复杂性、把事情过度复杂化的问题。有时候只需要回归基础。就像芒格说的，采纳一个简单的想法并认真对待它。

You mentioned blocking and tackling, and I think there's a point to be made there perhaps about how we get trapped in complexity and making things overly complicated. Sometimes it just comes down to remembering the basics. As Munger would say, take a simple idea and take it seriously.

是的。我的意思是，我们经常考虑那些宏大的事情——战略应该是什么样子，未来的愿景如何，或者这意味着什么，而不是如何做好基础工作。我认为一些最优秀的CEO都专注于基本功。比如沃尔玛的山姆·沃尔顿，他完全专注于基础。

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that oftentimes, we think of the big things we could go do, you know, what should the strategy look like, or what's the future vision of this, or what's it going to mean versus how do we do the fundamentals and do the fundamentals well. And I think some of the best CEOs out there focused on the fundamentals. I mean, Sam Walton at Walmart, he was all about the fundamentals.

他每周都会去门店，而且是多家门店，专注于如何更有效地服务顾客。这是一项非常重要但经常被低估或忽视的能力。我认为这尤其重要，特别是在中型企业，每天都有大量的基础执行工作要做。而且这些工作往往一直上升到管理团队和CEO层面，不仅仅是前线员工能处理的基础执行。

And he was in a store every week and, you know, multiple stores every week focused on how do we deliver for our customers more effectively. That is a really important skill set that is oftentimes undervalued or underappreciated. And I think that's really important, especially in mid sized companies where there's a lot of blocking and tackling to be done every single day. And oftentimes, that rises all the way up to the management team and the CEO. It's not something where just your frontline can handle the blocking and tackling.

真的，每个人都必须专注于它。

Really, everyone needs to be focused on it.

Pampered Chef的转型是原班人马完成的，还是团队发生了很多变动？

Was the turnaround at Pampered Chef with the same people, or was there a changeover in a lot of team?

在Pampered Chef的这次转型中，我们确实更换了大部分团队。该业务已经衰退了大约十年。在那段时间里，很多可能很优秀的员工离开了，或者他们不具备我们转型所需的技能，或者这些技能已经退化。因此我们需要注入新人才。举个例子，当我接手Pampered Chef时，10%的业务是数字化的，90%是通过线下聚会面对面销售的。

In this situation at Pampered Chef, we did change much of the team. The business had been in decline for about ten years. And during that period, we saw a lot of probably great people in the organization leave, or they had the skill sets that we needed for the transformation weren't there or had atrophied. And so we needed an infusion of talent. So as an example, when I started Pampered Chef, 10% of the business was digital, 90% was sold in person through in person parties.

员工们甚至连笔记本电脑都没有。而我们看到的是，哇，客户正在发生巨大转变。他们更多地在网上购物，更多地使用移动设备购物，而我们却通过线下聚会模式进行销售。因此，我们需要转变思维，思考如何真正在客户所在的地方满足他们，以及在这个过程中对他们来说重要的是什么？

Employees didn't even have laptops. And what we saw was, wow, the customer is shifting dramatically. They're shopping more online. They're shopping more mobile, and we're selling through an in person party model. So we needed to shift our mindset to say, okay, how do we actually meet customers where they are and what's important to them in that process?

在这个过程中我们发现，我们需要更加注重数字化，需要将我们对技术的看法从后台和支持转变为真正的收入生成器。因此，我们需要一位新的技术领导者，并最终组建一个新的技术团队，以及营销和销售团队来真正补充这一点。我们引入了一位新的领导者，他彻底改变了我们对技术的思考方式，以及我们如何服务客户。我们将业务的数字化程度从大约10%提升到了75%。我们仍然通过渠道，即通过销售顾问来实现这一点。

And what we found in doing that was we needed to be more digitally focused, and we needed to shift our own thinking about technology from back office and support to a true revenue generator. And so we needed a new leader in technology, and then ultimately much of a new technology team, and marketing, and sales to really complement that. We brought in a new leader who really transformed how he thought about technology, and then how we would serve the customer. We took the business from 10% sort of digital to 75%. Now, we still did that through the channels, so through the sales consultants.

我们没有在亚马逊上销售或直接销售，而是真正专注于如何利用我们的竞争优势，即渠道，但帮助他们更有效地进行数字化。但我认为这是一个很好的例子，说明有时你需要不同的技能组合或不同的经验来实现业务目标，而有时传统团队并不总是具备这些。

We didn't go on Amazon or sell direct, but we actually really focused on how do we utilize our competitive advantage, which was the channel, but help them be more effective digitally. But I think it's a good example of sometimes you need a different skill set or a different experience to go where you need to go in a business, and sometimes the legacy team doesn't always have that.

在业务下滑的情况下吸引人才是什么感觉？我可能将其比作体育。对吧？如果你在一个0胜17负的团队中，很难吸引到有能力、有竞争力并能改变文化的自由球员。他们可能会在看到进展或关键规模之前观望。

What was it like attracting talent to declining business? And I liken this maybe to sports. Right? If you're on a team that's o and 17, it's really hard to attract free agents that are capable and competent and who can change the culture. They're sort of waiting to see progress before they jump in, or waiting to see a critical mass.

你是如何吸引人才的呢？

How did you go about attracting talent to that?

这是我们早期非常关注的一点，即理解我们的员工价值主张是什么。为什么会有人想来Pampered Chef？我们发现，人们来Pampered Chef并不是因为他们一定总是喜欢产品、我们的位置或其他因素。他们来是因为他们想学习和成长。我们可以通过任人唯贤的方式给他们机会，让他们更快地学习成长，并因此获得回报，对我们所做的事情感到兴奋。

It was something we really focused a lot on early on, understanding what was our employee value problem. Why would someone wanna come to Pampered Chef? And what we found was people weren't coming into Pampered Chef, you know, because they necessarily loved always loved the product or our location or some other factor. They were coming because they wanted to learn and grow. And we could give them opportunities through, you know, meritocracy that they can learn and grow more quickly and get rewarded for that and be excited by what we're doing.

本质上，我们非常注重讲故事，并说明我们要做什么？我们正在转型业务。我们将重新定义用餐时间。我们将专注于我们的宗旨，即一次一餐、一次回忆，点亮生活。这就是我们要专注的，而这确实开始引起那些热衷于学习、成长并做一些独特和特别的事情的员工的共鸣。

And in essence, you know, we really focused on storytelling and saying, what are we going to go do? And we're transforming a business. We're going to reinvent mealtime. We're gonna focus on our purpose, which was energy lives, one meal and one memory at a time. That's what we're gonna focus on, and that really started to resonate with sort of employees who were passionate about learning, growing, and then doing something that was unique and special.

然后我们专注于我们的文化，即如何通过我们正在创造的文化来实现这一目标，无论是在机会、晋升、激励、成长方面，还是在参与度、提供反馈、帮助人们成长和发展方面。我们最终吸引了许多通常不会选择厨具产品行业的人。我自己通常也不会选择厨具产品行业，但看到了这个机会去打造一些独特而特别的东西，并真正专注于我们如何在这家公司也做到这一点。

And then we focused on our culture of how do we actually accomplish that through the culture we are creating, both in terms of opportunities, promotions, incentives, growth, but also in terms of engagement, giving feedback, helping people grow and develop. We ended up attracting a lot of people who wouldn't normally go to a kitchenware products business. I wouldn't normally go to a kitchenware products business, but saw this opportunity to build something unique and special, and really focus on how could we do that here in the company as well.

我很喜欢这一点。我想回到结构对长期思维至关重要的观点。作为伯克希尔的局外人，我一直认为其成功很大程度上源于在某个时间点没有人能进来告诉巴菲特去做不同的事情。这种结构与他从长期思维角度所做的事情是一致的。我们有一个共同的朋友布伦特·巴肖尔，他设立了同样的模式——我不会称之为私募股权模式，但他没有采用七年期的基金模式，那种有时间限制的模式。

I love that. I wanna go back to structure being critical important to long term thinking. I've always, as an outsider to Berkshire, thought a lot of the success resulted from the fact that nobody could come in at a certain point in time and tell Buffett to do something different. The structure aligned with what he was doing for a long term thinking point of view. And we have a mutual friend, Brent Bashore, who set up the same thing from a I wouldn't call it a private equity model, but he didn't take a seven year fund where there's a ticking clock.

他将其设为二十八年，并称之为永久股权。这使得资本部署更加耐心，让你能够进行今天投资、五六年后才见成效的投资，但如果你只是倒卖企业，就不会这样做。

He made it twenty eight years and called it permanent equity. And that enables a lot more patient deployment of capital, enables you to make investments today that they're going to bear fruit in five or six years, but you won't do that if you're just flipping a business.

绝对如此。我认为，如果你在企业中的时间跨度是三到五年，也就是说你打算在三到五年内卖掉企业，那么你所做的一切本质上都将是短期的，这仅仅是因为人性和激励方式。所以你会进来然后说，好吧。我是应该投资开拓新市场，还是应该现在就提高价格？我是应该建立一个强大的人员体系、文化和参与度，这可能三、四、五年后才见回报，还是应该现在就削减成本，这会增加我的短期价值？

Absolutely. I I think that if your time horizon is three to five years in a business, you know, I'm gonna sell the business in three to five years, everything you're gonna do is going to be short term in nature, just because of human nature and what how you're incentivized. So you're gonna come in and say, okay. Should I invest in growing into new markets, or should I take price right now? Should I, you know, really build a strong people system and culture and engagement that may not pay back for three, four, five years, or should I take costs out right now, which are gonna increase my short term value?

你可能遇到的每一个决策，做出更长期的决策都会非常非常困难，因为压力如此之大，你知道，偏向于采取更短期的行动。因此，我认为这种结构的本质就创造了错误的激励。任何企业领导者都会说，事情的回报通常不会像你想象的那么快。所以要在一两年或三年内获得回报是很难的，相比之下，比如我们要进入一个新市场。

Every decision you're probably gonna come up to, it's going to be really, really hard to make a longer term decision because the pressures are so, you know, skewed to making a shorter term action. And so I think that the nature of the structure just creates the wrong incentives. Any leader in a business will say, you you don't usually get payback in things as quickly as you think. And so to get payback in a year or two years or three years, it's hard versus, okay. We're gonna move into a new market.

你知道，这可能需要我们几年时间才能建立起来，或者我们要投资培养组织中的新一代人才，以便他们在五年后准备好领导。这些都是具有长期性质的事情，但如果你结构上是短期的，或者激励是基于较短期限的，就很难做出这些决策。

You know, that might take us a few years to get that set up, or we're gonna invest in building a new crop of talent in our organization so that they're ready to lead in five years. Those are things that are long term in nature, but if you're structure or you're incentivized on a shorter term duration, it's just hard to make those decisions.

即使你做出了这些决策，内部往往也很难推行，除非所有人都目标一致，因为就像，哦，我们为五年后做这个，但突然之间，投资回报率不如预期，就会出现一种弃船的心态。

And even when you make them, it's hard internally often unless you have everybody aligned in the same because it's like, oh, we're making this for five years, but all of sudden, the ROI is not what we thought it would be in abandon ship sort of mentality.

确实如此。我的意思是，我在很多企业工作过，人们会说，哦，如果我们能把利润率从10%提高到12%就好了。而我心想，这真的很难做到。这确实很难。但我记得当我接手Pampered Chef的职位时，我已经为这家公司提供咨询大约一年了。

Absolutely. I mean, I've been in a number of businesses where people will say, oh, if we can just get the margins from 10% to 12% or 12 you know? And I'm like, well, that's that's really hard to do. Like, that's hard to do. But I remember when I took the role at Pampered Chef, I had advised the business for about a year.

所以我对需要做的事情有了相当清晰的认识。然后我只需要去执行。我原以为需要一两年时间来推动必要的变革，让业务重回正轨。但实际上花了将近三四年，因为每件事都耗时更长、难度更大。你知道，组建合适的团队，建立正确的文化，投资于合适的业务系统。

So I had a pretty good sense of, I think, what needed to be done. Then I just needed to go do it. And I thought it would take me a year or two to go drive the change that was needed to get the business back on track. And it took almost three or four because everything took longer and was harder. You know, getting the right team, getting the right culture, investing in the right, you know, systems in the business.

我们想要更新营销方式和产品。所有这些都花费了相当多的时间。我想如果我的任务是在三四年内出售这家公司，我不确定是否会做同样的事情。我可能会做出一些更短视的决策，最终可能会为业务创造更少的价值。

We wanted to update the marketing and update the product. All of that took a fair amount of time. And I think that if if my task was to go sell that business in three or four years, I don't know if I would have done all the same things. I probably would have made some shorter term decisions that ultimately probably would have created less value in the business.

我认为文化变革如此困难的部分原因是它们比你预期的更漫长、更艰难。还存在时间线不匹配的问题，比如CEO更替速度——至少在标普500公司中——是有史以来最快的，甚至更快。所以你上任后，或者想想体育队的教练。对吧？你接手一支输球的队伍，你会冒险尝试很多孤注一掷的战术，因为预期就是你知道我不会在这里待十年。

I think that's part of the reason that culture changes are so hard is that they're longer and harder than you expect. There's a timeline mismatch as well too, like CEO turnover, at least in the S and P 500, is as fast as it's ever been, if not faster. And so you go in, or think of a coach in a sports team. Right? You go into a losing team, you're gonna throw a lot of Hail Marys because the expectation is just that, you know, I'm not gonna be here for ten years.

我会交易掉那个首轮选秀权。我会做这些可能在三四年后才有回报的事情。

I'll trade away that first round draft pick. I'll do these things that maybe would pay off in three to four years.

是的。我认为，我们生活中都有各种激励因素，所以认识到这些激励因素往往能显示出我们会有什么行为或做出什么决定。你提到了文化。我认为文化和人才是任何企业、任何规模中最基础、最根本的方面。特别是对中型公司来说，这极其宝贵，因为你们通常资源更有限，团队规模更小，所以每个人在职责范围或能力方面承担得更多。

Yeah. And I think that, you know, we all have incentives in life, and so recognizing what the incentives are oftentimes show us what behaviors you will will have or what decisions we'll make. And I think you mentioned culture. I think culture and people is the most foundational and fundamental aspect of any business, any size. I think in mid sized companies in particular, it's incredibly valuable because you have oftentimes more limited resources, your team's smaller, and so people are doing more in terms of their scope or responsibilities or capabilities.

他们通常非常热情和投入，但我们并不总是投资于那种文化。那么我们该如何持续下去？我认为最优秀的企业解决了这个问题。但随着公司规模扩大，在人员方面会出现更多复杂性。所以我们总是从人开始。

They oftentimes are very passionate and committed, but we don't always invest in that culture. And so how do we continue? And I think the best businesses figure that out. But I think as companies scale and you get bigger, there's more complexity in terms of the people side of things. So we always start with people.

我们是否让合适的人坐在了合适的位置上？我们是否有正确的文化？我们是否有良好的员工敬业度？我们是否有恰当的人才发展和人才管理？当我们思考企业时，通过关注人和基础，你确实可以提升一个企业。

Do we have the right people in the right seats? Do we have the right culture? Do we have the right engagement? Do we have the right talent development and talent management? As we think about businesses, you can really enhance a business by focusing on the people and the foundation.

我们首先关注这一点。其次我们关注目标。企业的目标是什么？我们在世界上创造了什么不同？我们是否围绕这个目标保持一致？

We focus there first. We focus on purpose second. What's the purpose of the business? What's the difference we make in the world? Are we aligned around that?

执行这一目标和影响力的策略是什么？然后我们第三考虑绩效。于是我们说，好吧，我们如何实际实现这些目标？我们如何推动协调和问责，以及如何专注于目标？我认为如果你一开始就专注于绩效，那么你就会错过这些基础设置，这些对于达成一致并最终为企业创造最大价值至关重要。

What's the strategy to go execute that purpose and impact? And then we think about performance third. And so then we say, okay, how do we actually achieve those goals? How do we drive alignment and accountability, and how do we focus on purpose? I think if you start by focusing on performance, then I think you miss out on really these foundation settings, which are so critical to get alignment and to drive ultimately the most value in businesses.

这是人们随口说说的另一件事。人是我们最宝贵的资产，但说这些话很容易，践行却很难，因为这意味着要对员工进行投资。这可能意味着在某些时候降低你的利润率。

That's another thing that people just throw out casually. People are our most valuable asset, but it's so easy to say those words and so hard to live that because that means investing in your people. It means probably lowering your margins at certain points in time.

这需要采取一种有纪律的方法来思考人员问题。所以不仅仅是，你知道，我如何更多地奖励员工，或者我们如何举办更多的假日派对之类的。实际上是采取一种结构化、有纪律的方法。我们总是对我们的公司说，通常企业在思考战略、KPI或预算时有结构化的视角。他们有一个日程表。

It's taking a disciplined approach to how we think about people. So it's not just, you know, how do I reward people more or, you know, how do we have more, you know, holiday parties or whatever it may. It's actually taking a structured, disciplined approach. We always say with our companies, typically businesses have a structured view to thinking about strategy, or KPIs, or budgeting. They have a calendar.

他们对此有纪律和方法。我们经常问，你的人员日程表在哪里？你在人员方面有同样的纪律方法吗？因为你应该有同样的方法。我们把它分为三个部分。

They have, you know, discipline and a approach to that. We often say, where's your people calendar? What is your same level of discipline approach that you have on people? Because you should have the same. And we put it in three buckets.

你知道，我们如何吸引合适的人才？所以这包括从招聘到雇主价值主张，再到哪些是最关键的角色以吸引合适的人？所以在吸引部分，我们如何发展人才？我们是否在考虑员工的职业发展方向？我们是否在帮助他们实现目标？

You know, how do we attract the right talent? So that's everything from, you know, hiring to employer value proposition, to what are the most critical roles to get the right people in? So on the attract bucket, how do we develop talent? Are we thinking about where people are going in their careers? Are we helping them get there?

我们对此是如何考虑的？然后是参与度的问题。我们是否在调动人才的积极性？我们是否考虑了文化因素？我们是否考虑了激励机制？

How are we thinking about that? And then engagement. Are we engaging our talent? Are we thinking about the culture? Are we thinking about incentives?

我们是否考虑了沟通方式？以及我们如何最高效地支持整个组织？整个人力资源框架在组织运营中至关重要，但往往被事后才想起。如果你观察高管团队，在中等规模的公司里，可能甚至没有人力资源负责人。即便有，也往往是较初级的通才型人员，而非真正的人才合作伙伴。

Are we thinking about communication? And how are we doing that most effectively to support the the whole organization? The whole people framework is so significant in terms of what you can do in an organization, but it usually is an afterthought. If you look at executive teams, usually in mid sized companies, there may not even be an HR leader. If they are, it's a more junior level generalist type person versus a true talent partner.

因此，这些重担通常都落在CEO身上来应对，但当你要处理所有事务时，这负担就很重了。随着规模扩大，这一点变得越来越重要。因为公司规模小的时候，每个人都离CEO很近。他们能看到，能感受到文化。

And so that weight all falls on usually the CEO to navigate it, but that's a lot when you're trying to navigate everything. And as you're scaling, it becomes more and more important. Because when you're small, everyone is close to the CEO. They see it. They feel the culture.

他们能看到工作 ethic 和纪律性。随着公司壮大，你需要退后一步，建立更多的系统和结构来维持这些，因为不是每个人都会与CEO肩并肩坐在一起。

They see the work ethic and discipline. As you get bigger, you need to sort of step away and have more of a system and a structure that allows for that to continue, because not everyone's gonna be sitting, you know, shoulder to shoulder with the CEO.

你们如何评估人才？

How do you evaluate talent?

是的。在我们考虑人才时，我们在业务内部会做几件事。当我们进入一个新业务时，首先，我们真的努力去理解这个业务中的关键岗位是什么。我们发现大多数中等规模的公司有15到30个最关键的岗位需要做好，这些是创造最大价值的岗位。每个业务可能略有不同。

Yeah. So we do a few things within our businesses as we think about talent. When we go into a new business, first of all, we really try to understand what are the mission critical roles in this business. We find most midsize companies have between fifteen and thirty roles that are the most critical roles to get right, and these are the ones that are creating the most value. Each business, it may be slightly different.

在一个业务中可能是销售，在另一个中可能是产品开发，在另一个中可能是财务，取决于他们在做什么以及他们的 approach。但我们是否真正清楚这些是什么？我们是否具备正确的能力？

It may be sales in one business. It may be product development in another. It may be finance in another, depending on what they're doing and how they approach. But do we really have clarity in what those are? Do we have the right capabilities?

有时候你可能有一个今天没有但需要的使命关键角色。就像我之前举的Pampered Chef例子，当我们开始时，技术对我们来说就是一个使命关键角色。我们当时不具备所需的能力，所以必须去建立它。但真正要做的是评估我们有哪些使命关键角色。然后一旦完成评估，我们再审视：今天这些岗位上是谁在任职？

Sometimes you might have a mission critical role that you don't have today, that you need the capabilities. So my example earlier of Pampered Chef, like, when I started a mission critical role for us was technology. We did not have those capabilities in terms of what we needed to go do, and so we had to build it. But really assessing what are the mission critical roles that we have. And then once we do that, we assess, okay, who do we have in those roles today?

他们是明星员工吗？是那些有巨大发展潜力的人吗？还是说他们现在表现尚可，但长期来看可能不是合适人选？所以我们试图以规范的方式认真评估这一点。我发现最好的方法是与某人深入交流，我通常会发送——我一般会准备几套不同框架的问题，包括行业问题、公司问题、部门问题和个人问题。

Are they rock stars? Are there people who have, you know, a lot of opportunity in terms of their progression? Or are they people who are okay today, but maybe aren't the right people longer term? So we try to really assess that in a disciplined way. I find the best way is you go in in with someone, and I can usually send I usually send, like, a list of questions that are I usually have a few different frameworks, but industry questions, company questions, department questions, you questions.

我会提出这些不同的问题。我发现通过与他们讨论所见所闻，通常能有效了解他们的评估、理解及其世界观，这也有助于我们更好地了解业务并取得进步。这通常是我们开展业务时的做法。一旦进入业务，我们就会重点关注：如何培养人才？因此，我们会运用不同的对话和流程，确保在这一过程中保持目标一致。

And I ask those different questions. And what I find is you can usually get someone's sort of assessment and understanding and their view of a world pretty effectively by just talking to them about what they're seeing, and then that helps us learn and get better about the business as well. So that's typically when we go into business and what we do. Once we're in a business, then we really focus, okay, how do we develop our talent? And so we're using different conversations and different processes along the way to really make sure that we're aligned in doing that.

对我们来说，这始于年初是否设定目标？是否有清晰的KPIs？因为如果没有明确的KPIs，你如何评估人员？所以你要设定我们要实现哪些KPIs，然后给予人们实现这些目标的灵活性。

For us, it starts with, do we goal set at the beginning of the year? Do we have clear KPIs? Because how do you assess people if you don't have clear KPIs? And so you have KPIs of what are we gonna go achieve? And then you give people the flexibility to go achieve those.

你不告诉他们如何实现，而是说：好的，你有自主权去实现这些目标，但你要赋予他们技能。所以我们进行问题解决培训，我们提供支持，使他们更有能力去实际达成这些目标，并且让他们有可见性。

You don't tell them how to achieve them. You say, okay. You have the autonomy to go achieve these, but you give them the skills. So we do problem solving training. We help support them so that they're more equipped to actually go achieve those goals, and, you know, they have visibility.

然后他们就有了对齐性：我们都朝着这个方向前进，这些是最重要的KPIs。接着我们融入对话或反馈，实时给予反馈，比如：嘿，你这点做得很好。

And then they have the alignment. We're all going in this direction. These are the most important KPIs. And then we incorporate conversations or feedback where we're actually giving real time feedback on, hey. You did this really well.

这是我们能做得更好的地方。通过这种方式，你就在实施人才管理流程。与此同时，你还在进行领导力发展流程，识别你的领导者，帮助他们理解愿景、期望和战略，最终他们也在帮助塑造这一战略。

This is what we could do better. And then through that, you are implementing a talent management process. And then alongside of that, you're doing a leadership development process where you're identifying your leaders. You're helping them understand the vision, the expectations, the strategy. Ultimately, they're helping shape that strategy.

所以这是一种非常有条理的方式，即我们如何在恰当的阶段、恰当的时间引入人才，真正帮助他们提升自身的发展、学习和贡献，从而更关键地利用他们的专业知识和见解。

So it's a very sort of structured way of saying, oh, how do we bring in people at the right stages at the right time to really help them enhance their own development, their own learning, their own contribution so that we can leverage their expertise and their their insights even more critically.

在你进行的这些面试中，是否有迹象表明他们可能不适合你们的发展方向，或者这个人不如你最初预期的那么好？

Are there tells in those interviews that you're doing with people that maybe they're not the right fit for where you're going, or that this person isn't as good as you thought they were going in?

我认为最大的迹象我称之为‘手舞足蹈’，当你与某人谈论某事时，你问一个问题，他们不是直接回答问题，而是东拉西扯。他们有点像在‘手舞足蹈’。或者当你开始深入追问时，‘手舞足蹈’就开始了，他们无法真正理解或解释清楚。通常，真正精通自己手艺、了解业务、掌握基本原理的人能够清楚地解释我们为什么做某些事，为什么不做。他们可能没有全部技能去修复问题，但他们明白问题的症结所在。

I would say the biggest tell I I say is called hand waving, where you're talking to someone about something, you ask a question, and rather than answering the question, they sort of go all over. They're sort of hand waving around. Or you start to drill in more, and the hand waving begins where they can't really understand or explain it. Typically, people who really know their craft and know their business and know the fundamentals can really explain why we do certain things, why we don't. They may not have all the skills to go fix it, but they understand what the issues are and what the problems are.

然后我们的目标是帮助他们理解，好吧，这就是我们可以如何解决或处理它的方式。但这通常对我来说是最大的迹象：他们能否清晰表达？能否简洁明了？他们是否真正理解自己领域的动态？这并不意味着他们需要了解业务中的所有事情。

And then our goal is to help them understand, okay, this is how we can go address that or solve it. But that usually is the biggest tell for me of is can they get clear? Can they get crisp? Do they really understand what's going on in their space? And it doesn't mean they need to understand everything in the business.

他们需要理解自己负责的领域。我经常发现最优秀的人只是拥有

You they need to understand the area that they're responsible for. I find oftentimes the best people just have

一种

a

天生的兴趣和好奇心去解决问题，或者他们甚至对自己领域之外的事情也有见解。你知道，我经常问的一个问题是，比如，有哪些我们应该做但还没做的事情？嗯。人们经常会在自己的领域提出建议，但很多时候，他们也会对其他领域有想法，比如，嘿，我真的认为如果我们能更多地专注于数字化向客户销售，那将使我们转型业务，而我们现在没有这样做。你知道，这样的事情让我能看出，他们是否对业务有那种天生的投入感、兴奋感或好奇心。

natural interest, curiosity to solve the issues, or they'll have views on things even outside of their area. You know, if one of the questions I'll oftentimes ask is, like, what are we not doing that we should be? Mhmm. And people oftentimes will say stuff in their area, but oftentimes, they'll have stuff in other areas too that, hey, I really thought if we, you know, could focus more on selling to our customers digitally, that would allow us to transform the business, and we're not doing that today. You know, things like that help me sort of see, do they have, you know, just that innate engagement or excitement about the business and curiosity.

我非常喜欢这一点。当你说到这时，我想到的是能够以不同的视角层次来讨论问题，从微观的一英寸层面到宏观的三万英尺高度，然后超越同一个问题本身。

I like that a lot. I think as you were saying that, what came to mind for me was the ability to talk at different resolutions from like the one inch level to the 30,000 foot and then transcend the same problem.

对于我和我的角色来说，关键是理解我们在对话中处于什么位置，我在和谁交谈，如何达到那个层次，以及什么才是合适的层次。我发现一线人员可能对企业发展的宏观战略（三万英尺视角）不够了解，但他们非常擅长十英尺视角，深刻理解他们正在试图解决的问题，或者是什么在限制或阻碍他们。所以真正要弄清楚的是，应该在什么层面上进行对话。

For me and my role, it's understanding where are we in that conversation, and who am I talking to, how do we get to that level, and what's the right level. And I find that people who are on the front line may not have the 30,000 view on where we're going in the business, but they're gonna be really good at that 10 foot view and understanding the problem that they're trying to solve or, you know, what's limiting them or holding them back. So really sort of figuring out what's the right level to have conversation.

你们是如何寻找公司的？你们现在已经收购了几家。

How do you go about finding companies? You've acquired a few now.

我们会寻找我们看好的领域。就像我们说想去钓鱼，就得找一个有很多好鱼的池塘。所以我们想了解哪些行业拥有强大的护城河或竞争优势。我们通常会通过考察资本回报率来量化分析：这个领域的资本回报如何？能否从数据上看出是否存在护城河？

We find areas that we like. So we say if we wanna go fishing, we wanna find a pond with a lot of great fish, and so we wanna understand what is an industry that we think has a strong moat or competitive advantage. We usually look at that by saying, okay. What are the returns on capital in this space? So quantitatively, can we see if there is a moat?

然后从定性角度，我们能否更有效地理解这个护城河？它有多宽？随着时间的推移，它是变宽了还是变窄了？它是否持久？能否经受住时间的考验？

And then qualitatively, can we understand the moat more effectively? How wide is the moat? Is it getting wider or more narrow over time? Is it durable? Is it going to withstand the test of time?

因此我们努力寻找这些领域。一旦找到我们认为合适的行业，我们会花大量时间联系企业、寻找企业、通过引荐认识企业。我们还有运营顾问帮助我们理解，然后我们真正努力变得专业，并找出如何为这些公司增值。另一类企业是主动找上门的，那些人听说了我们在做的事情并感到兴奋。所以他们会来找我们说，你对我的业务感兴趣吗？我们对此非常感激。

And so we're trying to sort of find those spaces. Once we find industries that we think are a fit there, we spend a fair amount of time reaching out to businesses, finding businesses, getting introduced to businesses. We have operating advisors who help us understand as well, and then we really try to get smart and find how do we add value in these companies. And then another group of businesses we have are just people who come to us, people who hear about what we're doing, who are excited. So they'll come to us and say, are you interested in my business, which we appreciate.

我们总是用同样的评估标准：企业的护城河是什么？从定量和定性上我们能评估吗？然后我们如何看待这些领域？我们还建立了一个由3000名CEO、所有者和创始人组成的社区，我们聚集他们来提供内容、资源和支持。通过这个社区，我们了解到新的企业和新的领域，这也有助于我们更好地寻找可能适合我们的企业。

And we always have the same assessment of, you know, what's the mode of the business, you know, quantitatively, qualitatively, can we assess it? And then how do we think about those areas? And what we've also done is we have built a community of 3,000 CEOs, owners, and founders that we bring together to provide content and resources and support. And through that, we learn about new businesses. We learn new spaces, which help us also be better in terms of finding businesses that might be a fit for us.

我们每年只投资一到两家公司。我们会考察500家，因此我们非常挑剔，只寻找那些拥有长远发展空间的最优质企业。

We only invest in one or two companies a year. We'll look at 500, so we're really selective at finding the highest quality businesses that have a long runway.

这是评估过程中最重要的部分吗

Is that the most important part of the process evaluating the

我们称之为我们关注的五个M。首先是护城河。你知道，什么是护城河？竞争优势是什么？第二是市场。

We call the five m's that we look at. First is moat. You know, what is the moat? What's the competitive advantage? Second is the market.

你可能拥有护城河，但市场在增长吗？我们认为这是一个有吸引力的市场吗？增长率是多少？可能的动态是什么？第三，我们关注管理层。

You you may have a moat, but is the market growing? And do we think it's an attractive market? What is the growth rate? What are the likely dynamics of that? Third, we look at management.

它现在是否有一个强大的管理团队，或者是一个我们认为如果有机会可以帮助建立管理团队的情况？有时，会有一个很棒的企业。它有三个强大的领导者，但他们需要建立一个销售负责人、人才负责人或财务负责人。我们能帮助他们做到这一点吗？第四是我们称之为更多潜力，即存在一些当前未被充分利用的机会，我们认为可以帮助他们。

Does it have a strong management team today, or is it something where we think we can help build the management team if there's opportunities? Sometimes, there'll be a great business. It's got three strong leaders, but they need to build out a sales leader, or a talent leader, or a finance leader. We can we help them do that? The fourth is what we call more potential, and there's some opportunity that's not being fully leveraged today that we think we can help them with.

可能是扩展到新市场。可能是对他们当前管理业务的方式采取更结构化的方法。在更多潜力方面有多种不同的途径，但绝对是一个重点。然后对我们来说，第五是安全边际。我们所说的安全边际是指我们不希望一切都必须完美才能成功。

It might be expanding into new markets. It might be a more structured approach to how they manage the business today. There are a variety of different avenues in terms of more potential, but absolutely a focus. And then for us, the fifth is margin of safety. And what we mean by margin of safety is we don't wanna have have to have everything go perfectly right in order for us to be successful.

我们希望有一些灵活性，这样如果出现像COVID或经济衰退或关税之类的情况，我们可以与管理团队一起很好地应对，并且不会因为某些可能超出我们控制范围的事情而给业务带来不当压力，迫使其做出短期决策。

We wanna have a little bit of flex so that if there is something like COVID or a downturn or tariffs, that we can navigate that well with the management team, and we don't put undue pressure on the business to make shorter term decisions because of something that's happening that may be outside of our control.

护城河是什么意思？

What does moat mean?

对我们来说，护城河就是我们视为竞争优势的东西。举个简单的例子，就像为什么城堡要有护城河。对吧？你有一个城堡，代表强大的业务，然后你希望在周围拥有的护城河就是用来防御城堡的，保护城堡的东西。宽阔的护城河能更好地保护城堡，狭窄的护城河保护作用就较弱。

For us, moat is what we consider a competitive advantage. And the simple example of, like, why a moat is it's a castle. Right? Do you have a castle that is a strong business, And then the moat you wanna have around is what defends the castle, and what is going to protect the castle. A wide moat is going to protect a castle more, a narrow moat is going to protect it less.

护城河可以由不同的动力驱动。可能是你有一个品牌和渠道，结合起来可以让你在一定程度上阻止客户流失。你可能有一个竞争地位，让你成为低成本供应商，从而吸引客户，在你的市场中获得路线密度，然后进一步降低价格和成本，这又能让你吸引更多客户，并将其他人挡在你的业务之外。护城河有很多不同的类型。有网络效应。

A moat can be driven by different dynamics. It might be you have a brand and a channel that in combination allow you to sort of keep customers out of your business. You might have a competitive position that allows you to be the low cost provider that then allows you to sort of attract customers and get route density in your market, and then drive down prices further and costs further, which then allow you to attract more customers, and that will keep other people out of your business. There's lots of different types of moats. There's network effect.

有无限的供应商力量，客户的集中度可以限制或扩大你的护城河。但我们真正关注的是如何建立一个尽可能有效地阻止竞争对手或新进入者的业务。我们发现护城河每天都在变化，一些曾经拥有惊人护城河的企业，比如报纸，现在已经大幅削弱。而其他一些企业的护城河正在变得更强。

There's unlimited supplier power, customer sort of concentration that can limit or expand your moat. But we're really focusing on how do we build a business that keeps competitors or new entrants out as effectively effectively as as possible. Possible. We find that moats are changing every day, and some businesses that used to have amazing moats, like newspapers, now have eroded quite considerably. And there's other businesses where the moats are getting stronger.

所以试图找到那些我们认为可以扩大护城河的企业。

So trying to find those businesses where we think we can expand the moat.

你认为哪些领域的护城河正在变得更强？

Where do you think moats are getting stronger?

这很难，你知道，当下很难看出来并说这个护城河正在变强，因为通常更容易回顾过去十年的历程。护城河是变好了还是变差了。我认为人工智能是一个很好的例子。它可能会侵蚀很多行业和企业的护城河，因为它降低了新进入者的摩擦或成本，他们可以更有效地在这个领域运作。但我确实认为，可能会有一部分企业，人工智能实际上让它们的护城河变得更强。

It's hard, you know, in the moment to look and say, this moat is getting stronger because typically, it's easier to look back over the course of ten years. The moat has gotten better or gotten worse. I think AI is a good example of that. Probably will erode a lot of moats and a lot of industries and businesses because it reduces the friction or the cost for a new entrant to come in, and they can navigate the space more effectively. I do think there probably will be a subset of businesses where AI actually makes their moat stronger.

而且因为他们已经拥有某种结构化系统，使其具备竞争优势，所以可能他们建立了一个难以复制的Salesforce技术基础，其他人难以进入。现在人工智能让他们能更有效地报价、降低成本或提高生产力，从而降低成本。成本降低后，他们可以将这部分节省传递给客户，并以此循环更有效地留住更多客户。我认为在人工智能的背景下，现在可能还为时过早来判断谁会是最大的赢家？谁会是最大的输家？

And because they already have some sort of structured system that is allowing them to have a competitive advantage, and so it might be you know, maybe they build out a Salesforce with a technician base that is hard to replicate, and for someone else to come into that. And now AI allows them to quote more effectively, or reduce their costs, or improve their productivity, so that then their costs go down. And if their costs go down, then they can pass that on to the customer, and sort of cycle that into keeping more customers more effectively. I think it probably is a little early in the context of AI to see, okay, who's gonna be the biggest winner? Who's gonna be the biggest loser?

因为在这个阶段，这更像是一场赌博，我会这么说。

Because it's a little bit more of a crapshoot at this stage, I'd say.

我最近一直在思考这个问题。有很多服务行业，如果有一个具备人工智能背景、拥有反射性AI思维的人加入，可能会在未来三到五年内降低成本并创造暂时优势。然后你可以利用这一点，通过提供更好的价格来创造与客户的定价飞轮，从而始终被预订满。同时，在收购企业时，也能以相同倍数获得比其他人好得多的回报。

I've been thinking about that a little bit recently. There's a lot of service businesses where AI could with somebody with a background with AI who has a reflexive AI mindset could come in and probably lower costs and create a temporary advantage over the next, I don't know, three to five years. But then you could use that to create this flywheel of pricing power with customers in the sense of giving better pricing so you're always booked. But also in terms of, oh, we can acquire businesses at the same multiple and get a way better return than other people.

是的。我认为我心中最大的问题是，这种优势有多暂时、速度有多快？是否会变成一场价格战，导致价格下降，然后其他竞争者进入市场，最终价值被客户捕获而非公司？或者你是否已经拥有护城河，或者能否在允许你维持优势的时间内建立护城河，从而最终打造一个更强大的企业？我认为这很有趣。

Yeah. And I think probably the biggest question in my mind is, you know, how temporary is it and how quick is it? Will just it'll be a race to the bottom where now prices will just go down, and then other entrants will come into the market, and it'll the customers will capture the value versus the companies. Or do you already have a moat, or can you build a moat in a in a time where it actually allows you to sustain it, and then you ultimately get a stronger business? And that's, I think, is interesting.

我们也在花时间思考这个问题，尤其是在服务行业。我认为有些行业新进入者更难进入。如果是受监管的领域，需要获得资格认证，而认证数量有限，那么其他人就很难进入。如果你拥有庞大的销售和服务团队，负责实施和支持客户，那么其他人复制起来就更难。不是不可能，但更难。

We're spending some time thinking about that as well, and especially in the service businesses. And I think there are some that it's just harder for new entrant to come in. If it's a regulated space where you have to get credentialed in, and there's limited number of credentials, that's harder for someone to come in. If it's you you have a huge sales force that and service force that's going out and implementing and supporting your customers, that's harder for someone else to come and replicate. Not impossible, but harder.

那么你是否已经具备这种可以强化的护城河方面，它看起来是什么样的？但我认为颠覆即将到来，我认为它会在不同的企业和行业中广泛发生。所以如果你今天有一个很棒的企业，你是否在思考这一点，能否强化你的护城河并使其更强大？

And so do you have that aspect of your mode already that you can reinforce, and what does that look like? But I think that disruption's coming, you know, it's, I think it's gonna happen pretty widely in terms of different businesses and industries. So if you have a great business today, are you thinking about that, and can you reinforce your mode and make it stronger?

在对这些企业进行量化评估时，你在关注哪些方面？

When it comes to quantitative assessment of these businesses, what are you looking at?

是的。本质上，我们关注的是投入资本回报率。当我们思考这个问题时，它是上升、下降还是保持不变？

Yeah. In essence, we're looking at, like, a return on invested capital. And as we think about that, is it going up? Is it going down? Is it staying the same?

我们认为这在行业中合理吗？我们发现这只是其中一部分。你需要理解定量方面，通常如果你有护城河，你是能看到的。你可以从业务回报和资本回报中看到它。但除了定量之外，还有定性方面。

Do we think that that is reasonable for the space? What we find is that's one part of it. Like, you need to understand the quantitative, and typically, if you have a moat, you can see it. You can see it in your returns in the business on what you're doing in your return on capital. But beyond the quantitative is then the qualitative.

就像，你能定义它吗？你能解释原因吗？你理解它吗？我认为这变得更加重要，因为如果你看报纸，我会说一旦护城河开始侵蚀，定量上在相当长一段时间内仍然看起来不错。尽管在定性上，它在那时已经开始侵蚀。

You is like, can you define it? Can you explain why? Do you understand it? That, I think, becomes more important because if you looked at the newspapers, I would say once the remote started to erode, quantitatively, still looks good for quite a period of time. Even though qualitatively, it was starting to erode at that stage.

财务数据滞后，然后才跟上。但我认为这通常是我们试图做的，即同时关注定量和定性两个方面。

The financials lagged, and then it caught up. But I think that's typically what we're trying to do is look at both the quantitative and the qualitative side.

而当涉及到

And when it comes to

投入资本回报率，那是什么？

return on invested capital, what is that?

对我们来说，它实际上是关注业务的盈利，以及支持这些盈利所需的资本。然后你可以进行计算得到一个比率。我们通常说，一个还不错的业务可能有20%的资本回报率。一个伟大的业务可能看的是50%以上的资本回报率。

For us, it's really looking at, you know, what's the earnings in the business, and then what's the capital required in the business to support those earnings. And so you can do the calculation and get a ratio. We typically say, like, an okay business is maybe 20% return on capital. A great business is probably looking at 50% plus in terms of return on capital.

当你说到盈利时，比如现在人们有很多种定义方式，比如息税前利润（EBIT）、税息折旧及摊销前利润（EBITDA）、营业利润？那么，到底什么是盈利？

And when you say earnings, like, there's a lot of ways that people are defining that now between EBIT, EBITDA, operating earning? Like, what is earnings?

我们通常看息税前利润（EBIT），也就是扣除利息和税之前的利润。我们对EBITDA的看法是，在某些行业它是有意义的，但在大多数行业，折旧和摊销是真实存在的成本。所以如果你只关注EBITDA，我认为有时会让你对业务的真实状况和实际产生的现金流产生错误的信心。因为本质上，你是在试图找到一个现金、现金流和现金生成的代理指标。因此，我们通常将EBIT视为一种盈利衡量方式，然后我们会关注业务中的资本情况。

We usually look at EBIT, you know, earnings before interest and taxes. Our view on sort of EBITDA is there's some industries where it makes sense, but in most industries, depreciation and amortization's real. And so if you focus on that, I think you sometimes give yourself false confidence in terms of what the business really looks like, and what it really generates. Because in essence, you're trying to get a proxy for cash, cash flow, and cash generation. So when we look at it, we'll look usually look at EBIT as sort of an earnings approach, and then we'll focus in terms of what's the capital in the business.

但盈利我们通常定义为EBIT。在某些情况下，我们也会看EBITDA，但我们会非常谨慎地选择在那些折旧和摊销确实重要的行业中使用这种方法。

But earnings, we usually define as EBIT. In some cases, we'll look at EBITDA, but we try to be pretty selective of how we do that in the industries where depreciation and amortization are real.

那你们如何定义资本？仅仅是指股权吗？

And how are you defining capital? Is that just equity?

在资本方面，我们会看几个不同的方面。业务实际需要多少资本？比如你投入的厂房、财产和设备（PP&E），如果需要大量应收账款（AR）来支持业务，我们真正要根本性地理解支持这个业务需要多少资本，需要多少库存来支持业务。每个业务都有些不同，但可能有些业务盈利看起来很好，但资产负债表上却有大量库存来支撑那种盈利水平，这样的业务可能就不那么好，因为你需要持有这些库存来支持它。有时你可能有很多门店，所以需要有存放所有库存的设施。

In capital, we're looking at a few different things. What's the capital actually required in the business? So what you're putting into it, you know, your PP and E, if you need, like, lots of AR to support your business, really trying to fundamentally understand what capital's required to support this business, what inventory is required to support the business. Every business was a little bit different, but there might be a business where the earnings look really great, but then they have a huge inventory on their balance sheet to support that that level of earnings, and then that business is probably a little less, like, a less good business because you have to have this, you know, inventory to support it. And that sometimes maybe you have a lot of locations, so you need to have facilities with all the inventory.

也许你的客户要求你持有大量库存来支持业务。这其中有很多不同的动态因素，但我们真正试图理解的是，支持这个业务当前盈利水平需要多少资本。最好的业务通常不需要大量资本。当然这也有例外。我的意思是，你可以获得更高的资本回报率，但同样，如果业务中没有资本壁垒，潜在竞争者可能更容易进入。

And maybe your customers require you to have a lot of inventory to support the business. There's a lot of different dynamics that play into that, but we're really trying to understand what capital is required to support the level of earnings that you have in this business. Your best businesses usually don't require a lot of capital. There are caveats to that too. I mean, you you can get a higher return on capital, but also, potentially, someone can enter the business more quickly if you don't have capital in the business.

如果你的业务中有资本投入，通常别人更难进入，但你也可能面临其他类型的短期影响。我认为现在正在发生转变。如果你看历史上的科技企业，通常不需要太多资本。谷歌或其他公司，它们有网络效应和其他构建护城河的动态因素，所以不需要太多资本。现在随着人工智能的发展，这种情况正在发生很大变化，但这可能也让其他人更难进入这个领域。

If you have capital in your business, that's usually harder for someone to enter, but you can get other types of low term impacts. And I think you're seeing a shift in this. If you look at the tech businesses historically, there wasn't a lot of capital required. Google or others, they had network effect and these other dynamics that drove the moat, and so you didn't have capital. Now with AI, that's shifting quite considerably, but also that probably makes it harder for someone else to come into the business as well.

当你审视市场时，是什么让它成为一个有吸引力的市场？

And when you look at market, what makes it an attractive market?

当我们审视市场时，我们会关注几个方面。一是它的增长情况如何？增长率是多少？是与GDP同步增长，还是高于GDP增长？

So when we look at market, we're looking for a few things. One is, what's it growing? What's the growth rate in it? Is it growing at GDP? Is it growing above GDP?

我们认为这种增长是否可持续？你知道，可能存在这样的情况：当前行业或市场增长非常快，但未来五年可能会衰退，或者不会。我们认为它会以每年20%以上的速度持续增长十年以上。所以试图理解增长率是多少，以及这与GDP的关系如何。

Do we think that that's sustaining? You know, there might be a situation where the business is growing very the industry or the market's growing very fast right now, but you're it's going to decline over the next five years, or no. We think it's gonna continue to grow at 20% plus a year for ten plus years. So trying to understand what the growth rate is. How does that relate to GDP?

第二，我们试图理解市场的动态。是存在许多分散的参与者的情况？还是有几个巨头？是否存在整合的机会？我们试图了解市场的动态及其运作方式。

Second, we're trying to understand what are the dynamics of the market. Is it a situation where there's a lot of fragmented players? Is there, you know, a couple of behemoths? Is it one where there's opportunity for consolidation or not? We're trying to just understand what the dynamics are and sort of how it works.

市场中的其他参与者是否理性？如果市场更集中，我们如何看待未来的发展路径及其可能的样子？我们认为自己在该市场中会扮演什么角色？未来的发展路径会是什么？但我们首先从增长率和动态开始分析。

Are the other players in the market rational? If it's, you know, more concentrated, what are how do we think about the path forward and what that might look like? And where do we think we would play in that market? And what do we think the path forward would be? But we're first starting with sort of growth rate and dynamics.

我们已经稍微谈到了管理层，我认为大多数听众对安全性的沉浸感已经有足够的理解，至少足以继续对话。你说的“更多潜力”是什么意思？就像彩票一样吗？

We've already talked a little bit about management, and I think most of our listeners will understand a little bit of immersion of safety enough for the conversation anyway. What did you mean by more potential? Is that like a lottery ticket?

不。它不如彩票那样，但实际上是，业务增长的机会在哪里，它会是什么样子？例如，我们与一家名为Marine Concepts的公司合作，销售船罩。当我们与该公司合作时，它是由一位名叫Randy Kent的先生创立的，总部设在奥扎克湖。他在奥扎克湖有一个设施和市场。

No. It's less than a lottery ticket, but really, like, where's the opportunity to sort of grow this business, and what does it look like? So for example, we partnered with a company, Marine Concepts, sells boat covers. When we partnered with the company, it was started by gentleman Randy Kent based out of Lake Of The Ozarks. He had a facility and a market in Lake Of The Ozarks.

他在那里拥有很高的市场份额和出色的净推荐值(NPS)。产品非常强大。他稍微拓展了一下业务，在佛罗里达州销售了一些产品，但确实没有进一步扩张。因此潜力很大，我们能否接手这家拥有优秀产品、良好声誉、高净推荐值和高利润率的公司，并将其扩大。在这种情况下，我们希望建立一个经销商网络。

He had great market share there, great NPS. The product was incredibly, you know, strong. He had moved a little bit and sold some in Florida, but really he hadn't expanded beyond that. So the more potential there was, can we take this company that has a great product, has a great reputation, great NPS, great margins, and expand it. And in this case, we wanted to build out a dealer network.

那么，我们能否通过经销商网络和增长来扩大业务？所以这家企业的更大潜力在于如何扩展它，做一些他们目前没有做的事情，而不是接手一个已经发挥全部潜力的企业。对吧？企业运营得非常好，但没有太多增长动力或增长机会了，你还能做什么呢？可能只能随着GDP增长而增长。

So can we expand that through a dealer network and growth? So that was the more potential in that business was how do we expand it and doing something that they're not doing today versus a business where you may come in and it's already at full potential. Right? The business is operating super well, not as many growth drivers or growth opportunities left where what are you gonna go do? Like, it's growing on GDP probably.

比如，要想真正加速可口可乐的增长会很困难。而对于我们来说，在中型市场运作，机会要多得多。或者以JM Test为例，这是一家有40年历史的企业，我们与之合作，由莫里森家族创办的家族企业，在过去20年里每年增长20%，如今大约有10个分支和区域，但有机会在地理上进入新区域，增加现有市场的渗透率，然后第三，寻找其他想要长期合作伙伴的家族企业的潜在收购机会。所以对我们来说，这就是该企业的更大潜力。每家企业都略有不同，但关键在于真正理解目前哪些方面还没有完全优化。

Like, it's gonna be hard to really go accelerate growth in Coke. Whereas for us, playing in the mid sized market, there's a lot more opportunity. Or JM Test, that was a forty year old business that we partnered with, family business started by the Morrison family, grew 20% a year over the last twenty years in sort of 10 branches and regions today, but an opportunity to move in geographically into new regions, increase penetration in our existing markets, and then three, look at potential acquisitions for other family businesses that want a long term partner. And so for us, that was the more potential in that business. So each business is a bit different, but really understanding what's not being sort of fully optimized today.

我们总是从我们的宗旨开始，即帮助组织和个人发挥他们的全部潜力。因此，当我们考虑新的合作伙伴关系时，我们如何思考那个全部潜力可能是什么？然后我们有什么机会帮助他们实现目标？我们是否带来某种技能、经验或视角，可以帮助加速这一过程？

We always start with sort of our purpose, which is helping organizations and people reach their full potential. And so as we think about a new partnership, how do we think about what that full potential may be? And then what's what's the opportunity for us to help get help them get there? And do we bring some sort of skill set experience perspective that can help accelerate that?

当你考虑潜力时，这是否会影响安全边际？还是不会？这就像是，无论如何我们都会有安全边际。这更像是额外的一层。

And when you look at sort of the potential, does that factor into the margin of safety or no? That's like in addition to we're going to have a margin of safety anyway. This is more like an added layer to that.

不。我认为如果我们将其视为增长潜力，但它可能有助于安全边际。如果我们说，即使我们不采取任何行动，这家企业也能以这个估值运作，然后我们能够推动这种增长，那么这让我们对安全边际和我们的处境更加放心。但它们可以相互关联，但不一定必须如此。

No. I think if we think of this as like a growth potential, but it may contribute to margins of safety. If we said, you know, if this business will work at this valuation, even if we don't do anything, and then we're able to go drive this growth, then that gives us more comfort in the margin of safety and where where we are. But they can be interconnected, but they do not necessarily have to be.

那么接下来会发生什么？交易完成后的行动计划是什么？所以你找到了一家公司。你喜欢管理团队。你喜欢那里的人。

And so what happens? What's the playbook post close? So you you've found a company. You love the management team. You love the people.

它处于一个很好的市场。你认为还有更多潜力。第一天，现在该做什么？

It's in a great market. You think there's potential for more. Day one, now what?

实际上，甚至在第一天之前，比如当我们完成交易时，在我们互相了解的过程中，我们进行尽职调查，花时间与他们相处，真正了解他们对行业的看法是什么？他们对业务的看法是什么？管理层认为最大的机会在哪里？我们经常进行访谈，所以我们的Cambric业务系统团队会花时间与业务中的七十、七十五人会面，了解他们认为的机会在哪里。所以我们会在尽职调查过程中，一直到交易完成前做这些工作。

Actually, before even day one, like when we close, during the process where we're getting to know each other, we're doing diligence, we're sort of spending time with them, really understanding what are their views on the industry? What are their views on the business? What does management think the biggest opportunities are? We're oftentimes doing interviews, so our Cambric Business System team will spend time meeting with seventy, seventy five people in the business, and understanding where they think the opportunities are as well. So we're doing that during that sort of, diligence process going up to the close.

一旦我们完成交易，我们真的试图了解他们在自己的旅程中处于什么位置。因此，我们有一个诊断来评估所有这些框架、人员，你知道，吸引人才、发展人才、激励人才、战略、关键绩效指标、预算。他们对自己在这些领域的成熟度有什么自我诊断？他们会这样做，然后我们也会这样做。然后我们会进来说，好吧。

Once we close, with a business, we're really trying to understand where are they on their own journey. And so we have a diagnostic to assess on all these frameworks, people, you know, attracting talent, developing talent, engaging talent, strategy, KPIs, budgets. What's their self diagnostic on their sort of sophistication in these areas? And so they'll do that, and then we'll do that. And then we'll come in and say, okay.

考虑到这一点，我们想一起构建什么？它看起来像什么？我们最初的合作伙伴关系有几个关键组成部分。通常，它是战略规划过程的一部分。我们的KBS团队会进来与管理团队合作，真正思考业务的未来方向是什么，机会在哪里？

Given this, what what do we wanna go build together? What does it look like? There's a few sort of critical components of the initial partnership that we do. Usually, it's a part of a strategic planning process. Our KBS team will come in and work with the management team to sort of really think about what's the future direction of the business, and what are the opportunities?

我们今天做得好的地方是什么？有哪些机会我们今天做得不够好？我们可以在哪些方面增长？业务面临的挑战是什么？所以进行这些类型的对话，这确实是一种协作的、亲身体验的，我们与他们合作进行评估。

What are we doing well today? Where are there opportunities we're not, you doing as well today? Where can we sort of grow? Where are the challenges facing the business? So having those types of conversations, and that really is a collaborative, you know, hands on experience that we're partnering with them to assess.

在我们这样做的同时，我们也在问，好吧，我们是否有合适的能力？我们有合适的角色吗？我们有合适的人来支持这种增长吗？如果我们说，你知道，我们想扩展到新市场，我们有这种能力吗？如果我们想进行收购，我们有这种能力吗？

As we're doing that, we're simultaneously saying, okay, do we have the right capabilities? Do we have the right roles? Do we have the right people to help support that growth? If we say, you know, we wanna go expand into new markets, you do we have that capability? Do we if we wanna go do acquisitions, do we have that capability?

如果没有，我们如何建立这种能力或在内部增加这种人才，使我们拥有那种灵活性？然后我们真的在为最初的十二到十八个月制定路线图，好吧，我们要一起做什么，那看起来像什么？从我们的角度来看，你知道，我曾经是CEO，我的合伙人是CFO。我们不想再当CEO和CFO了。我们不是想抢你的工作。

If not, how do we build that capability or add that talent internally that allows us to have that sort of flexibility? And then we're really building a roadmap out for the first twelve to eighteen months of, okay, what are we gonna go do together, and what does that look like? We say from our perspective, you know, I've been CEO, and my partner's been CFO. We don't wanna be the CEO and CFO again. We're not trying to do your job.

我们正努力成为我们曾经渴望的那种资源，因此在企业做出的重大战略决策上提供帮助，真正与他们合作，并在这些关键领域一路给予反馈和支持。

We're trying to be the resource that we wanted, and so we're being helpful on the biggest strategic decisions you're making in a business, and really partnering with them, and then giving them feedback and help along the way in those critical areas.

再详细说说这一点，你现在是控股股东，有一位成功运营公司的CEO创始人，你不是在指挥他们，而是在引导？具体是怎么运作的？

Talk to me a little bit more about that in the sense of you're the majority owner now, and you have a CEO founder who's run the company successfully, and you're not telling them what to do, but you're nudging? Like, how does that work?

我认为这更像是共同创造。他们有他们的见解，他们对行业的了解会比我们更深入，拥有丰富的知识、经验，知道什么可行、什么不可行。我们带来的是外部视角和大量问题。

I think it was like co creation. So they have a view. They're gonna be smarter about the industry than we ever will. They'll have the depth of knowledge, experience, what's worked, what hasn't worked. What we'll bring is outside perspective and a lot of questions.

所以我们会问，你们考虑过这个吗？或者那个怎么样？或者，嘿，有一个类似的行业，我们十年前见过这种情况，看起来可能相似。哪些地方相似或不同？

And so we'll say, have you thought about this? Or what about that? Or, hey. There's an industry that's like this that, you know, we've seen that ten years ago, this happened, and it looks like it might be similar. What might be similar or different?

因此我们试图与他们合作共同完成，以便能够共同创造，达成对世界的共同愿景，明确我们想要构建什么以及它的样子。本质上，我们认为自己是他们在评估这方面的战略伙伴。一旦评估完成，我们会介入，用我们的技能和框架帮助他们执行。例如，我们团队中有人专门擅长KPI和预算流程，如果他们没有KPI流程，他会帮助他们建立。

So we're trying to do that together in partnership with them so that we could co create and get to a shared vision of the world and what we wanna go build and what that looks like. And so in essence, we think of it as, like, we're their strategic partner in assessing that. And then once we've assessed that, we sort of come in and help them with sort of the skills and frameworks to go do it. So, for example, we have someone on our team who really specializes in sort of KPIs and the budgeting process. So he's gonna help them implement a KPI process if they don't have one already.

比如，如何构建KPI？好的KPI是什么样的？这个业务的关键驱动因素是什么？正确的基准是什么？

Just say, okay. How do you build KPIs? What do good KPIs look like? What are the important drivers in this business? What are the right benchmarks?

你们想要多激进还是不激进？我们帮助他们思考这些问题。在预算方面，我们视之为资源分配，我们是否有足够的资源来资助未来的增长和我们想做的事情？如何在某些领域提高效率，以便投资其他领域？我们正在帮助实现这一点。

You know, how aggressive do you wanna be or not? And so we're helping them think through that. On the budgeting, we sort of think of it as resource allocation side, do we have the right resources to sort of fund our future growth and what we wanna go do? How do we become more efficient in in some areas so that we can go invest in other areas? So we're helping do that.

或者我们的人力团队中有人从人员角度出发，表示，好的，我们理解需要推动业务的这种增长。我们想要推动这种增长。好的。我们今天有哪些关键岗位？这些岗位上的人员是否具备合适的技能和合适的人选？

Or we have someone on our people team who's going in on the people side and saying, okay, we understand that we need to go drive this growth in the business. We wanna drive this growth. Okay. What are the mission critical roles that we have today? Do we have the right skills in those roles and the right people in those roles?

如果没有，我们可能需要做出哪些改变？然后，哦，哇。如果我们想要增长和扩张，我们真的需要调动中层管理人员。我们是否为他们提供了合适的，你知道的，发展机会？好的。

If not, what changes might we need to make? And then, oh, wow. We're gonna really need to engage our middle level management if we're gonna go grow and expand. Do we have the right, you know, development for them? Okay.

我们需要为该群体实施季度总监日，这样我们可以帮助他们成为，你知道的，更好的领导者，以便他们能在这一新的增长阶段帮助我们。或者，你知道的，也许我们在参与度或沟通方面做得不够，我们需要实施季度全员大会，帮助公司理解愿景、战略和方向，从而加速增长，让每个人都感到他们理解愿景，认同我们正在努力做的事情，并愿意在下一阶段帮助我们。

We need to be implementing quarterly director days with that group so that we can help them become, you know, better leaders so that they can help us at this new stage of growth. Or, you know, perhaps we haven't done a lot on the engagement or communication side, And we need to implement quarterly town halls, where we're helping the company understand the vision and the strategy and direction, so that we can help accelerate growth, so that everyone feels they understand the vision, they're bought into what we're trying to go do, and they wanna sort of help us at that next phase.

当你说KBS时，你指的是Cambric业务系统吗？正确。这些就是我们正在讨论的它的所有组成部分。为什么要创建一个可重复的系统？它与Danaher的系统相似还是不同？

And when you say KBS, you mean the Cambric Business System? Correct. And these are all the components of it that we're talking about now. Why come up with a repeatable system? And is it similar to the Danaher one or different?

也许给我一点比较和对比。

Maybe give me a little bit of compare and contrast.

我当时是CEO。我想走出去向他人学习。我发现一些最优秀的公司拥有可扩展、可重复的业务系统。Danaher、Marmint、丰田。这是一种综合管理业务的方式，它不是零散的，而是一种整体方法，其中方法的各个组成部分相互加强。

I was CEO. I wanted to go out and learn from others. And what I found was some of the best companies out there have a scalable repeatable business system. Danaher, Marmint, Toyota. It is an integrated way of how they manage the business so that it's not piecemeal, but really it's a holistic approach where the components of the approach reinforce each other.

如果你孤立地做其中一项，你获得的价值会比一起做它们要少，而且它们在本质上是互补的。所以，你可以有一个战略流程，但如果你没有合适的人员和技能，你在实施该战略流程时效果就会较差。如果你有优秀的人员、伟大的文化和环境，但没有关键绩效指标（KPIs）和一致性，你就无法通过这些人员取得那么多成就。因此，通过增加这些不同的组成部分并专注于业务中最重要的事项，你整体上创造了更多价值。而且我认为，你知道的，有惊人的例子，Danaher就是其中之一，通过拥有结构化、系统化的业务管理方式创造了巨大价值。

And if you do one in isolation, you get less value than if you do them together, and they're complementary in nature. And so you could have a strategy process, but if you don't have the right people and the right skills, you're gonna be less effective at implementing that strategic process. If you have amazing people and a great culture and great environment, but you don't have KPIs and alignment, you're not gonna be able to achieve as much with those people. So by adding these different components and focusing on what matters most in a business, you create more value overall. And I think, you know, there's amazing examples, Danaher being one, of that's created tremendous value by having a structured, systemized way of managing a business.

我们发现，大多数中型企业都在为同样的问题而挣扎。如何让合适的人坐上合适的岗位？如何建立正确的文化和参与度？如何制定正确的战略，而不必聘请麦肯锡或贝恩来帮忙？如何执行该战略，并在业务中推动问责制和行动？

And what we found is that most mid sized companies, they're struggling with the same things. How do I get the right people in the right seats? How do I build the right culture and right engagement? How do I get the right strategy without, you know, paying McKinsey or Bain to help me? How do I go and execute that strategy and drive accountability and action into the businesses?

因此，我们试图做的是说，与其让你自己去摸索，我们已经完成了这项工作，告诉你，嘿，这里有一些结构化的方法可以做到这一点，并且这是根据你业务所处阶段有效的顺序，我们可以帮助你。这很大程度上是我们通过业务系统思考问题的方法。我们做的是去向一些最优秀的企业学习，比如丹纳赫、马蒙、星座集团等，从中挑选我们喜欢的部分，我们认为它们最成功的地方，并将这些精华提炼成我们自己的业务系统。我们的系统可能比其他人更注重人和文化，但我认为这是当今世界的一个功能，与二三十年前许多业务系统刚起步时相比，但我们在持续改进、战略规划或关键绩效指标等方面有类似的方法。我们感觉自己是站在那些巨人的肩膀上，他们做得非常出色，我们可以在此基础上进行增强，并为我们的业务类型量身定制。

And so what we're trying to do is saying, rather than you have to go figure that out, we've done the work to say, hey, here are the structured ways to go do it, and this is the sequencing that works for where you are in your business that we can help you with. And so that very much has been our approach to how we think about it with our business system. And what we did is we went and learned from some of those best out there, from Dana Her, from Marmon, from Constellation, and others, and sort of took parts of each that we liked, where we thought that they were the most successful, and sort of took those and distilled them into our own business system. Ours probably has more of a focus on people and culture than others do, but I think that's a function of where the world is today, and compared to twenty or thirty years ago where a lot of those business systems were started, but has similar approaches in terms of continuous improvement or strategic planning or KPIs that many business systems have. We feel like we're standing on the shoulders of those giants who've done a great job of building them, and we can enhance them and tailor them for sort of our types of businesses.

为什么你认为没有更多人复制丹纳赫的业务系统？我的意思是，拉里·卡尔普用它来扭转通用电气的局面就是一个很好的近期例子。是的，这是一个经过验证的系统，很成功。

Why do you think more people don't copy the Danaher business system? I mean, a great recent example of that is Larry Culp using it to turn around GE. Yeah. It's a proven system. It's successful.

我猜，在整个组织中实施可能需要几年时间，但它是有效的。

It probably takes a couple years to implement, I would imagine, throughout the organization, but it works.

所以我认为更多人不这样做是因为它真的非常困难。它需要大量的纪律、结构、专注和对系统的遵守才能发挥作用。你不能只做一部分，或只做一段时间，比如六个月，你必须让它成为业务DNA和文化的一部分。所以我认为从长期来看，人们不这样做是因为纪律性。从短期来看，比如私募股权，你没有足够的时间来获得这样做的好处。

So I think more people don't do it because it's really, really hard. It requires extensive discipline and structure and focus and adherence to the system for it to work. You can't just do a piece of it, or one part, or for six months, and you actually have to have it become part of the DNA and the culture of the business. So I think in longer term, like, holds, people don't do it because of the discipline. I think in shorter term holds, you are, you know, private equity, you don't have the time period to get the benefits of doing it.

那么，为什么你要花两年时间去实施一些东西，而在你需要退出业务时的第三年或第四年可能无法完全受益？所以对我们来说，拥有更长的视野，我们可以投资于此，并看到它的价值。我们有一个团队来帮助支持纪律和遵守。我还认为很多投资者实际上并没有运营经验，所以如果你从未真正运营过业务，就很难进入一个企业说，这就是你应该如何运营业务的方法。因此，你可能没有同样的洞察力或价值，或者不理解它的价值。

And so why would you spend two years going and implementing something that you're not gonna probably reap the full benefit of in year three or year four when you need to exit the business? And so for us, having a longer term horizon, we can invest in that, and we see the value of it. And we have the team to help support the discipline and the adherence to it. I also think a lot of investors haven't actually been operators, and so it's really hard to go into a business and say, this is what you should go do to operate a business if you never actually operated a business. And so you're you probably don't have the same insights or the value of that or understand the value of it.

你可能有一个运营团队在为你做这件事。但是，你知道，通常在很多公司，运营团队是二等公民，他们在桌面上没有与投资组织相同的席位。

And you might have an operating team who's, you know, doing it for you. But, you know, usually in a lot of firms, the operating teams are second class citizens where they're not at the same seat at the table as the investing organization.

所以你们在2020年启动了KBS。嗯。这五年间发生了什么变化？在过去这五年实施过程中，你们学到了什么？

So you started KBS in 2020. Mhmm. What's changed over the five years? What have you learned from implementing this over the last half decade?

是的。实际上我们最初是在Pampered Chef工作时开始的。对吧？那是最基础的阶段，我们在那里学习尝试各种方法，然后在2020年创办Cambric时正式将其系统化。它变化很大，并且每年、每个季度、每个我们合作的企业都在变得更好。

Yeah. So we we actually started when we were at Pampered Chef. Right? That were the fund foundational pieces where we were learning and trying things, and then we formally codified it when we started Cambric in 2020. It has changed a lot, and it gets better every year and every season and every business we work in.

我们把它看作是有生命、会呼吸的体系。它不是那种你实施完就忘记的僵化系统。它真正专注于持续改进。我们合作的每家公司都帮助我们在这方面做得更好。但我们从错误中学到的教训很早就开始了。

And we think of it as this it's living and breathing. It's not a stagnant system you go and implement, and then you forget about it. It really is focused on continuous improvement. And each company we engage with helps us get better at it. But the mistakes that we learned from started very early on.

当我们在Pampered Chef时，我们首次推出了KPI。我们将KPI推广到了整个组织。我们说，好的，很棒，我们要推行KPI。

So when we were at Pampered Chef, we first rolled out KPIs. We rolled out KPIs to the entire organization. And we said, okay. Great. We're gonna do KPIs.

我们要全面推广。你知道，500名员工。我们会推广给每个人，那是个巨大的错误。我们只是推进得太快了，组织还没准备好。我们应该在第一年先从高管团队开始，分阶段推进。

We're gonna roll it out. You know, 500 employees. We'll roll it out to everybody, and that was a huge mistake. You know, we just it was too fast, and the organization wasn't ready. They you know, we should have started and sequenced it and started just with the executive team in year one.

一旦高管团队理解、对齐并朝着目标努力，然后再推广到下一层级，最终再推广到更下一级。我们以为因为是个小公司就能更快推进并全面推广。与此相关的是，当我们推出KPI时，我们说，好的，很棒，如果有KPI，就去想办法完成。

Once you have the executive team understanding, aligned, working towards it, then you go to the next level, and then ultimately, you go to the next level. We thought we could move faster and just roll it out because it was a small business. You know, related to that, when we roll out our KPIs, we're like, okay. Great. If KPIs, go figure them out.

我们当时的想法是，员工会自己想办法去完成。但事实证明，你必须帮助人们，你必须理解问题解决的方法，并帮助他们理解如何解决KPI问题。仅仅给我一个KPI并不意味着我真正理解如何去推动它。这不代表我没有能力或想不出办法，但如果我给你问题解决培训，提供一些案例研究和实际操作的例子，效果会好得多。在人员方面，我们刚开始时，第一年就推出了360度反馈。

And what we fig we thought was, like, employees will figure out how to go do it. Well, it turns out you have to help people, and you have to understand problem solving and help them understand how do I go solve a KPI. Just because you give me a KPI doesn't mean I actually understand how do I go drive it. It doesn't mean I'm not capable or I can't figure it out, but it's gonna be much more effective if I give you problem solving training to help you have some case studies and examples of what this looks like in action. On the people side, when we first started, we rolled out 360 degree feedback in year one.

通过360度反馈，我们发现当人们不仅从上级那里获得反馈，还从同事和直接下属那里获取时，如果组织内部缺乏信任或心理安全感，这种机制就无法有效运作。嗯。你知道，反馈质量会很差，流于表面，人们会变得戒备心很强。

And what we found with 360 degree feedback, where people get feedback from not just their manager, but peers as well as direct reports, is if you're an organization where you don't have trust or psychological safety, it doesn't work. Mhmm. You know, the feedback isn't very good. It's shallow. People are defensive.

人们会互相攻击。就像，这不是富有成效或建设性的反馈。因此，我们意识到，好吧，组织在第一年的人员准备上还没达到这个水平。我们需要逐步建立起来，需要在组织内构建沟通和参与度，以及透明度。

People attack. Like, it's not productive or constructive feedback. So in doing that, what we realized was, okay, organizations aren't ready for this in terms of people in year one. We need to build up to it. We need to build communication and engagement in the organization, and transparency.

我们需要向他们展示，我们会先做这件事。我们需要解释为什么我们要进行发展。是为了帮助他们在职业发展方面。通过一路上学习这些，我们在做的事情上会变得更好。

We need to show them that we're going to, you know, do this first. We need to explain why we're doing development. People. It's to help them in terms of their career progression. And so by learning those things along the way, we get better at what we're doing.

近年来，我们意识到要更简单、清晰，尽可能简洁。领导我们KBS团队的Dawson Shamblyn在这方面非常出色。他天生就是学习者，一直在努力改进系统。每次合作后，我们都会反思并说，好吧。哪些做得好？

In the recent years, we've realized just more simple, like clear, less as concise as possible. Dawson Shamblyn, who leads our KBS team, is terrific at this. He's just a natural learner and working on improving the system. And after each partnership, we reflect and say, okay. What went well?

哪些可以做得更好？我们认为需要调整和改变什么？这也很棒。我们会进入企业，了解到他们做得非常好的地方，他们会说，哦，哇。他们实际上比我们做得更好。

What could have gone better? What do we think needs to shift and alter? And it's also great. We'll go into businesses, and we learn of what they're doing really well, and they're like, oh, wow. They actually do that better than us.

好吧。我们能调整这个吗，或者能利用他们吗？我们在社区中也看到了这一点。那3000位业主CEO组成的群体，我们从他们那里学习如何应对这类话题，这也帮助我们变得更好。

Okay. Can we tweak this, or can we utilize them? And we see it in our community too. The group of 3,000 owner CEOs, we learn from them of how they're navigating these types of topics, and that helps us get better as well.

我非常喜欢社区这个想法。你知道，我想你提到过有类似初创公司的加速器，但对于中型企业来说，没有真正的加速器或网络。

I love the idea of the the community. There's know, I think you had mentioned there's sort of like accelerators for startup companies, but there's no real accelerators or network for midsize businesses.

是的。我的看法是，中型公司处于这种中间的空白地带。规模较小的初创公司有加速器，他们有各种项目。大公司则有更多资源。

Yeah. My view is that midsize companies are in this middle sort of gap area. On the smaller side, their startups have accelerators. They have different programs. Bigger companies have more resources.

他们可以聘请咨询公司或专业人士来帮助，或者为特定主题购买资源。如果你处于中间位置，通常会受到资源的限制，包括时间、人力和资金。但你面临着许多相同的挑战需要解决和应对。因此我们建立了这个社群，目的是获得我们想要的资源，并向那些经历过、犯过错、学习并进步的人学习。通过聚集这些人，我们分享自己的资源、内容、观点和经验，同时社群中的其他人也在分享他们的。

They can bring in a consulting firm or someone to help them or pay for a resource on a specific topic. If you're in the middle, you're constrained by resources typically, both time, people, and dollars. And so but you have many of the same challenges to figure out and to navigate. And so we built the camera community for what we wanted, which was resources and people to learn from that have done this and have made mistakes and learned and gotten better. And by bringing those people together, we're sharing our own resources and content and perspective and experience, but also other people in the community are sharing theirs as well.

所以这种共享的学习、改进和进步生态系统，让社群中的每个人都能更好地参与自己的业务，同时也帮助我们自身。

And so that sort of shared ecosystem of learning, improving, getting better, has made, you know, everyone in the community participates better in their businesses, but also, helps us as well.

那么当你接手一家公司时，你如何看待债务问题？

And then how do you think about debt when you take over a company?

是的。我们相当保守。回到安全边际的概念，我们认为如果一切必须顺利才能成功，这会让我们感到紧张。杠杆就是其中之一，你施加在业务上的杠杆越多，一切就必须越顺利才能偿还债务。传统私募股权可能会给企业施加四到六倍的杠杆。

Yeah. So we're pretty conservative. So back to that margin of safety, we believe if everything has to go well and to be, you know, to be successful in the business, that makes us nervous. And leverage is one of those things that, you know, the more leverage you put on the business, the more everything has to go well for that to to be able to service that. So maybe a traditional private equity might put four to six times the leverage on a business.

我们可能只会用两到三倍。我们也可能使用卖方票据，即卖方帮助融资，这比银行贷款或其他债务选项更友好一些。总的来说，我们更保守一些。我们的观点是，杠杆在上升时会放大回报，但在下降时也会放大损失。因此我们希望有更多的安全边际。

We'll probably do two or three times. We might also use a term of, like, a seller note where the seller is helping finance that, which is a little bit more friendly than bank debt or some other debt option. And so we're, in general, a little bit more conservative. Our view is that leverage amplifies returns on the upside, but also on the downside. And so we wanna have a bit more marginal safety.

我们不想让公司面临风险。我们不想因为一个可能在短期内略微提升回报、但实际上我们认为对业务并非最佳的结构性决策，而迫使自己做出短期决策。我

We don't wanna put the company at risk. We don't wanna push ourselves to make short term decisions because of a structural decision that may be juiced returns a little bit, but isn't actually what we think is best for the business. I have

一种直觉，如果我错了请纠正，但当你收购这些企业时，它们通常没有太多债务。

a hunch, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're buying these businesses, they don't have a lot of debt on them.

是的，通常没有。我们遇到的大多数企业家，在某个阶段都经历过企业生死存亡的赌局时刻，通常涉及杠杆或其他可能导致全盘皆输的情况。经历过这些后，企业家往往会想：我绝不想再陷入那种境地。所以我不会再让自己冒险。

No. Typically not. Most entrepreneurs we meet, at some point, had some moment in their business where it was a bet the business type situation, and oftentimes, that might have been leverage or something else where they almost lost the whole business. And when you have those situations you've gone through, typically, as an entrepreneur, you're like, I don't ever wanna be there again. So I'm not gonna ever put myself at risk.

因此，我认为一些中型公司实际上几乎对债务过于抵触，他们甚至不愿为房产抵押贷款，或在本可谨慎使用融资的领域进行融资。他们更倾向于选择股权或更昂贵的资本，或者不使用现有的资本选项，因为他们非常害怕坏事发生。这通常源于某个阶段曾遭遇过不幸，几乎失去企业，他们再也不想接近那种边缘，这一点我们能够尊重并理解。如果你有一个好企业，你确实不想因为融资决策而让企业陷入风险。

And so oftentimes, I think some mid sized companies are actually, you know, almost debt too debt adverse where, you know, they won't even have, you know, mortgage on property or, you know, use financing on, an area where it might actually be prudent. And they're be more inclined to take equity or more expensive capital or not use, you know, the capital options they have because they're so afraid of something bad happening. And it typically is stemming from something bad happened at some stage, and they almost lost their business, and they don't wanna be ever close to that again, which we can respect. And we understand. You know, if you have a great business, you don't wanna put yourself in a situation where your business is at risk because of a capital financing decision.

你们在Campric内部已经拥抱了AI。你们是如何使用的？

You guys have embraced AI internally at Campric. How are you using it?

是的。我们从三个角度看待AI。一是在Campric内部，我们如何利用它，最终变得更智能、更高效、在我们的流程和运营中更具生产力？这包括用它来做更好的笔记、企业研究、在深入某个领域时更快行动，以及在更全面地思考企业时变得更聪明。我们肯定在使用它。

Yeah. So we think of AI in three different ways. One is at Campric, how do we become use it, and ultimately become smarter, more efficient, more productive in our own processes and how we operate? And so that's everything from, you know, we use it for better note taking, research on businesses, moving faster as we sort of deep dive in a space, and getting smarter as we think about the businesses more holistically. We definitely are using it.

我们思考的第二种方式是，哪些行业和企业会受到AI影响，并可能加强护城河，就像我们之前稍微讨论过的？有哪些领域我们认为有吸引力？所以我们关注所谓的AI赋能的服务型企业，我们认为它能加强企业的护城河。这方面我们还处于较早阶段，因为不同企业中AI的影响存在很多不确定性，但我们花时间思考这一点。然后是第三点，在我们的投资公司中。

The second way we're thinking about it is, what are the industries and businesses where AI will affect the industry and potentially strengthen the moat, as we sort of talked about a bit earlier? And are there spaces that we think are attractive? So looking in sort of what we call sort of AI enabled services businesses where we think it can strengthen the mode of the business. That, we're still earlier stages on because I think there's a lot of uncertainty of what it happens in different businesses, but we're spending time thinking about that. And then the third is in our companies.

在我们的公司中，我们认为AI可以在两个方面有所帮助。一是以结构化的方式帮助企业思考关键管理方面，以提高效率。例如招聘，我们有一个招聘流程：使用计分卡，在寻源阶段这样做，然后在筛选和面试过程中这样做。

And in our companies, there's two, I think, ways we think it can be helpful. One is just structured way to help our businesses think about the key management aspects where they can be more effective. So an example would be hiring. We have a hiring process. We have a structured you you do a scorecard, and you do this in terms of sourcing, and then you do this in terms of selection and an interview process.

如果你这样做，你知道，它会提高你成功的几率。但要做到自律非常困难，因为这需要时间，需要你退后一步去思考。你需要建立案例研究，需要完成所有这些事情。那么，我们能否开发一个招聘工具，减少所需的工作量，让你仍然能够自律地遵循流程，但又不必花费所有时间来构建流程？

And if you do this, you know, it will improve your odds of success. But it's very hard to be disciplined to it because it takes time, and it takes you requiring, to step back and think about it. You need to build a case study. You need to do all of these things. And so can we build a hiring tool that takes away some of the work required that allows you to still adhere to the process with discipline, but not all the time to build the process?

那么，我们能否更有效地为某个职位建立评分卡？能否从其他类似职位中提取信息并预先填充，让招聘经理的效率更高一些？因此，我们正在人工智能上花时间研究这类会影响每个企业的话题。然后我们还在思考，比如我们业务中的高效工作流程，以及如何变得更有效？我认为人们正从简单的事情开始，比如如何提高效率，或者如何思考我的呼叫中心？

So can we build a scorecard for a role more effectively? Can we pull from other similar type roles and pre populate it and make you a little bit more efficient as a hiring manager? So we're spending time on AI on topics like that that will affect every business. And then we're spending time on, you know, can we think about our productive, like, workflows in our business, and how do we be more effective? I think people are starting with, like, the simple stuff, like, how do I become more efficient, or can I think about my call center?

但我们可能更多地思考创收方面。我们现在有一个业务需要48小时来报价，能否通过更有效地利用人工智能，在不牺牲质量的情况下将其缩短到48分钟？在销售、营销或生产力方面，是否还有其他类似的工作流程，可以显著改善我们与客户的互动、决策或加速流程，从而让我们吸引更多客户或更好地服务客户？这就是我们正在努力的第三个方面。

But we're thinking probably more on the revenue generating side. Can we quote you can right now, we have a business that takes forty eight hours to quote. Can we get that down to forty eight minutes, but without sacrificing quality by utilizing AI more effectively? Are there other workflows like that on sort of the sales or marketing or productivity side where we can significantly improve how we are engaging with customers or making decisions or speeding up things that will then allow us to attract more customers or service our customers better. And so that's the third aspect that we're working on.

在招聘方面，这个过程具体是什么样的？你们最近从一家公司聘请了一位新CEO，那个过程的细节是怎样的？

When it comes to hiring, like, what does that process look like? Like, what does that nitty gritty look like in the details you've you guys have recently hired a new CEO from one of the companies you had. What is that process like?

是的，我们非常遵循WHO流程。这是由G. H. Smart提出的，有一本书叫《WHO》。

Yeah. So we very much described the WHO process. So by G. H. Smart, there's a book called WHO, WHO.

我认为，这本书是单枪匹马最好的简单招聘指南。如果你读了这本书，几乎每个人都会成为更好的招聘经理。它有几个组成部分，我们对其进行了扩充并添加了自己的内容。但首先是建立一个非常深入的职位评分卡，大多数人完全跳过这个过程。

It is, I think, single handedly the best simple book on hiring. And if you read that book, almost everyone will become a better hiring manager. And there's a few components to it, and we've augmented it and and added our own. But the first is building a really in-depth scorecard for the role. Most people completely skip this process.

他们直接跳到写职位描述、发布职位、开始面试，然后大致确定人选。人们通常这样做是因为你很痛苦，试图填补一个职位，要么没有人选，要么没有合适的人，所以你只想尽快开始。我们总是说，这样做今天可能节省了时间，但长远来看你会损失时间，因为你没有与同事达成一致。

They just jump to, I'm gonna write a JD. I'm gonna post the role. I'm gonna start interviewing, and then I'll sort of figure it And people usually do that because you're in pain. You're trying to fill a role, and you don't have someone in the role, or, you don't have the right person, and so you just wanna get going. And we always say by doing that, you may save your time today, but you're gonna lose time down the road because you're not aligned with your counterparts on it.

你没有针对合适的人群进行营销，没有面试合适的候选人，或者招错了人，然后不得不让这个人离职，在这个过程中浪费了大量的时间和金钱。那么，你如何从一开始就明确并统一对职位需求的认识？在我们看来，一个好的评分卡有三个关键组成部分。首先是这个职位的使命是什么？

You don't market to the right people. You don't interview the right candidates, or, you know, you hire the wrong person, and then you've gotta exit that person, and you lose lots of time and money in doing that. So how do you actually start up front and get aligned and get clarity on what you need in the role? And so a good scorecard in my our mind has three sort of critical components. The first is what's the mission of the role?

所以非常明确地说，你在这个职位上要推动什么？如何让它具体化？你希望它有明确的时间限制吗？你希望它尽可能可衡量吗？比如，如果你在招聘销售副总裁，你可能会说，我们希望通过改进工业客户管理和增加大型工业合同，在三年内实现收入翻倍。

And so really clearly, what are you going to go drive in this role? And how do you make it, like, specific? You want it time bound? You want it as as, like, as measurable as possible? So if you're hiring a VP of sales, you might say, we want to double revenue over three years by improving our industrial account management and adding large industrial contracts.

我们想要建立一个由耕耘者组成的团队，或者建立一个由猎手组成的团队，无论是什么。通过这样做，你想要实现什么？你希望在什么时间内实现？以及一定程度的方法。方法很重要，因为销售领导者的风格差异很大。

And we want to build a team of, you know, farmers, or we wanna build a team of hunters, whatever it may be. And by doing that, what do you want to achieve? What's the time you want to achieve it? And some level of the how. And the how is important because sales leaders are very different.

比如，如果你要通过亚马逊销售，你可能需要与直接销售或通过大客户销售不同的销售领导者。所以，你是否清晰地表达了你的需求？因此使命很重要。第二是成果。三到五个非常清晰的成果，说明你要推动什么。

Like, if you're gonna sell through Amazon, you probably need a different sales leader than if you're gonna sell direct or if you're gonna sell through large customers. And so can you are you clearly articulating what you need? So that mission's important. The second is the outcomes. So three to five really clear outcomes of what you're gonna go drive.

这可能包括增长和收入，但也可能包括我们需要提高利润率，或者我们需要将全国客户从4个增加到10个。无论这个职位需要什么成果，都要尽可能清晰明确。第三是能力。这个职位需要哪些能力？我们将能力分为两个层面。

So that might be growth and revenue, but it also might be we need to grow margin, or we need to, you know, improve from four national accounts to 10. Whatever the outcomes are that you need for that role, as clear and crisp as possible. And then the third are competencies. And what are the competencies needed for this role? And we think of competencies on two levels.

一个是职能性的。有些职位需要特定类型的能力。比如你可能需要分析能力，或者需要基于关系的能力，无论这个职位需要什么。然后是公司层面的文化能力。我们需要每个人都谦逊、乐于接受反馈或积极进取，无论你的业务需要什么。

One is functional. So there's some roles where you you need a certain type of competency. So you might need analytical, or you might need relationship based, whatever it is for that role. And then there's company to big cultural competencies. We need everyone to be humble or open to feedback or aggressive, whatever it is for your business.

所以评分卡就是把这些东西整合在一起。招聘经理将这些整合起来，然后与他们的同事和其他利益相关者分享。然后你们进行讨论。你会发现有人会说，哇，你认为我们需要通过全国账户增长？我认为我们应该面向小型家庭企业。

And so the scorecard is putting those things together. The hiring manager puts those together and then shares that with their counterparts, and so other stakeholders. Then you beat it up. And what you'll find is people will say, woah, you think we need to grow through national accounts? I think we should be going to mom and pops.

这个对话在流程早期进行，以便达成一致、允许存在分歧，然后推进你们想要做的事情。一旦有了这个评分卡，无论是招聘经理、招聘人员还是猎头公司都知道，好的，这就是这个人需要做的事情。我可以找到能够胜任此事的人，我可以制作一份职位描述来吸引想要做这件事的人，并且我能更清晰地阐述它。然后这个评分卡会贯穿整个面试流程，现在我需要知道如何进行面试。

And that conversation is had early in the process where you can get alignment, have disagreement, but then move forward on what you wanna go do. Once you have that score card, then either the hiring manager or the recruiter or the search firm know, like, okay, this is what the person needs to go do. I can find people who can go do this. I can build a JD that's going to market to people who wanna go do this, and I can more clearly articulate it. And then that scorecard then flows through the interview process, and now I have to know how to interview.

所以第一个组成部分是评分卡。第二个组成部分是人才寻源。大多数公司的人才寻源都非常被动。你知道，我发布职位，人们申请。而我的观点是，通常申请的人并不总是你想要的人。

So that's the first component is the scorecard. The second component is the sourcing. And so most sourcing in most companies is very reactive. You know, I I post the job and people apply. And my view is, like, oftentimes the people applying aren't always the people you want.

对吧？他们通常是那些没有工作或对当前工作不满意的人。通常，你最好的表现者对工作很满意，而且做得很好。所以你需要主动去寻找那些人。因此，需要招聘经理或招聘人员主动出击，承担起责任去找到你想要的人，而不是坐等别人上门。

Right? They're the people usually who don't have a job or unsatisfied in their job. Oftentimes, your best performers are happy in their job, and they're doing really well. And so you need to go find those people. And so having the hiring manager or the recruiter reaching out and taking ownership of that to actually find the people that you wanna have, and not just waiting for people to come to you.

所以真的要深入探讨如何进行人才寻源的具体方法。然后是第三部分，关于筛选，以及如何改进你的筛选流程？这是大多数人在考虑招聘时想到的部分，即筛选环节。我们的筛选有几个不同的组成部分。首先是招聘经理。

So really diving into more specifics of how do you go source. And then the third is around selection, and how do you improve your selection process? And this is what most people think about when they think about hiring is the selection part. Our selection has a few different sort of components to it. So the first is actually like the hiring manager.

我们与招聘人员会进行一次筛选，但然后招聘经理会深入探讨我们认为从评分卡来看在职位中重要的不同领域。所以在第一次面试中，关注成果和能力，然后实际上有一个面试小组，由不同的人面试不同的领域。我们发现大多数面试都以“介绍一下你自己”和“谈谈你的背景”开始。然后二十分钟后，你可能已经和三四个人进行了同样的对话，或者候选人已经和三四个人进行了同样的对话，而不是说，你的工作是面试成果，你只关注这些成果。你的工作是关注职能能力。

We do a screen with the recruiter, but then the hiring manager going deep on different areas that we think are important in the role from the scorecard. So the outcomes, the competencies in that first interview, and then actually have an interview panel that have different people interviewing different areas. So what we find in most interviews start with, tell me a little bit about yourself, and, you know, tell me about your background. And then twenty minutes later, then you've had that same conversation, or that candidate's had that same conversation with three or four different people, versus saying, you know, your job is to interview on outcomes, and all you're gonna focus on are these outcomes. Your job's to focus on functional competencies.

你只关注他们是否具备分析能力，如果那是你想要的。对吧。基于关系的。然后一个人专注于文化，比如在你的面试中，你进来时不担心他们过去的角色是什么，或者他们在成果方面的能力如何。你担心的是他们的文化契合度。所以要从这个角度来设置面试。

All you're gonna focus on is, are they analytical, if that's you're looking for Right. Relationship based. And then the one person focusing on cultural, I'm like, in your interview comes in, you're not worried about what their past role is, or how competent they are in terms of the outcomes. You're worried about their culture. And so having the interview set up from that.

然后我们用行为评估来补充这些面试。所以我们通常进行行为和认知评估，我们认为这有助于我们更好地理解一些文化和能力方面。我们通常做一个案例研究，深入探讨我们面临的实际话题。然后我们通常进行一次顶级评分面试，这是一次深入的面试，通常持续九十分钟到三小时，我们会回顾他们过去担任的每一个角色。当时的成果或职责范围是什么？

And then we augment those interviews with behavioral assessment. So we usually do behavioral and cognitive, which we think helps us better understand some of cultural and aptitude aspects. We usually do a case study, which is a deep dive on real topics that we're facing. And then we usually do a top grading interview, which is a in-depth, usually ninety minute to three hour interview, where we're going through every past role that they've done. What were the outcomes or the scope of responsibility?

他们表现如何？他们的经理会怎么评价他们？就是这类对话。所以这是一个相当深入的过程，根据人选的不同而有所遵循，但它能显著提高你的成功几率。

How did they perform? What would their manager say about them? Those types of conversations. So it's a pretty in-depth process, been followed based on sort of who, but it significantly improves your outcome of success.

你们不感兴趣的收购业务之一是保险业。我很想听听更多关于这方面的信息。

One of the businesses you're not interested in acquiring is insurance. I'd love to hear more about that.

是的。我认为有很多行业我们不投资，比如医疗保健、金融、保险、房地产。通常，我们想专注于我们的能力圈。我们认为自己在哪些领域拥有能够增强我们业务的价值和专长？所以我们专注于服务业、工业、消费品，这既是基于我们的背景，也是因为我们认为这些领域有吸引人的机会。

Yeah. I think there's a lot of industries we don't invest in, health care, financials, insurance, real estate. Typically, we wanna focus on what's our circle of confidence. Where do we think we have value and expertise that's going to enhance what we're doing? So we focus on services, industrials, consumer, both by our background, but also where we think there's attractive opportunities.

保险业可以是一门非常好的生意，但在过去十五年里，大量资本涌入。所以它可能是一个竞争更激烈的行业。其中的风险也比以往更大。可能会有一些时期它是一门非常好的生意，但也会有一些时期资本过剩，导致定价变得不那么自律，最终使得这门生意的吸引力下降。当然还有其他有吸引力的动态因素，比如如果我们找到了完美的保险业务。

Insurance is a you can be a really good business, but a lot of capital has come into it in the last fifteen years. And so it probably is a more competitive business. There's more risk in it than there has been. And there probably will be times where it's a really good business, but there'll be times where there's more capital, so the pricing gets less disciplined, and then it ends up being less attractive of a business. There are other dynamics that are attractive, like if we ever found, you know, the perfect insurance business.

这并不是说我们绝对不会做，但鉴于这些动态，它可能不是我们的重点。而且在我们目前涉足的领域，机会很多。所以我们看到的可能性比在保险或其他一些行业要多。其中一些行业更复杂，风险也更高。

It's not saying we wouldn't do it, but it's probably not a focus for us for those dynamics. And the fact that where we are playing, there's a lot of opportunity. And so there's just more there than we see sort of possible in insurance or some of these other sectors. And some of them are just more complex. The risk are higher.

如果你错误定价保险产品，你可能在很长一段时间内都不了解自己的成本，但这可能对一个组织造成非常非常大的困难，如果你定价错误，可能会侵蚀掉你所有的利润。

If you misprice an insurance, you don't understand your costs for a long time, but it can, you know, be very, very difficult to an organization, and you can erode, you know, all your profits if you misprice.

您曾在很多董事会任职，比如冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen）、约翰斯曼维尔（Johns Manville）、卡夫亨氏（Kraft Heinz）。我很想听听您从这些经历中学到了什么，以及您是如何将这些经验应用到现在的Cambric公司的。

You've been on a lot of boards. So you've been on the Dairy Queen board, John Mansville, Kraft Heinz. I would love to hear about what you've learned from those experiences, and then how you took that, and you're applying that now at Cambric.

是的。所以我想说，在我参与过的每一个董事会中，我都学到了不同的东西，包括该做什么，有时也包括不该做什么。有些经历很独特，比如CEO直接向我汇报，而不是一个正式的董事会，其他时候则是更正式的上市公司董事会或私人董事会。我发现，在大多数情况下，大多数董事会并没有为企业创造太多价值。而且我认为他们经常在不太关键的领域投入过多精力，而在他们能提供最大价值的最关键领域投入的时间却不够。

Yeah. So I'd say in each board I've been on, I've learned different things, both in terms of what to do, sometimes what not to do. And some of them have been unique, where, you know, it was the CEO reporting to me directly, and not a formal board, and other times, a more formal public board, or private board. And what I find is, for the most part, most boards don't add a lot of value to the businesses. And I think they oftentimes go too deep on areas that are less critical and not enough time on the areas that are most critical that they can provide the most value.

所以在每个企业中，真正理解那些三到五个能够推动并创造最大价值的关键杠杆是什么，以及如何将时间花在讨论这些杠杆上，而不是所有那些可能紧急、可能正在发生、可能重要但不会根本改变企业方向的小事上。因此，我认为最好的董事会会找出这些关键点，专注于它们，推动围绕它们的讨论，然后为管理团队提供见解或价值。我认为大多数管理团队在参加完董事会会议后都会说那不是在很好地利用我的时间，因为我只是在更新和告诉他们我在过去一个季度或无论什么时间段做了什么，而不是更多地向前看，讨论我正在面临的困难。而且大多数董事会对企业的背景了解不够，无法增加价值。所以如何确保董事会对企业有足够的了解，并能提出正确的问题，即使他们不会像CEO或管理团队那样深入。

So within each business, really understanding what are the, you know, three to five big levers that are going to shift and create the most value in this business, and how do you spend your time talking about those levers versus all the smaller things that might be urgent, they might be happening, they may be important, but they're not going to fundamentally change the direction of the business. And so I think the best boards figure out what those are, focus on them, and drive conversation around them, and then provide insights or value to the management team. I think most management teams would come out of most board meetings and say that wasn't a good use of my time, because I was just updating and telling them what I did, you know, for the last quarter or whatever it may be, versus more forward thinking, this is what I'm struggling with. And most boards don't have the context in the business enough to be able to add value. So how do you make sure the board is knowledgeable enough about the business, and can also ask the right questions, even if they're not gonna be as deep as the CEO or the management team.

我认为这是一个微妙的平衡，需要找到正确的度，但这些是我在思考不同董事会以及我们如何看待我们的董事会时学到的一些东西。

And I think it's a fine line of, you know, getting that right balance, but those are some of the things that I've learned as I've thought about different boards, and how we think about our boards.

你认为董事会在上市公司和私人公司中的角色是否不同？

And do you think the role of the board is different in public companies versus private companies?

既是也不是。我的意思是，绝对不同。比如，在上市公司中，你有受托责任。有更强的治理和一些其他重要的动态，这些在时间分配上受到监管。我认为有些方面价值较低，比如收益和季度报告。

Yes and no. I mean, absolutely. Like, there's a public dynamic where you have a fiduciary responsibility. There's a enhanced governance, and some other dynamics that are important and, you know, regulated in terms of where you need to spend your time. I think there's some that's less valuable, earnings and quarterly reports.

我认为这对企业价值创造的贡献可能较小。在私人公司方面，人们以不同的方式设立董事会。有时它更多地被设置为治理和监督以及股东管理。其他时候，它更多地被设置为咨询或见解提供，我认为不同的私人董事会做法不同。

I think that's probably less valuable to value creation in the business. I think on the private side, people set up their boards in different ways. Sometimes it's set up more as governance and oversight and shareholder Mhmm. Management. Other times, it's set up more as advisory or insights, and I think different private boards do it differently.

我认为我们的观点是，你可能希望处于中间地带，既有一些治理，但在Cambric，我们提供了大部分治理。但真正重要的是那些有价值的见解、视角、关系和介绍，这些才能创造最大价值，我们希望我们的董事会专注于这些。

I think our view is that you probably want somewhere in the middle where you're having some governance. But at Cambric, we provide most of that. But really, it's the valuable insights, perspective, relationships, introductions that are gonna create the most value that we want our boards focused on.

有没有那么一个时刻，在不提及公司名字的情况下，你在董事会会议上对正在发生的事情感到震惊，或者没有？

Is there a moment without naming the company where you were in a board meeting and you were just taken back by what was happening or no?

是指不好的方面吗？

Like in a bad way?

是的。

Yeah.

是的。我是说，有很多次。有些是好的董事会，但我记得有一次我们开董事会，我们在详细评估产品的包装，我认为这很重要。产品的包装非常重要。但我不确定董事会是否是评估和评论业务包装的最佳人选。

Yeah. I mean, many of them. And some of them good boards, but I remember there was a board meeting we were in, and we were, like, assessing the packaging of the products and in detail, which I think that's very important. The packaging of the product is very important. I don't know if the board is the best people to be assessing and commenting on the packaging of business.

我觉得这应该是管理团队和市场营销人员做的事情。我认为这些是，你知道，你必须参与讨论的话题。或者，你在看幻灯片，翻到第112页，你在读幻灯片，然后就想，真的吗？我们就要这样利用时间吗？我觉得任何董事会都不应该有112页的幻灯片。

Like, I think that's what the the management team and the marketers should be doing. And I think those are, you know, conversations you have to be like, about. Or, you know, you're on in a slide deck, and it's slide a 112, and you're read the slides, and, like, really? Like, this is how we're gonna use this time? Like, I don't think any slide deck should be a 112 for a board.

我的意思是，通常可能有20页幻灯片能触及当前面临的最重要议题的核心。然后大部分时间应该是讨论，而不是展示。这不是一场作秀。但我认为通常的设置是让管理团队上来讲述我们做的所有事情，我们有多聪明，多有才华，你们应该为我们鼓掌。而董事会则在另一边这样做，而不是那样。

I mean, usually, there's 20 slides maybe that get to the heart of the most important topics you're facing at a time. And then most of the time should be discussion and not presentation. It's not a dog and pony show. But I think it's set up typically for the management team to come up and say all the things that we've done, and how smart we are, and how talented we are, and how you should be applauding us. And the board, you know, is doing that on the other side, versus that.

这会创造最大的价值，而不是说，嘿，这是我们目前面临的三个最大问题。这是我们在挣扎的地方。这是我们需要你们帮助的地方，这是我们希望获得你们观点和见解的地方。那是一种完全不同的动态。

It's gonna create the most value, versus, hey. These are the three biggest issues we're facing right now. This is what we're struggling with. This is what we need your help with, and this is what we want your perspective and insights on. Now that's a completely different dynamic.

你需要有心理安全感。你需要有信任。你需要管理团队愿意接受反馈。你需要有能够提供宝贵反馈的董事会成员。所有这些要素都需要协同作用。

You need to have psychological safety. You need to have trust. You need the management team to be open to receive the feedback. You need to have board members who are capable of providing valuable feedback. You need all of those dynamics to to come together.

你之前提到了凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆和她的传记。我想再回到这个话题，因为它让我想起了一段记忆，其中涉及巴菲特。但有趣的是，她提到过一件事，如果我没记错的话，是他把所有这些年报带给她，教她如何从财务角度运营《华盛顿邮报》。他提到的一点让我印象深刻，就是他只是给她看了一份五年或十年期间的资产负债表。

You mentioned Katherine Graham and her biography earlier. I wanna circle back to this because it just brought back a little bit of a memory, and it involves Buffett. But it was interesting. She had mentioned something, if I can get this right, where he had brought all these annual reports to her, and he was teaching her sort of like the financial aspect of running the Washington Post. And one of the things he mentioned that stood out to me was he was just showing her a balance sheet over five or ten year period of time.

你能从资产负债表中学到什么？仅仅是那段时间的纯粹资产负债表。你能获得哪些洞察？

What can you learn from a balance sheet? Just a pure balance sheet over that period of time. What insights do you get?

我的意思是，资产负债表能看出很多东西。你可以看到你有多少库存。你可以看到需要多少资本。你可以看到应收账款的情况，比如它们是上升还是下降？

I mean, can see a lot in a balance sheet. I mean, you can see how much inventory do you have. You can see what capital is required. You can see are your accounts receivables, like, are they going up? Are they going down?

就像，从所有三张财务报表中都能看到很多洞察。然后，如果你开始理解业务的驱动因素，你也能理解这一点。我认为你通常会看到的是，大多数领导者并不总是——我认为我们假设他们理解业务中的所有方面，有些人确实理解并且基础非常扎实。有些人理解得战术上很好。有时人们在实际操作中理解，但不一定理解理论，比如它实际上是如何运作的。

Like, there's a lot of insights that you can see from all three financial statements. And then if you if you start to understand the business drivers of the business, you can understand this as well. And I think what you typically you'll see is that most leaders don't always I think we assume they understand all of that in a business, and I think some do and understand it fundamentally really well. Some understand it, you know, tactically well. Sometimes people understand it in their, like, in practice, but not necessarily the theoretical, like, how it actually works.

我认为，对你的领导者来说，不要假设他们理解所有这些是非常有价值的，因为有些人在财务上更懂行或更有财务敏锐度。这并不意味着他们不能学习，但如果你赋予他们这些技能，他们会变得更好。以CEO为例，通常CEO是出色的运营者。他们通常来自销售、营销或运营部门。他们很少来自财务背景，这通常不是职业轨迹。

And you win I think it's really valuable though for your leaders and not assume your leaders understand all of that, because some people are more financially literate or financially like, have more financial acumen than others. And it doesn't mean they can't learn it, but if you equip them with those skills, they're gonna be better. If you think about a CEO, for example, oftentimes CEOs are great operators. They usually have come from sales or marketing or operations. They seldom come from finance, and it's not usually the the career trajectory.

那么他们是否真正学习了这些方面，是在何时何地学习的，他们理解吗？通常，在业务中，你既要做出非常重要的运营决策，也要做出非常重要的资本配置决策。糟糕的资本配置决策真的可以毁掉一个好企业。我们想到的大决策是收购，这是最大的，我们经常通过收购一个不太好的企业或支付过高估值来破坏价值。但企业中每天都有资本配置决策。

And so have they actually learned those aspects, and where along the way did they learn them, and do they understand? And oftentimes, in a business, you're making really important operational decisions, but you're also making really important capital allocation decisions. And you can really ruin a good business with poor capital allocation decisions. And we think of big ones, acquisitions being the biggest, where we destroy value often by acquiring a business that isn't a very good business or paying the round valuation for it. But there's capital allocation decisions every day in a business.

那么我们应该投资这家工厂吗？我们应该开设这个分销中心吗？我们应该进入这个新市场吗？我们以同样的复杂度来考虑招聘。就像，你知道，这不是资本支出决策，但如果你把它当作资本支出决策，如果你要雇佣一个人，假设年薪10万美元，然后你折现这个人的价值，就像，你知道，这是你在这个人身上进行的百万美元投资，虽然你可以解雇他们，但你可能不会。

And should we invest in this factory? Should we open this distribution center? Should we move into this new market? We think of hiring with the same level of complexity. Like, you know, it's not a CapEx decision, but if you thought of it as a CapEx decision, if you're gonna hire someone for a $100, right, a year, and you think the you discount the value of that, like, you know, it's a million dollar investment that you're making in that person if you're, you can fire them, but you probably won't.

他们会留在组织里。那么你在所有这些类型的决策中是否具备同样的纪律性和严谨性？而那些更擅长从根本上理解资本配置的CEO通常能在业务中做出更好的决策。现在，很多企业家本能地就会这么做。他们不得不这样做。

They'll stay at the organization. So do you have that same level of discipline and rigor in your decision making on all those types of topics? And CEOs who are more equipped at, like, fundamentally understanding capital allocation usually can make better decisions in their businesses. Now, a lot of entrepreneurs, they do that instinctively. They've had to do it.

你知道，他们会想办法解决。但有时候，只需退后一步，帮助领导者，确保领导者理解这一点。当我刚开始担任CEO时，我们每年都会让所有领导者参加一次业务驱动因素会议和培训，内容是：什么是业务驱动因素？我们来过一遍损益表，理解损益表的所有组成部分。我们为每个人都做了这个，只是因为这也是人们认为他们应该知道的东西。

You know, they figure it out. But sometimes, just taking a step back and helping a leader, making sure a leader understands it. When I started as CEO, we took all of our leaders through a business driver meeting and training that we did once a year, which was what are the business drivers? Let's go through an income statement, and let's understand what are all the components of an income statement. And we just did it for everybody, just because it's also something that people assume they should know.

所以如果他们不知道，他们常常会感到尴尬，或者觉得不应该问。

And so if they don't, they oftentimes feel embarrassed, or they don't feel like they should ask.

对。

Right.

所以我们会过一遍并解释每项内容是什么。因为归根结底，财务只是一套词汇和语言，如果解释清楚，人们是可以理解的。但如果你从未被解释过，可能就很难理解，你只需要有人带你过一遍。

And so we would go through it and explain what everything is. Because ultimately, finance is just a vocabulary and a language that people, if explained to, can understand. But if you've never been explained to it, it can be tough to understand, and you you just need someone to walk you through it.

在招聘时，你如何评估诚信？

How do you evaluate integrity when it comes to hiring?

我们将其视为一种文化能力，那么如何评估它呢？一种方法是尝试提出情境性问题。比如，告诉我一次你遇到困难时的经历。告诉我一次你犯错的经历。告诉我一次你做错事的经历，无论是什么事，看看人们会分享什么。

We think of it as in one of those, like, cultural competencies, and how do you assess it? So one, you can try to get to situational questions. Tell me about a time you, you know, struggled with something. Tell me about time you made a mistake. Tell me about a time you you did the wrong thing, whatever it may be, and see what people share.

我们通过行为评估来运用这一点。也就是说，实际了解动机和驱动因素的方式，其中一些会体现出诚信或其他品质。然后我们通过背景调查来获取信息，包括他们提供的推荐人，也包括他们未提供的。我们的观点是，招聘过程本质上是在尽可能多地了解一个人以及他们在职位上的行为表现。直到他们真正上岗前你无法确切知道，但通过对这些动态因素保持严谨，你可以提高成功的几率。

We use it through our behavioral assessment. So, like, the actual way to get at sort of motivators and drivers, and some of those things come through, like integrity or others. And then we get it at it through reference checks, you know, both ones they provide, but also ones that they don't provide. Our view is, like, the hiring process is fundamentally you're trying to learn as much as you can about a person and how they'll behave in a role. You don't actually know until they get into the role, but you can improve your odds of success by being disciplined on some of those dynamics.

我记得当我被一家三字母机构录用时，他们做背景调查，联系了许多我未提供的推荐人，我一直觉得这很有趣，因为你提供的那些人最不可能给出有深度的信息。是的。所以他们会去和我生活中任何可能接触过的人交谈，比如我家的邻居，比如他开派对吗？他几点回家？哦，我不知道他们具体问了什么，但我一直觉得很有趣，因为有一天晚上我的邻居来找我妈妈，她说，我一直觉得你家那小子迟早会惹上麻烦。

I remember that when I got hired at a three letter agency and they were doing my background check, they talked to numerous references that I hadn't provided, and I always found that an interesting insight because the ones that you provide are the least likely to give insightful information. Yeah. So they would go, and they'd just talk to anybody in my life who would have been around, like including a neighbor to my house, and like, does he party? What time is he coming? Oh, I don't know what questions to ask, but I always found it interesting because my neighbor came over one night to my mom, and she's like, I always knew that boy of yours was gonna get in trouble.

而这只是一次背景调查，一次推荐人核查，却是一种非常有趣的方式来了解人们的信息。是的，以一种非受控的方式。

And it was just a background check, like, and it was a reference check, and it was a really interesting way to find out information about people Yeah. In a non controlled sort of

是的。看看人们分享什么真的很有帮助。我们在面试过程中，还会根据对象，当你进行顶级评分练习时，我会逐一了解你担任过的每个角色，你的职责范围，你做了什么，取得了什么成果。然后我会问你的经理是谁。

Yeah. It can be really helpful to see what people share. We also, in our interview process, based off of who, also, when you go through the top grading exercise, you know, I go through each role you've had, what your scope was, what you did, what were your outcomes. But then I ask who your manager was.