Rule Breaker Investing Blast From the Past, Vol. 11

Pulled from classic episodes spanning the last decade of weekly podcasts, David spotlights lessons that light candles -- at a time when too many are busy fanning flames.

The five growth-minded blasts from the past:

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• Roy Spence on being a "For" Person.
• Do you have a ________ friend?
• Accept responsibility; blame no one.
• Judge yourself by your results, and others by their intentions.
• Sam Horn's "proactive grace."

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A full transcript is below.

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This podcast was recorded on Oct. 01, 2025.

David Gardner: I try never to say, never. But I'm nearly there with a few things. One is running for public office. I'm more drawn to the private sector where the vast majority of us work every day. I see immense value in what I call Foolish phrase, a private service, serving others through the private sector, often finding it more enjoyable and rewarding than traditional public service, especially these days, perhaps. But another never for me is repeating a rule breaker investing podcast. We've delivered a new podcast every week since July 2015, 536 weeks in a row now without a skip or repeat. But who's counting? Yet continuously introducing new content can lead to neglecting essential timeless truths. And that's why a couple of times a year, I revisit and highlight key lessons in our blast from the past series, ensuring both new and long time listeners catch important takeaways, whether they're hearing them for the first time or as a reminder from years ago. And this week, we're not focused on investing so much and not business so much either. Let's focus this week on life. Blast from the Past, Volume 11. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

And welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. A few bookkeeping notes up front before we get into our five point blast from the past this week. The first is that the website that I launched along with my book, which is rulebreakerinvesting.com, is there for two reasons. The first is to serve people who've never heard of Rule Breaker Investing before and who can go to that URL and just read a little bit more about what we believe. See some old video interviews of me to see what I'm about and just generally begin to understand and feel comfortable with the idea of breaking the rules. So that's half of the purpose of the website for people who have not really heard of the book before and might want to buy it. The other half is there to serve you, especially if you're a regular listener or somebody who might enjoy the bonus chapter, which I have written and which we will be publishing in a little bit for anybody who'd like a free download of an extra chapter of my Rule Breaker Investing book, which will be available on that website, as well. But especially for regular and long time Rule Breaker Investing podcast listeners, I'm really excited about the podcast tab you'll find at, rulebreakerinvesting.com. So I do episodic series, and I've done them for a long time on this podcast, things like Authors in August or my annual Games Games Games, or the 20 volumes I've done of Great Quotes, and the list goes on. I love to organize my thinking around recurring episodic series, and for the first time ever we've actually assembled all of those, most of them on that list on the podcast tab at, rulebreakerinvesting.com, and it's not just a list. It enables you to click into every one of them. So, for example, if you'd enjoy getting back around the campfire with us with our long running stock stories series, and you're like, How many have they done? The answer is 10, and you can now find all 10 listed in order right there on the podcast tab. Maybe you have a friend and you're like, hey, David does a series every year or so of his pet peeves. It's pretty amusing. You can nudge them any of the eight volumes of pet peeves I've done over the years. They're listed right there, too, in chronological order. So it's a wonderful new resource for listeners of this podcast. If you want to go back and hear my besties each year, they're right there on a clickable list. So I definitely want to underline the podcast tab for all of you, my longtime listeners, especially. Before we get into it, I want to mention what we're doing next week. Every two years, just once, I do a podcast entitled, 9 Foolish Truths I Hold to Be Self-Evident. It's a podcast about investing, a podcast about business, and a podcast about life. And it's something that I just bring back every couple of years because I want to make sure we underline some of the key Foolish truths, especially with a lot of new listeners, a lot of new readers of my book this month. I'm excited that the timing randomly works out. Our tradition of always doing it every other October happens to be next week. So circle your calendar if you like, 9 Foolish Truths I Hold to Be Self-Evident comes back again in its 2025 form next week. And speaking of episodic series, that's what we're doing this week. It's Blast from the Past Volume 11. That means 10 previous times on this podcast, I've dipped back into the past, and I've said, What are some key points? Some cardinal points, some stirring stories or, I think, inspiring things to keep in mind that I can bring back? Because there's no guarantee anybody anytime recently has gone back and listened to my podcast from August 29 of 2018. I'll highlighting a point this week that I made back then. Do you remember what I was saying seven years ago? Probably not.

That's the purpose of Blast from the Past, to bring back some of my favorite, most important points into the present day. Typically, I do five of them. That's exactly what I'm doing this time, but we have a special theme this time. Usually, it's a grab bag. It's a motley list of five. But this time, I've specifically been thinking about where we are in the world today. With this podcast, my intention is not to speak to society. We'll be speaking a little bit about society or where we are, but society is too much. It's world events. It's the news media. It's social media. It's all the different nations. It's just this one nation, the United States of America, which is very complicated these days. So, I want you to know I'm not speaking to society. I'm speaking to just you. You and me this week because, well, I'm speaking to myself, too. To remind myself of what I believe wins in life. That is the theme of this week's podcast. What I'm sharing with you this week are lessons learned about how to win in life. And I think these win in business, too. I know they win in investing, but this week's podcast is about winning in your life. And I'm especially putting on Mr. Rogers red sweater this week. Fred Rogers is a past guest on the Motley Pool Radio Show. We've rerun that as one of our Rule Breaker Investing extras, if you ever want to hear us interview Mr. Rogers back in the day, Google, Rule Breaker Investing. Mr. Rogers, and you'll get to hear it again. I'm bringing back the ghost of Fred Rogers because I think he's desperately need by all sides. There are many sides, not just two sides. I know a lot of people these days talk about the left and the right. I've never framed things up that way. That is far too over simple in my mind. There are many sides, but the side I care most about is the side that you and I are on. I think that's the side of trying to live a better life, leave the campfire better than we found it, and send ripples of goodness out and around us. I'll be drawing on quotes and some past appearances of some wonderful people on this podcast to help us get back in that frame of mind because there's a lot of trash being talked. These days.

As a sports fan, I was thinking how glad I am that it doesn't tend to happen in sports. It tends to happen in news and politics today, and I'm really getting tired of it. And I was thinking, as a long time football fan, what if head coaches behave like politicians these days? Can you imagine if head coaches in the NFL every week, week in and week out, just trash talked each other, they just hated their opponent all week long, that opposing head coach, they'd be competing against the following Sunday. You know what would happen? If NFL coaches did that week in and week out using the media and social media to sow seeds of hatred at each other, I'll tell you what I think would happen. The fans in the stands would start occasionally to riot, and that would become a big media topic, which would then keep spreading the problem, and I think all of a sudden, we'd have an epidemic problem around NFL sports crowd behavior, and violence because we tend to follow the leader in different contexts as human beings, and I'm so glad here I'm using the National Football League, which in some ways is organized violence. I'm so glad that we don't comport ourselves that way at a high, high level in sports. Anyway, my five blasts from the past with my inner Fred Rogers are coming at you, and I'm excited to get started. Let's do it. Blast from the Past Point Number 1. Blast from the Past Point Number 1, I entitle I'm a for person. This is the first, and I believe the only repeat of a Blast from the Past in this podcast series history. As I mentioned at the top, this is our 11th blast from the past. Here with Point Number 1, I'm actually reblasting a point that I made last year as a Blast. So for those keeping score at home, it was shared on May 8 of 2024, it was Blast from the Past Number 4 that day. Reflecting back on a conversation we'd had with Roy Spence on this podcast seven years before. So this is my first Blast from a Blast from the Past, and it's entitled I'm a for Person.

Yeah, that conversation way back on November 1, 2017, featured Roy Spence, entrepreneur, world class Marketer, somebody who thinks a lot about purpose in branding, co founder of GSD&M, the Austin Texas Branding and Marketing firm. At one point, early in that 2017 podcast, I said to Roy, "I'm curious, Roy, looking at the world today, you don't have to cast any nasty aspersions here, but is there a company that comes to mind when you think about who may have lost their purpose at some point, maybe tried to redefine its purpose, maybe even failed at that. So who comes to mind?" Roy said, "My instinct in life." I know this sounds again a little bit naive. He said, "A really good friend of mine," Roy went on, "Validated this the other day and if I told you who it was, you'd go, wow. He looked at me and he said, Roy, you know what's interesting about you?" I said that is, Roy said, "Yeah, everything." And he was joking, of course. But no, this friend of his said to Roy, "You are a for person." Roy said, "I beg your pardon." He said, "You're for things. You're not against things". Roy concluded by saying, " I am." I was asking him on that interview not to cast aspersions, but I was asking him for a negative example, a counterfactual, some company that really screwed up. Roy declined to answer that, not because he doesn't have good ideas in mind, probably, or couldn't name companies, but he's a for person. Elsewhere in that podcast, speaking of for, he said this. He said, "You become what you look for in life. If you're on the road to look for enemies, you'll find them. If you're looking for hate, it'll live in your heart. If you're looking for gossip, it'll consume you. If you're looking for fear, it will follow you. But if you get on the road and you're looking for friends, you'll be befriended. If you're looking for love, you'll be loved. If you look for the truth, it'll set you free. If you look for hope, it'll go to the mountaintop." Roy concluded by saying, "I know now in life, all of you listeners, you Rule Breaker Investor listeners and viewers out there, you actually become what you look for. So let's go look for goodness. I'm a for person." Well, I've used that phrase a lot ever since. It's now nearly eight years later because that's exactly what I think I am. Or at least I try to be, and I hope you do, too. We're living at a time where especially politics seems to be against all the time. Many of the best known politicians are the loudest voices against. They're the opposite of for.

Why I, and I think many of us maybe tune out politics and look askance here in the fall of 2025. It's because it's become an environment against and against is exhausting. Against doesn't really help anybody. When against tries to turn other human beings created out of love for love, when against tries to turn some people into demons, that's the quickest way to become a demon yourself is to demonize others. But on the other hand, if you're a for person, what benefits? Well, for people foster collaboration. People who are for others cultivate environments where collaboration thrives. We're focusing on mutual goals and successes, win win, rather than against talking down others. People who are for people build trust when you consistently support and affirm others. Do you have someone like this in your life? You trust them. They are building trust. People feel more comfortable and secure when they know they're in a supportive environment, a for. Not an against environment. It also obviously reduces conflict. I don't think we need any more conflict in our world today. Focus on what can be done and what supports others. The for people that I know naturally reduce the potential for conflict because their approach emphasizes understanding and cooperation over conflicts over divisiveness. I think two more things that I can see in for people like Roy Spence. First, for people improve mental health. They probably have better mental health themselves in the first place, but being supportive and positive for those around them, creating positive interactions, nurturing relationships, that decreases stress. It increases your satisfaction and happiness, definitely benefits your own mental health, very likely benefits the mental health of those around you, for people. The second thing I have in mind, the last thing I'm going to say about for people as we close down blast from the past lead off point number one. Boy, if Roy Spence is an example of this, go back and listen to that podcast anytime November 1, 2017, if you need some positive ups. For people inspire others, and that might be the most powerful benefit of being a for person. Your ability to inspire others, positivity. We've talked about positive intelligence a lot in this podcast, the benefits for your investing and your business and your life. Positivity in support. You're motivating others. They're unconsciously or even consciously mirroring back to you the inspiration, the for that you are showing them, and it multiplies. That effect is a force multiplier, as Colin Powell once said about optimism, a multiplier through a community or an organization or a country. As I do for my every Blast from the Past then, I encourage you go back and listen to that podcast Rule Breaker Investing in November 1, 2017. But if you want to skip it, I hope you've gotten enough from this blast to realize and appreciate that Roy Spence is a for person. I'm trying to be a for person. I hope you're a for person, too, or at least I hope you're trying to be a for person.

On to Blast from the Past. Number 2, staying with character, staying with you, with me with life. This one was from June 24th. It was the June Mailbag in the year 2020. Do you remember June 2020?

Where were you then? Blast from the Past Number 2 this week is entitled, do you have a blank friend? Fill in the blank. I think it's as helpful as possible to collect as many friends with as many different backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences as possible. I think that's a worthy way to go through life collecting friends. Do you have a blank friend? Back in 2020 as I was doing that podcast, in particular, our law enforcement friends. Most police I've ever met, I'm extremely grateful for, happy to call them my friends, grateful for their service. I understand not everybody feels that way about the police, and for very serious reasons in 2020, were some really bad apples wearing blue completely abused their authority, did murderous things, and as one headline story spread to another and social media were rocking lines like defund the police, which I personally think would have been a horrendous mistake, avoided, fortunately, there I was on that podcast in June 2020 asking what I'll ask today. Do you have a police friend? I have a few friends who are police officers, and I really appreciate hearing their viewpoints. Some of those viewpoints have, in fact, aligned with points made by the people protesting against the police, which I actually find extremely admirable, given that they've been articulated by my police friends who are putting their lives on the line every day for you and for me and making the world safer. Now, it's always a shame when bad apples really spoil the public's view of anything. In my experience, our media will typically find the bad actors in any context and make them drive the headlines, and it's not even the media's fault. It's we who click and want to read about the bad apples and the bad actors. Apparently, with much more vigor or interest, than we want to read about the good things and the good people. In a stock market context, Enron was far more written about stock. In those days, then whatever we were picking in Motley Fool Stock Advisor back in those days, might have been Marvel or Amazon, whose positive gains have just utterly exceeded and blown away the losses ever created by Enron and its ilk. But nevertheless, Enron tended to imprint itself on a lot of people's minds when they thought about business.

They thought about bad business or what they think about the stock market. They don't think the stock market is a good place for good money and good people. Getting back briefly to law enforcement, I was influenced as a young guy when I had a full summer internship with the police department in Rochester, New York, after my sophomore year of college.

That was a summer where I got to see things I've never seen before, and I got to empathize. I got to understand how hard it is to be a police officer. Their divorce rate is much higher than the American divorce rate today. Levels of alcoholism and stress are much higher. These all, a lot of them are the good people because in my experience, most people who enter the police force are doing it out of a positive motivation. Indeed, they do a lot of heroic, and in many cases, helpful, sometimes really important things in small and big ways every day. I have a police friend, and as I said, what I think was a modern American inflection point during COVID that summer of 2020, I hope everybody listening to me right now has a police friend, too. If you don't, I would suggest you make a police friend and hear their viewpoint. There are some other friends I have, and I hope you do, too. I have some black friends. I have some white friends. I have a transgender friend. I have some rich friends. I have some poor friends. Sure enough, I have Democrat friends, and I have Republican friends. I live here in the nation's capital. All of them are all around me, even though I'm not much for the political world myself. You're darn right. I try to have a very diverse group of friends who have different minds on a lot of different topics. Maybe that's the reason that tolerance seems so important to me or that kindness is, for me, one of America's five core values, or that we might each do better next time you're in the shower or on a bike ride, taking a minute out to think about forgiveness. Maybe the reason I'm more centrist in my leanings is because I've tried to get to know as many different types of people as possible, I try to have as many blank friends. I'll just rhetorically conclude Blast from the Past point Number 2 by asking each of us, if you find that you disagree with a group of people, but you can't identify a friend that you have in that group of people, whatever type of group we're talking about, I would suggest you make a blank friend. By the way, this isn't following someone on social media, although I suppose you could start that way. I'm talking about a real relationship. I'm talking about a friendship. Do you have a blank friend? Here's a great quote to throw in there right at the end now that I couldn't have seen in 2020. It's because I follow @Axel Dussen on Twitter X. If you use that social media platform, I suggest you do, too, because he's full of elevating for me, excelsior thoughts @Axel Dussen, German, name A-X-E-L D-U-S-S-E-N. We've never met, Axel, but I appreciate you. In this tweet you sent out was a couple of weeks back. It wasn't there when I first asked in the summer of 2020, do you have a blank friend? But now I can share first, you pulled a quote you admire, and it is, "Never ask, who is my true friend, ask, am I a real friend of anyone?" That's the right question.

After that quote, Axel, you went on to add yourself, which I really appreciate you wrote, "When you go out for training, you may ask yourself, how does this training make me better?" My answer to you is, it won't. It makes the man next to you better. That's the attitude you need to have. On to Blast from the Past point Number 3. This one is from my series Old New Borrowed and Blue. It was Volume 4 of the date May 6th, 2020. I mentioned the title with the dates because I think it's fun to go back and hear the whole thing. But from my Blast from the Past, I'm just pulling a key point and keeping us moving here this week. Let's go to what I'll entitle accept responsibility. Blame no one. Now, fans of Warren Bennis, the wonderful author of many books on leadership, I frequently find myself quoting On Becoming a Leader, where he gives his four lessons of self-knowledge, and lesson Number 2 is probably my favorite. Accept responsibility, blame no one. This is lesson Number 2 of self-knowledge. This is not about what you should do for others or how to behave, but to get to know yourself, to improve yourself, accept responsibility, Bennis wrote, blame no one. If you go through life looking backward, blaming somebody or something, it might be personal, or it might just be circumstance, but if you go through your life looking backwards, blaming something, it's going to be awfully hard to truly move forward, won't it? While it's easy to say, accept responsibility, blame no one, it is another thing to do. If you and I can do a better job, accepting responsibility and blaming no one. I love, by the way, that forthright, almost traumatic air to those last three words blame no one. What a powerful place from which to proceed. I made so many bad stock picks in my time. About half of the stock picks that I've made in Motley Fool Stock Advisor, Motley Fool Rule Breakers, didn't beat the market. The good news is the other half did, and some by, quite a lot. They do so well that as I write memorably, I hope, in my final stock market book, Rule Breaker Investing out this month, by the way, thank you, in particular, to each of you who've left me an online review on Amazon or Audible. If you haven't already, I would really appreciate that.

Anyway, as I write in Rule Breaker Investing and have demonstrated over and over again, including 30 free five stock samplers picked on this podcast over the years, the winners completely wipe out the losers and leave a ton of money on the table. I don't sweat the small stuff. I realize not everybody thinks losers are small stuff, but I've learned to believe that losers in every context are small stuff. I tried to blame no one whenever I made a bad stock pick. Sometimes it was a teammate's favorite stock. I selected it in a given month for Rule Breakers, and maybe it sagged or even eventually got crushed, which is completely regrettable and never my intention, but it happens, and when it did, I always took on that responsibility myself. It may have been my friend's favorite stock, but Warren Bennis reminds me I made the selection. One of my favorite things I ever heard about coach Dean Smith, a longtime basketball coach Hall of Fame from my alma mater, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a person of real character. Dean Smith, it later came to light, and he got a lot more publicity for this in recent years near his end. But he promoted desegregation. That included integrating the Tar Heels basketball team by recruiting Charlie Scott, who became the University's first Black scholarship athlete back in the mid 1960s. But it was often said of Dean Smith that whenever his team lost in the post game press conference, he would blame himself. Whenever the team won in the post game press conference, he would credit the players. I think that's such a great position to be coming from. I see that in a lot of other coaches today, and I'm not just talking about sports. I hear a lot of blame today through the air waves, and I spend almost no time following people who blame first, second, or third. I'm a foreperson, but I think the more that you and I can get in the habit of accepting responsibility and ourselves blaming no one, it's not even that the people who weren't blamed are helped, it's that you and I are probably helped most of all, by that tendency in our own character. It's one of the most character improving things you can do, Blast from the Past point Number 3. On to Blast from the Past point Number 4, this one, I mentioned earlier, August 29, 2018, a lot of these were pulled from mailbags. I feel like I'm often thinking about these topics we're covering this week because of mailbag items where you write in and express a thought about business or life, and then I got a chance to think about that and give my best response back.

Then I try to pull my best ones and reuse them here, as I'm doing now years later. It's no longer August 29, 2018. It's not even August 29, 2025 anymore or in the future. This one is entitled, judge yourself by your results and others by their intentions. Remember that our tendency as human beings, psychologists have shown this, our tendency is to judge others by their results and judge ourselves by our intentions. It's very easy to look at Sally or Jim and say, she or he just didn't get it done. Then, unfortunately, when we tend not to get things done, we tend to say, "Here's what I was trying to do, though. I was trying to do that, whether or not I got it done." Again, we tend to judge others by their results and ourselves by our intentions. What I've said before on this podcast is reverse that for yourself. Again, you'll be a stronger person. I think a lot of what I'm talking about this week are ways to win, ways to succeed in this world. Here's another one of them. Do your best to judge yourself by your results and others by their intentions. By the way, you may get an eye-opener from time to time because you're going to find people who seem to be doing very different things from what you're doing, or making very different choices than you would, choices you might even bemoan. But if you summon up the character and ask yourself about that person Blast from the Past point Number 4, judging others by their intentions, what is he or she actually trying to do? You may find yourself surprised to discover they're trying to do the same thing that you are. They may well be trying to make for a better world. You might disagree on what form that should take, but remember their intentions, investigate their intentions, and then look deeply, not into your own heart, but at your own results. Investment or otherwise, because if you can make a habit of judging yourself by your results, you will be that much more awesome. Blast from the Past, Number 5. This one is not from the long ago past.

This one is from the one month ago past. Talking as much this week about life. How could I not think back to my conversation last month, Talking on Eggshells with author Sam Horn, our author in August and Sam's concept of Proactive grace, which I think makes for a really good capper for Blast from the Past Volume 11. In fact, I'm not going to quote from that podcast. I'm just going to quote a little bit from her book, Talking on Eggshells. I hope this speaks for itself, and I believe it speaks strongly and fits well with the rest of this episode. Sam writes, "We can't always choose how people treat us. We can choose how we treat them. When we choose to be kind, most people choose to respond in kind. If for some reason they don't least we did our half. At the end of each day and at the end of our life, we'll be able to look back and know, we were additive. That's what we can control, and it matters.' Let me define what I mean by the term Proactive grace. Sam horn writes, starting by contrasting it with the word reactive. "Reactive means responding with hostility, opposition, or a contrary course of action, often as a result of stress or emotional upset. Proactive means creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen. In other words, reactive is when we say or do the first thing that occurs to us without considering the consequences. Proactive is having the ISA. That's her acronym for interpersonal situational awareness. I'll read it out loud. That way, proactive is having the interpersonal situational awareness to anticipate consequences before we act and opting to behave in ways that make things better, not worse. Grace, to me, Sam goes on, means going out of our way to set an example of integrity, empathy, and goodwill, even if people don't appreciate it or return the favor. Please note the phrases going out of our way. Even if people don't appreciate it or return the favor, grace is not based on reciprocity. It is not something we do only when it is noticed and returned. That would make grace conditional.

Our goal is to extend grace unconditionally. It is a life choice. People like Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Malala Yousafzai and Dalai Lama are not the only ones who can embody and gift grace. Each of us can strive to live like them and like Gandhi, who said, my life is my message. What do you want to be known for? Being a bridge builder, a peacemaker, an example of integrity, a model of proactive grace. Clarifying that right now can serve as a saving grace and an emotional North star that carries you through the most trying times." That was from Page 35 of Sam Horn's book Talking on Eggshells. Just a few pages later, Sam, who has a gift for finding great quotes and using them over and over as epigraphs to open up chapters and subsections of her story. I also love great quotes. That's why I've done 20 episodes in my great quotes episodic series. I love a great quote, and Sam includes one that fits right in with what I just shared. This is from the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote, "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they're capable of being." Anyway, there they are. Five Blasts from the Past. I think any one of those is great. I hope stands on its own, any one of those five points. But like those six traits that I look for in Rule Breaker stocks, the more you have, the more they work together in powerful concerts. See if you can rock each of those five blasts. Some of my most admired colleagues are people who exhibit kindness every day. They leave every campfire they join in with better than when they depart, their actions come from their character, completely apart from, though, no doubt, related to whatever spiritual, tradition they come from, that they espouse. I say, let's you and me, fellow Fools, fellow Rule Breakers all, let's be known for lighting candles, not fanning flames. Let's choose builders over arsonists, with our money, with our votes, and something probably even more valuable than those, and that would be our attention. I look for these things, these things we've talked about this week, in those I follow and in those I invest in. I look for them in friends like you. We must all look for them in ourselves.

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