Three Fools Vol. 2, with Bill Burke & Mahan Tavakoli

In this episode of Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool Co-Founder David Gardner is joined by superstar guests Bill Burke and Mahan Tavakoli as they each share three stories—one to educate, one to amuse, and one to enrich. From investing lessons that last a lifetime to laugh-out-loud anecdotes and heartwarming life insights, these nine stories are packed with inspiration and practical takeaways.

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on April 22, 2026.

David Gardner: What happens when you bring together three storytellers, three themes, and a podcast devoted to making you smarter, happier, and richer? You get three Fools. It's my continuing episodic series, and this time around I'm joined by two much-admired friends and past guests on this podcast, Optimism Institute founder Bill Burke and CEO coach and AI expert Mahan Tavakoli. They're here with me to tell stories. Each of us with one to educate, one to amuse, and one to enrich. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Thanks for joining with us in the middle of April. Oh, my gosh, in Washington DC, it was freezing this morning. I thought that only happened, I don't know, in December or February, maybe March, but it's late April. Before we get started, I want to mention next week is, of course, our mailbag, so drop me a note. Rbi@fool.com is our email address. You can tweet us out on Twitter X at RBIpodcast. Let me know what you've thought of the podcast this month. Specifically, listen in this week around our campfire. Join us and who moved you? Who educated, amused, and enriched you? I hope all three of us, but we always love hearing your thoughts. I learned so much from your reactions to this podcast. It's why we do a mailbag at the end of every month. Next week is that. Our April 2026 mailbag. If you want to be featured, you want to be a star, you want to be up in lights, rbi@fool.com is the address. Let me introduce my two guests, and then we'll get started. Bill Burke founded the Optimism Institute in 2022, after an extensive media and sports career as an executive, writer and producer. Bill served as CEO of The Weather Channel Companies. After several years at Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting System, where he was the founding general manager of Turner Classic Movies before going on to become president of TBS Superstation.

Additionally, for 15 years, he was the co-owner and chairman of the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A Minor League Baseball affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. Bill is a lifelong optimist. He has to be, as he always points out, he's a Detroit Lions fan and launched the Optimism Institute with a mission to inspire people with an optimistic, hopeful vision of the world, and its future. He's also a fellow podcaster. His is the Blue Sky Podcast, which speaks to leaders, researchers, and thinkers, whose stories and insight will remind us that there is always Blue Sky above. Sometimes you just need to get your head above the clouds to see it. It is a wonderful listen every week. I first got to know Mahan Tavakoli during his board chair days for leadership Greater Washington here in the nation's Capital. Mahan is a CEO advisor, executive coach, consultant, and speaker, renowned for his expertise in purpose-driven leadership and organizational collaboration. He has a particular passion for exponential technologies and their impact on organizational leadership. To that end, Mahan has joined me on this podcast several times in the past to help us all better understand AI, artificial intelligence. Mahan is a Top 10 global thought leader on management by Thinkers 360, the marketplace for B to B thought leaders, analysts and influencers and like Bill, Mahan is a dedicated husband and father and all around great guy and like Bill, he has his own excellent podcast, partnering leadership, which I have greatly enjoyed and can totally recommend to you Bill Burke, Mahan Tavakoli, thank you. Welcome.

Mahan Tavakoli: Thank you, David.

Bill Burke: Absolute joy to be back with you, David.

David Gardner: Thank you, both. We're going to have fun this week, and let's get started. In fact, by lot, I randomized Bill, you will be up first with our first story. Just to remind our listeners here, we've got three stories to educate, then three to amuse, then three to enrich in that order. Each of us will lead off with an educated story, and by lot, Bill Burke, you're up first for Educate story Number 1.

Bill Burke: Thank you, David. Highly intimidating assignment, but I'll give it my best shot. I figured for Educate as someone who has ventured off into this optimism institute and Blue Sky podcast work, I should talk about optimism. About two years ago, I had my 50th episode of the podcast, and by 50 episodes, you start seeing patterns. My guest was a very special guest, Kelly Corrigan, terrific writer, really great thinker, wonderful person. She has a show called Tell Me More. It's all about curiosity. I said, Kelly, one of the patterns I've seen in optimists, who, by definition, you're optimist, if you're on my show, they're all lifelong learners. They all talk about what they read, what they watch, and what they think about. I said, I'm having trouble with the connection to optimism. Without trying to make me feel stupid, she's like, Well, it's kind of obvious.

She said, If you believe there's more to learn, that's just a fundamentally optimistic position to take. There's always another book to read. There's always someone else to talk to. It took me 50 episodes to figure that out. Ever since, it continues to ring true, that's one piece of education, and I can't resist a chance to talk about how good optimism is for you. That curiosity is good in and of itself, I believe, but the facts and the statistics and the research on optimism are overwhelming. It's good for your physical health as well as your mental health. There's a recent report two weeks ago, 15% lower incidence of dementia. It's very good for you. I'm always skeptical of this research because it's often backed by Big Pharma. There's no such thing as big optimism. At least not yet, a guy can dream, so I believe this research and curiosity can fuel your optimism. Stay interested, stay learning, listen to podcasts like David's and Mahan's, and that's my educate story.

David Gardner: I love that, Bill. I'm just wondering, though, from your origin story, how did you become an optimist? Or were you born an optimist?

Bill Burke: It's the age-old question. Are you born one? Do you make one? The annoying answer of it, it's a little bit of both. I always thought I was pretty angsty growing up, tough dad, teenage years weren't easy. Then a few years ago, my sister, while moving, my mom unearthed my high school senior yearbook, which I did not have a copy of. I flipped to the senior section, and I don't know what other school would do this, but my high school had class optimist, and it was me and Maura Quinlan. My classmates identified me as an optimist back then. It's a lot of things, my upbringing, very optimistic mom, entrepreneurial dad, and that sort of thing. But I just believe you have a choice every morning to wake up thinking about what good might happen that day, as opposed to the opposite. I'm very passionate about spreading that word because I worry about especially young people losing hope, losing faith, and so that's why I'm motivated to do this work.

David Gardner: Bill, you and I have a connection, Raymond, Maine.

Bill Burke: Yes, that's right.

David Gardner: Maine is one of your ancestral, I'm not going to say burial grounds. I can't speak to that, but I'll at least say birthing grounds.

Bill Burke: Exactly.

David Gardner: I myself spent a few years on Panther Pond in Raymond, Maine, at Camp Tamanas, where, if you go back and check it, the 1976 End of Summer Hall of Fame plaque has most cheerful, and it's me. I sometimes forget about that, but you and I both share that. There's a cheer. There's an optimism. It's usually in you early. You probably can fake it till you make it like some other things, too, but I do think there's something to be said about the birthing of joy.

Bill Burke: Maine is the first state to see the sunrise every day, so that has to be a tie to optimism.

David Gardner: Boom. I didn't even think about that. Well, Bill, thank you for that. I would just say, yeah, optimism is better. Better for you. That's the very education that I think a lot of Rule Breaker Investing listeners hope to get each week. Thank you, Bill. Let's move next by lot to Mahan. Mahan, your educate story.

Mahan Tavakoli: My colleagues and I at the leadership team were in the conference room in Manhattan, really nervous because we were about to present to the board of directors of Dale Carnegie. One of my colleagues said, you know what? I know the perfect song to put on. She put on the Muppets “Mah-Na Mah-Na.” We started singing “Mah-Na Mah-Na,” because we'd done all the work. We were ready for this presentation. We knew the board members, why so nervous? We were humming, singing, laughing, walked into the boardroom, they'd taken a break, said hello to everyone. We had a good energy, great strategy.

As we started presenting it, I was looking around the room and could slowly see the board members disengage, become a little bit more hostile in their questions. You know when you're going through that experience, we knew we were losing the group. It wasn't a conversation we thought we were walking into. It was nothing to do with the analysis. What we had totally missed was that to many of these folks, some of them family members who are shareholders, this was about legacy. It was about identity. It had nothing to do with the data we were presenting. The data we were presenting was almost like a frontal assault on the board and on the family members. We treated this as a strategy that required a lot of data, a lot of research, a lot of customer analysis, and interviews. But it was really more about power and narrative. Data wasn't a problem. What it implied for the people in the room was. What I learned from that is that you can have all the data and all the facts and all the strategies in the world, if you don't know who you are engaging with, what their identity represents, and what's at risk for them emotionally, you've already lost it before you walk into a room.

David Gardner: Mah-Na Mah-Na, bop bop.

Bill Burke: If you want to know how old someone is, you do Mah-Na Mah-Na, and see if they respond.

David Gardner: There you go. You just put an earworm in anybody over the age of, I don't know, 45 or something because it's going to be hard to get rid of that one. Were you able to pull it back out within that meeting context, Mahan? Did you just silence the music and realize we need to speak to these people? I love the risk-taking, and I know you go out there as I do into life to have fun. Try stuff, be willing to fail. Is there a coda to what happened that day?

Mahan Tavakoli: I wish I could say it all worked out really well. We had done all the work with the leadership team, with the CEO, executive committee, all of those folks. No, the board really took offense at that, didn't want to hear about it anymore. I wish it was otherwise, but it wasn't. Again, we hadn't reflected on elements of identity and elements of emotion and legacy, which intellectually, we think should not play a role in an organization strategy, but they really do.

David Gardner: Bill Burke, did you ever have any uncomfortable board meetings in and around Turner, TBS?

Bill Burke: Absolutely. I had Ted Turner one time tell me, the year after the Braves won the World Series, we carried the Braves on TBS. He said, what's the estimate for ratings next year? At first, I didn't know. He's like, well, you don't know. That's great. We find the number, and it's no higher than the year before. He's like, we won the World Series, it should be higher. I said, Ted, sometimes you get to the mountaintop, and then people, oh, so we should have lost the World Series? Oh, God, he's just lost it on me. That didn't go well.

David Gardner: Well, it's such a good point, Mahan, about we are all emotional creatures. That's really what distinguishes us from the coming robots, although probably they will show emotion in time, too, if Kevin Kelly is to be believed. But it is such a fundamental human experience to feel things and to have questions or worries or excitement, and joy and yeah, picking the wrong tune or leaning too hard into the data is such an instructive lesson for everybody listening. We have a lot of business people listening, and I'm sure I see some head nodding across the country in the world as you make it plain to us once again that you need to know your audience and what they're hoping to hear. Well, thank you for that, Mahan. I'm rounding us out for the Educate stories, so here comes mine. This is about a stock that I bought as a young man. This is an educational story. It's a stock story. The name of the company was International Colin Energy. Bill Mahan, have you guys ever heard of International Colin Energy?

Bill Burke: No, sir.

David Gardner: That's part of the point. But anyway, this is back in a pre-Internet mode when investment research took the form of calling up an 800 number, or sometimes you'd have to pay a collect call or toll just to get the annual report from the Investor Relations office. It was that era, pre-Internet. I was fascinated by small-cap companies. I was thinking, I, as an investor, I'm going to look for stocks that most people haven't heard of. Then Wall Street will start to discover them, and then there will be analysts assigned by Wall Street, and all of a sudden those strong buy ratings will propel that small cap into a mid-cap. Back then, I was thinking, probably two years later or so, I'll sell. Very different from how I invest today and what I've learned of the succeeding 30-plus years.

This story was part of my education because I took a fancy to International Colin Energy. This is a Canadian oil field kind of company. I actually wouldn't really know what an oil field looked like if I just walked over one, so I had very little knowledge or business looking into oil fields, especially at the small-cap foreign country kind of a level. I'd call up the company. I got their annual report. I read through it. Before each quarter, I would give a call to the company. I'd just say, hey, investor relations? Yeah, could I talk to? And at once I got to talk to the chief financial officer. I just went through a litany of questions, things like I don't know, have we struck it rich? Do we hit oil this quarter? I didn't really have the right questions to ask. Then I'd call back again the next quarter, talk to the chief financial officer, just, you know, here maybe some of are we more efficient with our operations? Is there some new technology that's made. Then I'd call again another quarter, taught to the chief financial officer. Guys, that leads me to my key educational lesson. That if you can get the chief financial officer of any company on the phone on a regular basis for any company you've ever invested in, sell that stock. That's it.

Mahan Tavakoli: What? What's the second word?

David Gardner: Colin. C-O-L-I-N. In fact, in conjunction with this week's podcast bill, I decided to Google it. Of course, it no longer exists, and that's part of the reason you probably shouldn't have owned that stock. It has taken on some other name like Morgan Hydrocarbons or something. It remains a tiny, I think, layer.

Bill Burke: How [inaudible] passed away.

David Gardner: The thing is, I don't think that was in the annual report, Bill. I couldn't figure out where the name is. These days we can just look at the About Us section on the web.

Bill Burke: Right, well, so it's funny, David. That's a great story, and I actually thought you might have been going in a different direction because I'm curious to know, so you concluded that being able to reach and have the CFO respond to you is a negative. I wonder, though, if back in the day, that personal interaction, the personality, the sense. Now back to Mahan. You can learn all this data online and all these facts and really polished annual reports that might be phony. Was there some benefit, though, to Jesus, the CFO seems like a good guy, he worked hard, and he returned my call?

David Gardner: I do want to say I don't remember who it was. I do remember it was a man, not a woman, so it was a guy, and I do remember the guy was polite, perfectly good. He was entertaining the questions of a 19-year-old who didn't know anything about oil, but liked the numbers. I was such a “investing as a math problem to solve” person, so I like the numbers, and I started to learn more from that story that probably I shouldn't invest in, like, oil.

Bill Burke: Got it.

David Gardner: That's not a great thing for me.

Bill Burke: So know what you're buying. Then I know, David, that part of your thesis, too, is about great leadership and the human beings behind it, too. The point I was making before, and Jess still applies to you the way you evaluate companies.

David Gardner: Certainly, I think that, in fact, one of my favorite things to look for is the quality and character of the person leading the business, because that's not found anywhere in the financial statements, and so everybody's missing that, and they're never factoring it in when they're thinking about whether a stock is over- or undervalued. Therefore, every company with bad CEOs look undervalued because the market's smarter than just looking at the financial statements. It thinks about who's leading it. Many of the best companies of our time always look overvalued, so thank you for that, Bill. Great story. Lived there, been there, done that. We are closing up the educate portion. Dear listener, we hope that you feel slightly better educated than about 15 minutes ago. If not, well, that was the educated portion. We're going on to amuse now.

Faith: Give it our net shot, Dave. No more education happening here. I've already had a lot of fun being amused by your stories, so let's keep the amusement going for the middle section of this week's podcast, our amuse stories. By lot, I have randomized myself first. So we get to hear from me twice in a row. Amuse story number one. I was remembering this, and it was making me smile last week as I was near Old Town Alexandria here in Virginia.

David Gardner: One of those early days of The Fool moments when I was put on the spot to deliver a speech, it was brief, and I'll explain the circumstance in a second, and it just didn't work out great. Here's how it went. In Old Town Alexandria, we had kids. A lot of our friends had kids. You discover, by the way, young parents, that some of your best friends sometimes end up being the random parents in the random particular grade that your kids are in, and then all of a sudden you're going to their weddings years later and become dear friends. That was sort of the feeling that we had around Old Town Alexandria, very social. There was a party given in celebration of the high school kids who were graduating that particular spring. One of ours was there, so we were there, and I'm going to say maybe about the equivalent of 40 kids with their parents. We got about 100 people in the room, and I've been asked ahead of time to say. I thought, I'm not going to talk too much about investing here. People don't really want that in this crowd, this particular.

But I was like, what am I going to do? I didn't really have a good plan until I seized upon a brilliant move, because I realized one of the co-hosts of this event was the Johnson family, good friends of ours in Old Town Alexandria. I realized what would be some good advice I could give the Johnson family and all the others that would be financial? That would probably be about money without being an investing lesson. I realized that the Johnsons, the couple, it was Mary and Rich. If you're already with me and I see you're with me, Bill Burke, I'm like, I think I got my stick. I basically got up at the end of this meal, and in front of all of these people, I said, obviously, I could talk about the stock market. I don't have my jester cap tonight. I'm not going to do that to you, but I do have important advice for the high school grads. This is financial in nature. I'm just going to ask, please, this can be two words of advice. I would just like the Johnsons, and they're reacting in a way that shows their surprise because I didn't plan this at all with them. I would just simply like the Johnsons to just stand up. You first, ma'am, if you would each give your first name in order. This is my advice to the room. She stands up, and she goes, Mary looking around, and he stands up, and he goes, Richard.

Bill Burke: You're killing me.

David Gardner: Unfortunately, my Mary, Rich genius stick fell flat, as I needed to then explain to Rich that Richard that he needed to say “Rich” and that that's what I was going for.

Mahan Tavakoli: David, maybe what happened was actually better for you because I wonder what would have happened if Mary and Rich had come out and the joke had worked out the way you would have wanted it to. Did they know what was gonna happen?

David Gardner: They didn't, but Mahan, I feel very confident that that was gonna be a winning joke if he had just said “Rich.”

Mahan Tavakoli: What a play.

David Gardner: I mean, this is a good-natured spring graduation for the kids and Mary Rich, and instead, my advice to the room was Mary Richard. I continue to learn a thing or two every time I get up in front of people and try to say something. Half the time, guys, winging it, which is what we're doing on this week's podcast. Let's move on to amuse story number 2. Bill?

Bill Burke: You mentioned Ted Turner before. I had my formative career experiences at Turner Broadcasting and was thrust into the presidency of TBS at a way too young age, didn't really know what I was doing, but seemed to connect with Ted Turner. This is going on more than almost 30 years ago, so late ‘90s, cable has got great tailwinds. There's no such thing as streaming. We've got subscription fees, and we're trying new stuff all the time, and Ted is a renegade and the most optimistic entrepreneur you could even imagine. Running TBS, we mentioned before, we carried the Braves games, and you often had to slot in an amount of time for a baseball game. We'd slot in 3 hours, and then, Greg Maddox would pitch a shutout in 90 minutes, and we'd have to fill all the time, so we'd drop in Andy Griffith or the Three Stooges.

Somehow it came to us this pitch to do these shorts using chimpanzees. They were called monkeyed movies, and they dress up these chimpanzees, and they would spoof and parody contemporary movies. We had Titanic, and we had one as good as it gets with Jack Nicholson, and they were really funny. We started getting a lot of mail, and for whatever reason, Ted loved him, too. We thought we got to do more with this, so we decided we were going to do a full-blown 30-minute weekly sitcom using these chimps. We had this whole thing, and it was called the chimp channel. It was basically going to be a TV channel manned by making fun of ourselves, and we had this Larry King character, his name was Murray Prince, and this whole thing. It was wild trying to put it together, and every time I saw Ted, he'd be like, how are we coming on the Chimp show? Where's monkey? I love monkeys, and I say, Ted, we're a little delayed. I see him a week later. Where's the monkey thing coming? He's obsessed with it, and human actors can be hard to work with in Divas, the chimps were the same way. It took forever. We finally got it done, and Ted was great about it.

He wanted to see every bit of original programming before we went on the air. He really cared about it, and so we got that done, and at the same time, we'd also finished a TV movie that was just schlocky and horrible. His “Jaws” with snakes basically, and we called it “Silent Predators.” Even though they were rattlesnakes and made a lot of noise. We call it “Silent Predators.” Anyway, so that happened to be done at the same time. We put it in a FedEx thing, sent it out to Ted's ranch in Montana. Now I'm an expectant father walking down the hall, waiting for him to call. Two days later, the secretary says, Ted's on the phone. I get on the phone, my heart's jumping out on my chest. Hey, Pal, how's it going? Listen, I saw that monkey. It's really funny, I love it. The kids love it, they watch it, they love it. I was like, thanks, Ted. He says, you're doing a great job, that's great. I'm about to walk down the hall and high five, and I'm just hanging up. He goes, that snake movies the worst piece of crap I've ever seen. But anyway, you're doing a great job now. It made me laugh, and then there's a little bit of the educated in this, too. I realized one of the great things, one of the many things I admired about Ted, is you always knew exactly what he was thinking. There are a lot of bosses out there who say, Great job, love you, babe, and then you walk out, and they roll their eyes, and they tell the buddy this guy doesn't know what he's doing. I told my staff. I said, Ted loves the Chimp show. He thinks a snake thing’s awful. We didn't make it to be great. It's going to do great ratings. He said, it'll probably do good ratings, and it did, and you just knew where you stood. It's amused story that hopefully even educates a little bit.

David Gardner: That is fantastic, Bill. Thank you for sharing that. Obviously, Ted Turner is such an iconic figure, continues to be just such a force of nature, and I know he's the greatest optimist you've ever been around and exemplifies so much of what you're about. I love the enthusiasm, I love the point that you just made, that you know what he thinks. That is such good leadership and something that I'm going to take away and remember. In the meantime, Bill, I did just check the Internet Movie Database for the ratings of Silent Predators. Do you know how it scores on IMDb.com?

Bill Burke: Those are the ratings I didn't care about. A lot of people watch, I know that.

David Gardner: Well, I'm here to tell you out of ten, it's a 4.3. You had John Carpenter write some of the story here, apparently. This is a 1999 release, 1,300 people have rated this movie on IMDb.

Bill Burke: Enthusiasm.

David Gardner: Love it. The director, Bill, Noel Nosseck, were you responsible for?

Bill Burke: I had people who did that for me.

Mahan Tavakoli: I made a 10, that was a full-time job.

David Gardner: If only we could all delegate our disasters away. No, that's a great story. Thank you, Bill Burke, for sharing. Mahan, you're up. You're closing out our amused section. What do you got?

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes, I was as big an optimist as you would hope. My tag was, I know I can, and I was standing in front of the Dale Carnegie training room, one of the first classes I was ever teaching, really enthusiastic. Jake Paul Green, who is the trainer quality assessment person, whose tag, by the way, was, yes I can. All the old Carnegie people were really positive, pulled up to our Silver Spring classroom. He walked in, and as I was teaching, my focus went right to Jake. You should focus on the class members, but my focus was right on Jake, because I knew he was going to assess how well I was training. This was my first solo class as a young trainer, and I looked back, and Jake obviously was not liking what I was doing. At first, he looked grumpy, and then he kept looking worse, and the entire time, I was saying a few things to the class members, looking at Jake, saying a few things, looking at Jake. My mind was occupied only with, so how is he going to rate me? What is he going to say? Are they going to ever let me in front of a classroom again?

I decided to take a break. I was like, I can't take this. We had scheduled breaks, but I said, no. I told the class members to take a break and set them up so they could have conversations with each other, because I said, I have to walk up to Jake and ask him, What the heck is going on? What am I doing wrong, Jake? Took a break, walked over to Jake, and said, Jake, what's up? He said, what do you mean? What's up? He said, what am I doing wrong? Said, you aren't doing anything wrong. Everything's fine, why? I said, but your face, your contortions, you're looking so unhappy back here. He said, oh, my God, I am so sorry, I forgot my glasses. I can't see the front of the classroom. I'm squinting to see what's going on. It sounds like it's going really well. I just don't have my glasses. Now, that was a real relief for me, but you know what, part of what I think about is we so often assume we know how other people feel, and we believe it's all about us. Not only as a young trainer, all through the years, I've had different experiences similar to this. I'm sure many of the listeners have, as well, where we assume the person who is cranky, the person who said something, or drove a certain way, it's about us. I had created this whole story in my head, no data, we all do it. The stress wasn't real, the story in my mind was, and the lesson I learned in this is, you know what, a lot of times how people are reacting is about them. It has nothing to do with us.

Bill Burke: Amazing. One of the things I've learned, Mahan, in studying optimism, too, if you're not sure, we often default to the negative. You just assume, and next time, maybe silence your cellphones and make sure you're wearing your eyeglasses if you have been prescribed. But one thing, Mahan, that connects both of your stories that I'm really interested in, because I do a fair amount of public speaking, you really connect with your audience. A lot of people, when they give a talk, they'll fake the eye contact. They'll look up because they were told to their eyes start around, but it seems like you really have a two-way relationship with your audience when you give a talk, which I think is really powerful, and it's not an easy thing to do.

Mahan Tavakoli: No, I really appreciate that, Bill. One of the things that I learned in Dale Carnegie is that people don't care as much about the words you use, the sentence structure, all of those things we pay so much attention to, if we are willing for a moment to be present with them, whether it's one-on-one or in front of the room. I found that over the years, it actually reduced my nervousness, as well. The beautiful human being sitting in front of me, if I talk to one person at a time and pay attention to them, they appreciate it, and I feel more comfortable, as well. I think it's a good thing for all of us to keep in mind, especially, you mentioned cell phones, and David was kind enough to talk about whether it's AI or technology. I think we are allowing technology to take away from that human connection that is so important for us. If we do that, whether when we are presenting or we are one-on-one, the gift of undivided attention, that by itself is tremendously powerful.

Bill Burke: Absolutely.

David Gardner: That's a mic-dropping moment. This podcast will continue, and everything is not blowing up behind Mahan in slow motion, but that is such a good point, Mahan. I was just thinking about a funny clip. Maybe you guys saw this on the Internet. Somebody had been using AI, no doubt, generating video, had tweaked friends, and put up a trailer for the famous show “Friends” if it was in 2026. It's, again, photorealistic, very well done.

Bill Burke: Very powerful. All the iconic characters, and they're all sitting there basically together, except instead of talking and interacting, they're just looking at their phones. It's a trailer of what friends would look like in 2026. I will say, guilty as charged up to a certain point. I'm sure a lot of us feel that we're probably not fully cognizant of how often we're looking down at our phones, or find ourselves occupied by technology. Any nudge in this day and age from any smart, good friend to say, hey, be present with the people in the room around the table. It's funny, Bill, you mentioned. I was also thinking about how both of Mahan's stories were him standing in front of a classroom or boardroom of people who looked upset by what he was.

Mahan Tavakoli: You've got to make your audience better. Either that or I'd better do a better job.

David Gardner: I mean, I'm already wondering what your third story is, Mahan, but I will say that a second-and-a-half story is just me reacting because when did I first meet Mahan? The answer is, I was in a room. He was the chair of Leadership Greater Washington, and he was speaking as the chair to the new class, all of us in 2018 or ‘19, and he was so dynamic, so much fun to listen to, getting everybody fired up. What was your license plate again, Mahan?

Mahan Tavakoli: I know I can.

David Gardner: That is incredible.

Mahan Tavakoli: Do with NO, but I know I can.

David Gardner: Excellent. Well, I found our middle section most enjoyable. Thank you, Bill, and thank you, Mahan, for sharing some amused stories.

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David Gardner: Let's close it out with our final section, our Enrich Stories and Mahan. You get to go first.

Mahan Tavakoli: This is not going to be about speaking. Sorry to disappoint you.

Bill Burke: I'm going to squint now.

Mahan Tavakoli: I know Bill already doesn't like it. I'm paying attention only to Bill. It feels like it was yesterday. I was driving to a Dallas airport, heading to Dubai and then India. I was going to be giving talks on leadership and culture, and the key message that my talk was about was leadership is an example. The fact that what companies say about their culture, what leaders say is important to them are somewhat meaningless. You walk in an organization, see what they prioritize, what they measure, what the leaders are doing, that's what matters most. Those were the talks that I was planning on doing, and as I was driving, I was thinking about that and also reflecting on a comment that a family friend made, that my daughter, one of them, was 6, one of them was 3. The 6-year-old had been crying to her 6-year-old friend, the daughter of this family friend, saying that I miss my daddy when he's away. For anyone who has traveled, they would know that traveling can be glamorous the first time, but the second time, it's not so glamorous.

Traveling to Dubai and then India, it feels like you're up in the air forever. You sleep, you eat, you read, and you still have time to think. I was thinking about the fact that I am standing up in front of CEOs and saying, look at your calendars, where are you spending your time? That shows your priorities, not what you talk about. Where are you investing your resources? That shows your culture and your priorities, but if I had looked in the mirror, someone had looked at my calendar, they would have realized that, yes, I say my family is my number one priority. That is not how I was living my life, and that, for me, was a big revelation and a moment where it wasn't a clean break. I loved what I was doing, much of the travel, but I had to align better with what my priorities truly were, for me and for all of us, it doesn't matter what we say our values are. What matters most is how we consistently show up and what we consistently choose. That's why that moment for me, became a big defining moment at a shift in my life.

David Gardner: That is a most enriching story and insight, Mahan. You are a CEO advisor. You are an executive coach. How do you work with people to get them to reapportion their time or their priorities? Do you have a framework? Do you have an exercise? Is there anything really shorthand that you can give a little tool that anybody who just heard you say, oh, wow, I see something of myself in that, where they could take a first new step in a new direction?

Mahan Tavakoli: I think the most important thing I've seen, David, and I was privileged to work for a CEO at Dale Carnegie, who was magnificent at this, is surrounding ourselves with a few people who are willing to consistently challenge us and get us to reduce our blind spot. I'm a big believer that we all have blind spots. Anyone who says I don't have blind spots or I know what my blind spots are, their blind spots are huge. However, what ends up happening is as we gain more experience, as we have more success in life, as we live longer, we become convinced of the way we are doing things, and the people around us are less willing to challenge our thinking and we become more likely to dismiss it. The one recommendation I have is, even if you think the people around you are being candid with you, find better ways to ask questions. I know you love asking beautiful questions, David. I know you have also had Warren Berger on your show the power of beautiful questions. Ask different questions to make sure people challenge your thinking to reduce those blind spots. I think surrounding yourself with people like that will become a real way of continually growing as opposed to a one time one shot opportunity.

Bill Burke: I love the story, Mahan. I love what you just said about asking better questions, and it's odd because you know so much more about this than I do, but as someone who's getting into AI slowly by slowly, the asking better questions is a huge thing there, too, because if you say to AI, you give them a paragraph, how does this sound? Is that good? That's great as opposed to tell me three things that could be better about this, or what have I missed here? Maybe AI could be good practice to do it with human beings because I don't want everyone just to be hanging out with bots on AI, but it is a lot of it is about what you get out is only as good as the question you ask. I think that happens in humans, as well.

Mahan Tavakoli: A brilliant and powerful point, Bill. All of these AIs are focused on validating us.

Bill Burke: Unbelievable.

Mahan Tavakoli: Telling us how brilliant we are the thought, oh, my God, it's so brilliant. Partly because we want that. We have trained it to respond that way to us, as well. The reality we need to keep in mind is we have also trained the people around us to respond that way to us. So asking the questions differently, just as you said, whether it's with AI or with the people we love and care about the most, solicits very different responses and therefore gives us at least a chance to reduce those blind spots a little bit.

David Gardner: Another mic drop moment. Thank you so much, Mahan. That was great. I'm going to go next with my enrich story. I don't think it's going to be as valuable, so I'm going to be quick. But here it is. This is how I got my first job. I'm in my early 20s. I'm now married. I got married without a job. A neat trick, if you can pull it. You can imagine the rehearsal dinner jokes being made at my expense, which I can never take back because I'm still in the same marriage.

Mahan Tavakoli: There's a Mary Rich joke there, probably.

David Gardner: My wife suggests that maybe this is, of course, years ago. We're talking about reading the wanted ads and the classified ads for jobs in your local newspaper for us, the Washington Post. There Margaret is going, David, I actually see something that might be of interest to you. It's a financial newsletter. Louis Rukeyser, you know who that is? I said, sure, the host of Wall Street Week on PBS, the longest-running show on PBS. She's like, yeah, it looks like it's like six blocks away right here in Alexandria. I thought, okay. Great, maybe I will apply for that. That sounds good. I filled out my application, and I sent it in. Of course, I mailed it in. This is another era. In conjunction with it being another era, I took another era waiting game approach. I basically was expecting that they would call me or maybe write me back snail mail and let me know that, no, you don't have the job or we'd like to interview you. I sat there Day 1, 10, 20, Day 29. I was like, Margaret, they haven't gotten back to me. I applied for the job. She's like, well, here's the thing. They're just six blocks away. Why don't you walk over there? I thought, I'm glad I married her.

I walked six blocks, guys. I got to the front door of the newsletter company that was running Rukeyser's newsletter. A young woman answered, and she said, Hi. What? I said, well, I'm David Gardner, and I applied for the job of financial researcher and writer for the Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Newsletter. I'm just wondering whether you saw it or whether I have a shot. She's like, David Gardner. You know what? Why don't you come back? She led me down a corridor, and there was a desk at the end of the corridor, and there were two stacks of paper on the desk. One of them was about 24 inches high, and she pointed that and said, now, here's the pile of papers of all of the people who did not qualify for this job. Then she pointed to a second stack of papers that was only about six inches high. She said, and here's the stack of papers of the people who did have the three to five years of journalistic experience and the backgrounds that we were looking for. David Gardner, your piece of paper is in the larger stack here. I said, well, first of all, guilty as charged, I guess. I'm sorry. I do like the idea of the job, and I love the market. She said, well, here's the thing. Since you took the time to come down here today, I'm going to give you the test that I gave this group of people the shorter stack of papers. She handed me a Dean Witter, still remember, Dean Witter brand not much out there anymore. Dean Witter pamphlet on convertible bonds. She said, You have 45 minutes. Please make this intelligible to a general audience. I don't exactly remember, guys, what I wrote. I do remember I did not finish it, and time was up.

Two days later, I got a call hiring me to write for the Louis Rukeyser Wall Street Newsletter. That's basically the story. There's an asterisk, maybe I'll tell the story some other time because within six months, I would quit that job, the only job that I ever had that I had locked my way and efforted my way into. I would actually quit that job, and had I not done so, I'm not sure The Motley Fool would exist today, so I'm very glad that I did. But this is a shout-out to the younger people, the go-getters out there. Obviously, we're no longer in a world of snail mail. We're in a world of LinkedIn. We're in a world of drop a note on somebody's site or send an email. It makes it easier to fire off your resume, if you like, to more employers than you could have afforded postage stamps back in the day. But I think the key, obviously, is it wasn't my own initiative. It was the prompting of my better half. Saying, what if you actually showed up? What if you actually went right down there? I'm so glad that I did, even though I didn't end up sustaining it, and that is my enriching story.

Bill Burke: I love that story in part because I used to watch Louis Rukeyser. My brother called him Lou Ru. The guy was amazing. He was an icon. I love that story because I also have talked to young people. My children included, I think it was Woody Allen said 50% of life is just showing up. That follow-up, and today, that tall stack, like you said, it's a LinkedIn job listing, and more often than not, there's not even a response. A lot of times people say young and old, I want to follow up, but I don't want to be a pain. It just always works. Another thing I'd say about your story that I like, David, is that rarely when you talk to someone in your position, so tell me how you got into that. It's like, well, I reached out to human resources, and they met me. It's always like I met this person, and then I followed up at that, and there was a meeting I didn't want to go to cause I had a headache, but I went. I think there is so much value in what you said, and thank goodness you did that, or we wouldn't all be here today.

David Gardner: Well, thank you.

Bill Burke: You mentioned snail mail, David. If anything, now I think it's even more important. Many of the clients that I talk to are overwhelmed because people are using AI to apply to hundreds of jobs, if not thousands of jobs, and they are overwhelmed to the point where they are not even looking at many of the people who are applying. The ATSs can't keep up with all the resumes that are formatted perfectly through ChatGPT or Claude to fit the ATSs requirements. Therefore, that outreach, that extra effort, that human connection becomes even more important. I think the advice is more relevant now. The other thing I love about it is you're fortunate to have Margaret as a life partner. One of the things we all need is someone in our corner. It can be a partner, it can be a friend, who can nudge us to do what we know is the right thing to do, but sometimes we need that extra nudge, someone to hold us accountable. I think you had that in your new bride, who was like, David, read this, act on it, move on. We can all find people like that, humans like that that can support us, as well as keeping in mind. AI is flooding the zone for everyone. If we want to separate ourselves, we better reach out and make an intentional human connection. Not an AI-written email that I'm sure both of you, as I do, get tons of human-to-human connection.

Mahan Tavakoli: Yeah, I want to underscore the snail mail point because I completely agree. It stands out, believe it or not, the mail will get to that person. When young people say, well, I like that company, who should I write to? I always say, if you can get the address of the CEO, send it to the top person. Worst thing they can do is throw it in recycling, and you're right where you were before. Best thing they can do is call you up, which probably won't happen. But what will likely happen is they'll send it to somebody else. That somebody else is now getting your letter from the CEO, and they're going to pay attention to it. I've seen it work and I recommend that to people all the time, and that's my story.

David Gardner: Thank you. That was great. It does remind me of the benefits of just calling up the chief financial officer or something talking to the business. Our final story of Three Fools, Bill Burke and Richard.

Bill Burke: These stories keep going younger and younger for all of us, I think. This before marriage, before high school graduation. I was a kid. You mentioned my bio. I'm a Detroit Lions fan. I was actually born in Detroit. My dad ran the radio station that carried all the sports teams, WJR for anyone in Detroit, listening. But we moved to New York when I was 3. I don't even remember living in Detroit, but for whatever reason, my dad was a fan. I just kept rooting for all the teams. It extended to the University of Michigan. I'm a 9-year-old kid growing up in suburban New York, and I'm this bizarrely rabid Michigan fan. Back then, they were on TV like twice a year, the Ohio State game, and if they were lucky enough to win, they'd be in the Rose Bowl or whatever. I was manic about it. I had clippings and banners, and I put them in the room, and I wanted to watch by myself. I literally thought, I didn't watch and put the banner right there, they're going to lose? It was bizarre. It was bizarre at 9. It got weirder and weirder when I was 14, 15, 16. Finally, I'm like 16 or 17, and I'm still doing it, and they miss a field goal or something to break my heart. I'm literally I'm taking the stuff down like this sad sack, and I walk up the stairs, and I have to walk by my parents' bedroom, and my dad hears me, and he watch the game on his TV. He says, son, come in here for a second. I'm prepared for the son, you have a driver's license now. It's time to move on from this Michigan thing.

Now I'll never forget it. He looked at me, said, you know what? It's really great to care about something so much. I'll never forget it. I doubled down on my phantom. But what I've learned that has enriched my life, whatever it is, a sports team, your alma mater, a hobby, for David, board games and Tar Heels, you know, whatever it is, be there in the good times and the bad. The Detroit Lions have never appeared in the Super Bowl, but damn it, one of these years they're going to, and I'm hanging with them and having that thing that you care about, like truly care about can really enrich your life. It was one of those fork-in-the-road moments where my dad could have said, get over, get on with your life. He said the exact opposite of what I expected. It has enriched my life to have that as an outlet.

David Gardner: That is beautiful, Bill. But if you're still holding out for Detroit Lions to make it to the Super Bowl, I see where the optimism comes in. Now, we have to question some part of that optimism. But we'll leave that aside. I love the point that you made, though. That's part of what makes you special. You love for Detroit Lions or Michigan. David's love for board games, it's the humanity, it's the differences, it's the passion, rather than the averages. The other thing, I mean, we've been talking a lot about AI. AI is powerful, it's brilliant. It's going to do a lot of great things. But there are a lot of averages. The responses and GPT. They're all averages. Humans are not averages. Humans are bumpy, are unique. What makes you unique and beautiful? I love that now I know, I don't know if you're going to ever reach your hope of seeing Detroit Lions win, but if they ever do, I will think about you, Bill. Because that's unique to you that, along with a bunch of other things. It's just a powerful way of us doubling up on our humanity and your dad doubled up on that rather than telling you to move on, be one of the averages, one of the same, one of the other people.

Bill Burke: Thank you.

David Gardner: There we have it. Is the hour up? It felt like 5 minutes. That was so much fun. Maybe not even quite an hour. I never really know. Bart Shannon, my talented producer, actually determines the length of each of these podcasts. But what did we hear? We heard stories right off the top, Bill reminding us that optimism is better, better for you, too. Mahan had me singing Menomina as he misconnected with the boardroom. There I was dialing up the chief financial officer to discuss operations of a company no one's ever heard of. I think that makes its own point. Our amused section, I'll just say it one more time. Mary, not Richard, Mary Rich. Then Bill comes in with an image I'm still trying to like the chimp channel. I'm still trying to picture that, but also with the silent predator snakes and Ted's reaction, that telling reaction. Then Mahan in front of another group this time at classroom with a squinting overseer, and that he learned, it's not about you and me. It's actually about them a lot of the time. You'd be surprised. Finally, we closed it out with our enriched stories. Mahan, there he was traveling. I miss my daddy when he's away, and that was a turning point for him. My turning point was just showing up for my first job that as it turns out, I didn't even keep. Then, Bill, love that you care so much about something, son, in this case, the Detroit Lions, and Bill, I also when the Lions win, and I know it's not if, it is a win. I, and I bet a lot of other listeners, some of whom are Lions fans, too, will definitely think of you. Bill, you're my only Lions fan. When they win this year, I'm gonna be calling you up.

Bill Burke: I'll wait. You have my number.

David Gardner: How about maybe just a quick final thought from each of you. Mahan, you?

Mahan Tavakoli: What I'm thinking is the fact that when I reflect on some of these stories and some of the ones I shared is I'm a big advocate for confident humility in that we don't see clearly whether it is others, sometimes situations, and sometimes ourselves. Asking questions to try to challenge ourselves becomes a powerful way for us to both build better connections to others, but also be able to understand ourselves and our wants, desires, and needs better.

David Gardner: You get an Amen from me. Well said, Mahan. Bill.

Bill Burke: Fantastic. I kicked it off talking about lifelong learning and how we can always learn more from each other. I learned so much from the two of you today, so that reinforced that notion. One more in educate amuse rich. This may have something to do with The Fool's staying power and the success of the company, because I found in preparing for this episode and now hearing these stories, most of them do at least two, if not all three of these things. I think the very best lessons and stories in our life, if we really think about it, they can educate. There's something we can learn from it. We can laugh at ourselves and laugh at things that we did. Because we do that, it enriches our lives. So I think these three things go together really well, and it just came to be in this process. Thank you.

David Gardner: Thank you, Bill Burke. Thank you, Mahan Tavakoli. Wow, what a journey we've just been on together. Nine stories that educated, amused, and enriched, in some cases, more than one of those things, delivered by two of the truly brilliant and engaging minds that I know. Bill, Mahan, thank you both for bringing your passion, your insights, and your storytelling magic to this second-ever edition of our Three Fools Episode. To everyone listening, I hope these stories sparked ideas, laughter, and inspiration for your own journey. Until next time, Fool on.

David Gardner has positions in FedEx. The Motley Fool recommends FedEx. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.