SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Case. This is a podcast where global leaders from Harvard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity to share the real lessons, principles, and mental models that go behind building enduring companies. Today's guest is someone who is guiding us towards building better companies. It's our professor from the OPM program, Professor Lauren Cohen. And he's not just a professor at the Howard Business School, he's a leading finance researcher, family office innovator, and most importantly, a champion world power lifter. Professor, it's uh an honor to have you here. Thank you so much for taking the time. Perfect. It's my pleasure, so it's what first pulled you into finance and academia? Could we start at the beginning? Finance and academia. Okay, gosh.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, I'm I'm happy to. And so this Scott will take us back to really, well, no, I'll take you back to the real beginning here. So I grew up in a farm town, small farm town. So we had lots of cows, lots of corn, but not so many people. And as part of that, when I was in fifth grade, fifth grade, there was a local newspaper that was holding a stock market competition. And it allowed anyone to enter. So of course it was mostly adults that entered, but I entered with one of my fifth grade classmates. And we ended up winning the competition. And so we won this competition. Look, it was a terrible investment strategy. Look, it was super concentrated. We we bet on one stock. We completely got lucky. No skill at all. Total luck. But it just got me interested in markets and thinking through markets. And that kind of weaved me through and took me to Wharton for my undergrad. So I did my undergraduate degree at Wharton. And while I was there, I was planning to go and do what every other Wharton undergrad did. So at the time, this was the turn of the 2000s. Every Wharton undergrad wanted to go be an investment banker. That was the life we dreamed of, right? Like we had this dream in our mind that was kind of imprinted with us within Wharton. And I can kind of summarize it with this. We, you know, when we between the junior and senior year, you have this, the junior internship. That was important because that would kind of lead to your future job. And so we mostly wanted to get these at investment banks. Clearly, we wanted to be investment makers. And they would come back, they would bring in the interns from last year to kind of pitch their investment bank. And so Morgan Stanley would come in, and the person from Morgan Stanley would come in and said, Yes, I did my investment make internship at Morgan Stanley. And at Morgan Stanley, we worked hundred-hour weeks. And we would go, ooh, 100-hour weeks. That sounds amazing. And then the Goldman person would come in and they said, 100-hour weeks? We worked 120 hour weeks. And they'd be like, oh my God, 120. That sounds even better than 100. So I have no idea what we were thinking, but we were so impressed by that lifestyle that we we could be lucky enough to be ground into dust and this investment making. And that if we were lucky enough, we would go be investment makers and then we'd work those 120 hour weeks for you know three years or four years to then go to HBS for our MBA and then come back and be MDs. And then in theory, our life would get uh, you know, a little bit smoother and a little bit less stressed, but of course that's not what happened. Then we'd just be working in the office on the weekends, just so our you know significant others and our families could go hang out on the Hamptons and the house that we bought. We didn't have time to go to because we were still working so hard. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm not sure this is the exact life I want. And that's when I started to think about academia and academic economics, really. I was an undergrad econ major too. And so I went to talk to my finance professor there. I said, look, I'm thinking of doing an undergraduate, sorry, a PhD in economics after undergrad uh because I'm really interested in the space and you know, I just want to explore opportunities after that. But I never thought I was gonna be a professor. And he said, you know what? There's this thing called the PhD in finance, which I'd never heard of. And he said, you know, it's a little bit harder to get into, but if you get into it, it opens up all these career opportunities afterwards. You can go be a professor, you can go to a hedge fund, you can go back to the bank and just have a different job in in research and modeling and all these cool things. And I thought that sounded great. So I said, you know what? I'm gonna try. I'm gonna go for a PhD in finance. So and when I went to the PhD in finance, I still didn't think I was gonna be a professor. I went through the entire PhD and I was convinced I was gonna go back to work for a hedge fund afterwards. And in fact, I interviewed with hedge funds, along with interviewing at HBS and Yale and all these other places. And it really, even when I came back, I came down, I had offers in both these places. And I was really considering both when I came out. And I went to this hedge fund, and I'll never forget the day I was there. It was awesome. It was kind of like academia, but just way nicer. It was like the offices were nicer, all the amenities were nicer. They had a private chef, like a three-star Michelin chef that would make food for them. And I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. Everyone was super smart, everyone was like very, very fun to talk to and intellectually engaged. And I was convinced I was gonna go there, except this. They said, Hey, look, I can't wait for you to meet the boss. You're gonna love the boss. Then I would go to the next meeting. Oh, I can't wait for you to meet the boss. You're gonna love the boss all day. So this boss was being built up in my head. I mean, really, I thought this person was gonna be like this absolute, like larger-than-life human that I would meet, you know, really like a Thanos that would have all the rings and it would be amazing. And I go to meet the boss, final meeting, and so hit. This person was the least impressive person of the whole day, barely string sentences together, couldn't even like talk to me about dynamics. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I hope this CEO somehow has like some incriminating pictures of someone else here. Or does that like I hope some or they're the cousin of someone? In any case, I left there and I never picked up the phone from them again because I just wanted to be somewhere that was a meritocracy. I wanted to be in an organization where it was clear why the person at the top was the person at the top. Compare that to the University of Chicago where I was doing my PhD and there was this professor there, Eugene Fama, and he was, you know, one of the real, like absolute pioneers within empirical asset pricing, ended up winning the Nobel Prize for his idea about market efficiency. And Professor Fama was the person that people coalesced around and everyone looked toward him, but he was that for a reason. He was in the office, he even bought a house very close to campus, was in the office on Sundays, you know, worked his butt off, and just provided so much insight. And you could see why he rose to the top. And I was like, gosh, I want to be somewhere where that's why you get to the top, where everyone points to your ideas and be like, yes, it's the ideas that get you to the top, and these other things don't matter. And so that really kind of spurred me into instead of going down that route, I went toward this academic route. And I took my first job at Yale. And then I came here to HBS when my wife got into grad school a few years later. And we'd just been married, and I thought, gosh, you know, I could, we could do the separated thing in distance where I would stay in New Haven, she would come to Boston. But HBS is a wonderful place too. And they kindly made me an offer. And so I decided to come up here and I've been here ever since. And now, look, I interact a lot with the private sector and with these hedge funds, and it's awesome. And I love doing it. And a lot of my co-authors have gone to work for them, and I'm great friends of them. And so thank goodness that has changed. So now when I look at many of these funds, they are wonderful meritocracies too, which is great. And which I have to say, I tell my students this now too, my MBA students all the way up to I PhDs, is that whenever you go to a place to interview, just try and make sure. If I weren't to tell you, if you were to do that like fourth grade question where you took like the one side and then linked it to what fit on the other side, like, oh yeah, horses go on a farm and then elephants go on the, you know, in the savannah, then you want to know, if I were just to give you all the employees that you might have with, you want to know why this person made it to the top. Like you'd want to say, yes, this person is wonderful with people, or they have this great skill, or this admirable quality, and that's why they were promoted. So you want that meritocratic piece to be a part of the organization you're with.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Amazing. What a what an incredible story. Professor, you spoke about the long hours. And while preparing for this podcast, I read somewhere about how you introduce yourself, how you'd like to be remembered, and parenthood comes in there. You are very focused on your attention towards the upbringing of your children and how much time you dedicate there. How do you feel life is shaped out for you today in not going after the hedge fund offer and rather choosing the life you're on in terms of work-life balance, your availability for your family, etc.?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So I think that's a great question. And here's the thing: I am self-aware enough and I'm humble enough to know that this is one life that I chose and I led. But it's not at all clear to me that I chose the right one. In theory, like other me, hedge fund me, might be even happier. And he might be doing awesome things. And like, I'm it's great that I have six kids. Maybe he has 12 kids. I don't know. Like maybe he's something taller than me and ham more handsome, but like I don't know. I can't say that this was definitely the right decision. And I've been approached, and I continue to get approached from hedge funds that give me offers to leave, and they are putting on more and more zeros. And maybe one of these days there'll be enough zeros where I'm like, okay, that's where I want to go. And so, in that sense, it's a fluid decision that I keep making. But look, I think one thing that has been nice, and you're totally right, this has allowed me flexibility around some of the timing. And it's allowed me to have that and to really define balance around things that I care about. And one of those things is family. And one of the biggest things that I love to do and that I implement in my life, and again, I don't know if this is right or wrong. And in fact, there isn't an objective right or wrong. And so my wife is a professor of education, early childhood development. She studies this. And it turns out that many paths lead to wrong when it comes to parenting and kid outcomes. And so there are lots of ways to raise kids, and they're all wonderful ways. And the way that I've decided to do it is that I include the kids in all the things I love. So the kids I bring them into the office with me at HBS on the weekends. And they get to come in, they get to run around Harvard, and they get to feel like their students here, and they bring in what they're working on, you know, their little workbooks, and it's fantastic. They get to see that this job that I have, which, you know, I'm happy to say this, although hopefully no one from the Harvard administration hears this. Look, I would do this for free. I love this. I get to talk to people like you, and I get to be a four-year-old every day. I get to learn. You clearly share that same level of learning that I do. And there's nothing better in the world than learning something new, right? When you get to take that jewel with you, you, oh, what a wonderful feeling. And so the fact that I get to do that and I share that with the kids is wonderful. I also share, like you mentioned before, weightlifting. So all of my kids are powerlifters. And I get to share that with them. They come in every morning. I work out at 4 a.m. I so I wake up at four and I work out at four. They're waiting outside the door at their workout time, which is 6:30. And so, like down to the littlest one, then they run into the gym and they get to do that too. And so it's, it's, I've really tried to make it a point to show them that I don't have to do these things. I get to do these things. And I want them to see how much I love that because hopefully they can model their lives around things that they love doing. And not only that they love doing, but you know, that the world also thinks is valuable on the work side, right? Like I'm I'm certainly rational in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Incredible. And yes, you do bring your family along with you, even in the stories when you're talking about cases with us. I remember Dollarama, the case you taught us, started with a story that you shared around how you and your six kids were looking to visit a dollar store at some point and how you kept them engaged. You also introduced them to power lifting. Yes. Could you talk a little more about, you know, why you feel it's important to have your children recognize the journey of a parent? And then maybe towards the end also touch on how you got in involved with powerlifting in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yes, yeah, I'm more than happy to. And I think, look, I'm gonna broaden your point because I think it's a really important one. I get this question quite a lot through my work on family offices. Gosh, when should we introduce our children to the family business or to the amount of wealth that our family has generated? We're worried that if we do it too early, then you know, kids might get this silver spoon syndrome or they might lose motivation, or there are all these downsides. And the truth of the matter is, there's just not that much evidence of that in the data. I think the earlier you can introduce your kids to these things, the better. Kids are pretty darn impressive and they will rise to the challenge on nearly everything if you introduce them to it in that way. And so I've always tried to do that with the kids, my kids, in terms of all the things that I do. I talk to them and I tell them and I try to involve them as much as I can. And I think that that has been one of the things that both helps them to understand when I do travel a lot, when I'm gone a lot, when I just stay in the office and do these things, they understand what I'm doing. It's not just some black hole that dad has gone. Oh, oh, we know what he's doing. He's visiting this country or he's, you know, visiting giving a talk here. And they kind of get that. They've come to see me give a talk. I look, I'm gonna take this one aside so hard to tell you. One of the most impactful memories that I have, and that uh the kids, I was so lucky to share with the kids, and I hope they remember is I was uh asked to be a full bright visiting fellow in Cambodia. And so just visiting one of the universities there and helping them to build up their management education. So it's a really interesting place and a fast growing place where they have all of this now manufacturing and other production that's going on, but they're still lagging behind in terms of management education. And so they want to build up that management education so that they can take part of the rents that are for that. Because of course, you get some of the rents for producing, but much bigger rents are there for managing. So if you can both manage and build, then that just opens up even more avenues for them. So I was there doing it, and I brought over Nicole with the top four. The two littlests were too young at the time, but they there and they got to see me give that Fulbright lecture. And so they were there in the audience. And we've done this other thing. We do this every weekend. We have Cohen Academies where we have all the kids learn something, and then they have to both learn something, say what they learn during the week, and then present it to all of us. And so, what that does is look, you know this well, you have this podcast. In this world, you don't get credit for the ideas you have, you get credit for the ideas you can express. So it doesn't matter whether you have the best ideas in the world, jewels of wisdom are rolling around your head. If you can't express those ideas, then you're sunk. That's it. And so the ability to stand up and express those ideas is such a big marker of success that I want them to build that very early. And so we have the kids down to my youngest, Oscar, and and he will just ask us, he'll be like, gosh, what was the biggest elephant ever to live? So we tell him, but then he has to stand up in front of everyone and say what the biggest elephant was, all the way to, you know, some of the older kids will explain the Monty Hall problem or the LA paradox, or they'll explain comparative advantage in economics, or you know, they'll explain something in chemistry that they're learning. But that is something that we I've tried to build with the kids. So they're very used to that. So going back to Cambodia, when there was a trade minister who was giving a talk along with my Fulbright lecture, and he asked a question. All four of my kids' hands went up to answer the question and he called on them. And they were the only ones in the room. I was so proud that all four little coins gave up and they gave answers. And who knows, like bananas maybe, but I loved that they had that confidence to raise their hand and give their answers to his question. And so that that was fantastic. And so that's one of the things that that has been a really kind of guiding force for how I've looked through this and involving the kids. So getting back to your question about lifting, I'll kind of take that side and then we'll and then we can jump back in. Here's how I got into lifting. So I played football when I was in high school and I was recruited to play in college, like nowhere great, but I was recruited to play college football. And the first time I went to Penn was talk there, their football coach about playing there. And so Penn, you know, Ivy League has football and they're, you know, play against each other, play some other teams. And so I talked to the coach and he was like, okay, Lauren, you know, I was captain of my high school football team, but we were a small town uh football team. So I said, okay, you know, we'll play you here at Penn, but you're gonna have to gain 40 pounds. And at that point, I was about the same size I am now, like think like 90-ish kilos. And so you're gonna have to then get up to like 110, and then we'll move you to middle linebacker or to fullback. And that's a lot to hold on my frame. And then I saw how much time football took. So I said, God, Professor Gowan's probably not going to the NFL. So I don't think it's worth my time gaining all this weight and take all that time. So I told the coach, okay, look, I'm gonna spend my first year and just get my bearings in terms of the academic side, and then I'll come and I'll play the second year. And he said, Okay, sounds great. In that time, that's when I fell in love with economics and finance, really. And I met the head strength coach of the football team, and he was a power lifter. So he was actually the person that turned me on to powerlifting. I started powerlifting then, and let me make a little bit of a pitch for powerlifting because what we found in the years since then that we didn't know is that really weight resistance training, it gives you these huge benefits that only weight resistance exercise gives. So you can think about things like running and other cardiovascular heavy exercise. They're fantastic, they're good for your heart, but they actually miss a lot of the benefits that weightlifting can give you in terms of muscle strength and keeping your muscle, especially as you age, in terms of joint strength, in terms of just the entire body health, along with brain health we're finding with BDNF, brain drive neurotropic factor, and all these other, you know, really positive spillovers you only get from weightlifting. And so I found it then, but it's been one of these great things that has helped me health-wise, and we've gone up through the generation. So it so I actually got my parents into powerlifting as well, and they've competed on powerlifting, and it's one of these things that's really helped them. My parents are now 80. My father has Parkinson's disease, and his doctor brings him out as like a poster child because he's staved off a lot of the symptoms, and I think it's partly because of this weightlifting that he's done.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

It's very, very inspiring. And I'm you have shared some of these experiences with the broader class as well. And I'm hoping, you know, folks, including myself, feel inspired to consider powerlifting.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Exactly. I like well, yeah. And I'll ask you, Sohan, did you get your workout in today? Not yet. Not yet. There we go. Not yet. I like the sound of that.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Uh hopefully my my response is different before unit two. There we go. I like the sound to that. Yeah. Um, at what point did you launch your your newest initiative, which is inside the family office? Yes, yeah. What surprised you the most about that initiative and the response that you got?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

That's a great question. And so that's actually quite new. And so that was we only just finished the first semester and really the first experiment in this course. And so this is a first of its kind MBA course where essentially I'll tell you why I started it. So I've now run family office programs here, and I've been doing that now, probably the last decade. And the reason I got involved with family offices is that we I've taught in some of these other exec ed programs here where we'd get, you know, think of more on the investment management side. So we have these programs, you know, they're tailored to sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, you know, we get VCs and hedge funds. But we started to get in a family and then a few more families. And I wanted to bring them best in class thinking in the family office space. And I went to go find it and so on. It doesn't exist. All that's out there is this like super conflicts of interesty stuff that's like, hey, here's every here's five things every family needs, and we have four of them here at Deutsche Bank. So you should come and use our private wealth management and these types of things. And I thought, gosh, you know, we can do something better at HBS. We can try to help families on all dimensions of what we teach, which you know quite well, right? Think like accounting, finance, operations, negotiation, strategy, you name it. All of these are things that families are struggling with. And so I started the program and I think just got lucky to kind of lean into this explosion in global family offices. And so as that program has been built out, I've had MBA students that have come to me that said, Hey, Professor Cohen, we're really interested in this. In fact, some of my students have spurned jobs at KKR and Blackstone to go work for family offices because the career prospects have been better, at least in the early term for sure. I mean, think of going to Blackstone and then having an MBA who graduated two years before you, that will always be your glass ceiling, right? That person will always be your boss from an accident of history that they just happen to graduate two years before you. Whereas a family office from day one, you can be running their PE portfolio. You can be running their VC, you can be helping with investment strategy. And so it's just such a great career opportunity and less involved on things like business development. If you don't want to do that, going out to raise money, because you have a private pool of capital you're working with. And so as students that said, hey, Professor Cohen, what is it like to have a career at a family office that we're interested in? And my honest answer to them was I don't know. Like none of us know, they're just too young. If they were to say investing, but what is a career investing? I'd say, oh, okay, sit down. Have you heard of this guy named Peter Lynch? Have you heard of Warren Buffett? I could go story on story and tell these wonderful careers, but I couldn't in family offices. So I decided to launch this course to give students a real-time feel for what it was like to work in family offices. And we have some of these field courses in in other dimensions that have been really successful. So we have them in think like PE, where our students will team up with a team from Blackstone or with KKR, and they'll have a semester long where they'll work with the team on a project and get a feel for what it's like to work in a PE firm. I would try to create the same thing in family offices. So we found a group of incredibly generous families who agreed to open up their family office and tried to create this win-win. Cause for them, it's great. They get a group of HBS MBAs, right? Really kind of high-level thinkers, to come in and solve like number seven or eight on their to-do list. And so every family office, every organization has that seven or eight that you never get to. So it was great for them. They got these HBS MBAs in, great for the students because they got to meet these families and build their network. And so we just ended the first semester and it was, it went better than I could have imagined. The students leaned in, the families loved it. And in fact, there was so positive and there was so much kind of fervor around it that I'm offering it again in the fall. So we're gonna have round two very soon when you're here on campus.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, incredible. And at at the OPM, I know there's a global group just on family businesses, you know, where participants at OPM who are part of a a business that they've either inherited or they're they're starting a family office, they're talking amongst themselves. So I'm sure there's a lot of interest. And one of the things that comes to me is you had also taught us or you had discussed the case on the Murdoch family with us. Yes, yeah, yeah. Very good memory. I love this one. Yeah, and there was an entire show on Netflix post that on the Murdochs. Yes. In your experience and everything that you've seen over the last decade or so, what separates successful family business transitions from unsuccessful ones? Could you list out a few pointos?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah, uh look, that's a great question. And I would say the answer is this that there is not a one size all fits recipe, right? And so first let's dispel with that, right? Because if I were to sit and say, hey, these are the three things that every family succession that successful has in common, it would be bananas, right? You should just stop the podcast now. And the reason and it comes from the fact that every family is different in terms of liability and objective that they have. Think of liability structure and objectives. By liabilities, I just mean what they hope to do with the money in the future, right? Whether that's pass it on to the next generation, whether that's create philanthropy, impact investing, set up future entrepreneurial ventures, all of those vary by family and not only by family, but within family across generations, right? And given that that's true, that's gonna mean that last generations or even yesterday's succession plan is not tomorrow's succession plan. Like you need to dynamically solve this problem within the family over time. And so given that, there are no hard and fast rules that will guarantee a succession, uh successful succession. But I can say this one of the biggest mistakes that I see made, I will tell you that. And it's that the following is not fully appreciated by families. And that is that value maximization of the family enterprise or family office is often not the same as maximizing family unity. And in fact, they often go in the opposite direction. So families like to think about, gosh, I want to maximize the value of this family enterprise, and I also want to maximize family unity, and I'll do something that'll maximize both. Oftentimes, unfortunately, they go in the opposite direction, which, and I'll give you an example. So when you split all shares equally, this is the most common inheritance and succession strategy used amongst many families, which is that, hey, if I have three kids, I'm gonna split things a third, a third, a third, a five, four, you know, a quarter to everybody. And that can maximize family unity and that everyone feels like they got the same amounts, right? You essentially equated amounts, but that can lead to awful governance and fighting and things like we saw in the Murdoch case, which can do the opposite in terms of family unity. Sometimes the thing that will maximize family unity will be something like saying, hey, it's only gonna be you, Sohan, that takes over. You have all the decision rights because that will keep our family enterprise going. And I understand your siblings are gonna be upset, they're gonna be pissed at me, they're gonna be pissed at you, and this is gonna drive some family wedges, but that's the way that we can ensure it goes on. Now, look, if you want to maximize family unity, totally fine thing to maximize, but understand you might be doing that at the cost of that legacy.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

End of the last. One of the other cases, just to touch on and not to give anything away, was Butler Lumber, which you mentioned is you know, a case which has been very well received for for years and years.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

One of the things we excuse me. One of the one of our takeaways from that case was that finance is about valuation, not just about valuation, it's also about evaluation. Yes, yeah, exactly. And so could you just share maybe a couple sentences on where that where that came from?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, look, I mean, Butler Lumber is there's a reason why we teach it and have taught it ever since it's been written. And it's been the really canonical case that we introduce finance with because it's this really powerful example of how you take these financial statements, which to most people haven't looked at them before, these like boring, incomprehensible lists and tables of numbers, and you breathe life into them and say, no, no, no, no. These are not, these are the vital statistics of a firm. And if we start to view them as that, we can get so much insight into these in much the same way that your doctor gets insight by looking at your vital statistics, by looking at your blood pressure and looking at your glucose level and looking at, you know, liver health function and things like this. And that is the a wonderful example of just how much you can learn by just twisting that and turning that a little bit, how you look at these things, to say, no, no, no, no. These financial statements allow us to evaluate our patient, which is the firm here. And not only that, but they even allow us to prescribe potential solutions. Okay, I can diagnose the problem here. He's not managing cash, he's not managing inventory policy. And here's what he can do to try and make it better. And so once we have that shift in view, then all of finance changes. Then it says, okay, no, each of these numbers is actually helpful from a bio statistics standpoint. And we can take this mosaic of numbers and know more and more about our patient. The more we know about our patient, the more we can figure out how to prescribe what's best for that patient in the future.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And how does that evaluation lens look when you look at the markets today? Does that feel very rational to you?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yes. I mean, I think it's incredibly actionable, right? I mean, I think you can look at many of these AI firms today and they are Butler Lumbers, right? In that you can see the kind of cash they're generating or not generating and then the growth levels that they want to sustain. And so that is one of the main problems of Butler Lumber is that he wants to continue this very high growth rate, 25% growth rate, but essentially can't without borrowing more and more. And maybe that's the right thing to do, or maybe it isn't. When we look at these data centers they want to build or all these other big projects, they can't do it alone. They need to go out into markets and raise money. And if you want to give them money in the same way you would want to give Butler Lumber money to continue growing, you have to believe that growth story of theirs and that they can continue to generate income, even if they have to keep borrowing from you, which you're totally rational to do if you think they can pay you back.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Going back to dollar amount, what do you think the future looks like for dollar stores and value retail today?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah. And so I think that dollar stores, I mean, in the medium term, I think dollar stores are have a place and will continue to have a place. And that's because they still provide this immediate, the ability to both immediately get goods and and to purchase something you'll need and to purchase them in a way that gives you a treasure hunting feel that's hard to replicate with online competitors right now. It's very hard to replicate that dopamine hit you get when you go into a dollar store and you're like, oh my gosh, this is only a dollar? What a steal. And so you come in and you grab that. And instead of getting one thing, you get 15 things, and yet you still come out feeling like a king because you bought all these things for that amount of money. And so I think that that will continue to be there. And look, as certainly in the in the short to medium term, it with any inflation, with any compression in terms of wages, then they become an even better value and they become a place I think that will attract more people when they are are hit on the wallet side and need places to go to pick these things up. And so I think that short to medium term looks good. I think you would have to have some real advances in technology that we're just not close to in order to replicate that.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Moving away from academia, professor, and this is in closing. Yes. Has there been any book you might have read which influenced the way you think or that still comes back to you? Yes. Yeah, I want to recommend one.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Okay. And it's called Everything Is Obvious, and then there's a little asterisk, once you know the answer. And it's by this economist named Duncan Watts, who was an economist at Cornell, then went to work for Yahoo and other places. And it's just this wonderful accounting of how much in life is circular thinking. And we don't give enough credit and we don't appreciate enough how much is circular. And he gives great examples in the book. And I'll give you one about the well, I'll give you two quick ones. One about the Mona Lisa. It turns out if you go to the Louvre, have you seen the Mona Lisa in person? I have not. Okay. So when you do go to the Louvre and you see the Mona Lisa, I don't think objectively you would say, yes, this is the best painting in the building. It's not like if we're aliens were to come down and look at every painting, they would be like, yes, this is the most singular best painting I've seen. It's a little small, it doesn't look great, it's a little dark, and yet it is widely known to be priceless, right? Like one of the most pieces of art that is most venerated around all of them. And it turns out that wasn't always the case. The history that made it that was it just like languished in uh some Italian nobleperson's like attic for a while. It wasn't even looked at. But then there was a feud around who would get it, and then there was some romantic issues and all these other things that was really like, you know, uh Netflix drama type feuds, and that raised it to like, oh gosh, no, I want the baney, no, you want the banning. And it was this weird series of accidents that elevated it to its now current priceless status. But it didn't have to be. There's nothing innate about the Mona Lisa that makes it so amazing. And yet we have now, after the fact, come up with all these reasons. Oh, it's her smile, oh, it's the way she can look at you. But there are lots of pictures that have those same attributes, even better ones, but we have convinced ourselves after the fact that that is true. And then the second great example uh that pops out in the book is about these movies that are sleeper hits over the summer. So after a movie is a sleeper hit in the summer, think like the hangover. But movie critics will say the hangover was such a hit because it was the exact kind of popcorn fair that people wanted to see over the summer. But they're essentially saying the hangover was such a hit because it was the movie that was most like the hangover of any other movie. They're just redescribing what it is and describing it in this circular way. And so when we start to think of things that way, then we can kind of see where that true value is created and where we're just kind of repeating what we see and making us think we're understanding where value is created.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Incredible professor. One last question. If you could go back to, you know, your your earlier years, maybe early 2000s, and you could talk to your younger version, what advice would you give him?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

The advice I would give him, and this is the advice I'm gonna give you, Sohan, and to all the listeners too, say yes. Say yes. Your bias should be to say yes. And awesome things happen when you say yes. There's some work that looks at the most important things in your life. Sohan, how you might have met your business partner or your partner, you know, your significant other, or all these amazing things that happen to you. And it turns out that all those, many of those things will seem serendipitous. Oh, I just happened to be in the library at this time and met my significant other, or my business partner was on the same flight and we happened to be moved seats, and then when we sat by this person and now we have a business together. And they seem random because they are, right? And and so faced with this, this fact that so many important things in your life happen because of randomness, you might say, This is fantastic, Professor Cohen. I can just sit on my couch and like eat Cheetos and like random, awesome stuff will happen. You know what I mean? That's how randomness works. But that ignores the fact that more random, awesome things happen to you when you put yourself in those situations. But you never know when that situation is gonna happen. And so saying yes more often puts you in those situations where the probability of that random, awesome next thing is gonna happen. And so I would say Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah, I think that advice would appeal to a lot of entrepreneurs as well who are eager to say yes to every opportunity. Yes. And jump into it without a lot of thought. So thank you very much, Professor. Appreciate uh the words of wisdom and the fact that you took some time uh on a busy Friday afternoon, also just before the long weekend. Very, very grateful to you.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Uh it's my absolute pleasure, Sohan. And I'm so glad you're doing this. Take care. We'll see you on campus soon.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Thank you. Bye. Bye bye.