yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

What Hermes Taught MeQT


2m read
·Nov 7, 2024

Hi, Kevin O'Leary, investor at large.

I've just come back from a shopping trip and learned a very important lesson. You know I love Hermès fantastic ties. What I hate about them is the price. So, I like to shop for volume, see if I can get a discount.

I went to the store in Geneva, and I tell you, I like to buy those radioactive bright ties; you know the ones that you need a battery just to keep them lit up because they look great on television. I'll tell you, I think these things are the best in the world. Look at this one, for example! How often can you get the purple tie? It's radioactive. Hmm, just love it; that's Hermès.

But wait, there's more. I like to shop for a lot when they get Hermès rainbow of colors, and this year's design, little HS, is just perfect. So, I go up to the counter and I say to the lady, "I bought five, how about a discount?" You know, I'm a bit of a Phoenician; it's sport to me. I don't mind spending two hours getting a five percent discount.

And she looks at me and she says, "Why you buy somebody ties if you can't afford them?" I thought she was insulting me. I said, "Well, no, no, I want you to step up and buy a lot of ties from you, even though they're outrageously expensive, but I'd like a twelve percent discount knowing that I’d settle for five."

So, she says to me, "But why don't you wait till next month's paycheck, and then you can buy another tie?" And I said, "No, no, no, no, a discount! I want a discount." I couldn't believe it—no discount! I was there for about 30 minutes; there was no way she was going to give me one.

Two important lessons here, I think, from an investment point of view: number one, brand. I wanted those Hermès ties; I ended up paying full price for them, and it killed me. I wept like a child on the way home, broken.

But secondly, think about the last couple of years—Thanks giving mortgages to people. If they had the same attitude and said, "Why are you buying a house you can't afford?" we wouldn't be in this mess we're in today. Sometimes there are things you can't own because you can't afford them, and that's okay.

Just a thought from your investor at large, Kevin O'Leary. Until next time.

More Articles

View All
Keep Redefining What You Do
We just finished talking about the importance of working hard and valuing your time. Next, there’s a few tweets on the topic of working for the long term. The first tweet is: “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until…
Reading more than one source on a topic | Reading | Khan Academy
Hello readers! Today I want to talk to you about why we read more than one text on one topic, and to show you why I shall use a subject that is very near and dear to my heart: animals that can kill you. This is not a joke; I legitimately wrote a book abou…
When Life Hurts, Stop Clinging to It | The Philosophy of Epictetus
Our very sense of wellbeing is at gunpoint when we cling to the fickle, unreliable outside world. Around two thousand years ago, Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed that people are burdened and dragged down because they tend to care about too many things…
This Book Has No Words
Book From the Ground by Juing is a novel written entirely in pictogram symbols, icons, and logos. It tells the story of a day in the life of an office worker. You don’t need to know any particular language to read this book; you only need to be familiar w…
My Thoughts On The Stock Market Collapse
What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here. So, we gotta sit down for this one, even though I’m always sitting down, because we’re beginning to see some major changes taking place in the market. If you’ve opened up your computer and taken all through any amount…
Free live tutoring at schoolhouse.world
Hi everyone, Sal here from Khan Academy, and I just wanted to make an announcement of something that I think many of you will find useful. I have a little bit of a side project going on called schoolhouse.world. It isn’t an official Khan Academy project, …