Ernest Hemingway always fascinated me. I’ve read all of his novels, most of his short stories. I walked through his house in Key West several years ago. I tipped a few pints at Sloppy Joes, his hang out there.

I’ve also tried out many of his haunts in Paris.

Hemingway died over 60 years ago. But he’s still part of pop culture. Who in our culture today is going to still be relevant 60 years from now? I don’t know. But Hemingway still is. One reason, I think, is because he was a badass.

So I’ve put together 5 Lessons below: 

1. Take the Good with the ‘Not so Good’ in People. We're All Flawed!

Hemingway is by all accounts, one of the great American writers. Perhaps he is the best American writer. 

Burns did a nice job balancing Hemingway’s genius and his flaws. The documentary raised the question ‘'is it possible to admire the art of a writer despite his or her human flaws?’

The answer, I believe, is yes.

After all, we humans are all flawed… some of us more than others, of course. My experience is that most of us are all pretty much equally flawed, albeit in different respects… And that’s okay. This might be the way God planned it. Just say’in…

So let’s not get too heavy here! Rather, let's dive into some Hemingway: 

“Always do sober what you said you would do drunk. That will teach you to keep you mouth shut.”

This quote came from Hemingway, as detailed by Forbes magazine in September, 1961.

From Malcom Forbes:

‘When Charles Scribner succeeded his late father as head of the country’s most venerable publishing firm in 1952, Hemingway, an old friend, wrote him a long personal letter, which concluded with a list of his ‘rules of life.’ 

This was one of them. 

In my research, I did not find an instance where Hem actually followed up on doing something ‘sober’ that he said he would do when he was drunk. It doesn’t really matter. 

Let’s go back to Warren Buffett... In a previous newsletter, I mentioned that I attended the most recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. Warren had guidance consistent with Hemingway, crediting Tom Murphy, the former CEO of ABC/Capital Cities (which was acquired by Disney).

More than 40 years ago, Buffett wrote, Murphy taught him an ‘indispensable’ lesson about recognizing and controlling your emotions.

‘He said, Warren, you can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow.’ ‘It’s such an easy way of putting it. You haven’t missed the opportunity. Just forget about it for a day. If you feel the same way about it tomorrow, tell them then… but don’t spout off in a moment of anger!’

Hemingway might in some instances have followed Buffett’s lesson: waited until morning to tell someone to ‘go to hell.’  After all, this was before emails and social media; a time when you actually had to write letters, allowing some degree of reflection before ‘launching a grenade.’ His written criticism of other writers of the day is legendary. He clearly had time to reflect before firing these missiles out to his colleagues.

Hemingway’s character is humorously (and accurately) portrayed in Midnight in Paris.

Outside deliberate written criticism, Hemingway didn’t waste time in getting into confrontations.

 In previous newsletters, I describe five ‘toxic business types’ (TBT's):

A clarification: TBT's are not necessarily ‘bad’ people. In fact, many that I’ve known were pretty decent and likable folks. 

My point in the previous newsletters is that from a ‘getting a deal done’ standpoint, you are best to avoid these folks. They will never get a deal done, or if they do, you don’t want to be part of it - because you will likely end up frustrated, lose money, perhaps expose you to lawsuits!

In a future newsletter I will focus on '5 lessons learned from losing business deals.' So we are not going to go into that now! More to come!

The lesson here is take the good with the 'not so good' in people. Even though a person is 'not-so-good' in a couple - perhaps many - respects, it doesn't mean they are 'bad.'

For example TBT's might be just fine in settings other than deal-making. I've found this is true.

OK, so let's go 'macro' on this first lesson:

In this current day, of course, we are so polarized as a culture. Both the right and left want to vilify their adversaries. What's the answer?
I don't know... but I do know we all have flaws - so let's chill. Just say'in!

2. Working Sports into Business is a Good Thing

If you’ve read my other newsletters (and I hope you do!), you’ll notice that there are some common themes. Sports is one of them.

If there was ever a great writer that worked sports into his literature it was Hemingway. Sports is a central theme in almost every Hemingway novel. 

Or rather ‘sports’ and ‘games’ were central themes, since Hemingway said:

‘There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.’ 

Back in his day, Hemingway intended to say that these three ‘sports’ could likely result in death. If you made a Venn diagram with circles for bullfighting, motor racing and mountaineering, you might find in the middle ‘probably going to die.’

I have to say that when I first read this quote, I questioned bullfighting. 

Have you ever been to a bullfight? I’ve been to three or four in South America and Spain. I really found them hard to watch.

In a previous newsletter, I describe ‘Kabuki theater:’ an activity of drama carried out in real life in a predictable fashion, reminiscent of a kabuki style of Japanese stage play. When I witnessed my first bullfight, I thought this was another form of Kabuki theater. All of the pomp and circumstance of the matador, the theater of it all, the tight pants!

At some point, I started rooting for the bull! But I knew how the ‘play’ would end…

I remember thinking to myself, ‘Surely, this is not the ‘sport’ that Hemingway wrote about in Death in the Afternoon and The Sun Also Rises.

I characterized bullfighting to professional wrestling… Yea it’s a little dangerous, but it’s all contrived!

I thought it must have been a lot different back when Hem became the bullfighting aficionado after seeing the Pamplona fiesta in the 1920’s. 

If you’re interested in this type of stuff, check out this article from August 2021. Every now and then - about 10 percent of the time - there are bullhorn injuries, and about .5 percent of the time, the matador is toast!

Well, this gave me new respect for the matador! Bullfighting is still hard to watch, and I doubt that I’ll ever be back. Just say’in.

Motor racing qualified for Hemingway’s ‘sports’ vocabulary. The sport is less dangerous now than back in Hem’s day, thanks to technology advances and safety measures. But few would question how dangerous the sport still is today.

‘Mountaineering’ in Hem’s book is different than mere rock climbing. Think about the mountaineering Hemingway wrote about:

After all, this is a guy who said “My writing is nothing. My boxing is everything.’

Boxing, of course, is incredibly dangerous. But for Hem, it didn’t qualify as a ‘sport.’

Neither did football.

On the other extreme, according to a recent National Safety Council (NSC) study, the five safest ‘sports’ are baseball, track and field, golf, cheerleading, and swimming.

For me, I’m happy calling golf a ‘game’ and not a ‘sport.’

3. ‘The Best Way to Find Out if you can Trust Somebody is to Trust Them’

In a previous newsletter, I talk about Robert Ringer’s classic book Winning Through Intimidation.

Ringer describes his ‘Three Type Theory’ of people you’ll meet in the business world:

• Type One: Who’ll let you know that from the outset, either through words or actions or both that he’s out to get your chips. He then follows through by attempting to do just that.

• Type Two: Who goes to great lengths to assure you that he would never dream of pilfering your chips, often throwing you off guard by assuring you that he really wants to see you get everything you deserve.  Then like Type One, without hesitation he goes about trying to grab your chips anyways.

• Type Three: Who like Type Two, assures you that he’s not interested in your chips.  Unlike Type Two, he sincerely means it. But due to any one of a number of reasons ranging from his own bungling to his amoral standards for rationalizing what’s right and wrong, he still ends up trying to grab your chips. 

Ringer’s reasoning was ‘people are people.’ And no matter how a person holds themselves, in the end, everybody tends to look out for themselves. It seems a tad cynical- but remember Ringer is talking about business, not personal relationships. The latter tends to be more complicated!

Ronald Reagan famously took a different approach: ‘Trust But Verify.’ This phrase came from a Russian proverb. It was taught to Reagan by a Russian scholar, and Reagan frequently used the phrase in the context of nuclear disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

I’ve always liked Hemingway’s approach. My approach has been to trust someone until I don't (because of something they do). I think this is what Hemingway was getting at.

This does not apply when you are buying a business or investing money. In these situations, Reagan's 'trust but verify' is best. That is, do your diligence. I was fortunate to work with some amazing professionals like Robert Mazur in this domain.

4. 'I Like to Listen. I've Learned a Great Deal from Listening Carefully. Most People Don't Listen'

It sounds simple right? Just listen, don't 'talk over' someone.

Hemingway said 'it takes two years to learn how to talk, and 60 years to learn how to listen.' He was speaking about himself.

It's challenging: we all want to make sure our point comes across. And in the meantime, we get 'Lost in Translation.'

I've found that many lawyers tend to be the worst on listening: in deals, two lawyers given control by their clients will endlessly 'ping pong' match against each other, never closing a deal. Litigators are even worse. I've spoken in a previous newsletter about this phenomenon. Why do they do this? I think it’s intentional.

In a future newsletter, I'll focus on '5 Lessons Learned from Managing Knarly, Ugly Litigation.' So I'll tackle that question in more detail then!

I'll just leave with this question: how many times has a restaurant waiter messed up your order because he was not really listening?

So sometimes it's good to just to repeat yourself!

5. ‘The World Breaks Everyone and Afterward Many are Strong at the Broken Places. But Those that will not Break it kills.’

This is from a Farewell to Arms:

Essentially Hemingway is saying that as humans we all face adversity, people saying ‘it can’t be done,’ failures, hardships and setbacks. It’s not how many times you get knocked down that matters. It’s how many times you get up that matters.

I was familiar with an older phrase: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ from 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

I’ve worked with a ton of founders of startup businesses over the years. I have great respect for them.  Some are better, of course, than others. The good ones face extreme adversity- raising capital, executing a business plan, making a payroll, and ultimately succeed by becoming a profitable independent private company, selling their business or going public.

The U.S. is the leading country by number of startups. Over 69% of startup companies started as home businesses. Over 90% of start ups fail.

As mentioned in a previous newsletter, I was a founding board member of a startup business in Menlo Park California called Texture, a digital magazine app aimed at consumers. After pouring millions of dollars into building the tech platform and marketing to consumers, the business hit an absolute low point around 2017. A few of us understood that the business had no future without a larger partner. 

This was clearly a ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ moment: if we secured a larger partner, we’d likely succeed; if we didn’t the business was dead! Rather than let Texture continue to hobble along, likely eventually going bankrupt, we led a strategic process, which resulted in Apple acquiring Texture and entering a multi-million dollar licensing agreement with us. A huge win!

Flash forward: early Spring 2020- stock markets across the World suddenly crashed after growing instability due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spring 2020 was a dark period: lockdowns, business deterioration, anxiety, and uncertainty. Meredith stock was hitting an all time low, we were over-leveraged due to the Time Inc acquisition, and the future looked uncertain. Again, a ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger moment.’

As publicly disclosed and detailed in a previous newsletter, we separated our two businesses, selling one to Gray Television (NYSE:GTN) and selling the other to IAC (NASDAQ:IAC), resulting in almost a 600 percent return over a 12 month period to shareholders, and more importantly finding two ‘good homes’ for these businesses, employees and stakeholders.

After leaving Meredith following its change of control, I’ve been asked by acquirers to go on the board of target public companies, essentially to be an independent director to deal with an entrenched board of the target company. 

For example, I was nominated by a hedge fund to go on the board of a public company whose board was by all measures, entrenched and not open to change. There are many public companies like this. More surprisingly, they have institutional shareholders that seem complacent about maximizing shareholder value and doing what’s right for employees and stakeholders.

A lot of these companies and their boards fall into Hemingway’s second sentence above: ‘Those that will not break.’ These companies will continue to drift along, eventually becoming extinct. In the meantime, the directors pull in over $300K a year.  You can’t make this stuff up!

See you next time!