#371 James J. Hill: The Empire Builder

I found out about James j Hill from Charlie Munger. Munger said that Hill was a great operator like John d Rockefeller and Andrew Carney, and I thought that was very high praise. And what's jumps out when you read a biography on James j Hill is just how difficult Hill was to compete with. And in this biography, they are constantly comparing the way Hill runs his business to his main competitors. And here's one example. It says many observers would later compare Hill with Henry Villard. The comparison was inevitable. While Hill was building carefully and checking his costs minutely, Villard built in ignorance of his costs. Amid mounting deficits, Villard was then forced to resign the presidency. Hill knew that the best defense against invading railroads was a better built system that could operate at lower rates. Well, just how sound was the system that James j Hill built? Well, the Great Northern Railway lasted from 1889 to 1970. Hill died in 1916. That's over fifty years after he died, and you'll think that you'll find this interesting. The great northern railway in 1970 is merged into the Burlington Northern Railway, which then the Burlington Northern Railways merged in 1996 to the BNSF Railway. And in 2010, Warren Buffett bought the BNSF Railway. Buffett still owns it to this day, and this all started with James j Hill. James j Hill knew that you could find a competitive advantage if you controlled your costs better than your competition. In fact, Sam Walton said exactly that. Sam Walton said, control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage for twenty five years running Long before Walmart was known as the nation's largest retailer, we rank number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. Anyone who is committed to being great at building their business is obsessed with watching their costs. Think about last week, the founder of IKEA said, we pushed cost awareness at all levels with almost manic frenzy. Warren Buffett has a great quote about this. He says a good manager must be a demon on costs. Sam Walton, Ingvar Kamprad, James j Hill, every person that runs a Berkshire owned business, and countless of history's greatest founders all have one thing in common. They made cost control an obsession. That is exactly why Ramp is now a partner of this podcast because all the founders of Ramp listened to the podcast. They picked up on the main theme from the podcast over and over again, the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage. That is the reason that Ramp exists. Ramp exists to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp exists to give you everything you need to make cost control an obsession. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense …