Tracy was interested in working in business. She was like the star of a high school musical who asked Steven Spielberg for a part.
Ms. Cool was fresh out of business school when she wrote a letter to Warren E.Buffett asking if she could work for him. She took his office address as well.
Ms. Cool was the financial assistant to the chairman at the time. She was one of the company's few senior female executives.
After people started to include her on a short list of potential successors to Mr. Buffet, she left. Many people were surprised by the move.
Ms. Cool is using her access to the mind and methods of a renowned investor to build her own investment firm. She is the most direct inheritor of a style of investing that Mr.Buffett developed over the course of many decades.
Companies that have moats or defensible business models are among them. Don't go outside of your circle of competence. Buy stocks that have a margin of safety between what you pay for the asset and its value.
Ms. Cool doesn't shy away from highlighting her experience with the company, but she said her challenge was to not link her experience with the company too much. She knows what she isn't doing.
She said she was not building a new version of the company. I use some of the principles to build something different.
She is quick to point out that Kanbrick is not a traditional private equity firm that buys companies only to sell them later. Kanbrick doesn't advocate risky start-ups in ways that will remake the investing world. The firm wants to buy businesses that are easy to understand and hold them for a long time.
Ms. Cool and Brian Humphrey are the co-owners of Kanbrick. It's name is a nod to the idea that great businesses are built by brick and mortar.
Ms. Cool doesn't want Warren to think we're trying to ride on his coattails. Three people were telecommuting that day.
The vibe was very similar to a start-up.
Kanbrick has done two deals so far and Ms. Cool said it was the right pace. There are a lot of possible acquisition targets. Many of the 30,000 businesses in the United States have annual operating profits between $10 million and $50 million. In the 1980s, those companies may have appealed to Mr.Buffett, but he wouldn't be interested in $600 billion.
Ms. Cool won't say how much capital the firm has to invest, but the pool contains funds from her and Mr. Humphrey. She wouldn't say if Mr.Buffett had invested.
Ms. Britt Cool made it clear that Kanbrick is not a copy of the Berkshires. She no longer believes that it is enough to spot companies with good managers and let them run the show. She and Mr. Humphrey are interested in buying companies.
The pair borrowed a tradition from Mr.Buffett. The missives contain thoughts on investing and updates on the businesses.
They both went for the same tone in their letter. While auctions work well for cattle, we want to work with owners who want a long-term home and partner.
Mr.Buffett didn't comment on Ms. Cool. The investor turned down most interview requests, according to his assistant. Mr.Buffett heaped praise on his successor.
He told The Omaha World-Herald that she thought the same way.
The laws of supply and demand were discovered by Ms. Cool when she was a young girl. Customers were able to get asparagus at $2 a bunch in the early part of the season. She noticed that if she lowered the price by 50 cents, they would sell more quickly.
At 13, she recruited her fellow eighth graders to work for her at the farm stand and offered them $8 an hour.
The produce would be arranged at the farm stand under Ms. Cool. The produce was grown on the family's 200 acres of farm.
When she was in eighth grade, her parents barely gave her an allowance. She had a lot of responsibility.
Ms. Cool was able to calculate the taxes on a sale at the farm store without a calculator. When she was 6 years old, someone put an upturned bucket for her to stand on.
Ms. Cool was president of the farmers' market by 15. She recruited several of her friends from high school to work at the market and increased the weekly sales by fivefold. She used her savings to buy a red Ford mustang convertible.
Ms. Cool loved building businesses at the farm.
On May 19, 2003 The Manhattan Mercury ran a front-page article about a woman with a bunch of asparagus. The headline said that the local star had cobbled together scholarships and aid to attend the Ivy League university.
Elizabeth Knopf said that Ms. Cool was very aware of what she wanted and was very driven.
Ms. Knopf went to see her classmates drive at the farm. Ms. Knopf woke up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday so they could arrange the produce for the farm stand.
Ms. Cool went to Harvard Business School at the age of 22.
While attending business school, Mohit Bathija remembers his business school classmate as modest and not someone he would have pegged as having the confidence to start her career by sending a letter to a well-known investor.
If you scanned through 900 people and told them to pick out Warren Buffet's successor, Tracy Britt would not be that person. Someone with more investing experience would be expected.
Mr. Bathija said he used Ms. Cool as an example when talking to young entrepreneurs. Write to that person. The worst can happen.
When she asked Mr.Buffett if she could work for him, she wasn't a complete stranger. He had met her three times while she was a student at Harvard. Ms. Cool didn't hesitate when he told her to look him up if she found herself in Omaha.
What do you want to talk about with a billionaire? Ms. Cool wondered if she would see Mr.Buffett in person. She chose corn and tomatoes from the farm as a nod to their Midwestern roots.
Ms. Cool stood out among a group of mostly male executives at the headquarters. She was worried about how she would be seen. She had a solution that was to always be put together, wearing a suit when the occasion called for it, and to come prepared.
Robert Miles, who has written several books about the company, said that the culture is hard for young people. He said that it wasn't a culture of coddling you or training you. She got a first-hand look at what it's like to work there.
Ms. Cool had a great deal of make-it-up-as-you-go-along quality. Dozens of small to medium-size companies were bought by Mr.Buffett over the years. NetJets is a company that sells ownership shares in private planes. Some of the companies that were too small to merit Mr.Buffett's attention became too big for him to ignore.
Ms. Cool was able to learn about business operations. She traveled to the offices of different subsidiaries of the company to meet with their chief executives and listen to what they had to say.
After becoming a mother for the first time, Ms. Cool became the chief executive of Pampered Chef. A version of a Tupperware party, the company's direct-sale model meant that people would gather socially to possibly buy a $30 waffle pan or food chopper. Revenue and profit were not performing as well as they could have. Only a tenth of the business's sales were digital because customers had moved online.
It took two years for her to get the right people in the right roles. She said that digital sales were over 50 percent by the time she left.
Mr. Christopher said that Ms. Cool was a leader with clear vision.
Lawrence A. Cunningham is a business law professor at George Washington University. He said that she shared Mr.Buffett's common sense.
She was called a "fireman" by Mr.Buffett in a 2020 interview. She has done a great job on any assignment I have given her.
One of the billionaire's go-to spots in Omaha was Piccolo Pete's, and the two enjoyed weekly dinners at the restaurant.
She said that he liked it when people didn't place him on a pedestal.
Mr.Buffett walked Ms. Cool down the aisle after she lost her father. Mr.Buffett was supportive when she told him that she was starting her own business. He told her that it reminded him of when he left Benjamin Graham to pursue his own career.
Drew Van Pelt, a former chief executive of a picture frame company, said that Ms. Cool had positioned Kanbrick as an alternative to private equity.
One of the top reasons people don't want to sell to P.E. is that they don't know who the jerks are. That is very different of her style.
The firm bought a majority stake in the company in 2020. The founder of the company, Cindy Monroe, had followed in the footsteps of Ms. Cool at Pampered Chef and was hoping for the same result.
Kanbrick bought a majority stake in Marine Concepts, a company that patented a system that simplifies the process of covering boats.
Ms. Cool believes in the power of relationships and hosts training programs and events in order to build connections with entrepreneurs. A three-month course on expanding businesses was offered by her firm in the year 2020.
One of Davis Smith's investors mentioned that he attended the course last year. He said it was a small business school for C.E.O.s. He said that the program focused on moving beyond the start-up stage and that it was useful.
Ms. Cool and her husband moved to Nashville with their three children after meeting in the elevator of her building. She said that Mr. Cool was able to balance the demands of a young family and a new firm.
She said that he spends a lot of time with their children.
Ms. Cool doesn't think that success is a foregone conclusion. She said that growing up on a farm made her accept hardship.
She said by phone that she tries to stay humble. There won't be failure if I do those things
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