TRACY BRITT COOL

Tracy Britt Cool grew up on a farm in Manhattan, Kansas. Not Manhattan the city — Manhattan the small Kansas town surrounded by wheat fields.

Her family ran a farming operation, and she learned about business the old-fashioned way: watching crops, managing cash flow, and understanding that in agriculture, one bad season can wipe you out.

She went to Harvard, where she studied economics. While there, she cold-emailed Warren Buffett asking for advice.

He replied. That one email changed her life trajectory entirely.

After Harvard, Buffett offered her a job as his financial assistant at Berkshire Hathaway. She was 25.

The role had no formal job description — it was essentially "be useful to Warren Buffett in whatever way he needs." She analyzed potential acquisitions, attended board meetings, and learned the Berkshire operating philosophy from the inside.

Within a few years, she was appointed chairman of four struggling Berkshire subsidiaries: Oriental Trading Company, Pampered Chef, Larson-Juhl, and Benjamin Moore. She was 29.

These were real companies with real problems — declining sales, operational issues, cultural dysfunction. Her job was to fix them.

She ran these companies through turnarounds, learning hands-on what it takes to operate a business, not just invest in one. She replaced management teams, restructured operations, and implemented the kind of operational discipline that Berkshire expects.

In 2020, she left Berkshire to co-found Kanbrick with her husband, Scott Cool. Kanbrick is a long-term holding company that acquires and builds businesses — essentially a mini-Berkshire model.

The firm focuses on buying good businesses at reasonable prices and holding them indefinitely, providing operational support to help them grow. She took the Berkshire playbook and went independent.

Kanbrick is her current company — a long-term holding company and investment firm that acquires small and mid-sized businesses. The firm provides capital, operational expertise, and a permanent home for businesses whose founders want to sell but don't want their company flipped by private equity in three years.

It's explicitly modeled on the Berkshire approach.

At Berkshire Hathaway, she served as chairman of Oriental Trading Company (e-commerce novelty retailer), Pampered Chef (kitchen products direct sales), Larson-Juhl (custom framing), and Benjamin Moore (paint). Each was a turnaround or growth challenge.

She also serves on the board of JPMorgan Chase — one of the youngest board members in the bank's history. That appointment signals how seriously the finance world takes her despite her relatively young age.

Cool is a textbook value investor — she learned from Warren Buffett personally, so this shouldn't be surprising. She looks for businesses with durable competitive advantages, strong cash flows, and honest management teams.

She buys them at reasonable prices and holds them essentially forever.

What makes her approach different from a typical Buffett disciple is the operational focus. She doesn't just invest and sit back — she gets involved in running the business.

At Berkshire, she was hands-on with four companies simultaneously. At Kanbrick, she and her team work closely with the businesses they acquire.

Her investment criteria: predictable cash flows, defensible market position, a culture that can attract good people, and a price that makes sense. She's patient — she'd rather wait years for the right deal than do a mediocre one to stay busy.

She thinks about businesses the way a farmer thinks about land: something you acquire, improve, and hold for generations. That Kansas upbringing shows up in everything she does.

Being selected by Warren Buffett as his financial assistant at 25 is the headline win. Getting that role — through a cold email, no less — put her in the room with one of the greatest investors in history during her formative years.

The access, mentorship, and education she received is essentially priceless.

Successfully turning around four Berkshire subsidiaries as chairman before 30 is the operational win. She proved she could not just analyze businesses but actually run them — a skillset that most investors never develop.

Launching Kanbrick is the entrepreneurial win. She could have stayed at Berkshire forever or joined any firm in the world.

Instead, she started from scratch to build something her own way.

Cool has been honest that the hardest part of her career was managing the Berkshire subsidiaries through their worst periods. Some of the turnarounds required firing people she'd grown to know, shutting down product lines, and making decisions that were correct strategically but painful personally.

She's also talked about the challenge of being a young woman in rooms dominated by older men — particularly in the Berkshire world, where the average board member or subsidiary CEO was decades older than her. She earned credibility through results, but she's acknowledged it wasn't always easy or comfortable.

Cool's philosophy is deeply Berkshire-influenced. Core principles: Buy great businesses.

Pay fair prices. Hold forever.

Let compounding do the work. Don't use excessive debt.

Trust good managers and stay out of their way unless they need help.

She adds her own emphasis on operational engagement. Buffett is famously hands-off with his subsidiary managers.

Cool is more involved — she believes the Kanbrick model adds value by providing operational support, strategic guidance, and capital allocation expertise that founder-operators often lack.

She also stresses the importance of culture. She's seen from the inside how bad culture destroys good businesses and how good culture compounds over time just like capital does.

When she evaluates a potential acquisition, culture is weighted as heavily as financial metrics.

Her farming roots show up in her patience. She thinks in decades, not quarters.

She's comfortable planting seeds today that won't bear fruit for years.

Cool is married to Scott Cool, her co-founder at Kanbrick. They work together running the firm, which she's said is both a challenge and an advantage — they're aligned on vision, strategy, and values in a way that business partners who aren't married rarely are.

She grew up in a tight-knit farming family in Kansas. She returns there regularly and stays connected to the agricultural community.

The farm background isn't just a backstory she mentions in interviews — it genuinely informs how she thinks about long-term value creation, weather cycles (both literal and economic), and patience.

Cool graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics. While at Harvard, she was involved in the student investment club and made the fateful decision to cold-email Warren Buffett — a move that shaped her entire career.

No MBA, no formal business school — she got her real business education at Berkshire Hathaway.

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