Following Warren Buffett’s announcement that he is stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, countless people have written admiration pieces about the man regarded as the greatest investor of all-time.
We don’t need another, do we?
Probably not, but I promise to keep this short (500 words to be exact).
After hearing the news, I spent some time on Sunday watching Buffett answer questions from the past few annual meetings.
As you would expect, he covered everything from U.S. trade policy to tariffs, competitive advantages, favoring simplicity over complexity, the value of reading widely, and everything in between. This said, one answer made everything else seem irrelevant, or at least much less significant.
Last year, a young boy named Andrew Nickes asked Buffett what he would do if he had one more day with his late business partner, Charlie Munger. After answering the question, Buffett provided some wonderful life advice,
“Think about who you want to spend the last day of your life with, then figure out a way to meet with them as often as you can. Why wait until the last day?”
Life shouldn’t be more complicated than that. In fact, if you surround yourself with these type of people, be it your spouse, friends, teammates, or colleagues, chances are you will materially increase your odds of being both happy and successful.
Sound too simple, and a little unrealistic?
Sure, but Buffett addressed that too,
“Don’t expect to make every decision right, but still attempt to because your life is going to progress in the general direction of the people you work with, admire, and befriend."
He continued,
And, in doing so, you will find teachers — at school, at work, in life — who will make a big difference. I have had at least ten people significantly shape my life. I was lucky enough to be able to ‘select’ them, and many just loved helping people. That ‘help’ matters the most, especially when you’re a little lost, which we all are sometimes. So yes, my experiences have been really good, but I attribute that mostly to the individuals I have met along the way.”
Whenever someone writes about Warren Buffett, chances are they will mention the fact that he is one of the richest men in the world. In doing so, they inevitably point to the fact that he is worth more than $150 billion.
But is that the only reason? Or even the real reason?
I don’t believe so.
In fact, I would guess that if Buffett ever gets up on that podium in Omaha again and someone asks him what he thinks made him one of the richest men in the world, he would reply by saying,
“Because I had the chance to spend the vast majority of my career working with my closest friend.”
After all, is it a coincidence that Buffett retired the year after Munger died?
I don’t believe that either.
FULL RESPONSE TO THE YOUNG BOY’S QUESTION
Berkshire 2024 Annual Meeting
“We always lived happy with what we were doing every day. Charlie liked learning. He liked a wide variety of things. So, he was much broader than I was, but I didn’t have any desire to be as broad as he was and he didn’t have any desire to be as narrow as I was, but we had a lot of fun doing anything together. We’d play golf together. We’d play tennis together. We did everything together. We had as much fun, perhaps even more to some extent, with things that failed because then we really had to work, and work our way out of them. And, in a sense, there is more fun having somebody that’s your partner when you dig out of a foxhole than watching an idea you got ten years ago produce more and more profits. We never had any doubts about the other person.”