Here are the 2 REASONS Why People Have TERRIBLE PROBLEMS! | Warren Buffett INSPIRING Speeches

he's often referred to as the wizard of Omaha and is one of the most successful investors of all time he is known for his belief in value investing and his living in frugality despite his immense wealth he's also one of the world's greatest philanthropist having pledged to give away 99% of his fortune to charity mentor me Warren I was wondering how you define success personally well I can certainly define happiness because that's what that's what I am I mean I I am an effective I mean I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year I get to do it with people I like I get that I get to I don't have to associate with anybody cause us by summer to churn at and the only thing in my job I don't like and it's only happens about every fair four years a cage you may have to fire somebody and I don't like that's the only thing other than I tap dance to work and I get down there and I think I'm supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling you know or something I mean it's where I feel and I added it doesn't diminish its it's tremendous fun so you know if they say that success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get well I don't know which one applies in this case but I I do know that I wouldn't be doing anything else then I do advise you you know and when you go out to work go to go to work for an organization that you admire people you admire because it'll it'll it'll turn you on and and and you ought to be happy where you are working and I always worry about people who say you know I'm going to do this for 10 years I really don't like it very well be 10 more years he doesn't present I mean that's a little exciting up sex for your old age I mean not a very good idea so get right there you got to recommend that get right into what you enjoy you know and and you'll be successful at it really well I mean you won't be able to miss and you know that's I don't regard what I do is the most important thing in the world at all but it's right for me I mean I happen to be wired in a certain way that what I do works in this if I had to do what you know bill does I mean last about ten minutes and let's troupe a lot of things but I luckily I kind of stumbled into the thing that I I do best and that you know that it's worked out boom the whole long-term capital management and I hope most of you are familiar with it but the whole story is really fascinating because if you take John Meriwether and Eric Rosenfeld Larry Hill and branch Greg Hawkins victory Ghani the two Nobel Prize winners Merton Scholes if you take the 16 of them that they probably have as high an average IQ as any 16 people working together in one business in the country including at Microsoft or or wherever you want a name so that incredible amount of intellect in that room now you combine that with the fact that those 16 and had extensive experience in the field they're operating I mean this is this one it was not a bunch of guys who made their money you know selling men's clothing and then all of a sudden went into the securities business or anything they had they'd had in aggregate the 16 that probably had 350 or 400 years of experience doing exactly what they were doing and then you throw in the third factor that most of them had virtually all of their very substantial networks in the business so they had their own money up hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money up super high intellect working in a field they know and essentially they went broke and that to me is absolutely fascinating I mean I that if I ever write a book it's going to be called why smart people do dumb things my partner says it should be autobiographical but I what buddy this might be an interesting illustration and these are perfectly decent guys I know I respect them and they helped me out when I was at problems with Solomon and so that they're they're not bad people at all but to make money they didn't have and didn't need they risked what they did have and did need and that's foolish that is just plain foolish I put my gamer switch your IQ is if you if you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you it just does not make any sense I don't care whether the odds are a hundred to one that you succeed or a thousand one to succeed if you hand me a gun with a thousand chambers out a million chambers in it and there's a bullet in one chamber use that put it up your temple and how much do you want to be paid to pull it once I'm not going to pull it you know you can name any sum you want but it doesn't do anything for me on the upside and I think the downside is fairly clear so I'm not interested in that kind of a game and yet people do it financially then without thinking about it very much I also fashion believes that I can only should expect to make money and things that I understand and when I say understand I don't mean understand you know what the product does or anything like that I mean understand what the economics of the business are likely to look at look like ten years from now or 20 years ago I know in general what the economics will say Wrigley chewing gum will look like 10 years ago the internet isn't going to change the way people chew gum it isn't going to change which come they chew you know if you own the chewing gum market in a big way and you've got double mint spearmint and juice from those brands we'll be there 10 years from now so I can't pinpoint exactly what the numbers are gonna look like on wriggly but i'm not going to be way off if I try to look forward on something like that that evaluating that company is within what I call my circle of competence I understand what they do I understand the economics of it I understand the competitive aspects of the business so figuring out the economic consequences TV I think there's I don't know 20 25 million cents a year sold the United States I don't think there's one of them made in the eyes States anymore I mean you'd say TV set manufacture what a wonderful business site everybody nobody had a TV in 1950 or thereabouts 45 to 50 everybody has multiple sets now nobody is in the United States and made any real money making the cents if they're all out of business you know the Magnavox is the RCA is all of those companies radio was the equivalent of 20 over 500 companies making radios in the 1920s again I don't think there's a u.s. radio manufacturer at the present time but coca-cola you know I was at 1884 Jacobs pharmacy or whatever the fellow comes up with something a lot of copiers over the years but now you've got a company that is selling roughly 1.1 billion eight ounce servings of its product not all cokes right and some others daily throughout the world honored 17 years later so understanding the economic characteristics of a business is different than predicting the fact that an industry is going to do wonderfully so I look at the internet businesses are look at tech messes I say this is a marvelous thing and I love to play around on the computer and I ordered my books from Amazon and all kinds of things but I don't know who's going to win unless I know it's going to win I'm not interested in the best thing I'll just play around on the computer and defining your circle of competence is the most important aspect of investing it's not how important how large your circle is you don't have to be an expert on everything but knowing where the perimeter of that circle of what you know on what you don't know is and staying inside of it is all important Tom Watson senior who started IBM said in this book he said it I know genius is it but I'm smart in spots I stay around those spots and you know that is the key so if I understand a few things and I stick in that arena I'll do ok and if I don't understand something buddy I don't excited about it because my neighbors are talking about stocks are going up everything they start fooling around someplace else eventually I'll get creamed and they should avoid credit cards just forget about it we're in various business that issue credit cards the American public loves credit cards but if you start revolving debt on credit cards you're going to be paying eighteen or twenty percent and you can't make progress in your financial life going around borrowing money at eighteen or twenty percent you can make a lot of money by lending out at eight or 18 or 20 percent over time you know if you can find anybody that's good that will borrow from you but you don't want to be on the side of the equation that's always behind in life you know I was lucky I'd saved about ten thousand dollars by the time I got out of school that ten thousand dollars was really worth millions I might have learned later on because after he had a family and everything the expenses roll in but but those were my tools to work with but it was only because I was ahead of the game if you're behind the game by ten thousand dollars at some point and paying eighteen or twenty percent interest on it you will never hit them you'll never get out of it so the trick I've got a partner that says all I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there you know and and that's true in financial matters as well you want to figure out where you don't want to be ahead of time and avoid that and I get about a dozen letters a day from people who are having terrible problems and there are two reasons why they have terrible one is a number of them have had health problems of some sort I mean they have really been hit by some or somebody in their family has been hit by some kind of catastrophic you I understand that is it you know it's a terrible thing to happen to any family and they get in the ground bills they can't pay and really only society can solve that one in terms of protecting people against that that's just plain bad luck but the other one is from people who run up credit card debt and they're facing bankruptcy or they've been put through bankruptcy once before and they all a bunch of money and they can't they can't pay the interest let alone pay any principal and the half of my letters come from people like that and that that that problem is avoidable catastrophic illness is not but but credit card debt is something to bring on yourself and it's way better it's way easier to stay out of trouble but to get out of trouble financially and and I will guarantee if you run a big credit card that you will be in trouble probably the rest of your life in terms of your financial situation on the other hand if you get ahead of the game even it's on a very modest scale so that money is coming in from investing and your your people owe you money or equities or ownership you'll be way out of the game compared to paying it they always be paying your creditors every month so my advice to you is if you can't pay for it don't buy it and get yourself in a position where you can pay for anything and then we'll be glad to see it bore shines or the rest or furnish your Monument I always look at IQ and and talent as sort of representing the horsepower of the motor but then in terms of the output the efficiency with which the motor works that depends on rationality because a lot of people start out with four hundred horsepower motors and get a hundred horsepower about but and it's way better to have a 200 horsepower motor and get it all in doubt put and so why do why do smart people do things that interfere with really getting the the output they're entitled to and it's it gets into it habits into character into temperament and it really gets into behaving in a rational manner it's not letting not getting in your own way as I say everybody here has the ability absolutely to do anything I do and much beyond and and some of you will and some of you won't but it it will the ones that won't it will because me because you get in your own way won't because the world doesn't allow you to it'll it will be because you don't allow yourselves to them so I want a simple business easy to understand great economics now honest enable management and and then I can see about in a general way where they're going to be ten years from now and I can't see where it can be ten years and I don't want to buy it basically I don't want to buy any stock or if they close the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow for five years I won't be happy only I buy a farm and I don't get a quote on it for five years and I'm happy if the farm goes okay you know I buy an apartment house don't get a quote on it for five years I'm happy if the apartment house produces the returns that I expect but people buy a stock and they look at the price the next morning and they decide whether they're doing well or not doing well that's crazy because they're buying a piece of the business that's what Graham the most fundamental part of what he taught me yeah you're not buying a stock you're buying a you're buying a part ownership in the business you will do well if the business does well and if you didn't pay a totally selling price and that's what it's all about and you ought to buy businesses you understand just like if you're buying farms yottabyte farms you understand it's it's not complicated well I mean I've made a lot of mistakes biggest mistake other than not the biggest necessarily the biggest but but buying Berkshire Hathaway itself was a mistake because Berkshire was a lousy textile business and I brought it very cheap I've been taught by Ben Graham to buy things on a quantitative basis look around for things that are cheap and that I was taught that say a 1949 or they made a big impression on me so I went around looking for what I call you cigar butts of stocks and the cigar butt approach to buying stocks is that you walk down the street and you're looking around for cigar butts and you find this honestly this terrible looking soggy ugly looking cigar the one puff left in it but you pick it up and you get your one puff disgusting it's rot away but it's free I mean it's cheap and then you look around for another soggy you know one puff cigar well that's what I did for years it's a mistake oh we make money doing it but he can't make it with big money so much easier just by wonderful businesses so now I would rather buy a wonderful business at a fair price that a fair business at a wonderful price but in those days I was buying cheap stocks and Berkshire was selling below its working capital for sure he had the plants for nothing yet the machinery for nothing he got the inventory receivables of the discount it was cheap so I bought it and 20 years later I was still running a lousy business and that money did not compound you really want to be in a wonderful business because there the time is the friend of the wonderful business you keep compounding it keeps doing more business and you keep making more money time is the enemy of the lousy business I could have sold Berkshire perhaps liquidated it and made a quick little profit you know one puff but staying with those kind of businesses is a big mistake so you might say I learned something out of that mistake and I would have been way better off taking what I did with Berkshire as I kept buying better businesses I started insurance business See's candy the Buffalo all kinds thing I would have been way better doing that with a with a brand new little entity that I'd set up rather than using Berkshire the platform now I've had a lot of fun out of it I mean everything in life seems to turn out to the better so I don't have any complaints about that but it was a dumb thing to do I went in the US air I bought a preferred stock in 1989 as soon as my check cleared the company went into the red never got out I mean it was a really dumb I mean a dumb I've got an 800 number I call now whenever I think about buying an airline stock I called him up any hour that fortunately I can call him at 3 in the morning and I just dial and I say my name's wand I'm an arrow holic and I'm thinking about behind this thing and they talked me down I mean it takes takes hours sometimes but it's worth it if you ever think about that airline buying an airline just call me and I'll give you the 800 number but we got lucky in terms of how we eventually came out on but it was a dumb dumb decision all mine I would go to work I would go to work and whatever turns you on it may turn out that it'll be more profitable than you can think but almost everybody here will make enough money unless they get some terrible habits along the way to do reasonably well and doing reasonably well in this country really is is is pretty darn good I mean it is it's not necessary to have huge amounts of money in order enjoy yourself I enjoyed myself when I was at my $10,000 and I live in the same house that I lived in when I was making when I had about that I bought a 41 years ago I like the house then I like the house now I mean if you think about it if you have a reasonable job you'll be eating at McDonald's and I'll be eating McDonald's so we're we're to push on food I mean you know I open in fact I hope it's very clean actually and they had and if you come to Dairy Queen you'll see me and you can order anything on the menu I can order what we both can afford it you know you'll you'll wear the same clothes I wear I'll pay more for my suits but as soon as I put them on they look upon me so we'll we'll look about the same and we'll both live in the same kind of houses I live in that house from 41 years ago and it's it's warm in winter and it's cool in summer and it's comfortable and you'll live in a house that's that similar and it and what difference does it make if you have 50 more rooms or you know guest houses are all edited you know it'll probably just bring your problems I mean you have to worry about the about the greenskeeper something when you get through so I I I have been in the houses of people where the houses are worth Oh probably 200 times what my house is worth and I would not be any happier in those houses at all in fact I'd be less happy I just have one them to worry about you know the dozens of people around the place and people quitting and people stealing from you kinds of things the hell with it yep we drive we'll drive the same kind of car fact you'll probably drive a better car I Drive a cars about eight years old I don't know what it's worth now but it gets me around fine I mean I'm perfectly happy we'll watch we'll watch the same television you know we'll work on the same computer pretty much the only difference will be how we travel long distances yeah I will fly in a plane that's more comfortable women than flying Southwest Airlines or something at which I've got nothing against but that's the one real big difference and other than that I do what I like every day I hope you you'll do what you like every day to do and I work with nice people I hope you work with nice people and there's 24 hours in the day and those are where the hours go so great wealth is the tiniest bit different in a real sense than having just a decent a decent income and and to trade a decent income and something you love doing and something where you feel worthwhile doing it for huge wealth where you trade off a lot of your principles would be a terrible mistake if you tell me who your heroes are I can tell you how you're going to turn up to quite an extent that by this point in life and I have been extraordinarily lucky and that none of my heroes ever let me down I mean I the ones I came up with throughout their lives that I've never felt that I've been let down in any way with and number one was my dad and had a huge impression on me my wife who was heroes is one of my heroes I mean she is you know in terms of she's taught me a tremendous amount and never seen anybody any better with human beings than she is and you can Yogi Bear again said you can you can observe a lot just by watching I you know I I watched my dad and I have watched her and I had a professor Ben Graham back at Columbia and had a huge impact on myself I have been lucky and then I've had terrific heroes and they haven't let me down and that that takes you a long long way I've gone through one or two periods word that we're kind of tough in life but not any I mean everybody had that but what having the right heroes will take it right through it I have a lot of spare time because the managers at Berkshire do all the work I just sit there in the office and read and talk on the phone occasionally and it may surprise you I am i leaving out the question of email I spend more time on the computer than Bill Gates does the we use that as a trick question sometimes when we appear together and I spend about spend about 12 hours at least 12 hours a week playing bridge on the Internet at play on something called okay bridge most of the time my name is t-bone I put my age is a hundred and three so when I do something dumb people will say well for a guy 100 and fries not so bad and I play almost every night I play on the weekends I can't get enough of it My partner incidentally almost all of the time is a Italian woman who lives in the United States who's come along on this trip actually and use twice world-champion and we have a terrific time and that's my favorite activity I used to play golf I still play a little bit but I've gotten so bad that I can hardly bear to watch myself play golf and I do a lot I do a lot of reading I like movies but the best thing I like is running berkshire hathaway thank you guys so much for watching I made the mentor me Series happen because I wanted to spend a little bit more time with these super successful entrepreneurs and hope some of their magic pixie dust rubs off on us by spending a little bit more time with them so I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what you think of it let me know what you took from the speeches that we played leave a comment below I will join the discussion thank you so much for watching continue to believe and I'll see you soon

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 337,181

Keywords: business, success, advice, help, entrepreneur, how to, better, life, money, work, job, career, company, motivation, education, inspiration, Evan, Carmichael

Id: oRnwnB51zpI

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2016