Howard Buffet Interview - Becoming Warren Buffett

you know i would describe my childhood as normal but who knows what normal is i mean you know um people often think when they ask that question you know well warren buffett was this famous rich guy he was not famous and he wasn't rich when we were growing up i mean you know uh he was in the process of you know making money but he was at home a lot um we had uh dinners together we had christmases together we you know we we did what i would think would be a very normal uh we had what i would think would be a very normal upbringing i think an average christmas at the buffets was what you would see on tv i mean it was like you know lots of gifts a great time everybody together and we did that year after year i mean we just we it was a very consistent thing in our lives and we even did it uh when we were long into one into our adulthood i mean it was something that we just did for many many years pretty much until my mom died i'm the middle child so of course i got picked on from both ends had the most difficult part of the life in the buffett family asked my sister and brother they'll tell you something different but you know susie and i were very close in age we were about 18 months apart and so we were a bit competitive growing up i think it was good that that you know she's a female and i'm a male i think if we were males we probably wouldn't kill each other but but um you know and peter was four years behind so he was and he was he was more i call him more passive if that's you know if i can use that term uh in terms of kind of my personality and so you know we just didn't we didn't do a lot together and we didn't clash at all um but susie and i were pretty competitive growing up so yeah my my first name howard was after my grandpa howard holman buffett and my second name graham was after ben graham who was of course you know great mentor to my dad um and you know they're they're both incredible people and you know i i really don't remember ben graham uh but i remember my grandfather you know to a certain degree he he died when i was probably maybe 10 years old something like that you know we would my grandpa and i would watch football games together and it it it would always throw me because well it did in the beginning i mean he would he'd be you know routing rooting for one of these uh teams and then the score would change and he'd root for the other team and i i thought wait a minute you're for you're for the other team and he said no i'm always for the underdog and i've never forgotten that you know it was kind of a life lesson in a sense because it just he was he was always for the person who had you know the least amount of opportunity and so that football game just kind of represented his philosophy and i'll never forget that well um he was home a lot and i always get a kick out of the story about you know how he went across the street once and asked don quixo if he wanted to invest and you know don said not to his face but john said you know why would i invest in the guy that just sits at home and reads books you know and so you know he was around a lot which is great i mean we we had a very you know um it may i would say normal but it may have been unusually normal if that doesn't maybe make sense but i mean you know my parents were around all the time and we had dinner together we went on vacations to dinner or together we went vacations together we did um you know we celebrated holidays together and we even you know oftentimes had you know extended family so i think it was a very for me i think the big thing was a very stable environment and um you know my mom and dad were were always congenial i mean we we never saw i i never saw them fight ever i never i never saw him in an argument i mean i never saw him mad at each other and so you know that may actually be a bit of a fantasy because now that i've been married i know it doesn't always work that way but i always made the same effort with my wife you know to behave the same way in front of our kids and so i think we had the most stable environment you could ever ask for yeah i mean it was you know i would constantly kind of go up to the office and say you got time to throw the football you got time to throw the baseball and you you know it was typically it would it would be it i mean i think it's a pretty typical response you know i'll be there in a minute and after the second or third time you know kind of prompting him you know he would always come he would never say no i mean he would always come down throw the football for a while throw the baseball you know do whatever it was that that you know i was you know trying to get him to do so i mean i think you know after the second or third time of you know uh kind of prompting him you know he always came down he always would um you know throw the football through the baseball participate and so i you know he he was he was around more than most fathers would be around so i probably had an opportunity to try to convince him to do that more than most kids would you know have an opportunity to do but yeah i mean he was always great about that most of the time he was very patient with me you know it was when my when i had really gotten my mom to her limit that was what she called in the heavy forces and that's when he had to take a little different position you know he i don't remember really doing much with chores i mean basically i think you know uh my mom and dad would pay us a small allowance and you know we would clean gutters we'd drink leaves we would you know do things around empty the garbage we do do all that i mean i remember you know it was 25 cents at one point then 50 cents a week and it never it was never a lot of money but it was you know the incentive to uh do it and it was a reward for doing you know what you know our parents wanted us to do but i don't you know remember him doing much of that i mean he's not the kind of guy that would go out and cut the grass and and the truth is today i would say uh you know that's not i've learned what you know i mean what the phrase is what's your highest and best use of time and obviously with him his highest and best use of time was not mowing the lawn well it's difficult to connect on an emotional level because i think that that's not his basic mode of operation i don't think he could be as successful in business if he were a really like normally an emotional person obviously he has emotions he expresses emotions um there's times that that comes and goes but you know i would say he's he's a lot of fun but he's he's still in his personal life um you know very direct and very focused on practicality and reality and so you get that but it's not you know in business you know it probably is a hard edge type of approach but personally even though he's not you know i would say extremely emotional it it isn't the kind of thing that most people would probably imagine because he is the funniest guy i've ever met and part of that comes from how clever he is and how witty he is and you know there's nobody that can come up with better jokes on the spur of the moment than my dad and so he's a fun guy he is one of the most fun guys to be around from that standpoint he will come up with the funniest lines that you can imagine and sometimes i sit there and think how does he do that you know but but it's it's that's his that's him i mean that you know and that and and so that's the part of i think the very clever business part that carries through to his personal life is you know he's got obviously a tremendous iq and it's an iq that that can be applied to you know produce results i mean not everybody with high iqs produce results so um i just think it's kind of a natural extension of how he actually is you know i think the the similarities that you would see that i've developed from my dad would come from what he's taught us and all of us kids and you know i remember certain things i mean i was driving down dodge street when i was like 11 or 12 years old with him and and i still remember he said just remember it takes you know 30 years build a reputation in five minutes to ruin it and he was always you know giving us these little you know bits of philosophy and um and they're great and i think they build you know they they build out a character they build out you know what your sensitivities are what your priorities are and so i think you know the the kind of person he is i think all three of us kids have parts of that in us and you know he always tried to stress integrity um and at the same time being pretty flexible knowing that you know all young kids you know good kids make mistakes so it just because you make a mistake doesn't mean you're a bad person but i think he would always try you know i got in trouble probably way more than my brother and sister and i think you know he would always try to take that and use it as a lesson to try to teach me you know why i didn't want to do what i was doing or you know why i got in trouble you know what can i learn from that so i i think all of us would have a lot of the traits that he possesses in terms of you know how he feels about humanity and how he feels about treating other people and being fair and being honest i think those are all things that he would have pretty much you know to him was important to make sure that that we understood those things well my mom was like the biggest part of my life growing up i mean you know um even though i got disciplined on a regular basis and she was usually the one doing it she was still my best friend and you know she was somebody who i could go to with almost any problem or any issue any situation even if i knew i was probably gonna get in trouble i i knew she would handle it in a way that i could confide in her or ask for help so she was i i think she was very unusual i i mean you know everybody might say that about their mom i don't know but you know i think she's very unusual because she was somebody who you know could be the discipliner and the best friend at the same time and i think that's a very hard thing to do my mom was kind of like you know always radiating joy and always radiating friendship and and so people would be very attracted to her and she was somebody who was really easy to be around somebody who would help anybody i mean whether she knew him or didn't know him or maybe even didn't agree with them she would still help them and so i think she was a very unusual person that way she was a bit of a free spirit but but she you know um wasn't way out there uh you know she was somebody who i think and i think that's what may i think being a free spirit is what made her be so open and so giving and so willing to accept you know really almost anything and anybody and and i don't think that's normal and and i think she did that to a much greater degree than most people could do or would do well i think my mom probably instilled very deeply and again i think it's probably for all three of us but you know an obligation to help other people an obligation to respond to people who are in need my mom was always helping people i mean that her whole life was about helping other people and so i think that there wasn't any way we could be around her without absorbing that and having it become like part of our dna i mean i just think you know we're very all three of us are very responsive people to um situations where others don't have what they should have or have what they need to have and then i think you know with her and my dad setting up the foundation it just gave us the financial ability to respond to a lot of that and that's what we spent a good part of our lives doing in the last you know 10 years or more i would say that she was not frustrated at all that my dad was not giving away a large amount of money because he has a very logical you know rationale for that i mean i remember when ted turner criticized him you know for not giving way more money i thought well that may be your opinion but it's a very narrow opinion because my dad is taking money and making more money and he the more money he has the more money he can make and so you know his ability to make money and generate returns as a result of not giving it away too early actually means will be a much greater i mean a much greater benefit later on and that's a very rational argument and i think my dad's right about that and so i think she understood that and i think you know from time to time she might have been a little frustrated you know trying to get him to loosen up here and there but i think overall it was not some great frustration that he wasn't generous he's very generous in his own way but he does that based on you know his analytical uh analysis of you know how he sees things and how he views things and it's very hard to argue with most of how he analyzes things well i think it depends on what the circumstances are i mean i can remember when i we were out in emerald bay one time and i remember exactly how old i was but it was uh you could actually figure this out because it was when the strike was going on at uh at the paper in buffalo new york and i just sat there fascinated kind of listening to his side of the conversation and then he would hang up and i asked him some questions and he would explain to me i mean at that point in time what he's seeing is he's seeing a set of circumstances that he knows when he's going to start losing money he knows how much money he's going to lose and he knows what his tolerance level is for losing the money for the long term gain of getting guys back to work he's got that all calculated out and he knows what that is now his decision on that may not be the same as somebody else's decision but his decision is usually the best decision when it comes to something like that and so you know in that case he's seeing uh pretty much numbers i mean he's saying you know you know what can i afford how far can i afford to go before it costs me enough that i can't recover it and so i would say that's a numbers game and i think most of what he does is a numbers game and that's what he focuses on you know when you're a kid growing up you don't always pay attention to everything your mom and dad are doing but um there were some things we couldn't ignore because because she would kind of pull us into them or we would you know there were big enough things going on in life that that um they had some kind of influence but you know i remember her being very involved in in like the uh women's league of voters um not getting really in to i don't ever remember getting really into the political part of politics but i remember getting into the you know the part that encourages people to vote participate um and be part of the process and and that and that and and her involvement that was very much about uh coming from the angle of civil rights that all groups were involved all groups were had a fair opportunity to be involved so i think you know we saw that uh what she was doing and spending her time on you know she used to go down to what we would call the projects in north omaha and and do different things and and you know i went with her quite a few times uh when she went down and and you know got engaged in different activities so i saw a lot of that and i saw her engaged in that and i think that that absolutely wears off i mean you see that and you pick it up and and you learn things from it and i think what you know what i learned from it was that she was a very compassionate person who had empathy for circumstances that were not circumstances that you or me would want to be in and and so i think it was her actions that i learned from not not what she would talk about but what she would do well he's my dad's a creature have there's no question about that whether it's you know hamburgers or cherry cokes or whatever i mean you know he but i i think a lot of us are that way um but you know he also has had a a very clear philosophy of you know doing what you're good at and sticking with that i mean he used to always tell me you know everybody has a circle of competence and stay within it and then he'd always remind me mine was a little bit small but you know i mean jokingly but i think you know um and there there's a lot of truth of that i mean that is great advice people get in trouble when they get outside of their element when they get outside of their competence level and so you know he's somebody that lives in that circle and that means you create certain habits it means you do things a certain way on a pretty normal basis and that's what he does but i don't think that's so unusual for i mean most people have personal habits that just don't change and you know somebody might focus on him because he's famous today and so you know they zero in on something the truth is that's probably not much different than 95 of the people in this country i think omaha is a great place for my dad because he he doesn't want to be you know in big groups he doesn't want to be he doesn't look for attention i mean you know he he doesn't avoid it today because it's part of what is kind of goes with with what he's done and what he's accomplished but you know he he's he's a loner in a sense i mean he he is not somebody who's going to follow a group he's not somebody who cares about being a groupie he's not somebody who cares about you know going to parties or being involved in you know the things that a lot of people want to be involved in so i think omaha fits well i mean he can you know people have respected him well in omaha um he's somebody who can kind of blend in and and he's obviously very uh friendly and and so when he's around omaha people see him he's you know it's an easy thing for him omaha is easy for him new york would not be easy for him and so i think you know omaha is a perfect place for him and it was a perfect place for us to grow up as a family i would i would say the one thing my dad does that almost nobody else does and i mean a lot of people write about this is that you know he zeroes in on something he gets to understand it and know it better than probably most people would have the patience to do and then he sticks with it i mean you know he hasn't made these brilliant investments all the time i mean he does some that are very complicated and very intelligent and very difficult i'm not you know i wouldn't you know say that that isn't part of what he's done but you know buying you know going out buying branded companies and hanging on to him for 20 or 30 years is something that anybody could do but but people but most people don't do it because they don't have the patience and and they and everybody wants to get rich quick everybody wants to make a buck today and so what makes them really different than most people is he just he's in it for the long haul and that's that is him and so that's a very different trait than a lot of investors have and it isn't that there aren't other guys out there like wally white's or other people you know that that have a similar investment philosophy but he's done it extremely well and as he's gotten you know as he's earned more money he's placed bigger bets and he's just stuck with those bets and that has really paid off for him he doesn't stick with something when it doesn't make sense anymore i mean you know uh he's gotten in and out of some investments but for for the most part he's somebody who is very um he's a very loyal person and he's very loyal in his investments my dad's very competitive and i think he's also pretty smart about what he decides to compete in or with you know he's he's not going to try to take something on that he probably won't be successful with but when he's into something he's extremely competitive oh i think my mom was a huge uh part of my dad's success i mean she was the foundation she was kind of the rock in terms of you know always holding everything together and she did that in a lot of ways she did that for him emotionally she did that for us as a family she did that in a way that she took on you know probably more responsibility than a lot of wives would have taken on just to make things work and she was very committed to that and she was very committed to making our family work and to do that she was very committed to making sure my dad was successful well it was it was hard for me um i think you know i took the position that that's whatever the decision and conversation was with her and my dad was none of my business i mean i just didn't ever ask about that and that wasn't what i was really concerned about because they were they were always you know it wasn't it was almost like nothing changed with their relationship i mean it wasn't like it was some you know big thing that caused problems and created you know bad feelings i mean nothing nothing like that ever happened that i ever saw so it was just more the idea that she was moving away you know physically moving away i mean probably very selfish reaction on my part because it was like you know well she's going to be further away i won't see hers off and she won't be as involved you know on a regular basis so my reaction was more probably about how it affected me and i just i just felt like that was not it's not my business i mean they need to work that out and so it wasn't something i really got very deeply involved with i mean i i mean i i think one of the reasons it was important for her to leave omaha was because she just felt like she was kind of trapped in this environment that that everybody knew who she was that she you know couldn't have her own identity that she couldn't kind of just go out and do something without people recognizing her and and that was true and so um even though she's a very giving person everybody needs you know their own life and they need their own you know uh time where they can privately do what they want to do and she couldn't do that in omaha and she really couldn't do that in omaha and so i think you know she wanted to move somewhere where she had some autonomy where she could just be herself and not always worry about being pulled into something or being recognized she was kind of i mean when she moved when my mom moved to san francisco um obviously we didn't see her as often and that was why i wasn't you know thrilled about her moving but um you know if you could take these little snapshots as to when we had christmas or when we did other things together you you wouldn't have known that anything had changed i mean you know and so i i think it's pretty unusual i don't think that's a normal set of circumstances but it worked for them and it worked for us well oscar is you know a very self-contained person i mean she's not somebody who is looking for attention or wants attention i think she's one of the few people in the world to be honest with you who could be with my dad today and i think my brother and sister would give the same answer and none of us think that she's there for any other reason that she's there to support him i think that's very unusual i mean i think very few people would do what she's doing and have it really be what comes naturally for them and so but she's a very private person i i never get asked about you know how did it work with oscar and my mom and if i did i would just say i you know who cares i mean you know i mean they made it work and that's what matters and so i again i felt like it was just not something that involved me or was for me to to be involved with you know when you have kids you know there's things that your kids will ask you to help with and for the most part you stay out of their personal life and i felt like you know that that's oscar and my mom and my dad however they're working that out that's their personal life that's not my business well i i remember because i was on my way to a board meeting in india uh that i served on and uh and i remember saying to her that um well i'll go to the board meeting i'll be back and you know i'll see you when i get back and she actually broke down and she rarely cried and she just started crying said no you need to stay here and you need to come out for the operation and so that's you know that's when we all went out and she had this you know amazing i think it was like 14 hours or so it was an amazingly long operation she came through it really well but um you know she she did not talk a lot about that i mean she's she wasn't looking for sympathy or you know i mean she just would kind of tell us what she thought we needed to know other other people probably knew much more about it than i did to be honest with you because i always felt like you know um i didn't pry into her business or or you know i don't pride in my dad's vision you know they're going to tell me what they want to tell me and i think that's typically how you should treat people yeah well i mean i think he was he would have done and was trying to do whatever he could to support her and you know one of those things was to just physically be there and you know i can remember when when i would go back and you know it was unpredictable i mean you didn't know i would go with her sometimes when she would get her treatment and sometimes she would just have to go home and rest other times she would want to go take a walk and sometimes that was two blocks sometimes it was ten blocks and it just completely depended on how she felt physically and i think i mean my dad did what all of us tried to do which was just be there physically to spend time with her and support her the way that she wanted it so i was i'd just gotten off an airplane and landed in johannesburg south africa and my s my the guy there peter kinnear who was to pick me up uh had i call i always would call peter and say okay i'm here i'm getting my bags i'll be out in 20 minutes or something and peter said you'd call your sister and i said well it's like 2 a.m or something i'll call her in a little bit he says no you have to call her right now so i actually thought something happened to my dad i don't know why i thought that but i guess i thought you know my mom had had this recovery it was successful and why would anything happen to her at that point and so yeah i called my sister and she told me what was going on and it was like okay how do i get home and she was like well get a private airplane i said well it won't matter because you know it's still going to take the same amount of time to get home and they'll have to get up you know i mean where's the plane going to come from and we were all talking about how the logistics of how to get back because at that time she was on her way to the hospital she hadn't actually died and so um you know she was trying to figure out how she was actually going to the airport getting on a plane going to idaho and i was trying to figure out how to get home and then you know she let me know that she died so then it was it was like okay i just need to figure out how to get back and they and they kind of you know susie just slowed everything down and just made sure that you know i could get home and it was a long trip home you know i think it depends who the person is what the relationship is i mean i i have this is going to sound strange but her death was not that difficult for me because i think i had an amazing relationship with her when she was alive and she was a huge part of my life so when she's gone there's nothing i can do about that but i had no reason to look back and feel like i should have done this or wish this had happened or anything like that so i mean i think you know for me uh it may sound strange but it was not that difficult it's difficult to lose somebody don't get me wrong but it was not that difficult to deal with the fact that you know i mean i think it's one of the things that i learned from my dad i mean you know it's a practical part of it i mean there's nothing i can do about it there's nothing i can change about it it's a fact it's you know it's happened and you have to deal with it and so for me i just looked at it as if you know i had had you know the greatest mom the greatest life of my mom she was my best friend always supported me so there was nothing for me to look back and go i wish it had been different yeah we actually talked about it for months to be honest with you i mean the first time uh he sat down with susie and in our house when i was in omaha and just talked to susie and i about it and some of the ideas he was thinking about and you know we had a little bit of back and forth on his what he was thinking and what did we think of it um and then as he kind of got geared more up on on trying to get something done um we all kind of had some input on it and and discussed it and then he decided how he was going to do it well um my guess is it's complicated but i don't know i mean you know they're they're friends they're probably a little competitive they're um they have different interests but you know they have some things that are parallel i mean i'm sure um i don't i mean i don't ask how his relationship is with bill gates i don't really know how to answer that but i'm sure it's i'm sure it's not simple well ultimately you know when my dad's gone what happens at berkshire would be a decision by the board and there's no guarantee the board will put me in as a non-executive chairman my dad has suggested that the board has been very supportive of that if that's what i'm asked to do that's what i'll do pretty amazing i mean you know he's done a lot for many many people i mean i think one thing you know our society measures things in wealth and if you want to measure it that way um he has probably made as many people wealthy as any single individual ever did and did it in a very unique way um and a lot of the people that he has helped over that period of time are very generous people and so they have helped millions of other people and so it's just it's it's really you know it's it's it's almost like the the pay it forward you know uh movie where you know you just you know i i'll help you but you have to help other people it's happened naturally i mean it's happened without him ever he would never suggest to somebody you know who has made money whether it's through his you know uh him doing it or somebody some other way of doing it he would never suggest how you should spend your money um you know he would be glad to give advice on it he would be glad to share his experience with it but he would never say this is what you really should do and so i think you know in his case he has made he has given a lot of people the opportunity to use you know financial resources to help a lot of other people in the world and that's something not everybody can say you know i think it's hard to say what his legacy is because i think different people interpret it different ways um i think you know he's somebody who will absolutely be remembered for berkshire hathaway and what he built and that's been the most important thing to him in his life and um so i think that'll be i think to me that'll be the overreaching part of his legacy that the majority of people will talk about when he dies and the majority people will remember him for well i mean somebody had to keep my dad on his toes so you know i i kept challenging him a little bit i mean i was a very challenging kid um you know my mom played the biggest role in trying to keep everything under control um i am you know probably even what i do today is a bit of you know what i did when i was a kid which is just i like challenges i want to do things differently and i'll push stuff to the limit and i'll take risk and that's just who i am and and that's how i made and so you know as a kid when you don't have good judgment and you don't understand all the consequences sometimes you you do more things than you should do and i was that kid i did that and you know there there was times when i you know would really push it to the limit and not not not illegal things not things where you know i was gonna end up jail that kind of thing i never came close to that i wouldn't give up on anything that i thought i had a chance at getting done or accomplishing so i think you know um my mom saying i would survive in any circumstances is probably a fair description i would i would give it a good fight um and i think that's part of what drove me when i was young i mean i always wanted another challenge i was never satisfied with what i had well i was pretty preoccupied i do remember it for one reason because it was the right in the heart of it uh was when i got a call and and i was asked if i want to go to work at archer daniel midland at 8 am and so i called him because i wanted i called two people i called don keo who was president of coca-cola at the time and i called and don talked to me about it and then i called him and i got a hold of him and he just said um i can talk tonight as long as you want to talk but you know i'm getting ready to go under congressional hearing and you know but i'm available tonight as long as you want to talk so you know even under all that pressure um and this is what he was so good at under that pressure he could he could kind of um compartmentalize things so he could deal with that and then he could step away from it and and he when i talked to him that night you you would not have known that he was involved in something as huge uh as an and as critical as what was going on solomon you you would never know it i mean he's totally focused um and and relaxed uh and we talked for more than an hour you know that evening talking about my decision to go so i mean i i think that's the best example i can give to you about how he was then i mean he was very i'm sure inside he was probably tied up in knots and tents and you know um upset but he did a pretty good job and not showing it i can't remember exactly i know he's getting ready for the testimony because he was in new york and it was with a bunch of lawyers and with the you know different people and whether whether it was the next day or not i don't know exactly what the timing was because i don't remember that but he just i remember him referring to it and saying but i can talk to you um as long as you want to talk to you know tonight just call me you know after seven or eight whatever you told me i don't remember um but i i mean that that's that in itself is a pretty amazing characteristic because you know a lot of people would break down under that a lot of people you know would not handle that pressure as well as he did but i i think that's one of the things that makes them really unique and i think that's a trade object that i've really kind of inherited or learned or however you do it from him i love pressure i love being under pressure you put me under pressure and all i'll respond better than if i'm not under pressure and and and i learned that from him i watched him do that his entire life i mean this is a guy who you just keep throwing stuff at him and he will just keep coming and he won't slow down and he won't he won't let it deter him from what he's trying to accomplish and and i watch that and i love that characteristic i think you know it is uh it's an amazing characteristic to have and and i don't know whether that's a learned characteristic or if that's part of your dna or what it is but um it's something that i think he helped me learn how to do and and i love it and my wife will tell you that you know i'm that way and i think he's very much that way well it's got this amazingly unique name the howard g buffett foundation uh which actually it came from when my parents set it up they set it up under our names and suzy's changed hers and which is an interesting story because she stole the name from me and then you know peter changes i've just never changed mine but you know we have evolved over time but one thing we've been consistent on is we've consistently worked on agricultural development and and particularly in developing countries although we do some here in the united states we've worked pretty consistently on on on the preservation of water resources or the impact of water resources and particularly more specific to agriculture and then we've really the last five or six seven years we've worked a lot on conflict mitigation well you know i i think my farming is kind of a funny thing because my it's not something that you would think i would ever do it's not something i would have thought i would ever done growing up my mom used to say that i didn't have enough talkatoys when i was little and i think that actually may be true so you know i love big equipment again farming is a huge challenge i love challenges and it's something i i had no idea how you farmed at at 20 years old when i rented a farm for the first time i had no idea what i was doing um but that's that's my life i mean i i have done most things that i've done in my life i've had no idea how to do them at the beginning and i've had to learn how to do them and i think something people don't understand my dad always says stay in your circle of competence but that doesn't mean stay in your comfort zone that's very different my dad would go outside his comfort zone i'm sure all the time and i go outside my comfort zone all the time i mean and it's it's what challenges you to learn and to do better and and and to be able to expand um what you do do in your lifetime and so you know you should never confuse those two things and and so farming to me was totally getting outside my comfort zone i had no idea how to do what i was doing but i learned it and today it's a huge part of what i do in my lifetime or in my life and it's a huge part of what our foundation does and and i think it's a great lesson and and obviously i would never have done it without those kinds of things without the encouragement from both my mom and dad and and my dad as a role model watching him just do all these things as he goes not there there's not a textbook for what he did there's not a textbook for what i do um i don't want a textbook i i want to write part of the textbook and that's what he's done in his lifetime as he's he's written a whole new book um about business about philanthropy um and some of those things are successful and some of them aren't but you know when he when he wrote the letter to us saying here's the money i'm going to give you and here's here's how it's going to work and here's the process and here's what i think you should do he put something in that letter that was incredibly important to me which was exactly how our foundation behaves which is you know if you're gonna try to bat a thousand you won't do very many things that are important but if you're willing to basically strike out a few times you can really change something big and he did that's a paraphrase he said it a little differently than that but that that's what it was it was basically a license to go take risk it was a license to go out and try to take on some really big issues and it was his way of saying it's okay to fail you don't have to succeed every time and one of the biggest problems in philanthropy is everybody feels they have to tell a success story and i start by telling people what we did wrong what we failed at because those are the lessons it's easy to talk about the stuff that you've got right it's hard to talk about the things that you got wrong and that that is that's another trait that my dad taught me is you know it's not about you know just talking about the success it's as much as talking about what didn't work and what went wrong and how do you help other people not make the same mistake or how do you use that in your future decision making

Channel: Kunhardt Film Foundation

Views: 12,346

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Id: 9SY1OCV0vko

Length: 43min 29sec (2609 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021