The Oracle of Omaha

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Warren Buffett is on my mind today because I’m headed to Omaha for the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting. It’s my first. Every year, people worry that it’s Buffett’s last. 

Buffett is widely quoted and seldomly emulated. 

That thought came to me reading a summary of Buffett’s sayings compiled by David Senra, the creator of the Founders Podcast. 

It’s hard to come up with a comparable example of someone who so dominates their industry, openly explaining the basis for their success only to have so few people follow.

The core of what makes Buffett different from other money managers is that he seizes opportunities to make large, concentrated bets at opportune moments. 

Most money managers measure their performance relative to benchmarks, overweighting or underweighting select securities. They invest steadily. They rarely hold cash. 

Buffett is also distinguished by a genius for communication. 

He has an accessible, folksy style of speaking. He tells memorable, relatable stories. 

He publishes an annual letter written in plain English and holds a yearly meeting in Omaha that is educational and entertaining. 

Again, very few CEOs in business follow his lead.

If you want to be more like Buffett, Senra’s list is a good place to start. 

Here are six of the life and business lessons that stand out to me. 

--Explain big ideas in simple language

--Measure achievement, not activity

--Run the business like you own it

--Keep the organization small 

--Make concentrated bets 

--Seize rare opportunities 

Here is the entire list Sentra extracted from the book, A Few Lessons from Warren Buffett: 

1. Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.

2. A funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. 

3. The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph.

4. Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me.

5. When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now.

6. The roads of business are riddled with potholes; a plan that requires dodging them all is a plan for disaster.

7. A compact organization lets all of us spend our time managing the business rather than managing each other.

8. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

9. The most elusive of human goals: Keeping things simple and remembering what you set out to do.

10. Just run your business as if: (1) You own 100% of it; (2) It is the only asset in the world that you and your family have or will ever have; and (3) You can't sell it for at least a century.

11. The right players will make almost any team manager look good. 

12. Just tell me the bad news; the good news will take care of itself. 

13. Our managers have produced extraordinary results by doing rather ordinary things—but doing them exceptionally well.

14. It's difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.

15. On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous.

16. Charlie and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.

17. Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost  operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead

while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors.

18. Tomorrow is always uncertain.

19. The trick is to learn most lessons from the experiences of others.

20. In allocating capital, activity does not correlate with achievement.

21. The less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

CASHTAGS: Howard Lindzon from Social Leverage was in town this week for the first annual Cashtag awards sponsored by his company StockTwits. The awards were given to people who posted financially relevant content on social media.

WE DON’T KNOW: I think the answer - “we don’t know” should be more accepted and even celebrated for its honesty.

YOU TUBE: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your kids are?

NYC EVENTS: I saw a tweet by Sherveen Mashayekhi inviting anyone who was interested to attend his podcast in which would-be founders pitch their startups Shark Tank-style. It’s called the The Feedback Loop and the event was in a loft near Gramercy Park. This is your regular reminder that you can just go to things. And many of them are free.

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME: A reminder from Schopenhauer not to read the unreadable.

P.S. Hit reply if you have something to share about today’s newsletter. Did anything stand out? Are there any stories or themes I should cover? You can also click on the poll below. I review every reply - so say hi!