James Altucher
Forbes
1) House. I really did drive right up to his house in a cab. Here’s his house:
It’s a 5 bedroom house he bought in 1956 for $31,500. Its one house among many on a normal suburban block. The guy next door to him might as well be worth $0 and his next door neighbor is worth $60,000,000,000.00
To me, that shows a lot of discipline. Every time in my life I’ve ever made money I would make the mistake of buying a home. Here’s a story about Buffett. He’s playing golf with a bunch of people and they all bet a dollar on a particular hole. Buffett won’t bet. “Why not, Warren?” they ask him, “you’re worth a gazillion.”
He said, “I never break my discipline.”
By contrast here's the house of his bridge partner Bill Gates:
(a 9 building compound worth $150 mm)
2) He was rejected from Harvard Business School. If you think about it, Harvard must have a pretty bad reputation by now. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg hated it so much that they dropped out. And the one time they could’ve landed the best businessman ever, they rejected him. Like most smart people, Buffett didn’t even really want to go to college. He started out at Wharton but then switched back to his hometown college in Omaha because he didn’t like it. Then, after being rejected by the best business school in the country, he went to Columbia.
The reality is that people at the genius level (Buffett, Einstein, Gates, etc) have no use for college but some cases (Buffett) reluctantly go through the motions.
3) He was a victim of reverse anti-Semitism. When he originally wanted to work for his mentor Ben Graham, on Wall Street, Graham said, “no”. Buffett was shocked and asked why. Graham told him it was because he wasn’t Jewish. Graham wanted to save a spot in the firm for a Jewish person. To be fair, Graham was worried that Jews couldn’t be hired anywhere else on Gentile Wall Street so he wanted his firm to be Jewish-friendly.
The key to success though is persistence. Buffett went back to Omaha but kept pitching ideas to Graham until Graham eventually hired him. Persistence is the only sure-fire method for obtaining success.
4) Zen. Its not so bad to pick up the habits of Warren Buffett for a week and try them out:
No computer on his desk
No cell phone
He plays bridge 12 hours a week (I guess he uses a computer at home for this). Bill Gates is often his bridge partner.
Try it for one week: no computer, no cell phone, play a game for at least 12 hours for the week.
(Buffett and Gates playing bridge)
5 ) Love. There’s a fun story about how he actually took over Berkshire Hathaway. It was more ruthless than anything JR Ewing would do. And I’m not going to mention the intertwining personal relationships he had. That’s well-documented everywhere. But I give him credit for being open, unconventional, and living the life that best suited him with the least amount of stress. As his daughter, Susan, says: ""Unconventional is not a bad thing. More people should have unconventional marriages."
But, one thing struck me as interesting. The annual meeting is about eight hours long. I don’t recommend it to anyone. I can’t remember anything he said except one thing. Actually I remember something Charlie Munger (Buffett’s number two) said. Something to the effect that long-term you better bury all your guns and valuables in the backyard and at that point Buffett shut him up.
But one thing Buffett said always stuck with me. Someone asked him, “How do you measure success?” And all 20,000 of us leaned forward to hear what the “magic number” was. But he said this: “I measure success by how many people love me. And the best way to be loved is to be loveable.”
And that, to me was the most unusual thing about Warren Buffett.
