The Warren Buffett Interview

The “Sage of Omaha,” as the media likes to call him, is one of the world’s richest business tycoons. Yet, his spending habits would make Mother Theresa blush. He would rather have a McDonald’s burger than a $100 steak because “a fancy meal won’t make me any happier,” says Buffett. His self-effacing style isn’t just for interviews; it’s on full display when he’s driving around Omaha, the headquarters for five hundred billion dollar Berkshire Hathaway which he founded in 1959. In 2019, it was the second-largest and second most profitable company in America (behind Apple, where he is the second-largest shareholder), according to Forbes. Buffett runs it like a large convenience store with only 25 people on the payroll to oversee 350,000 employees. By comparison, New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio requires thirty times as many to manage an equal number of employees. Perhaps it’s time we turned over complex organizations to people who, like Warren Buffett, know what they’re doing?

Buffett’s secret isn’t efficiency, just common sense. He lives simply, he governs simply, and guess how he invests? Simple is right. He understands that spending money on bureaucracy doesn’t create value, just a bigger bureaucracy. When he gathers more than 40,000 Berkshire shareholders for the Berkshire annual meeting, it is a love fest for people who are torn between admiration for making them rich and curiosity to learn how he does it so well. What is even stranger, at the same time as he’s minting money, he turns people into smarter, more reasonable versions of themselves. Call it the Buffett way.

If you are lucky enough to be in Buffett’s inner circle, he will even invite you to a shindig he throws the day after at the Omaha Country Club. I was lucky enough to be included and had a chance to chat with the man about various subjects. My conclusion is that while many of us want to be Warren Buffett, the smarter play is to learn to live by the same rules.

Here are a few insights that Buffett shared with me:

Buffett proposed marriage to his wife as part of his Dale Carnegie public speaking homework:

I was terrified of speaking in public. I avoided any class that would require it. Then I finally signed up for a Dale Carnegie course when I got out of school. I spent 100 bucks. I got this little…