Guy Spier: Why Warren Buffett’s $1 Trillion Success Wasn’t Just About the Money

During their recent episode, Taylor, Carlisle, and Guy Spier discussed Why Warren Buffett’s $1 Trillion Success Wasn’t Just About the Money. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Tobias: I’m glad to hear that. I wanted to open this by saying that Berkshire Hathaway today has crossed $1 trillion-

Jake: Wow.

Tobias: -in market capitalization, which is quite a run from the $10 million that Adam Mead tweeted out today was when Buffett started buying $20 million when he got control. Has there ever been a run like that?

Guy: There probably has been. [laughs] Think of the guy from Teledyne, whatever his name was.

Tobias: [unintelligible [00:00:59]

Guy: Yeah, he’s been pretty freaking amazing. And not that I’ve ever– [crosstalk]

Jake: Henry.

Guy: Yeah, Henry Singleton. And not to mention Domino’s pizza and a whole bunch of things that, in retrospect, you could say have been amazing runs. But I think the point about this is that the people who invested at the $10 million market cap with Warren knew that he was going to have an incredible run at the time that they invested. They didn’t know how big it would be or how long it would go for, but they knew that they were in for the ride and it was going to be great.

That’s what’s, I guess, the difference between that, and so many of these other things where it would have been much harder to discern. We’re all on the search for what the next big, long hill to roll down will be with whom. That’s really tough. Really, really tough. We just want to find another Warren Buffett.

Tobias: What do you take? You’ve studied Buffett in pursuing your own investment philosophy, and you’ve written about the lunch being very significant. What do you take from the way that he has conducted his investment and business over his life?

Guy: I think that, actually what I’d say is to take a company from $10 million to a trillion is kind of obscene.

[laughter]

It’s ridiculous when you think that he’s can’t spend any of the money. Well, he stopped being able to spend any of the money a long, long time ago. And so, why the hell is he doing it, and what’s worth saying– At the launch, because I was up close, I realized that because he wasn’t pretend– That’s what he enjoys doing. Before even you got on, Jake, I was telling Tobias, all the things I like doing.

I like going swimming in the lake of Zurich. I like going for bike rides. I like all sorts of things. I’m far more human than Warren Buffett is, but in a way, we want to invest with people like Warren who want to find them and invest with them and hold on for a very long time. It’s funny. This came up for me recently. It was a conversation that Mohnish and I had a long time ago where he said that, “He would happily swap his life for Warren’s.” I was like, “No way. Warren’s towards the end of his life, and we were at the time more at the middle of our lives, and I want to have all that enjoyment. I’m rich in seconds, and Warren’s less rich in seconds.”

The big divergence or the big lesson for me at that launch that scared me a little bit was– In order to be more like Warren Buffet, have those amazing returns and all those good things, you need to actually want to live your life like Warren Buffett, except that would have been miserable for me. What was absolutely incredible for me to realize was that, that was actually Warren Buffett’s best possible life. So, he was not doing what he was doing, because he was trying to optimize the path to a trillion. He was doing what he was doing, because that’s what he loved to do every day. I enjoy coming into the office every day, but I also enjoy going swimming, all those other things. So, yeah, I don’t know. Did I give a good perspective?

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