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Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

lines on the record: 61
first: 2023-01-16
most recent: 2023-01-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And then when you find something that you're interested in, like I was interested, you know, and Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, I'll read every single book and get my hands on. I would listen to every single podcast. So I will list them all. And obviously if you're interested in learning more from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, just listen to them and, you know, listen to them again. And so they're going to talk about inversion throughout the entire book. Munger starts off. That is very much my approach to wisdom. I go around figuring out what doesn't work and then I avoid it. Invert, always invert. I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment than pondering ways to avoid such outcomes. So that is in his personal life, right? But he also talks about it's extremely useful in studying why other people fail in business. To examine how businesses become big and strong, Charlie first studies how businesses decline and die. Buffett says, we have been a student of other people's folly and it has served us well. And then Buffett has a great line on how do you actually practice this? This is fantastic. It is an inversion process. You start”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Munger say variations of this idea over and over again. Let me go back to what Buffett's saying. He's like, hey, we try to be rational, we don't let the outside world, right? We're not going to let the outside world interfere with our own thoughts. We do not let other people's opinion interfere with our own. And then Munger goes back into this thing. Don't mess it up. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success. And then they go on for multiple, multiple pages about one of their favorite ideas is this idea of inversion. I've covered this idea a lot in the other Munger and Buffett episodes. I will list all of them in the show notes down below in case you want to check out, you know, I don't even know how many there are. There might be like eight or ten or something like that. You can also go to founderspodcast.com and see like all the show notes in case it doesn't show up on your podcast player. But I'm going to try to avoid covering things I've covered in past podcasts because I just assume when I make the podcast that you're just like me, that you're a maniac.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just a few sentences. The first thing here is Munger saying, Hey, the one thing that has surprised me all my life is how many people with high IQs do massively stupid things. Someone once said what most distinguishes the foolish and the intelligent is the foolish consistently commits the same stupidities, while the intelligent always find new ones. So that's really funny, obviously. Munger then continues. While an excess of self-regard is often counterproductive in its effects on cognition, it can cause some weird successes from overconfidence that happens to cause success. So what does that mean? That's kind of a weird language there. He breaks it down into a maxim that I've heard Munger repeat several times. And he says, never underestimate the man who overestimates himself. Buffett chimes in. He says, I would say if Charlie and I have any advantage, it is because we're rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our own thoughts. You're going to hear Buffett.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of life. Repeat what works. Moving ahead, there's going to be three main ideas spread across a couple of pages. They're going to repeat these ideas a lot, which is very surprising. One is something that I think you know well, but it's worth repeating. You should aim to be consistently not stupid. Then they talk a lot about do not let the thoughts of others interfere with your own. And then something that I talk about that comes up a lot in conversations with other founders is it's so difficult to build a successful business. And then what happens and what Munger and Buffett are always talking about, it's like, first of all, it's very difficult to build a very successful business. And most likely your downfall once you're able to achieve something that's extremely, extremely rare is not that you're going to be taken over by a competitor or something like that. It's that you're going to mess it up. And they talk about that people, there's something in human nature where people are driven crazy by extreme success. And of course they're able to describe all of these ideas in a way.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people that multitask pay a huge price. I think when you multitask so much, you don't have time to think about anything deeply. You're giving the world an advantage you shouldn't. Practically everybody is drifting into this mistake. This is amazing that Woodmonger says. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. And then Mugger goes in. This is not rocket science. This is very obvious and yet people don't do it, Johnny Ive, in that video. The reason I sent it around so much is he talks about, listen, this seems really simple, but I'm shocked at how so few people do it. So I always, whenever I hear something like that, where it's like, this is really important, high priority, repeat it over and over again, and yet it goes completely against human nature, and you know it goes against human nature because most people don't do it. And I'm like, okay, that alarms go off in my mind. It's like, okay, that is extremely important. That's something you need to master, right? And so Munger goes into this. He goes, it's just this simple. We have enough good sense. When something was working well, we keep doing it. The fundamental algorithm.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of multitasking. They say over and over again what worries me and Charlie Moose is a lack of focus. Munger says this modern generation, which has gotten so good at doing two or three things at once, multitasking, all confidently predict will end up worse than people more and buffet with solitary reading time and less trying to do three things at once. I think people that are multitasking pay a huge price. I think Edwin Land, founder Polaroid, somebody talk about over and over again on the podcast. That's Steve Jobs hero. He would agree with exactly what they're saying. He talks about the powers of intense concentration hour after hour. We actually release things inside of people that they didn't even know existed. I send this video of Johnny Ive to a bunch of my founder friends and in like three minutes he talks about, hey, Steve Jobs was the most remarkably focused person I knew. And so this idea of”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Munger says we both hate this is something that I've really adopted. I think it's one of the best ideas that they have. And it's this idea that you have to schedule time to think and you cannot, Munger is going to say something funny where it's like most people, most business people schedule themselves like a dentist. He's like, well, if you do that every single minute of your day from the time you wake up to you go to bed is accounted for, when the hell are you thinking? And I'll get into why Jeff Bezos picked up on this is such an important thing in one second. Munger says, we both hate to have too many forward commitments in our schedules. We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think i've heard various stories over the years about this. But for example, like let's say you wanted to meet with Warren Buffett, you wanted to schedule something and say, you know, hey, can you meet the third week of next month? He's just going to say no. If you want to meet me Friday, call me Thursday and I'll tell you if I'm available. I interact with a lot of founders. It's completely different than how most founders schedule their time. Maybe we should be learning from their experience. Munger says, we schedule time.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It to you, he says, We actually make decisions very rapidly, but that's because we've spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking. Buffett chimes in. He says, unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world. Most men would rather die than think, and many do. And then Munger says, if you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom. So then they're asked the question, but how do you guys have so much time to read? I always believe that you were very busy and all the time that you had meetings all the time. Buffett says at Berkshire, we don't have any meetings or committees, and I can think of no way to become no better way to become more intelligent than sit down and read. I hate meetings, frankly. I have created something that I enjoy. As I was talking about as company, I've created something that I enjoy. I happen to enjoy reading a lot and I happen to enjoy thinking about things.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Joked at the sign at the field in Nebraska reads Remember Your Helmet. Charlie and I are Remember Your Helmet kind of guys. We like to keep it simple. And then they go into the fact that avoiding problems is better than being forced to solve them. This is a really amazing way that Charlie Munger describes this idea. He says wisdom is prevention. Then Buffett says, it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. And he didn't even look that smart for 39 days. But there are some things you have to think ahead on, and prevention is enormously important. And so if wisdom lies in prevention, how do you gain wisdom? And Munger says, if wisdom is what you want, you're going to get it by sitting on your ass. If you really want to be an outlier in terms of achievement, sit on your ass and read and do it all the time. And then Mugger goes into the fact that because they spend so much time gaining wisdom and preparing, that allows them to actually make decisions really quickly when you have the few great opportunities in your life.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the books written about Munger Buffett, but also a lot of it is from the annual meetings that Buffett and Munger both put on. And so the author organized all this so we can read it in like a conversational format. So you have Munger that says that. Buffett says everyone makes mistakes. I've made a lot and I'm going to make more. That's the nature of making a lot of decisions. Try to live your life totally free of mistakes is a life of inaction. Stupidity is inevitable. It happens to everyone. Wrong decisions are part of life. Being able to make them work out anyway is one of the abilities of those who are successful. And so that's one main theme that they repeat over and over again is the fact that since mistakes are inevitable, you have to structure your life and your business to be able to survive the inevitable bad decisions that you're going to make. And Buffett has a funny little memorable way to describe their approach to being able to survive mistakes. He says, the sign above the player's entrance to the field at Notre Dame reads, play like a champion today. I sometimes”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Psychopath and a monster, and dumber than a bucket full of rocks. And so when I listen to Munger and Buffett speak, or I read their writing, I really do view it as, hey, this is the wise grandfather figure that I never had. They have six decades more life experience than I do. They've seen all kinds of different things, and they've learned from that experience. And then they push that knowledge and the information that they've acquired over their very long lives down to future generations. And so almost all my highlights are Munger and Buffett talking directly to you and I. It is very surprising that they start the book on the subject of mistakes. And so it starts off with Munger saying, mistakes are a fact of life. I'm not gnashing my teeth over them or suffering or enduring them. I regard it as perfectly normal to fail and to make bad decisions. Buffett comes in. Remember, this is going to be like a dialogue between them. I guess I should tell you, so what's interesting about this book compared to the rest of the books that I've read on both Munger and Buffett is they quote heavily, so he uses obviously any.”
2023-01-16 · Founders · #286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source