Warren Buffett: A Bunch Of Qualities That Will Make You Rich

Video length: 00:04:59

Transcript

Play one game with me for just a minute and then we’ll get to your questions. I’d like for the moment to have you pretend that I’ve made you a great offer and I’ve told you that you could pick any one of your classmates – you now know each other probably pretty well after being here for a while – you can have 24 hours to think it over… You can pick any one of your classmates and you get 10 percent of their earnings for the rest of their lives. And I ask you what goes through your mind in determining which one of those you would pick. You can’t pick the one with the richest father, that doesn’t count. I mean you’ve got to do this on merit, but you probably wouldn’t pick the person that gets the highest grades in the class. I mean there’s nothing wrong with getting the highest grades in the class. But that’s not going to be the quality that sets apart a big winner from the rest of the pack. Think about who you would pick and why. And I think you’ll find when you get through that you’ll pick some individual – you’ve all got the ability or you wouldn’t be here otherwise, and you’ve all got the energy. I mean you’ve got… the initiative is here, the intelligence is here, throughout the class. But some of you are going to be bigger winners than others. And it comes down to a bunch of qualities. That. Interestingly enough are self-made. I mean it’s not how tall you are, it’s not if you can kick a football 60 yards, it’s not whether you can run a 100 yard dash in 10 seconds, it’s not whether you are the best looking person in the room. It’s a whole bunch of qualities that really come out of Ben Franklin or the boyscout code or whatever it may be. I mean it’s integrity, it’s honesty, it’s generosity it’s. It’s being willing to do more than your share. It’s just all those qualities that are self selected. And then if you look on the other side of the ledger, because there’s always a catch to these. You know, free gifts and Jeannie jokes. And this is the fun part. You also have to sell short one of your classmates pay 10 percent of what they do. So what do you think is going to do the worst of the class, this is way more fun. And think about it again, and again it isn’t the person with the lowest grades or anything of the sort. It’s the person who just doesn’t shape up in the character department.