Mettle by…
Donald Trump
SALESMAN AND RINGMASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE: OWNER, TRUMP ORGANIZATION; 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The greatest business lesson I’ve learned in life is the same message I have for young people across America: Never give up. Even in the most difficult circumstances, have faith in yourself, confidence in your abilities and the conviction that you will be able to win for your family, for your business and for your country. But you have to relish the fight – you have to enjoy coming in to work each day and going to battle for what you believe in, and for the people who you believe in. And if you do that, if you keep moving forward, then each victory along the way will feed into another victory, and another opportunity, and another chance for a breakthrough. By building this momentum, by pushing, by never backing down and by refusing to allow other people to define your limits, you will bring your goals into closer range, and you will accomplish them. America is a land of dreams, and if we chase those dreams with all of our hearts, then our country will be greater than ever before.
Listen by…
Oprah Winfrey
TALK SHOW MASTER; SYNDICATION SUPERSTAR; BRANDING JUGGERNAUT; FOUNDER, OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK
I was invited by Nelson Mandela to stay at his home for 10 days. At first, I was very intimidated. I’d said to my partner Stedman, “What am I going to talk about for 10 days and 10 nights at Nelson Mandela’s house?” And Stedman said, “Why don’t you try listening?” So when I was there, halfway through my visit with him, I got comfortable sitting and being with him. First of all, when you go to Nelson Mandela’s house, what do you take? You can’t bring a candle. What I wanted to do really was leave something that would be of value. When we were talking one day, we started a conversation about what was in the newspaper: poverty and how to change it. And I said, “The only way to change poverty is through education, and one day I would like to build a school in South Africa.” And he said, “You want to build a school?” He got up and called the minister of education. By that afternoon I was in a meeting, talking about building a school.
Warren Buffett
THE ORACLE: CEO, BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY; ARGUABLY THE GREATEST INVESTOR AND BIGGEST PHILANTHROPIST OF ALL TIME
When I was 7 or 8 years old, I was lucky in that I found a subject that really interested me – investing. I read every book on that topic in the Omaha Public Library by the time I was 11. Some of them more than once. My dad happened to be in the investment business, so when I would go down to have lunch with him on Saturdays, or whenever it might be, I would pick up the books around his office and start reading. (If he’d been a shoe salesman, I might be a shoe salesman now.)
I bought the book that became the largest influence on my investing life by accident, while I was at the University of Nebraska. I read and reread The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham, about half a dozen times – it’s incredibly sound philosophically, very well written and easy to understand. And it gave me an investment philosophy that I’m still using today.
That strategy is to find a good business – and one that I can understand why it’s good – with a durable, competitive advantage, run by able and honest people, and available at a price that makes sense. Because we’re not going to sell the business, we don’t need something with earnings that go up the next month or the next quarter; we need something that will earn more money 10 and 20 and 30 years from now. And then we want a management team we admire and trust.
My favorite investment, one that embodies this philosophy, is Geico, which I learned about when I was 20 years old, because I got on a train and went down to Washington and banged on the door on a Saturday until Lorimer Davidson, who would later become CEO, responded. He answered my questions, taught me the insurance business and explained to me the competitive advantage that Geico had. That afternoon changed my life.
Here’s a product that now costs, on average, about $1,800 a year. People don’t want to buy it – but they do want to drive. And they hope they never use it, because they don’t want to have an accident. And Geico was a way to deliver that product for less money than people had been paying. When Berkshire bought control of it in 1995, it had about a 2% market share; now it has a 12% market share, and we are saving the American public perhaps $4 billion a year against what they would be paying if they had bought insurance the way they had before. A simple idea when Leo Goodwin founded the company in 1936. The same simple idea now.
Ben Franklin said it a long time ago: “Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.” The quaint language aside, it means don’t just satisfy your customers – delight them. They’re gonna talk to other people. They’re going to come back. Anybody who has happy customers is likely to have a pretty good future.
But ultimately, there’s one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself. Address whatever you feel your weaknesses are, and do it now. I was terrified of public speaking when I was young. I couldn’t do it. It cost me $100 to take a Dale Carnegie course, and it changed my life. I got so confident about my new ability, I proposed to my wife during the middle of the course. It also helped me sell stocks in Omaha, despite being 21 and looking even younger. Nobody can take away what you’ve got in yourself – and everybody has potential they haven’t used yet. If you can increase your potential 10%, 20% or 30% by enhancing your talents, they can’t tax it away. Inflation can’t take it from you. You have it the rest of your life.
Customer service by…
Sean “Diddy” Combs
HIP-HOP MOGUL (BAD BOY); FASHION MOGUL (SEAN JOHN); LIQUOR MOGUL (CIROC)
I started my business career at age 12, delivering newspapers. I had a lot of elderly customers, so I would always put the newspaper in between the screen door and the door – that caring made me different, made me better than the last paperboy. Since then, I’ve always understood that if I give the customers my best and service them differently, whether music, clothing or vodka, I’ll get a return on my hard work.
Data by…
Billy Beane
THE MONEYBALL MAN: OAKLAND A’S EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
In sports, you’re not allowed to just survive. People cheer for teams that win. And it’s a zero-sum game. You don’t get partial credit for losing. I never doubted the Moneyball approach. We had two choices – intuition or data. Before, it seemed like we were making decisions on a roulette wheel, and when we were correct we celebrated the good guesses and applied some sort of clairvoyance to it, as opposed to just pure luck and random outcome.
So instead, we were very rational, logical and fact-based. What was interesting was the resistance. When we applied data to decision making and relied on objective reasoning, it was held to a perfect standard. If it was not correct 100% of the time, the response was “I told you that number s–t doesn’t work.” But it did work. And then we had to evolve again. As soon as you think you’ve completely figured it out, you’re probably in trouble. Every business is a living document, an algorithm that needs to be improved.