1: Growing up, billionaire Charlie Munger learned an important lesson from his father.
His dad was a lawyer. “One of his best friends, Grant McFayden, Omaha’s Pioneer Ford dealer, was a client,” Charlie writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack.
“He was a perfectly marvelous man, a self-made Irishman who’d run away uneducated from a farm as a youth because his father beat him,” he notes. “So he made his own … continue reading
1: Billionaire Charlie Munger was once asked: What should a young person look for in a career?
“I have three basic rules—meeting all three is nearly impossible, but you should try anyway,” he writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.
Rule #1: Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.
Rule #2: Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire.
Rule #3:… continue reading
1: Sometimes life is going to be hard, Charlie Munger tells us.
“Another thing to cope with is that life is very likely to provide terrible blows, unfair blows,” he writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.
“Some people recover and others don’t,” he observes.
So how should we deal with “life and its various passages [which] can be hard, brutally hard”?
Charlie … continue reading
1: Let’s say our goal is to help India.
“The question we should consider asking is not ‘How can I help India?’ billionaire Charlie Munger writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.
“Instead, we should ask, ‘How can I hurt India?’ We find what will do the worst damage and then try to avoid it.”
This is the power of thinking backward and … continue reading
1: Billionaire Charlie Munger, the longtime vice chairman and “right-hand man” to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, was well known for his fiercely independent thinking.
He took pleasure in rejecting the “wisdom of the herd” and going his own way. Regardless of what others thought or what they might be doing.
Yet, equally important, although perhaps not as well known, was Charlie’s willingness to change his mind when … continue reading
1: The good news?
“Every person is going to have a circle of competence,” Charlie Munger writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack, the Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.
The bad news? “It’s going to be very hard to enlarge that circle,” Charlie observes.
Until his passing in 2023 at the age of 99, Charlie served as Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, founded by Warren Buffett. Berkshire is … continue reading
1: There are currently eight companies worth over $1 trillion.
Six are technology companies. The seventh is Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, which some consider a technology company.
The eighth trillion-dollar company is Berkshire Hathaway.
“One of these things is not like the other,” goes the saying.
Berkshire Hathaway was led for many years by Chairman Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger until he died in 2023 at … continue reading
“To a man with only a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail.” -Proverb
1: B. F. Skinner was a renowned Harvard psychology professor.
He “may have been the best-known psychology professor in the world,” Charlie Munger writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.
The reason for his reputation? He proved that “incentives are superpowers” by conducting experiments using … continue reading
1: “Some Scandinavian canoeists succeeded in getting through all the rapids of Scandinavia.”
Charlie Munger, the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, was delivering a commencement address to the 2007 USC School of Law graduates.
“They thought they would continue their success by tackling the big whirlpools in northwest America,” he continued.
Things didn’t work out so well. “The death rate was … continue reading
1: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Friday, I share something about myself or what we are working on at PCI.
Searching for a bit of wisdom as we push to end 2024 on a strong note and start 2025 with a bang.
“You’re standing in front of an elevator. The … continue reading
