Warren Buffett describes a Benjamin Franklin thought experiment: pick one classmate whose earnings you'll receive 10% of for life. He argues that long-term success depends less on intellect than on chosen character traits like integrity, honesty, and generosity, formed early through deliberate habit.
Chapters
I'd like for the moment to have you, well, have you pretend I've made you a great offer and I've told you that you could pick any one of your classmates and you now know each other probably pretty well after being here for a while. You could pick. You have 24 hours to think it over and you can pick any one of your classmates and you get 10% of their earnings for the rest of the 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, got to do this on merit. But you probably wouldn't pick the person that gets the highest grades in the class. I mean, nothing wrong with getting the highest grades in the class, but that's not, that isn't 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, you'll pick some individual. You've all got the ability, you wouldn't be here otherwise. You've all got the energy. I mean, you've got, you know, 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 gets down to a bunch of qualities that interestingly enough, are self made. I mean, it's not how tall you are. It's not whether you can kick a football 60 yards. It's not whether you can run the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds. It's not whether you're the best looking person in the room. It's a whole bunch of qualities that really come out of Ben Franklin or the Boy Scout coaters or whatever it may be. I mean, it's integrity, it's honesty, it's generosity, 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 free gifts and genie jokes. You also have to, and this is the fun part, you also have to sell short one of your classmates and pay 10% of what they do. So who do you think is going to do the worst in 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. We look for three things. When we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don't have the latter, the first tool will kill you. Because if you're going to get somebody without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb, you don't want them smart and energetic. So it's that third quality. But everything about that quality is your choice. You can't change the way you are wired much, but you can change a lot of what you do with that wiring. And it's the habits that you generate. Now on those qualities or those negative qualities. I mean, the person who always claims credit for things they didn't do, that always cuts corners that you can't count on in the end. Those are habit patterns. And the time to form the right habits is when you're your age. I mean, it doesn't do me much good to get golf lessons. Now if I'd gotten golf lessons when I was your age, I might be a decent golfer. But someone once said the chains of habit are too, are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken. And I see that all the time. I see people with habit patterns that are self destructive when they're 50 or 60 and they really can't change them, they're imprisoned by that. But you're not imprisoned by anything. So when you write down the qualities of that person that you'd like to buy 10% of, look at that list and ask yourself, is there anything on that list I couldn't do? The answer is there aren't, there won't be. And when you look at the person you sell short and you look at those qualities that you don't like, if you see any of those in yourself, egotism, whatever it may be, selfishness, you can get rid of that. I mean, that is not ordained. And if you follow that. And Ben Franklin did this, and my old boss Ben Graham did this at early ages, in their young teens, Ben Graham looked around and he said, who do I admire? And he wanted to be admired himself. And he said, why do I admire these other people? And he said, if I admire them for these reasons, maybe other people will admire me if I behave in a similar manner. And he decided what kind of a person he wanted to be. And if you follow that at the end, you'll be the person you want to buy 10% of. I mean, that's the goal in the end. And it's something that's achievable by everybody in this room. So that's.
