Sam Parr paid $2 million for a lunch with Warren Buffett in 2007 when his net worth was $84 million. Buffett spent three hours answering any question they asked, ending only when they ran out. He wanted them to feel they'd gotten a bargain and treated the whole thing like a teaching session.
In 2007, my net worth was like $84 million, and Warren had been running these charity lunch auctions where once a year you could bid on eBay to have lunch with Warren Buffett, and the money would go to the Glide Foundation, which was feeding the homeless in San Francisco. So I thought about it. It's okay, $84 million, what's an appropriate tuition bill? I said $2 million is good. Warren's agenda when he has these lunches is really different. His agenda is he wants the people who won that lunch to feel like they got a great bargain. He would take lemon questions and turn them into lemonade. He's always— is exactly what he does in the Berkshire meetings is he's a great teacher. He was trying to give as much value as he could in that lunch. He told us when we met him, he said, "Look, I got nothing going on all afternoon. When you guys are sick and tired of me, you just let me know and I'll leave." We kept asking him questions for 3 hours and then we were exhausted. We said, "Warren, we just don't have anything else to ask you."
