We went to one of the Berkshire buildings, and met Warren Buffett on the top floor in the “Cloud Room”. He had free Cokes for everyone and did a Q&A that lasted about 2 hours. He spent about 10-20 minutes answering each question. I took a lot of notes during his talk and Q&A, and much of what he discussed is very applicable to the note business. I decided to go over these in a series of blog posts. I’ll publish these over the coming weeks, although these blog posts aren’t necessarily going to come out back to back.
He said if you have a 160 IQ you should sell 20 or 30 points because you don’t need them. The other analogy he made was there is no point in having a 500 HP motor if you don’t use all of it. If you have a 300 HP motor and use all of it you will be fine. He also said he has never asked anyone what their IQ was in a job interview and didn’t seem concerned with grades either. To me this means that taking action is much more important than being smart. You can have the greatest mind for note investing in the world, but if you don’t do any deals then being smart doesn’t do you much good.
Only do things when you are ready
He said if you could only make 20 investments over the course of your life, you would get very rich. The reason is with only 20 you would think them all through very carefully. This makes a lot of sense to me. There are always plenty of opportunities out there so there is no need to fire from the hip. However, I think this needs to be balanced against becoming too cautious and getting caught up paralysis by analysis. Of course, doing 20 deals is way more than the 0 deals that most people do anyway.
If it’s raining gold, go outside with a bucket, not a thimble. Don’t be afraid to take big swings.
This one I really loved. Let’s forget for a second that if it was actually raining gold and you went outside that you would get hit in the dead and die…. I believe strongly that there is a huge opportunity in notes right now. That’s why I quit my day job to focus on notes full time, as opposed to muddling through trying to do both and slowing the growth of my notes business. I want to collect as much gold as from notes that I can while the opportunity is available.
These three nuggets just scratch the surface on what he talked about. I have a lot more to share from this experience that I plan to publish in the coming weeks.
Quest Expo August 25-26
I will attend the Quest Expo in August, and hope to see you there. It will be held in the Westin hotel in Dallas. This is a great way to learn more about how to use your SDIRA. If you use the discount code SDIRA18 you can get 50% off. You can get tickets here.