Connecting with the right people
In today's fast-paced world, people often measure their network by the number of business cards or followers. But for Buffett, sincerity and the value you bring are what truly matter. One quality relationship can change your entire journey.
Entrepreneur Duan Yongping (the billionaire founder of Oppo and Vivo) once paid $620,000 just to have lunch with Buffett. After that meeting, his wealth grew exponentially. Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo, also dined with Buffett and is now a billionaire.
Valuable friendships and relationships don't come from showing off, but from persistent self-improvement. Eventually, you will be rewarded.
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Billionaire Warren Buffett. Photo: Yahoo |
Billionaire Warren Buffett. Photo: Yahoo
Focusing on the right things
The issue isn't how much time you spend, but where you invest it.
Buffett once told Columbia University students, "If you only get 20 punches in your life, would you still swing randomly?" Every major decision is like a golf swing; it needs to be precise because you don't have many chances.
When the US market crashed on "Black Monday" in 1987, most investors panicked and sold off. But Buffett sat calmly under a lamp, reviewing 10 years of Coca-Cola's financial reports. He realized it was a brand deeply ingrained in consumers' minds, a sustainable money-making machine. So instead of selling, he held onto that investment, which resulted in a profit of more than 30 times his initial investment.
Or take Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Upon taking office in 2014, he boldly eliminated the phone division, focusing on cloud computing. Just seven years later, Microsoft reached a $3 trillion valuation.
Therefore, "Doing more isn't necessarily better. Sometimes it's a disaster," as Greg McKeown wrote.
Creating irreplaceable value
When a 19-year-old Zuckerberg typed the first lines of code that created Facebook, it was just a website for rating campus attractiveness. But 10 years later, its network effect had created a fortress no one could replicate.
This is the "convexity" phenomenon that Black Swan author Nassim Taleb wrote about: each new user not only adds a unit of value, but also increases the value of the entire system exponentially.
Jeff Bezos didn't invent cloud computing, but he turned idle servers into a "digital power plant" that brings in over $80 billion annually.
For Buffett, innovation isn't about miraculous inventions, but about rearranging existing components in new ways. By age 30, many people have invested, failed, and lost their way, but Buffett believes great success often comes after 30.
The book that changed his life was One Thousand Ways to Make $1000. He read it as a child and understood the power of compound interest, practically memorizing the book.
If you're struggling financially, try reading this book. Not because it holds a magic formula, but because it helps you understand the core principle: getting rich requires not just hard work, but knowing how to choose the right snow and the right slope.
Life can be challenging, but if you choose the right snow and the right slope, the snowball will roll itself.
Bao Nhien (According to Baidu)
