Scient @scientxbt

In 2007, Mohnish Pabrai paid $650,000 for one lunch with Warren Buffett. He expected one meal. He ended up with years of private dinners with Charlie Munger. By then, Pabrai had made more than $70 million applying Buffett’s ideas. He decided that 3% was a fair tuition bill, set his limit at $2 million, and won the auction for less than a third of it. He expected nothing beyond the chance to say thank you. Before the lunch, Buffett’s assistant collected biographies of every guest. Buffett studied them all. Then he told the table there was no time limit. He had nothing else to do all afternoon. Buffett wanted the person who paid for lunch to leave believing he had bought a bargain. During the meal, Pabrai told Buffett that his wife was a fan, but the real love of her life was Charlie Munger. Buffett got competitive. He called Munger boring and promised to arrange another lunch. Once they met Charlie, he said, they would understand that Buffett was the more interesting partner. Pabrai thought he was joking. Two days later, Buffett’s assistant emailed Munger’s assistant and arranged the lunch. The plan backfired. Pabrai enjoyed lunch with Munger even more. A friendship followed. From 2009 on, Pabrai and his family met Munger for dinner every three or four months. Pabrai also played bridge with him at the Los Angeles Country Club every two or three months. The original lunch also brought yearly invitations to Buffett’s private Sunday brunch after Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. Pabrai later described the $650,000 bid as “buy one lunch and get infinite lunches for free.” He tells the full story in the attached video. After watching it, read the article below. It organizes Charlie Munger’s 25 rules for avoiding costly decisions into a practical checklist.

Lima @limalemonnn

3 weeks ago

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@reidgrows a tiny ego decision can compound into a massive capital allocation mistake

@xbtlevi historical figure, top investor of all time

Ten million people have watched an MIT professor accidentally destroy the executive coaching industry. He filmed it once in January 2018 and died eighteen months later. Executive coaches charge fifteen thousand dollars a session to teach a third of what he covered in one hour for free. His name was Patrick Winston. He ran the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 and wrote the AI textbook every computer science major in the world read for thirty years. Every January for four decades, he gave a lecture called "How to Speak." His entire framework fits on a napkin. Do not read. Be in the image. Keep images simple. Eliminate clutter. Start with an empowerment promise. End with a line the audience can repeat over dinner. Never open with a joke. Never end with "thank you." That last rule alone has probably cost the executive coaching industry a hundred million dollars. "Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order." That is the argument Winston makes in the opening minute. He believed it strongly enough to spend fifty years teaching computer scientists how to communicate. Founders spend $80,000 on an MBA and then hire a communications coach to teach them the same material Winston filmed once for free. Engineers write brilliant code and lose promotions to teammates who watched this lecture on the train. The full 60-minute lecture is free on MIT OpenCourseWare. His textbook is free on his page. Winston died in 2019. He reduced a complicated subject to rules people could use in their next meeting. The article below does the same for money. Four numbers show how long you must work, what an hour is really worth, how long you can live without income, and whether your savings are actually growing.

Lima @limalemonnn

a month ago

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@MadCrash_X exactly

@reidgrows it's true

@velesxbt exactly

@verumxbt because “thank you” often replaces the line people should remember

@quroolarc exactly. he treated speaking like system design

Charlie Munger said this on camera weeks before he died: "I don't regard Elon Musk as truly that rich, because I don't think it's sure that everything he's working on can work." Then he went further: "I would not invest in Elon Musk myself." Munger wasn't judging Tesla's product or Musk's talent. He was judging the pattern. Musk had used so much borrowed money, Munger said, that he had pushed himself to the edge of extinction two or three times. Asked how often Musk had reached that edge without falling in, Munger answered: "He's done it three times. Maybe he's got six more." This came from a man who spent nearly six decades alongside Buffett, building Berkshire on the opposite principle. They took smaller positions than they could afford and used less debt than was available, so one bad stretch could never wipe out the people who trusted them. Munger called problems he couldn't fix the "too hard pile." Earlier in the same conversation, he put nuclear war there. Elon Musk went into the same pile. "I never met with him," Munger said. "As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't exist." In his 1995 speech The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger described the traps behind decisions like this: overoptimism and excessive self-regard. The article below organizes Charlie Munger's 25 Rules for Avoiding Costly Decisions into a practical checklist.

Lima @limalemonnn

3 weeks ago

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@verumxbt it's true

@reidgrows buffet is legend. great share

@mrcsxbt Musk and Buffett with Manger represent completely different approaches to business, Musk is a builder

this is insane. i genuinely don't understand why ambitious people aren't shown this lecture before their careers start consuming their entire lives. clayton christensen spent his career studying why successful companies collapse. in his final class, he asked students to apply the theory to themselves: if you keep allocating your time the same way, what life are you actually building? he had already seen the answer in his own harvard mba class. everyone looked successful at the fifth reunion; by the 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, many were unhappy, divorced, and living far from their children. work shows you the score immediately. close a sale, ship a product, finish a presentation, earn a promotion, get paid. an hour with your child may produce nothing you can measure today; it may take 20 years to understand what that hour built. so the next free hour goes back to work, one rational decision at a time. this is how people build lives they never planned: through hundreds of right decisions that lead in the wrong direction, day after day. the full 19-minute lecture is in the attached video. money, titles, and headcount are easy to count. christensen believed a life should be measured by the people who became better because you were there. he died in 2020. one question remains: if someone saw only where your time, energy, and attention went this year, what would they think actually mattered to you? charlie munger described 25 psychological tendencies that influence decisions about money, work, status, and other people. read the article below and run the 25-point audit on one decision you're making now.

Lima @limalemonnn

3 weeks ago

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@verumxbt your calendar usually reveals your priorities before you do

@mrcsxbt It's worth it

@limalemonnn you're welcome