Warren Buffett’s 2 Questions That Reveal Everything About a Business | Berkshire 2025

[Transcript]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, my name is Alitia Burk (PH) and I’m from Poland but I currently live in Chicago. This question is on behalf of an inspiring man that I know, Wid Ahmed (PH), who’s here with us today.

Mr. Buffett, nearly 74 years ago, on a cold Saturday in January 1951, you traveled 8 hours by train from New York to Washington. You went all the way on nothing but hope that someone might teach you more about the insurance industry. Arriving at GEICO’s office to find the doors locked, you persisted until a janitor let you inside.

You credit that meeting with Lorimer Davidson for the insurance float that was the rocket fuel behind Berkshire’s success.

In 2011, when I was 15, I wrote to you with similar determination asking to meet. You kindly wrote back saying you had only 3,000 days left and more pressing priorities. (Laughter)

Well, Mr. Buffett, it’s now been 5,000 days since you replied. (Laughter)

So respectfully I ask again Mr. Buffett, before father time wins, will you please grant Wid Ahmed an hour of your time or any time you can dedicate? Thank you so much for your time.

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you. And I will say this, I grant an hour to everybody of the 40,000 here. (Laughs)

Well I have an interesting time the rest of my life. But I will give you one tip.

I found that when I was very young, and I would drive around to various companies all over the country. Because I was very young and these were companies were offbeat, and they didn’t have investor relations departments then, almost every CEO would see me because they figured they’d never see me again. And they weren’t getting calls like that.

And I would ask them two questions. I would explain to them – it’s not a bad idea, incidentally – if you’re going to walk into somebody’s office and you say you want 10 minutes of their time, take a hourglass and stick it on the desk of the person you’re talking to and turn it up so it’s going to go for 10 minutes. And you say you're going to get – you’re going to leave in 10 minutes unless they ask you to stay. And that sets the terms.

But once you have that, if they're in the coal business, we'll say, which happened to be one that I was interested in 70 years ago or so, you just ask them one question: "if they were to be stuck on a desert island and they had to own only one of their competitors’ stock during the 10 years they were going to be on that island, which one would it be, and why?"

And then after they give you that answer, you said the same thing, "if you were going to short your net worth while you were on that island, which would it be and why?"

Because every manager likes to talk about their competitors. They’re like a bunch of school kids, you know, when they get into talking about their competitors.

I probably learned more about various industries by just making sure that they didn’t think I’d stay too long and that in the meantime they would have the floor and talk about their competitors. I kept my own mouth shut in those days. That’s a lesson I’ve lost somewhere along the line.

But the – you essentially – they've outsourced, I shouldn't say outsourced. But they’ve departmentalized investor relations in all companies of size frankly now.

So you’ve got, you know, 3,000 companies or whatever they have and they all have departments and each one of them has an investor relations department practically. And their job is to say this is the best thing you can do today is buy our stock.

Well, that whole concept is total idiocy. But it’s a big business and it gets bigger and the investor relations department gets bigger. And it’s what we have now.

But do a little of your own work your own way.

But Berkshire Hathaway has got plenty of material out there for you to read. And when you get through reading it all, you’ll know way more than most the people that work at Berkshire. (Laughs)

So, you don’t need a personal interview. If we take an hour times even the 40,000 people we may have here, plus Becky’s many listeners and viewers, it just doesn’t work.

So I admire your effort, but you’ll just have to settle for that, as the admiration that you get in this. (Laughs)

Okay.

(Applause)

Source: https://buffett.cnbc.com/2025-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting/

 

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