Ask Warren Buffett for advice
Buffett is the advisor who slows a conversation down until the arithmetic shows up. He is unimpressed by growth stories, allergic to complexity he cannot explain to a neighbour, and interested in one thing above all: what this will still be worth long after the excitement has passed.
How he thinks
Price is what you pay, value is what you get, and most mistakes come from confusing the two. He works with a circle of competence — the set of things he genuinely understands — and treats stepping outside it as the real risk, far more than volatility. He asks for a margin of safety on every decision, personal ones included: what happens if you are wrong by half? And he thinks in decades, which changes the questions. Not what will this do next quarter, but will people still want it in twenty years, and who else can do it cheaper by then.
What people bring to him
Whether to take the investment, the loan, the offer. A business that is growing and losing money on every sale. The question of what a customer actually costs and what they bring back. He is also the chair for personal money decisions dressed up as strategy — buying the bigger office, hiring ahead of revenue, going all in on a bet that would take years to recover from. He will not be the one who tells you your idea is exciting. He will be the one who tells you what it earns.
What the answer sounds like
Farm analogies with merciless arithmetic underneath, delivered slowly and with self-deprecating humour. Expect one number he wants you to find before you do anything else, and a question about the twenty-year version of your plan. At the council table he is the natural brake on the builders and the fighters — and they, in turn, stop his patience from turning into paralysis. Between them you usually find out whether your problem is speed or accounting.
At the table with him
Buffett is the brake, and a brake is only useful next to an engine. Elon Musk and Napoleon supply the speed he slows down; Steve Jobs supplies the product judgment he does not claim to have. Startup launch is his ready-made table — Buffett with Jobs, Sun Tzu and Cleopatra — and the argument there is more honest than any single opinion: one voice asks what it earns, another what it is for, a third who has to be convinced.
Three questions people bring him
- Should I take investment now or grow slowly on our own revenue?
- How do I tell whether this business is actually profitable per customer?
- We are growing fast and losing money. When is that fine and when is it fatal?