¶ Introduction and Reflection on Time
Hey, good morning, everybody. Lee Brower here. Welcome to this week's edition of Meaningful Monday. I am grateful to be here, and I am glad to be here. What if I said, can you believe it's the end of the month already? Gosh, we just started this year. Where did time go? What's the feelings that's coming from you when I say something like that? Is it energizing, or is it taking that energy away? Is it an abundant mindset, or is it a scarcity mindset? mindset.
¶ Meeting Warren Buffett and His Unique Ability
Compare that with, gosh, can you believe how much we've accomplished in just 30 days? Now you're into that abundant mindset, but you're also into that growth mindset. Now I'm going to link that with something in just a minute that somebody very, very smarter than me that I admire, and that's Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett. Imagine, how many of you, imagine sitting down with Warren Buffett and being able to ask him any question you wanted to ask him.
I had that opportunity. Yep. Out of any of my doing, I certainly didn't earn it, but I had a good friend. Okay. And the good friend was Michael Levitt, who happened to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources. And he gathered a very small handful of just a few businessmen and women, and we were able to fly to Omaha and have dinner with with Warren Buffett at his country club. He drove up in his old pickup truck. You know, what a great guy. What a down-to-earth guy.
One of the questions that was asked, Warren, what do you consider, what do you attribute your success to? Now, this is different than how did you become successful. This is what do you attribute your success to. He said, number one, I can walk into a business and I can look around and I'll see more opportunities that nobody sees. He says, I don't understand why everybody can't see it. He said, but I see those opportunities. Now, what are we talking about here?
We're talking about his unique ability. You know, you've often heard him say, I can say, he said, one of the key to success is he says no 99 times out of a hundred. Do you think people are putting some really exciting opportunities in front of him that are just off the charts? But he has the power to say no to even the very important because he understands his essential. He knows what's important to him. He knows where he can get the most out of
his unique ability. There's something there that we can all learn from. Number two, he said, well, Well, he said, number two would be,
¶ Warren Buffett’s Success Attributes
I build cheerleaders. I'm a cheerleader. Now, I don't see Warren in pom-poms, you know, short skirt shaking. A cheerleader, he cheers leaders on. And that's what he does. Out of the 62 companies at that time, 60 of the original founders were still working for the company, even after he acquired it. Do you think they're better leaders? He invested in them. Arrows out. Arrows out. The third thing is, he said, I was born in America.
Now, you talk about gratitude. So what we're seeing is a blend of gratitude with unique ability and arrows out, all coming together that makes the man Warren Buffett. Now, recently I saw an article that was in Inc. Magazine that reminded me of several other things. And I'm going to pull a little extracts of that. But I'm going to share with you three things that if you will apply these three things in your life that come directly from Warren Buffett, they're common sense, but they make sense.
In your life and in the lives of those you influence, I predict that your life will become even more meaningful. You'll have more energy. You'll be more on purpose. You'll be in more direction. So let's see what they are.
¶ Three Lessons from Warren Buffett
Number one, in his words, go to bed smarter each day. What does that mean? That means make your learning greater than your experience. It's a quote that Dan Sullivan uses all the time. Our past is our great teacher, our greatest teacher. Imagine going going to a college course and never opening up the book, never putting notes. Imagine living your life that way. We go to bed at the end of the day and we've had this learning experience and we just let it wash away.
If we just take the time to go to bed smarter each day. One of the things that Warren says, he says that knowledge builds up. It's like compound interest. Make whatever progress you can and improve each day. All right. The second thing, Be around people better than you are. To quote Buffett, he said, I learned that it pays to hang with people better than you are because you will float upward a little bit. And if you hang around with people who behave worse than you,
you start sliding down the pole pretty soon. It just works that way. So what would you call that? So you look at the one thing is the constant learning. Be around people that are greater than you are. Invest in them. Be the leader. Be the cheerleader. Get the people around you that will elevate you, that will lift you. He said, the third thing is invest in yourself. Invest in yourself. The best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something.
People are going to give you some of what they produce in exchange for what you deliver. What's Warren's words, not mine. He says, whatever abilities you have can't be taken away from you. They can't be inflated away from you? He said, the best investment, stop right there, the best investment, okay, by far is anything that develops yourself. And guess what? It's not taxed at all.
Three lessons that you can use. Three lessons that you can use if you just remember, go to bed smarter each day, hang around people better than you are, and invest in yourself.
¶ Conclusion and Call to Action
You will be a better leader. You will be in a positive space. You will say at the end of this next week, I can't believe how much I've learned in just one week. Let's make that our mantra, shall we? Let's make it our vision for the next seven days. When you can put a mark down and say seven days from now, I'm going to ask myself, how much have I learned in the last seven days? I'm going to say, I can't believe I've learned this much in just seven days. Let's do it.
Make life meaningful. Live life deliberately. Onward, upward, and outward. Have a great week. We'll talk next week. Bye-bye.