Why Charlie Munger is My Greatest Mentor!

hi it's Robert herac welcome to my series things I've learned from a billionaire in order to become a billionaire my first one was around the incredible Mark Cuban who I've had the privilege to know for many years the next one is about Charles Munger who needs no introduction prolific investor I hope you enjoyed how I met Charlo when I lived in La I was obsessed with soul cycle there are some amazing instructors I love the intensity I love the community of it no one really cared about what anyone else did because her common Bond was

the class one day one of my friends in the class says to me his boss is a big fan of Shark Tank and he'd like to meet me I kind of Let It Go didn't think too much of it at the time a few weeks go by and he says my boss is actually Charles Munger and he is a big fan of sh tank and would love to meet you my first reaction was sure you work with Charlie so I let it go again a few weeks go by again and my friend asks again this

time I figure it must be real and would love to meet Charlie so I say yes rearrange a meeting I hop in my car and I start driving I get to the address and I look at the house and I think it it's a nice house but it's from the 50s it's not modern it looks exactly like it did in the 50s so I drive around the blog thinking I must have the wrong address I finally go in it turns out it's the right house it's the same house Charlie bought in the 50s loved it

and stayed in it houses Showmanship and Flash were not his thing I walk in and that's the first time I meet the incredible Charles Munger why did Charlie want to meet me of course I had to know why in the world would he want to meet little old me so I asked him his answer you seem like the sensible nice one on the show and I love the show wow he called it great entertainment about one of his favorite topics investment one incredible compliment he wanted to meet me for no other reason than he has

an insatiable appetite for business and people and was extraordinarily curious he found out through one of his partners that did Soul cycle with that guy and he mentioned it to him and that was it I'm sitting in Charlie moners house he wanted to talk about everything he's one of the few people that ask more questions than I did during Co we used to do Zoom calls he and his team want him to stay sharp and a bunch of people like me would call him on a regular basis just a chat as I'm getting older and

worrying about my own longevity I realize how vital this is and occupied and curious mind is a young mind Charlie was in his '90s extremely sharp the key is surround yourself with people that inspire you keep you sharp and keep you curious about this incredible thing we call life one thing he was really proud of as humble as he was and he rarely talked about success was his book poor Charlie's Almanac the wit and wisdom of investing in fact he was so proud of it he gave me a sign copy in our first meeting the

sad thing is I've moved the houses so many times I have no idea where it is I hope I find it one day in one of my moves this is the story of the incredible Charlie Munger he passed away earlier this year I missed talking to him he was a great man 10 Things I have learned from billionaire to become a billionaire the Charles merer version number one be humble the first thing you know about Charlie is the lack of pump and Circumstance his house was simple nice but simple he well his staff and there

was only one person at this point Charlie was in a wheelchair made me lunch I forget what we had the first time but I think it was cheese and ham on white bread with butter or something like that the decorations were simple he wore a suit and tie I suspect he wore that every day I think it was just the way he was it was a sign of respect to him not for himself or to show off but to the people he met he came from the day where serious people wore a suit humble and

simple don't judge a book by a traditional cover wealth does not always express itself in the way you think never assume that the one with the flashiest toys is the richest one in fact in my experience quiet wealth is usually the most powerful and the biggest wealth if you need to tell people how rich you are in general you're probably not that rich Charlie was a simple guy and none of the outward stuff mattered to him lesson don't judge others by the toys you see great wealth tends to whisper not shout the goal is not

necessarily to get a billion but the goal is to learn how others have done it and apply it to yourself this is simply my journey and what I have learned from some of these remarkable people there are different types the first thing I have noticed about these people is how different they all are there's no look there's no way they act there's no outward physical characteristic some are short some are tall others are incredibly fit and pour every penny into longevity and living wellth and some have horrible habits that make you wonder how in the

world are they still alive it's all different some are incredibly showy they have Yachts super fancy cars own sports teams dress incredibly well and you know from far away there are billionaires instantly and some are so simple and humble that you would not know they're wealthy until you meet them or someone tells you about them this story is about one such billionaire Charlie Munger simple in all things except his mind and business humble and gracious the complete opposite of some of my other billionaire friends he is the small town quiet billionaire where not for his

partnership with Warren Buffett no one would ever know his amazing weal number two use money as a resource not as an end goal in all our discussions about wealth and money I never remember him saying about how he wanted to make a lot of money in the sense of oh I wanted to be rich it took me a while to figure that out he always talked about the making of money as part of a larger goal one business would make money they would use that money to buy another business and so on I realized that

I talked about money as an go not as a process I wanted to get rich Charlie wanted to buy an insurance company to disrupt the insurance business in order to buy another business me I just want to make money to be rich I was thinking about money as an end goal and it's not I don't think of money that way anymore it has nothing to do with being rich or wealthy or any of that it's about how you think about money the funny thing is an immigrant we never ever talk about money I used to

ask my parents how much money is that guy make or what do you think that house is worth and they would tell me don't talk about money it's rude honestly I think my parents would have rather talked about sex at the dinner table than money it messed me up for many years and my relationship with money money is a tool no different than a hammer or a saw if you want to build the house of your dreams you need to know how to use the tool lesson money is not an end goal it's a tool

to be mastered to build the life that you want if I gave you a million dollar and told you to spend ,000 a day you would run out of money in 3 years if I gave you a billion dollars it would take you 2,740 years to run out of money or think of it this way you could have spent ,000 a day since the day Christ was born and still have money billionaires so how many of them are there as of last count there were 3,194 in the world America has by far the most billionaires

around 813 China is second with about 400 America despite all the challenges real or perceived continues to be the Bastion of capitalism and while you can derive the political system I can tell you from person personal experience having lived in communism democracy is still the way to go curiosity feeds the mind and the wallet Charlie was a legend and I have to admit I was in awe when I first met him I had a million questions I wanted to ask him about life about investing many things I have a habit of asking people a ton

of questions to the point I can make people feel uncomfortable I have a Natural Curiosity about life and people and I find people fascinating and I just don't mean powerful wealthy people I mean all people a good friend of mine who's a Pastor said something to me a long time ago that I think is very much true you will never find anything in life as fascinating as another human being and I think it's very true but before I had a chance to ask Charlie a million questions or even a single question he started asking me

questions about me where I came from Shark Tank my parents how the show worked he loved shark tag he asked me a ton of questions I learned a lot in that not the least of which was the key to good answers was great questions lesson curiosity did not kill the cat but it made him richer and more informed number four life is long prepare when I met Charlie he was in his 90s just think about that for a second in his 90s he passed away only 34 days before his one 100th birthday life is long

at the time I was in my 50s and feeling really old I meet Charlie and I realize he's 40 years older than me you know what what put in perspective for me I thought backwards 40 years I was 10 I don't remember a single thing a 10 think of the life I've lived in 40 years and he was that much older than me when you look forward it doesn't seem long but when you take that time and and look back it's long you're never going to be younger than you are right now in some ways

life is very short and you need to get going by other ways life is long you have more time than you think one of my favorite sayings is constant forward momentum think about each of those words constant one at a time not short bursts of energy but success is constant doing the low things every single day forward that does not mean you're always moving forward sometimes bad happens you go backwards but you're always trying to face forward and momentum life is energy as they say life is a Vibe I'm on a big training binge right

now working with an amazing trainer I'm trying to get lean and build strength can't you guys see it though I look great one of the things I have learned from him it is much harder to do a full pullup or pushup one at a time from a dead stop than doing many in a row why momentum once you get going you build a certain amount of momentum and that propels you forward but if you stop between each pullup and hang your body dead still and then do another pullup every time it's super hard you're starting

over every single time your body carries no momentum from one to the other it's the same in life momentum carries you forward now here's the thing about momentum it cannot discern good from bad bad habits can accelerate and soak in good ones lesson you have more time than you think constant forward momentum buy a business run by idiots in one of our meetings asked Charlie Optica what's the best kind of business to buy I was expecting an answer around certain categories certain amount of eida some Financial parameters margins BL but instead without hesit and he

says to me buy a business that can be run by an idiot Charlie I'll just knew how hard it was to run a business and how complex but he and Warren Buffett look at businesses that could be run by an idiot they didn't mean people were idiots but they wanted a business that was easy and so well set up that almost anyone could run it they believed they were smarter than the average person and could add some guidance and capital and make it better but the foundation had to be a great business that someone had

built to a point where it was operating smoothly obviously this was hard which is one of the reasons they bought so few companies as Steve Jobs once said it is incredibly complex to make things simple simple as hard and operating a business that an idiot run is really hard the point is a business based on telling is very difficult to buy because guess what the talent walks at the door every single day this is one of the reasons they never invested in tech for such a long time Tech is based on talent and on technology

that can change and does very very quickly soda insurance tends to be constant the other thing they liked about more traditional businesses is the barriers to entry they're massive da Coke is a distribution business all over the world the infrastructure is massive to disrupt that would take a lot of money and many many years keep in mind to an investor if you're business is based on a small group of Highly talented people it's going to be hard to sell you don't want to always be the smartest person in your business investors generally want to buy

your business and not you listen build build a business that can be run by an idiot investors like simple investors are not operators know which one you are Charlie was a great investor I'm an okay investor I think I'm a better operator it is good to know what you are Charlie and Warren were very clear which lane they were in they were investors they put Capital to use they bought businesses to deploy that capital and get more Capital back they were famously longterm investors but in all of that they were very clear they were not

there to operate again a different model may not work for everyone but worked really really well for them they did not buy businesses to change them they very rarely made management changes and famously many of their businesses many years later still run by the same people that were in place when they bought them they did not want to invest in the business to fix it or come in and tell the team how to run it they don't want to operate they want to invest lesson stay your lane it's better to pay a good price for

a good business than a bargain price for a bad business but met Charlie had made 13 Acquisitions in my own business some of them were very small million dooll business and some were large $40 million business I become pretty good at it especially considering at that point I owned 100% of my business business as my business got bigger it required more and more capital and I was spunding it on my own we got to hundreds of millions in sales so it was becoming challenging I had to buy businesses on an earnout meaning a smaller amount

of cash up front and a chance for the owners I was buying to earn more over time that required a lot of faith on their part and my part by the time I met Charlie I had learned it is much better to pay a good price for a good business than a great price for a bad business Charlie was all about that they did not buy bad businesses they did not look for bargains or a business they could buy at a discount their view is they wanted to pay a good price for a good business

that was on its way up as opposed to one that was declining lesson it's better to pay a good price for a good business they get a bargain on a bad business it's hard to be simple touchdown this before but is a very very important Point most of my conversation with Charlie were simple he was obviously a super smart guy and understood investing in financials on the level I did not but most of our conversations were about business and Leadership and pretty simple Concepts he loved to break down things into simple ideas and Concepts he

believed that people tended to over complicate things simple as hard I learned this from him and it stuck with me from for many years I used to go to meetings where people were explaining their business to me or my team was telling me about some incredible idea how we were going to go after this Market segment and how we were going to do it if the answer or explanation was highly complex it tended to be not such a great idea Charlie knew that simple is hard and simple ideas are usually the best it's the execution

that is hard there's an old saying in business when explaining things the kiss concept keep it simple stup stupid it's very much true lesson simple is hard but usually the best path forward money is not a Ferrari although that's nice too it's freedom I have learned this lesson by the time I met Charlie to a point I was still worried about money not about how much I had because at that point I had well more than I needed but I was still caught up how am I doing compared to that person do I have the

best of this toy or that toy it was impossible to meet Charlie and not realize how little money mattered to him in terms of what it could buy him but how much it mattered to him as a tool he lived in the same house in La that he bought in the 1950s he ate simple he lived simple the great wealth he had accumulated was simply freedom to him the freedom to live the way he wanted and the freedom to spend time with only the people he wanted to hang out with in business they call that

Fu money Fu you money meaning that you can say F you to anyone and do whatever you want I remember when I was younger having these conversations with my friends and thinking about how much is Fu money we would all talk about buying a Jet a vacation house and all these things was it 50 million was it 100 million but I've realized this money is not about buying the things you you desire or crave or you think you crave money is about the freedom it buys you for some people it's very simple for others it's

really complex I love toys and I love to play with things and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a Ferrari or two but if the pursuit of that interferes with my freedom I am very clear the freedom is more important people tend to get trapped into the pursuit of things and don't realize it's a trap of your time a better home a better car a better vacation house a better school always in the pursuit of better and more of it at the cost of your freedom lesson money is more important for freedom than more for Ries

just because you can afford it doesn't mean you should buy it when I met Charlie I was very rich but not very wealthy and there's a difference to me I had enough money to do whatever I wanted but I needed to work my wealth was tied up in my business my business failed I failed my wealth faltered nothing wrong with that but I was the working Rich again nothing wrong with that I could do and afford most things to a point but I still had to be careful because my business needed my money and my

time a few years later I sold my business to equity and things changed my wealth was no longer solely tied to the business I was no longer the working rich I was just the rich I could buy anything I wanted literally anything and I did a bigger jet a yacht and so on I hav't insatiable appetite for life and for playing with things I love toys but I got to a point that I was living for the toys and there were all a lot of time and work a large Y is super fun but it's

work we had a crew of 18 at one point it was like running a small business nothing wrong with that but I don't want to spend my time on that one of the lessons I learned from Charlie just because you can afford it does not mean you should buy it buying more stuff is work again no judgment and I have a ton of friends of tons of stuff and are super happy with it all as different as these people are there's a couple of characteristics that they all do share in fact there are three first

there are obsessed with their business not passionate or really love it they are obsessed with it sit down with any of them and get into a conversation about their field and it'll be ours passion fades obsession is always two they're curious many of these people ask me more questions than I ask them they're curious about others they're curious about the world they just want to learn it's hard to get ahead if you're not curious and three they make no excuses this is probably the most common characteristics they've been beaten up they've been down they've had

nothing but they never blame their circumstances they never say if this or that they take responsibility for their lives and they've all come back from incredible odds most of these people don't come from privilege and yes most will admit they have been incredibly lucky but it is the lack of excuses that really hit you it's the old red car Theory that's a whole another story as a guy admirer says in his great book endure Cameron Haynes no one cares work harder you had a bad upbringing your parents weren't there you have bad things happened to

you you came from a communist country and you're dad was in jail all the time no one cares work harder well that was my story of Charlie moner and the 10 things have learned to become a billionaire and not just in Australia if you enjoy this content Please Subscribe and let me know what else you'd like to see