How Warren Buffet got his life changing job

The day was in Nebraska, the city was Lincoln, and the 19 year old kid was simply making his way through life when he ran into a book.

Now, let’s step back a bit, let’s gain perspective. Here’s the backstory before that day: The boy was trying to figure out the stock market game, how to pick securities, how to make gains. He had dabbled in some stocks before that day, even bought Cities Service preferred as an 11 year old — 3 for himself and 3 for his sister — and though he had a sense of what could be, he was not sure how the whole thing worked. That boy was Warren Buffet.

In the words of Roger Lowenstein, author of Buffet, The making of American Capitalist:

In fact, he spent a lot of time at the brokerage office in Philadelphia, following various stocks. But he didn’t have a system for investing — or, if he did, it was haphazard. He would study the charts, listen to tips. But he didn’t have a framework. He was searching.

Buffet at the time had read at least 100 books on business. Yet something was missing.

As part of finding that piece, he decided to go to grad school. He applied to Harvard University. They rejected him.

But back to the book — The Intelligent Investor — he had read in Lincoln, Nebraska as a 19 year old, Buffet found out the author of the book was a grad school professor at Columbia University.

A Jewish man who owned a Wall Street firm, Benjamin Graham, who also doubled as a professor, had written the book back in 1934. Buffet applied to Columbia and got in.

His goal? To learn from the master. Buffet loved the book’s content, which he always credits a lot of his understanding of investments with. So much so that he even went on to name his middle son, Howard Graham Buffet, after the author.

In Buffet’s own words about the book:

It not only changed my investment philosophy, but it really changed my whole life. I’d be a different person, in a different place had I not foreseen that book. I got a bedrock of investment philosophy that really hasn’t changed since I read the book.” — Warren Buffett

After enrolling at Columbia, he went on to take a class with Graham as the teacher. But after picking up an A+ in Graham’s class, and later graduating, Buffet did something unusual: he offered to work under Graham on Wall Street for free. Graham turned him down.

Years would pass — and he went back to Omaha. But while in Omaha, he still pushed his chances to work for Graham with a small unsolicited project for Benjamin Graham.

He dreamed up studies to do for Ben Graham and suggested stocks to him — anything to keep his chances of working for Graham alive — Roger Lowenstein.

Sometime later, Graham called…and offered Buffett a job. Without bothering to ask his salary (it turned out to be $12,000 a year), Buffett was on the next plane [to New York].

And this was the opportunity that would open up the ‘game’ for Warren’s investing understandings. Being in close proximity with the ‘master,’ he would pay close attention to how things worked.

I got inspired working for him, just being around him every day… — Warren Buffett.

But key to this whole thing is Warren’s initial offer: free labor. But think again — was it really free? Not at all.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get — Buffett

Sure, the price may have been to hustle to make money some other way while working there — if he were actually hired on to work there for free — but the value he will be getting — in inspiration, in seeing the inner workings of the game, and watching a ‘master’ do it — was a whole lot more than that. And if you look at his investing achievements — in the billions — much of which he credits with the lessons he learned from Graham, the value he got was worth billions.

And I talk about this in my book on how folks should not write off a job just on the basis of how much it pays. Sure, the paycheck has a number — $25,000, $35,000, or $60,000; or, if hourly, $15.00/hour, $30/hour — but is that the real value?

What’s the value of a job for someone who starts out working at a Chic-Fil-A, and while there studies how the franchise system works — how food is supplied, how revenue is generated, how the menu is designed, how to keep customers coming back, actually how the whole operation works — and then later decides to start his own franchise?

So speaking in those terms, a job may not pay much, in terms of physical cash, but it could be worth a whole lot more in value — in terms of stretching you, challenging you, expanding your vision of what could be, helping you overcome your fears, and helping you understand the inner workings of an operation or a skill, and that could be all the difference in your career.

I remember a time when I scoured my local town for jobs, looking for something to just do to pay the bills. I looked for a while and the only opening I got was a job going door-to-door setting appointments for window sales. This could be uncomfortable for most people as they see that type of job as low-paying and “unglamorous.”

And most have fears about it, too — who is behind that door, they may be thinking? What’s their temperament? Are they going to scream at me, or be nice? But what you actually learn is that, you will never know until you get out there — you can’t learn how to swim without getting wet, right? You simply have to brace yourself for anything, and keep a positive mindset as you approach the door.

And you will find out that, in reality, most people are nice and are willing to hear you out. It’s up to you to patiently, respectfully, and sincerely present your reason for the call — knocking on their door. And if they genuinely have a need for your product, they will hear you out.

Another key thing I learned: People are not the same and your product always has a chance out there if it actually solves someone’s problem. The basic truth that people have different needs, and no one controls the decisions of other people will take you far in life and in business. Let me ask you: can you tell your neighbor not to hear out the window guy who just knocked on their door if they have a broken window that has been letting in mosquitoes into their home the past few days? I doubt it. They have to listen to the solution the guy is offering.

I have come to doors to set appointments and have received some rude responses, and right after that, I’d knock on a door that is opened by the possibly the nicest person you’d ever meet, and they have a broken, faulty, or very old window that needs to be fixed or replaced. That person is happy I stopped by, he has been thinking about changing those windows for a while now but hasn’t found time to get around to it, and is thankful I will set an appointment at a convenient time to have someone come over to look at them. What if I got upset or down on myself after leaving the previous door?

What if Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had given up on telling other people about their idea after pitching Airbnb to investors and were told the idea has no future? What if Evan Spiegel had shutdown Snapchat after being laughed off when he shared his ‘weird’ idea? They simply had to keep going till they found the right audience, ‘the door that needed their service.’

Those kinds of lessons in perseverance are worth more in value than the $11.00 an hour I got paid.

Warren understood that when he made his “free labor” offer, and that changed everything.