WarrenHi, Warren, this is Charlie. He can hear, I can see, we work together.
CharlieAt Clayton, unlike virtually anybody, there's a few. We offer the, we offer mortgages to all the buyers of our homes, and we have retained roughly 12 billion of mortgages on 300,000 homes. Now, when a mortgage, when a mortgage goes bad, two people lose. The person who owns the house loses, and the person that owns the mortgage loses. And in our case, we have this identity of interest. We have no interest in selling anybody a house and having the mortgage default, because it is a net loss to us, it's a net loss to the customer. About 3% of the mortgage is default in the year, and, you know, and when they do, We lose money and the person who bought the house loses money. But 97% don't, and most of those people would not be living in the kind of houses that you can see right here at the auditorium without the financing availability that Clayton makes available and others make available.
WarrenI had to give up the plane or I had to give up the internet. The plane cost me a million and a half a year. The internet cost me $100 a year. You know, I wouldn't want to give up either one of them, but I give up the plane.
QuestionerWhat advice would you give to someone who's trying to network with influential people but doesn't have access to the alumni network of a top business school?
WarrenI think you should do the best you can. Playing the hand you've got. I never had any business culture. No. Why should you have any?
QuestionerHave we reached an inflection point in human behavior in how consumers view sugar consumption?
WarrenI don't think you're going to see. anything revolutionary and I think you will see all food and beverage companies adjust to the expressed preferences of the consumers as they go along. I sit here as somebody who in the last 30 years, one quarter of all the calories I've consumed come from Coca-Cola. And that is not an exaggeration. I am one-quarter Coca-Cola. I'm not sure which quarter. When I compare drinking Coca-Cola, you know, to something that somebody would sell me at Whole Foods. I don't know that. I don't see smiles on the faces of people at Whole Foods.
QuestionerHow do you make lots of friends and get people to like you and work with you?
WarrenI have looked at other people and during my lifetime and had these wonderful teachers. They weren't teachers in the standard definition. But they were people I admired, and I thought to myself,
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Questionerwhy do I admire these people? And if I want to be admired myself, you know, why shouldn't I take on some of their qualities? It really works in marriage. If you can change yourself instead of trying to change your spouse, that's a good idea. Charlie has said the most important thing in selecting a marriage partner. is that you don't look for intelligence or humor and character. It says you look for someone with low expectations. Do Charlie and you think that the Euro currency has had a positive or negative effect overall in the Eurozone economy?
WarrenI do think they created something that was probably unwise. They got countries in there that shouldn't have been there. You can't form a bit. form of business partnership with your shriftless drunken brother-in-law.
QuestionerWhat practical mental model or mental models would you impress upon a young enterprising individual at the infancy of their career?
WarrenYou just have to get the best reputation you can in the years you're allotted in the time available. I see all the time opportunities come to people where it's their, it's the credibility they've gotten in the past that causes them to have the new opportunity. So I think hardly anything is more important than behaving well as you go through life.
QuestionerWhat would you cite as the most important reason for your early success with small amounts of capital?
WarrenI had exceptional focus and I had the right sort of emotional qualities that would help me in being investment. I enjoyed the game.