Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2022. The article gives Warren Buffett’s fortune as more than 80 billion dollars and calls him an octogenarian. By July 2022 he was 91 and his net worth was generally estimated at around 100 billion dollars.
Warren Buffett is clear about it. You need one specific skill to achieve success and wealth, and you also need to be clear about what success in life means so that you don’t end up miserable, with or without money. Buffett is one of those billionaires who can offer us doses of wisdom that shouldn’t go to waste. And not just about finance and the stock market, where we are quite possibly talking about the best investor of our time. His life experience as a man in his eighties should also be taken into account.
Buffett himself attributes his fortune of more than 80 billion dollars to a single skill, which he now recommends that everyone acquire as soon as possible.
What skill does Warren Buffett recommend for greater success in life?
In an interview, the legendary investor showed the diplomas hanging in his office. He doesn’t have his university degree up there, or his master’s, or even the finance courses he took. Only one diploma hangs on his wall: the one Dale Carnegie awarded him after he completed a course on learning to express himself and communicate. It’s the only diploma on his wall because he acknowledges that it changed his life.
The skill that will increase your wealth is learning to write and speak clearly
In Warren Buffett’s own words, the only way to increase your net worth by more than 50% is to perfect your communication skills, both written and verbal.
“If you can’t communicate properly, it’s like winking at a girl in the dark. Absolutely nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but if you can’t get it across, nothing will happen. And getting it across is communication.”
If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you also need to be a good storyteller. Obviously, being a good storyteller is useless if your product is rubbish. But creating a great product or a great company isn’t enough. You also have to find a way to let people know about it. And this is where communication skills become essential.
See also: 8 books Warren Buffett thinks everyone should read
This isn’t the first time Warren Buffett has admitted that he was genuinely terrified of public speaking. He knew it was something he had to fix, because business is about people, and you have to be able to communicate effectively with people. We need to know how to get our message across effectively.
In fact, do you know anybody who’s “done real good at being successful” talking like that? Exactly.
The most important thing: defining success so that you’re not miserable in life
In her biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder describes a talk at the University of Georgia where one of the students asked Warren Buffett for his personal definition of success. And here is Warren Buffett:
“As you approach the end of your life, the only measure of success should be how many of the people you wanted to love you really do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, get testimonial dinners and have hospital wings named after them. But nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, it doesn’t matter how much money you have. Your life is a disaster.”
Forgetting how important it is to live by a code, by principles and values, including the love you give and receive, is what leads many people to measure success only in achievements, possessions and wealth. And as I’ve explained before, letting all of that define you is what can make you miserable in life, because you can’t live defined by external things. If you measure yourself by external things, when they disappear, your life goes down the drain.
Think about this. If you lost everything you have tomorrow (house, car, money, clothes…), what would you have? What would be left? Who would be by your side? Well, the answer to those questions is your one true wealth. If you think you’d have nobody by your side after losing everything, then you are incredibly poor, even if you have millions in your bank account.
Measuring success in “love” is an excellent yardstick, because you can’t write a cheque to buy the sincere feeling of someone loving you, and for someone to truly love you, you have to be a particular kind of person. Here’s Warren Buffett again:
“The problem with love is that it isn’t for sale. The only way to get love is to be a lovable person. The more love you give away, the more you get. The better a person you are, the more love you get. The better your values, the more love you get.”
Develop empathy
Empathy is a trait that opens many doors, not only when it comes to love but also when it comes to wealth. Empathy is being able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. It doesn’t just make you a more “lovable” person; it also helps you understand the other side in a negotiation, just as it helps you understand your customers when you’re selling a product.
When it comes to influencing people, empathy is the key.
Empathy also helps us treat others as we would like to be treated, a golden rule for life.
See also: 10 hard truths that will instantly improve your life once you accept them
So these are basically the two things to keep in mind when we talk about having an extraordinary life. Let me repeat my personal definition of success and happiness:
“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is being able to enjoy it.”
However much you achieve, if you don’t have people who truly love you to share it with, you haven’t succeeded and you aren’t happy. So be careful not to get this simple equation of life wrong.
Featured image: JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
