The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [377]
Buffett skipped the small talk; he immediately asked Gates whether IBM was going to do well in the future and whether it was a competitor of Microsoft. Computer companies seemed to come and go, and why was that? Gates started explaining. He told Buffett to buy two stocks, Intel and Microsoft. Then he asked Buffett about the economics of newspapers, and Buffett told him that they had gotten worse, because of other media. Within minutes the two were deeply immersed in conversation.
“We talked and talked and talked and talked and paid no attention to anybody else. I started asking him a whole bunch of questions about his business, not expecting to understand any of it. He’s a great teacher, and we couldn’t stop talking.”
The day started to go by. The croquet games began. But still Gates and Buffett talked on, even as many of Seattle’s best-known people circulated around them: Speaker of the House Tom Foley; chairman and CEO of Burlington Northern Jerry Grinstein; former EPA administrator Bill Ruckelshaus; Arthur Langlie, son of a former three-term governor, his wife, Jane, and their son Art; and Joe Greengard, a close friend of Greenfield’s, plus a local doctor, judge, newspaper owner, and art collector.8 Gates and Buffett took a walk on the pebbly beach. They were starting to attract attention. “We were sort of ignoring all these important people, and Bill’s father finally said, gently, that he’d prefer that we join in with the rest of the people a little more.
“Bill started trying to convince me to get a computer. I said, I don’t know what it’s going to do for me. I don’t care how my stock portfolio is doing every five minutes. And I can do my income taxes in my head. Gates said he would pick out the best-looking gal at Microsoft and send her to teach me how to use the computer. He would make it totally painless and pleasant. I told him, ‘You’ve made me an offer I almost can’t refuse, but I will refuse it.’”
As the sun descended toward the water during the cocktail hour, Buffett and Gates kept talking. At sunset the helicopter had to leave. Gates did not go with it.9
“Then at dinner, Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life? And I said, ‘Focus.’ And Bill said the same thing.”
It is unclear how many people at the table understood “focus” as Buffett lived that word. This kind of innate focus couldn’t be emulated. It meant the intensity that is the price of excellence. It meant the discipline and passionate perfectionism that made Thomas Edison the quintessential American inventor, Walt Disney the king of family entertainment, and James Brown the Godfather of Soul. It meant the depth of commitment and mental independence that led Jeannette Rankin to stand alone as the only representative in Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars in the face of widespread ridicule. It meant single-minded obsession with an ideal. “Focus” meant the kind of person who could earn billions by allocating capital, yet be baffled by a sign that said “No TP.”
Sometime during the weekend, a guest who was less focused had figured out that “No TP” stood for touchy plumbing that couldn’t handle toilet paper. At last, the mysteries of the indoor facilities had been revealed and Buffett was liberated from the gas station. However, some traitorous member of the party—Graham, Greenfield, or one of the Evanses—had found the story so hilarious that even Buffett’s introduction to the Gates family had included a recounting of the story of “No TP.”
A day later, Buffett escaped the island and returned to the normal plumbing of Omaha. He could see that Gates was brilliant and that he understood business very well. But since the days when he told Katie Buffett not to invest in Control Data and passed on the chance