Today I'm interviewing Mary Buffett on value investing and also stories about Warren Buffett which you probably have never heard before!
I certainly enjoyed interviewing Mary. On a personal note, I was not expecting that she would be so cool. I learned, once again, a great lesson: "There's no better investment than being a great human being; it costs nothing, and it pays off great dividends." Thank you, Mary.
Mary Buffett
Ney Torres: [00:00:00] Hello everybody welcome to the show. Today I have the honor of interviewing Mary buffet. How are you Mary?
Mary Buffett: [00:00:06] I'm great. Thank you.
Ney Torres: [00:00:08] Hey, before we start I really wanted to thank you for your time. is really , a big honor. I started studying, investing with your books, and I really appreciate it and it comes to full circle now.
Now I'm talking to you and thank you so much for this opportunity.
Mary Buffett: [00:00:21] My pleasure Ney. Honestly. Thank you.
Ney Torres: [00:00:24] Can we start, for the listeners that maybe haven't read the books, who is Mary buffet?
Mary Buffett: [00:00:29] Well, I was, a singer, song writer in the music industry since I was 14 years old. And actually I was living at the time in Laguna beach and I was making, I had a business, I was making skateboards at the time with Tony Alva, who was the world champion skateboarder. And, I met Susie Buffett, Warren, Peter sister. So Warren has three children, Howard, Susie, and Peter and Susie lived. Down there. And we became really great friends.
And she said to me, Oh, you've got to meet my brother. He's a musician, and you got to talk to him and help him. And I thought, Oh! That's the last thing I want to do is meet another musician. I had gotten out of the business, you know? But as it turns out, we met and immediately fell in love and we met and married in almost three months.
It was just, yeah, it was really like that. He was living in San Francisco. He had just rented a house that was too big for him, and I was working with the company that was based in San Francisco and I was going up there and he said, you know, stay at my house. And I did. And I saw his studio and we talked all about his business.
And I said, you know what I'll I'll be your manager. I actually, you need help. So, I moved up to San Francisco and actually Susie buffet, his mom who had an apartment near us, I stayed at her place. And, And then shortly after Peter asked me to marry him and I said yes, and that was that.
Ney Torres: [00:02:06] I can not believe that.
Well, I've never heard his story before.
Mary Buffett: [00:02:09] Yeah. And I really, at the time, I had grown up in California, well, I was born in Chicago, but I really grew up in California and I went to Beverly Hills high school. Cool. So at that time, the only thing I knew about his father was that he owned see's candy and bluechip stamps.
I think maybe he hadn't owned blue-chip. I think Charlie (Munger) did. But, you know, and I thought "Great! Free candy", you know, little did I know there was no free candy with Warren, but, I had grown up around plenty of people whose parents were wealthy, but you know, I didn't see him as a millionaire... It was... he didn't live like a millionaire.
It was never really discussed.
Ney Torres: [00:02:50] You know, and I will love to take this opportunity for this interview to just address that, because I find that incredibly fascinating. You would believe that being around Warren, you start absorving all of this... just how to analyze businesses, pick up stocks, but turns out like Peter was not interested in that.
It looks like none of his sons and daughter. It turned out they didn't like it. I mean, maybe they didn't even know what he was doing. Right?
Mary Buffett: [00:03:17] Well, you know, it's, I think. No Peter loved music, and that's what his mother, Susie really, you know, stood behind him. Howie (Howard Buffett) , you know, later wanted to learn more about the business, to be honest with you.
I think Susie ,little Susie, was probably the most qualified, but. At the time, you know, women really weren't thought of in the same way as taking over, but it's a pretty big shadow to walk in, you know? To be honest with you, it would be very difficult to be, you know, Warren's child and get into the same business that he was.
Ney Torres: [00:03:57] Yes. Yes, I agree. I agree. He's considered the best investor in history. Actually.
Mary Buffett: [00:04:03] Better. Yeah. 55 years of amazing returns. Nobody's done that.
Ney Torres: [00:04:08] Could you told us a couple stories? For example, I bet, you have personal stories about the Nebraska furniture Mart. He went and bought this huge furniture Mart.
How did it looked like? What happened then? How do you guys find out?
Mary Buffett: [00:04:23] I remember. That when we... cause we went to Omaha several times a year for vacations and stayed at his house and so on. And the Nebraska furniture Mart was a very successful, very large furniture store run by Rose Blumkin, who was a Russian Jewish, Russian immigrant, who didn't read or write.
But she certainly knew how to sell carpet and, what she would do, would she go to the suppliers and she would say, you know, I'm going to buy all of your inventory, but you got to give me a really great price. And then it would allow her to turn around and offer, you know, rugs and furniture and everything.
At a really decent prices, and we just remember that people would drive from other, you know, from Iowa, from different States. You know, they drive to Omaha just to shop at the Nebraska furniture Mart , and it was run by her family, her sons. Still is run by the family. And, I think he, it was his birthday and, he went to the Mart and met with Mrs Blumkin and said, I want to buy, I want to buy the store. And she said, I think it was something like 65 million and not a penny less. And he's like, "Yes!". And shook hands on it. Never looked at the books, understood the business was, you know, really had a, had a lock on everything and went back and got her check and made sure that the family was gonna still run it because he doesn't want to change management.
Ney Torres: [00:05:59] So that was, that's how you lived it? Well, cause that's what we know now. But, back then? Did you just know he wrote a check for $65 million and walked into the store?
Mary Buffett: [00:06:09] No! No. We, we never heard about the price. Later, of course I found out, we just, you know, knew that he bought it and we were like, "Oh", you know, a "great", haha it's just like one time he called me and, we were in San Francisco doing our music and he's, he called me and he was like, "Well Mary so, well, nobody is getting in my business, so I thought I'd get in yours hahaha. I bought ABC" and I was like, "Oh, great, I'll, I'll, I'll tell Peter" and I got off the phone. I said, "Peter, dad, your dad called and he bought ABC. I wonder what that is?". And Peter and I were like, A... b... c... And then we just looked at each other, realize "Does he mean the network?", you know? And, that was really when people, of course he was, he bought it with cap cities, Tom Murphy. and, that was really the first time people started to know who Warren was. Because that was a pretty big, obvious purchase. You know, there were only three networks still at that time.
That was before cable really took off.
Ney Torres: [00:07:18] So it's kind of a monopoly kind of economics. But how did you and Peter feel when you find out? "Oh! He bough the network".
Mary Buffett: [00:07:27] We where surprised. I mean, for us. I, you know, my first reaction was great. You know, we write music. ABC has a lot of shows that we can write the music introduction to, but that of course never would happen with Warren.
You never got, you never got a break. I mean, I went to New York. And Tom Murphy had organized for me to have a, you know, a whole, I went to ABC and met Diane Sawyer, and I went and met everybody. But, and I, I talked to the producers and gave them Peters in my music. And, but it never would have happened because Warren didn't believe in.
you know, in, in That he didn't believe in helping.
Ney Torres: [00:08:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand that.
Mary Buffett: [00:08:15] It was very difficult actually because people who knew him and then also always assumed we were so rich and didn't need the money. But. In fact, you know, we were running a business and, so it made it more difficult.
The, the, you know, people's opinion was different than the reality.
Ney Torres: [00:08:34] And I bet if anything that made it made it harder. Cause you know, if you start doing something successfully, you're, you're the daughter in law, the owner or one of the owners.
Mary Buffett: [00:08:42] Yeah. Yeah. Well. We never worked for any of his companies. We never got free candy.
Ney Torres: [00:08:50] It's funny, the other day you were telling me that you went to Nebraska furniture Mart and you didn't get a discount. If it wasn't for Mrs B?.
Mary Buffett: [00:08:58] That's right. Yeah. Mrs B would give us a discount and, see's candy, we would buy every year for the people we worked for. And, at the time, Chuck Huggins was the president, and Chuck would give us a discount, but everybody would say, you know, don't tell Warren that we're giving you a discount.
Ney Torres: [00:09:17] One of my question is as Warren, as a father in law, He looks to be really radical. I remember seeing this documentary once where he mentioned that he got , that "innerscore card" , from his dad, right?
Mary Buffett: [00:09:30] Right. He did have great respect for his father and his father was a Republican. And, it wasn't until grandpa died. That Warren changed to being a Democrat because Susie had a lot of influence on Warren, and she was, you know, working for equality for blacks and she was involved in all kinds of things that were very, you know, very, progressive.
Ney Torres: [00:09:57] And that opens the door to my questions about Sussie. I'm really interested in to know the woman behind Buffet. Becuase I don't think we know much about her.
Mary Buffett: [00:10:08] Warren admits to the fact that if it wasn't for Susie, he could never have been who he is.
She was his absolute, partner in life and she, you know, basically raised the kids and did her job, and left him to do his. Because, he really worked all the time. So it was, it was amazing. And Susie was one of the most generous kind people that you would ever want to meet. she always was helping people.
she was an amazing, funny person, a total free spirit. very, very kind of opposite of Warren, but very, you know, she had a lot of friends and. Yeah, she, she was, she was very different than when she left Omaha, as everyone knows now . She was a singer, and she sang at a place called the French cafe in Omaha.
And the, person who was the, not a waitress, but she, you know, sat you down. It was Astrid and Astrid and Susie became friends. And Astrid, I believe, had taken care of a few other older men, making sure they were okay. And when Susie left, she asked Astrid to move in and take care of Warren. And that's what happened.
Really remarkable.
Ney Torres: [00:11:44] Really remarkable. And he worked for them.
Mary Buffett: [00:11:46] It did. A lot of people didn't understand it. And we would always have, you know, a few weeks at Christmas and new year's in Laguna beach together. And Susie would go to Omaha and stay with her best friend Bella Eisenberg and, go out to lunch with Astrid , and Susie and Warren talked absolutely every day.
There is nothing that she didn't know about.
Ney Torres: [00:12:08] I don't know if I read this in the biography of Warren , or maybe somewhere else. I'm not sure how true it is, it's just my memory. But I could swear that U2 Singer Bono spend a lot of time with her and said she was the "highest emotional intelligent person" he had ever met or something between those lines.
Mary Buffett: [00:12:26] Yes, I would agree that that's a very good, a good way of putting it emotionally. She was just an amazing person. . .
Ney Torres: [00:12:35] We have some questions from the listeners. Now... can I start asking you?
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