Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway-The Best Advice They Ever Received

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway director Thomas Murphy told him:
"Never forget Warren, you can tell a guy to go to hell tomorrow — you don't give up the right. So just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow."
From a 2010 interview with Yahoo!

Bill Gates, chairman, Microsoft

"Warren Buffett has taught me a lot of things, but he got me thinking very early on that at some point I'd have the opportunity and responsibility to give the wealth back.

"And so, literally decades before the foundation got started I was reading about philanthropists from the past … what they'd done and how it worked."

From a 2012 interview with ABC News

Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

"Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco, gave me fantastic advice because we were going down the wrong track. We brought him in to look at our plan and he said, 'You know, I don’t want to be rude but this is exactly the wrong thing to do.' This was my idea, and he was right.

"His advice was the cost of losing your core customers and trying to get them back post-recession would be much greater than trying to find new customers, so we completely shifted."

From a 2011 interview with The Entrepreneurs' Organization

Jim Rogers, chairman, Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests

"Buy low and sell high. When I went to Wall Street. Actually all the old guys used to say 'Figure out the money and you’ll figure out what’s going on.'"

From a 2012 interview with Business Insider

Richard Parsons, former chairman, Citigroup

Steve Ross, the former CEO of Time Warner, told him:

"Just remember, it's a small business and a long life. You're going to see all these people again."

From the 2008 HACR Roundtable

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google

"Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids."

 

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

when

Sandberg was thinking she wouldn’t accept an offer to be Google’s general manager, Eric Schmidt told her, “Stop being an idiot; all that matters is growth.” She says that’s the best advice she ever got.

 

Larry Page, co-founder, Google

In graduate school at Stanford University, I had about ten different ideas of things I wanted to do, and one of them was to look at the link structure of the web. My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, 'Well, that one seems like a really good idea.' So I give him credit for that."

 

Jennifer Hyman, CEO and co-founder, Rent The Runway

"Just do it. There's no benefit to saying, 'I'm just doing this because it will get me to this new place,' or 'I'm just going to go into this analyst program because it will prep me for X.'

"If you're passionate about something, go for it, because people are great at what they love and when they're the happiest."

From a 2011 interview with The Huffington Post

Edward Rust Jr., chairman and CEO, State Farm

"[My father] had the uncanny ability with just a couple of little phrases. One: 'You know better… don't you,' and 'you can do better… can't you.'"

From the 2008 HACR Roundtable

Joe Uva, former CEO, Univision

Uva's boss early on in his career at McCann Erickson told him:

"Always have the courage of your convictions. Always state what's on your mind. Follow your gut. And observe what other people are doing around you."

From the 2008 HACR Roundtable

 

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and co-chief investment officer, PIMCO

"I remember asking my father, 'Why do we need four newspapers?' He said to me, 'Unless you read different points of view, your mind will eventually close, and you'll become a prisoner to a certain point of view that you'll never question.'"

From a 2009 interview with CNN Money

 

Kenneth Burdick, president and CEO, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Minnesota

Burdick received this message from various successful people he has met:

"Surround yourself with good people. And part of that is surrounding yourself with people who think differently than you. Surrounding yourself with people who have different experiences than you. In business, it's all about the team."

From the 2008 HACR Roundtable

 

Steve Schwartzman, chairman and CEO, Blackstone Group

"[My high school] coach, a 50-year-old named Jack Armstrong ... would shout, 'Remember—you’ve got to make your deposits before you can make a withdrawal!' ...
"Coach Armstrong came to mind in one of my first weeks on Wall Street, 35 years ago. I’d stayed up all night building a massive spreadsheet to be ready for a morning meeting. ... The partner on the deal, however, took one look at my work, spotted a tiny error, and went ballistic.
"As I sat there while he yelled at me, I realized I was getting the MBA version of Coach Armstrong’s words. Making an effort and meeting the deadline simply weren’t enough."
From a 2008 blog post at Harvard Business Review

Peter Swinburn, president and CEO, Molson Coors

The then-big boss asked me to go and do basically a turnaround job. And he said, 'I don't mind what you do, as long as you don't do what we've done before.'"

From the 2008 HACR Roundtable

BONUS: Ben Silberman, co-founder, Pinterest

"Don't take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. ...
"Every company carves its own path, and [founders] are under pressure to make their startups look like the last successful company everyone remembers."