the tale of Rose blumkin is a quintessential immigrant success story she was born in a village near Minsk Russia she and her seven siblings lived in a two- room log cabin and had to sleep on straw mats her father was a rabbi and spent his days in religious study her mother ran a small General
Store my father was so religious he said that my mother had to support us he only prayed Rose never attended school she started helping her mother in the store at the age of six she once woke up in the middle of the night and saw her mother washing clothes and baking bread
for the next day Rose said when I grow up you're not going to work so hard I can't stand it the way you have to work day and night when Rose was 13 she left home walking barefoot for 18 mil to get to a train she stowed away on the train and got off 300 M away at a small town
near the Ukrainian border she went from shop to shop looking for a job and a place to stay you're just a kid one store owner said I'm not a beggar Rose Shop back with only four cents in her pocket she asked to sleep in the house that night tomorrow I go to work she said the owner relented and Rose got up
Before Dawn the next morning and cleaned the store she stayed becoming the manager of that store by the age of 16 then she went to a larger Town got another job in a men's clothing store as a Salesman and met Isidor blumkin they were married in 1914 and Mrs B later remembered her wedding day saying my
mother brought me 2 lb of rice and 2 lb of cookies that was the wedding Feast World War I erupted that same year and many inhabitants of Russia had to flee Isidor was able to immigrate to the United States we didn't have the money for two passages Rose said and so my
husband had to go alone for the next 3 years Rose worked in a dry goods store squeezed every penny and finally in 1917 took a train to the Chinese Siberian border I had no passport at the China Russia Frontier a soldier was standing guard with a rifle I said to him I'm on my way to buy leather for the Army when
I come back I'll bring you a big bottle of vodka I suppose he's still there waiting for his vodka she said laughing she made her way from China to Japan and then book passage on a Japanese peanut boat after six miserable weeks the ship finally docked in Seattle when she got
to America she had $66 in her purse the Red Cross helped Rose find her husband who was living in Iowa they lived in Iowa for 2 years during which their first daughter was born but Rose was unable to communicate with any of the locals so they moved to Omaha where there was a large community of people
who spoke both Russian and Yiddish I couldn't learn to talk English Rose said I didn't know nothing so I made up my mind that I was going to a bigger city that was an excert from the short biography of Rose blumkin that I found in the book I'm going to talk to you
about today which is the women of birkshire hathway lessons for Warren Buffett's female CEOs and directors and is written by Karen Linder so I've made a lot of podcasts on Warren buffin and Charlie Munger and in almost every book including the the birkshire shareholder letters they'll mention their admiration
for Rose blumkin who's known as Mrs B who's the founder of Nebraska Furniture Mart and I've mentioned on past podcast that I can't find a biography on her I wish I could do an episode on her and a few listeners actually told me about the book that I'm holding in my hand and
this book does an excellent job of giving an overview of Rose blumpkins life and career and so let's jump right into it it says Rose blumkin became the first ever female birkshire hat theway manager when Nebraska Furniture Mar was acquired by Warren Buffett in 1983 Rose
was just shy of 90 years old at the time you would assume that this change in ownership would signal retirement for Rose but she still worked for more than a decade longer 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week until she reached the age of 103 so after I read the book I went and
searched all the highlights that I have uh about Rose blumkin and back on episode 182 I read a biography of Warren Buffett that came out in 1995 it's called Buffett The Making of American capitalist and there's this great uh excerpt in that book that describes this purchase that this book is describing
and it's the it's the negotiation if you can call it that between uh Buffett and Mrs B and this is I think the second or third time he had tried to buy I think I know he tried to buy it at least one other time maybe like 20 years earlier and so it says uh how much Buffett asked
60 million Mrs B spat out they shook hands and Buffett Drew up a one-page agreement Buffett's biggest acquisition by far uh Mrs B who could not write in English and barely could read it made a mark at the bottom a few days later Buffett presented her with a check for 90% uh she this is my favorite part she
folded it without a glance and by way of concluding matters declared Mr Buffett we're going to put our competitors through a meat grinder she was 89 when she said that about 46 years after she started the company it says Rose founded the furniture store in Omaha in 1937 at
the age of 43 and grew it into a business with annual profits of over $15 million by this time she had trouble walking but that wouldn't stop her she'd actually drive around the furniture store on a motorized scooter and she would stop to speak with customers in
her thick Russian yis accent encouraging them to make a decision and assuring them that they wouldn't get a better deal anywhere she had a harsh management style and she was very tough the way she speaks about some of her former employees in this book uh it's just it's funny cuz it's coming from like a
100-year old lady this is the end result most furniture stores have found it futile to attempt to compete in Omaha with Nebraska Furniture Mart in fact I can't remember if it's in the book uh Buffett the making American capitalist no you know what it's in Buffett's shareholder letters where he says that
he would rather wrestle Grizzlies than compete with Mrs B and so I want to expand on that idea that most furniture stores have found it futile to even try to compete with her this is one of my favorite parts of this entire like mini biography of rose look what they hang on the walls in
the office of Nebraska Furniture Mark there are several going out of business advertisements from competitor stores framed and hanging on the wall displayed so that the company will never forget about those other stores who put themselves out of business how it can happen to anyone and that it must be
avoided and so yeah that's a good idea as a reminder hey how bad things can get you know uh Buffett has like a newspaper CES from the depression to remind him for the same thing but after getting to know Mrs be I just can't help but thinking that she also put it up there
to be like look what happens when you try to go against me uh I I unapologetically Adore and love her approach and how serious she took her work and just if you think about the opening where you just think about how difficult her early life was she was never able to go to school ever not
Elementary School not College not high school nothing you know having to start work at six years old live on a straw mat and then have the opportunity to come to America and build a business that made her and her unborn grandchildren rich could see why why she would take it so seriously so let's go
back to the very humble beginnings of this business that's unbelievably valuable I think in later shareholder letters uh they were doing more they were doing what 120 million a year just out of the one Nebraska store I think it was more than all the other furniture
stores in Omaha combined and it started out because she needed to help her husband her husband opens a secondhand clothing store now sometimes it's referred to as a clothing store sometimes it's referred to as a pawn shop but her husband's the one working originally and she's at home with the
kids remember at the very beginning she calls herself dumb or she said she says I was dumb because I couldn't learn to talk English the way she speaks learns to speak English though is actually from her old I think I'm pretty sure this is her oldest daughter who was going to
school in Omaha uh her oldest daughter is named Francis Francis taught her mother how to speak English after she came home from school each day Rose tells the story of how she began to be involved in Isidor her husband's store the depression came and my husband came home and said we'll starve to death
nobody walks in what will we do I already had my four children by 1930 so she's gonna go to work and help her husband she says uh he would sell clothing at the same price that he had paid for it he didn't understand how to make a profit remember she's at this point she's what almost 43 she' been
working in stores when she was six working full-time when she was 13 you know managing stores when she was 16 she knew how to sell and so she told this is she told her husband this is what we're going to do and this is really the basis for her entire uh Warren's going to talk
about the advantage that he has and why he's uh that she had over her other competitors and in many cases I think it's in this book and if it's not I'll find the quote for us about the fact that she hit on the idea for what makes places like Costco in Walmart so special before there was a Costco in Walmart and
so she says let's sell 10% over cost and I'll come to your store and show you how and show you and help you because I did build a big business in Russia for my boss and I knew business these are direct quotes from her so this is how she speaks she obviously speaks you know
she's missing some words there uh Rose began retailing right out of the blumkin home this this is hilarious with home furnishings and accessories this practice continued even after she was successful check out her dedication to sale uh this practice continued
throughout her lifetime visitors to the blumpkins house would admire the furniture that had attached price I'm sorry all right hold on I got to read that to you again I just this idea where you're like one of the most success Financial successful entrepreneurs in Omaha and you come to her
house and her furniture has price tags on it and like oh I like your couch and she tries to sell it to you I love this lady this practice continued throughout her lifetime visitors to the blumin house would admire the furniture with attached price tags and lamp Sheets
still covered in plastic wrap if a guest expressed interest in a piece it was available for sale long before that though she had to find a way to make money at one point she printed 10,000 Flyers offering to dress a man from head to toe for $5 so this is back in I think like the 1930s somewhere around 1937
this one promotion made the blumin family $800 and so she's selling stuff out of her house there's like this basement she's selling stuff out of this store and she realizes like people keep coming to her because they get such great prices can you get me this can you get me that people used to ask me can you
get me this can you get me that I used to take them to the wholesale house and sell it and sell them uh at 10% above cost I never lied so her main let me go to another quote real quick I think I brought this up in the latest episode I did on Charlie Munger which is episode 2
95 and he says uh well there's actually two ideas here let me let me bring this up to you first before we go back into Rose's story because I think this is fascinating how they make an exception to their rules how how Rose is so special that monger and Buffett make exceptions for her as a general rule
this is Charlie Monger saying as a general rule you should bet on the quality of the business not the quality of the management unless of course you've got a Mrs B in your hand if that's the case you need to go all in I remember Nebraska Furniture Marts founder Mrs B who in response to a
question about having a business plan replied yeah sell cheap and tell the truth she was a business genius so that's the end of the quote from Munger how many and again this is what I've always pay attention to with people like Muffet uh Muffet with Buffett and Munger how many different managers Founders
businesses have these guys analyzed over their entire life like it's incredible and they're saying hey no pay attention to this person this is why I went really deep on Henry Singleton and why I've been collecting a bunch of like hard to find Singleton information cuz I'm going
to do another episode on him but his idea like she was a business genius the reason that that came to mind just now is cuz where we're in this book they're like listen I'm just going to tell the truth and at this point in the story she's telling the customer hey I'm going
to get you a good deal and I'm just going to sell it to you above 10% cost and because the markup so low this is the lowest price you're going to get and therefore it builds trust and a relationship with these customers and they're going to come back forever they're going to tell their friends
their kids are going to go there their grandkids are going to go there assuming you're in a like a if you're in a game that you're going to play for a long time this is like the the version of uh this idea of infinite return on investment I never lied I showed them the bill and then and they all respect
me you should see what kind of customers I have the best in the world they build me one of the finest businesses in the country I always believed in honesty anything is wrong I try to make it right meaning obviously if the problem has if the customer has a problem I'll will
make it right uh Mrs B open a furniture store in 1937 with a $500 loan from one of her brothers it was a 30X 100 ft basement room she called it the Nebraska Furniture Mart this is hilarious the day the same day I opened another Furniture sir was opening they had an orchestra
orchestra music and Hollywood stars and I only had a three and I only had three line One ads because I was poor I did that day a big business I couldn't get over it Rose was 43 years old at the time and her four children were between the ages of 10 and 19 and then this story is also mentioned in Buffett's
shareholder letters which was fantastic the fact that she gets sued by her competitors over charging customers too little Mrs B would encounter a fair number of obstacles in growing her business throughout the years she would choose to make a small profit of 10% bend over backwards for customers and
grow the company by selling in large volumes it also made her competitors very angry uh at one point Mrs B was able to convince uh Marshall's fields to sell her carpet wholesale at $3 per yard she then resold it for $395 per yard the competition was selling the very same
carpet for $7.95 per yard her competition called her a bootlegger her reply was you bet you I'm the best Bootlegger in town so then she tells the story of what happened these three lawyers uh take from this one company take me in court suing me for unfair Trade Practices three lawyers and me
with my English I can't afford a lawyer so I just go to the judge and I say judge I sell everything 10% above cost what's wrong can I give my customers a good deal I don't Rob my customers the judge agreed threw out the case and bought $1,400 worth of carpeting from
Mrs B the next day the publicity from this uh trial was worth far more than Mrs B could have afforded afforded to purchase an advertising it's hard to think of better advertising than that it's something you read imagine reading the newspaper it's like this this lady
get sued because her prices are too little you know where you're going the next day um oh this is fantastic so uh this investor named Josh Wolf has this great um has this great maximum that I I see in these books all the time he says uh chips on shoulders puts chips in Pockets I think Rose blumkin is a
perfect example of that Rose attempted to buy furniture wholesale in Chicago their Merchants were very rotten to me when I walked in to the merchandise Mark to buy furniture they used to kick me out and say don't bother us we're not going to sell you nothing I used to uh
almost start to cry my face would get red and I'd say someday you'll come to my store to try to sell to me and I'll kick you out the same way you did to me and then her punch line here is hilarious this is why I think he's framed going out a b she definitely has a chip on her shoulder and it takes
great pride in in competition and I just I could picture her looking at these framed uh going at a business uh sale like advertisements of her competitor s with Glee because the way she ends this story The punchline is I outlive them all but of course with any business there's ups and downs here's one of the
Downs in 1950 business slowed down this is after the Korean War business slowed down and Mrs B found herself unable to pay her bills she was worrying night and day a local B Banker came into the store to buy a cabinet and asked why she was so upset after listening he gave her
$50,000 of his personal money as a 90-day loan she then had to think of a way to earn the money to pay back the loan this is really smart so she rented the Omaha City Auditorium for $200 per day and held a 3-day sale she took in $250,000 from the sale paid off all of her loans and never borrowed money again
unfortunately this is the same time that her her husband dies Isidor had a heart attack and died they were married for 36 years and Rose would be a widow for 48 years Mrs B once asked if she believed that she had a tougher time succeeding because she was a woman she said me no
sir she answered when it comes to business I could beat any man in any college graduate she was relentless another example of that in 1961 half of Nebraska Furniture Mart was destroyed by a fire the resulting fire sale generated a line two blocks long to buy hugely discounted items that had been exposed
to the smoke one of my favorite maxims from the history of Entrepreneurship is uh PRS orsus opportunities in work close she's like okay can't pay my bills gets this loan does a three-day limited sale makes five times the amount of money right then fire comes okay well what can
I do now I have a bunch of uh inventory I need to get rid of hugely discounted just because it has a little bit of smoke damage people love saving money couple years later actually about 15 years later 1975 a tornado took out the entire Nebraska Furniture Mart building
the tornado also destroys a post office next to the mark So what does she do she buys the ground and built on it to expand the business we have turned every tragedy into a positive that's another way of saying problems are just opportunities and work clows then it goes into to description of her uh
insane work hours and her dedication the fact that work was a hobby for her with her children grown and out of the house she devoted her entire existence to Growing Nebraska Furniture Mark she loved the game of selling she didn't care a bit about the money it was all about making the sale she said uh Louis
her son came back after World War II in 1945 and joined the business showing the same intelligence and business Acumen as his mother and I think long after she passed away he was still I just saw him in the I was reading through all my highlights in birkshire uh and Warren's
shareholder letters and as of like ' 92 when Lou was like 92 he's still working in the business too uh his C management style balanced out his mother's quick temper and he would often hire back employees who had been freshly fired by Rose she could have quit working at any
time but the simple action of going to work and being productive kept her interested in life and energized David Oggy has a great quote on this he says retirement is fatal when I was poor I was ambitious she said I always wanted my kids I always wanted that my kids should have what I didn't have I wanted
to show poor people that there's a future in life if if you try you can have it Mrs B took time off of work to take classes to become a US citizen a fellow member of Mrs B's class recalls asking her you were here for 30 this is hilarious you were here for 37 years before becoming a citizen how come you
waited so long I was busy Mrs B said and Mrs B has some good maxims this is one of them business is like raising a child you want a good one a child needs a mother and a business needs a boss my hobby is figuring out how to advertise how to undersell how much hell to give
my competitors I'll never forget how they treated us when we were poor this is I think this is my favorite part of the entire book uh a 1977 local newspaper article sums up Mrs B Mrs B's temperament on work ethic what's your favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon visit my customers at my store
what is your favorite thing to do on a nice evening drive around to check the competition and plan my next attack favorite movie in the last year too busy favorite book in the last year don't have time cocktail none drinkers go broke if you want to be in business
be sober favorite place my store and finally last question what's one thing that needs that most needs to be done uh in our state or in our nation clean out all the lazy ones this just made me think of something there is something that I think uh adds a little flavor to life I was rereading past highlights and
there was something about um David oovy that was in this biography of of David written by somebody who worked with him um because I think all the books I've done on David olgy he wrote himself he's the best writer I I've ever come across for for the podcast let me read this
because I just realized like the stories I'm about to tell you we're going to add to our Rose file and this will make sense this comes from the king of Madison Avenue David ogy and the making of Modern Advertising which I covered all the way back on episode 169 in case you missed it I'd also read the book
it's excellent but uh this is I think pretty sure this is like one of the very beginning parts of the book and so the author who used to work work with or work for ogave said he was 52 and famous I was 33 and a junior account executive early on he wrote a letter to one of my
clients after listing eight reasons why some ads prepared by the company's design Department would not be effective he delivered his ultimate argument the only thing that could be said in favor of the layouts is that they are quote unquote different you could make a cow
look different by removing the other but that cow would not produce results so began my David file almost everyone who worked at the agency kept one and this is something that was repeated in another context for people that knew ogy and they said almost everyone who brushed up against the man has a David
story and so this is I think like all the stuff taing on the next few pages like oh this is we're going to add to our Rose how special and unique this individual was and I just think these people add like so much spice and flavor to life in 1990 Mrs B drove her cart
into a metal post and broke her ankle she didn't go to the hospital until the next day she was back at work the next day the next year she took a corner with too much speed and turned the C completely over gashing her head on a grandfather clock the wound required stitches yet she was back in the store 2
hours later she is 97 this is insane uh there was a lunch in Where Mrs B was being honored the lunch in was dragging on and at about 1:15 Mrs B stood up and hollered what is wrong with you people don't you have jobs I'm going back to work and she left here's another addition to the Rose file
Warren Buffett said during the opening remarks at the 1993 birkshire hathway annual meeting I'd like to introduce berkshire's managers except Mrs B who couldn't take time off of work for such foolishness like a shareholder meeting and this is what I was mentioning
earlier Mrs B developed successful merchandising practices long before they were adopted by mainstream retailers she had established the idea of a discount store making small profits on large volumes Sam Walton didn't open his first Discount Store leading to the Walmart Empire until
1962 the company still follows these principles it is run very fiscally conservative conservatively Mrs B always felt that the days of the depression could return at any time we still run the company like the depression is coming back we have no debt though she never spent a single day in a classroom
she had a savant capacity for arithmetic so this is the idea of she she gets interviewed on ABC's uh like nationally televised show 2020 and people can't imagine can't believe how fast she is with numbers but it's another example of this maximum that you and I talk about
all the time that the public Praises people for what they practice in private how she's been working in the carpet department for half a century how many times do you think she had to multiply how much per yard or per square feet by the the the size of the customer's space and so it says uh her skill was
witnessed by the entire country on a television broadcast they're like rolling through the store on her cart and she's being interviewed and he would just throw out random numbers it's like okay let's say carpet's $12.95 a yard I want 30 yards how much is that in less than a sex
Mrs B would reply and if my room is 12 by 14 ft how many and then she'd cut them off 19 yard she'd reped before he'd even finished his sentence she was the most brilliant salesperson I've ever met but she's a lousy manager she is terribly abusive who is saying this oh this is uh one of her for her former
employees she's terribly abusive to her employees she charms her customers though she's a workaholic she operates on almost zero margin and she is one tough feisty woman and so that's a that's another uh actually good idea for you and I where it's like you know she's
the most brilliant salesperson ever she is gifted at what she's doing but she brought in her son to kind of balance out she's really great with customers but maybe not good good with employees okay so bring in somebody that that's way more calm that's better at dealing with employees and like they said she
may fire an employee but then her son who's morec might hire that person back after the fact and then here's a story I referenced earlier where Warren tried had previously tried to buy uh this business Warren Buffett had known of the business and was aware of its success from living in Omaha he admired uh the
blumpkins business business savvy in the late 1960s he had offered $7 million for Nebraska Furniture mark an amount this is hilarious an amount that Mrs B turned down while calling him cheap two decades later Warren came into the uh Mart again for the purpose of making Mrs be another
offer this time it $60 million for 90% of the company Mrs B and uh Buffett shook hands on the deal no lawyers were involved and there was no audit and no inventory was taken of the merchandise Buffett said if she ran a popcorn stand I'd want to be in business with her
she's just plain smart she's a fear competitor and she's a tireless worker and this is one of my favorite things that he said and I think is a good idea for for us to think of are we the answer to Buffett's question that'll make more sense in one second one question I always ask myself in appraising a
business is how I would like assuming I had ample capital and skilled Personnel to compete with it I would rather wrestle Grizz Grizzlies than compete with Mrs B they buy brilliantly they operate at expense ratios competitors don't even dream about and they and then they pass on to their customers much of
the savings it's the ideal business one built upon exceptional value to the customer that in turn translates into exceptional economics for its owners that is a great I need to read that line again it's the ideal business one built upon exceptional value to the customer
that in turn translates into exceptional economics for its owners and I couldn't find it in my highlights and in it's not in any of my notes and it's not in this book but I swear I remember um this idea of like they buy brilliantly there's a beautiful Simplicity to Rose's approach
to her business right and I'm pretty sure I had heard somewhere or read somewhere that they buy all their inventory from one manufacturer but this idea when I read that I was like okay I want to make sure that my approach to my own work is like okay I want people to describe me that way it's like I'd
rather wrestle Grizzlies then compete with him and what he's doing and I think that's just a good like maximum for us to keep in our back of our minds like is that applicable to me and if it's not what can I do to make it true uh in turn Mrs B also admired Buffett Mrs B said uh
my hero is the middle class the immigrants and Warren Buffett he's a genius I respect him a lot he is very honest very plain and his word is as good as gold another addition to our Rose file Rose is the only founder that Buffett had to buy out twice so the the good thing about about the business is
was a family business this is after Buffett already owns it she's still working they bring in like multiple generations of plumpkins and so she loved working with her son and she hated working with her grandkids and so this is what's going to cause her to leave uh
nobody wanted her to leave said uh said Lou that's her son Mrs B said she was not upset with Lou he is one in a million she said however she said however she had used the name Hitler to refer to her Grands Sons Ronald and Irvin they have a fight over pricing and control of the carpet depart
apartment which she considered was her domain and of course Rose like all of History's Greatest entrepreneurs are obsessed with control and so she quits and she starts another business it'd probably be the first for a 96-year-old woman to start a business but I feel
capable of doing it and want to prove to buff it in my grandsons she was upset a buffet because she felt that he had sided with her grandsons over this they wind up patching things up uh want to prove to Buffet to my grandsons that I can do it I I could outsmart any 25-year-old so that's how old her
grandkids are Mrs be quickly became bored after leaving the store she hired a chauffeur this is hilarious I keep saying that but it is I I laugh so many times reading her story I absolutely love her she hired a chauffeur her drove her around Omaha each day and took her to other stores she looked in the
windows and checked to see how many cars there were in the parking lot she's 96 it didn't take long for her to plan her revenge I Want To Be My Own Boss nobody's going to tell me what to do I had enough I'm going to let them have it thank God I've still got my brains I've
got Health money and strength and common sense I know how to beat everybody the new store was directly adjacent to the Nebraska furniture mark this is adjacent I heard it was across the street but it's they can see it in one way or another and so she's asked would you like to see Nebraska Furniture Mark go
out of business she says uh it should go out it should go up and smoke I like that they should go they should go to hell she replied the reason she able to move so fast is because there's really no uh it's everything's black and white there's really no like Shades of Gray
with her and so at this point she felt you know they took away her carpet department or tried to override her decision so that's it you're going to go to hell and Buffett picks up on this so everything with Mrs B uh knew how to do she would do fast she did not hesitate and there was no second guessing she'd
buy 5,000 tables or sign a 30-year lease or buy real estate or hire people there was no looking back she just swung the rules of running her business were very simple sell cheap tell the truth fortunately Mrs be lived long enough to reconcile with her family uh the first
relationship to be patched up with was Warren Buffett Rose was angry with him cuz she felt that he had sided with her grandsons two days before her 998th birthday Buffett once again bought uh her roses and chocolates and brought it to her job he's a real gentleman she
said after accepting Buffett's peace offering she settled her differences with her grandsons and sold Mrs be's Warehouse the new the new company to Nebraska Furniture Mart for $5 million with a provision that she could keep control of the carpet Department This Time Buffet made sure to have Mrs B at
age 99 sign a non-compete agreement and then Mrs B looks back at this time and really she's just saying you know controls obviously priority number one maybe I was wrong maybe I was too hard on that Mrs B said on the field with her grandsons I'm very independent if things aren't run the way I want it I don't
like it and I get very mad and this an excellent way to end Rose's Story the woman who never attended school and couldn't read or write was the recipient of some distinguished college degrees Rose's long life allowed her to accumulate numerous experiences in the community and in business she was
forever grateful that she was able to come to the United States in fact at every family gathering she would insist that they they sing God Bless America it was her favorite song the people who were born in this country don't appreciate all these wonderful things like those who whove come from out of
Darkness so when I had lunch with Sam zel that was episode 298 this is one of the things that we talked about in detail because his experience as a kid was similar to uh what his dad would tell him was similar to what my dad told me his father escapes Poland uh you know
the pro persecution of the Jewish people of the Nazis and you tell Sam over and over again you have no idea how lucky you are that you were born in this country my father was born in Cuba fled uh Castro and he would tell me that over and over again says the people who are
born in this country don't appreciate all the wonderful things like those who came out of the darkness I love the United States since the day I came here on her 100th birthday she said all my wishes have come true American people were wonderful to me and I made a success I never expected that much and I
did a pretty good job that's a hell of an understatement Mrs B you did a fantastic job uh she officially retired in October 1997 and she died at the age of 104 the next year upon hearing of her death Warren Buffett said we were partners and in most ways she's the
senior partner she's forgotten more than I'll ever know aspiring business manager should look hard at the plain but rare attributes that produced Mrs B's incredible success students from 40 universities visit me every year and I have them start the day with a visit to the Nebraska Furniture Mark if they
absorb Mrs be's lessons they need none from me and that is where I'll leave it for for the full story of Mrs B there's a bunch of other remarkable managers profile in this book as well but I think the book is worth buying just for the rose blumin chapter uh alone even if you
only read that chapter chapter one I will leave a link if you buy the book using that link uh you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time another way to support the podcast is to sign up for Founders premium I've been making a lot of AMA ask me anything episodes and subscribers to Founders premium can
listen to those I think there's like 21 or 22 of ailable and I'll be updating that feed every week that link is obviously down below and available at Founders podcast.com and my I have a free email newsletter if you want to receive an email from me a friend of mine will actually chastise me because
it's like I was so inconsistent so I'm going to update it every every time I read a book and he's right he was completely right about that so what I do is I just uh usually every book I think the last one uh the last email I just sent out was on the the m and Napoleon
book I think I have like 76 or maybe 86 something like that um different highlights from that book and so it takes me forever but I think it's really valuable where I try to say hey okay what are the top 10 things I want to remember most and I try to get them into
like sentences almost like maxims um so anyways if you're interested in getting an email from me uh with the top 10 highlights of all the books that I read for the podcast that link is also down below and available Founders podcast.com that is 303 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon