Like many people, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett followed a parent’s career path: His father owned a stock brokerage firm before later embarking on a political career.
Needless to say, the younger Buffett stuck with investing and did quite well. When he stepped down as CEO at the end of last year, Berkshire Hathaway was worth more than $1 trillion. But crucially, Buffett said, he didn’t receive any parental pressure to follow that path.
“He said that — which was very important — he had no feeling that I should follow in his footsteps. Period,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in “Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy.”
On the contrary, Buffett recalled his dad paraphrasing a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”: “The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
In other words, you have to find your own calling. It’s advice Buffett said he passed down to the next generation of his family.
