#303 Rose Blumkin (Warren Buffett's Favorite Founder)

**David Senra** (0:00)
Mrs. B had this relentless dedication to her work and a willingness to do whatever it took to serve her customers. That reminds me a lot of the founders of Meter. The Meter founders make their own hardware. And to make sure they got it right, they literally moved into the factory and slept on the floor. And now almost a decade later, they have perfected their service. Meter gives you fast and secure internet and wifi for your business. It works in any commercial space. This could be an office, a warehouse, a lab, everywhere. Meter makes fast, secure and reliable internet and wifi that is as easy to switch on as electricity or water. That is actually why the company is called Meter. There's power meters and there's water meters for every building. There should be one for internet networking and wifi. Meter can help you set up a new space or help you expand your existing space. In fact, in the podcast you're about to listen to, there's a tornado. A tornado tears through Mrs. B's business. So then she buys the lot next door as well and then she expands. So if this was happening today, Mrs. B without a doubt would use Meter because she wants to focus on selling and dominating her competition while Meter could handle everything that a modern business needs, all their internet and networking and wifi needs. With Meter you get streamlined design and installation, powerful hardware and smart software. Meter makes both their hardware and their software. Meter offers fully managed expert support. And one of my favorite things about Meter is how easy they make it for the customer. All you have to do is give Meter your address and your square footage of your commercial space and they take care of the rest. Even better, there's no upfront cost to you. Meter grows right along with your business, so that means you can expand your business without worrying about expensive upfront cost. You simply pay one monthly rate. Check out their website. It's absolutely beautiful and explains all the value that Meter can provide your business. And you can do that by going to meter.com forward slash founders.
I was talking to Andrew Wilkinson the other day. He's the co-founder of Tiny. And something Andrew and I both learned from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is the importance of having fun in your work. It's very obvious that Warren and Charlie are gifted at what they did, literally the best in the world at what they did. But they also had fun. And Andrew and Tiny have fun by building silly, but very valuable side projects. I want to tell you about one right now. Go to berkshirenerds.store. And when you go to berkshirenerds.store, you will see two things that I have sitting in my house watching over me. There are these high quality, heavy duty bronze busts of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. I think of them as physical manifestations of the ideas that you and I are learning in these books and on this podcast. I glance up when I need to make a decision and they serve as a constant reminder for me to ask what would Charlie and what would Warren do? You've got to see what these look like. Go to berkshirenerds.store to check them out. You can buy them for your office. They also make great gifts for a fellow Berkshire nerd. I want to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts in the world. It is Invest Like the Best. A long time Founders listener was just interviewed on Invest Like the Best. It was episode 326 with my friend Alexis Rivas. You can find that whatever podcast player you're listening to and I also leave a link down below.
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. But 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 miles to get to a train. She stowed away on the train and got off 300 miles away at a small town near the Ukrainian border. She went from shop to shop looking for a job and a place to stay.