Reflections from my dinner with Charlie Munger

**David Senra** (0:00)
What you're about to hear, I have never released on this feed before. Earlier this year, I got to have dinner with Charlie Munger. I spent over three hours with them. Shortly after that happened, I was asked the question, what did you learn from that experience? And I actually recorded my answer to that question. And so you're about to hear that recording now. Before we get to that, I want to tell you one of the first thoughts that I had when I woke up this morning. I heard the news of Charlie passing away yesterday, and I was actually surprised at one of the first things I thought about this morning was, it was actually a quote of something that Sam Walton had said in his autobiography. Sam Walton said that he borrowed more ideas from Sol Price than anyone else. And Sam was in the business of learning from other entrepreneurs. In fact, in that same book, he says, everything that I've done, I've copied from somebody else.
I'm in the same business. That is why Founders exists. I'm in the business of learning from other entrepreneurs. And I realized this morning that I've borrowed more ideas for my own life and my own business from Charlie Munger than anyone else. Charlie's a hero to me. Charlie changed my life, and I'm going to miss him. I hope you enjoy these notes from my dinner with Charlie Munger.
What did you learn from having dinner with Charlie Munger? In case you haven't seen it yet, I just made an episode.
It is about the book, The Tow of Charlie Munger, but it is also about the fact that I got invited to have dinner at Charlie Munger's house. I got to spend over three hours with him, and I got to ask him any question, no limits. Like you could ask him whatever you wanted.
And so the first thing that I learned is he's exactly as advertised. The Charlie that you see at the Berkshire meeting, the Charlie that you've maybe watched speeches on, the Charlie that you've read books on, that is the same guy. He really does read all the time. His bookshelves were filled. When he says, hey, you should become friends with the Eminent Dead, he says he's a biography nut. I thought, you know, close to 300 biographies for the podcast so far. He makes me look like a biography amateur. He had books on his shelves, and don't worry, he let me look through his shelves, and I'm gonna order a bunch of these books. They're really hard to find. I've already tried to track a bunch of them down. But he lives what he preaches. The fact that, hey, you should become friends with the Eminent Dead. The fact that you should find what you're good at, and you should pound away at it forever. It took him 41 years to find his life's work. But once he became a full-time investor, he knew that that's what he's gonna do for his whole life. He's just obsessed with it. He loves this idea where he could design his own schedule. He never wanted to have people, to manage a bunch of people. He wanted to read all the time and make money with his mind.
And so while I was with Charlie, it was so incredible to be able to meet one of your heroes. Like he had a heavy influence. Like I've stolen so many of his ideas that I had prepared a list in advance of a ton of questions and things that I wanted to talk to him about. I never looked at my phone once. So the way I'm going to answer this question is what I did is when I got back to my hotel after, I knew I was like this, you know, Charlie Munger, this is like a night Charlie Munger may never remember, right? Cause you think he's 99 years old, think about all life experiences that this guy's had, what's in his brain, right? It's a night that he may never remember and it's a night I'll never forget. So I just wrote down like, what are the things that I wanted to remember? And so to answer this question, I just want to run through some of my notes with you. There's like one main theme. What's interesting about Charlie is like, a lot of his ideas interact with each other and they combine and they become even more powerful. It's like this Lollapalooza effect that he talks about all the time. So what I would say is like the main thing that I took away from the dinner that I think is something I've already tried in practice.