Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.
— Some free advice included in the ‘farewell letter’ sent by retiring CEO Warren Buffett to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, November 6, 2025.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett sent out a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders earlier this month, announcing that he’s handing the company reins over to his successor, Greg Abel.
Apparently, this is his final letter to the shareholders, after many, many years of dispensing corporate insights. The letter comes across less like an annual report from a corporation’s CEO and more like a letter you might get from your grandfather. It begins:
To My Fellow Shareholders:
I will no longer be writing Berkshire’s annual report or talking endlessly at the annual meeting. As the British would say, I’m “going quiet.”
Sort of.
Greg Abel will become the boss at yearend. He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator. Wish him an extended tenure.
Mr. Buffett notes that he never expected to make it to age 95, and he shares a brief story about his appendectomy. During his childhood in Omaha, a friendly family doctor, Dr. Harley Holtz had saved his life with a timely diagnosis. Probably not the type of story you normally read in a corporate annual report. I wouldn’t know, however, because I’ve never been a shareholder of a corporation, or received an annual report. Certainly not from a billionaire Board Chairman.
In fact, I never even received a letter from my grandfather. It wasn’t his style to write letters.
We’re not sure what Mr. Buffett means by “I’m ‘going quiet’… Sort of.” He admits that he has been prone to talk endlessly at Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings, and to judge from the YouTube videos I’ve come across, his speeches to shareholders often included his advice on how to live a happy life.
Easy for a billionaire to say, of course. But you want to believe him, because… well… he’s really, really rich.
The letter also recounts Mr. Buffett’s important relationships with other men from his hometown of Omaha, where he has long maintained his corporate headquarters. He wonders:
Can it be that there is some magic ingredient in Omaha’s water?
If so, I bet Mr. Buffett could make a killing bottling Omaha water and selling it. But doing so might allow other corporate CEOs to acquire magic powers. Not something you’d want to see happen in the cut-throat world of corporate Mergers and Acquisitions.
I’m actually surprised Mr. Buffett even mentioned the idea. Will the Coca-Cola beverage conglomerate jump on the idea, now that the magic has been revealed?
There’s actually a heartwarming story about Coca-Cola in the shareholder letter, concerning an Omaha neighbor named Don Keough.
In 1959, Don Keough and his young family lived in a home located directly across the street from my house and about 100 yards away from where the Munger family had lived. Don was then a coffee salesman but was destined to become president of Coca-Cola as well as a devoted director of Berkshire…
In 1985, when Don was president of Coke, the company launched its ill-fated New Coke. Don made a famous speech in which he apologized to the public and reinstated “Old” Coke. This change of heart took place after Don explained that Coke incoming mail addressed to “Supreme Idiot” was promptly delivered to his desk. His “withdrawal” speech is a classic and can be viewed on YouTube. He cheerfully acknowledged that, in truth, the Coca-Cola product belonged to the public and not to the company. Sales subsequently soared.
But Mr. Buffett isn’t just sharing funny stories. He’s also dispensing advice based on a lifetime of accruing enormous wealth.
Like:
“Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.”
That advice honestly made me stop and think pretty hard about what I would like my obituary to say. Because it’s one thing to decide what you want you obituary to say, and quite another thing to live the life to deserve it.
Like, let’s say you wanted your obituary to say, “He was President of a multinational beverage conglomerate that changed the flavor of its flagship product in an ill-fated attempt to take market share away from a competing, slightly sweeter carbonated drink… and then, as a result of consumer backlash, had to reverse the decision within less than three months and revert to the previous product formulation. He publicly apologized for his company’s mistake.”
Would you want to live your life to deserve that obituary?
When I think about what I want my obituary to say, it sounds something like this:
“He had limited talent and ambition, and as a result, never had anything to show for his presence on the planet. After a failed marriage, he was unable to attract any attention from the opposite sex, and spent his later years in the company of his cat, Roscoe. He is survived by his three children, all of whom will deny maintaining any meaningful relationship with their father. He was known to play ukulele on occasion.”
That’s the kind of obituary that I can reasonably expect to live up to, without too much effort.
I don’t actually play the ukulele, but hardly anyone will know that. I just threw it in, because Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, and I wanted to imply that I have something in common with one of the wealthiest people on earth.
I suppose I could also include a comment about “liking to give advice”…
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.