Welcome

Whats up! Welcome to Wouter’s blog. It’s Wednesday! That means i’m going to be covering:

• 💰 Media Business Breakdown (Buffet what?)

• 🔥 Giveaway time…

Hope you’re all having a great Christmas break, friendly reminder that you can reply to this email with any topics you want me to cover, would love to hear it!

P.s, I’m building this newsletter in public! If you want to see the behind the scenes, follow me on twitter..

Follow me booty here lad.

BREAKDOWN
Warren Buffet - The Wealthiest Influencer

I can no longer ignore the fact that Warren Buffet is the wealthiest influencer. It's mind blowing!

I was thinking the other day about personal-brands. It's a big reason i started my newsletter. A big reason I tweet. A personal brand is so powerful, it's insane.

• It's why Sahil Bloom can put out a tweet and generate millions in MRR.

• It's why Nick Huber can buy and promote companies like a machine.

• It's why Founders go to Andrew Wilkinson and Tiny to sell their companies - fast.

Warren Buffet is the brand behind Berkshire.

I'm going to show you how Buffet became the wealthiest influencer right infront of us:

• Berkshire Annual Letters

• Berkshire Annual Meeting

• Buffet-isms and quick learnings.

Berkshire Annual Letters

Buffet is an incredible writer. He is very underrated.

Now he started out good, but over time his writing jsut got better and better.

Firstly the Annual letters have been going on for 58 years. 1956 marked the first letter, Berkshire at the time traded for $18 per share. That's now $547,000 per share lol.

In the letters, Buffet only uses on average 13.5 words per sentence. Short but explicit at the same time.
And the crazy part is his writing has gotten simpler over the years! In both the Hemming Way Score (grades readability) and the number of words per sentence.

The letters are always as simple as possible, Buffet writes as if he is talking to his two sisters "who are not active in business". So the letters need to be understandable.

He uses really accessible language instead of corporate talk. What's really noticable is that Buffet:

• Constantly using words like “you” and “your” to evoke empathy with the reader.

• And also the frequency of short and light transition words like “but”, “and”, “so”, to make it feel like a conversation.

I think another thing Buffet does, whether on purpose or not, is to remain within his zone of competence. He doesn't promise the worlds best returns. I mean apart from being a baller investor, he also stays super humble and grounded.

The average sentiment in his letters is mostly neutral. Not too optimistic. Not too pessimistic. But rather a more neutral tone which I think adds to his credibility. He is being authentic and not trying to trade/gain hype.

Interestingly, the letters talk a lot about mistakes Buffet made. The letters share them and what he learned from them and how to move forward.

Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders are generally about 14,500 words or 30 pages. On average, his letters are a 30 min read.

There's a lot of juicy content but it's a pretty doable read.

Funnily enough a study (from Quartz) found that the most used word in his letters to shareholders, since 2014 was “business”. And the most used 3 word phrase was “Charlie and I”.

With frequent, honest and clear communications style Buffet became a very trusted brand. You're going to trust him to hold your money, much more than others.

Annual Meetings

The annual meetings are incredible events, people from all over the world travel to go there. It's a way for Berkshire to be incredibly open and provide a ton of value to shareholders.

They started doing them in 1973, after 8 years in 1981 only 12 people attended! Eventually Buffet started including an invitation in the annual shareholder letters leading to attendance to grow.

The meeting is usually called the “Woodstock for Capitalists”. It is world renowned and doubles as an expo for the company’s many subsidiaries (smart). There's a documentary that covers the event that is pretty awesome to see! Last year there where over 30k attendees btw. Insane.

The event is also surrounded by fun things i did not expect to find when doing this research

Buffet-isms — You’ll find most valuable

There are a ton of learnings from Buffet, but specifically related to brand and media here are the ones i found that i think you’ll find most valuable.

Warren Buffett on your “circle of competence”

• “That ability to know when you're playing the game in which you're going to win and playing outside of that game is a huge asset” (Buffett, Legendary Investors, 02/23).

Applied to content creation, this translates to:

• Identifying what content you are great at creating, not just content you like creating

• Getting to know your “content box” or your areas of expertise.

• By understanding your “circle of competence” or “content box” you place yourself in a position of power, as an expert in your field.

Lessons in marketing

• Think long term and compound your efforts.

• Be skeptical of silver bullets.

• Seize opportunities during tough times.

• Reputation is everything.

• Focus on one strategy and commit to it.

• Embrace uncertainty and appreciate value.

• Stick to your strike zone.

Berkshire Hathaway

• Berkshire Hathaway’s assets under management amount to $764.77B as of Dec ‘23.

• Berkshire Hathaway’s marketing strategy. Heavily relies on its brand reputation.

• Maintains a long-term perspective.

• Capitalizes on its diverse portfolio of businesses.

• Tactics used for marketing strategy:

  • Transparent and effective communication with stakeholders.

  • Engaging with the media to use Warren Buffet’s image as leverage.

  • Selective advertising to engage a targeted audience.

  • Philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.

  • Warren Buffet as the face of the company

  • Subsidiary level social media to engage with target customers.

That’s all for today folks!

Need Help?
Time to help. Need Sales Advice? I got you..

Are you running a newsletter right now and are looking for an external sales-experts opinion on wtf is going on?

I’ve helped sell millions of dollars worth of newsletter advertisements. IF you want consulting advice i’m available for calls.

Reply to this email if you’re interested with your problem(s) + budget.

wait…
BEFORE YOU GO!

Don’t forget

Don’t forget to come back for Fridays newsletter where I will cover:

• The weekly newsletter media breakdown!