Warren Buffett says the most “important” career advice he ever received — and later passed on to his own children — came from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay, “Self-Reliance.” The essay advises choosing work that fits your nature, not parental expectations or society’s approval.

Emerson wrote that each person can discover their unique genius only by trusting their own experience and intuition. He warned that copying someone else’s life is a way of wasting your own talents. 

Buffett’s father, a stockbroker who later became a politician, adopted this view and deliberately did not pressure his son to join the family business or go into politics. 

Buffett recently told CNBC that his dad “had no feeling that I should follow in his footsteps,” which he said was critical to his development. Instead, his father urged him to find what uniquely excited him, a message straight out of Emerson’s work. 

Buffett remembered his father paraphrasing a quote from “Self-Reliance” to drive home his point: “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.”

Giving the same advice to his own children

Buffett has passed down the advice his father gave him to his own children.

“I told my own kids … look for the job you’d take if you didn’t need a job,” Buffet told CNBC. “And that’s basically what my dad was telling me.” 

Buffett tried to give his three children the same freedom his father gave him: no scripted career path and no assumption they would go into finance. 

Buffett’s children have pursued careers in fields like music and agriculture rather than trying to follow in their father’s footsteps with investing. Buffett has, however, included his children in philanthropy efforts, tasking them with giving away his $149 billion fortune within 10 years of his death. 

How Buffett applied the advice

Buffett discovered his passion for business and investing early, buying his first stock at age 11. Following that inner pull, Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway into a company worth more than $1 trillion by the time he stepped down as CEO at the end of last year. He led the conglomerate for 60 years. 

Buffett says he did not choose investing because it was expected or glamorous, but because it was the kind of work he would have wanted to do even without a paycheck. The billionaire acknowledged in a 2021 letter to shareholders that “economic realities” may interfere with a student’s search to find a job they would do even if they weren’t getting paid. 

“Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest,” he wrote in the letter. “For when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be ‘working.’”

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