What Warren Buffett Told a 7th-Grader Who Asked for His Advice

Investors from all over the world met in Omaha, Nebraska, this weekend for the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, where CEO Warren Buffett and his vice chairman, Charlie Munger, fielded questions for nearly seven hours.

It wasn't just journalists, analysts, and shareholders peppering the duo with questions about management and the economy. One of the more curious queries came from a seventh-grader who traveled all the way from South Florida to ask the two billionaires for advice: "How do you make lots of friends? And how do you get people to like you and work with you?"

After telling the middle-schooler that he was "obnoxious" at that age, Munger aroused a few laughs with his concise response, which boiled down to: get rich and be generous.

Buffett offered a longer answer, explaining that he was also obnoxious early on but learned to change his behavior as he matured. He did this by copying those he admired and adopting the qualities they possessed.

He even gave the youngster an exercise to do: List four things he liked about kids in his class and four things he disliked about them and model his behavior accordingly.