[laughs]

... because my first revelation was that, uh, 25 years ago, uh, there was a billion dollars in net operating earnings.

So this isn't the cash, this isn't the, uh, equity portfolio.

Uh, this is strictly, um, 56, um, wholly owned operating companies, net of taxes, $1 billion in 2000.

All of that, or 100% of it, came from investment insurance income, which kind of blew my mind when I went back and looked at that in retrospectively.

And then fast-forward 25 years later, and it's 47 times that, so it's $47 billion, which is a really nice growth in annual earnings net, and you now have four times the employees, you have four times the amount of wholly owned subsidiaries.

But most dramatically, and I think structurally, i- he and the other managers have solidified the investment of Berkshire Hathaway by dividing the 100% of net operating income from insurance investment income to a broader pie, which is more sustainable and more durable, where you have now 30% of the $47 billion coming from insurance investment income, the other 20%, or half the earnings, coming from insurance underwriting.

How it helps

What did you see early on that that most people missed?

Well, I looked at Berkshire Hathaway as a business owner.

So I was a business owner looking at Berkshire Hathaway as a business, not as something to trade, but something to own, just like I would look at owning a business.

And I started a blog before they were blogs on The Motley Fool called fool.com. And I announced...

I could come up with 101 reasons why you should own this company, not buy it, not trade it, own it.

And I didn't know what those 101 reasons were.

And so I logged on, I created a pseudonym called Simple Investor, one word.

What leadership traits showed up consistently?