The Best Investment Advice I Learned from John Maxwell and Warren Buffett

Writing for a living isn’t glamorous. It’s a whole lot of blah, punctuated with moments of euphoria. For years, I struggled to develop the discipline of writing. But then I heard author John Maxwell speak about his “Rule of 5.”

As someone who’s written over a hundred books, John shared five habits that formed the basis of his success. Without exception, “every day he reads, every day he files, every day he thinks, every day he asks questions and every day he writes.” Reading strengthens his mind, filing helps him store quotes and illustrations he might use, thinking helps him process, questioning helps him engage with others, and writing brings everything full circle.

I adapted this approach, and six days a week (aside from Sunday), my routine looks very similar. I read over a hundred books a year, have thousands of quotes filed in my notes folder, spend time praying every morning, ask questions of authors every week, and am always writing.

This consistent routine is the reason my business is where it's at today. It's a bit like compound investing.

The Relational Snowball

A couple of years ago, I drove my in-laws’ U-Haul from their former home in North Pole, Alaska, all the way to their new home in Caldwell, Idaho. It’s close to a 50-hour drive, and I spent about thirty of those hours listening to a biography of Warren Buffet appropriately titled The Snowball.   

From a distance, it’s easy to picture Buffett as this mythical figure who is the savviest investor of the past century. And he made some brilliant decisions. But he also had something that many of the 2,000+ books on his life dismiss—time.

Even at a young age, Buffett began to develop his savings. He recognized why Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world and understood the secret to his long-term success was held in investing his hard-earned savings over decades. He started his earnings snowball early, and it grew in size every year.

At age 52, Buffett had by his standards today, a miniscule $376 million. But that was where things began to take off. By age 53, he was worth $620 million. By 56, $1.4 billion. At 66, $17 billion. At 83, $58.5 billion. And at 91, his billions matched his age. In fact, 99% of Buffett’s wealth was accumulated after his fiftieth birthday.

This is the power of compound interest and making sustained investments over lengthy periods of time. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel made this observation:

Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him.[1]

From this statement, Housel goes on to make a few additional observations. “Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years.”[2] This left Housel to conclude of Buffett, “His skill is investing, but his secret is time.”[3]

Relationships are like this. Initially, the investment might be small. However, consistent investments over sustained periods of time can literally change the course of human history.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do with a lifetime of faithfulness. 

The Power of Consistent Investment

Compound investing in others isn’t glamorous. It’s a whole lot of doing good things day after day. As Darren Hardy writes in The Compound Effect, “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” Change your routine, change your life.