IT HAS BEEN AN ARTICLE of faith for me that I should always try to hang out with people who are better than I. There is no question that by doing so you move yourself up. It worked for me in marriage and it’s worked for me with Don Keough.
When I’m with Don Keough, I can feel myself on the up escalator. He has an optimistic view of me and what I am to the extent that he raises my sights and makes me believe more in myself and the world around me. When you are around Don, you are learning something all the time. He’s an incredible business leader. The greatest achievement of good executives is to get things done through other people, not themselves. Now here is a guy who is capable of getting all kinds of people from all over the world, men and women who want to help him succeed. I’ve seen him do it.
Maybe it is because no one understands the human aspects of situations better than he. He can advise my kids perhaps better than I can and they love him for that. He does the same for everyone he calls a friend—and that is a lot of people.
The Graham Group, named after my mentor Ben Graham, is a bunch of people who meet every two years or so. All my close friends, including Don, attend. Everyone wants Don to be the keynote speaker. Bill Gates, in particular, always wants it to be Don Keough. He just loves listening to him because Don talks such sense and offers such inspiration. Don can tell you to go to hell so wonderfully you’ll enjoy the journey.
He is on my board at Berkshire Hathaway because he is one of the very few guys I feel I can hand the keys over to.
We go back almost fifty years together, to the time we lived opposite each other on Farnam Street here in Omaha. We were just two guys making a living for our families back then. If we had told you that one of us would become president of The Coca-Cola Company and the other would become head of Berkshire Hathaway, I’m sure you would have said I hope their parents have enough money to support these two.
At one point I knocked on his door and asked him to invest ten thousand dollars or so with me. He turned me down flat. I’d probably have turned me down too back then.
Our families were great friends; the kids were always in and out of each other’s houses. It was very tough on my kids when they had to move to Houston. There were a lot of tears that day when they moved away.
It’s interesting when you think of it. Don and I were living less than a hundred yards away from where my future partner, Charlie Munger, had grown up. Don went to Houston and Atlanta; Charlie landed in Los Angeles. But we later reunited as close friends and business associates, all with a lot of Omaha still in us. Nowadays, of course, a lot of people say they are from Omaha for status reasons!
After Don left Omaha we kept in touch over the years. I’d meet him at the Alfalfa Club or once we even met at the White House. Then he read an article in 1984 in which I praised Pepsi, “preferably with a touch of cherry syrup in it.” The next day he sent me their new product, Cherry Coke, and invited me to taste test “the nectar of the Gods.” After I drank it I told him, “Forget about your testing. I don’t know much about that stuff but I do know this is a winner.”
I switched brands right away and immediately declared Cherry Coke the official soft drink of Berkshire Hathaway.
A few years later I started buying Coke stock but I didn’t tell Don because I felt he might have to tell the company lawyer, and who knows where that would have led. I didn’t want to put him in an awkward position. Anyway, he called and said, “You wouldn’t happen to be buying a share or two of Coke stock, now would you?” I told him, “It so happens that I am.” At the time we picked up 7.7 percent of the company.
It was a straightforward decision, especially knowing that he was the president. I saw Coke in 1988 as a company that understood what it was doing and was doing the right thing and was obviously enormously valuable as a result.
If you wanted to invent a human personification of The Coca-Cola Company, it would be Don Keough. He was and is Mr. Coke. He’s of the Ben Franklin school, “Keep thy shop and it will keep thee.” Basically, what he has always done is do the right thing by Coca-Cola and he believes that it will always do the right thing by him.
Don’s best ability is to cut to the chase on an issue, to cut through the bureaucratic fog. Keep it simple is his principle and mine too.
Herbert Allen says that the only two businessmen he knew who could have become president if they had run for office were Jack Welch and Don Keough. I agree with that; they both had that natural brilliance. They are both people we can learn so much from.
After all these years, every time I see Don Keough I feel as refreshed as I do after drinking a Cherry Coke. He never loses his carbonation. I’ve seen him on the board of Coke and now at Berkshire. Don is as enthusiastic and committed as ever, full of plans, energy, ideas, daring us all to dream. I am delighted that this book will help so many other people share in that unique Keough vision.
—Warren Buffett