Warren Buffett is worth $150B, and his breakfast budget tops out at $3.17 every morning. He pulls his 2014 Cadillac XTS into a McDonald’s drive-thru and orders a Sausage McMuffin with egg and cheese. “That’s it. Thank you.” The money is already counted out in a little cup next to him. How much is in it depends on the stock market. Every morning while shaving, Buffett tells his wife 1 of 3 numbers: $2.61, $2.95 or $3.17. She puts that exact amount in the cup. Today it’s $2.95. “The market’s down this morning, so I think I’ll pass up the 3.17 and go with the 2.95.” The Cadillac came with hail damage. His daughter had to decide it was time to replace his old 2006 Cadillac, which had about 19,000 miles on it after 8 years. He drives about 3,500 miles a year. He drives it home to the same Omaha house he bought in 1958 for $31,500. Berkshire Hathaway pays him a salary of $100,000 a year. It has for decades. On a trip with Bill Gates, he once offered to pay for their McDonald’s lunch with coupons. Worth $150B. Still saves 22 cents when the market’s down. Genius habit or billionaire theater?

Simon Sinek explains how Apple, Amazon and Netflix took trillions from 3 industries, and none of it came from better technology. Publishers didn't build the Kindle. Hollywood didn't build streaming. Record labels didn't build iTunes. Outsiders did, and Sinek calls it embarrassing. The music industry is the worst case, because it lost to 1 word. People had moved from an album culture to a song culture, and the labels never noticed. They were still trying to get everyone to buy whole albums at Tower Records. Apple saw it differently. "No, no, no, songs. People want to buy songs." Then came Spotify and playlists built from single tracks. "Great album is not a thing," Sinek says. "Great song is a thing." That's the 1 thing. Apple, Amazon and Netflix paid attention to the culture first, then asked how technology could fit into it. The old industries were so hell-bent on protecting what got them there that they missed how the world had changed. Forget about the technology, Sinek says. They missed the people. Tower Records sold albums. Apple sold songs. Which industry is still selling albums right now?

Patrick Bet-David breaks down who really holds the most power in the world. You might expect presidents, world leaders, or even billionaires at the top of the list. But some of his picks might surprise you, and his reasoning reveals a different way to look at power. Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk. The people behind Google. Jeff Bezos. Then come the financial and media power players, including Larry Fink, Alex Soros, and Rupert Murdoch. Different industries. Different roles. But one thing connects them: influence that extends far beyond a single company or position. Presidents have political power. But the people who control major platforms, capital, and media can influence what millions of people see, what they pay attention to, and how they understand the world. Bet-David even brings up Ted Turner, arguing that if Turner had continued running CNN, he could have become one of the most powerful men in America. The bigger question isn't just who holds the highest office. It's who has the power to shape what everyone else sees. So who do you think is the most powerful person in the world today?

Jordan Belfort finally explained what “Sell me this pen” really tests, and most salespeople fail it in 1 sentence. The moment they hear the line, they start pitching. The pen is great, it writes upside down, it’s the best value for the money. To Belfort, that’s the clearest sign someone doesn’t understand selling. The right answer doesn’t mention the pen at all, at least not at first. A fan in the audience asks Belfort to sell the pen. He jokes that no one has ever asked him that before, then explains what the test is really for: before you pitch anything, you ask questions. How long have you been in the market for a pen? What have you used before? Is it for business or personal? How much do you usually spend? Pitching without asking, Belfort says, tells the buyer you don’t give a shit about them. You’re just ramming the product down their throat. The questions also tell Belfort who to walk away from. If someone says they’re not looking for a pen, he says “Great, have a nice day” and moves on. To him, the biggest rookie mistake is trying to sell to everybody. Only then does Belfort pitch: “Based on what you said to me, this pen is perfect. Let me tell you why.” And the pen, he says, is just a stand-in for any product. Rookies sell the pen. Pros sell what you just told them. Be honest: would you have pitched the pen, or asked the first question?

IBM needed an operating system for its first PC, and the company that already had one wouldn't sign 1 non-disclosure agreement. So the job went to Bill Gates. Microsoft didn't have an operating system. It didn't even write the first one itself. Gates tells the story himself. IBM came to Microsoft because Microsoft had written the software for nearly every personal computer. Gates told them to put a disk in. IBM wanted to ship fast. Digital Research already had an operating system for 8-bit machines and was starting a version for the new 16-bit ones. But Digital Research hadn't finished the work. And it wouldn't sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. IBM was getting frustrated. Inside Microsoft, Paul Allen and Kazuhiko Nishi, a colleague from Japan, pushed back: "No, no, no, we should just do that ourselves." There was no time to build it from scratch. Microsoft licensed code from another company and turned it into MS-DOS. Then MS-DOS went head to head with Digital Research's CP/M. Within 2 or 3 years, MS-DOS was "far, far more popular." Microsoft later added graphics on top of MS-DOS. Windows still carries all of it inside. Digital Research had the head start. Microsoft said yes.

IBM paid Bill Gates a flat fee for the software that ran its first PC, and walked away thinking it had won. No royalties. No cut of every machine sold. Just a fixed payment. But the money was never in the fee. It was in 1 restriction Gates and Steve Ballmer wrote into the contract. IBM couldn’t sell the software to other hardware makers. That didn’t sound like much at the time. Then IBM PC-compatible machines started showing up, and every one of those companies had to come to Microsoft directly. Gates explained it in 2010. The deal was very complicated, and he and Ballmer had thought about it a lot. On the other side of the table, IBM sent a fairly junior team. Microsoft believed personal computers were going to be hyper popular. So they built the deal to make sure Microsoft would get a lot of that upside. IBM thought it got a very good deal, Gates says. And it did. But the industry kept growing, and every new PC maker was another deal for Microsoft. IBM won the contract. Microsoft won the industry.

50 Cent saw 2 gallons of water in the same supermarket aisle, 1 for $2.89 and 1 for 59 cents, and it ended in a $4.1B sale. In the video below, he tells the story himself. A gallon of water costs $2.89. Further down the aisle, another gallon of spring water costs 59 cents. Pour them into 2 cups, he says, and he couldn’t tell you which spring either one came from. Poland Spring had just trained people to pay more for the name. He goes back and tells his manager, Chris Lighty. “I want to sell water.” “What?” “I want to sell water.” “To who?” “Everybody. Everybody need water.” It might have been easier, he says, if he’d told him he wanted to sell liquor. The bottle finds him later, at a gym on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He’s working out, sees a vitaminwater, and keeps the bottle. He doesn’t buy the company. He ends up with almost 10% of it. Then Coca-Cola buys vitaminwater for $4.1B. The interviewer guesses he made $100M. He won’t give a number. “But I could show you all my teeth.”

The man who drew Superman was almost blind and living near poverty in 1975, nearly 40 years after selling him for $135. His name was Joe Shuster. He lived in New York and couldn't make a living, even though his creation had made millions for other people. His partner, Jerry Siegel, was 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. He was supporting a wife and daughter on $7,000 a year as a mail clerk. It started in the middle of the Depression. The 2 of them, just out of high school, took a New York comic book publisher their idea: a red-caped hero from the planet Krypton. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. The price was $135, and all rights went to the publisher. For 9 years they made a living writing and drawing him. Meanwhile, Superman became a star on radio, TV, movies and product endorsements. In 1947 they sued for royalties and to get their names back on the comics. They lost the case. Then they lost their jobs. "Our American dream then became an American tragedy." They never stopped fighting. After nationwide publicity, Warner Communications, Superman's new owner, gave in to public pressure. Both men were 61 when the deal was signed. Each got a $20,000-a-year pension, full medical care, provisions for their relatives, and their byline back. Superman cost $135. Getting their names back on him cost 28 years.

Al Gore told George W. Bush in 2000 that he was backing the drug companies’ bill, and pointed to his own 24 years of fighting them. “Alright, here we go again,” Gore started, and went straight at Bush. If you want someone who uses a lot of words on a convoluted process and ends up backing a bill the big drug companies support, Gore said, “this is your man.” For 24 years, he said, he had never been afraid to take on the big drug companies. He gave them credit first. They discover great new cures, and he wanted that to continue. Then came the charge. They were spending more on advertising and promotion than on research and development, and they were trying to extend their patent monopolies to keep prices high. His plan was a Medicare drug benefit for all seniors: You pick your own doctor. Your doctor picks the prescription, and nobody overrules it. You go to your own pharmacy, and Medicare pays half. If you’re poor, Medicare pays all of it. Medicare pays everything over $4,000 out of pocket. He also wanted faster approval of competing generics to bring prices down for everyone. Bush’s plan leaned more on private insurance and targeted help for low-income seniors. Bush won. In 2003 he signed Medicare Part D, a drug benefit run through private plans. The law also barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices directly. Supporters said competition between the plans would keep prices down. Critics said Medicare’s buying power was being left on the table. That ban held until 2022, when Congress gave Medicare the power to negotiate prices on some drugs. Both men promised lower prices. Medicare waited 22 years for the power to bargain.

25% up doubles the money and 25% down wipes it out, and that's the private equity model Stephen Schwarzman described in 2005. Charlie Rose asked the Blackstone CEO what private equity actually is. "Well, what we do is pretty simple." Raise large amounts of money, mostly from pension funds and endowments. Buy companies with it. Borrow about $3 for every $1 of equity in the deal. Control the company, improve it and own it for a while. Then sell it, "and hopefully make a lot of money for our investors." The $3 is where the 25% comes in. Put in $1 and borrow $3, and you control a $4 company. Grow its value 25% to $5. The debt is still $3, so your $1 is now $2. Now run it backwards. A 25% drop takes the company to $3. The debt is still $3, and your $1 is gone. Same company. Same 25%. 1 side doubles, the other goes to 0. That's why he said "hopefully"