I first heard Warren Buffett say the words “Money Mind” on May 6, 2017. I started thinking about this book on May 7.

Not in any kind of organized, purposeful way—not at first. For a long time the notion of Money Mind was simply an idea sitting quietly in a corner of my brain, not causing any trouble but stubbornly refusing to relinquish its spot. Gradually, without conscious intent, I found myself visiting that idea more and more, and each time I discovered that it had gotten a little taller, a little more demanding. Until finally, one day in 2019, I knew I could ignore it no longer. I had to give that idea my full attention. It was time to start planning a new book.

I tasked myself to investigate fundamental questions. What exactly is a Money Mind? Where does it come from? What are its components? Can they be learned? And if so, how? Once I articulated the questions, I immediately knew the answer. Who better to teach us what it means to have a Money Mind than Warren Buffett himself, the splendid teacher and the ultimate Money Mind.

And so I started digging.

Ben Graham concludes The Intelligent Investor with this final, profound sentence: “To achieve satisfactory results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.” Over the years, Warren Buffett, Graham's most famous pupil, has often repeated this phrase, although a bit more succinctly: “Investing is easier than you think but harder than it looks.”

I thought I knew exactly what that meant. I was wrong.

When Warren said investing was “easier than you think,” I took that to mean that in his view, all the difficult financial puzzles that others urged investors to undertake—forecasting the stock market, or determining how interest rates would change, or predicting the overall direction of the economy—were completely unnecessary. Things were easier for successful investors because they could simply skip all those annoying questions. And that is still the case.

It was the “harder than it looks” part that I got wrong. I thought it was a caution flag warning investors of all the work they would have to do, such as disentangle the income statement to determine a company's cash owner‐earnings, analyze a balance sheet to tabulate returns on invested capital, and employ a discounted cash flow model to calculate a company's intrinsic value.

Collectively, I believed, all this calculation and analysis was harder than simply choosing stocks with low price‐to‐earnings ratios, low price‐to‐book‐values, and high‐dividend yields while avoiding all stocks with conversely high multiple factors. Wouldn't that be easier than all the laborious research and analysis of owner‐earnings, ROIC, and DCF models? Maybe, but that's not what Graham and Warren meant by “harder than it looks.”

The hard part is acquiring the right temperament, the temperament of a Money Mind. The objective of this book is to help us understand the building blocks that go into making this Money Mind so that we may begin to incorporate its principles in service to a life of value.

Our journey was chronological. We began with the first business book that 11‐year‐old Warren Buffett read, One Thousand Way to Make $1000 by Frances Mary Cowan Minaker. She instructed young Warren that “the first step in starting a business of your own is to know something about it … so read everything published about the business you intend to start.” As elementary as this sounds, and as simple as it is to do, the vast majority of investors read very little about the companies they own. Those who own index funds can be excused, as their bet is not on any one company but the investment class of common stocks. But those that are making active bets on individual stocks should, at a minimum, take an interest in their companies' annual reports. It is surprising how few people even take the 10 minutes required to read the chairman's letter to shareholders. Make no mistake, if you don't understand the inner workings of a company, you will never reach the first level in what it means to have a Money Mind.

What other building blocks have we observed?

We must begin with the quality of self‐reliance, which Roger Lowenstein once called “Buffett's trademark.” It means relying on your own power and resources rather than others, and it is the start of a positive upward cycle in which self‐reliance increases self‐confidence, which promotes success, which further reinforces self‐reliance. In a very real sense, self‐reliance is the primary building block of the Money Mind, for everything else flows from the mental fortitude that it creates.

Self‐reliance is what helps a Money Mind understand the intrinsic value of stocks owned, which in turn is critical for achieving the Stoic mindset investors need when interacting with Mr. Market. Whenever you look at Mr. Market and wonder whether he knows more than you, at that moment the jig is up. This does not mean you won't make mistakes. Warren has made mistakes and so have I and so will you. But the point when you begin thinking the market knows more than you is the moment when you have lost your self‐reliance.

A Money Mind is strengthened by knowing that its understanding of investing is based on the concept of rationality, which combines the “shared experiences” of a wider body of knowledge with the insights of an “experiencer,” someone with the direct business experience of what it means to own a company. Rational investors understand how markets work and can distinguish between the approaches that work and those that don't.

A Money Mind gains further strength by studying the mental models from other disciplines—what Charlie Munger calls “the art of achieving worldly wisdom.” And a Money Mind is reinforced by examining the “psychology of misjudgments” in order to learn from mistakes.

A Money Mind understands that the world is constantly changing and the “challenge of change” requires adaptation. A Money Mind rejects hiding behind outdated mental models and in its place embraces pragmatism as a way to “widen the field of search” for ideas that can help them become a better investor.

The Money Mind is also aware that meeting the challenge of change will take more than just technical skills, no matter how dazzling. In short, the Money Mind is an analytical competitive advantage that for most investors is the missing link. The key to investment success is acquiring the right mindset. Adding more math is not the answer.

The Money Mind is a business‐driven investor. You don't have to own a business to acquire a Money Mind but you have to think like a business‐owner and make the connection that the stock you own is a long‐term partnership interest in a company, not a passing fancy that can be discarded on a whim. A Money Mind acknowledges the inviolable commandments of business ownership—never own a company that does not generate cash, never own a company that does not achieve returns above the cost of capital, and never buy a company without a margin of safety. A Money Mind has a keen insight to wealth creation that comes from owning companies that are able to compound shareholder value over time. And a Money Mind, like a business‐owner, doesn't have to own every company in town, just the best businesses with favorable long‐term prospects run by the most capable managers.

The Money Mind is comfortable operating with the lessons learned in the Investment Zone while chuckling at the folly being played in the Market Zone. The Money Mind is content observing the economic progress of their companies and does not need the market's daily price affirmation to tell them they are on the right track. If anything, the Money Mind recognizes the noise in the stock market while being better attuned to the value signals, knowing they will be justly weighed by the stock market in due course. In this way, the Money Mind is not reliant on short‐term performance metrics to measure success, but rather plays the long game of achieving investment returns. And, crucially, a Money Mind is an investor, not a speculator. The Money Mind is focused on the asset—the company—and pays no mind to the beauty contest being waged by speculators.

A Money Mind is a sportsman, competitive and eager to win. But for the Money Mind there is more to the sport of investing than winning every race. A Money Mind appreciates the beauty of investing and its ultimate experience, and in doing so actually becomes a better investor by focusing first on process and only then on outcomes.

Like an artist, a Money Mind moves beyond “looking” at stocks for the answers, and engages in the art of “seeing” stocks to better understand how the company achieved its results. And a Money Mind appreciates that teaching is a sacred endeavor entrusted with educating others about investing so they, in turn, will rise to become the next teachers.

Lastly, the Money Mind is a virtuous mind. Strengthened by the cardinal virtues of prudent action, just rewards, and mental fortitude, they are then able to acquire the proper temperament to invest—the quality of soundmindedness that defines the Money Mind. Then with a faith in capital markets, and with the expectation of future financial returns, the Money Mind marches forward with generosity, help and devotion to partners, shareholders, and clients.

If we stop the journey here, the book has a nice ending. We fully understand the component parts that lead to the formation of a Money Mind. But understanding, without action, is not enough. What then is next? Once again Minaker's book gives us a push in the right direction. “The way to begin making money is to begin.”

If you wake up tomorrow morning and decide you are going to adopt a Money Mind and become a business‐driven investor, there are a few things you need to know. A business‐driven investor in the stock market is a nonconformist. Ralph Waldo Emerson, you might remember, said that the nonconformist “must know how to estimate a sour face” while “the world whips you with displeasure.”

Being a business‐driven investor, bound to the principles learned in the Investment Zone, you will soon discover the Market Zone has its own ideas on how you should behave. The financial media are constantly grabbing for your attention with unsolicited advice about what you should do next. All around you, people will whisper that you should buy this or sell that. But a business‐driven investor turns a deaf ear to the mosh‐pit that is the stock market and instead becomes a vigilant overseer of the businesses they own.

A Money Mind steps back from the Market Zone. Instead of becoming a participant they become an observer. There will be no shortage of opinions hurled at them. But the Money Mind silently smiles, letting the “opinionator” drone on and on, then quietly turns away and does nothing.

I wish I could tell you that being a business‐driven investor is as easy as taking the road less traveled, but the Money Mind's road is not for the faint of heart. Being a silent contrarian is not enough. More is required. William James reminds us that truth is discovered only by those who had the courage to act on their own beliefs. The greatest achievements of the great investors began with the courage of making a bold decision in the face of uncertainty.

When I wrote The Warren Buffett Way I made it plain I could not promise readers they would be able to achieve the same investment results as Warren. But I did promise them that if they applied the investment tenets outlined in the book, they would likely see improvement on their past results. In much the same way, Inside the Ultimate Money Mind does not guarantee you will achieve the same mental construct as Warren Buffett. But I have no doubt that if you are willing to spend time studying and thinking about the architecture of what it is to have a Money Mind, you will see a marked improvement in your temperamental balance when it comes to thinking about the stock market. This alone, I am convinced, will be worth the time spent reading this book.

But that is not all. Just as there is more to a rich life than your bank account, there are rewards that come from following the path of a Money Mind that go beyond investing. Someone who makes life decisions based on rationality rather than emotion, with this discipline alone moves to the top of the class. When thinking about how to solve a serious, troubling problem, why not take a pragmatic view instead of stubbornly hanging on to a bad idea? All of us, no matter our profession, will be well served by becoming a multidisciplinary thinker. It is well recognized in education theory that someone who has a broad base of knowledge with general skills can much more easily achieve deeper knowledge and understanding in one specific area. And although we are geared to study success, the study of failure and misjudgment can be equally beneficial.

A Money Mind is a dynamic mind. And this is a good thing because the stock market is dynamic. It is a system in process that is constantly changing, learning, and adapting. For this reason, the Money Mind is a learning machine. Whatever fixed ideas you have about the stock market, rest assured they will need to be updated in the years ahead. And that means the Money Mind remains humble, conscious of its shortcomings, and not so naïve as to think that success will be the only outcome. But recognizing that the process is sound, a Money Mind is confident, knowing that failures, when they occur, will be few and fixable. And when all these forces come together, it inspires you to share what you have learned, not as a barnstormer or a pedant, but a quiet, calm, trusted adviser.

Most important, when the pieces of the Money Mind coalesce you begin to recognize that you are walking a new path. A path built on virtue, prudent behavior, a sense of justice, and fortitude in thought and action. I cannot promise that walking this path will make you rich. But I can promise you that your life will be enriched.

This is a book about investing. I am not qualified to counsel you on how to live your life, and even if I were, I would not presume. But I do know that when we move through the world with patience and charity, when we face problems rationally rather than with self‐defeating emotion, when we enthusiastically embrace new ideas while cherishing deeply held values, life becomes easier, and more fulfilling. In all your roles—as a spouse, a parent, a colleague, a friend, a neighbor, a teacher, a citizen—your life will be richer. Of this, I am certain.