Let's spend a blog or two talking about the ingredients for successful wealth creation. Specifically, what makes a good investor? In my mind it's emulating a guy like heartland billionaire Warren Buffett, probably the most successful wealth creator of the last 50 years. What’s the secret to Warren Buffett’s investment success? The secret, according to The Sage of Omaha, is that there is no secret. “All there is to investing,” he says. “is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.” Buffett has done that in spades over the past 40 years – at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful investment companies in the history of Wall Street. The $44 billion company is like a block of granite in an otherwise fragile investment environment. Astute investments in brand-name value plays like Coca-Cola, H&R Block, American Express and Comcast have fueled Berskshire Hathaway’s rise to the top of the global investment period. All solid, no-nonsense companies that offer investors the three things that Buffett prizes in his investment picks – steady growth, good management and no surprises. Buffett’s results speak for themselves. A $10,000 investment in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 would be worth nearly $30 million by 2005. In contrast $10,000 in the S&P 500 would have risen to roughly $500,000. Consequently, Buffett is a Zen-like figure to both Wall Street and Main Street. Business writers and stock market analysts jot down his every utterance. Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings are almost mythical events, with a small army of Berkshire investors – and Buffett zealots – hanging on his every word. And he always delivers. Prior to Berkshire Hathaway's six-hour annual general meeting in May 2002, investors began lining up for seats at 4:00 a.m. Attendees were not disappointed. Among the treats? A film of Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett playing a ukulele and singing, "When the NASDAQ's down, you'll never frown, Berkshire's here to stay." In typical fashion, the folksy Buffett later led a visit to the local Dairy Queen down the street, which, by the way, he owned. The Buffet Way Call it the Buffett Way – as many people do. In this day and age, when traditional investment like stocks and bonds ebb and flow along with the economic tides, seemingly tethered to nothing and batted about in global financial markets on an almost daily occurrence, there is comfort in the knowledge that a visionary like Warren Buffet exists. His company, Berkshire Hathaway is one of the most successful businesses in American history, if not the most successful. Buffet, himself, has personal net wealth of more than $40 billion, making him the second wealthiest individual in the US (behind Microsoft founder William Gates). But it wasn’t so long ago that the so-called “experts” on Wall Street were laughing at Warren Buffet; mocking his cautious, carefully-measured methodology of investing in the financial markets. To the self-proclaimed gurus, Buffett's take on things seemed out of tune. The rules of the game had changed, and he just didn't get it. "Warren Buffett should say, 'I'm sorry,'" fumed Harry Newton, publisher of Technology Investor Magazine, in early 2000. "How did he miss the silicon, wireless, DSL, cable, and biotech revolutions?" That was a year when AOL stock rose six-fold and Amazon.com had rocketed by 1,000 per cent in a year, while shares in Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company Buffett had built from virtually scratch had climbed – cue ominous music - only 11 per cent. But, as history has proved, the Buffet Way won out in the end, as the dot.com bubble exploded, leaving millions of Americans with huge holes in their investment portfolios, and left more than a few ‘experts” with egg on their faces. Experts, who right now would kill for 11 per cent investment returns. Yes, wise old Warren ("a life long technophobe" as he confesses on the Berkshire Hathaway web site) meanwhile stuck with boring bluechips like Gillette, Coca-Cola and American Express, saying he couldn't understand these newfangled companies. What did Buffet know that the dot.com geniuses didn’t? Buffet and his partner, Charles Munger, began looking closely at dot.com company valuation sheets and came away convinced there was more folly than fortune in all those celebrated new economy companies. Instead, they returned to the grounds they had tilled before and knew so well – value stocks. They invested in companies like Proctor and Gamble that made products that people actually used. It is hardly necessary to point out that this was during the age of irrational exuberance, when the Nasdaq was flying and Berkshire's stock was flopping. While the experts considered Buffett's fixation on value (and values too) old hat, The Sage proved them all wrong. In my next blog, I'll lay out Buffett's story, and explain how his background and frugal mindset made him the wealthiest man on Wall Street. It's a story well worth telling -- and hearing.