“Because Nobody Wants to Get Rich Slowly.”

Jeff Bezos once asked Warren Buffett a deceptively simple question.

“Warren, your investment thesis is so simple. You’re one of the richest people in the world. Why doesn’t everyone just copy you?”

Buffett smiled and replied:

“Because nobody wants to get rich slowly.”

That single line explains almost everything that goes wrong in investing.

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The Paradox of Wealth Creation

The principles of successful investing are not secret.

We all know them:

• Buy high-quality businesses

• Hold them for a long time

• Let compounding do the heavy lifting

• Avoid unnecessary activity

Yet very few people follow this path.

Why?

Because investing is boring, uneventful, and psychologically uncomfortable.

And humans are not wired for boredom.

Slow wealth creation offers:-

• No excitement.

• No stories to tell at dinner parties.

• No adrenaline rush.

• No quick wins to celebrate and

• No dramatic moves to feel smart about

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Why Smart People Struggle

Ironically, educated and intelligent professionals are often the most vulnerable.

Their careers have trained them to believe that:

• More effort leads to better results

• Faster action signals competence

• Doing something is better than waiting

Markets punish all three instincts.

In investing:

• Inactivity often beats activity

• Patience beats intelligence

• Time matters more than timing

Buffett didn’t get rich by making frequent decisions.

He got rich by making a few correct decisions and refusing to interrupt them.

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The Illusion of Get Rich Quick

The desire to get rich quickly pushes investors toward:

• Trading instead of owning

• Tips instead of businesses

• Predictions instead of probabilities

• Constant changes instead of consistency

This leads to wealth destruction.

And this is not due to bad markets or poor products; it is due to impatience.

In contrast, compounding works quietly:

• Year after year

• Cycle after cycle

• Bull markets and bear markets alike

For a long time, it feels like nothing is happening.

And then, suddenly, everything happens.

What appears to be “slow” from the outside is often exponential on the inside.

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The Real Edge

Hence, the real edge is not access to information.

It is not stock tips.

It is not market predictions.

The real edge is behavior.

The ability to:

• Stay invested when nothing exciting is happening

• Do less when others are doing more

• Hold conviction through boredom, volatility, and noise

That is why Buffett’s approach looks simple but is incredibly hard to copy.

Everyone wants to become rich, but a very few are willing to endure the process.

And that is what precisely Buffett reminded Bezos and all of us:

“Nobody wants to get rich slowly.”

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-- Pady