Dairy Queen CEO: What a Job Interview With Warren Buffett Is Like

Warren Buffett won’t be conducting many job interviews once he steps down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO at the end of this year.

Dairy Queen CEO Troy Bader revealed what it’s like to be grilled by the legendary investor, and shared two big takeaways from the experience, in a conversation with Business Insider in Omaha ahead of Berkshire Hathaway’s historic 60th annual meeting.

Berkshire paid nearly $600 million to take Dairy Queen private in 1998. As a big fan of the chain’s Blizzard soft-serve ice cream, Buffett joked at the time that he brought a “modicum of product expertise” to the deal.

Dairy Queen now develops, licenses, and services a system of more than 7,700 restaurants across more than 20 countries, according to its website.

‘Very anxious’

Bader flew from Minneapolis to Omaha to interview for the company’s top job. He recalled feeling a mixture of worry, anticipation, and excitement as he studied his notes before the meeting.

“It was the fall of 2017, I’ll never forget the day,” Bader told BI. “I was very anxious going in because OK, I felt like I knew our business, but you’re sitting down with Warren Buffett.”

“What questions is he going to have about our business that I’m just going to sit there and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I never even thought about this,'” he added.

Many people of Buffett’s stature would be “very arrogant” in an interview, sending the message: “Here’s who I am and you better impress me,” Bader said.

“From Warren it was just the opposite,” he continued. Buffett swiftly put him at ease, then spent the first 15 or 20 minutes of their conversation asking about a particular area he thought Bader might know something about, as it was relevant to another deal he was working on.

“Warren is a constant learner,” Bader said. “He wants to know what you know and what he can learn from you.”

The fast-food chief took away a big lesson from that: “Anybody you meet, I don’t care who they are — they know something you don’t.”

Passion and ethics

Buffett probed Bader’s knowledge of the restaurant business, his vision for Dairy Queen, and what he planned to do differently as the chain’s CEO. He also gauged Bader’s love for his work.

Buffett was “digging for something more, that energy, that passion, that connection to the business,” Bader said.

That revelation sparked his second key takeaway. Even the “smartest person in the world” won’t be as capable or perform as well as “somebody who has that passion.”

Berkshire’s 94-year-old boss echoed that sentiment during his recent Q&A: “What you’re really looking for in life is something where you’ve got a job that you’d hold if you didn’t need the money.”

Bader said that Buffett, who is known for prizing ethics and reputation, likely assessed his character by speaking to his predecessor and others who knew him.

“As he always says, ‘There’s plenty of room to play in the middle of the court. We don’t need to get to the edges,'” Bader said.

On the subject of his morals, Buffett “probably had that answered before I ever got in the door,” Bader said. He added that “if there was any question about that, I’m not so sure I would’ve been in Omaha in his office.”

Buffett made a similar point in the lead-up to his surprise resignation announcement. He said it “just doesn’t work over time” to have managers who don’t abide by the standards they set for their employees.

“So, you really need someone that behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit,” the billionaire philanthropist said.

Love for the job

Buffett stopped by Dairy Queen’s booth to catch up with Bader a few hours before BI interviewed him.

Bader highlighted strong first-quarter sales figures to the outgoing CEO, and Buffett said he’d seen those in the subsidiary’s reports.

“Dairy Queen’s not a big part of Berkshire, but he’s actually paying attention to every business,” Bader told BI. “This is his life, this is who he is.”