Warren Buffett pushed a startup founder to dream bigger - and now she's dead-set on building a global fashion brand

• A startup founder credits Warren Buffett with boosting her business ambitions to another level.
• Lola Banjo told the investor she aspired to be CFO of BMW, and he encouraged her to dream bigger.

A word of advice from Warren Buffett transformed how one startup founder saw herself, and boosted her ambitions to a global scale.

Lola Banjo met the famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO while studying for a MBA from Emory University between 2009 and 2011. She entered and won a competition where the prize was meeting a business leader, who turned out to be Buffett.

"I freaked the f out and it was just incredible," she told Markets Insider in an interview this week.

Banjo had read about Buffett's investment philosophy, and the empire he'd built, while she was working toward a master's degree in financial engineering at New York University a few years earlier. She respected his business principles, frugal lifestyle, and commitment to give virtually all of his wealth to good causes.

"He was almost a mythical character, the godfather of finance that doesn't exist," she recalled about her view of him at the time.

Buffett paid for around 60 students from Emory and half-a-dozen other schools to visit his hometown of Omaha and learn about him and his company for a week. Their orientation was held at the Berkshire-owned Nebraska Furniture Mart, and Buffett joined them afterward for lunch in an unassuming cafe where the staff greeted him by saying, "Hey Warren!" The students also visited Buffett's home, seeing firsthand that he'd lived in the same house and driven the same station wagon for many years, Banjo said.

Banjo seized the chance to speak with Buffett personally. The investor asked her about her ambitions, and she replied that she wanted to become the CFO of BMW — the most aspirational job she could imagine at the time.

Buffett seemed disappointed. "Instead of just aspiring to be CFO of BMW, from the little I know about you, why not aspire to own BMW?" he asked, in Banjo's recollection. Buffett pointed out that a person had founded the German auto giant, and there was no reason why she couldn't build her own world-beating company too.

"I had never had that thought in my entire life," Banjo told MI. "The mindblown emoji — that was literally me."

"That was one of the most monumental things anyone has ever said to me," she continued. "It's hard to quantify what impact that whole conversation has had on my life," she added, noting it "put the battery in my back about wanting to create a global enterprise."

Banjo went on to launch a million-dollar fashion brand named Silver & Riley, which specializes in stylish travel bags for businesspeople. The former strategy consultant at Accenture and Deloitte quit her job as vice president at Salesforce this month to run her company full time.

Buffett, whom she counts as a mentor, has been very supportive of her plans. She's not only growing her business with a worldwide vision, but she also wants to build a legacy brand with lifetime customers, in line with Buffett's love of powerful brands like Coca-Cola and American Express.

Banjo has also embraced Buffett's advice to do something she's passionate about, and to do it well, whether it's "selling widgets, paper clips, cars, or commercial real estate," she said.

The founder balked at the idea of selling her company one day, but said she'd consider an offer if it came from Buffett.

Banjo was a high flier before she met Buffett, but the simple act of him questioning her greatest aspiration made her realize she should aim even higher and dream even bigger.