What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence

by Stephen A. Schwarzman

the government’s policies exacerbated the situation. When the market was going too fast, they slammed on the gas. When it was grinding to a halt, they hit the brakes.

Historically, mom-and-pop operations dominated the business of buying, fixing, and renting out houses in America. Of the 13 million rental homes, most belonged to individuals or small real estate businesses. Many landlords were absentee and didn’t maintain their properties to the standard of a professionally run apartment complex.

the biggest asset class in the world,

Real estate

most public energy companies were chronically overvalued.

When somebody asks you for something new, the odds that he or she is the only person on the planet at that point of time who would find that of interest is zero. When you get one of those inquiries, it’s potentially a huge opportunity. Those who are asking don’t know that. They are just looking at their own needs. But if those needs make sense and you create the right product to fit those needs, you can roll it out more broadly and your competitors will be left wondering how you figured it out.

Mike Bloomberg. Mike was looking for money for his young financial data company.

But one of the great things about the entrepreneurial experience is that over time, if everything works out, life does get easier.

if we weren’t great out of the gate, our program would never have the prestige it needed to succeed.

They don’t trust ideas. I could promise a building and great students, but until they saw them, they weren’t going to write us a check. So we decided to wait until Schwarzman College opened in 2016 and our first class was enrolled. And as soon as they did, the perception of what we were doing changed completely.

my refusal to accept anything but success.

Every entrepreneur needs luck,

China was now rich enough not to need protectionist trade policies. It no longer seemed right that US exports to China were charged three times more in tariffs and taxes than Chinese imports into the United States.

In the equity markets, being big can hurt your performance. If you want to buy $1 million of an S&P 500 stock, you can do so without moving the price. If you want to buy $1 billion worth, the market will push up the price before you can complete your purchase. In our world, we found the opposite happening: as our funds grew and our rivals struggled, our size became a major source of advantage. We found buyers and sellers eager to work with us, and us alone. We moved away from participating in many competitive auctions with other private equity firms into situations where we could focus more specifically on the value to both sides and less on rival bidders.

We kept the deal exclusive and avoided a public auction process.

We decided to offer 85 percent of the present value of the financial and risk business in return for a 55 percent stake. Thomson Reuters would get cash for almost the entire business yet keep nearly half of it to share in its future growth. We and our co-investors, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, would become the new majority shareholders, with Blackstone maintaining operational control. This arrangement would be a strategic partnership, not an outright sale, thereby avoiding the need for a shareholder vote.

thirty-eight, the age I was when I started Blackstone

Sales rarely get made on the first pitch.

Success comes down to rare moments of opportunity.

Christine Anderson, the head of public affairs at Blackstone, was instrumental in all of these interviews and helping to refine the concept for the book.