More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 23 - May 25, 2020
Since you can tackle only one personally defining effort at a time, it’s important to pursue a goal that is truly worthy of the focus it will require to ensure its success.
“The best executives are made, not born. They absorb information, study their own experiences, learn from their mistakes, and evolve.”
But wanting something isn’t enough. If you’re going to pursue difficult goals, you’re inevitably going to fall short sometimes. It’s one of the costs of ambition.
After we sailed north to Providence, Rhode Island, I took a bus back to Brooklyn in search of another job.
Try something new when finished a target.
rewards commensurate to your effort.
If we could get the best dancers from other colleges, why not shoot for the professionals?
“I need $10,500 because I heard there’s another person graduating from Yale who’s making $10,000, and I want to be the highest-paid person in my class.”
Keep your target and idea into reality
I liked learning how to use weapons. I didn’t enjoy the stupidity.
No matter how successful, smart, or brave you are, you can always end up in a tough place.
work somewhere where my personality was a natural fit.
“Because at Lazard, there are two types of people: masters like me and slaves like you would be. I don’t think you’d be happy being a slave.
Understand what you really need in this moment
At a minimum, this includes the airport test: Would I want to be stuck waiting at the airport with you if our flight were delayed?
Test people wether I want to work together or not
people who succeed in finance must start with repetitive practice before they can ever hope to achieve mastery.
His relentless questions enabled him to get to the heart of the problems at the firm, but the process was trying.
Getting to know Jack and watching him in action reinforced my growing belief that the most important asset in business is information. The more you know, the more perspectives you have and the more connections you can make, which allow you to anticipate issues.
The fix, I found, was to focus on my breathing, slow it down and relax my shoulders, until my breaths were long and deep. The effect was astonishing. My thoughts became clearer. I became more objective and rational about the situation at hand, about what I needed to do to win.
“If somebody challenges you, you’ve got to be ready to rip the place apart. Then you put it back together.”
“Nobody at Lehman will ever stab you in the back. They’ll walk right up to you and stab you in the front.”
My early mistakes on Wall Street, the typos and calculation errors, and the embarrassment that followed, had taught me the importance of rigor, eliminating risk, and asking for help.
A classic LBO works this way: An investor decides to buy a company by putting up equity, similar to the down payment on a house, and borrowing the rest, the leverage.
This one unexpected visitor turned out to be worth more to Blackstone than all the clients we expected in those early days who never came.
Unexpexted new client to the new firm
People in a tough spot will often focus on their own problems when the answer may lie in fixing someone else’s.
“Friendly Transactions in a Hostile Environment,”
But through sheer will, you wear the world down, and it gives you what you want. The money had to be out there.
Pension funds were typically conservative and had not yet begun investing in alternative assets.
Never believe in current way
Sometimes it’s best to pay what you have to pay and focus on what you can then do as an owner.
Not focus on lowest price of assets
The way to avoid this type of situation is to invest only when values have recovered at least 10 percent from their lows. Asset values tend to increase as economies gain momentum. It’s better to give up the first 10 to 15 percent of a market recovery to ensure that you are buying at the right time.
Investment rule for recession
My mother and father never raised their voices. If we did something wrong, they let us know about it, but they never screamed or shouted.
Note to cultivate children
Failures can be enormous gifts, catalysts that change the course of any organization and make it successful in the future.
As long as you had the ball, all you had to do to win was just keep passing, waiting until you were sure of making the shot.
Investment rule
People think they’re great and tell you they’re great, never that they failed at their last job, only that they are looking for “more opportunity.”
Get new job
The first was focus. If you ever felt overwhelmed by work, I said, pass on some of your work to others.
The second way to maximize your chances of achieving excellence was to ask for help when needed.
everything in business is connected.
Note from HBS
Many politicians considered home ownership the first step toward fulfilling the American dream.
Note to subprime mortgage
Life is long, and helping people when they need it often comes back to you in ways you least expect it.
It seemed like bad corporate finance to borrow to pay a dividend in a volatile market with a volatile stock.
Borow money to pay dvd
If you want to get anything done, the strength of your relationships means everything.
Business in China
Blackstone’s investment committees: study the problem in detail, then pull back and look for the handful of variables that could determine the key points for any deal. Where would the zone of fairness be?
I’ve learned that when dealing with the Chinese they need time to consider and socialize an idea.
Whenever we promote people to senior roles at Blackstone, I congratulate them in person and we talk about their new responsibilities.
As a leader for new comers or promoted to senior role in our team
We make decisions as a team, and we own the outcome as a team.
