Frank Slootman, Lifelong Wisdom, and Sam Zell
"You can’t be an entrepreneur unless you’re really curious"
Hey! Welcome to issue #4. As usual, I’m keen to share what I’ve been reading, learning, and compressing.
Here’s the format of today’s email:
Part 1: Frank Slootman
Part 2: Lifelong Wisdom
Part 3: Under the Spotlight: Sam Zell
Part 4: Bonus Quirky Content - Something to Read, Watch, and Listen.
Frank Slootman
What Got You There Podcast with Frank Slootman (Link)
Full disclosure, I chat with Sean a bit, but I truly believe What Got You There is one of the most underrated podcasts around. He’s had some incredible guests that I haven’t heard elsewhere. This one is my latest favourite.
I do believe that trust is the highest currency in life, and in business, and in any other endeavor. And trust is a very is something you have to work on really systemically and and very purposefully right.
And when you have trust, then the business almost starts to roll downhill instead of fighting your way uphill. Right? Because when there's trust, you know everything gets easier and quicker, and it's more enjoyable and it’s just an incredible thing.
And it's so intangible. And when you lose trust, it's nothing but friction, in everything that you do.
Amp It Up! (Link)
A guide for leaders on how to increase the speed, intensity, and focus of organisations.
Mediocrity is the silent killer. Organizations are not getting killed by their C players. Everybody knows who they are, and performance eventually is addressed. The people who kill organizations are your B players. It’s the scourge of the enterprise because there are many and they are generally accepted. Often, they are seen as not bad enough to fire, but not good enough to keep. They are the ultimate passengers.
This thread basically sums it up better than I ever can!
I’ll leave you with this from the article:
Everybody wants results, but not everybody wants to do what that takes.
Which is almost as good as Ronnie Coleman’s quote “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.” Yeah buddy!
Lifelong Wisdom
Why make your own mistakes when you can learn from others? Here are a couple lessons and reflections from some of the best.
Blackstone’s Byron Wien Discusses Lessons Learned in His First 80 Years (Link)
20 simple lessons. And not just career advice. Tonnes of great life advice too.
Concentrate on finding a big idea that will make an impact on the people you want to influence.
Network intensely.
When you meet someone new, treat that person as a friend.
Read all the time.
Get enough sleep.
Evolve. Try to think of your life in phases so you can avoid a burn-out.
Travel extensively.
When meeting someone new, try to find out what formative experience occurred in their lives before they were seventeen.
With regards to philanthropy, try to relieve pain rather than spread joy.
Underplay your achievements and you’ll become a more likeable person.
Take the time to give those who work for you a pat on the back when they do good work.
When someone extends a kindness to you write them a handwritten note, not an e-mail.
At the beginning of every year think of ways you can do your job better than you have ever done it before.
The hard way is always the right way.
Don’t try to be better than your competitors, try to be different.
When seeking a career out of school or making a job change, always take the job that looks the most enjoyable.
There is a perfect job out there for everyone.
When your children are grown or if you have no children, always find someone younger to mentor.
Every year try doing something you have never done before that is totally out of your comfort zone.
Never retire. If you work forever, you can live forever. ;)
Lesson #3 has easily my favourite passage:
When you meet someone new, treat that person as a friend. Assume he or she is a winner and will become a positive force in your life. Most people wait for others to prove their value. Give them the benefit of the doubt from the start. Occasionally you will be disappointed, but your network will broaden rapidly if you follow this path.
Li Lu’s Reflections on reaching 50 (Link)
Li Lu is a favourite of mine and was Under the Spotlight in issue #1 (link), so I’ll use any excuse to insert Li Lu content in this newsletter!
Socrates was right, unexamined life is not worth living, certainly not living well. Every once in a while, I would sit down alone to figure out where I might be wrong. Sometimes, what is wrong today is what was right in the past. As circumstances change, so should we. In my experience, every five to ten years or so, I had to change so much of myself that at times it felt like almost a reinvention. I’ve been blessed with the faculties of rationality that help me to form the habit of self-examination. And when I fail in self-examination, I’m even more blessed to have some strong friends who can point out my blind spots. I would have been lost in life’s various mazes if I had not gotten that help.
Interesting to hear what he attributes his success to:
Woody Allen is right, 90% of success is to show up. At various stages in my life, I could have stopped, or took the long rest. For some reason, my heart told me otherwise. I just kept going. Half of the time, I wasn’t sure where I was heading. The other half I was probably taking the wrong turns. No matter.
Every week I share resources and interesting links.
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Under the Spotlight: Sam Zell
Each week I provide a little spotlight on an investor or operator I admire.
Sam Zell is this weeks focus, in a nutshell:
Born in the 1940s in Chicago to Jewish immigrants from Poland. His father having managed to board the last train out of Poland before WW2 kicked off.
In his junior year in college, he started an apartment management business. By the time he graduated law school at 24 he earned ~$150,000 that year ($1.1 million+ in today’s dollarydoos).
In 1968, Zell founded what was to become Equity Group Investments. Which would eventually turn into an empire.
In 2007 after he sold his Equity Office REIT, to Blackstone for $39 billion. At the time, was the largest leveraged buyout deal in history.
Known as the forefather of modern real estate investment trusts (REIT’s).
Strategies for High-Stakes Investing, Dealmaking, and Grave Dancing (Link)
One big takeaway from this episode was Zell’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Which I think is one of the most common themes among successful people I’ve studied.
They all ask why. They all want to know more. They all want improvement.
A number of years ago, I went to Ulaanbaatar. Why would I go to Ulaanbaatar? Well, Ulaanbaatar happens to be the capital of Mongolia. I had read someplace that they had opened a Gucci store and another high-end retail store in Ulaanbaatar. And I said, “Why would they do that?” It turned out that the country was in a giant resource boom. So I said, “We’ve got to go and look at it and see what’s there.” That’s kind of the way I attack and look at all kinds of information. You can’t be an entrepreneur unless you’re really curious. You’ve got to see the problems, you’ve got to see the solutions, and you can’t see them from afar — you’ve got to see them upfront. That’s why I end up traveling 1,000 hours a year on my plane, but a typical CEO of a Fortune 100 company travels 250 hours a year.
Now, I’m 24 and an absolute noob in life, but the quote below sums up how I approach my work. Take in vast amounts of content, but be able to take away the most important and useful aspects.
You can’t be an entrepreneur, you can’t be a risk-taker, unless you’re also just ape about knowledge, and you’ve just got to keep absorbing — and separating out that which is relevant and that which isn’t. It’s very easy to get overcome by too much information, and therefore you can’t make decisions. So you’ve got to be able to sort it out.
Also, I found this tidbit interesting.
In 1989, 80 percent of the institutions that I pitched to didn’t have real estate as an asset class.
Feels like in Australia that Real Estate is numero uno and is the greatest investment of all time. So it’s wild that 30 years ago institutions wouldn’t even want a bar of it.
The Great Wisdom of Sam Zell (Link)
The audio and video are probably sub-optimal, but if you can get through that, it’s an immensely valuable hour!
Zell has a belief (which I share) of post-covid meetings returning to normal. I should be wanting Zoom calls to stay since I’m the perfect candidate given I live in the middle of whoop whoop. But, humans are social creatures and I think will always prefer a face to face meeting rather than an online one.
Everybody's going to do Zoom calls. And then one day, a young whippersnapper is going to say, 'You know, I think I've got a better chance if I go sit in front of the guy.' And so he's going to get on a plane. And he's going to sit in front of the guy. And he's going to get the deal.
Zell’s comments on Bitcoin speaks to me on a spiritual level.
I am very skeptical, frankly, of Bitcoin. Ultimately, it may be the answer or one of the answers. But right now, it's a world that's extraordinarily populated by chameleons and other fast-talking characters. I don't believe everybody involved in it are the kind of people I'd like to follow.
And I’ll leave you with one of my all-time favourite quotes below,
Everybody else seems to have a kind of timing game in their own head. 'Well, I can get out before so and so happens.' The world is full of skeletons of people who believed they could get out before the bad event came.
Overall, I think there’s much to learn from Zell. And I haven’t even finished his book Am I Being Too Subtle? yet! Many thanks to Daniel Toloko (@daniel_toloko) for suggesting it, I’m already halfway through and loving it!
Bonus Quirky Content
Something to read: Rise above it or drown: How elite NBA athletes handle pressure (Link)
How do you combat pressure? Is it just a change in mindset? Will putting in the work alleviate it? I think a lot about how to deal with pressure, and this article covers a lot of interesting and important points.
Some guys in the league right now, their regular seasons are different than the playoffs. Why is that? Because it's a different kind of pressure. Those guys, when it gets stripped down, don't believe in themselves. They aren't sure they can hit the big shot, so they can't. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Michael Jordan
I’m no professional (not even slightly so), but my solution for combating pressure is honestly just put in the work.
If I know I’ve studied for an exam, the pressure is non-existent. It feels like a breeze. I’m not a huge fan of public speaking, but if I’m well practised and know the content, it’s no problemo.
If you have doubt or concern about a shot, or feel the 'pressure' of that shot, it's because you haven't practiced it enough.
The only way to relieve that pressure is to build your fundamentals, practice them over and over, so when game breaks down, you can handle anything that transpires.People didn't believe me when I told them I practiced harder than I played, but it was true. That's where my comfort zone was created. By the time the game came, all I had to do was react to what my body was already accustomed to doing.
- Michael Jordan
Something to watch: Magic: the Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned (Link)
Basically a step by step guide on how to create and market a successful product.
*Spoiler Alert* Here are the 20 lessons
Fighting against human nature is a losing battle.
Aesthetics matter.
Resonance is important.
Make use of piggybacking.
Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun".
Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke.
Allow the players the ability to make the game personal.
The details are where the players fall in love with your game.
Allow your players to have a sense of ownership.
Leave room for the player to explore.
If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail.
Don't design to prove you can do something.
Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win.
Don't be afraid to be blunt.
Design the component for its intended audience.
Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them.
You don't have to change much to change everything.
Restrictions breed creativity.
Audiences are good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them.
All the lessons connect.
Something to listen to: Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko on the Nickelodeon Animation Podcast (Apple Link) - (Web Link)
I love Avatar. Seriously, I LOVE Avatar. Probably my favourite show ever (proof here).
It's amazing how art can have that powerful place in people's lives.
And Mike (Dante DiMartino) and I don't sit down, and ask like how can we change the world? You just have to start with your own heart and like, what inspires you and why? And respecting the characters that you've all created together, like treating them with respect and writing and drawing things that you think that character would actually do. And like who she or he is, you know, who they are.
Then I think, if you're lucky, and if you and if everybody did a good job, and all the stars aligned, then like you might reach people.
Bonus: Here’s a podcast episode where Bryan Konietzko and Jeremy Zuckerman (Composer of Avatar) talk about the music of Avatar. (Apple Link) (Web Link)
Also, I’m thinking of starting a Discord server for the readers of this email. The goal for me would just be to more casually share links and snippets. Let me know if you’d be interested. :)
Until next Wednesday, have a good one!
- Special K
You can find previous issues of Curated by Kalani here. I’m on the web at kscarrott.com and on Twitter @scarrottkalani.
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