WHAT IT TAKES - Stephen A. Schwarzman

-


ISBN: 978-1-4711-8955-5

Verdict:  👍👍

You have to respect Scharwazman for what he has achieved in his long life, reinforcing to some extent the old saying that ‘money makes money’.This book is worth reading if you are working in finance and is quite a nice read.

The book takes you down Stephen's memory lane and his life time of investing. It’s a short book and does lack clarity on the analysis, rules and logic applied on the business decisions.

The book is about Stephen and the people he knows and boy does he ‘name drop’, throughout the book, to the extent it was getting boring reading another name popping up towards the end. 

There are snippets on Blackstone’s Business Drivers/Methodology e.g. Blackstone’s three tests 
“It must have potential to be hugely rewarding for investors. It must add to Blackstone intellectual capital. And it must have a 10 in charge of it.”          p281 

Below are some of my best bits from the book;

  • There is insight into his Business world starting with the theme “The best executives are made, not born. They absorb information study their own experiences, learn from their mistakes and evolve.”                   p3
  • Stephen makes some great points indirectly about connections and to nurture them for the long game e.g. “Those early encounters and friendships have a way of reappearing throughout your life”                     p50 
  • I did like the Airport test – “Would I want to be stuck waiting at an airport with you if our flight were delayed”.                             p53 
  • “a lot of people fail because they start from a position of self-interest. What’s in it for me?p77  
  • “The harder the problem, the more limited the competition.“    p109 
  • “Don’t waste your time trying to reinvent the wheel. I Advised. There are plenty of wheels all around you, ready-made, just waiting for you to spin them faster, further and in new directions”              p165

“All my life, I have been looking and listening for patterns” Its like the old TV Show ‘name that tune’ the more songs you know, the more likely you are able to identify the songs from just one or two notes” p205 
I gave it a 👍👍 purely because, I got bored with the name dropping and I felt  that his choice of charity donations were more about putting his name on the door - a kind of legacy?  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Surrounded by Idiots – The Four Types of Human Behaviour (or, How to Understand those Who Cannot Be Understood) – Thomas Erikson

-
Image
ISBN:  978-1-78504-218-8 Verdict :👍👍 I enjoyed reading this book with its elaboration of the concepts that centre around the D ominance, I nducement, S ubmission and A nalytics ability (DISA) system for  human  communication which the Author breaks into 4 Color Types ( Red , Yellow , Blue & Green ) and says that " behaviour.Its like a  recipe  - we need to understand all the ingredients before we bake the cake " p13 The book discusses the various  behavioural  traits of individuals which the author centers around a 4 square color model, with each color representing a specific trait and some behavioral patterns associated with the colors - here are some snippets; The Quote "Only Dead Fish Go with the Flow" to describe Reds is classical where Reds are quick thinkers and one on long before everyone else. Yellows can be amusing, creative and elevate the mood regardless of who they are with         p64 " ...
Read more

The Technology Trap - Carl Benedikt Frey

-
Image
I SBN :  978-0691172798 Verdict :  👍👍   👍 This is one of those books that you have to read in full to fully appreciate, with its well-researched examples to support the concept behind the book.  The book highlights how current automation and Artificial intelligent(AI) systems trends can be used with an historical economic lens to project and address the economic, political and social affects that will arise and by using examples from the industrial revolution when technology displaced workers we can predict the effects of technologies like driverless cars. I like the structured approach to present the argument and learnt along the way with references to various paradox ( Moravec, Polanyi etc. .) which I had not come across before and had to look up  Here are some bits I highlighted in the book. however, there were quite a few so I couldn't  list them all ; The pre-industrial era did not suffer a shortage of imagination, it suffered from a shortage o...
Read more