Myles: Read
Introduction
These are the big ideas from books I have read- not summaries!
Recommend or disagree with me!
Big Ideas:
How to Buy a Great Business With No Cash Down
You need money to make money, but it doesn't have to be yours
Companies fail because the financing was improperly structured
The real enemy is procrastination, no cash down is a mentality. You can do it, but you have to believe it first
You have to attract the right partners and know their incentives to do a no cash down deal
What does the other side *actually* want? How can you get it to them? Address what they say they want, but work with them to get what they actually want
The list is endless. Your job is to know the alternatives and decide on the financing blocks most likely to work for your deal.
The best financing blocks allow the longest payback period with the lowest interest rates the lowest collateral and with no personal liabilities
Leave no stones unturned. Out of sight is out of mind.
Everything is negotiable
Cash is so important, and never forgo profits in liu of cash
Buy for what the seller delivers, not on potential
There are so many lead sources out there
"Most experienced buyers agree that the best acquisition candidate is one that is operating at a small fraction of its true potential, can be acquired at a price consistent with its low present earnings, but can be rapidly energized into a money maker."
This gives so many insights into what different parties want and optomize for
Seperate the problems from the assets
"No matter how many books on the subject you read, negotiation ultimately boils down to one objective: winning what you want from someone else while convincing him he's getting what he wants."
Recommended: Starting Your Own Business With No Money ,
Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Durability comes from monopolies comes from secrets comes from recruiting a team and taking control of your future comes from focus
Figure out what others don't believe and are wrong to disbelieve and focus on that
Durability is all that matters- you have to survive
The best way to be durable is to have a monopoly
You create your own future
What if the opposite is true? There are often no rules
Power laws should be the only thing you aim for
Compelling is why you’re doing something important that no one else is going to get done.
Recruiting: we cover the basics (health insurance and rent), and you have the opportunity to do irreplacable work on a unique problem alongside great people
People should focus on one thing at a time- even in their jobs. Super defined roles
Technology gives us the efficiency of a hyper scaled person who doesn't want to compete with resources
Am I Being Too Subtle?
Be a long term partner
Fierce tenacity and constantly opportunity-seeking
Two things matter in deals: the downside and the fulcrum
Supply, demand, and barriers to entry
Micro opportunities in Macro events
If you are not selling at this price you are buying
Good assets below replacement cost from poor operators and fix them up
Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives
Not many useful or big ideas. Just a fun and interesting book
What happens after we die?
I love how each story is structured. Interesting concept, the good, then the bad, then the despair
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life:
Self Improvement
Focus, focus, focus
Be practical and funny!
Industry + Frugality
Be curious and try any new thing
Essence of America is ordinary people can do extraordinary things if given the chance
Meditations
Be rational, temperate, virtuous, disciplined, wise, naturalistic, and have liberty from all passions
Nothing external can harm us
Be charitable in thought and action
Have singular focus on the task at hand
Stay clear-minded, right-minded, and high-minded
Copy the best virtues; serene, dignified, industrious, sober, frugal, considerate, frank, temperate, and carry yourself with authority
Poor Charlie's Almanack
It is a moral duty to constantly learn and stay rational
Keep things simple, but not more simple than necessary
Use lessons from every discipline to learn and swing hard at the no-brainier decisions
Tear down your own ideas, avoid envy, acknowledge cognitive biases, think in reverse, and never stop improving
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
10 years learning, 4 years refining, 4 years with success
Experimental and focus on what the audience loves
Incremental steps + a few intuitive leaps + creation of luck
Have delusion and valid inspiration
Stand out, no matter what
On A Roll: How A Kid from the Bronx Started with Hot Dogs and Wound Up Making a Fortune
Be relentless
Just do it, always give back to others, constantly innovate & be creative
Treat others right, self image and optimism is important, constantly reduce risk
Never compartmentalize, catch the right waves early and ride them hard
Partner with good people and find the key ideas
Give people the freedom to have success
Focus on solving problems and you will find the solution
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections
Only be satisfied with reaching your potential
Count your blessings often
Happiness + freedom + peace of mind
You are no better than others, just as good
Make mistakes and learn forever
Control only what you can. No more.
Have a positive self-image
I will do the best I am capable of doing today to bring out my best tomorrow
How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
Getting rich is a journey with a lot of sacrifices
Be entrepreneurial and opportunistic
You will have to constantly learn, keep your eye on the ball, and never fear failure
Just keep pushing
Die With 0
Stop delaying life pleasures
How much are material things holding you back from experiences and life hours?
Be deliberate, not on autopilot
Realize that time is your enemy. Money utility decreases, and everything has a last time
Ergodicity
Decisions have an implicit timeline assumption
The best maximize performance AND survival. The later of which is more important
Avoid things that are hard to revserse (0s). Death, injury, bankruptcy. Anything that eliminates the possibility of future returns.
Ergodicity is the ability to take advantage of the law of large numbers instead of hitting "0"
This is the difference between 1000 people playing Russian Roulette and one person playing 1000 times
Over enough time, "unlikely" means "eventually"
Resources tend to cluser
Become irreplaceable and remember that most things can be replaced
Centralization is only efficient to the central observer. Something can work on average and fail locally
This book reminded me of the Howard Marks quote "never forget the 6ft man who drowned in the river that was an average of 5ft deep"
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Reciprocation, commitment/consistency bias, social proof, authority bias, liking tendency, and scarcity bias (and deprivation)
We all have stimuli that triggers us to do certain, often dumb, things
On Writing Well
Write simply and cleanly
Be clear in the head and on the paper
Be unexpected + refreshing
Have humanity and warmth in your writing
Be precise and tug the reader forward
Get rid of the useless stuff and write when you think "that is interesting"
Getting to Yes
Focus on everybody's core interests
Having an opinion puts you in a box
Leverage/power comes from your Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
Give others a stake in the decision
Judge results with clear and pre-determined standards
Ask why a lot to understand the other party
Am I Being Too Subtle?
Be different and bold
Always be opportunistic
Empower great people to do interesting things for the long term
Simplify everything and have tenacity
Protect your downside and stay optimistic
The Little Book of Hygge
Create safe, comfortable, and cozy environments
Love natural and organic based materials
Be silly + simple with others
Savor the best in life
Trade Like Warren Buffett
Workouts, merger arb, spinoffs, distressed debt, stubs
Figure out who you should be the bat boy for
Predictable earnings with temporary distress, underlying high quality
Used borrowed money for workouts
Personal portfolio has higher turnover and better returns
100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-1 and where to find them
Find great companies at not-crazy valuations and hold on to them for dear life
100-baggers take time, but can come from anywhere
Capital allocation is important, as is growth and returns on incremental capital invested
Accelerating earnings + revenues with different business models
The Art of Execution
The best investors are right 50% of the time
adapt when losing (usually kill losers or average down aggressively)
have a plan when losers and winners come
stay around for the big winners
concentrate in their best ideas
stay liquid
Losers take profits quickly
Losers convince themselves they are right
Losers stay with losers
Losers widely diversify
The long-term returns come from preservation of capital and a few home run investments.
The Intelligent Investor
Stocks are part ownership in businesses
Buy with a margin of safety
Take advantage of Mr. Market when possible
Develop your own discipline and courage
The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization
Companies do not borrow because of balance sheet problems and lack of domestic reinvestment opportunities
Many savers + no borrowers shrinks the economy ($ that would have been borrowed is sitting idle)
Pre-industrial revolution: little reinvestment opportunities
Urbanization was seen as the golden area for most countries as there was constant upward mobility
Companies that went through urbanization are now going through being pursued
The Little Book That Beats the Market
Remember that you own part of a company's future earnings
Buy high return on capital businesses for bargain prices, and stick to your strategy
Try to make as little predictions as possible, find what works, save all the time
Use the Magic Formula!
Margin of Safety
Opportunity when people flow between fear and greed
Avoidance of risk is margin of safety
Understand institutional investors + their weaknesses
Use every relevant valuation technique
Be ready to change your mind
Look for flaws
What Works on Wall Street
Value, growth, 1-year momentum, and small-stuff works best in markets
Combining multiple factors together can outperform the market even more than single-factor models
The best strategy is something you are able to stick with and is a sound strategy
Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle
Respect the capital cycle
Everybody eventually falls to it, but fate can be cheated for a while
Focus on good capital allocators and moats
Supply side economics runs the capital cycle
Your own case is not unique- look at relevant parallels
Always remain skeptical, logical, and safe
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Buy great companies out of favor that have good long-term plans
Scuttlebutt all the time, ask people questions: customers, competitors, suppliers
Be forward looking, rational, and focus on management
Dear Chairman
Activists should let managers manage, but focus on capital allocation
Where is the company's true value? Massive arbitrage between public market value and private value with a different management team
Truly a messy space
Adolf Lundin: No Guts No Glory
You need an ego
Be constantly optimistic, yet calm and competitive
Be more opportunistic than competitors
Never give up
No pain, no gain
Find great partners and let them share in the profits
The Dhando Investor
Find asymmetric risk/reward scenarios
The best risk reward is 0 risk, unlimited reward. No brainers
Heads I win, tails I don't lose much
Work hard and save all you can with equity
Distress and uncertainty can provide returns
Inbound Marketing
Use simple websites as a hub
Be remarkable, not unique
Write good niche content with calls to action
Focus on being a hub, not an advertisement
Focus on titles. Like, a lot
The Innovator's Hypothesis
Cheap Experimental ideas are important
Say: the team believes exploring X action will likely result in Y outcome. We will know this because Z metric changed
Lean on testable ideas
Be simple, fast, cheap, smart, lean, and important
Aiming High: Masa Son, Softbank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley
Be cartoonishly ambitious
Show true enthusiasm
Set a long term strategy for winning, have self-belief and constant persistence
Make it easy for the other party to say yes, find the root of the problem, and tell a story
Excuses are reprehensible because you still have the ability to act
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire
We are not sure what we want. So we look to others (models) and desire what they desire. We make many choices according to the desires of others.
What have you helped others desire?
Jealousy and conflict comes from mimetic desire
The harder it is to get- the more we want it
Everybody has models
Hidden models show the illusion of autonomy
Rivalry is a function of proximity. Eventually the object becomes moot
Zero to One
Companies are monopolies or in perfect competition
Focus on network effects, mimetic desire
Focus on being bold and different
Reduce the role of luck and take control
The Alchemy of Finance
Bias thoughts influence action which influence results
Market biases move markets
Credit cycles matter above all else
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
Rationality + be focused on cognitive biases
Take advantage of your luck
Avoid controversy
Highlight your contradictions/biases
Take time to reflect
Do not blindly follow others
The Fish That Ate the Whale
Take the low-hanging fruit, and what others are throwing away may be valuable
Take a niche and take it hard
Control the supply and diversify, have a good reputation, beware of debt, stay ambitious
Run as lean as possible and trust the people on the ground- stay nimble
The Man Who Solved the Market
Work with great people
Don't be afraid of doing something unconventional or odd- even when others think you are crazy!
Give everybody compensated on overall success, and have a great infrastructure
Share ideas and be intellectually honest with others
Do something new, never give up, and hope for good luck!
Bad ideas are good, good ideas are great, no ideas are terrible.
Chapters in My Life: Frederick Taylor Gates
Anything is possible with brains, will, and energy
Understand everybody's incentives and how to get them ahead
Have solid reasons with worthy ends
Common sense diligently applied
Man's Search for Meaning
Everybody has a unique task only they are able to fulfill
Focus on what drives you
Get your why and stick with it
Why can change over time
First, A Dream
Be industrious/entrepreneurial and ambitious
Focus on customers
Own an under-served niche
Create win-win scenarios
Great values are not taught
Reputation across family, friends, customers, and employees is what matters
How to Sell Anything to Anybody
Help the customer get what they want
Keep your reputation pristine
Keep personalized contact with customers
Constantly market
Thinking Fast and Slow
Our assumptions are usually wrong. We have lazy thinking
Answer the easy questions first
Study failures, be aware of cognitive biases (recency bias, exposure effect, uncertainty, halo effect, framing effects, anchoring bias, availability bias)
Thinking in Bets
Focus on finding the correct processes, not the outcomes
Quality of life = quality of bets + luck
Acknowledge uncertainty- don't be afraid to say "I'm not sure"
Be skeptical of your beliefs
Think long-term, backwards, and do postmortems
End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T
Mis-alignment of financial inflows and obligations created problems
Giving up the good businesses for the sexy business killed them
Succession and politic issues
Management wanted form over function
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric
Focus on cash flow, not reported earnings. GE got this backwards!
At GE: bad news was not tolerated
Make sure marketing does not get ahead of the products
Board needs to provide consistent and adequate oversight and understanding of the business
Jack Welch & The GE Way
Constant training + improvements
Honest, open, candid
Set clear rules + expectations
Constant feedback loops
The Inner Game of Tennis
Be natural and do not force actions
Just do. Stop thinking
Trust yourself fully
Focus on the goal and let your body and unconscious mind do the work
See reality and adapt
Let go of your ego
Keep it simple. Keep it natural
The Making of a Blockbuster: Wayne Huizenga
Have an over-arching plan, but hustle to make sure all of the little details fit
Focus on what matters/cut to the meat of the problem
surround yourself with great partners who have skin in the game and want more than just money from you (treat all employees really well!)
Reputation truly matters, so protect it with everything.
The Man From Zara
Always stay close to the customer, constantly improve from their feedback
Help people succeed and celebrate them in your organization
Think outside of the box and make goals that others may think are impossible
The Big Rich
Grit + luck leads to anything
Texas oilman influence everything in their areas
Bold will win and lose in new/budding industries
The Sleuth Investor
Uncover information by asking questions
Understand people, product, and peripheral functions
Who works for the customers, company, or service providers
Become fluent in the business. Ask why
Who is the decision maker for the product? Who uses it? Who sends the check?
Who is doing what to whom and why
The Black Swan
Rare + extreme impact + predictable in retrospect
Respect and adjust to unknowable unknowns
People love narratives, no matter how flawed
Do not accept status quo
Happy City: Transforming Through Design
People want to be able to walk
Have easy connections with others
Ability to appreciate beauty in nature
Private space for retreating when people get too much
I Will Teach You to be Rich
This was one of the better personal finance books I have read
This is now how to get rich- but how to take control of your financial life
Focus on the big things that matter- not always the minute. Focus on the big picture first and be simple
Spend a lot on things you love, be ruthless on those you do not love
Online banks often have better rewards due to low overhead
Automate everything so you do not have to think
The Millionaire Next Door
Millionaires are low-key
Millionaires are compulsive savers, investors, and business owners
Millionaires are great at allocating time, energy, and money
Millionaires are disciplined and willing to sacrifice for financial freedom
Why Nations Fail
Countries are poor due to their institutions
Dis-incentives for innovation and investment
Avoiding accountability leads to weak institutions
Increased education makes nations rich
How the Scots Invented the Modern World
Much of the American revolution can be attributed to Scots or Scottish-born ideas
Focus on the inner self instead of the outward form
Emphasis on education and literacy for all
Focus on survival and honor
Goal of intellectual life was to understand in order to teach others and allow others to build on your work
Being good means doing good for others. Make others happy
Highlands felt lawless and impoverished. Super violent
Wealth was created by pooling family risk and get capital from all over while cutting costs
Social creatures have sympathy for others
Division of labor means what we produce is no longer ours
Dictators Without Borders
Eastern dictators are enabled by western institutions
It is never a good idea to work with a criminal
Criminals are generally greedy and act irrationally
State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World
Most countries have used or are using state capitalism to their advantage- but with varying success
Blurring of lines between political action and commerce
Some use State Owned Enterprises to buy loyalty, some use it for political weapons
SOEs seem to succeed with good economics and political rules, and fail when governments act extractive
SOEs spawn because of political regime change, or economic/market failures
Guns Germs and Steel
Advantages come from starting circumstances (such as geography)
Intelligence, drive, or divinity do not determine much if you are delt a bad/great hand
Everybody is the same. Differences come from starting circumstances
Firsting and Lasting
Purposeful narratives are used to dislodge facts
Catch 22s are great for dislodging facts
Language creates a powerful image
The native American struggle is ongoing and has been shaped by lies
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Copy from other cultures
Take care of your best partners
Discipline above all else. Even for your partners.
Control public opinion/narrative for a competitive advantage
Break another's spirit before attacking
Hire engineers