Thread by @sidecarcap

1/ A favorite non-investment book, with lots of investing lessons. Martin’s toilering, tinkering, borrowing ideas until finding a formula that works, then leveraging success to its fullest, rhymes with the arc of many investment careers.

amazon.com/Born-Standing-…

2/ ”Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté...” -Overconfience, and not being constrained by the institutional imperative can be a huge advantage early in one’s career

3/ “I looked around the Bird Cage and saw actors who had worked there fifteen years and counting, and I knew it could be a trap for me.” -At some point, an investor may end up in a comfortable position that no longer challenges them. It’s tempting to stay, but resist the urge.

4/ “Where I could only recite poetry, Mason (Williams) actually was a poet.” -For every 100 people that quote Buffett, Lynch, etc, perhaps one is a true investor. Be that one.

5/ “My life had been alternatively inching or leaping upward.” -Returns aren’t linear, or normally distributed. A successful investor will likely experience long periods of boredom interrupted by the occasional huge winner.

6/ “In an anxiety attack you have all the symptoms of fear, yet there is no lion.” -During bear markets an investor will feel terrible, but true risk, which will be appreciated and priced in, could well be low creating high prospective returns.

7/ “the odds....of the producers’ desires, my talent, and a good reading were low, and that the audition process was a dead end. I decided to leave Hollywood and go on the road.” -Succeeding within the system or on your own require diff skills sets. Which path are you pursuing?

8/ “My departure from television writing meant that I was now adrift. I had lost my financial support and my hyphen and now was only a comedian.” -The first step toward becoming a full time private investor is likely the hardest step.

9/ “I received one of the most crucial reviews of my life. John Huddy... devoted his entire column to my act. Without qualification, he raved... Steve Martin is the brightest, cleverest, wackiest new comedian around.” -One person can change the trajectory of your career forever

10/ “You’ll use everything you ever knew.” He was right; twenty years later I did my teenage rope tricks in the movie ¡Three Amigos!” -It pays to stay curious and be a constant learner. The investor never knows when acquired knowledge will pay off, but it will!

11/ “the whole point of this comedy was to turn off the older crowd while reeling in the young.” -Don’t be discouraged if your approach isn’t approved by the last generation. What worked for them is diff than what will work for you. Same was true for them years ago.

12/ “I felt a huge responsibility not to let people down.” - Managing OPM can be stressful and trying. If it isn’t, the investor probably isn’t taking their fiduciary duty seriously.

13/ “I was determined to parlay my stand-up success into motion pictures while I still had some clout. A movie career seemed to foster longevity...a movie would go on while I stayed home.” -The old saying if you can’t make money while you sleep, you’ll work forever.

14/ “My body was on the road but my heart was elsewhere.” -If money, not the game, is driving one forward, it may be time to hang up the cleats.

15/ “I wanted to be there again, if only for a day, indulging in high spirits and high jinks, before I turned professional, before comedy became serious.” Some day, we’ll all probably long for the early days when the world was in front of us.

16/ “My intuition is not always right. If it were, there would be no surprises left; I would be living in a dull comedy heaven.” -Investing is very difficult, which is also what makes it so incredibly exhilarating and fun!

17/ end