I read King of Capital years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the story of Blackstone/Schwarzman.
Excited to hear it directly from the man himself. #SundayRead
“Couldn’t believe I was rejected by Harvard. I called the dean myself and demanded he let me in because I was going to be a super star. He declined. I was on the verge of tears at the prospect of settling for Yale”
Few pages in, dude already sounding like Patrick Bateman lmao.
Schwarzman recalling how he got his first job on Wall Street.
There was a case study in 2019 that examined 11m LLC tax returns.
A typical firm owned by the top 0.1% is a regional business with $20m in sales and 100 employees, such as an auto dealer, beverage distributor, or a large law firm.
The 5 largest industries for LLCs within the top 0.1%:
1) Legal services ($28.6B) 2) Other financial investment activity ($28.2B) 3) Other professional and technical services($8.2B) 4) Offices of physicians ($8.0B) 5) Auto dealers ($6.7B)
Top pass-through profits comprise human-capital-intensive service professions and to a lesser extent non-manufacturing industries that depend on financial and physical capital, such as real estate and oil and gas.
Overall, most top pass-through businesses do not operate in finance and instead actively produce goods or services across diverse industries.
I love this chart detailing how capital was allocated for Berkshire Hathaway from 1964 to 1969.
Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1964 and went straight to work, reallocating capital to the best available option.
Some quick thoughts on capital reallocation:
This chart makes reallocating capital look very easy. Eloquent transition from textiles (low ROI) to insurance and banking (higher ROI) in a span of just 5 years.
The reality is that it's very challenging to reallocate capital within a business.
The chart doesn't show the difficulties of laying off staff, shutting down factories, closing vendor accounts, and canceling projects to shift money elsewhere.
Any business owner that's done any of the above knows exactly how tough this is to do.
Our government should rebrand the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) to the Tax Free Investing Account (TFIA) so ppl use it correctly.
Maxing out TFSA since 2009 (inception), and investing in an S&P500 index would mean a $200k+ value today. Accessible instantly, all tax-free.
It's so poorly marketed. Many Canadians think the TFSA is just a savings account, and if it happens to generate some tiny interest amount, cool.
In reality, it's a powerful investment vehicle that can compound $$ tax-free. And, it also transfers to a beneficiary tax-free.
After rebranding and better marketing the TFSA, the next step:
Allow people to use the TFSA to invest in illiquid investments like private businesses, real estate, limited partnerships, etc (similar to the US self-directed Roth IRA).
I completely switched my career 4 times before landing on what I currently do (buying cash-flowing businesses). If you're considering making a career switch, this is for you.
Here are 7 lessons I've learned along the way:
1/ Humility
You need humility to be able to acknowledge that you may have chosen the wrong career.
It’s not your fault, statistics are against you, don’t fight math.
There is no shame in admitting:
• You made the wrong choice, or
• You have evolved/changed & want to do something different
Life is too short to hold onto your ego. If you aren't happy, acknowledge it and move on.