Learnings from Stephen Schwarzman's "What it Takes"

Stephen Schwarzman's autobiography details his extraordinary journey of building one of the world's largest asset-management companies. His anecdotes, insights, and values are deeply inspiring for an aspiring investor like me, and I have really enjoyed reading this book. In this post I will briefly note some of my most important learnings, which I hope to take forward with me.

• Entrepreneurship is psychologically and financially demanding. Even when you have a unique idea and are blessed with fortuitous timing, you have to "bludgeon it into existence". If you are dedicating your life to something, it better be worth it: go big or go home.

• Ask for help and seek advice. Don't hesitate to knock on the doors of the people you admire. The odds are that they will be happy to guide you - and maybe, just maybe, you'll find a lifelong friend.

• Relationships and reputations are invaluable. Do whatever it takes to build and maintain them.

• Help others by solving their problems. All acts of kindness (big or small, random or not) go a long way. When you help someone, they remember. This is why listening to others' problems, and trying to solve them is a great way to win friends.

• Information is money. This was why Schwarzman once told an interviewer "I want to be a telephone switchboard, taking information from countless feeds, sorting it, and sending it back out into the world."

• "The harder the problem, the more limited the competition." If you can build a reputation for solving tough problems, people will actively seek you out - and pay you handsomely.

• Work in a team. Scwarzman puts it best: No one person, however smart, can solve every problem. But an army of smart people talking candidly with one another will.

• "There are no brave, old people in finance." As you learn from your mistakes and failures you have to develop a healthy dose of skepticism along the way; otherwise, you won't survive in finance.

• Take a moment. "Take a breath, slow it down, and relax [your] shoulders until [your] breaths [are] long and deep." This works particularly well because "people [are] always happy to let [you] have that extra moment". It "even reassures them" and makes them "more eager to hear what [you have] to say once [you are] ready."