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Life is people—life at its best, is about doing meaningful things with people you love. #JimCollins.…Walk good. 28all. Eya. The Warm-Up: “You always was a black queen, Mama / I finally understand / For a woman it ain’t easy tryin’ to raise a man / You always was committed / A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it / There’s no way I can pay you back / But the plan is to show you that I understand / You are appreciated / Lady, don’t you know we love you? (Dear Mama)…” ~Tupac, Dear Mama The Core: “The fastest way to get what you want is to pay the price.” ~Orange Book “Diversity is best categorized, not as a metric, but as a competitive advantage.” ~Cat Hernandez “Lord give me the confidence of a seed stage CEO on Twitter making 11 threads per day about how to run a company.” ~Will Manidis “Reading gives you direction. Writing gives you clarity. Teaching gives you understanding. Loving gives you meaning.” ~Orange Book “Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that’s just how my brain works. To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say: I re-invented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you also think I was gonna be a chill, normal dude?” ~Elon Musk on SNL 5/8/21 “One of the greatest ‘privileges’ I could give to my future kids is to teach them the value of learning, gaining experience, acquiring information, and self-education. We tend to over-value financial incentives (short-term) and under-value learning opportunities (long-term).” ~Steven Bartlett “The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out…The personas we inhabit publicly are merely approximations of who we are internally—shrunken, distorted versions of ourselves that we present to the real world. This is because the things that are most important to us, that are really vital to us, are perversely the most difficult to express.” ~Khaled Hosseini “Work to become, not to acquire…Writing down one thing you are grateful for each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever…Don’t treat people as bad as they are. Treat them as good as you are…We are not bodies that temporarily have souls. We are souls that temporarily have bodies…All the greatest gains in life — in wealth, relationships, or knowledge —come from the magic of compounding interest — amplifying small steady gains. All you need for abundance is to keep adding 1% more than you subtract on a regular basis…” ~Kevin Kelly, 99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice “Be willing to make whatever adjustments are needed to sustain the growth, joy, and love frequency that you want for your life. Genuine intentions don’t need a perfect setup. Authenticity is recognized and rewarded by those who are true to themselves. Bring value. You won’t be overlooked by those who know what to do with it. Being vocal can produce results. Say what you need to say. Honesty nourishes the soul. Growth doesn’t happen without changing your thoughts. The relationships you care about can only improve if you decide to be and think differently. Recognize the people that are healthy for you. Try not to get so caught up in your temporary emotions that you lose sight of the bigger picture and end up pushing good people away. You can repair trust with real change.” ~Rob Hill Sr. “Every investment is valued by taking a number from today and multiplying it by a story about tomorrow. Sometimes an asset is mostly numbers, sometimes it’s all story. But there’s always a story about future potential involved. And stories aren’t beholden to reason or logic – they’re just whatever people want to believe. Are bonds overvalued? What is bitcoin worth? How high can Tesla go? You can’t answer those questions with a formula. They’re driven by whatever someone else is willing to pay for them in any given moment – how they feel, what they want to believe, and how persuasive storytellers are. And those stories change all the time. They can’t be predicted anymore than you can predict what kind of mood I’ll be in three years from now.” ~Seth Godin, The Limits of Investing Sanity Last Set: “When was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?” ~Maya Angelou Food for Thought: “Hip hop had described poverty in the ghetto and painted pictures of violence and thug life, but I was interested in something a little different: the interior space of a young kid’s head, his psychology. Thirteen-year-old kids don’t wake up one day and say, ‘Okay, I just wanna sell drugs on my mother’s stoop, hustle on my block till I’m so hot [people] want to come look for me and start shooting out my mom’s living room windows.’ Trust me, no one wakes up in the morning and wants to do that. To tell the story of the kid with a gun without telling the story of why he has it is to tell a kind of lie. To tell the story of the pain without telling the story of the rewards—the money, they girls, the excitement—is a different kind of evasion. To talk about killing [people] dead without talking about waking up in the middle of the night from a dream about the friend you watched die, or not getting to sleep in the first place because you’re so paranoid from the work you’re doing, is a lie so deep it’s criminal. I wanted to tell stories and boast, to entertain and to dazzle with creative rhymes, but everything I said had to be rooted in the truth of that experience. I owed it to all the hustlers I met or grew up with who didn’t have a voice to tell their own stories—and to myself.” ~Jay-Z, Decoded (pg.17-18) Food for Thought II: “David Swensen was my mentor in the investment business from this day many years ago when I graduated college and came under his tutelage. As I reflected on his passing this week, I felt into how much of an impact he had on my career and life. I wanted to share some investing lessons that came to me this week:
1. Start with vision and values. David began with first principles and created ideas for how portfolios, organizations, and securities ought to be managed.
2. Be deeply authentic. David’s beliefs were his own, both about what works and how to implement. Internalize what is authentic and true for you.
3. Practice discipline. Human nature pulls us towards crowds. Investing calls for independence from them. Once you find your vision, values, and authentic application of them, stick to your path.
4. Greatness is complex. David’s inner circle knows he was not perfect as an investor, a leader, or a person. He was, however, amazing at each of the three. Recognize the imperfection in each of us and in life.
5. Greatness in investing is even more complex. David’s proclivities included seeing the world in black and white, comfort going against the crowd, stubbornness, irreverence, and rigidity. Each of these characterizes some of the best investors and brings challenges as well.
6. Impact others. Investing isn’t really about dollars and cents. It’s about people and the impact money has on people’s lives.” ~Ted Seides, Hail to the Chief (Investment Officer)
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