Warren Buffett is usually considered the greatest investor of all time but one thing that is often overlooked is how much his longevity has helped. Yes, he is worth $110 billion. Yes, he’s compounded money at a 22% annualized rate. But he also started investing in stocks at age 10 and is now 91. That is 81 years of compounding. By the way, 95% of his wealth accrued after age 65. If he had started investing at 3 Read more
"That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”, said Bill Campbell in typical fashion, to an employee in a meeting. Back then, he was a tyrannical boss, and it took a near mutiny from his staff for him to see the error of his ways and change. According to this book, he was a classic “diminisher”. He was not yet the legendary mentor to Silicon Valley CEOs like Steve Jobs and the Google founde Read more
What do Allstate Insurance, Discover Card, Coldwell Banker, Craftsman tools, Kenmore appliances have in common? They are all successful brands created by Sears, while Sears itself went bankrupt. Allstate alone has a market cap of $34 billion. According to Annie Duke , The story of Sears is the story of not knowing when to quit. Or more precisely, ignoring all the signs that you should quit something. While successful Read more
Image courtesy of beta2boss.com “Advertising, once a gamble, has become, under able direction, one of the safest business ventures. Certainly, no other enterprise with comparable possibilities need involve so little risk.” [1] The above quote is from Claude Hopkins who, in 1923, wrote the seminal advertising treatise, “Scientific Advertising”. He famously made toothpaste mainstream in America Read more