The Book ‘Am I Being too Subtle?’ is written by Billionaire Sam Zell who is famed for his deal making skills
The Book are essentially his memoirs which makes for superb reading.
Sam Zell was born in Chicago to a Jewish family.His family fled Poland from Hitler and made the journey to US crossing over from Poland to Russia to Japan to the US.
From the beginning, Sam was great at making deals-especially in the real estate sector.
He parlayed his success into raising funds and investing in capital asset companies/real estate.
He make famous for his deals buying distressed assets…so much so, that he became well known by the epithet ‘The Grave Dancer’
His most famous deal was in 2008 when he sold his REIT company to Blackrock at the top of the real estate cycle for $ 39 Billion
The Book is written in a very salty style and makes for great learnings.
Two takeaways for me personally were:
- Conduct your deals in such a way that people want to deal with you again and again.This essentially means always leave something on the table for the other guy
- Go where the competition is limited/non-existent. You can be a genius but if there is lot of competition, you won’t make any money
I STRONGLY recommend this book for all traders/investors/deal makers
