Key Takeways from “What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence”

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and co-founder, Blackstone Group, an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. The firm has $1 trillion in Assets Under Management (as of June 30, 2023). Stephen wrote his biography “What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence” and share some important life lessons.

Some of the key lessons learned from his book:

• Every entrepreneur knows the feeling: that moment of despair when the only thing you are aware of is the giant gap between where you find yourself and the life and the business you imagine. Once you succeed, people see only success. if you fail, they see only the failure.
• The best executives are made, not born. They absorb information, study their own experiences, learn from their mistakes, and evolve.
• I believe that education is a discipline. The object of the discipline is to learn how to think. Once we have mastered this we can use it to learn a vocation, appreciate art, or read a book. Education simply enables us to appreciate the ever-changing drama fashioned of God’s own hand, life itself. Education continues when we leave the classroom. In fact, we never stop learning until we die.
• If you are going to commit yourself to something, it is as easy to do something big as it is to do something small. Both will consume your time and energy, so make sure your fantasy is worthy of your time and energy, so make sure your fantasy is worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your efforts.
• Harder the problem, the more limited the competition. If something’s easy, there will always be plenty of people willing to help solve it. But find a real mess, that there is no one around. If you can clean it up, you will find yourself in rare company. People with tough problems will seek you out and pay you handsomely to solve them. You will earn a reputation for doing what others can not. For a pair of entrepreneurs trying to break through, solving hard problems was going to be the best way of proving ourselves.
• I had always been maniacal about not losing money and the trauma of Edgecomb pushed me further, I began to think of thinking as like playing basketball without a shot clock. As long as you had the ball, all you had to do to win was just keep passing, waiting until you were sure of making the shot. Other teams might lose patience and take those off-balance, low-percentage shots from behind the three-point line, the way we had done with Edgecomb.
• At Blackstone, I decided we would keep moving and passing until we could get the ball into the hands of our seven-foot center standing right underneath the basket.
• Two key principles or fundamental rules. The first was that everyone had to speak so that every investment decision was made collectively. The second was that our focus should be on the potential investment’s weaknesses. Everyone had to find problems that had not been addressed. The price of constructive confrontation could be challenging for the presenter, but we designed it never to be personal.
• It is important to always be open to new experiences, even if they don’t completely fit your agenda.
• If you are going to start a business, I believe it has to pass three basic tests:

1. Your idea has to be big enough to justify devoting your life to it. Make sure it has the potential to be huge.

2. It should be unique. When people see what you are offering, they should say to themselves, “My gosh, I need this. I have been waiting for this. This really appeals to me.”. Without that “Aha”, you are wasting your time.

3. Your timing must be right. The world actually does not like pioneers, so if you are too early, your risk of failure is high. The market you are targeting should be lifting off with enough momentum to help make you successful.

• No entrepreneur anticipates or wants pain, but the pain is the reality of starting something new. It is unavoidable.
• Real companies do not just happen. Raising money and recruiting good people is very hard. Even when you are small, though, and your resources most constrained, finding out the right people is the most important thing you can do. You typically would not have access to the best, who are working elsewhere at much higher compensation levels. You have to make do with the people you get. That means, at a minimum, you must reduce your criteria to a simple question: does this person have the same zealous commitment to the mission of this business as you do?
• When Phil Knight was building Nike, he hired other distance runners to work with him because he knew that whatever they lacked in terms of business knowledge, they made up for in stamina. They would never give up. They would take the pain and make it to the end of the race despite the difficulties
• When you start a company, you are usually happy to find anyone of quality willing to go on the journey with you. But as you grow, you realize that some people are like wide receivers in football with hands of stone. You throw to them, and the ball just bounces off them. Others have hands like glue. As a decent person, you think your role is to coax the bad one along, to find workarounds.
• Finance is a simple business. When somebody asks you for something new, the odds that he or she is the only person on the planet at that point in time who would find that of interest is zero. When you get one of those inquiries, it is potentially a huge opportunity. Those who are asking don’t know that. They are just looking at their own needs. But if those needs make sense and you create the right product to fit those needs, you can roll it out more broadly and your competitors will be left wondering how you figured it out.
• In China, we aspire for greatness. If it does not happen the first time, we simply continue until we achieve greatness.
• Education is the passport to a better place. A good education has the power to affect whomever it touches for the better. We all have a duty to not only preserve the knowledge that is handed to us but also develop it in a way that improves its relevance l and impact for future generations.
• Lessons to young graduates:

Regardless of how you begin your career, it is important to realize that your life will not necessarily move in a straight line. You have to recognize that the world is an unpredictable place. Sometimes even gifted people such as yourselves will get knocked out back on their heels. It is inevitable that you will confront many difficulties and hardships during your life. When you face setbacks, you have to dig down and move yourself forward. The resilience you exhibit in the face of adversity — rather than the adversity itself- will be what defines you as a person.

• Failures, I want them to know, can teach us more than any success.
• Devote your time and energy to the things you enjoy. Excellence follows enthusiasm, and doing anything solely for prestige rarely leads to success. If you have passion for pursuing your dreams; if you persevere; and if you are committed to helping others, you will have a full and consequential life and always have a chance at greatness. And the benefit of your enormous gifts will accrue to yourself, the people your love, and to society at large.

25 Rules for Work and Life

1. It is as easy to do something big as it is to do something small, so reach for a fantasy worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort.
2. The best executives are made, not born. They never stop learning. Study the people and organizations in your life that have had enormous success. They offer a free course from the real world to help you improve.
3. Write or call the people you admire, and ask for advice or a meeting. Your never know who will be willing to meet with you. You may end up learning something important or form a connection you can leverage for the rest of your life. Meeting people early in life creates an unusual bond.
4. There is nothing more interesting to people than their own problems. Think about what others are dealing with, and try to come up with ideas to help them. Almost anyone, however senior or important, is receptive to new ideas provided they are thoughtful.
5. Every business is a closed, integrated system with a set of distinct but interrelated parts. Great managers understand how each part works in its own and in relation to all the others.
6. Information is the most important asset in business. The more you know, the more perspectives you have, and the more likely you are to spot patterns and anomalies before your competition. So always be open to new inputs, whether they are people, experiences or knowledge.
7. When you are young, only take a job that provides you with a steep learning curve and strong training. First jobs are foundational. Don’t take a job just because it seems prestigious.
8. When presenting yourself, remember that impressions matter. The whole picture has to be right. Others will be watching for all sorts of clues and cure that tell who you are be on time. Be authentic. Be prepared.
9. No one person, however smart, can solve everyone problem. But an army of smart people talking openly with one another will.
10. People in a thought spot often focus on their own problems, when the answer usually lies in fixing someone else’s.
11. Believe in something greater than yourself and your personal needs. It can be your company, your country, or a duty for service. Any challenge you tackle that is inspired by your beliefs and core values will be worth it, regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
12. Never deviate from your sense of right and wrong. Your integrity must be unquestionable. It is easy to do what’s right when you don’t have to write a check or suffer any consequences. It is harder when you have to give something up. Always do what you say you will, and never mislead anyone for your own advantage.
13. Be bold. Successful entrepreneurs, managers and individuals have the confidence and courage to act when the moment seems right. they accept risk when others are cautious and take action when everyone else is frozen., but they do so smartly. This trait is the market of a leader.
14. Never get complacent. Northing is forever. Whether it is an individual or a business, your competition will defeat you if you are not constantly seeking ways to reinvent and improve yourself. Organizations, especially, are more fragile than you think.
15. Sales rarely get made on the first pitch. Just because you believe in something does not mean everyone else will. You need to be able to sell your vision with conviction over and over again. Most people don’t like change, so you need to be able to convince them why they should accept it. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.
16. If you see a huge, transformative opportunity, don’t worry that no one else is pursuing it. you might be seeing something other don’t. the harder the problem is, the more limited the competition, and the greater the reward for whomever can solve it.
17. Success comes down to rare moments of opportunity. be open, alert and ready to seize them. Gather the right people and resources; then commit. if you are not prepared to apply that kind of effort, either the opportunity is not as compelling as you think or you are not the right person to pursue it.
18. Time wounds all deals, sometimes every fatally. Often the longer you wait, the more surprises await you. In tough negotiations especially, keep everyone at the table long enough to reach an agreement.
19. Don’t lose money!! Objectively assess the risks of every opportunity.
20. Make decisions when you are ready, not under pressure. Others will always push you to make a decision for their own purposes, internal politics, or some other external need. But you can almost always say, “I need a little more time to think about this. I will get back to you”. This tactic is very effective at defusing even the most difficult and uncomfortable situations.
21. Worrying is an active, liberating activity. If channeled appropriately, it allows you to articulate the downside in any situation and drives you to take action to avoid it.
22. Failure is the best teacher in an organization. Talk about failures openly and objectively. Analyze what went wrong. You will learn new rules for decision making and organizational behavior. If evaluated well, failures have the potential to change the course of any organization and make it more successful in the future.
23. Hire 10s whenever you can. They are proactive about sensing problems, designing solutions, and taking a business in new directions. They also attract and hire other 10s. You can always build something around a 10.
24. Be there for the people you know to be good, even when everyone else is walking away. Anyone can end up in a tough situation. A random act of kindness in someone’s time of need can change the course of a life and create an unexpected friendship of loyalty.
25. Everyone has dreams. Do what you can to help others achieve theirs.

Hi, I am Jaspal Singh, Founder of Mobility Innovation Lab (MIL) and Host of the Mobility Innovators Podcast. I am also Included VC 23 Fellow. I love to talk about startups, mobility, and technology.