Investors Motivation Quotes

In short, physicians are getting more and more data, which requires more sophisticated interpretation and which takes more time. AI is the solution, enhancing every stage of patient care from research and discovery to diagnosis and therapy selection. As a result, clinical practice will become more efficient, convenient, personalized, and effective.

It’s estimated that AI could free up to 25% of clinician time across different specialties. This increased amount of time could mean less hurried encounters and more humane interactions, including more empathy from happier doctors. This is important because empathy has been shown to improve outcomes by boosting patient adherence to the prescribed treatments, increasing motivation, and reducing anxiety and stress.

An algorithm that expedites care to a stroke patient in a chaotic emergency room (ER) has a good chance of adoption. An algorithm that reads a routine scan and provides some quantification of what the physicians can already estimate won’t be in as much demand. There are good reasons for algorithms to parse patient records to look for signs of rare diseases, but there are fewer good reasons for using them to evaluate clinical symptoms. It’s cool that AI tools can make diagnoses from scratch, but for most clinical encounters doctors are already pretty good at it.

The issue of reimbursement by payers is an important factor that should be discussed. Is it possible that if radiologists use AI to read scans, they’ll receive less reimbursement? Or to approach this from the other angle, if payers are reimbursing for the use of AI, will they pay radiologists less as a result? My discussions with insurance executives have shown that they don’t think this is likely. If the use of these technologies will improve patient outcomes and lead to fewer errors, there are benefits to them that will motivate executives to pay for them in addition to radiologists’ reading fees.

The power of "can't": The word "can't" makes strong people weak, blinds people who can see, saddens happy people, turns brave people into cowards, robs a genius of their brilliance, causes rich people to think poorly, and limits the achievements of that great person living inside us all.

Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that you are motivated by them. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money.

A compassionate leader always feel motivated to bring happiness and relieve the suffering of customers, investors, suppliers, employees, government and the communities.

Minimalism is a way of living at the maximum of your potential.

A common adage on Wall Street is that the markets are motivated by two emotions: fear and greed. Indeed, this book suggests that investors are affected by these emotions. However, acting on these emotions is rarely the wise move. The decision that benefits investors over the long term is usually made in the absence of strong emotions.

We have a complete business plan that aims to yield investors 1,000% returns within only a five-year period. We have all the pieces in place; the only missing piece is YOU! We are looking for a very motivated scientist who has experience in teleportation research and/or technology. Send a resume and any other information that may set you apart from other teleportation scientists.

Somehow it was not the fault of the born adventurers, of those who by their very nature dwelt outside society and outside all political bodies, that they found in imperialism a political game that was endless by definition; they were not supposed to know that in politics an endless game can end only in catastrophe and that political secrecy hardly ever ends in anything nobler than the vulgar duplicity of a spy. The joke on these players of the Great Game was that their employers knew what they wanted and used their passion for anonymity for ordinary spying. But this triumph of the profit-hungry investors was temporary, and they were duly cheated when a few decades later they met the player of the game of totalitarianism, a game played without ulterior motives like profit and therefore played with such murderous efficiency that it devoured even those who financed it.

great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

I am interested in helping people to understand how to sell what it is they need to sell in a way that makes sense for both them and the investor.  Over the years what I have been astounded that many artists and business people who produce theatre works consistently do not know how to go about funding their projects and moving them from one point to the other.  There are many money sources around, but in many cases people who make theatre are not business minded to the point of developing the skills to mine money sources consistently.  Ask yourself what is the motivation of this potential investor. Is it for financial return, is it for tax credit, is it just to help? or do they want to become a part of the entertainment business?  OK once you have discovered this then you need to think in terms of how do you present your case. This is what has come to be known in the world of investment as your “pitch deck.

Cohen continued to struggle with his own well-being. Even though he had achieved his life’s dream of running his own firm, he was still unhappy, and he had become dependent on a psychiatrist named Ari Kiev to help him manage his moods. In addition to treating depression, Kiev’s other area of expertise was success and how to achieve it. He had worked as a psychiatrist and coach with Olympic basketball players and rowers trying to improve their performance and overcome their fear of failure. His background building athletic champions appealed to Cohen’s unrelenting need to dominate in every transaction he entered into, and he started asking Kiev to spend entire days at SAC’s offices, tending to his staff. Kiev was tall, with a bushy mustache and a portly midsection, and he would often appear silently at a trader’s side and ask him how he was feeling. Sometimes the trader would be so startled to see Kiev there he’d practically jump out of his seat. Cohen asked Kiev to give motivational speeches to his employees, to help them get over their anxieties about losing money. Basically, Kiev was there to teach them to be ruthless. Once a week, after the market closed, Cohen’s traders would gather in a conference room and Kiev would lead them through group therapy sessions focused on how to make them more comfortable with risk. Kiev had them talk about their trades and try to understand why some had gone well and others hadn’t. “Are you really motivated to make as much money as you can? This guy’s going to help you become a real killer at it,” was how one skeptical staff member remembered Kiev being pitched to them. Kiev’s work with Olympians had led him to believe that the thing that blocked most people was fear. You might have two investors with the same amount of money: One was prepared to buy 250,000 shares of a stock they liked, while the other wasn’t. Why? Kiev believed that the reluctance was a form of anxiety—and that it could be overcome with proper treatment. Kiev would ask the traders to close their eyes and visualize themselves making trades and generating profits. “Surrendering to the moment” and “speaking the truth” were some of his favorite phrases. “Why weren’t you bigger in the trades that worked? What did you do right?” he’d ask. “Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning,” he would say. “Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.” Many of the traders hated the group therapy sessions. Some considered Kiev a fraud. “Ari was very aggressive,” said one. “He liked money.” Patricia, Cohen’s first wife, was suspicious of Kiev’s motives and believed that he was using his sessions with Cohen to find stock tips. From Kiev’s perspective, he found the perfect client in Cohen, a patient with unlimited resources who could pay enormous fees and whose reputation as one of the best traders on Wall Street could help Kiev realize his own goal of becoming a bestselling author. Being able to say that you were the

I believe that social media, and the internet as a whole, have negatively impacted our ability to both think long-term and to focus deeply on the task in front of us. It is no surprise, therefore, that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, prohibited his children from using phones or tablets—even though his business was to sell millions of them to his customers! The billionaire investor and former senior executive at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, argues that we must rewire our brain to focus on the long term, which starts by removing social media apps from our phones. In his words, such apps, “wire your brain for super-fast feedback.” By receiving constant feedback, whether through likes, comments, or immediate replies to our messages, we condition ourselves to expect fast results with everything we do. And this feeling is certainly reinforced through ads for schemes to help us “get rich quick”, and through cognitive biases (i.e., we only hear about the richest and most successful YouTubers, not about the ones who fail). As we demand more and more stimulation, our focus is increasingly geared toward the short term and our vision of reality becomes distorted. This leads us to adopt inaccurate mental models such as: Success should come quickly and easily, or I don’t need to work hard to lose weight or make money. Ultimately, this erroneous concept distorts our vision of reality and our perception of time. We can feel jealous of people who seem to have achieved overnight success. We can even resent popular YouTubers. Even worse, we feel inadequate. It can lead us to think we are just not good enough, smart enough, or disciplined enough. Therefore, we feel the need to compensate by hustling harder. We have to hurry before we miss the opportunity. We have to find the secret that will help us become successful. And, in this frenetic race, we forget one of the most important values of all: patience. No, watching motivational videos all day long won’t help you reach your goals. But, performing daily consistent actions, sustained over a long period of time will. Staying calm and focusing on the one task in front of you every day will. The point is, to achieve long-term goals in your personal or professional life, you must regain control of your attention and rewire your brain to focus on the long term. To do so, you should start by staying away from highly stimulating activities.

As Charlie Munger has said, “I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost my entire adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive superpower.” An example from FedEx is one of his favorite cases in point. As he explains, the integrity of the FedEx system relies heavily on the ability to unload and then quickly reload packages at one central location within an allotted time. Years ago, the company was having a terrible problem getting its workers to get all the boxes off and then back on the planes in time. They tried numerous different things that didn’t work, until someone had the brilliant idea of paying the workers by the shift as opposed to by the hour. Poof, the problem was solved.2 FedEx’s old pay-by-the-hour system rewarded those who took longer to get the job done. They were incentivized to take longer. By switching to pay-by-the-shift, workers were motivated to work faster and without error so they could go home, yet still earn the wages of a full shift. For the workers, finishing early amounted to a higher effective hourly wage. By aligning the business’s interests with the worker’s incentives, FedEx got the outcome it and its workers both desired. The

The final, and most important, consideration concerns personal motivation. When I started the partnership I set the motor that regulated the treadmill at “ten points better than the DOW.” I was younger, poorer and probably more competitive. Even without the three previously discussed external factors making for poorer performance, I would still feel that changed personal conditions make it advisable to reduce the speed of the treadmill. I have observed many cases of habit patterns in all activities of life, particularly business, continuing (and becoming accentuated as years pass) long after they ceased making sense. Bertrand Russell has related the story of two Lithuanian girls who lived at his manor subsequent to World War I. Regularly each evening after the house was dark, they would sneak out and steal vegetables from the neighbors for hoarding in their rooms; this despite the fact that food was bountiful at the Russell table. Lord Russell explained to the girls that while such behavior may have made a great deal of sense in Lithuania during the war, it was somewhat out of place in the English countryside. He received assenting nods and continued stealing. He finally contented himself with the observation that their behavior, strange as it might seem to the neighbors, was really not so different from that of the elder Rockefeller. Elementary

the reality is directly opposite to this ideal scenario. Primary motive for lead managers is the commission they earn for selling the shares to the public. This

Stocks that are in the hands of operators, on the other hand, will display very little reactions to good or bad news. That may be because the news itself is “planted” or is “motivated”. Such stocks will often defy gravity and their falls will defy reason. Chances that you are wrong in calling the direction in these stocks is high. That’s because the chart itself is “fixed”. It is fixed to get you to interpret it in copybook style and then trap you (and many others) to be on the wrong side and provide an exit for the operators with motivated reasons. Many stocks have only a few people driving them. A stock without a diversity of owners will always be subject to severe turbulence. And even if the overall direction is up, you will always be at a disadvantage because you don’t really know what this group driving the stock is thinking and will do next. That is why stocks with a large diversified investor and trader base which includes thousands of buyers every day don’t react erratically.

Generally, you'll be motivated to sell sound investments and hold onto the bad ones because we prefer to feel good about the gains and avoid the pain of acknowledging loss.

The motives to sell during a market capitulation are rarely rooted in a long-term plan. If they were, the market would never be oversold.

The motivation to break even is so tempting that you'll even consider doing so at greater levels of risk than you'd typically accept. If you've heard the expression "double or nothing," you've seen this bias in action.

But Anita Roddick had a different take on that. In 1976, before the words to say it had been found, she set out to create a business that was socially and environmentally regenerative by design. Opening The Body Shop in the British seaside town of Brighton, she sold natural plant-based cosmetics (never tested on animals) in refillable bottles and recycled boxes (why throw away when you can use again?) while paying a fair price to the communities worldwide that supplied cocoa butter, brazil nut oil and dried herbs. As production expanded, the business began to recycle its wastewater for using in its products and was an early investor in wind power. Meanwhile, company profits went to The Body Shop Foundation, which gave them to social and environmental causes. In all, a pretty generous enterprise. Roddick’s motivation? ‘I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community,’ she later explained. ‘If I can’t do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?’47 Such a values-driven mission is what the analyst Marjorie Kelly calls a company’s ‘living purpose’—turning on its head the neoliberal script that the business of business is simply business. Roddick proved that business can be far more than that, by embedding benevolent values and a regenerative intent at the company’s birth. ‘We dedicated the Articles of Association and Memoranda—which in England is the legal definition of the purpose of your company—to human rights advocacy and social and environmental change,’ she explained in 2005, ‘so everything the company did had that as its canopy.’48 Today’s most innovative enterprises are inspired by the same idea: that the business of business is to contribute to a thriving world. And the growing family of enterprise structures that are intentionally distributive by design—including cooperatives, not-for-profits, community interest companies, and benefit corporations—can be regenerative by design too.49 By explicitly making a regenerative commitment in their corporate by-laws and enshrining it in their governance, they can safeguard a ‘living purpose’ through times of leadership change and protect it from mission creep. Indeed the most profound act of corporate responsibility for any company today is to rewrite its corporate by-laws, or articles of association, in order to redefine itself with a living purpose, rooted in regenerative and distributive design, and then to live and work by it.

The key, he wrote, is to “concentrate on this for your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state.” That includes “welcoming wholeheartedly whatever comes,” “trusting that all is for the best,” and “not worrying too often, or with any selfish motive, about what other people say. Or do, or think.” Marcus Aurelius considered it futile to fret or complain about anything beyond his control. He focused instead on mastering his own thoughts and behaving virtuously so he would meet his moral obligations. “Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions,” he argued. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you.” He sought “to be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

Climate change is the biggest threat facing the world. And Erick Miller has a big idea to tackle it. Miller, a frenetic L.A.-based entrepreneur and venture investor, has worked in Hollywood, invested in early dot-coms, and had a vital role in developing Snapchat’s highly popular spectacles. Now he wants to “tokenize the world” through his investment fund CoinCircle. As part of that, he and his partners have come up with a term they call “crypto-impact-economics.” Out of this concept, Miller and a team that includes UCLA finance professor Bhagwan Chowdhry and World Economic Forum oceans conservationist Gregory Stone came up with two special value tokens: the Ocean Health Coin and the Climate Coin. Those tokens would be issued to key stakeholders in the global climate problem, a mix of companies, governments, consumers, NGOs, and charities, who could use them to pay for a range of functions having to do with managing carbon credits and achieving emission and pollution reductions. The idea includes a reserve of tokens controlled by the World Economic Forum to manage the value of the global float of coins. The meat of the proposal involves a plan to irrevocably destroy some of the coins in reserve whenever international scientific bodies confirm that improvements in pollution and carbon emission targets have occurred. That act of destroying tokens, through a cryptographic function, will increase the surviving tokens’ scarcity and thus their value. The point: holders are motivated to act in the interests of improving the planet now, not tomorrow.

Cooperages typically specialized in one or the other because they each had different customer bases and wood requirements. They were often located in major towns to be close to their customers. Slack cooperage demand was more fragmented than tight cooperage, and therefore had a more diverse customer base. While most of the industry was tight cooperage, Greif focused on slack, with the company having the most slack capacity of any player. The cooperage industry had grown increasingly concentrated over time, with the top four companies’ share of total production increasing from 26% in 1935 to 47% in 1947.66 John Raible acquired control of the company from the Greif brothers in 1913. Raible was a wealthy investor, not terribly interested in the cooperage business. But his leadership was valuable, helping the company grow revenue from $1 million when he took over to $10 million when he took Greif public in 1926. But Raible’s reign came to an end in 1947, undone by a fellow board member. John Dempsey, an accountant in his early 30s, had joined the firm as a director and company secretary in 1946. After Raible tried to buy shares held by Dempsey’s wife and mother-in-law at a price the young accountant thought too cheap, Dempsey accumulated enough voting shares to take control of the company. Dempsey, claiming to be motivated by Raible calling Greif ‘my wood company,’ purchased over 50% of the voting shares and made himself chairman.67

I've always been a contrarian of sorts. I'm not exactly sure where this quality comes from. I am among the approximately 13 percent of people who are left-handed, and a great deal has been written about the differences in the ways southpaws process ideas and motivations. In any event, always fitting in or going with the crowd has never been a big concern for me if my head and heart lay elsewhere. Admittedly, my inclination to stray from the pack didn't go over too well with my drill sergeant. My armed forces stint offered many lessons, one of which was that if I was to be successful as an individual in whatever I chose to do, I would have to work, and think, independently.

Just believe in it and do it! Do not ask people for advice. They are going to tell you no. That’s the problem. Asking for advice all day long is great but taking action is more important.

I learned an important lesson—that the value of the stock is not the same as the underlying value of the company. The stock goes up and down according to the whims and wiles of Wall Street. The value of the company depends on elements that contribute to the creation of real value—things like providing superior products at fair prices. You need to be learning and innovating, giving your people interesting, motivating work and compensating them fairly, creating value for your community, and doing it all in a way that yields a good profit. That’s not what much of Wall Street values, but it’s what creates long-term value for investors.

Higher payoffs for success increase the supply of properly trained talent, and these higher payoffs motivate innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors to take risks. These two effects loosen the current constraints on growth, which frees the economy to grow faster. Faster growth increases middle- and working-class wages when the supply of lesser-skilled labor is constrained. Otherwise, it increases employment rather than wages. With smaller payoffs, growth would be even slower than it is. Naturally,

A dearth of fiduciaries willing to place client interests foremost forces individuals to take responsibility for their investment portfolios. In the profit-motivated world of Wall Street, fiduciary responsibility takes a backseat to self-interest. What benefits the stockbroker (commissions), the mutual fund manager (large pools of assets), and the financial advisor (high fees) injures the investor. When profit motive meets fiduciary responsibility, profits win and investors lose. Understand

however, the round trip was a very long one (fourteen months was in fact well below the average). It was also hazardous: of twenty-two ships that set sail in 1598, only a dozen returned safely. For these reasons, it made sense for merchants to pool their resources. By 1600 there were around six fledgling East India companies operating out of the major Dutch ports. However, in each case the entities had a limited term that was specified in advance – usually the expected duration of a voyage – after which the capital was repaid to investors.10 This business model could not suffice to build the permanent bases and fortifications that were clearly necessary if the Portuguese and their Spanish allies* were to be supplanted. Actuated as much by strategic calculations as by the profit motive, the Dutch States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, therefore proposed to merge the existing companies into a single entity. The result was the United East India Company – the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (United Dutch Chartered East India Company, or VOC for short), formally chartered in 1602 to enjoy a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.11 The structure of the VOC was novel in a number of respects. True, like its predecessors, it was supposed to last for a fixed period, in this case twenty-one years; indeed, Article 7 of its charter stated that investors would be entitled to withdraw their money at the end of just ten years, when the first general balance was drawn up. But the scale of the enterprise was unprecedented. Subscription to the Company’s capital was open to all residents of the United Provinces and the charter set no upper limit on how much might be raised. Merchants, artisans and even servants rushed to acquire shares; in Amsterdam alone there were 1,143 subscribers, only eighty of whom invested more than 10,000 guilders, and 445 of whom invested less than 1,000. The amount raised, 6.45 million guilders, made the VOC much the biggest corporation of the era. The capital of its English rival, the East India Company, founded two years earlier, was just £68,373 – around 820,000 guilders – shared between a mere 219 subscribers.12 Because the VOC was a government-sponsored enterprise, every effort was made to overcome the rivalry between the different provinces (and particularly between Holland, the richest province, and Zeeland). The capital of the Company was divided (albeit unequally) between six regional chambers (Amsterdam, Zeeland, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam). The seventy directors (bewindhebbers), who were each substantial investors, were also distributed between these chambers. One of their roles was to appoint seventeen people to act as the Heeren XVII – the Seventeen Lords – as a kind of company board. Although Amsterdam accounted for 57.4 per cent of the VOC’s total capital, it nominated only eight out of the Seventeen Lords.

For a study in contrast, consider the European Union’s venture interventions. In 2001, the European Commission allocated more than €2 billion ($1.9 billion) for venture subsidies. But it failed to pair this capital with the design features underpinning Israel’s success. Europe did not recognize limited partnerships. It did not address burdensome labor-market regulations. It failed to build startup-friendly stock markets to facilitate VC exits. As a result, rather than crowding in private venture operators, the European initiative crowded them out: given the limited entrepreneurial opportunities in Europe, commercial VC partnerships were not interested in competing with subsidized public investors.54 Worse, because government-sponsored investors were less skilled and motivated than private ones, this displacement reduced the quality of European VC: deal selection and post-investment coaching deteriorated. From the beginning of the industry through the end of 2007, the average European venture fund generated a return of minus 4 percent.

Your motivation should move you from thinking in terms of electives to acting in terms of imperatives.

Motivation matters. Napoleon Hill believed it, and so do I.

The power and reach of your motivation often dictate the level of your success.

Still, Frederic Allen and his partners recognized that the markets were changing. Given its Boston roots, Lee Higginson lacked the national networks of Morgan or National City, a leading commercial bank. The firm needed someone to establish stronger connections, first with new companies whose securities would appeal to investors, and then throughout the United States with the investors themselves. Every American already knew Jack Morgan. They were getting to know National City’s chairman, Charles Mitchell, a former electrical goods salesman, who had been encouraging his brokers with sales contests, high commissions, and motivational speeches. Lee Higginson needed someone to join this fray, and to introduce the firm’s name and the companies it discovered to the public. It wouldn’t hurt if this man resembled Fred Astaire

It turns out that there was good reason to be skeptical. Thanks in large part to increased transparency, the financial services world is now unhealthily tied to an annual compensation cycle. The desire to be paid the most each and every year has created perverse incentives directly impacting almost every facet of the banking and investment world. As the focus on and opportunity for outsized compensation in the financial industry has shifted from investment banking to the investing world, the short-term compensation arms race has moved to the realms of private equity, hedge funds, and managers of public market securities. Given investment managers’ desire to boost their annual—and, in some cases, quarterly—compensation, they’re motivated to pursue strategies that maximize returns on an annual basis, rather than allowing for longer hold periods. As such, these annual compensation structures often lead to shorter-than-ideal investment horizons and lower relative returns, all at the expense of investors—and, arguably, at the expense of the long-term compensation of the investment managers themselves. This was not always the way things were done. Of course it happened, but much less when the investment strategy wasn’t so laser-focused on an annual bonus cycle.

Economist Paul Rosenstein-Rodan has pointed to the “tremble factor” in understanding human motivation. “In the building practices of ancient Rome, when scaffolding was removed from a completed Roman arch, the Roman engineer stood beneath. If the arch came crashing down, he was the first to know. Thus his concern for the quality of the arch was intensely personal, and it is not surprising that so many Roman arches have survived.” Why should investing be any different? Money managers who invested their own assets in parallel with clients would quickly abandon their relative-performance orientation.

Amid the most challenging times, your ability to bring stakeholders back to first principles and connect with them at a deeper emotional level can be the difference between success and failure. Today, we refer to this skill as motivating people through purpose, However, for this to happen, we need a purpose in the first place.

Amid the most challenging times, your ability to bring stakeholders back to first principles and connect with them at a deeper emotional level can be the difference between success and failure. Today, we refer to this skill as motivating people through purpose. However, for this to happen, we need a purpose in the first place.

Back in 1967, I had taken a further step in figuring out how much a warrant was worth. Using plausible and intuitive reasoning, I supposed that both the unknown growth rate and the discount factor in the existing warrant valuation formula could be replaced by the so-called riskless interest rate, namely that which was paid by a US Treasury bill maturing at the warrant expiration date. This converted an unusable formula with unknown quantities into a simple practical trading tool. I began using it for my own account and for my investors in 1967. It performed spectacularly. In 1969, unknown to me, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, motivated in part by Beat the Market, rigorously proved the identical formula, publishing it in 1972 and 1973.

Sales leaders know that everything I’m describing in this book applies to them, too. The private sector is way ahead of nonprofits in this regard, which makes sense. Their profit model financially motivates them—their CEOs, managers, and salespeople—to crack the code on what truly works and what doesn’t. If they don’t, their investors seek change. In the 21st century, your investors (your donors) will, too.

While you don’t necessarily want to come right out and ask a seller if she’s talking to any other investors—you don’t want to remind her that she has other options—there are ways to glean this information more subtly. I like to ask sellers this question: Investor: “If we can’t come to an agreement for me to buy your house, what do you think you’ll do?” This gives the seller an opportunity to discuss her alternative options (she’s talking to other buyers, she doesn’t really need to sell, etc.), which is what will ultimately drive her level of motivation. The better her alternatives, the more careful you need to be about an aggressive offer; the fewer alternatives she has, the lower your offer can be without her jumping ship and going after another option.

Ask the Most Important Question The information we’ve gathered on motivation and property payoff amount are likely enough to allow us to generate a reasonable opening price bid. But, given that we’re great negotiators, there’s one more tactic that will often provide an even clearer picture of the seller’s minimum acceptable price. And that’s asking the seller flat out, “What is the lowest price you’d accept?” Now, you may be thinking that’s a bit too direct and any reasonable seller is going to be unlikely to give you an honest answer. And I’d agree with you. But if you phrase that same question just a little bit differently, you can get the information you’re looking for, while at the same time sending the message to the seller that she’d benefit from answering the question. Instead, what if we asked the question: Investor: “If I were to offer you all cash and close as quickly as you’d like, what is the best price you could give me in return?” Do you see what we just did there?

As any truly formidable real estate investor will tell you, success doesn’t come from knowing how to negotiate—it comes from knowing how to solve problems. Your best deals won’t come from exerting leverage over the other party or from charming a buyer or seller with your charisma. Your best deals will come from solving the problems that are motivating the other party to want to enter into the transaction in the first place.

Determine Motivating Factors Other than Price In addition to determining motivation and trying to get as much information as possible from the seller, you’ll also want to use this discussion to determine if there are motivating factors other than price, or other requirements the seller has. For example, you might ask: Investor: “Assuming we can agree to a price, is there anything else you want or need out of this deal?” This gives seller the opportunity to give you more information about her situation—information that could be used to help formulate an offer and then later be able to better negotiate that offer. For example, the seller might respond in a half-joking manner with: Seller: “Price is the most important thing… But, if you know anyone who can haul all of our furniture to Nebraska for us, that would help too!

When a manager has a criminal record or a history of cheating investors or even just feels above the law, I stop right there. Crooks don’t suddenly sprout a sense of fiduciary duty. When a piece of evidence might or might not tag a bad guy, I use it only if it hints at other investment defects. Glamorous hype stocks are more likely to be scams, but I avoid them because they are usually overpriced and prone to raising capital constantly. Intricate corporate structures make analysis difficult, even if nothing bad is going on. To spot bad guys, look for the fraud triangle: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. Philosopher Hannah Arendt had it right that “most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Watch for when massive option grants or hefty fees compel people to try too hard. Pride can be a dominant motive when an audience believes in someone’s magical powers. Charismatic promoters often suppress the boards of directors, auditors, and other naysayers that might prevent them from doing what they want. They cluster in industries and geographies where capital is abundantly available with little scrutiny or accountability. Lax accounting standards are also a draw. Don’t buy anything someone is pushing hard. By avoiding the bad-guy stocks—and it’s a short list—I slash the possibility of a disastrous outcome but scarcely reduce my opportunity set.

Intelligent Investor

But as a founder, it’s critical to keep in mind your motivations and how they align with those of your investors.

Quality and investment return are antithetical,” Gumbiner concluded, “because in order to generate short-term profits, the company cannot put money into research and development, new long-range concepts, management training, and all the things that will build a long-term successful organization. People who strictly have investors’ return as their motive are not interested in long-term corporate guarantees.

The CEO must set the context within which every employee operates. The context gives meaning to the specific work that people do, aligns interests, enables decision making, and provides motivation. Well-structured goals and objectives contribute to the context, but they do not provide the whole story. More to the point, they are not the story. The story of the company goes beyond quarterly or annual goals and gets to the hard-core question of why. Why should I join this company? Why should I be excited to work here? Why should I buy its product? Why should I invest in the company? Why is the world better off as a result of this company’s existence? When a company clearly articulates its story, the context for everyone—employees, partners, customers, investors, and the press—becomes clear.

The economy is growing, and the economic reports are positive. Corporate earnings are rising and beating expectations. The media carry only good news. Securities markets strengthen. Investors grow increasingly confident and optimistic. Risk is perceived as being scarce and benign. Investors think of risk-bearing as a sure route to profit. Greed motivates behavior. Demand for investment opportunities exceeds supply. Asset prices rise beyond intrinsic value. Capital markets are wide open, making it easy to raise money or roll over debt. Defaults are few. Skepticism is low and faith is high, meaning risky deals can be done. No one can imagine things going wrong. No favorable development seems improbable. Everyone assumes things will get better forever. Investors ignore the possibility of loss and worry only about missing opportunities, No one can think of a reason to sell, and no one is forced to sell. Buyers outnumber sellers. Investors would be happy to buy if the market dips. Prices reach new highs. Media celebrate this exciting event. Investors become euphoric and carefree. Security holders marvel at their own intelligence; perhaps they buy more. Those who’ve remained on the sidelines feel remorse; thus they capitulate and buy. Prospective returns are low (or negative). Risk is high. Investors should forget about missing opportunity and worry only about losing money. This is the time for caution!

Competition for a financial reward is also what keeps Bitcoin’s blockchain secure. If any ill-motivated actors wanted to change Bitcoin’s blockchain, they would need to compete with all the other miners distributed globally who have in total invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the machinery necessary to perform PoW. The miners compete by searching for the solution to a cryptographic puzzle that will allow them to add a block of transactions to Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Happiness will always be a far-fetched dream if you can not be happy with the cup of tea you have had this evening. Happiness will always be unattainable if you forget to cherish all the mistakes you have made all these years. Happiness will always be a mile ahead of you if you keep running after it. There are around 1 billion people in the world who live with less than 1 dollar per day. To them, tea is a luxury. How many cups of beverages do you take on a typical day? Warren Buffet made 15 colossal mistakes that could ruin his investor career. He made over a thousand mistakes that could hinder him from being what he is right now. He accepted all the mistakes, took lessons from each of them, and successfully built his billion-dollar empire. Happiness is he didn't fail because he failed numerous times.

A progressive business advancement strategy enriches the businesses capacity to gain momentum in a hostile economy.

The capitalist-investor class experiences a tremendous loss of “real” wealth during depressions because the value of their investment portfolios collapses (declines in equity prices are typically around 50 percent), their earned incomes fall, and they typically face higher tax rates. As a result, they become extremely defensive. Quite often, they are motivated to move their money out of the country (which contributes to currency weakness), dodge taxes, and seek safety in liquid, noncredit-dependent investments (e.g., low-risk government bonds, gold, or cash).

At Oaktree, we strongly reject the idea of waiting for the bottom to start buying. First, there’s absolutely no way to know when the bottom has been reached. There’s no neon sign that lights up. The bottom can be recognized only after it has been passed, since it is defined as the day before the recovery begins. By definition, this can be identified only after the fact. And second, it’s usually during market slides that you can buy the largest quantities of the thing you want, from sellers who are throwing in the towel and while the non-knife-catchers are hugging the sidelines. But once the slide has culminated in a bottom, by definition there are few sellers left to sell, and during the ensuing rally it’s buyers who predominate. Thus the selling dries up and would-be buyers face growing competition. We began to buy distressed debt immediately after Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection in mid-September 2008 as described on page 235, and we continued through year-end, as prices went lower and lower. By the first quarter of 2009, other investors had collected themselves, caught on to the values that were available, and gathered some capital for investment. But with the motivated sellers done selling and buying having begun, it was too late for them to buy in size without pushing up prices. Like so many other things in the investment world that might be tried on the basis of certitude and precision, waiting for the bottom to start buying is a great example of folly. So if targeting the bottom is wrong, when should you buy? The answer’s simple: when price is below intrinsic value. What if the price continues downward? Buy more, as now it’s probably an even greater bargain. All you need for ultimate success in this regard is (a) an estimate of intrinsic value, (b) the emotional fortitude to persevere, and (c) eventually to have your estimate of value proved correct.

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.

Even when the underlying motive of purchase is mere speculative greed, human nature desires to conceal this unlovely impulse behind a screen of apparent logic and good sense

Investor confidence rests on leaders who deliver.