Although Warren plays the tycoon game of buying companies at the topmost level, much of his advice is still relevant for smaller players.
Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby is almost here. I have been anticipating seeing this one for two years.
Of the four or five trailer versions for The Great Gatsby this is the best one as it provides some insight in what droves the protagonist. He’s a man with a past he wants to bury. Mad Men’s Don Draper is a similar character. As someone once said, “Reality is something you rise above.” Both men achieve this to varying degrees.
Here’s the trailer:
So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17 year old would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. – F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
One of these days I plan to do a Top 10 Billionaire Movie List but all I have time for today is a quick heads-up that the long-awaited 5th version of The Great Gatsby comes out in early May. This is the one with Leo DiCaprio in the lead role and, going by the trailers, he may just pull the part off successfully. Although I do have a few quibbles with some of the other casting choices, Tobey McGuire was an excellent pick for Nick Carraway the narrator and my favorite character in the story.
I had read not all that long ago that Carlos Slim didn’t speak English, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that he does and quite well too.
Here is highlite from the interview. He repeats the fact that tycoons are driven by a need to build something great. It’s not about merely accumulating money quickly so as to be able to show off to anyone. That type of goal rarely works for anyone.
Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill. — Warren Buffett
The answer to the question of how Carlos Slim Helu became so wealthy can be traced in large measure back to his childhood. Carlos was fortunate enough to receive an early start in his business training from his businessman father. There’s a school of thought that kids who grow up in a family where dad (or mom) is an entrepreneur are far more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves. I participated in an extended debate over this years ago with a couple of colleagues. At first I resisted the proposition but came to accept it over time. I know a well-known entrepreneur who explained how he got the entrepreneurial bug early on this way. One evening, when he was about 10 years old, he sat silently in the living room listening to his dad negotiate a bank loan over the telephone. That’s when it hit him that he wanted to be a businessman too. Most of my successful entrepreneurial associates had entrepreneur fathers.
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