Reviews for Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons

The average rating for Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-04 00:00:00 Albrecht Weller This book reads like afternoon coffee with a grandfather, whose pride, confidence and self-satisfaction at how well he’s lived his life initially deter you – you’re guarded and dismissive. But then, you’re humbled by his successes, his moments of insight, his laidback conversational style, and after enough cups of caffeine, you eventually find yourself stimulated and eager to pick his brain a little more. That grandfather just happens to be Seymour Schulich, the major benefactor of York’s school of business; a Canadian billionaire, businessman, and philanthropist. This is his only book. I suspect it’s a part of his giving back, that stage in life where our remaining energy goes toward leaving a meaningful legacy, to making one’s mortality more bearable; a passing-of-the-torch that I’m sure many old people go through, and that I myself will one day too. His name is on York’s school, after all. Anyway, it’s a book that, in his words, aims to deliver life lessons to a twenty-to-forty year old. It’s actually a book that has re-inspired my love of reading: Schulich claims that he has read about 2500 books over the course of his life, 80 percent of which comprise nonfiction, and that this habit has accumulated more knowledge for him than his three university degrees. I have so much catching up to do, and I’m glad to have that fire lit by a ‘local’. The information is scattered sporadically, with short and sweet chapters dedicated to a cornucopia of topics ranging from advice on life, business, investment, decision-making, sales, China (?), leadership, health, love, and plenty in between. Schulich, who made most of his money in the oil industry, attempts to impart dozens of potentially useful ideas, rather than two or three main ones. His writing is refreshingly simple. Sections are brief. This makes it all highly readable and re-readable, but the information sometimes feels random, challenging to retain, and almost impossible to summarize without re-listing. Light reading often makes for heavy amnesia. Consequently, I prefer to preserve some of his opinions that resonate here, return to the ones that don’t, and probably leave a copy on the coffee table from time to time. Memorable passages: “How do you beat Bobby Fischer? The answer: play him at anything but chess. Always ask, where do I have the edge?...All of these ventures went sour because the people running them had no advantage, no natural edge. It’s extraordinarily difficult for most mortals to develop expertise in several very different areas.” “The entire business world, and much of family life, runs on relationships that are grounded in reciprocity. I’ve never met a successful person who didn’t have a complete grasp of this.” [references Cialdini’s Influence] “Your twenties are a time for gaining experience on which you will build the rest of your life. It doesn’t matter all that much what you do, as long as it’s legal. By thirty, though, you should have a clear direction. Only you can know where you’ll find your niche; no career counselling service can tell you. In my opinion, a key is to find work in a business with high profit margins...today’s high-margin business is not always tomorrow’s.” “Virtually all the accomplished people I’ve known in my life had positive outlooks most of the time. Behind every success story is usually someone who beat the obstacles because he or she refused to accept the pessimist’s view. Accountants and lawyers are the major exceptions to this rule.” [bahahaha] [On his takeaways from Rules for Aging]” 1. Nobody is thinking about you. 2. Avoid swine. A swine will always be a swine, even if, for the moment, he is acting in an unswine-like fashion. You cannot reform swine. It’s better just to stay away from them. 3. Appearance is frequently reality. No matter what they told you in university. 4. Envy no one—ever 5. After the age of thirty, it is unseemly to blame one’s parents for one’s life. [arbitrary number? But true.] 6. Never bring news of slander to a friend. [counter-intuitive?] 7. Never expect gratitude" “Self-praise is no honour.” [On health and longevity] “Studious folks suffer much less wear and tear than the athletic jocks of our high school and college years...Exercise: aerobically, three times a week. Strength training, twice a week...Do not study diseases unless you’re going to be a doctor. There are a lot of diseases and health demons out there that you do not want to know or obsess about. Deal only with the issues directly affecting you and your family. Keeping yourself mentally stimulated is important – maybe even critical—to a long life.” “Success correlates to exposure. This doesn’t mean you should ignore my earlier advice to play where you think you have an edge and be patient..[but also] many successful people arrived at their niche in life through exposure and experimentation in areas that interested them.” “Real relationships are built up over twenty-, thirty-, and forty-year time periods. My wise, street-smart father told me I would be very lucky to have two close friends in my lifetime outside my family.” “Every profession is a conspiracy against lay people.” “In every company in which I was a principal or an investor, the first metric was always the level of cash.” “Financial history keeps repeating itself – I’d say it’s almost as critical as accounting, the language of business, and statistics, which teaches you to analyze probabilities and risk...it’s human nature to extrapolate current trends far into the future, to assume that excellent gains in the stock market (or any financial market, including real estate) foreshadow even greater wealth to come. Investors are too influenced by recent history.” “China may not be the biggest economy on the planet (yet), but it’s arguably the most important trading nation. If you want to prosper in the twenty-first century, you’ll need to understand it. [Entire chapter on this. He really, really likes China..] “What do I mean by discipline? To me it’s simple: it’s the ability to figure out what’s worth your time and effort, what’s not, and to cut out the latter. “’You must make enough in your chosen profession to afford to be screwed by every other profession or vendor of consumer goods.” “[on setting incentives/building a company] …very few things are more important to keeping those [good people] than having the proper pay scheme in place. Observations I have accumulated [more detailed]: a) Deferred compensation. B) 10-year option vesting c) Profit-sharing D) Communal compensation “[Poor choices for wealth creation: zero-sum games i.e. field of derivatives and hedging are kind of like casinos. Growth stocks also bad.] [revisit chapter and appendix on philanthropy when I’m more secure] “A human’s attitude and behaviour change completely if he owns something, or has “skin in the game." Compare home owners to renters in their care of the properties they live in...rental cars versus cars they own…profit-sharing plans versus government bureaucracies. Government’s record of managing is so poor because civil servants have no ownership or skin in the game.” “[closing thoughts] People who live in fear don’t live at all. Business is a means to an end, namely freedom to pursue the ultimate goal of trying to make the world a better place for your having been here for a very short while. People only die when they’re forgotten. Luck favours the brave. Don’t complain, don’t explain. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is how to love and be loved in return.”

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-21 00:00:00 Mark Mcdaniel TLDR: In short, skip this one and read better researched books. It is advice that falls short of wisdom. It contains business, management and life lessons without the science, mathematics or psychology to back it up. While you could take the author at his word (and his track record), I would recommend dozens of other, better written and better researched, books on the same topics. None of the comments below are meant to detract from the author's successes; his philanthropy and business successes speak for themselves. My comments are a critique of the book. The positive parts: 1. This book is concise. Each chapter is a very brief lesson the author wishes to impart. The intended audience seems to be someone with little time or attention span. Indeed, I believe that although the book is around 300 pages in the edition I read, but I think I finished it under 5 hours (I'm not a fast read either). 2. The cartoons at the beginning of each chapter are each a gem: witty, cute and sometimes teach the lesson ironically. The cartoonist deserves the praise the author heaps on him. 3. The lessons are more than business lessons; they are life lessons. It is indeed important whom one marries, to travel to gain new perspectives, to play to one's strengths, and the other dozens of lessons imparted by the author. 4. The best part of this book is the reading list the author recommends for further reading. Why this book gets 1 star out of 5: 1. The real issue is that this book is supposed to be a collection of lessons to young adults but falls short of wisdom. The brevity of each chapter undercuts the lessons it tries to impart. There is no real insight to lessons like "don't buy a house if you're not going to stay there for at least four years". The hard part is understanding why this is wisdom. This lesson alone can (and does) fill books on its own, for example "The Wealthy Renter". Lessons like marry the right person are too flippant to be of any use to the intended audience (young people), and no use to someone already married. These are only two examples, but I think they capture the book's biggest flaw, which is repeated in virtually every chapter. 2. The author does a decent job of telling his story of success humbly but offers truly little insight into how he achieved it. You must read between the lines and not take the author at face value to understand his success. The author does not explicitly hide his secrets to success, but it is extremely hard to understand the success without some business acumen of your own. To over-simplify: Franco-Nevada, the author's company, bought shares and royalties of other successful mining companies. That's it in a nutshell. The secret is not to create per se, it is to piggy-back off the work of others. It is not necessarily unethical advice; owning shares in a publicly traded company is legal after all, but it is not praiseworthy either. 3. The author never explains the economics of his choices. He simply explains it was a good idea or a good price or a hunch. The issue with this advice is that not everyone can follow it or appreciate why it is correct. Simply telling people that restaurants are bad investments and gold, or oil are good investments does not even scratch the surface of the economics of why the author may be correct. There are far better books on investing than this one, namely Millionaire Teacher and The Wealthy Barber Returns for lay people. The author's experience in analyzing investments in mineral / oil deposits and extraction played a huge part in his success, but it's not an education that is widely held or easily acquired, which puts his advice out of reach of the intended audience. I don't know which young person between 20 and 30 has that background. That is not to say one cannot go study these fields of investing in e.g. gold or oil - I dare say the author would encourage you to do so. I'm saying you won't learn a shred of it from this book. 4. The reader walks away with a handful of ideas, but extraordinarily little knowledge or wisdom. I won't begrudge the author for doing this; his stated intent in the introduction is to give ideas. However, the reader is not going to be able to make a go of business after reading this book. The aspiring CEO, investor or entrepreneur can read more thorough literature on each topic. 5. The management and loyalty advice given is not necessarily the prevailing school of thought. There are better books on management: I would recommend The Dichotomy of Leadeship or Extreme Ownership both by Willinck and Babin for management and leadership advice. His advice is also contradicted by other authors such as Gladwell in Blink and Mlodinow in Subliminal, which are better researched books about understanding people and their motivations. Concluding remarks: It is a book that bites off more than it can chew. The advice contained herein may be optimal business or investing advice. However, it falls short of imparting wisdom or the "know-how" of how to do anything the author achieved in his life. I will not say this book is a waste of time because it is such a short read. BUT there are so many more informative and better researched books on management, leadership, investment, relationships, psychology and business mentioned in this review alone, that I cannot recommend this book as good advice to anyone. Skip this one and read better researched books. P.S. - I am glad I did not buy this book; it was borrowed from a friend. I think the author would approve of that.