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Often your best investment opportunities are staring you right in the face based on situational knowledge you have due to your physical location, career, or network; things that other consumers and capital allocators don’t, yet, realize.
Last week, Simon Cowell’s new show, X-Factor, called one of my companies, Mount Olympus Awards asking if we could outfit the varsity jackets for Marcus Canty’s performance of Bobby Brown’s hit “Every Little Step I Take” on tonight’s live show. Most of the time, letterman jackets with custom chenilles take 4 to 6 weeks, but…
Earlier this year, I was watching Gossip Girl and suddenly the characters on screen were wearing varsity jackets. I immediately called the office and demanded to know why we hadn’t been the one that made the products. The response? “We were.” There have been a few other moments like that in the past couple of months…
If I were thinking about starting a small business from nothing or I were actively operating a small family company, there are eight questions that I would immediately ask myself about any entrepreneurial idea I had. These eight questions are: How do we make money? (What product or service do we provide at a profit? What…
Very early in life, I had three important insights that helped me achieve the things I desired within a year or two after graduating college. These three insights were based upon my observation of the world and years of sitting in a reading chair by the fireplace pouring over history, accounting, economics, philosophy, psychology, ethics,…
In the most recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, Warren Buffett remarked that the three best investments he ever made included his home in Omaha (the other two were wedding rings). He conceded that he would have had more money if he had instead rented and invested the cash, but the utility of the home far outweighed the opportunity cost. Now that I am in my late twenties, I understand what he meant.
One way to begin making money is to create and own synthetic equity in other companies. This technique is one that Aaron and I used early in our career and was very lucrative for us, providing a stream of profit and cash for us to fund our other investments.
One of the most common questions I receive is, “how do you come up with a list of stocks for your portfolio that you then research further?”. Here is a brief overview.
I came across pictures from years ago of the very first office Aaron and I setup when we came back to Kansas City from New Jersey. It brought back fond memories. Other than problems with the temperature (the office was always too warm for my taste), it was a great space. Of course, being an…
We finally got a few of the other Carl Barks collection framed for the office walls. I’ve been meaning to get pictures up for months and finally just decided to stop and do it. I was browsing auction records tonight so it reminded me …
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