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Sam Zell sold his real estate company, Equity Office, to Blackstone for $39 billion. It made him one of the 1,000 richest people on Earth.
He was the son of Jewish immigrants who escaped Poland days before the Nazis invaded.
On top of his family’s improbable escape from the horrors of the Holocaust, Zell had an improbable run of successful deals from the 1970s onward.
Sam was a voracious reader. He consumed business biographies like they were Oreos. He was constantly looking for an edge.
And he found one in a book that hardly anyone had read.
It was the autobiography of William Zeckendorf, a real estate developer whose heyday in the 1950s included developing the Magnificent Mile in Chicago and buying the land where the United Nations Headquarters was built.
In his book, Zeckendorf outlined his ‘Hawaiian Technique’ valuing and financing his properties. It was one of Zeckendorf’s greatest strategic advantages and he gave it away freely in a book.
Sam found it so valuable that he cited it in his own book as a key to his success.
As Charlie Munger says, “There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.”
Sam passed away May 18, 2023. He spent the last years of his life passing along the wisdom he accrued. If you choose not to consume it, that’s on you.
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