My review of Stephen Schwarzman’s “What it takes”
By: Rashie Jain
Tags: Wall Street, Biography, Private Equity, Entrepreneurship, Book Review

This book is an autobiography of sorts of the founder, CEO of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman. In this book, Stephen also shares lessons (25 rules for work and life) from his career that one could apply in their entrepreneurial journeys.

I am a big fan of biographies especially that of founders as they provide a window into their journeys of building their business from scratch and vicariously allows one to experience the ups and downs that it entails. But I had mixed feelings about this book after I finished reading it. On the one hand, I was blown away by the sheer geniusness and ambition of Stephen in pursuit of his goal of building a billion-dollar fund in Blackstone (which was unheard of then) and scaling it to a firm that manages $500B in assets today. On the other, I wondered how Wall street at the end of the day is still run by White American Men and is a world that has its own rules, tight networks and is broadly inaccessible to outsiders. How much of Blackstone’s success can be attributed to the fact that Stephen had access to his network at Yale, HBS, and Lehman?

So first things first. Let me share some of the insights that I completely resonated with:

Set bigger goals. This seems almost self-explanatory but often first-time founders get intimidated and start with a smaller vision. That is the wrong approach. Building something is hard, very hard. Schwarzman’s shares very succinctly that if you are going to spend your entire life chasing a goal, it better be worth your effort, and the bigger the vision, the bigger the rewards. As he puts it, “It’s as easy to do something big as it is to do something small. Both will consume your time and energy, so make sure your fantasy is worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort.” Reach out for mentorship to people you admire: From his college days itself, Schwarzman made it a point to reach out to people in finance and politics, who he looked up to as his role models and he was often surprised because quite a few of them were open to giving him advice. This is a solid lesson in networking which a lot of us don’t realize early in our careers. Reaching out to people who we don’t know for advice is ok and it can have a cataclysmic impact on one’s career Hiring 10s and then giving them a lot of responsibility: When building Blackstone, Schwarzman focused on hiring top 1% talent who he calls 10s and then gave them crazy responsibilities. His theory is that the smarter the person, the more proactive they’ll be in sensing problems and more importantly will attract the other 10s creating a culture of excellence.

I also enjoyed Scharwarzman’s commentary on the 2008 housing crisis and recession and why it happened. It is pretty incredible that Blackstone was able to sense that there was a bubble in making in real estate much earlier and was able to sell-off the majority of their real estate investments before the crisis hit. I was intrigued by the author’s candid remark on how the government handled this crisis. Schwarzman gives an insight into what was going on in the congress at the time they decided to not bail out Lehman and roll out a relief plan for AIG and others. It is funny that people still blame only wall street for the crisis and consider that the government bailed them out although today all the debt has been repaid back to the government with interest. So the government actually recovered its entire loan with interest!

There were many other learnings that not only are valuable for first-time founders but also for young college graduates who have high ambitions and want to build a stellar career for themselves. But I also felt that a lot of these learnings may be more relevant to individuals who are pursuing careers in finance. The premise of this book is that it is a tough world out there and to make a mark for yourself, you ought to go all-in. Resonated with quite a few lessons. It is up for debate I think on how important a role Schwarzman’s privileged background played in Blackstone becoming what it became but credit ought to be given to his incredible networking skills. The book is insightful also because there isn’t a lot of content out there on how to build a fund although there are quite a few playbooks available to founders who want to raise private capital for business.

In short, if you are not among those who are influenced by the anti-billionaire, anti-wall street rhetoric which honestly in my opinion is more of a fashion trend these days rather than it having substantial merit, I would recommend reading this book for some great insights.