Sublime

Most of the real money isn’t in the royalties or the sales. For authors, the real money comes from speaking, teaching, or consulting.

“whale curves.”5 In Kaplan’s experience, the whale curve usually reveals that the most profitable 20% of customers can sometimes generate between 150% and 300% of total profits so that the resulting curve resembles a sperm whale rising above the water’s surface.

Howie, inside Morgan Stanley, would lose $9 billion on a single mortgage trade, and remain essentially unknown, without anyone beyond a small circle inside Morgan Stanley ever hearing about what he’d done, or why.

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” Enough. I was st

can hear what you’re thinking. “I’m not an American. I’m not even using a US brokerage.” That might not matter. The IRS states that “Nonresident’s stock holdings in American companies are subject to estate taxation even though the nonresident held the certificates abroad or registered the certificates in the name of a nominee.”16

As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s.

Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.

Andy Stanley, Johnny Carson, Howard Hendricks, Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham,