"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for"

Like you, I've been deeply hurt by people I put my trust and faith in.

This wise quote from a true oracle helps me cope. It can be taken at least two ways. One, what a harsh realty to acknowledge. It could easily lead to cynicism. Yet when you think about it, it is sad, but true. Our friends, familes and certainly foes can step over the line at any time. If we feel they are not worth suffering for, we can let it go and not suffer for them.

On the other hand, we should always practice compassion for those we share love and respect with, our inner circles. Here we infer a much brighter message from Marley: Fill your life with people you not only love and trust, but who you also will forgive when they make mistakes. Because we all do. So, we must choose our most meaningful relationships wisely.

Let's take an example of each. 

A business associate asked me to lend his startup money to build a prototype. Within weeks of funding, he lost it all. Bam, gone, he blew it and he knew it. Instead of making amends, he and his colleagues went on a spending spree, declared bankruptcy, and fought to deprive me and the other investors the return of our capital. It took me several years and lots of legal bills, but I finally got all of my loan back. The other investors fared less well, losing most of their investments. Once again, I read the agreements, the others did not!

Here, we have a person who I believe betrayed my trust and showed no remorse. For me, such a person is not worth suffering for but, rather, someone to let go of. 

Now, let's turn the other cheek. Have you ever been told, "Always come back to love"? It's a really nice way to live, and it's simple. With the people you are closest to, who you share mutual love and respect with, life is to be happy and fruitful in abundance. Opportunities to be patient and forgive your loved ones arise every day. Maybe it's about their being late, angry or unkind...whatever.

Here, we have love to come back to. Our loved ones are worth suffering for. Again, we must choose them wisely.

Christ is worshipped as a practitioner of universal love and compassion. I gather other spiritual leaders like the Buddha, Ghandi and the Dalai Lama had the capacity to suffer for everyone, too, and that is a source of their great power and influence.  As a mere mortal, though, I am content to suffer for those I share love and respect with, and let go of those who intend to make me suffer.

These philosophies have led to some hard decisions, like retiring from my career and ending my marriage. But I know those were the right decisions for me, that my suffering had to end, and that my true loved ones will forgive me for any suffering those decisions may have caused them.

Thank you, Bob Marley, for showing me how to handle deceit, betrayal and other sins with dignity, reminding me to pick my loved and trusted ones very carefully, and teaching me that we will inevitably suffer for one another.  

"Read everything you sign"

Frank was a legal academic who taught an introductory law class at my business school. He was highly intelligent, educated and entertaining. In his classroom, we learned a lot about how the law works, pitfalls to avoid, precedents of note...a really great class taught by a really great professor. RIP Frank.

I think the lesson I have relied upon more than any other is to "Read everything you sign." I started with my personal credit card and car rental agreements, and graduated to a broad variety of investment documents of great complexity. Very often, my readings generated questions. When I was told nobody ever asked that before, which still happens all the time, I knew I was doing a good job. 

A good example is a unique investment I led in the United Kingdom. For ten years, it stood as the largest of its kind. It was nominated by the press as one of the best investments of the year. The largest and most influential institutional investors lined up to invest in it. It put my company and the real estate secondaries market on the map. 

Well, along came the Global Financial Crisis, and property values dropped 40%. Fortunately, my company had pulled great profits out before the crash by selling assets we bought at a discount into a rising market. Even better, while other large UK investments made around the same time by bulge bracket fund managers (who clearly did not read their agreements!) were lost to their lenders, we retained our assets. 

How, you may ask? Well, before the crash, when I was negotiating our loan documents, I noticed a seemingly untouchable "boilerplate" provision requiring loan defaults to be cured AND also for the lender to agree they were cured. In other words, the lender would decide whether or not it could foreclose and take the properties. But I (and, judging by our lender's surprise when they attempted but failed to foreclose, I alone) replaced the AND with an OR, so that our lender was prevented from foreclosing on our assets. By reading the loan agreement, I saved my company's investors over $100 million.

Thank you, Frank Macchiarola, for teaching me to read every agreement in order to safeguard my investors' and my own best interests. 

"In real estate, basis is everything"

I worked for Joe Lesser and his sidekick, Alan Gordon, the summer after my first year of business school. Alan was a sweet guy, very welcoming and interested in providing me with a solid internship. Our enlightening luncheons at the Penn Club, I'll always value and never forget.  

Joe, on the other hand, was a crusty old value investor. He ran Loeb Partners with an iron fist starting from the Shearson Lehman Loeb days. If he didn't absolutely love the price, he would never consider the investment. When he told me "basis is everything" it seemed kind of obvious. 

Not to all! I went on to spend two decades in institutional investment committee meetings, and encountered lots of investment professionals who ignored, forgot or never learned this lesson. Their presentations were inevitably entangled in weak rationales for doing deals, spinning out unsubstantiated SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analyses and saying things like "perception is realty." They had not asked the right questions or done their homework. They took on greater risk and generated lower returns without even knowing it. 

I also did an internship with Equitable Life, then the second largest US property owner. My last week was spent shadowing their construction loan monitor. We'd ride up and down skeletal elevators making sure Manhattan developers were spending Equitable's funds appropriately. When I asked why he did this every day instead of working the phones and computers like everyone else, he said "In real estate, you get what you inspect, not expect." Another gem. 

So, when buying real estate, always look closely at the property, the people involved, and the deal terms (most importantly, price!). All three must be very solid. Reduce the investment decision to numbers and math. Know the deal inside and out, up and down, side to side. Only then can you optimize the opportunity to buy low and sell high.

Importantly, don't believe the hype. People have all kinds of reasons to take shortcuts and commit capital. Momentum investing may work in other markets, but in real estate, always focus on value.

Thank you Joe Lesser for giving me the advice I needed to generate attractive returns throughout my career. 

"Only in the dictionary does Success come before Work"

No ordinary man, my sixth grade teacher Mr. Glick stopped us from flipping baseball cards by winning all of ours in a flip-off marathon. He later admitted he stacked his deck, but still, I thought he was pretty smart. 

I had cruised through grade school when Glick stopped me dead in my tracks, writing into my graduation signature book: "Only in the dictionary does Success come before Work." Along the same line, my Dad used to say: "The harder you work, the luckier you get."

It would take me until business school to put that advice fully into effect, but they were right. We're given certain capabilities. What we do with them is what matters. Keep swinging until the bell rings!

Thank you, Mr. Glick, for igniting my desire to make the most of myself.