In the beginning, we took nearly all of our returns in residuals, and we charged very little in fees. Eventually, the residual equity turned to cash,… - Sam Zell

So I called Merrill Lynch and said, “I want to create an opportunity fund wherein investors put up cash to become my partners in the purchase of distressed real estate.” No one, including me, had done this kind of fund before, but they thought it was a great idea. They put up 5 percent of the first fund’s target and said they’d raise the balance of the capital. Six months later, we still had no commitments. Not one. So I took over the process and hit the road — from May 10 through June 30, 1989. I found that to raise money, I had to do it personally. I traveled with Merrill forty-two of those fifty-two days and did every single presentation — typically three to four a day in different cities.

Boards that don’t exercise an ownership approach are complicit in poor-performing companies.

Zeckendorf’s autobiography was packed with colorful stories, but what fascinated me most was his strategy. Zeckendorf viewed assets as a sum of parts, so he could increase the value of the whole. Various parts were more valuable to different buyers, so Zeckendorf could maximize the value of his holding overall, in effect making 1 + 1 = 3. For example, One Park Avenue in Manhattan, which the marketplace had valued at $10 million, was ultimately worth $15 million in Zeckendorf’s hands. He calculated everything separately — the building’s title, the land, the leases, the individual mortgages. I thought this was brilliant. I adopted the approach both inside and, later, outside of the real estate industry.