So I wrote an article titled “From Cassandra, With Love” and it ran in the March 1988 Real Estate Issues. Cassandra was a character in Greek legend c… - Sam Zell

You just build up a tolerance for rejection. You learn to keep asking and to find ways to get a conversation going. If you can just start and keep a dialogue, you have a chance.

First, the key to our prior success had been an inefficient market. The real estate industry had always been fragmented, with valuations and projections that often varied widely.

Jay taught me to use simplicity as a strategy. He had an uncanny ability to grasp an extremely complex situation and immediately locate the weakness. He always said that if there were twelve steps in a deal, the whole thing depended on just one of them. The others would either work themselves out or were less important.