we had always looked at the tax benefits of real estate as what you got for the lack of liquidity. - Sam Zell

Sentimentality about an asset leads to a lack of discipline.

There’s a line from an old movie, Wheeler Dealers: “You don’t go wheeling and dealing for the money, you do it for fun. Money’s just a way of keeping score.” And that’s how I see it. I’ve always been much more drawn to the experience.

I’ve always valued long-term relationships, but John Hsieh, the former head of Itel’s container leasing business, taught me that you simply cannot succeed in-country without them. Hsieh had extensive international experience and contacts. He took me under his wing, and we traveled the world meeting Itel’s customers and suppliers — from a cocktail party in Rotterdam with British and German customers to a dinner in Hong Kong with a Chinese shipping company. The deep relationships he had with his customers enlightened me. I learned that the extreme degree to which you rely on strong personal relationships is perhaps the single biggest difference between doing business in the emerging markets and the U.S.