YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Zell

lines on the record: 123
first: 2020-01-23
most recent: 2020-01-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That was a very easy decision. My father's view was very simple. You got to have a profession. No matter what, you got to have something that you can quote a Hanu Shingalad on. And law school seemed like a very logical thing for me to do. Academically, I was very difficult to achieve. And so I went to law school not because I wanted to practice law. I went to law school, so I had a degree and that if I didn't work out at whatever it is I was doing, I would be able to, in effect, still practice law and make a living. And that's what he, more than anything, stressed that I had to do.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To say, I didn't listen to everything he had to say, but living in that kind of an environment was very, very different than what my peers were doing.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At first, it was very frustrating and very much of a challenge, and I didn't really know what to do with it. And then eventually I just came to the realization that I had to be my own thing and I had to be who I was and that other people had different ideas and different objectives and that was fine. But I couldn't accept what everybody else was thinking about. I also grew up in a world where the rest of the kids that I grew up with, they were kids. But I grew up in an environment where they didn't really give me much of a chance to be a kid. And in fact, whether it was a six-year-old watching Holocaust movies or listening to my father telling me, you went to a basketball game last week. Why do you have to go again? And why are you so focused on having fun? You've got to be studying. You got to be getting better. You got to be able to take on what's going on.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I certainly was no different than any other teenager, but the fact that I wasn't any different didn't really change the fact that I was very different and lived in a house where the closeness to which they came to being exterminated was very much aware for everybody all the time. I grew up in a house where my parents took the position that whatever I was doing, I was lucky I was doing it and I had to do more of it. I had to study harder and I had to excel. And other parents didn't have these kinds of influences on their children. So it became obvious to me in a relatively young age that I was different and that as much as I wanted to be accepted and as much as I wanted to be like everybody else, I also recognized that I wasn't and that I couldn't.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then when I talk to them about it afterwards, I never told them that I snuck out to watch. But we talked about things over the dinner table, et cetera. And I began to understand that these concentration camps literally were created to wipe out a population and as efficiently as possible kill them and then put them in dump trucks and find some place where they could be dumped and lime tossed on the bodies and buried accordingly. So it was an incredible thing for a six-year-old to watch. And most important of all, what I felt about it was that, but for the grace of God, it could have and should have been my parents. And in fact, most of their siblings ended up murdered in these concentration camps.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The living room was, and they were watching an 8mm movie. And I remember looking at the movie as I'm sitting here talking, I can tell you that I can represent the images that I saw. And the images were of trucks and dump trucks. And on the back of the dump trucks in the bins were bodies and bones and heads. And somehow or other they had all been dumped in the back of these trucks. And then I learned for the first time that this was all about the Holocaust. And these were smuggled out movies that were made of what was going on in these camps in Poland right before the end of the war. And I sat there and at first I couldn't conceive of what I was watching.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think I was maybe six years old, and we lived in Chicago and we lived in what's commonly referred to as a railroad apartment, which is yet a living room at the one end and the kitchen at the other end, and then it was a long row of bedrooms and bath. And my bedroom was at the far back next to the kitchen. And my parents had a group of immigrants that had their own little organization called the Harmony Circle Club, and once a month they would get together in one of the other one's living room and talk about information and particularly information about Poland and when they all were refugees from Poland and all Jewish and all trying to get information. I don't know why I got up that night, but I got up that night and I snuck into the right near the...”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“every day that come from all over the world and we can't really relate to the idea of a society where information was literally limited and the further you got from the point you were standing the less dependable the information was so he was functioning with a lot of information that his siblings and his friends didn't have no different than when we talk about being a risk taker what i talk about often is how critically important it is to be as knowledgeable as possible that all my life i've basically focused on reading and digesting information because the well educated up-to-date you are the better you are to be able to assess judgment and assess risk”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We looked at the society that he was leaving and particularly at his age. I think he really thought that he was making a major decision for creating optionality and freedom for his future. And I think that he had heard enough of what was going on in Germany and Austria at the time that I don't think he had any doubt of how big the risk was and how critical it was to exit. And yet he was unable to convince everybody else. But everybody else were settled, they had their professions, they were living in this relatively small city. And most important had very little exposure to the outside world. I mean, we live in a day of 24-7 sound from the cable TV stations, and we live in a world where there's newspapers.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think he ever articulated it that way because I don't think he ever thought about it as risk and reward. I think he thought about it as survival. I think he thought about it and said what am I giving up?”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You wanted to do as long as you didn't disturb your neighbor. So this was an extraordinary background for everything that eventually happened to me. And without question, very much influenced. How I made decisions going forward. Because more than anything else, what it told me was that anything was possible, that you didn't start with a set of limitations. You started with the entire spectrum was available, and it was how good you are, how committed you were, how hard you were willing to work. That really was the limiting factors, not the society”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then he didn't know where he was going he had a wife and a baby daughter, and all he was doing was going away from the threat. So it made me very aware of how lucky I was. He must have told me a hundred times how lucky I was that I was born in the United States, how the streets of the United States were paved with gold, not monetary gold, but freedom. And that was really what it all meant. And he over and over again lectured me on how important it was to understand how unique an experience it was to live in a country where you really had the freedom to make decisions, you had the freedom to work harder or work less or change professions or do whatever it is.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Down the stairs, hoping that this would precipitate the baby, and eventually that night at ten o'clock the process started, and so they got dressed, went downstairs, got on a street car, and rode the streetcar to the point where they had to get off and change to go to the hospital. But the other streetcar didn't come, and it was 11 o'clock at night, so they walked the last six blocks, and then I was born very shortly thereafter. But when you come from that kind of a life and you hear the stories all over again for all of your young period of time, it gives you a very different perspective on life. The idea of somebody literally picking up and leaving where they were is just extraordinary. How anybody could have the self-confidence.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to get their visa to the United States, which they finally got in May of 1941, and they arrived in the United States may eighteenth, nineteen forty one at six AM in Seattle. Interestingly enough, as only the life of an immigrant could reflect, they arrived at six AM in the morning and six PM they took their first English class because they were going to become Americans and this was the most important thing in their life. So this was kind of the background and I was born September 28th. So literally I was born 90, 100 days after they came to this country. And typical of my mother was late with me. And so the day I was born, she went to Marshall Fields, which was the major department store in Chicago and started walking up.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That they had a train and that they could sell in effect train passes from Vilnius overnight to Moscow and then eleven days and eleven nights on the Trans-Siberian Express to Vladivostok, where you could take a boat to Japan. And my parents for two hundred and thirty nine dollars per person bought transit on that train, went overnight to Moscow, spent the night in Moscow, actually went to the Bolshevik ballet, and then the next morning got on the train and spent the next eleven days and eleven nights on the train with their two year old daughter going to Viladav. And then eventually boarded a boat and ended up in Japan and then spent six months in Japan.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now there is no such thing as a transit visa, but they created it and they found a wood artisan who made a wood cut and they created these visas and Sempi Shugahara who was the consul ended up signing almost two thousand of these. And in the meantime he sent a notice to Tokyo and asked permission to grant the visas and they came back and said no. And then he sent them a second question and while he was waiting for them to respond is when he filled out all the visas and when the response came back they basically took him and relocated him. But the people had these visas. At the same time the Russian government was desperate for hard currency. And so they decided that as only Russian entrepreneurs.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Netherlands but couldn't go west, so went east and stopped in Vilnius, and he gave out visas to Curso. Curso is an island in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, and it was a Dutch protectorate and they had historically had an open visa policy to anybody because they were trying to populate Curso, particularly with Europeans. And so all of these refugees got visas to Curso. But the problem still became, how do you get from Vilnius to Curso? And obviously the only way you could go was east. And obviously the answer became the Japanese. And they found a consulate in Covenus, which is the second largest city in Lithuania. And they told him their story. And he took pity on them, and they literally created Something I called a transit visa.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Train to wagon cart, whatever, and whichever methodology they could, they kept going east. And along the way, there were other refugees, just like them, all moving east. And eventually they got to Vilnius, which was the capital of Lithuania. And that's where the Russian army was. And that's where they paused. And they spent a few months in Vilnius trying to get adjusted. And at that time, there were a lot of other refugees in Vilnius. And so there was a community and they shared information. They were all confronted with the same challenge, which was, how do we get out of here? And most important, how do we get visas to get out of here? While they were in Vilnius, the Dutch ambassador who would come out of Poland was on his way back to”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My father instead knew about Crystal Knock, knew about all of the Jewish activities in Germany, and he couldn't convince anybody to go with him. And so finally at 4.30 in the afternoon of august thirty first, nineteen thirty nine, he got on a train and started going east. And at six AM the Lufafa bombed the rail yards, and that was the beginning of both the Germans and the Russians invading Poland from either side. He then continued and just all he wanted to do was keep going east, keep going away from Germany. And there are times my mother told stories about her pleading with him to stop, okay, we're far enough away from the border. Everything is going to be fine. Instead, all he said was we got to keep going. And they went by every conceivable form of transportation from bus to bus.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He moved my mother and my older sister, who was like two, a couple hundred kilometers from their town, went back and tried to convince other members of the family to come with him. Without exception, they all turned him down. He was like thirty four years old. I think they all thought he was typical, over enthusiastic young man, didn't understand, didn't remember that when World War I happened, the Germans invaded western Poland. And the locals found that to be terrific. They were much happier under the Germans than they were under the Poles. The Germans were educated, the Germans were cultured, music, art. And they all said, this is an alarmist young man. He didn't understand. As soon as the Germans come back, it's going to be terrific again.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that proves to her who he is, and she gave him all of the money, and forty eight hours later the money was on deposit at Berkeley's Bank in Tel Aviv, and that money eventually became the currency that they used when they were escaping from Poland. So it's now 1939, it's August 23rd, 1939, and the world is stunned by the announcement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, which was a treaty executed between Germany and Russia. Basically, Stalin and Hitler had made a deal. And my father looked at that treaty and said, this is basically an agreement to split up Poland. And so my father got off, he was on a train, turned around, went home, got my mother, and said, We have to leave.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You went on a vacation to Egypt and Israel or Palestine, and basically there was the Jewish organization that allowed Polish Jews to get money out of Poland. And so one day the guy showed up at my mother's house who had, in effect, my father had told her, look, if some guy shows up, he can prove to you that I know him, give him all the money that's in the armoire upstairs. And in between, my mother received a letter from my father, and it was a typical rosy letter having a great time. Everything is terrific. And when she opened up the letter, she found a ripped piece of paper inside the envelope. And then a week later, a guy shows up at her door with the other half of the ripped piece of paper.”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My parents lived on the German Polish border in the thirties. And my father was a grain merchant. And the Jewish community in Poland at that time was very, very limited and had very little exposure to the outside world. But my father, because he was in the grain business, was dealing with businessmen all over Europe. And so he had a much better understanding of how the world had changed and the risk that was occurring to the Jewish people. Events like Kristallnacht that were never reported in Poland he knew about, and he became alarmed at what was happening and began planning to leave Poland and go to the United States. He saved up money. One of the stories I tell in the book is the story of him basically getting money out of Poland and getting it to Israel or to Palestine at the time. And so he, in a”
2020-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #407: Sam Zell — Strategies for High-Stakes Investing and Dealmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT