In 1979, James Dyson got Kirk-Dyson Designs off the ground with borrowed money. According to his autobiography, things didn’t start well. Within months, he’d gone through two molding partners who reneged on fixed-price agreements. He was forced to build the parts and borrow £45,000 at a 25% interest rate to buy a molding machine.

The “Ballbarrow from Kirk-Dyson Designs” launched in May 1979. At first, it failed. The construction industry and garden retailers were used to wheelbarrows and unwilling to try something new. James learned a valuable psychology lesson: entrenched professionals will resist change longer than consumers. James didn’t know how to sell to consumers, but going direct was his only option. He ran a newspaper ad and checks started flooding in. The company became profitable.

The ad led to a gardening journalist demoing the product, loving it, and writing a glowing review. This taught James a few things:

• Journalists are the first to see potential in an invention.
• People are likelier to believe someone who has tested the product.
• One journalist’s review is worth a thousand ads.

A large direct-selling company reached out, and Kirk-Dyson began drop-shipping orders for it. The company had a 50% market share, was selling 45,000 Ballbarrows annually, and recorded £600,00 in annual revenue.

Consumer inquiries led retailers to begin asking for the product. James hired an inexperienced sales manager, who suggested abandoning direct sales and wholesaling to distributors. This was a terrible mistake. Kirk-Dyson lost contact with the consumer, and margins were cut in half because margin for wholesalers had to be factored into the retail price. The company’s cash flow became negative, and it had to borrow more money.

With sales growing, the board of directors authorized spending money on unnecessary investments. James, focused on cash flow, objected but was overruled. The company borrowed £150,000. It was forced to raise capital by selling one-third of the company for £100,000. James’s stake was reduced to one-third, making him a minority shareholder. He was also the only rational voice on his board of directors.

Between 1975 and 1977, Kirk-Dyson had a 70% market share. Financially, though, the company was struggling. It had roughly £200,000 in debt at a 25% interest rate—the interest payments alone were £50,000. The company couldn’t support those debt payments.

The board decided to sell a U.S. license to get on track financially. The sales manager bolted to a U.S. competitor, copied Ballbarrow, and started selling in the United States. The board sued, despite James’s objection because of the cost. They spent a fortune on legal fees but lost the case, and James wasted a year traveling between the United States and the U.K. as his mother was dying from cancer.

Reducing debt was a must. James wanted to capitalize his loans and wanted the other two major shareholders to do the same. The board, on the other hand, wanted to sell the rights to the Ballbarrow. In January 1979, it did, and at the same time fired James.

Kirk-Dyson was a sales success but a financial and personal failure. The company didn’t make money, and James’s sister and brother-in-law didn’t speak to him for ten years after the firing.

From this, James learned valuable lessons about voting control and boards of directors. Control is everything to entrepreneurs; losing it can lead to losing their company. Choose your board carefully. Investors and “businessmen” don’t think or act like founders.

James also learned how debt triggers reverse psychology for small companies. When you don’t have money, you start thinking of all the things you could do if you had money and end up overspending, getting further into debt. When you have money, you’re not desperately thinking of ways to make money, so you’re careful and don’t spend on frivolous ideas. Being free from debt frees you to think clearly and negotiate from a position of strength.

Fired from the company he founded, James had to figure out what was next.

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Months ago on Reddit, I saw a post listing a user’s favorite founder biographies and autobiographies. Against the Odds, James Dyson’s autobiography, was number one. Researching him, I learned that James Dyson is a famous inventor and the founder of Dyson, a global company famous for its cyclone vacuums. According to this press release, Dyson’s 2023 revenue was £7.1 billion, or roughly $9 billion today, and its profit (EBITDA) was £1.4 billion, or roughly $1.77 billion today. James reportedly owns 100% of the company and is personally worth over $13 billion. Intrigued, I started reading his autobiography to learn about his journey.

Life started out rough for James. His father died of cancer when James was just nine. He felt alone and that things would easily be taken away from him. This, plus being the youngest sibling, instilled an underdog mentality in James. When James’s father died, he was making a career change. James learned his first valuable lesson: don’t waste time doing something you don’t want to do.

Following his passion for art, he skipped college after high school and enrolled in a graduate-level art program at the Royal College of Art (RCA). He fell in love with industrial design and, for spending money, started a company selling cheap wine. The wine business taught him a crucial business lesson: real money is made selling entirely new products that have style and substance and can’t be found anywhere else.

James tried and failed to raise money to build a theatre for poor children that he designed, but investors put British inventor and entrepreneur Jeremy Fry on his radar. James cold-called him, and Fry offered him work on a project. James approached Fry with an idea for a Sea Truck, something new, and Fry let him run with testing the idea. Eight months after the prototype was made, Fry’s company paid James £300 for the design.

James graduated in 1970 from RCA and went to work for Fry in a marine division newly created for Sea Truck. The Sea Truck eventually succeeded after James overcame various internal and external hurdles. James learned valuable lessons: One, if you don’t invest enough in the early product and try to sell a half-finished product, you’re doomed from the start. Two, sell people on how the product fits their specific needs, not how it’s generic enough to solve all problems.

After five years, James was roughly twenty-seven and tired of rewarding shareholders of Fry’s publicly traded company through his efforts. He wanted to reward himself. He was ready to go out on his own. He invented the ballbarrow and with Stuart Kirkwood, his wealthy brother-in-law, formed a 50/50 partnership. They borrowed £24,000, which required James to put up his home as collateral. Kirk-Dyson Designs was launched. James was officially an entrepreneur!

James’s early years were traumatic and affected the rest of his life. They instilled a steely drive to prove himself and made him comfortable with blazing his own trail. These skills were valuable in launching Kirk-Dyson, but James had many more lessons to learn as a first-time founder.

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

My current personal project is to read books about entrepreneurs and share what I learn from them via blog posts and audio podcasts. By sharing the journeys and wisdom of some of the most successful entrepreneurs, I aim to help entrepreneurs increase their chances of succeeding.

Why Did I Start Thinking about Amazon’s Affiliate Program?

I’ve conducted weekly feedback sessions with listeners as part of my feedback loop. A few weeks ago, one listener told me she purchased an autobiography on Amazon after listening to one of my podcast episodes. This was good because my post was valuable enough to her that she took action to purchase the book. It was also bad because I would have never known about the purchase if it hadn’t been mentioned during our conversation.

I wondered how I could get data on purchases that were prompted by my blog or podcasts. This led me to Amazon Associates, Amazon’s affiliate-marketing program.

What Were My Concerns about Using Amazon’s Affiliate Marketing?

I didn't like the idea of adding affiliate-marketing links. It felt tacky, and I thought people would think I was doing it only to make money off book sales. That would make them suspicious and defeat my purpose. I decided the only way to know for sure was to ask.

During my feedback sessions, I asked about the perception of affiliate-marketing links. To my surprise, listeners shared two important insights. First, it’s fair to include them because my blog or podcast might help them discover and purchase a book. Second, it’s such a common practice now that people don’t look down on it. They expect it. People are appreciative when someone helps them discover new things; it adds value for them.

That feedback proved I was thinking about this the wrong way. I decided to move forward and become an Amazon Affiliate.

Have I Implemented Amazon Affiliate Marketing Links?

Yes. I signed up last week. Friends purchased books so I could test the flow of data. I encountered an issue with links on iPhones initially routing to the Amazon mobile app but then quickly jumping to the Safari web browser. That was annoying because the data tracking was broken when the jump between the mobile app and Safari occurred. If I couldn’t fix this, there was no point in moving forward because a high percentage of people listen and read on iPhones. After spending more time on this than I had planned (and being annoyed), I figured out a hack that appears to be working. Fingers crossed!

I started updating links on my blog and podcast. Over the next week or two, most links to books will be updated to affiliate links.

What Should Blog Readers and Listeners Know?

• I’m doing this only for books and Amazon. I don’t plan on using affiliate links for any other products or websites.
• Any purchase you make via affiliate links doesn’t cost you anything extra. Amazon sells the item for the same price and shares part (a very small share) of the purchase price with me as a commission.
• My objective is to get data, not money. From a monetary perspective, this isn’t a great use of my time. On a $10 book purchase, the affiliate commission is maybe $0.50 if I’m lucky. But from an insights perspective, it’s extremely valuable. Understanding what books are being purchased helps me understand what’s valuable to listeners and readers. Knowing this helps me double down on what’s working and focus my efforts on reading books from the type of entrepreneurs listeners and readers are interested in.

I hope this gives you insight into my thinking. If you want to share your thoughts on this decision, I’m all ears. Feel free to reach out!

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

I finished reading about Wayne Huizenga’s amazing entrepreneurial journey. His biography was published in 1995 when Wayne was 57 or so. He wasn’t done. He continued building before passing in 2018. The public companies he was involved with and the value they created for shareholders are testimonials to his entrepreneurial success:

• Waste Management – Wayne was a founder and helped take this company public. It’s still public and, as of this writing, has a market capitalization (i.e., valuation) of over $80 billion.
• Blockbuster Video – He built this from $7 million and sold it for over $8 billion.
• Republic Services – He bought into this company and grew it. It’s still public and, as of this writing, has a market capitalization of over $60 billion.
• AutoNation – He founded this company and spun it out of Republic Services in 1998 via an IPO. It’s still a publicly traded company and, as of this writing, has a market capitalization of over $6 billion.

Wayne also founded two professional sports teams and bought the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.

How Did Wayne Become So Successful?

Childhood pain instilled drive in Wayne. He watched his father fail and go broke. This scarred him and sowed in him a fear of financial insecurity. Wayne was also born with an intense personality. These two traits fueled Wayne’s tireless work ethic and frantic pace. Wayne worked constantly and did multiple things at once. In the 1950s, friends realized that Wayne was different when he installed a phone in his bathroom. Wayne’s drive had a downside, too. His first wife divorced him, and he openly shares regrets of not being around to see his children grow up. Executives working under Wayne also sacrificed personally to keep up with him.

Another factor in Wayne’s success was his strategy. He focused on building large companies through acquisitions. Picking the right types of companies and markets was key. Wayne’s criteria were simple:

• Service industries with repeat business
• Growing industries
• Industries dominated by mom-and-pop entrepreneurs, who are easy to take market share from
• Economies of scale that a large player can benefit from

If you don’t know something exists, you can never benefit from it. Wayne worked to make sure he was in the flow of information, which contributed to his success. In private markets he had a network of wealthy, early-stage investors with whom he shared deals. On Wall Street, he had a network of investment bankers and analysts. Owning three sports teams kept him in the know with titans of various industries. When something was happening or about to happen, Wayne knew about it.

Last, Wayne figured out his playbook for compounding his wealth rapidly. He learned how perception on Wall Street worked and how to scale companies rapidly. He combined those two things to create his initial wealth base by growing Waste Management quickly. He then compounded that wealth even faster by applying the same playbook to Blockbuster.

What Kind of Entrepreneur Was Wayne?

Wayne was a buyer. He was a deal maker. He enjoyed the thrill of winning deals and building an empire by acquiring. But Wayne had no desire to run an empire. He was not an operationally minded entrepreneur. He could pick and acquire the pieces of his empire, but putting them together and managing them fell to others.

Wayne was never satisfied. He always wanted more. People who worked closely with him repeated this throughout the book. He never said “Good job.” Instead, he always said “You could have done more.” The $23 million fortune he accumulated at Waste Management wasn’t enough, so he quit. The $8.4 billion signed deal with Viacom to acquire Blockbuster wasn’t enough, so he pushed Sumner Redstone for more stock before the deal closed. No matter what, he always wanted more. His thinking about pursuing more when he already had enough is best captured in this quote: “Why do you climb the mountain? Because it’s there.”

What Did I learn from Wayne’s Story?

• Entrepreneurship through acquisitions is a viable path to building a publicly traded company.
• A deal-oriented entrepreneur is well suited to partnering with an operationally oriented person. Otherwise, the foundation could crumble as more acquisitions are added.
• When building something to sell in the short to medium term, you’ll likely be playing the perception game. You can’t always control perception. Perception can lead you to do things that may not benefit your customers.
• Dealmaking is a skill. If you’re doing a deal and you don’t have this skill, find someone who does. The downside to a bad deal can be big.
• Wayne’s rules for making a deal:
  • Don’t fall in love with a deal.
  • Don’t paint yourself in a corner.
  • Never say anything that won’t allow you to come back in the front door.
  • Don’t say anything is a deal breaker (if you renege, you kill your credibility).
  • A deal is never dead if you don’t let it die.
  • Always let the other side set the initial price.
  • Recognize what the other side really wants out of a deal.
  • Know when to walk.
  • Don’t take no for an answer.

Wayne was an amazing entrepreneur. His biography is a blueprint for anyone interested in building companies by acquiring, learning about dealmaking, getting into the business of sports franchises, or compounding wealth in the stock market.

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

Wayne Huizenga’s fascination with perception on Wall Street continued to fuel his desire to build Blockbuster into a diversified entertainment company. According to his biography, in June 1993, he met with advisors from Wall Street to discuss expanding into entertainment. The meeting resulted in a list of three potential partners: Viacom, Paramount, and Polygram Inc.

Over lunch, Wayne pitched Viacom’s Sumner Redstone on merging, but Redstone was busy trying to acquire Paramount. Viacom’s acquisition of Paramount meant that two targets on Wayne’s list would become one. Polygram was owned by Philips Electronics, which was restructuring and couldn’t entertain any deals.

Viacom announced its deal for Paramount, kicking off a bidding war between Redstone and QVC’s Barry Diller that gave Wayne an opportunity. As the price got higher, Redstone needed a partner. Wayne agreed to buy $600 million worth of preferred Viacom stock and receive a 5% dividend. Wayne did a stock offering at $30 per share to raise $424 million of the $600 million needed.

Diller bid higher, forcing Redstone to rework his proposal. Redstone needed someone willing to buy $1.2 billion worth of Viacom stock so he could use that cash to offer Paramount shareholders more cash in his cash-and-stock bid. Wayne agreed. He would buy $1.8 billion worth of Viacom stock, but with one condition: regardless of the outcome of the Paramount deal, Blockbuster and Paramount must merge.

The deal included a collar provision called a variable common right. If, on the first anniversary of the merger, Viacom shares were too low, Blockbuster shareholders would receive additional Viacom shares.

A lot of drama happened before the September breakup deadline. Wayne and Sumner’s relationship deteriorated. But the $8.4 billion deal was approved by Blockbuster shareholders and closed.

Wayne quit and owned a stake in Viacom worth $600 million. It was a bittersweet ending, but Wayne kept going. He didn’t need more money, but making money is still a challenge he enjoys. He summarized his thinking about this with this line: “Why do you climb the mountain? Because it’s there.”

In 1995, he and his friends invested $27 million for 6 million shares and warrants for another 12 million shares in Republic Waste Industries. Wayne personally invested another $13 million, and banks completed a private placement for $70 million. The stock went from $4 to $26 in months because of the “Huizenga effect.” Wayne was off to the races again with a new company and richly valued stock he could use to build a diversified services company!

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

Wayne Huizenga made Blockbuster Video's positive perception by Wall Street a priority. His biography details his success in doing this early. But business is never a straight line up and to the right. As business operations ebb and flow, so will perception.

In May 1989, Bear Sterns analyst Lee Seidler highlighted acquisitions-related accounting practices that he claimed inflated Blockbuster’s earnings and stock price. The inflated stock was used to acquire more businesses, further inflating earnings. Perception tanked, and the stock price took a hit. This marked the beginning of a rough patch for the company.

In 1991, the Gulf War began, and consumers watched the latest developments on CNN. Blockbuster reported growth of 31% that quarter, but Wall Street expected 40%. The stock tanked. The cable industry launched interactive cable with more channel options. Cox Enterprises, a major cable operator, announces its sale of eighty-two Blockbuster locations. Blockbuster had a confidence crisis, and some executives believed Wayne, not having the conviction of a founder, compounded the issue.

Desperate to change their perception, Wayne began diversifying. He struck a deal to buy a U.K. video rental chain, Cityvision. As part of that process, he convinced Phillips Electronics N.V. to invest $66m in Blockbuster, which provided the cash needed to close the Cityvision deal. Wayne hoped the vote of confidence by a $31 billion technology giant would squash Wall Street’s fears about technology risks.

Wayne went further by getting into music retailing. In 1992, Blockbuster spent $185 million in cash and stock to buy 236 Sound Warehouse and Music Plus stores from Roy E. Disney. That same year, he struck a deal with Richard Branson Virgin Music to open Virgin Music stores in the United States. Blockbuster went on to copy Virgin’s concept and open smaller Blockbuster Music stores, which didn’t go over well with Virgin and Branson.

That same year, Wayne met with an investment banker and Wall Street analyst to discuss Blockbuster entering the entertainment industry. In 1993, he purchased 35% of Republic Pictures Corp, its thousand-film library, and warrants for $25 million. Also in 1993, he purchased 48% of Aaron Spelling’s Spelling Entertainment and its hits, such as the Beverly Hills 90210 TV show and Terminator movies, for $140 million. Wayne combined the two publicly traded companies into one, of which Blockbuster owned 70%. He also bought 20% of Discovery Zone’s indoor playground business for $10 million in 1993.

Wayne used his dealmaking skills and transformed Blockbuster into an “all-around entertainment company.” Analysts took notice, and perception started to change. This, combined with positive and increasing cash flow, led institutions like State Street to buy and lift the stock price.

This increasing cash flow (and somewhat positive perception) would ultimately lead to the biggest deal of Wayne’s life.

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Reading Wayne Huizenga’s biography, I learned something unexpected: Blockbuster Video’s roots were in making software for oil and gas companies. David P Cook & Associates was founded in 1978. By 1983, when it went public and raised $8 million as Cook Data Services, it had employees in five offices and hundreds of oil company customers. Then the oil market tanked and customers stopped paying their bills. Founder David Cook sought ways to use the company’s barcode technology and settled on the exploding video rental business. Powered by software and a high-tech distribution center, he could build a superstore in an industry full of mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. The first store opened in 1985 and had more customers than it could serve.

So how did a garbage entrepreneur find a small, public company that was pivoting? Wayne, through Huizenga Holdings and wealthy friends, built a deal machine with great deal flow that they shared with each other. A friend came across Blockbuster and pulled Wayne in. Wayne visited a store and was hooked on the rental and service aspects of the business.

In 1987, Cook tried to raise money to grow Blockbuster, but a negative Barron’s article sunk his chances of selling $18 million worth of shares to public-market investors. He raised only $4 million. Wayne and his friends came to the rescue. They agreed to invest $18.5 million and receive 1.2 million shares, warrants to buy another 1.7 million shares, and 60% company ownership.

Wayne believed the company could be easily duplicated, so he focused on getting large quickly. In 1987, with just 19 stores, he acquired a large competitor with 29 stores. Cook, losing control and disliking acquisitions, quit, forcing Wayne to become CEO.

Wayne quickly realized this was an unfamiliar industry and hired seasoned executives to fill his gaps. This team would drive the hyperbolic growth he envisioned. Wayne preferred company-owned stores to franchising, but each store cost $500,000 to build. He planned to fund the growth by selling shares to public-market investors, but Blockbuster shares cratered by more than 50% during the October 1987 stock-market crash. Wayne hastily arranged for family and friends to invest $8.4 million via a private placement instead.

The company grew from 19 stores in 1986, to 133 stores in 1987, to 415 stores in 1988, to 1,079 stores in 1989. While Wayne’s lieutenants ran operations, he focused on acquisitions and on managing Wall Street analysts’ and institutional investors’ perceptions of the company. Positive perceptions led to a high multiple on the stock, his main currency in acquiring companies. Employees at all levels were partially compensated in stock options, which Wayne also used as motivation to run the company at a breakneck pace. The pace took a toll: one executive died of a heart attack and others divorced.

Wayne completed 110 deals in seven years. He needed a strategy to raise capital to fuel that growth, silence critics who said pay-per-view was a threat, and gain more credibility with Wall Street, and he devised one: he struck deals with Cox Enterprises and United Cable, two of the largest cable companies. Each invested $12 to $15 million initially and bought rights to open 100 stores. The companies perceived as big competitors were now Wayne’s investors and partners.

Wall Street embraced the company, which moved from trading on an over-the-counter (OTC) stock market to the NYSE in April 1989. The stock went from $5.75 to $33.50. Blockbuster was perceived positively . . . for the time being.

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

Sumner Redstone’s autobiography detailed negotiations with Wayne Huizenga during Viacom’s acquisition of Blockbuster Video. I knew that Huizenga owned an NFL team, the Miami Dolphins, at one point, but not much else. I decided to read Gail DeGeorge’s The Making of a Blockbuster: How Wayne Huizenga Built a Sports and Entertainment Empire from Trash, Grit and Videotape.

Blockbuster wasn’t Huizenga’s only outsize success. During his career, he also took Waste Management, Republic Services, and AutoNation public. Each was valued at over a billion dollars. He also launched the NHL’s Florida Panthers and MLB’s Miami Marlins as expansion teams.

Wayne started off in the garbage business. His grandfather immigrated from Holland and ran a garbage business in Chicago. Wayne’s extended family would become garbage entrepreneurs too. Wayne’s father was the exception. He moved to Florida to build homes but went broke when the economy slowed. This scared Wayne.

After dropping out of college, Wayne borrowed money from his father-in-law in 1962 to buy trucks and routes to start his own company in Pompano Beach, Florida, at age 25. Wayne’s intense personality and work ethic, combined with an exploding population, grew his business from one truck to forty trucks and $3 million in revenue by 1969.

Wayne leveraged loans from banks and family to grow. After exhausting those options, he merged with the garbage company his cousin’s husband, Dean, ran in Chicago. Wayne was the deal person and Dean was the strategist and operator.

The combined company couldn’t borrow any more money, so they decided to take it public. In 1971, the company began trading on the over-the-counter (OTC) stock market. Wayne could then use the company’s stock, not cash, to acquire new companies. They acquired 133 companies in ten months in sunbelt states and suburbs. A key part of their strategy was to acquire companies that owned landfills, which created revenue from fees paid by competitors to use their site.

The acquisition pace was blistering. After a decade, revenues reached $772 million, and Wayne didn’t feel that his $23 million in stock and options was enough compensation for his efforts. He wanted more, so he left the company in 1984 and started what would become Huizenga Holdings.

His learnings from Waste Management were that service businesses and rental companies are ideal. Both have great cash flow and high levels of repeat business. This informed his investment thesis. Wayne bought most of a publicly traded lawn-care company, porta potty company, and bottled-water company, to name just a few.

Wayne leveraged his deal-making skills and always bought. He never started from scratch. Huizenga Holdings became a deal-flow machine. He cultivated a network of wealthy, deal-hungry individual investors who shared in the deal flow. Wayne’s early track record was mixed. A savings and loan he invested in was seized, and he lost over $1 million. But Huizenga Holdings would be the sourcing tool that helped him find investments early, including one of his most lucrative investments: Blockbuster Video.

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

I finished reading Kirk Kerkorian’s biography. His journey and what he managed to accomplish are inspiring. When I started this book, I wanted the answers to a few questions:

Why did Kirk become so successful?

Kirk Kerkorian was a learning machine. His formal education ended in eighth grade, but he learned to be a pilot, an aviation entrepreneur, a public market investor, a casino entrepreneur, and a mergers and acquisitions maven. He had a thirst for knowledge around topics that excited him.

Kirk started out trying to make enough money to survive. But after that box was checked, he began thinking bigger. He became an entrepreneur with a vision. He fell in love with Las Vegas in the 1940s and saw what the city could become: an entertainment and leisure travel mecca, an adult Disneyland. His vision led to decades of pursuing projects in Las Vegas that set records and were massive successes. Each moved him closer to turning Vegas into the place he envisioned. Many successful entrepreneurs have mercenary motivations in the beginning, but those who have outsize success are visionaries. Kirk was one of the rare founders who successfully shifted his thinking from one to the other.

Some entrepreneurs are builders. They love turning nothing into something and going from zero to one. Others enjoy optimizing existing companies and taking them from one to ten. Kirk was unusual in that he was good at both. He built massive casinos from the ground up. But he also bought private and public companies outright and optimized them.

Kirk became a shrewd investor. He bought and sold public and private companies. People are usually skilled investors or skilled entrepreneurs, not both. The rare ones who excel at both often realize outsize success. Warren Buffett famously said, "I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor.” That holds true for Kirk too.

What kind of entrepreneur was Kirk?

Kirk was fair. He didn’t believe in zero-sum games and was adamant that both parties win. He even returned subordinates to the negotiation table after the deals they cut were too favorable to him.

Kirk always kept his cool in the direst of circumstances. He loved the thrill and embraced risk in a major way. He once bet $1 million on a single roll of the dice in the French Rivera. And won! As a pilot, he almost died serval times.

Kirk was grounded. He hated public attention and refused to give speeches or do interviews. He liked that he could go anywhere and no one knew him. The freedom to go anywhere and do anything without being disturbed was priceless to him. As a billionaire, he wore a Timex watch, drove himself around Los Angeles in a Ford Taurus, and lived in a 1,800-square-foot home.

He wasn’t perfect by any means. The book highlights his flaws and gives detailed accounts of some crazy stories from his personal and professional life.

What can entrepreneurs learn from Kirk?

Continuous learning is key to outsize entrepreneurial success. The more you learn and the faster you learn (and figure out how to apply what you learn), the more you increase your chances of success. Wisdom compounds, and you can win by learning faster than everyone else.

You can’t control your starting position in life, but you can control your personal velocity and distance traveled. If you were dealt a bad starting position, get comfortable with the idea of needing to move faster and travel further to end up in the same place as others. It’s not fair, but neither is life. If you want to surpass others, like Kirk did, move even faster and travel even further.

Control matters. Understand the situations in which you could lose control of your company and try to eliminate them.

Last, keep doing what you enjoy. Kirk was still playing tennis and building record-setting development projects in his eighties!

Prefer listening? Catch audio versions of these blog posts, with more context added, on Apple Podcasts here or Spotify here!

While Kirk Kerkorian was becoming a public market investor and developing casinos, he got into another industry: movie studios. Per his biography, Kirk launched a tender offer to take control of publicly traded MGM Studios in 1969. Kirk saw hidden value in its library of classic films and its brand. The company also owned real estate, a music publisher, a record label, and overseas studios.

He raised $70 million in two days from a consortium of European banks. His tender was successful. He owned nearly 40% of MGM’s stock.  The company was in “financial shambles.” Kirk slashed costs, sold real estate and other assets, and canceled upcoming movies.

By 1971, the company had stabilized, and Kirk began looking for a way to generate reliable and growing revenue. His idea was to diversify. He’d just sold off his remaining stake in International Hotel (by then renamed Hilton Las Vegas). He wanted to combine the entertainment and casino businesses to create the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. Kirk envisioned twenty-six floors and two thousand rooms. It was the second time Kirk would build the biggest hotel in Vegas. MGM borrowed $75 million, and the project began.

In 1973, MGM Grand opened and exceeded expectations. Its success led to MGM’s highest annual earnings in its fifty-year history. Kirk doubled down, increasing his ownership in MGM to 50.1%.

Kirk took MGM to Reno and spent $115 million building the MGM Reno. He bought a Lake Tahoe casino for $2 million to train workers until the Reno project was completed.

Amid all this, he tried to buy a controlling stake in publicly traded Columbia Pictures in 1978. He failed, but he made a profit of $75 million when Columbia bought back his shares at a significant premium.

In 1980, Kirk split MGM into a film company and a hotel company. He owned roughly half of each publicly traded company. He also bought United Artists for $380 million in 1981 and combined it with the film studio to form MGM/UA.

By 1986, he sold MGM’s film company to Ted Turner, although he would repurchase much of it months later when the debt load crushed Turner. That same year he lost interest in the MGM Grand hotels in Vegas and Reno and sold them to Bally’s Corporation for $550 million.

Kirk didn’t stop there.

He sold MGM/UA for $1.3 billion in 1990, bought it back for $870 million in 1996, and sold it again to Sony for $3.5 billion in 2004.

He built a bigger MGM Grand for $1 billion, which opened in 1993 and became known for hosting famous boxing matches. He bought Mirage Resorts from Steve Wynn in 2000 for $4.4 billion. And in his nineties, just before the Great Financial Crisis, he embarked on his biggest Las Vegas project, CityCenter.

Sometime in the 1960s, Kirk evolved from a small-thinking, mercenary entrepreneur to a big-picture, visionary entrepreneur. He saw Las Vegas as his blank canvas and the ultimate place for entertainment and leisure travel—an adult Disneyland. He spent the next forty-plus years turning that vision into reality and making Las Vegas the city we know today. That he turned a movie studio brand into a hotel brand that’s still thriving today is a testament to his vision and abilities as an entrepreneur.

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