Lessons From The Man Who Turned His "Little Family Office" Into a $50B Behemoth

Ira Lubert built his "little" family office into a $50 billion behemoth, with investments across essentially every major private industry you could think of

He rarely speaks publicly

But he has done a few podcasts, which I dove deep into

He is a man of tremendous wisdom, and selfishly, I hope he continues to share his wisdom

Today, I'd like to share 12 powerful lessons from Ira Lubert

Let’s get started…

1. Fail Young, Fail Fast

In life, no matter how hard you try, sometimes you will not achieve the goal you set out to achieve

That is okay

Embrace these failures

Think of failure as an opportunity to learn, as it is a much better teacher than success is

Ira Lubert was a college wrestler at Penn State. He often refers to the struggles of not achieving what he set out to in wrestling as great life lessons

2. Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Your basic personality will not change after a certain point (say early 20's)

Take inventory of what you do great, and where you don't flourish

Supplement your weaknesses with people who thrive in those areas

In Ira's case, he decided to partner with operators rather than creating his own company because he felt he would never be a good manager of people

3. Adversity is Essential to Achieve Success

Adversity is what creates someone

Someone who comes back day in and day out, irregardless of how rosey the day before was

In Ira's first job at IBM, he was tasked with selling computers

He found tremendous success his first year, finishing at the top of his class

How did he do it among a group of Ivy leagues?

He understood how to handle adversity better than anyone else, which he learned from his wrestling career

4. The 2 Keys in Every Investment

1. Differentiation - different than the competition in some way

2. Barrier to Entry - something that will stop someone else from replicating your business

5. The 4 "Best of Breed" Characteristics

Ira focuses on these 4 qualities when he is getting to know a founder of a company he may invest in:

1. Honest

2. Ethical

3. Committed

4. Capable

6. Create 1 and 5 Year Plans

Annually, Ira created 1 and 5 year plans of what he wanted to achieve on an income and life basis

Then he broke down the metrics to ensure the monitoring of his progress

His goal in 1975 while at IBM was to sell 40 computers

-Calls / week = X

-Sales / week = X

He broke each metric down and tracked it vigorously

Lesson: create KPI's you can measure over short and long periods

7. Treat Partners as Partners, Not Employees

Many owners feel the need to give firm direction on how things should be done

Ira does not do this

There are only 2 things you can't do without his permission:

1. Hire a family member

2. Give yourself a raise

8. Real Estate is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Its all about staying power in real estate

If you can maintain ownership through a downturn, you will be okay

Don't make short term decisions that compromise the ability to play the long term game that is real estate

9. Always Look For Alignment of Interest

How can you ever ask someone to put money into something if they themself dont have skin in the game?

Ira tells a story of a time he met a group of New York bankers

He asked them how much money they had in the deal

They said they each have $1,000,000 in the deal

Ira dove deeper

He asked whose money it was

It ended up being a non-recourse loan from a local bank

So essentially, they had little to no "skin in the game"

Relative to your net worth, a founder/operator's investment should be material

10. Make Money on The Buy

Ideally, you want to buy at a value which is advantagous to your competition

Enabling you to be more nimble when the market softens

A high basis hinders every aspect of operations

11. Don't Fall in Love With Your Assets

Buy when people are selling

Sell when people are buying

Being contrarian leads to outsized returns

Also, never sign a lock-up agreement

Ira tells a story of an investment he made in a company that was in a bad spot

He invested rescue capital and gave them a few suggestions to get them out of the bad spot

The company ended up succeeding and going public, at which time every banker and important figure in the business urged Ira to sign a lock-up agreement while the stock went public

He would not do it

The stock went public during the dot com bubble - Ira sold at close to the top and realized a tremendous return

All the other investors were locked up and could not sell - the stock ended up falling substantially...

12. With Success Comes Responsibility

Once you have realized success, you have a duty to help others achieve their goals

Seek opportunities to spread your knowledge and help others succeed

Pay it forward

There you have it friends, 12 potent lessons from one of the wisest people I have had the opportunity to learn from, Ira Lubert

I hope you have found these lessons valuable, I sure did

Until next time,

Jake

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