Your Summer APB: One Article, Podcast, And Book To Invest In
Welcome to our Q3 APB!
It’s a trio of content—one Article, Podcast, and Book—that’s worth your time and attention.
ARTICLE
My family recently watched the new Avatar movie, The Way of Water. It cost an estimated $350-400 million and took 12 years to make. It's not a short movie with a runtime of more than three hours, but it was incredible.
That is what director James Cameron aims for—incredible.
He’s been responsible for some of the most incredible (and expensive) movies ever made.
Terminator
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Aliens
The Abyss
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
True Lies
Titanic
Avatar
All of them were enormously expensive to make and risky. But how many were unprofitable?
Zero.
Every . . . single . . . one . . . was profitable. Many of them incredibly profitable.
Curious to learn more about James Cameron, I stumbled into this article by GQ Magazine’s Zach Baron. It’s titled, “The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King.”
There is one specific paragraph that jerked me by the collar. It’s about Cameron’s magnetism toward the difficult.
As Cameron worked late into the evening, day after day, solving the infinite problems that The Way of Water continued to present, he seemed to be enjoying himself. “I like difficult,” he told me. “I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a f****** magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it probably goes back to this idea that there are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen, because the really gifted people don’t f****** want to do it.”
Much of your work should be difficult—it means you’re pushing yourself and expanding the value you provide. It means you’re choosing to target your customers’ biggest issues—the very ones that are well known and avoided . . . for the very fact they are difficult.
PODCAST
One of my favorite new podcasts is called, Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy. I was hesitant to subscribe to a finance podcast, but O’Shaughnessy has strong hosting skills and he’s got a wide array of guests on the show, including relatively recent episodes featuring an African animal tracker (!) and venture capital legend, Doug Leone. Both episodes were strong.
However, the episode I’ll recommend here features Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. I listened to it twice—back to back—and cited a clip in my new book on Negotiating.
BOOK
Run—don’t walk—and buy a few copies of The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
His thesis is that while financial decisions are often taught with spreadsheets and assessments on risk tolerance and percentages based on modern portfolio theory, that’s not what really drives our money-based thinking and behavior.
What drives it is your “personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives all scrambled together.”
His thoughts on the general concept of compounding—of money, time, and freedom—have changed how I think and act. Regarding money, specifically, chapter 4 opens with this mind bender: “$81.5 billion of Warren Buffett’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. Our minds are not built to handle such absurdities.”
Read that again.
“[Buffett’s] skill is investing, but his secret is time.”
If you or anyone you know uses money, I’d strongly recommend you invest in this book now.
Bonus book recommendation
Last week I finished this book. It blew me away.
You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America by Paul Kix.
The fact that it’s already been optioned for a future movie does not surprise in the least—it reads like a movie. I can only hope James Cameron chooses to direct it.
Thanks for reading.
Extras
- If you’re looking for good viewing, these all played well in the Hartmann household recently.
- Last week on The Construction Leadership Podcast, I spoke with Brian Blevins, analytics lead at PrimeSource. Our conversation is a glimpse into the future of what an internal analytics team will look like for construction companies—and what companies can begin to expect from their suppliers who support them.
- To listen to/share this newsletter as a podcast, click here or the large button we made for you.
Housekeeping
- We recently partnered with the West Coast Lumber and Building Material Association (WCLBMA) to launch their own podcast. Listen and subscribe here.
- We continue to share excerpt videos from The Construction Leadership Podcast on YouTube here. It’s free and our hope is the smaller clips will be easier for you to share with your team. View videos and subscribe here.
- Tis the season for booking Q1 and Q2 2024 keynotes and training sessions. Every year the timeline seems to creep further into July as we only have a handful of free weeks available. If interested in exploring an on-site or remote training session or booking Hartmann as a keynote speaker, click here.
- If interested in advertising on the podcast as we continue to grow and expand our footprint (100K+ per month), click here.
- For any of you that also have a typeface and font OCD like I do, I cannot think (let alone write about!) Avatar without thinking of this Saturday Night Live short featuring Ryan Gosling.
This is as close I can come to explain what it’s like in my head all the time. I’m not proud of it. It just is. It’s like being left-handed. Or growing red hair.