Everyone has got it in him, if he will only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities. There is no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
As a young analyst just out of Stanford business school in the 1960s, I got to really understand what growth was about. Back then, you had to ask a customer to pay some money. That was the most important thing in getting a company off the ground.
If there's not enough money in the bank account, you don't spend it.
I was about thirteen when I started thinking about the stock market. My dad helped me a little bit. I'd see it in the 'Santa Barbara News-Press.' These prices would change every day - what was that all about?
Sometimes my mistake has been hesitancy about acting on the decisions I've made. When's the best time to invest? It's today, not tomorrow.
There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, and I always hoped I was related, but I wasn't. He was a steel magnate. He worked for J.P. Morgan; then he started Bethlehem Steel. But he had no children, unfortunately, and it turned out I wasn't a relative.
On the personal side, family is really important to me. I have a big family - five kids and 12 grandkids - so keeping that going is wonderful. And I do a lot of philanthropy. I'm chairman of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.
You've got to take the road you need to take, and only you can make that calculation. Not your dad, not your friend. You have to take it if you feel it instinctively.
I frankly think we in the financial service world believe we need appropriate kinds of regulations. No question about that. But when something like Dodd-Frank has been created, sort of in the mystery of night, it is a huge document. It's vast. It weighs about 10 pounds when I carry it around.
For as little as a thousand dollars, you can open an account at Schwab. I mean, it's not a big barrier to entry.
I remember, my first bicycle was very much a used bike. I wasn't going to Wal-Mart, buying a flashy 10-speed bike from China. Are you kidding me?
I remember very vividly - I wrote about it in one of my books - my first IRA. I contributed $2,000 every year, and in 21 years, the funds in that IRA account grew to $260,000. Seems like sort of a miracle, but it happened.
When I was 14, I did all kinds of different odd jobs. I had a chicken farm, had an ice cream operation in the summertime, worked as a caddy; all things to make money and save money. Save money in order to invest - that was the first step, though I never really accumulated very much because of other demands like bicycles and things like that.
You've always got to think about having some fixed income in your portfolio as well as equities.
I have probably purchased fifty 'hot tips' in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser.
