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Catalysts and Growth

We buy things with what we call a hard catalyst; so some kind of event that’s going to close the gap between what you bought it at and what it’s worth.

We also buy things where there’s no catalyst; so we’re just owning businesses.

In the first category, if there’s a catalyst, we don’t need that much growth. We need to buy it cheap and get out.

In the second category, where there’s no catalyst, we absolutely need growth. And now the growth can come in all kinds of ways. It doesn’t have to come through increased revenues, although a lot of times it does. It can come from running operations more efficiently. It can come from acquisitions. It can come from buying back shares really cheap. But if there’s no catalyst, we absolutely need growth.

– David Abrams

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Art and Focus

‘It is only half and hour’ – ‘It is only an afternoon’ – ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes–or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day…whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.

– Charles Dickens