Other highlights (37)
“In other times, the Slim family's economic empire might have made them the only royal family of our country. However, rich and powerful, the Slims are a simple family, well-mannered, informal in appearance, oblivious to the ostentation of the money elite.”
“One of his staple books is The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell, one of the last great humanists of the West, who argued that the secret of happiness is not being entirely foolish, and to be reasonably happy one must think properly, never stop thinking altogether; act right, be inventive, and if possible disinterested, and never altogether stop acting.”
“Slim has said time and again that his main job is to “think".”
“For the West — argues Maalouf — the threat of Islam has been constant. Almost a century after the death of the prophet in 632 A.D., the Moors controlled Spain and were knocking on the doors of France, halted by Charles Martel in 932. In 1453, the Turks and Ottomans captured Constantinople and were at the gates of Vienna in 1569; until they were definitively stopped in 1683.”
“The entire people then belonged to a single feudal lord. He was the heir to an ancient system of sheikhs [...] he was far from being one of the most powerful characters in the country. Between the eastern plain and the sea, there were dozens of properties larger than his [...] above him and those like him was the Emir of the mountain, and above-”
“the scholar Carlos Martínez Assad gives an account of a testimony in "The Lebanese, a model of adaptation", in the book Veracruz: Port of Arrival, in which he recounts that "when the Americans invaded Veracruz”
“The reasons for my father's commercial success were simple: vocation, talent, and work, his advice on professional issues, morals and social responsibility were very clear. I quote his own words: “Trade must establish a useful system; its activities and its purpose rest on a small profit from sales. It must provide the consumer with fine and cheap items, and deal directly with him, offer him payment facilities, adjust his acts to the strictest morality and honesty”.”
“At the end of 1952 when I was twelve years old, and in order to manage our income and expenses, my father established the obligation for us to keep a savings book, which he reviewed with us every week.”
“He was assigned properties on the streets of Corregidora, Albondiga, Juan de la Granja corner with Corregidora (which was later expropriated from him). After some time they sold several properties like Rubén Darío (now the Canadian Embassy), Martí (Mexico Hospital), Venustiano Carranza 124, Corregidora, and three in Correo Mayor, for an approximate amount of twenty million dollars leaving currently only four co-ownerships.”
“Slim was taking flight in business, starting in the real estate industry with a company specialized in real estate. Even then he caused amazement with his administrative skills and strategic ingenuity.”
“"On the contrary. We always had the freedom to study what we wanted, to study or not to study, to work or not to work in the group or do other things. In addition, my parents' education was about doing things for pleasure and responsibility, rather than ambition."”
“"A friend asked me some time ago, what was the most demanding thing my father required from me. I think it was honesty."”
“In his youth, his penchant for reading Playboy magazine nourished him with Getty's ideas, who said there was a sure formula for achieving financial success: "Get up early, work hard, and drill for oil."”
“Warren Buffett: "It's not worth doing well something that, to start with, is not worth doing.””
“Benjamin Graham, another of his mentors, said that "a businessman seeks professional advice on various facets of his business, but never expects to be told how to make profit."”
“Getty used to say, "When you don't have money, you always think about it and when you do have it, you only think about it."”
“"I can't be everywhere. My job is to think," he says when asked what the secret to busin”
“Be very careful when you ask someone for their time. You are asking for their life, because their time is life.”
“In business, from Slim's perspective, there are three types of personalities in companies: first, the entrepreneur; second, the executive and third, the investor. The three, he says, often complement each other and sometimes even merge. The first is the one who conceives and undertakes, the second is the one who operates the companies and the third the one who provides the means. Slim defines himself as an entrepreneur, but adds: "We could say that a fourth type exists, which is the politician".”
“Slim says his businesses operate based on basic principles and simple structures. He explains this as follows:
We are continually seeking for our human team to have a vocation, training, and stimulating work that leads to self-esteem, that makes responsibility a pleasure rather than a duty, and that contributes to their human development. The group works without corporate staff, and the one of the company is always located at the production plant, in operation and sale, and with minimal operating expenses, seeking optimal personnel, the best prepared and well paid.”
“We aim to minimize hierarchical levels by bringing managers as close to the operation as possible, and having them work for it, not for corporate structures. We strive to combine executive activity with shareholders' interests through a delegate chairman of the board, who, along with management, constantly seeks to optimize investments, strategy and expenses. We systematically work to improve production processes, optimizing investments and facilities, increasing productivity, improving quality, reducing waste, and aiming to mass-produce the best quality at the lowest cost; its reduction implies maintaining or improving margins, expanding our markets, reducing prices, and competing internationally.”
“We guide our growth and investments towards the most dynamic sectors in the medium and long term, we try to maintain flexibility and speed in decisions and, in the end, the advantages of small businesses, which are what make large companies great.”
“The conducive environment in a society gives it political and economic stability; healthy public finances, with balanced budgets, applied to priority economic and social programs; with investment in infrastructure and social spending with redistributive effects that gradually and consistently favor well-being. The conducive environment is also created with the society's trust in its country, in its government and in itself. Moreover, the government must participate by organizing society and directing the common effort. These are - no doubt - necessary conditions for national development.”
“Therefore, it is necessary for national and private investment; there is also a need for a market that generates wealth, a government that guides and fosters growth, and that spends and invests with redistributive purposes in education, health, housing a good percentage of the gross domestic product.”
“In this new world of economic opening and globalization, initiated by transnational corporations and technology, which at times seems to be retreating to economic blocs and protectionism due to the force of historical subsidies, which even the most developed countries such as the United States, European Union, and Japan firmly have in place.
Especially in the agricultural sector, individual and social insecurity leads to protectionism and isolation, while the struggle for markets and excessive competition,
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Carlos Slim
are a modern substitute for warfare instincts.”
“There are three vocations to distinguish in the company: the entrepreneur, the executive, and the investor. In the first generation family business, the same person usually performs all three functions. In large public companies, there are substantial individual and institutional investors, and often in developed countries the entrepreneurial function is diluted, displaced by the strength of non-partner executives who report quarterly to institutional investors.”
“The businessman has the social responsibility to optimize the company's resources by making it more efficient, more competitive, reinvesting its profits and training its personnel who, well paid, motivated and satisfied with their responsibility, do their best effort.
In short, in the end, the businessman is just a temporary administrator of social wealth.”
“Success is not doing things well or very well and having the recognition of others. It is not an external opinion, it is an internal state. It's the harmony of the soul and its emotions, which requires love, family, friendship, authenticity, integrity.”
“Do not confuse values, nor devalue your principles. The path of life is very long, but it moves very quickly. Live the present intensely and fully, let the past not be a burden and the future be a stimulus. Everyone shapes their destiny and can influence their reality, but do not ignore it.”
“Live without fears and without guilt; fears are the worst feelings of man, they weaken, inhibit his action and depress him, and guilt is a huge burden in our thinking, in action and in life. They make the present difficult and obstruct the future. To combat them, let's be sensible, accept ourselves as we are, our realities, our joys and our sorrows.”
“His favorite films that have impacted him the most are El Cid and Modern Times.”
“Slim wrote his personal vision of what he titled "Four epochs of the Mexican economy" and the subtitles: "The start in 1952 culminates today; exaggerated debt and deficit; from boom to nightmare: oil" in two installments.”
“The Slim philosophy
The first era lasts twenty years, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1972. The second era, which does not reach ten years, ends in 1981, when the sources that gave it life run out: external credit, the high price of oil and the deficit public spending. The third era, the crisis, takes seven years, from 1982 to the present. A new era is currently foreseen that should start in the first months of 1989.
First era 1952-1972: During these years, substantial development is achieved while maintaining a balanced budget, price stability and moderate external debt. The internal debt is reduced, as is the deficit, despite significant population growth and a great effort to provide public services. The internal product almost quadruples; per capita income doubles. Income is distributed through increasingly well-paid employment, although it is far from desired levels, and through public spending that benefits the most needy and increasingly covers more Mexicans.”
“I don't know how much free time I have, but I know there are clouds, and in those clouds there are many things, there's sun, too. The clouds are close to the sun. Clouds and sun are brotherly words. Let's be worthy of the clouds of the Valley of Mexico, let's be worthy of the sun of the Valley of Mexico. Valley of Mexico, that phrase illuminated my childhood, that phrase illuminates my maturity and my old age.”
“Carlos Fuentes why Slim seeks the company of intellectuals, the author of the famous novel The Most Transparent Region responded that no, Slim "does not seek us, we enrich ourselves with his freshness and spontaneity".”
“Almost no one knows that Carlos was born rich. His father had a prosperous business near the National Palace, and on occasion bought old colonial mansions that were worth more for their land than their architecture. Carlos studied engineering and with his inheritance built a multi-story building where he lived in an apartment with his wife and children. An extraordinary financier, he started buying several factories and businesses that he made prosper.”
