Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Brett Kelly, Clown Publishing, $49.95.
While wisdom comes from living, one’s actions should also demonstrate that acumen. Commitment and “honesty is the first book” for forward-thinkers, and Kelly is firmly ensconced in this category.
The founder and CEO of a leading accounting firm for private business owners was determined not to be one of those people who “wanders unconsciously through life until death grabs them”. Kelly had decided to remember to ‘always be alive to life’ in 2003. He emulated the long-running BBC documentary series, Seven Up, and decided to write a book every seven years, encompassing what had been his focus during that period.
The right use of knowledge is imparted in Investment Wisdom, the fourth book that forms a series that started in 1998 after Collective Wisdom, Universal Wisdom and Business Owners’ Wisdom.
Investment Wisdom features business instincts, experiences and stories by nine Australian investors. The well-known money managers are: Charlie Aitken, Andrew Clifford, Bill Ferris, Jun Bei Liu, Paul Moore, John Murray, David Paradice, Joseph Skrzynski and Alex Waislitz. The interview formats are illuminating and the black-and-white photographs and sketches help with illustrations.
The only woman of the nine, Liu says, “Your ambition is only limited by your imagination”.
It was Warren Buffet, American investor, business tycoon and philanthropist, who has had a significant impact on Kelly’s career. “He struck me as not just a man of brilliant ideas but also one who had implemented those ideas with real commitment”.
In 1997, when Kelly lost an investment banking job he realised he now had the freedom to choose his own path. He “did not want to live according to other people’s expectations of a normal life for me”.
You, too, have the chance to learn from some of Australia’s most successful investors as they reveal insights into business, life, as well as investing. Well worth noting are each of their three ‘investment wisdom learnings’.
