Chapter 15 4. Investment

In the investment of time, there is something called the crowding out effect, which is an antinomy.Time is particularly interesting. It is both a means of production and a means of consumption. It is both a capital product (investment product) and a consumer product.For example, when we went to Europe, we saw that Europeans are very leisurely, and they can sit there for an afternoon with a bottle of beer. For these people, time is a consumable.People have already lived to that point, and the quality of life is high enough to spend time.Likewise, basking in the sun on the beach, that's time wasted.But for us, if we work overtime every day, that time is a capital good, which is equivalent to a kind of capital. We need to exchange this time for money.Consuming time in this process is production.Therefore, in the limited lifetime of human beings, there is a mutual crowding out effect, that is to say, how much time you spend on production is running out of your consumption time.Just like what we usually say, a policeman catches bad guys every day, and then can’t go home, and no one cares about the children going to school. This belongs to your a lot of time for survival and work, but you can’t enjoy and consume a lot of your own time .So on an investment of time, you may get money in return, but it may also be time itself.When food and clothing are not a problem, time itself becomes a special consumer product, even a luxury.

So if we try our best to do a professional job within the effective time, and treat it in a persistent and focused way, we may get a lot of money and save a lot of time at the same time. The time saved is equivalent to the return on investment. We can spend it, go on vacation, paint, and satisfy other personal interests.In a person's lifetime, time as a consumer product and as a capital product are mutually exclusive.If you have this, you don’t have that, and if you have that, you don’t have this.Because there is only so much time in a person's life, and the requirements and quality of enjoyment in each period of time are different.Time is fleeting, and it will never come back after it has passed. For example, the kind of joy you had when you were a child will never be found again when you are 50 years old; Find the same childhood joy?Absolutely impossible!

Therefore, in terms of time, it is necessary to subdivide your own time as an investment product and your time as a consumer product, and then use the specialization and refinement of your work to increase your return on money in business and at the same time improve production efficiency , free up more time to satisfy your desire to spend time, and you will be able to manage time well and enjoy life.There are many bosses around us who are not doing a good enough job in this regard.But look at Wang Shi, he is consuming a lot of time now, and time has increasingly become a consumer product for him, because he has done everything right before, and he can consume time at this time.What if it's not done right?Then you may still be running around desperately, for a loan, for a right and wrong, for a company's legal dispute, every day you invite people from the court and the public security, either to soak in restaurants or tea shops, or to kowtow in saunas in karaoke halls.If a business leader regards time as a capital good all his life, he will become a slave of capital and work.

Investing in time has several interesting patterns.First, in the direction of time, time is one-way and irreversible, so people are unique and irreplaceable in the choice of time.On the contrary, people can repeat the choice of space. For example, if we come here today, we will come here tomorrow. Still laughing at the spring breeze", but the time is completely different.So each of us has limited options for behavior.Just because time itself is one-dimensional, you have to do some specific activities within a limited time.But how do you do it to maximize your profits?We often think about one thing in a smart way, as if we can do A and B, and we can do this and that.

But even if you are a smart person, due to limited time, assuming that everyone only lives to be 80 years old, and you do 10 things, even if you start from a young age, you can only do each thing in less than 10 years.And a person who is stupid than you may have done one thing in his life, and he spent twice as much time (20 years) as you on this thing, and he has been rich for many years!So it must be very easy for him to play and do it. In fact, his income from this matter will be greater than your income from doing everything for 10 years.Why can't Adili walk the tightrope, but we may fall to death if we walk a little?He has been practicing tightrope walking for 20 years, so he is a bold artist. Not only can he not fall, but he can also earn money from it.In other words, if you concentrate on one thing and spend enough time, you may become the master of this matter, and you may also earn income because of it.More importantly, time is still at your fingertips, and you will still have a lot of leisure to spend time and do other things.

Just like in the history of Vantone, there was a difficult time, we had many old things, the Huairou project was an old thing, the New World Mall was an old thing, and so were Xincheng International and Ideal World (later renamed Xincheng International) old thing.It is really difficult to pile these things together. Everyone is unwilling to do this thing and wants to do something new.But in fact, in the end we get the most out of doing those old things right.So just keep learning about one thing, invest in one direction, don’t be stingy with time, and spend more time in the same direction, you can match things and time according to the amount, and your income will continue to increase, and the marginal income will become more and more bigger.There is an old saying in the past, "As long as you work hard, you can grind an iron pestle into a needle".Ten years of sharpening a sword is also based on this principle.

Therefore, if you want to invest in the road of life and get some benefits and returns, the first thing is to accumulate in one direction, and continuous positive accumulation is more important than anything else.For example, in an enterprise, if you do this for a while, and do that for a while, there is a big difference from your continuous positive accumulation in one direction.Continuous positive accumulation, even if you do a little less, slowly, and spend 30 years on one thing, it will be better than that smart person doing 10 things and doing each thing for 10 years. The result will definitely prove that you are better than That "smart guy" is smart.

So in the past few years, we have emphasized specialization. Like Vanke, we do one thing professionally. Now, we are actually much calmer than in the past. So it is a truth that time decides everything, and it is also a truth that the truth does not like to listen.For example, I hold a glass of water and drink it right away, which is called drinking water; if I hold it for 10 hours, it is called performance art, and the nature changes; if someone holds it for 100 hours and dies here, this action If it is still maintained, it can actually be made into a sculpture; and if it is left for another 50 years, tickets can be sold by pulling a rope, and it will become a cultural relic.So it is not the act itself, but the timing that determines the nature of a thing.If you practice one thing hard and work hard towards one time direction, the value of this thing will continue to increase.You want to drink water for a few cents, but a performance art can earn tens of dollars at most. If it is turned into a sculpture, it can be sold for a little money if it is placed in a good place; but if it becomes a cultural relic, the price will be high.You see, the longer the time, the more precious and valuable things become.

For another example, an 18-year-old innocent girl is cute, an 80-year-old innocent woman is a living treasure, and an 800-year-old mummy woman is a cultural relic.Obviously, the longer the time, the higher the value.So the key is to master the time well.The same is true when we are a company. One day in real estate, people say you are speculating (real estate speculation, land speculation). After 10 years, they say it is a serious business. If you can do it for 100 years, they call you a great company.So time will reward you greatly and give you every opportunity to be great, honorable, right and famous.

From the perspective of financial return, the longer the time, the higher the return.This is just like what I just said, a piece of porcelain, if you bury it underground for 10,000 years, it is a cultural relic.The best and most respected investor in the world is Warren Buffett.Buffett started investing with $300 when he was in elementary school.So now, he is the second richest man in the world, with a net worth of nearly $40 billion from $300.His approach to investing is so simple that everyone can understand it, but no one does it.He was a simple guy, in a small town, very austere, in a $200,000 house.How does he invest, he just buys a stock, buys a stock of a company he thinks is a good company, and then waits there, it's as simple as that.Most people are constantly picking stocks, buying and selling, selling and buying again, in and out.What did he buy?He bought Coca-Cola, he bought Gillette, the New York Times, and he bought insurance companies.After he became a "master", he summed up many tricks.He particularly emphasized two links, one is to buy right, and the other is to hold for a long time.How long is the long term? He doesn't move for 20 years.But generally speaking, no one who invests, especially those on Wall Street, can keep it for 20 years, but his father did this, so he actually became the second richest man in the world.

Of course, there are many ways for him to buy stocks.For example, he buys stocks very simply by looking at the company's cash flow. He believes that some companies that look good are actually companies without cash, such as Shougang and Baosteel, which are very good, but according to Buffett's point of view, they cannot be bought. Because Baosteel undergoes technological transformation every year, it has to depreciate every year. Depreciation eats up part of the cash, technological transformation eats up part of the cash, and research and development eats up part of the cash. How can there be any cash profit?It looks like a lot of profit on the paper, but the money is gone.Why is Coca-Cola good?Coca-Cola is always cash, and its brand does not say how much it is worth. It will never need technological innovation. Do you think this packaging plant needs technological innovation every year?Therefore, this type of enterprise does not eat cash, only cash, and the risk of investing in it is very small.Many of Coca-Cola's canning plants are not invested by itself, but by others. In addition, in China, another investment myth happened in Vanke.When Vanke issued shares, there was a Hong Kong man who was in the video recorder business with Vanke at that time. At that time, he bought 3 million shares and accidentally bought them into legal person shares.After buying it, it was not in circulation for a long time, and he went to other businesses. When he was short of money, he tried to exchange the legal person shares for tradable shares or B shares in Hong Kong and sell them as soon as possible through contacts.But because it was not easy to sell, it was shelved. It has been shelved for 17 years since it was launched. By the first half of 2007, 3 million yuan had become 2 billion yuan.As a result, looking back, this money was many times more than the money he earned from all other businesses over the past ten years. We went to visit Hongkong Land, Hongkong Land in Central, there are 5 buildings.I asked their CEO how to calculate short-term returns and long-term returns.He said that calculating the short-term return is to estimate and calculate its rate of return every year, that is, the rate of return of the property, which is actually around 8% per year, 6% to 8%.not tall.Because Hong Kong is constantly valued, sometimes the valuation is high this year and the valuation is low next year, and the gap is huge.However, they have been doing this building for almost 40 years.At that time, it cost about 500 million U.S. dollars to build these buildings. If they were sold at that time and they could earn nearly 200 million U.S. dollars in cash, that would be good.However, even if you don’t make mistakes with the 200 million US dollars you earned, and continue to invest to make money, up to now, the maximum is 1 billion US dollars.But he didn't sell it, but rented it out. So far, he has received nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars in rent, and the annual rent is more than 400 million U.S. dollars. The return of nearly 20 billion US dollars in 38 years is called the long-term return, which obviously far exceeds the short-term return of 6% or 8% per year. Therefore, what their company has always insisted on is long-term growth.Hongkong Land has a history of more than 120 years, and its parent company Jardine has a history of nearly 200 years.The length of time has a great impact on the return on investment.So on the issue of investment, investing time is actually doing a valuable thing in one direction, overlapping time and the value of things.In addition, you have to persist for a long time, the longer, the higher the rate of return. The third rule in time investment is to see whether the object you invest in, or in other words, whether the object you determine in a certain period of time is correct.If the wrong object is selected, the income from the time you invest will become a negative value. The longer the time, the greater the disaster.Therefore, the nature of things is determined by time on the one hand, and the object of investment on the other.The objects of time investment are different, and the nature of things is also different.Just like me, I used to work with Mou Zhong. If I have been with Mou Zhong and spent the same amount of time with him, it is called participating in economic crimes, and I will definitely be arrested; if I am with Liu Chuanzhi, it is a career. Managers; but we do it ourselves, called entrepreneurship.So at the same time, who you are with is also very important. As far as investment is concerned, when the time is certain, the return on investment depends on the object of your investment.For example, we bought two pieces of land in 1992, one in Huairou (Miaocheng) in Beijing, and the other in Sanya, Hainan.The two pieces of land were bought at the front and rear feet. Sanya was bought in August and September of 1992, and Beijing was bought at the end of 1992 and early 1993.But at the beginning of 2006, after we sold the land in Sanya, we discovered that the land in Beijing had increased by more than 20 times.But the land in Sanya, after the same period of time, only increased by less than 3 times.Obviously, the same time, placed in different places, the difference is very large.Today we understand this truth. If we still plan to consume a piece of land in 10 years, then we must first choose a place instead of emphasizing time. If you spend the same amount of time and money, if you want to get better returns, you must choose the right investment object to discover the value of the invested object.