How the Ex-Goldman CEO actually invests his own money

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/6027651c82df57ad

The difference between somebody who's really, really good and somebody who can't make it is not that great. Goldman Sachs, senior chairman and former CEO Lloyd Blankfind, your portfolio as a pie chart, what does it look like right now? I invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me. I would say
That ninety eight percent are equities. What are some of your biggest holdings? This is gonna be controversial. I don't know who I'm gonna upset, but you know, it's like Are you trading every day?
Yes. That's crazy. No, it's not. It's like taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm talking. Right now it's like that. So you're bullish on big tech.
Anything else? It's been good to be bullish on big tech and I'll stop being bullish on it when it stops going up. What did the people who couldn't outperform, what did the bottom half have in common? The bigger takeaway is that I feel like I can rule the world and know I could be what I want to.
I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking for the black. The reason why it's interesting to talk to you.
It's because I'm pretty good at building companies. You know, I built a company that was doing almost twenty million in revenue by the time I was thirty one. But I'm like I don't know anything when it comes to investing. My portfolio is basically eight. Nobody nobody knows anything. Well, that's what I've learned. Uh but it seems like you know a lot.
Unlike a lot of people.
I know nobody knows anything, whereas every pure everybody else just wonders.
Well, that's cool. And so the m so I'm gonna ask you a ton of questions and it's come and it's gonna come from a perspective of like I actually don't know what I'm doing be in the majority of my my portfolio is which I actually think is smart is just ninety percent index, ten percent bonds.
Well that's sensible.
But you day trade, which I thought was hilarious. Two things. One, I'm a pro
at it. I mean that's what I did my you know, only for the last four or five decades.
And the other thing is that
Nothing hugely positive or usually negative is gonna affect my life. Yeah.
So to me it's like a hobby. What age were you when you felt that?
Grow grow up in the project, so I I always
I wouldn't say that I felt.
Poor.
But I certainly was incapable of feeling well to do. I can't even say the R wordr
I can't hard for me to even just say it.
But you know, by any metric, I have been that way for a you know, for a long time, but I never feel that way. I mean I I'm still trapped in that mindset, you know, of the kid from the projects.
So your your father was a a postal worker. I think you said you're an urban hick.
Which I liked.
grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, you know, you know, at the end of two you know, you you know, s you know, two subway lines and a bus in the uh eastern part of Brooklyn.
You know, growing up
I think I went to uh I think I went to Manhattan.
Three times.
I never left the country, didn't didn't fly on an airplane till after I left c you know, to left school and stuff, you know.
Yeah, I was uh pretty provincial.
It turns out
That if you look at the lists of most successful people or wealthiest people in the US.
You're not seeing a lot of Morgans or Rockefellers.
Or any of these classical family names.
on that list you're seeing basically people
not necessarily growing up in poverty, but they were kind of middle class people who did you know who did well. These are not
You know, generational wealthy people.
Coming along a lot of people.
were socially mobile in their lives and that you know created w wealth for others and you know and a piece of it stuck to them. What I'm curious about is because you have this perspective of knowing world leaders, potentially the most powerful people on earth.
Is there anything that would shock them about what it's like to be around some of these.
That's shocking. But I think what would be good if everybody understood is that
You know, look, there are very, very few geniuses in the world. I don't know if I've ever met one.
You don't think that you've met like when you meet Jeff Bezos, you're not like this guy just has more horsepower?
Yeah, or most of the people I meet
I can't I I I'm not saying I can do what they do, but I can see how they can do what they do.
Very few people of my have I met in my life where
I can't even see the world through their eyes or I can't even see how they do what they do. Elon Musk may be l a guy like that, where I don't know how Have you met him? Oh yeah, a lot. Don't forget we underwrote his
Yeah, a lot of his stuff.
When you met him, did you didn't think
When you when you you know, you know him, I guess. You didn't think
This guy's different.
Oh no no I'm saying he's very de I'm I'm giving you an extreme case of where
A guy, but when people toss around the word
Genius. There's a lot of words that get tossed around. Superstar that get diluted.
The bigger takeaway.
is that I've known people who've done very, very well
And in high office and hi there. And guess what? After they finished speaking, they said how they say, How did I do? Like they want affirmation.
And they're insecure and the kids don't always like them. People are a lot more normal.
than you think they are. And people are a lot more insecure and a lot more and sometimes the most successful people that you know are driven by insecurity and their flaws or things like that. So
You also have to be lucky b the ball has to bounce. You could be the fastest runner in the world.
But
The Olympics are once every four years, and if you peak in the wrong year, you'll never meddle in the Olympics, even though you would affect you know, so
I got to be
CEO of Goldman Sachs because my predecessor
got nominated to be tr treasury secretary. Had he not been that, maybe he would have lasted five more years in the job and maybe I would have been, you know, too old for it at that point or something.
So
There's a lot of fortune, there's a lot of luck, but
I wouldn't exaggerate.
The skill set required or the degree of work required is beyond the grasp.
of many of your listeners. It's not.
So you've had teams of traders. You you you
You were like a a commodity salesman, but you came you became t to eventually lead traders.
What did
The people who couldn't outperform or who were not the best, what did they have in common?
The difference between somebody
Who's really, really good and somebody who can't make it is not that great.
You know, when you you know, you think of a golf tournament
and somebody wins a golf tournament by one stroke.
And there's six people tied for second.
one stroke behind the winner. That's a very low margin of victory.
And a lot of life is like that.
And sometimes it's winner take all where
Somebody is just
Ever so slightly better.
But
That thing
stands out. By the way, a lot of life is like that. The difference between
A great actor will get any part.
He or she wants in Hollywood and the second best one.
You know, may have to like weight tables at night.
Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't
cursed by being a great athlete.
And so I didn't have to I wasn't tortured into thinking, should I go pr you know, should I
dedicate myself to sports and athletes or should I try, you know, strive to do well in classes and school and get another guy. I didn't have that.
But imagine the unfortunate person who's
The best athlete his high school ever produced.
gets a a minor league contract and from the minor league something like
Two percent.
eventually make a living out of you know enough money, you know, ja get become professional. You know, you get into a very rarefied area when you're talking about the people who are the best at what they do with a market only rewards.
And can only give a full time
job opportunity to people who are in
you know point oh oh one percent of that field.
You had this uh funny bit where
You I think
Something had happened where Goldman, um, you guys were like really
nervous at making mistakes.
When uh you know, we had
You know, the big financial crisis, the one that was like in uh oh seven, oh eight, when the regulators
Wanted to make sure that this kind of thing never happened again.
Well the only way you can make things sure that
You know.
Once you're in the risk taking world.
anything can happen. You know, y risk is risk. And you don't you know don't always know the consequences of it. And if you try to
Legislate.
Risk.
You know, you may think you're protecting the world from
The hundred year storm.
But you're also gonna forego the ninety nine years of in between.
When there was growth.
You were like we were meeting with the twenty partners or something and people were throwing around ideas and some of the ideas were pretty good. And you were like
What the hell, guys, we're talking ourselves out of everything.
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Everyone's throwing around these ideas and everyone around here is saying, like, Oh, we can't do that because what the hell? Why aren't we why aren't we trying some stuff? Let's get after it. And I think you said the best traders are the ones who have resiliency, they bounce back and they look at the new information that they have, not the past, and they adapt quickly.
You know, the firm at that point had just gone through a period where it had, you know, big losses and people were gun shy.
And I you know
You'd think a risk manager is always trying to repress people from taking risk.
Sometimes a good risk manager has to promote the idea that people take risk'cause that's what you're there for. And if you don't take risk, you don't you don't move forward. There's no growth.
You can't be an entrepreneur. You've been an entrepreneur. You can't be entrepreneuri unless you take risk. If you take risk.
there's a not insignificant chance that you'll fail and you'll lose money for all the people that backed you. That's a terrible situation.
But the alternative to never taking any risk.
Will give you the comfort of not losing money.
For yourself or anybody else, but you also won't make progress.
Yeah, and as you get more successful, you d I at least I have and I think you said Goldman did, you take less risk.
Well, I think that that's what makes people more conservative. Think of the word conservative, you conserve.
You become interested.
And what uh and not losing what you have as opposed to making more.
Now when I say making more, are people gonna be repulsed by the idea of making more. Waking more
is another way of saying advancing, creating wealth.
Can you tell that story about Warren Buffett in the book? That was amazing, where you he loaned you a bunch of money basically
over a handshake and a phone call and was like
All right, I'm gonna go take my grandkid at Derek Queen. You know, Warren is one of those great men which he's brilliant in a way that I can't put myself in his shoes and see the world through his eyes. And during the financial crisis he offered to
at a at a very important moment.
Invest money in Goldman Sachs.
Do you remember how much?
I think it was
five billion dollars or ten billion dollars. And what you do, you can call billion. Uh we had talked before that
And
You know
you know, with him, he decides to do something, or he does it's all gonna be with him. I didn't have to ask him
It would it would serve no purpose to ask him two or three times.
So what you said you said, Hey Warren, we're going to this thing, we might meet need a little liquidity. No, and I'd done that before. Would he would he be willing, you know, willing to do this and at the time he wasn't grabbing and then eventually he called in.
and was willing to do it for his own reasons and he thought it was a good investment to make. He wasn't doing it because he was trying to
You know, help us. Uh although it had the effect of helping us, but he was trying to help the his own shareholders. And
You know, you know, he he he saw in us what I saw in us, which was a good investment that was being beaten down by, you know, circumstances that it would reverse, and I think he wanted to make an investment before it got better.
Well, I think that and the story was cool because you were like
on the phone with them, you're like, Hey Warren, uh you wanna do this thing? or or I th maybe he called you and he's like, Hey, let's uh
You know, I'm willing to do a five billion dollar investment.
Or uh a loan. I'm not sure if it's a loan or investment. It's something between a loan and a and a and a stock. And uh you were like, uh Yeah, cool. That sounds great. We would love to work with you. Do you want to do some due diligence or do you want to like sign some paperwork? And he's like
No, no, no. Uh I'll just uh send the money and uh you know, I gotta go. I'm gonna take my kid to uh I'm taking my grand kid to Dairy Queen. Just just figure it out and let me know where you want me to send the money to talk later.
Yes.
That was actually the flow of the conversation.
But he's a pretty rigorous guy and he knows that we're pretty rigorous people.
And I and he and one point he said, you know, and I said, you know, I would feel better telling you all the things you know, before you make this investment, I would feel better telling you all the things I'm worried about.
And he said, You know, Lloyd, I know you well enough to know that you were enough for the both of us.
And then I I I pushed a little bit.
And he said look
Berkshire.
five billion dollars. It's not even it's you know, again Berk Berkshire is a an insurance company.
And so in their real in their real business
Uh Bert Bertrand sure's
Among other things, property. He said, Look.
Five billion dollars if it all goes bad.
That's not even a bad hurricane on the east coast.
So put me in my place.
So in other words, five billion dollars wasn't a big number to him. That was a joke, and I took it that way. Nobody wants to lose five billion dollars, not even him.
But you know, he was very good and it was a very
Important. It wasn't just the money. In fact, frankly
The money was irrelevant to us'cause we had the money. What we didn't have was we didn't have the confidence
of the world because at that point
People, you know, some institutions
that were similar to ours were kind of failing, others were in distress.
We weren't failing and we weren't in that much distress, but people didn't know that and if you just assert that
Yeah and I think he said something like uh Oh, and hey, uh by the way
Do me a favor, don't sell any of your shares until
I sell mine or something like that. Like let's be in lockstep. Oh no, it wasn't even a favor. It was a it was he asked for that uh he asked for our commitment for that. Yeah. And and you were like
Yeah, I'll put that in the contract. That sounds good. He goes, No, no, no, no need. It's cool. Just tell me you commit and that was it. And that's pretty amazing.
You know, in our wor in my world of
Buying and selling stuff.
Most of the stuff we do
is not written down, is not is not a is not a written contract.
People buy and sell
bonds and things and the y they don't get delivered for two days. I suppose somebody could lie and say, I really didn't do that or I didn't intend it or I'm confi you know, or something.
But you'll never eat lunch in this town again.
And if people rely on their reputations for probity, it doesn't mean that things don't get documented so that each side really understands what the other person's
Perception is making sure you're literally on the same page.
Have you did you see the attacks between I think it was like Ellison and Elon? Elon was like
Hey, I'm gonna buy Twitter for you know, whatever, I think thirty billion.
Are you in? And he was like
Yeah, I'm in for five, or like y you know, it was like a a
Fairly casual conversation for like a
No, but that sounds right. Just because something is big doesn't mean it's tricky.
Or complicated.
Some you know, there are big things that are simple and little things that are complicated, I think all things considered.
It's always good to document stuff.
But in a trading room you never d you don't document stuff when people buy and sell stuff. Also
Sometimes the
Execution of what you've agreed to.
Is so near in time.
Then it's pointless to document it.
Because in two days
You're gonna perform.
And so there's no th there's no there's no reason why you have to document something that will be accomplished before you could ever dot the I's and cross the T's in a document.
But
It's always you know, all things equal. It's good to have a document, but it's
largely not necessary in most of the
Transactional world works without documentation.
So you're uh no longer the CEO, but at in the book you're like
I now like to trade on my own.
If your portfolio a as a pie chart, what does it look like right now? I
Invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me.
And that was what I did my whole career in my own.
Well index funds are risky. They're just they're diversified.
across different things, but if you're in a diversified equity ETF, you're in equities.
Yeah.
And equities will is is a lot different than being in debt and it's a lot different than being in short term money markets, which is more safe.
And so it's it it's still risky. Um
I would say that
I am ninety eight percent in uh in risky assets of which
You know.
Ninety five or the ninety eight.
Are equities.
Probably a third.
A quarter.
Is then
ETFs.
And seventy five percent
is in a single stock, and if I'm wrong.
It's ten percent are in ETFs and ninety percent are in single stocks because that's what I like to do. Well okay, of that seven I'm so curious about this. Of the so I'm in ninety ninety percent just a vanguard fund and then ten percent. Well that's sensible because this is what you're you're doing you're not doing the you're not doing investing for a living. Of course. And I'm not gonna I'm
probably not gonna change that, but I'm always interested in seeing how other people like to invest. So of the seventy five percent
What are some of your biggest holdings?
Right now I'm very heavily
Focused in tech and have been for a long time for good reason.
All the big hi you know, all the big hyperscalers and second tier ones.
What's a second tier one? What's an example of a second tier one? If they're if they're yeah, the big hyper scalar like uh you know, like the Googles of the World and the Microsoft's of the world.
And NVIDIA to the world.
maybe a second tier version down the f slightly down the foon there with no insult intended to Larry Ellison, maybe Oracle. I don't have to I I change my things all the time, so it doesn't matter no specific names. I'm just giving you I'm speaking in terms of category. That's how I think of it is
You know
not the s necessarily the bluest of the blue chip
Yeah. And by the way, the companies that are probably gonna be
Gigantic companies that some people know about today and are investing in. I never heard of them.
Because I'm just not always you know, I'm not walking around the Carter's Silicon Valley shops and I don't know the new new thing and
It might be commonplace knowledge over there, but it's not with you know, everybody knows
The world's a big place.
And everybody always knows their corner of it. So you're bullish on big tech?
I'm b generally billish and and by the way, it's been
Good to be bullish on b big tech and
I'll stop being bullish on it when it stops going up.
For the foreseeable future, that's what you're thinking.
Yeah, my foreseeable future is when I finish this conversation with you and then I'll check it again. Are you trading every day?
Yes.
That's crazy.
No, it's not. It's like uh I don't think it's really crazy. It's just crazy for me to yeah. Oh no, no, I multiple times. It's taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm talking to you. Right now, it's like back It's background noise. It's like, you know, some people
Like to listen to music, you'd say, How much time do you spend listening to music? Well, they're not sitting at a desk
slumped hunched over just listening to music and doing nothing else. Maybe if you're a m a record producer you do that.
But normal people are listening to music.
While they're doing other stuff.
To me the market is like music.
It's out there, it's going on.
What trades did you make today?
I think today I may have
I you know, I I I'm not sure what I did because I put in orders'cause knowing that you were gonna tie me up.
And I wasn't gonna be able to look at stuff. I told people what to do. I'm so curious. Energy is rising. You know, I've been
I buy and sell a lot of stuff. I don't wanna talk about specific things because
People listen to these things on different days and they'll start you know sound smart or st stupid depending on what day it is.
Do you have a team?
Oh, just me.
Just you. Yeah. And so you're at your computer doing it on your own.
No, no, I'm not at a computer. I don't have a computer. I have an iPad.
And a phone.
Are you and you're mostly what what's your uh source of information to make decisions?
I chat with people.

What? You're texting him?
Yeah, but usually I call somebody will text me, I'll text them and then I'll get tired of tapping things out and I'll be tired of fixing the typos'cause of my fat fingers.
So I just call people up.
And you're doing that all day?
Some people follow I follow the news, but I also follow business news and I like that you know, companies are like little stories.
And it's like gossip. What do you what do you read?
I read, you know, all the newspapers. Of course I start with the New York Post, paper of record. Yeah. Um, and you know, when I read papers
Like you know, like the Journal, the Times, the F T.
You know, Bloomberg I look at, you know, very financially or you know, financially.
Yeah.
No, I don't steal them. Yeah. Well, you know, how many paywalls do you hit and you're like, Oh shit, I'm not gonna read that. I've gotta go find a different article. That happens every once in a while. There's something esoteric where I you know, I click on something and it turn you know, and it turns me down. So I don't read it, there's a million other things. But I I do this and then I have to think of gee, why am I quibbling about this? You know, I will tell you, I am still
watching commercials on Netflix.
Are you really? Yes. That's hilarious. Have you outperformed the market significantly?
Yes, I have for a while.
And I'm not and that's not because of the it's because of where I focus. So
I started to say I'm I'm mostly and have been
And
Tap.
Energy.
Don't forget to have a background in trading energy.
And I'm also in financial services'cause I know a lot about financial services, having been in the financial services. So those are the three areas that I've been focused on. I haven't Well, I'm sure you still own a bunch of Goldman. I do. I I tend to have so uh some affection for the organization that I spend
Almost forty years in. So yeah, I kinda like those that that company.
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So like I said, I'm boring and it's ninety ten. It's the most simple stuff. It's the advice I would give to people. I think at your age it pays to be in riskier assets like equities as opposed to
you know, fixed income.
But if I were in equities, and by the way, this is same advice that a Warren Buffett would give.
I would be in a diversified portfolio of equities like the s five hundreds, which is spies or VOOs. And I'm I I do VOO. And then I would also because of
the importance of tech and the y you know being on the threshold of great changes in the technology, I might be
Mostly in those generic diversified things, but I might also have ETFs that were focused on
You know, on uh more tech oriented ones.
that you know so that would give me disproportionate although the general ones, the ones that are the m broadest index are very heavily in tech because just tech are such a
t the market cap of tech companies are so heavily weighted in those
that you do get a fair share of tech even in a very broad index.
And you know, frankly, that has gone well for a long time and every once in a while
something doesn't work, it goes down a lot, and you have to be able to do that. That's why I say at your age, the older you get, the more conservative, the older you get, the more concerned you should be about
not losing money as opposed to maximizing the money you make.
But as a young person you have time to uh you have time you know, you'll outlive your mistakes.
What's your opinion on what's going on with um like the Robin Hoods of the world and all these
Like the uh the calchies and things that promote like
Uh day trading but also
Betting and things like that. I think those things that kinda democratize investing and make it very, very accessible to people.
is in its own terms a very good thing. So people should be aware of assets they could buy and make it easier to do some.
And maybe
you know, receive advertising promotion so that they focus on it more than they would. Maybe they would never focus on it, but for those companies.
You know, at the same time, if you make it too much like a video game
you can mask the fact that there's danger associated with it and you can lose and that people who don't have a lot of money can lose more than they can afford to lose.
So that's the risky thing. So
You know, when you have some of these sites and
They show confetti dropping'cause you did a trade and
you know, had a boy and high five and you know, you should gamble and make that look too attractive.
You know, for some people that's a disservice, and for other people it's exactly what they need. They won't go overboard.
But they but it needed to be more attractive for them to develop an interest in it.
Are there any interesting things that you didn't invest in?
that ended up turning out right and it was because you had poor input, like you or you had a po you just let emotion control you or No a million things. I didn't want to interest one, yeah.
Well I I I thought uh you know SpaceX was overpriced at a hundred billion dollar market cap. What's it gonna go for now? Like just I don't know what's in the market. I think they're proposing something that would make it work.
You know, a trillion and three quarters. I'm not involved obviously I'm not involved in any of that. And what did you say what you thought was expensive? A hundred billion? Yeah.
So one instead of uh you know
You know, a hundred and seventy five.
Wow. I mean I I could pick any number. I mean I missed a lot of things. I remember
A million years ago.
When they were auctioning off
bandwidth or something.
For cell phones.
And I'm thinking why would anybody want to carry a cell phone with you when there's you know
twenty million or two hundred you know.
thirty million, I'm not sure the exact number of telephone booths around. Why would you want to carry at that time cell phones were bulky and the batteries lasted fifteen minutes or something like that.
Why would anybody want that? So I showed them how smart I was.
And so I didn't make early investments in cellular opportunities to things I
Let me tell you.
I missed
A lot more stuff than I got.
Yeah.
And you know, Goleman doesn't miss as much as I miss, but that's because Goleman has a lot of people in it, not just me.
But if it were just up to me, I would have missed you know
Nobody's great about p you know predicting the future.
I try to like talk to like some of the younger people who listen to the show where I'm like, Man, having a supportive partner
is like without a doubt more game changing probably than any than anything. I don't and let's take the opposite side of it.
And you know, statistically this is gonna happen to a lot of people and it'll happen to good people, and it doesn't make you a bad person, but
People have bad marriages and they have breakups and they have children and they fight over custody and visitation and all those kinds of things.
Life's a lot better if you can avoid those problems. And by the way
Being lonely is not the worst thing in the world. A bad marriage is, you know, that you have to work out of and deal with
You know, kids and property settlements, that's worse. I'm a very emotional person. I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurial
tend to be uh quite high up and downs. And I think people like you who are good CEOs tend to be a little bit more steady and optimistic. And I think that uh having
like a great wife. It's really been like a one plus one equals five type of situation. And by the way, I'm not and that I'm not just saying this for completeness, but it's worth saying it's bad and
wives to have great husbands and that's a tough you know
There's a lot of people I know.
partners of mine and things where the husband in the relationship takes a less stressful job.
because needs to support his wife uh wife in her stressful job and sometimes that's even harder because you know
As much as we want to think things are calibrated and equal.
Guys don't have babies.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You also uh
Like hanging out with you now, you seem super happy and optimistic.
But in the book you're like
I'm prone to anxiety.
And that was like I think a polite way of saying it, but like there were y you seem like a pretty anxious person occasionally. No, I well I'm wired that way a little bit. You know, I inherited from my dad was an anxious person, and you know, I made my kids anxious. You know, unfortunately I had yeah, that
There's benefits and burns to every situation. Being anxious and looking, you know, around corners for problems and seeing things that could go wrong.
I think that suited me and my job.
I mean not all of life is about your job. You could be happy in other things, you should be happy in other ways and other parts of life besides just your job.
But just looking at that narrow point.
I was in a you know, I was in a risky business with a firm with a big balance sheet that had a lot of investments and that bought and sold and
Price risk and took on
other risks that other people didn't want to have for a price. And you know something, if you're gonna do that job
and preside over other people doing that job, it helps to be somewhat
Focused on things that could go wrong.
And in my life, I generally upbeat that I think things will tend to work out.
But I know that before they work out they go wrong.
It didn't seem like it when I was reading about it. Your travel schedule was crazy.
Did you have any work life balance when you were doing it?
Well when you ask me any, I of course I still say yes, but not not not not enough that would be reasonable to most people. Yeah. Um, I traveled a lot and then they and then here's again where having a supportive spouse.
Um was very helpful. My wife, Laura, I was a lawyer, worked in big law firms.
And
You know, now she's
you know, be chair of Barnett College and other things. She w you know helped helps to
oversee a charter school. You know, she's you know, very involved, you know, in the world. But I'm telling you one thing she did. She was very supportive of my career when I needed to move overseas. She took care of everything. And I'm telling you, when we moved overseas, she's the one who got the car, got the house, you know, made sure the kids got to school
I took victory laps because I was doing a good job at work, but she was doing all the uh you know, all the work that made it possible.
Yeah, I think about my wife now. She's a stay at home mom right now.
And uh
It's awesome, man.
having someone like who has your back. It's pretty great. Like I don't even know how
We pay a lot of our bills. We were talking the other day, we were talking last night and I was like, look, I'm not trying to be morbid, but like
If you died, I wouldn't know how certain things happened at all.
Like how does our rent get paid? Or like do we pay utility? Like I didn't know anything. I think we I I hope we're exceptional, but I will tell you
That I haven't
paid a bill in well over forty years.
Really. Yeah, we have a bill paying service that she manages.
And she does it and I think, you know, what the hell, how much could she steal?
It's all ours anyway. Can I ask you about that? That's actually interesting. Do you guys meet to discuss finances at all?
I'm in charge of generating the money and she's really in charge of distributing it. You told the story, I think you were close to forty or maybe your m late thirties and you're like we bought a vacation home.
And it was like maybe three hundred grand, I think. And you're like
That was all of our money.
No, it was more than all of our money. Yeah, you were like I'm supposed to be this big shot. I don't remember if you're a partner or not. I think you were, but you were you were you're like, a new partner, but in the early days the way I mean
too much it would take too much time for your your purpose here.
But in a partnership.
You don't take money out of the firm. So even when you own money, it stays in the firm. Yeah, you are like you know, I
I had paper well paper. I don't have a lot of like cash. I had no like no money and and I you know, we bar so
We were driving to the closing.
And now I'm a different kind of guy. I can buy things I don't even go to the closing warriors do, but in those days, you know, we were angsting about everything.
And we bought
You know, uh you know, we had a very small apartment in the city.
and we s were having kids and at that point we had just had our second kid and there was no place for them to, you know, breathe or run around in our little apartment. So instead of getting a bigger apartment in the city
We bought a relatively small place.
in out in the you know, at the beach.
And we were going through the math, or my wife was really my wife was doing this and she was going through
In her mind.
Where the money for the closing and she had to come up to a certain amount.
And she said, We borrowed this much.
And
you know, I had this much in this account and that much in that account and she couldn't make it work out.
to the total we needed to close and she was freaked out.
And so he drove like
You know, thirty miles.
Where she's going over and over this stuff and doing it. And finally
We realized
She forgot to count the down payment that we'd made on the house.
Which was ten percent.
So she kept coming short. So you guys were like really on the edge.
Yeah.
We're f Yeah, we were.
I mean
We were able to buy dinner that night.
No, we don't it wasn't a question of survivability. I just don't think that uh we we exhausted more than all of our savings.
We do a monthly meeting. Uh, I learned this from my friend Ramit. He's a uh personal finance author where and we've been doing this since
You know, I started dating my wife when we were twenty five, probably at twenty six we moved in together.
And we would do like a look back or like here's what we spent this month.
Is that in line or not in line with our expectations and our budget?
And are we happy with it? Do we want to spend more? Do we wanna spend less? Are we happy with what we spent on?
And that discipline has been nice. Uh and w we've never ever ever worried
Look.
I grew up
In a household
When my dad
work nights at the post office, but before he got that job he had worked on a
You know, he'd worked in private thing, I think he drove a truck for a while and he worked in a dry goods store as a clerk.
And he actually lost his job as unemployed for a while. So I I grew up in a household where
You know, where the rent was you know scarce.
Be nervous about like really nervous about money. What age should that stop?
Yeah, probably in my you know, in my thirties.
And so that's a privileged position. I'm lucky that way.
But I grew up at you know
Listen, I was pretty scarred growing up in a household where money was scarce and so I'm familiar with what people think.
It's very funny'cause people, you know, I'm a you know
CO of Goldman Sachs, blah, blah, blah, and a real fat cat kind of guy that's in feeble.
But
You know, a lot of times people will assert that. I mean be being with some politicians where they're saying, What do you know about this or that or what do you you know
And I'm going, listen, I you know, I did some research on you before this conversation, but your dad went to Yale and my dad went to the post office. So why are you telling me what you know that stuff doesn't go away either. Like the way that like the first twenty years that you experience
I c it's like a lower T trauma a little bit, not to be too woo woo, but like I I felt the same way. My mom and dad told me they were like
Um, when I think they said like when I graduated high school, they were like, We had like
Eight thousand dollars. That was our our situation. And I was like, weren't you nervous? And they were like
Yeah, we are nervous all the time.
I when I got to college
after I bought books and did this and I I remember bought a sweater, which was a very big deal for me because when I got to college I wasn't dressed the way everybody else was dressed and you know, I w you know, I just didn't know I came from Brooklyn. I never w you know I never saw it. And so, you know, I went out and I bought a you know sweater to put over a tennis shirt,'cause that's how everybody dressed in those days.
And then after I bought but at one point
I have
I remember this, I had$11 left over.
What year?
Freshman year this would have been like nineteen seventy one or two.
Yeah, so it's still only worth like what fifty bucks. And I was on financial aid, like full financial aid. But full financial aid doesn't cover
You know, going to movies or things like that.
you know, buying a beer. And then so somebody said you should go to the financial office and tell them that, you know, in this situation, can they help you out?
And I went to the financial aid office and they said, Here, fill out this form and
On one side put what you ha have, on the other side put what you need and see whether there's a difference between that and
And I did that and I turned it in.
And I remember making it so that there was a difference of five hundred dollars.
Like thing my life cost five hundred dollars more than what I had.
And so a clerk looked at it.
And
Said Oh, okay.
And they and right there while I waited.
She made out a check for five hundred dollars and gave it to me.
And I said, Whoa.
I want more of that. No, no, I do. I know you've heard the jokey reaction is I should have asked for a th No, but that would the point was it was the first time in my life that I wasn't really nickeled and dimed. It was like
You know, I it was like uh uh unbelievable. And by the way, that w that had a big influence on me.
Because I later.
went to Harvard, was lucky enough to get in there. That's another whole set of stories.
But
As a result of that, you know, my
My commitment to my again University is I you know, I co chair the campaign for financial aid and I did
You know, that was a big deal because it was not only that I got it.
But I got it in a way that had a generosity of spirit to it.
And
So I didn't feel bad I wasn't made to feel bad about it. And that was
So I I think
You know, everyone, you know, my category thinks about giving, but I also think about r how it feels to receive.
Yeah. And
I and and so I came away
With
A feeling that you know
It's not just enough to give people what they need, but you have to give them you have to get to it in a way where it's a positive experience also.
Yeah.
Well it doesn't it feels a little dignified. It's dignified and again that five hundred dollars I hope I've repaid
Алада лата лада лада лата там з Овер.
But that was still something look, I'm telling you the story today. How about that? That was that was well over fifty years ago, and it's still something that I you know that I think about that you know moment when I got because I was relieved I got the money, but I was also
I d I I I I didn't feel bad about it.
This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company.
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I've outrun my peers.
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There's this book called Diewood Zero. Have you ever seen that book?
No, but it the title tells me everything. Yeah. And
I the truth is I haven't read it either. Uh but the title does tell you everything. It's a great title. The guy, Bill Perkins, he's a he he seems like a great guy, but it this the the premise is like spend while you're alive because when you're dead, like who cares? And so the the premise is is um if you're gonna give
If you can pull it off give now.
Uh an experience was a way of expressing it that I didn't originate, that somebody said it to me but it resonated with me.
He said he wanted to give with his warm hand, not his cold hand.
That was a very good visual for me, you know, to feel.
Give with your warm hand, not your cold hand. Is that what you're gonna is that what you intend to do?
Yeah, I have to work things through. And I I joked in the book and it's
Oh kind of only half a joke.
So putting aside philanthropy and stuff and just thinking of your kids, I sometimes I
Wanna g I give things
Uh, like take you know, I give I give stuff to them and then I feel then I feel ambivalent that I g you know, that they that they have what I gave them.
What do you mean? Like you don't feel good?
Yeah.
You know, I sort of, you know
I'll give stuff to my kids'cause I can afford to do it and they're great kids and they work really hard. They're super. There's nothing you know, nothing wrong with them, you know.
It has not ruined my kids that they they get stuff.
Far from it.
But you know, I'll give them stuff.
Then I'll say, You have no idea of God, I you know, I didn't have what you have, and I live like this, and you're living like that, and I'm saying
Well
The reason why they're not living they're living so well is because I gave it to them. Dude, I had the exact same conversation with my wife yesterday. So if I gave it to them
Why am I then
acting.
You know
Regretful that they have it.
I had the same talk with my wife yesterday. I remember saying telling her
We had just hung out with someone who was born into a wealthy family and I and I was envious. I was like
That asshole hasn't worked hard for this and that and it was rooted a little bit in jealousy of like, you know, I'm better than them because I worked for and I wasn't given nothing. And then
Like I was like well but
I intend to give to my kid. It's like I'm gonna create
My children are gonna be the people that I dislike.
And I thought that was really strange of me to think that way.
Kids turn out the way they turn out for a variety of reasons. One of which could be
You know, their neediness.
Or the surpluses they have, but that could be a small part of it. And there are other things that make your kids. My I have no
issues. My kids, you know, you know, terrific. They worked hard. They went to good schools. They plied to work in Goldman? No. Each worked you know, Goldman's a kind of firm
That doesn't discourage people from
From bringing their kids into the business. Like, you know, it was an old partnership, family firm, you know, it was a good thing to big. So all my kids worked at least briefly at the firm.
But it was too complic it was complicated for them to work there. You know my name was Smith.
They could have hidden out.
But if your name is blank fine, you know, it was just too and and by the way, the burdens of being that were very heavy, you know.
I can't tell you I'm not in my kids' heads totally, so I can't tell you what they feel, so I'll just say generically.
You're the son of a very senior or the daughter of very senior person in the organization, you have to worry that people think you didn't get your job.
By merit and they'll think, you know, you don't work hard and you'll think this so
There's a lot of pressure on kids to come in earlier, stay later, show
show their mock. Yeah, there's some baggage. There's baggage that they have to overcome. And so it was it was it was c it would have been too oppressive for them to see. Yeah, I saw someone I think it was like an ol I was researching it, it was like an old gaticle
Yeah. And uh you seem
Pretty tough skinned. I would have been very upset about that.
uh about people writing that stuff. That would've been that would have been a No I was very it turns out I had a thick skin. Look if I if didn't have a thick skin I wouldn't have survived there and there I wouldn't be I wouldn't have the uh
I wouldn't have the joy of sitting opposite now. There'd be somebody else in this chair talking to you instead of me. I mean like Oh, I didn't like it, but it turns out I could be um
I could uh I could take that, I could take a punch. Look to be the CEO of a firm as high profile as Goleman.
Going through the stressful times that we went through.
Uh if uh you know one you know, to survive that you needed a s uh a thick skin and I had one. Was there a point where you thought this isn't gonna work?
No.
You it felt good the whole or it felt like the things that would feel bad to anybody would feel bad to me. I just could take it.
I mean now I don't wanna test it, I don't wanna get sh I don't want to get challenged more to to get to the point where I can take it.
But certainly everything that I've endured so far I obviously I could take because I took it.
in life there are people who could take a punch and people who can't take a punch. And so it turns out I know that.
Until I got punched.
But it turns out that I could uh take a punch not everybody can. By the way, it doesn't make him a bip.
People have different wirings. Some people are athletics, some people aren't. Do you think you're born a great investor?
I don't know.
I certainly wasn't, so I can't tell you. You don't think you were?
No, I I I ran a firm that contained a lot of great investors. I'm not a bad investor. I can read
Balance sheet and plans and
Yeah, proposals and
I have opinions on the future, a lot of times I'm right, but I didn't again
I didn't climb the ranks because specifically I was an investor. Goldman Sachs has great investors and great salesmen and great traders and great bankers in this.
And you know, fortunately I had I didn't have to be the greatest at any one of those things. I was a pretty good manager and I was a pretty good strategist for the business.
And I was a good partner to other people.
And that was what
was required of my job. Just
Look.
Maybe once upon a time.
The captain of the shi got to be captain because he could do every job on the boat.
I'm not sure that's true in a nuclear navy.
And so I will tell you, maybe there was a time that the person who ran a financial firm could do was best at every job in that firm.
Uh but I didn't I couldn't have been, no one could be at a firm as complicated and as big and diverse as Goldman and so I didn't have to be.
My last question, you had this really cool thought.
It was awesome actually. And I wrote it down and I've been thinking about it a lot.
This idea that
Someone said it to you when you became a partner.
You were like, um or they were like
You know, our goal here is that
You become successful enough that when you die, there'll be a really long multi paragraph obituary about you.
And we hope that
your time at Goldman is only a sentence or two. Yes, that was
When I got when you made partner
had a conversation with you know senior partner there who was sort of assigned to acculturate new people to the firm and
He gave you some rules of the road, you know.
Things like uh
Make sure you don't get anywhere near anything that would today would be called me too kind of activity. You know, the warnings of that kind of stuff, then a warning to
You know, make sure you're very rigorous and conservative on your taxes.
Yeah.
And then there were two other things that they advised.
One of which is they set up a charitable foundation for you.
And they said we expect you to
Do this to use it.
And to give money away and it's good for your personal life.
And it's also good for your professional life to be thought of as somebody who gives back to the community.
And as a result of being on philanthropic boards and other things, you'll engage with a set of people that's broader than the people you might meet in your business life.
So it's good for you, good for the firm, do this. So that was another topic that was broached.
And then the final thing they said was and as far as you know your balance in your life
You know, think of it this way.
If you live the kind of life that you that there's an obituary written about you and it's nine paragraphs long
Make it so that you do enough so that there's no more than three of those nine paragraphs are about your life at Goldman.
That's Yeah, that may be the best, but it's not gonna be the case for me because I was I stayed too long. That's what I was gonna ask you. What are you gonna you have to do something now. Maybe I'll join the foreign legion or go up in a space. Well what do you hope the rest of the paragraphs will be? Do you have a do you have like a goal? I think at this point, you know
Every hive has a queen bee, the queen you know, the other g the other guy, the worker bees and the others, they kinda they go off and the c you know, the queen stay I was called you know, as a CEO in a long time, I stayed a long time.
And you do other things, but I don't think I'm ever gonna be
Two separated
from my experience at Goleman and look, I wrote a book.
Call Streetwise.
Getting to and through Goldman Sachs. So when I wrote a memoir, it even has Goldman Sachs in the uh in the subtitle. So
I'm never gonna I'm not gonna comply with that piece of advice, but I knew where the advice was coming from. The important thing is
And I do. I serve on boards and I do other activities and I'm interested in other stuff.
I I retired early enough with enough gas in the tank that I could go out and learn, you know, pe
I tried teaching a little bit and I said, You know something?
Better than teaching, I want to learn.
And so I, you know, take some courses online and do some, you know, things and and that's the luxury of my position now. So, you know, I'm feeding my curiosity about things away from business, but I also like business.
And I like markets, and so as I said to you.
I still trade.
I watch my markets as background noise.
I read a lot of financial stuff, but I also read about
cosmology and the physics of small stuff and I'm interested in um linguistics.
And anthropology and I read a lot of history. I think you said you you were like if a trader asked me what to study, I tell him to study history.
I do. What do you what do you read?
You know a while ago and for some reason I I chewed
medieval history'cause it's hard to follow.
Yeah, it is. It's very hard to follow, but then I sort of got caught up in it because of
You know, the way people thought in those days, relationship with religion and the church.
And I I I I guess sort of got interested in
reading it and sometimes you pick up good authors that you really like the way they write and so you
less interested in the topic they pick to write about than the fact that they're writing it.
I tend also to I I like reading a lot of biographies.
Which one moved the needle for you most?
For me it was Titan, and I know you did a thing with Ron Chernobyl actually I read Titan.
I didn't love it tha as much as that. I mean
You know, the Rock obviously about Rockefeller.
Um and I've read a lot of his I've read you know, when when I re like an author, I tend to read all of his stuff.
There's a book I write. There's an author I always like. She's been dead a number good number of years now, named Barbara Tuchman, who wrote
Son actually two Pulitzer Prizes, so I didn't actually discover her. She's been discovered away from me, but she wrote
Guns of August.
About the the Origins of World One, a great book, not a biography, but a fantastic book. And by the way, very influential book. World War One, it's about.
But very and very influential because it shows how
You can get caught up in a vortex.
You know, forces started to mobilize, it almost couldn't be stopped.
Yeah, but but she wrote a book that I found.
really fun that I'm not sure. It's not her most famous book, but it's called A Distant Mirror and it's a history
of a life that was led in the fourteenth century
And the guy was a very influential person, not a king, but kind of an aristocrat.
And he moved back and forth between England and France and the fourteent century. Reason why it's called a distant mirror.
She wrote this book.
Like in the middle of the cold war when everybody was worried that the world was gonna be blown apart and a nuclear war and stuff.
Акції ін the фортин центри возтанка.
And the papal schism and the hundred years war was a very stressful time.
In Europe.
In the world in general, but certainly in Europe.
And people were very, very fatalistic in their attitude. And that's why
It was called a distant mirror. It was like sort of like a mirror on the twentieth century.
And
Sh the jumping off point for telling the story was this particular guy
Baron Cussi was a French aristocrat.
But he fought in the Hundred Years War, he ended up marrying an English woman and so
He appeared it was like Zelig, he popped up in a lot of places, and so it gave you the opportunity to write a history of a lot of different of what was going on in that era. And I that was I I enjoyed reading that book. That was one of the few books I've read twice.
That's awesome. I also liked totally different. I liked reading The Power Broker about Robert Moses. By uh Carrow. He just had a thing uh at the American History Museum. Yes.
It was awesome. And I'll tell you the interesting thing is I read reason why I re read that.
I read that book once when I was star and you know we were audience, there's no reason why they should know him, but it was a guy
you know, basically built New York and well the power broker because he asserted power that on paper he shouldn't have had, but by dint of his personality and different offices he held.
And clever things.
He really was a power broker to the point of dominating even the elected officials who were nominally his boss.
And
Aspects of th he did great things, you know, he built
No, from the Long Island Expressway to all sorts of th and you know
But he also, you know, had
Personality flaws.
That today
look worse than they did in that era.
Yeah, I mean he's accused of being like a pretty big racist and accused of that, and he was accused of rolling over
you know, building you know, cementing parks
that you know, that were otherwise green that people today wouldn't do, but he did it, you know, so
Think of you know, think of the founding fathers who, you know, created the template for a democracy when none had existed for you know
And yet they had slavery. And so how do you evaluate that? And so
people have different you know, how do you look at that? Does that disqualify the good things that they did or you know, it gets very confusing and hard to fathom and different people have different views about these things.
And he was kind of a personality like that in a different way.
But you know
When I first read the book as a young guy.
I was focused on the flaw part.
Yeah.
And I said, Oh God, this is a you know, but you know, this is a tough human being.
I mean it's think terrible, but tough and
You know, this
And then
After forty years
Of trying to get stuff done.
And build in a business.
And
you know, try to influence people to do what I wanted them to do when they didn't want to do it and the sacrifice I had to make and evaluating what I got done and the effort it took
I re read that Robert Moses book and all of a sudden his achievements
Started to go up.
Yeah. And the other flaws kinda stayed the same. They didn't get better.
But I became I I kind of
valued him more.
What it showed was again.
It was less about Robert Moses at this point than it was about me because I had changed.
Because
As a result of trying to get things done and
It made me appreciate
The degree of difficulty of his achievements
More than I had.
I feel that way about the founding fathers. I I'm angry at them for a bunch of stuff and then I
Like man, Thomas Jefferson, he was like
twenty eight or thirty years old when he wrote thirty three or thirty yeah, when he when he wrote this document and
How much wisdom and there was no template for really.
And you know, the idea of something that, you know, we can get, you know, because democracy was a pejorative demos. It was anarchy.
Yeah, and I think about that revolution, uh'cause I've been'cause Ken Burns has this American Revolutionary and it's just
You I didn't realize how consequential the American revolution was and how like
For the most part, there had never been democracy at such a large scale. And they made this document that was self-amending, like this idea that you can like we are flawed and we can you can fix it. And that's just like that was if you read a book, um and I just read a book on the constitution, that was even debated. There's a cool one by uh the guy who did the Brooklyn Bridge one.
Where it talks about how it was um
the most important words of the Constitution.
was we believe these truths to be self evident.
And it just like goes. And yet in despite the self evidence of the rules, they still had us you know, they debated slave and by the way, it's not that they didn't know it was wrong at the time and missed it and then were brilliant.
But by the way, another good book.
Uh
To read.
is uh uh it's part of it will ultimately be a three volume scene by by Rick Atkinson on the on the American Revolution.
But the first one is called The British Are Coming and he has the second volume is out.
about people don't learn enough about
history in general.
But Americans don't learn enough about the American Revolution and why it was fought. And of course people debate it because then you have views, you know, people, you know, revise history and say you know, these people were all evil, they were they know they weren't, you know. It's like Columbus.
You know, they don't want they rename Columbus Day because
He was you know.
bad to the indigenous people, which I'm sure he was, but in a ship that was
Not as long.
as your backyard swimming pool.
You know.
In uh in the fifteenth century.
Steer that ship.
to a continent that he wasn't sure was there for crying out loud. Give a guy, you know, give let's have some credit.
on this stuff. You know, in other words you can't you know, nobody's gonna be perfect. But
You know, we have those you know, all these revisionary histories that stop admiring
characteristics and achievements that are worth admiring just because there were other flaws
in the person that delivered the achievement. It's cra it's crazy.
Yeah, I've I've ignored the American Revolution for a long time and I'm now I've gone down this path because of that can
Ken's Burn documentary.
And I think it made me feel like
Capitalism in America is almost a spiritual thing. You know, I married into a um
Immigrant family.
And they're small business owners. And now that I'm in New York, I walk by all these bodegas that are owned by like, you know, Vietnamese families are like and I'm like
This is the greatest place on earth where someone can come with nothing
And like my favorite part is walking around here, you see these bodegas and they're called like American Cowboy or like American Inc. And like someone was so proud, but they didn't speak English enough to know, but they just knew that like Cowboy in America was like cool. I know this is gonna be controversial. I don't know who I'm gonna upset, but you know, it's like
I would say that most of the people who are prominent social democrats grew up in prosperous families here. Of course. And let me tell you, the people who grew up under communism
Don't wish the country was socialist. I mean it's crazy. It's crazy, but you know, But that but I love like this immigrant I I I'm like particularly like the immigrant journey, you know, I think um I I freaking love that. And you know, I think like the American dream shouldn't be to move here and buy a home. It should be move here and start a small business.
And and I just think it's really cool. But the fact that people can do look.
I you know, I agree with you. And you know, we're going through a moment where people
I guess people always question again, I've grew up I was a young guy during the Vietnam era.
So I grew up when everybody was disgusted with the country and stuff. And listen
Here's another good thing about the country.
You can live here quite happily, you know.
quite comfortably.
why you express your contempt for the country. Where else can you do that? The way that I describe America is I'm like it's mostly good.
And you can im and we can improve. And you could talk about all the bad stuff and you generally won't be arrested for it. Yeah, it's it's mostly great and we can improve it. No God, I I I am, but it you know.
But look, everybody has to rediscover these things. And maybe it's you know, maybe it's a function of age.
I could talk to you about history all day. I'm so happy that that you're into that. No, but I think I like the upper western.
Is that you can is that
History again doesn't repeat, but to paraphrase a a remark, uh
attributed to you know Twain, Mark Twain.
is it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
And so
Patterns happen again.
So we're going through these tough times and oh it's none like anything, but it's you know, it's not that different from the late sixties.
When the country was very polarized.
Or
The McCarthy era.
Where we sort of went off the rails.
And then got back on the rest. So people say, Oh my God, I don't like
You know, the norms of soci you know, the norms of political proper political behavior are gone forever. Well
You know, we did have a civil war, we did have a McCarthy era.
We did put
you know, Japan American citizens who were Japanese descent in camps.
Because we were freaked out by World you know, by Pearl Harbor.
And then we c we overcame those things and regretted them afterwards.
So even at the worst, there's hope there there's always hope for America and and and America's always fulfilled those hopes eventually. Yeah, I think Warren Buffett or uh you I think quoted Warren Buffett in the book saying like
You know I I wouldn't bet against America or I think a lot of people have said that. I wouldn't bet I wouldn't get against America. And though you know, so if you watch the evening news, you read the newspaper, you'd walk away with one set of views. Well, I think there's a lot of lazy phrases. For example, I see people online and they'll make comments like, Well, in this economy, blankety blank, or
It's so crazy out there. Like there's like these lazy phrases, and I hate those phrases.
Um, because it's sort of I think the way that the words that you use shape how you think.
Um, like it's hard to feel a certain emotion if you don't have a word to describe that emotion.
And so I think that when people use phrases like well in this economy
It's hard to do blank. It's like well
That's a pretty defeatus attitude. This economy is actually quite good.
Uh and it doesn't matter what the economy is, that shouldn't prevent you from exercising the action that you want to try to occur. I mean, it will always be hard.
No, I'm thinking today, you know, when I was go when I was a chi you know, I was crossing into adulthood.
They were drafting people, Vietnam War, the literally the body count coming out of it, you know, they would read every Friday evening, they you know, they would read, you know, scroll down the T V, you know, three hundred and fifty, four hundred and fifty, six hundred died. And then of course
Compare that to World War Two.
When you know when tens of thousands. And so
You know, every every generation has its challenges, every generation
minimizes the challenges of the past because they're resolved and can't get worse, and maximizes the challenges
that people face today because they're still scared of'em because they're not resolved.
And so, you know, that's why it's good to read. It's I that's why I think it's beneficial to read history.
Because if they can go through that period, then we can get to ours.
Yeah, I do that all the time. Like I remember I was reading about Saka Joeia when she was with Lewis and Clark.
And I purposely read that book before I had my kid because a lot of people don't remember. That's a good book, too. Undaunted courage. Stephen Ambrose, the best. And people this is way under discuss. Sakawe.
For the listener, basically Lewis and Clark.
uh w west from St. Louis and they're coming from St. Louis. But they started in St. Louis from and they basically said just go west and figure out if there's like a passage. And they didn't know what the hell they were doing. Yeah, they go to Portland and then they find uh you know progressive mayor.
Yeah, it's a lot different now. Do you think Lewis and Clark would have been impressed by the progressivism of the third. Well what's crazy is they went with thirty people and like none died.
Uh, and so they go there, but sa and and they find this uh woman um named Sacca Jawe who spoke a variety of languages and they're like, Hey, come with us. Well, a lot of people don't talk about this. She had a three month old kid. And if you actually there's a Sacajawea gold dollar. Have you ever seen one of those? Yes.
Um her kid is strapped to her.
And I'm like, if she could do that, I don't need a baby thermometer for my bathtub. Like, you know what I mean? Like I don't need all these gadgets if Saka Joey could carry this. He turned out great. Jo his name was Joseph. He went to my high school, by the way. He was in the first graduating class of my home, I think. I tell you the infant mortality rate was a lot higher then, so keep
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Keep the thermometer give it the facts get the way of a good thing. Give them vaccines according to the schedule and take good care of them because you don't want uh
Uh there has been progress on infant mortality, so just because her kid made it through I would She ended up dying of illness at like f in her early forties. So my story doesn't exactly hold true, but I appreciate you so much. This is awesome. Yeah, no, my pleasure. All right. That's it. That's the pot.
I feel like I can rule the world I know
But I want to
I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel, never looking back
All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Cause if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story.
If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing QA sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.