Founders - #253 Henry Goldman (Goldman Sachs)

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

What I learned from reading When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[2:30] The Uses of Adversity by Malcolm Gladwell[2:40] Business Breakdowns: Goldman Sachs: Fortune Favors The Old[3:00] Men can learn from the past, and I've been shocked how little some of the younger executives in the present firm know about its origins. They don't even know that my grandfather, whose picture is on the wall there, founded the firm.[3:46] My grandfather, Henry Goldman, was the son of a poor German immigrant named Marcus Goldman. Marcus Goldman is the founder of Goldman Sachs.[5:45] Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World by Lynn Downey (Founders #33)[7:10] The job Marcus Goldman was grateful to have: Walking the streets peddling goods seven days a week. Working regardless of rain, or snow, or the humid summer heat.[9:13] Henry had been slow learning to read. It was finally determined that the youngster suffered from astigmatism, and his chores in the shop were limited to fetching and carrying articles from the storeroom or fastening the shutters at closing time. His mother was convinced he would never succeed in a competitive world and was inclined to coddle and baby him. (The “slow learner” is the one that fuels much of Goldman Sachs growth!)[12:03] At the time no qualifications or special training were needed to enter the banking business.[13:36] Marcus was anxious to capitalize on every waking hour.[14:19] Henry was an attentive listener who committed everything he heard to memory.[18:40] Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby (Founders #212)[25:12] This part about the Railroads reminded me of the Internet: As new businesses started up every day and the distribution of their goods was being revolutionized by the rapid spider webbing of railroads across the country, Henry was itching to get into the action.[26:05] Goldman Sachs partners with Kleinwort Sons & Co [27:36] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. (Founders #197) and The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. (Founders #198)[30:01] David Ogilvy’s idea that The Good Ones Know More: First, you must be ambitious. Set yourself to becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product.Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research  laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. At the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss; you will then be ready to succeed him. Most of the young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #89)[30:23] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley[32:28] Jacob Schiff was fascinated by railroad development in all its ramifications and became determined that his firm would dominate the field. There was not a facet of railroad investment or operation that he did not carry in his head.[34:30] Learn more about Standard Oil: Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247)  Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)[39:18] Markets can turn on a dime. —Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)[40:12] The greatest entrepreneurs that have ever lived optimized for survival.[44:22] Henry’s motto: Money is always in fashion.[45:08] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw. (Founders #145)[54:00] But he held no sympathy for them. They had relied on the decisions of others, which he himself would never have done.[54:13] Henry shared the regret that he had never developed greater rapport with his children. He thought of his inability to “noodle" with them, to express approval, to overlook their minor slips, to embrace them and say, “I love you.”----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Among the many letters of sympathy received by the family after Henry's death was one from Sidney Weinberg, who had been elevated to the position of partner in Goldman Sachs in 1927 and assumed the role of senior partner five years later. Weinberg had started his career with the firm as a janitor's assistant, an eighth-grade dropout whose chores included cleaning the office and brushing off the partner's boots. For a long time, he was known around the office simply as Boy. But like Henry, whom he greatly admired and viewed as one of the geniuses behind the success of Goldman Sachs, Sidney was an excellent listener and an adaptive

student. In 1919, after he left the Coast Guard, in which he served during World War I, he approached Henry seeking a job. Henry advised him to return to Goldman Sachs. That was where the opportunity lay, he said. Demonstrating once again a canny talent for spotting human potential, Henry offered to act as Weinberg's mentor and to introduce him to valuable contacts in the business world. At Goldman, Weinberg became a salesman of commercial paper for $28 a week plus 1.8% in commissions.

Henry advised him to ask for a bigger piece of the pie as his sales escalated, and he advanced to earning 33% commission at a time when the stock market was booming. And in the 1930s, Henry recommended and endorsed him for seats on many of the corporate boards on which he would serve for almost 40 years. Weinberg joined Walter Sachs as a co-chairman of the firm, became a trusted advisor to presidents and corporate chairmen, and was credited with steering Goldman Sachs into a revitalized era of prosperity and stature. That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is When Money Was in Fashion, Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the founding of Wall Street, and it was written by Henry's granddaughter, June Breton Fisher.

So I wanted to start with that excerpt that comes at the end of the book, Henry Had Just Died, to prove a point that he was just doing an act of kindness. That happened in the, he was helping Sidney Weinberg in the 1920s. He had already been forced out of the Goldman Sachs partnership, so he didn't have any financial benefit to the wonderful career that Weinberg winds up going and having at Goldman Sachs over the next 40 years. There's actually two additional resources I use to prepare for the podcast in addition to reading this book. And one of them is this essay, and I'll link down below in the show notes for both of these.

But one of them is an essay that Malcolm Gladwell wrote in 2008. It's called The Uses of Adversity and is about Sidney Weinberg's story. Henry Goldman makes an appearance in that essay as well. I thought it was worth the time I invested in reading it. And the second was an episode of a podcast. It's Business Breakdowns. The title of the podcast

is Goldman Sachs, Fortune Favors the Old. And that episode is great because in an hour, they give you a complete overview of the Goldman Sachs of today, how they make money, what businesses are involved in, how the firm is organized today. So I want to jump right into the book. There's this quote that's on the first chapter that I thought was fantastic. And it comes from Walter Sachs, who at the time was a senior partner of Goldman Sachs. He said this in 1928. So this is about 11 years after Henry's forced out of the firm, which I'll get to, which was one of the most surprising parts of the book for me. And Walter said, men can learn from the past.

And I've been shocked how little some of the younger executives in the present firm know about its origins. They don't even know that my grandfather, whose picture is on the wall there, founded the firm. And that just speaks to why the book was written. It's meant to catalog the history, the very beginning of the firm. It ends, the story ends in like the 1920s, 1930s. And what is unique about this book is it kind of reads like a family diary. So let's go right to the beginning. It says, my grandfather, Henry Goldman, was the son of a poor German immigrant named Marcus Goldman. Marcus Goldman is going to be the founder of Goldman Sachs. And I've actually looked for biographies of Marcus Goldman in the past and haven't found any.

And I think the first part of this book kind of serves as a brief overview of how Marcus got to America and how he's in it when he started what would eventually become Goldman Sachs. And then the vast majority of the book is about Henry Goldman. But I think this brief overview of Marcus's life was is very useful. And so the note I left myself when I first read this part was this is how Goldman and Sachs actually meet. This is happening in Bavaria and Marcus's father is his name is Wolf. So it says Wolf was especially proud of his son, Mark, who at the age of 16 had been encouraged by the schoolmaster to make periodic trips to the synagogue where the rabbi offered more advanced classes to outstanding students. It was there that Mark made the acquaintance

of Joseph Sachs, the 19 year old son of a poor saddle maker. The two young men became fast friends, never dreaming that their futures would be entwined for more than a century in a land they had yet to see. And so Joseph Sachs keeps popping up in Marcus's life. And I was like, when are they going to start this company together? I didn't realize that it's not, that is not, Joseph Sachs is not the Sachs that is the Goldman Sachs. It's going to be his son. Marcus brings in Joseph's son. And then once he brings him into the partnership that he's already started, they rename the firm Goldman Sachs. And so now we get to the point where Marcus's father actually advises him, hey, you got to get

out of Germany. There's an opportunity here for you. You need to go to America. And this is why and it's going to tie into another founder that I've covered in the past. It had become increasingly apparent that there was no future for young Jewish men in Germany. Wolf reluctantly concluded it was time for his eldest son, who had just turned 27, to seek a new start in the United States. The newspaper had been running stories almost every day about the grand opportunities available to newcomers in America. A recent article had told about a boy named Levi Strauss. This is back on Founders number 33. I actually read, pretty sure if I remember correctly, it was the book written by the

historian, the company historian of Levi Strauss that tells his, Levi's life story, which is absolutely fascinating. So now think about this, the future founder of Goldman Sachs, his dad and him are reading newspaper articles about the opportunity and being inspired by Levi Strauss's story. That was remarkable to me. A recent article told about a boy named Levi Strauss from a nearby village who had left the old world and soon afterward made a fortune sewing work pants for gold prospectors heading out west. So Marcus does a trip across the Atlantic, winds up in Philadelphia, bumps into Joseph Sachs, who had moved there with his wife a few years earlier. They were moving again because Joseph is going to, he's a teacher, he's going to start a school,

and so I think he's going up to Boston or something like that. And he's like, hey, if you need a place to stay, you can rent. We're about to move. You can rent our room. The reason I'm bringing this up to you is because it talks about what Marcus was doing, the jobs he had and that he had to take, right? Coming to a brand new country, not a lot of money, has to take any opportunity you can get. And just the sense of gratitude that he has, which really impressed me. So he went to meeting his new landlady. Her son gives Marcus a job. Her son, Manfred, had a little shop on the ground floor facing the street where he sold goods and tobacco,

but he had hopes of enlarging the business and peddling a wide range of goods from a horse-drawn wagon around the city. He was looking for a strong, reliable helper who could walk the streets seven days a week and would not be afraid to work, regardless of rain or snow or the humid summer heat. Mark jumped at the chance. And for the next year, for the next three years, rather, he sold textiles and spices and learned the language and customs of his adopted land. Sometimes he would put in as many as 14 hours a day. Remember, seven days a week. The guy's working insane amount of hours. Listen to his response, which I found so impressive this. He was courteous, cheerful and popular popular among his customers. In the letters he wrote to relatives in Germany, he always spoke of his good fortune

and happiness. And so he's doing this for three years, and then we see immediately that Marcus has founder mentality. Other people might see a stream of immigrants coming in, arriving by boat from Europe every day. He sees opportunity. As he hawked his wares along the river, Mark watched the newcomers arriving on steamships carrying all their goods in small suitcases. And he recognized an enormous untapped market for sturdy, inexpensive clothing that was unfolding before his eyes. So this is the first business he's ever going to start. He's telling his wife, Bertha. Bertha had also told him that she'd seen a wonderful new invention being demonstrated downtown that day. It was a sewing machine.

In less than 10 minutes, the two agreed to gamble on their first investment. The next morning, Marcus applied at the First Bank of the United States for a $5 loan to buy one. He paid $2 down. He used the balance of the loan to rent a storefront on a busy street where he started a new career as a tailor. So Marcus was correct in identifying the massive opportunity. This business is going to be very successful. He's going to run it over the next six years before he moves to New York and becomes a banker. At this point in Marcus's life, though, they're having children. One of the children that they have is Henry, who's obviously going to be the main focus of this book right and what was fascinating to me and this comes up over and

over again is because henry had a problem reading they thought he was dumb and so it says henry had been slow learning to read it was finally determined that the youngest that that the youngster rather suffered from astigmatism and he and his chores in the shop were limited to fetching and carrying clothes from the storeroom or fastening the shutters at closing time. His mother was convinced he would never succeed in a competitive world and was inclined to coddle and baby him. And this is a main point in Henry's life, this idea that other people saw him as deficient because he had trouble reading. He winds up going blind. His eyesight gets worse and worse over time. Eventually, at the end of life, it sounds to me that he's almost completely blind.

And even this is important. The reason I'm bringing this up to you is because that is why it's not called Goldman and Goldman, and it's called Goldman Sachs, his own father. Marcus didn't think that Henry was capable enough. And so when he was when it was time to pick a partner, he chose his son in law. So that's another thing you need to know about Goldman and Sachs. They were, you know, it starts with this deep friendship between Joseph Sachs and Marcus Goldman. They wind up intermarrying. There's a bunch. It's so confusing. There's like so many this family tree is so crazy, but a lot of them are marrying each other. And so when Marcus chooses his son in law over his son, Henry uses that as fuel. He had a deep desire to prove people wrong. And it turns

out he's really, really smart. It's just, he has to learn through listening. He has like this superpower, this listening superpower he uses through his entire life. He's just not, he's not gonna be able to see, he can't even see the page. He can't read. So let's get to the point where Marcus, again, founder mentality, always chasing opportunities. Over the next six years, his store thrived. But Philadelphia began to lose some of its steam as an economic center, as an economic economic center, as the Civil War wound down. So we're in 1869. This is just a point in history. New York had replaced it as a commercial and cultural center. And money making it, investing investing it exchanging it was the engine that was propelling its growth marcus's wife prodded her husband to take his profits and

relocate to new york the city of progress where opportunities seem limitless so we've already seen hey i'll make the jump from bavaria to america to chase opportunity i'll make the jump from philadelphia to new york i'm going to chase opportunities exhibiting once more an extraordinary ability to reinvent himself and adapt to a new environment, a trait that would define his success over the years, Marcus sold his share of the business and set out for new horizons. And so the very beginning of the firm that will eventually turn into Goldman Sachs is benefiting from a financial boom, growing customer base, and that there's no barriers to entry. This blew my mind because this is exactly, we live in almost the exact opposite scenario today in terms of how difficult it is to start a new bank today. In 1869, gold was flowing into New York from

California and vast numbers of immigrants were arriving on ships from Europe almost every day. This provided a potential, a growing potential clientele for bankers. At the time, check this out. At the time, no qualifications or special training were needed to enter the banking business. And then we see Marcus, just like every other, all of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs were studying the successful entrepreneurs that came before them. So he's inspired by this guy named Joseph Siegelman. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. So it says, following examples of established German Jewish bankers like Joseph Siegelman, who came from a similar background as Marcus and had become very, very rich in a relatively short period of time, Marcus hung

out a shingle advertising himself as M. Goldman, banker. And so this is a description of the very first business that he does. He considers himself a banker and a broker of IOUs for the tanners and jewelers in this district in Manhattan known as the swamp. This is what he was doing. By buying promissory notes at a discount in the morning and selling them to banks in the afternoon, he enabled merchants to raise short-term working capital. That's very fascinating because what Henry Goldman is credited with his innovation for Goldman Sachs was getting the company into IPOs of new firms that were consolidating and expanding their businesses. That is where Henry is going to make his fortune. This is what Marcus is doing.

The notes later came to be known as commercial paper. He conducted his business on foot. And so this line gives you an insight into Marcus's personality. Won't come as a surprise to somebody that was working seven days a week, 14 hours a day and grateful for that opportunity. Marcus was anxious to capitalize on every waking hour. So Joseph Sachs, Marcus's friend, had started this prep school that was really difficult, and that is where Marcus's sons, Henry and Julius, are going to go. It says Henry and his brother attended the Sachs Collegiate Institute for Boys,

which was founded by the Goldman's old friend, Joseph Sachs, which was considered the city's number one college preparatory school. In this description of Joseph Sachs, Sachs was a gifted teacher but famously short on patience. He would come down on you like a ton of bricks if you were ever caught slacking, Henry remembered. And so this is the first part of the book where I realized, oh, Henry's not dumb.

He just needed to find the best way that he learned, the way he learned best, and that was by listening. Henry was an attentive listener who committed everything he heard in school and much that he heard outside of the classroom to memory. He does so well in school. He gets admitted to Harvard. He's going to have to drop out, though. He was granted admitted to Harvard, but his eyesight had become so poor that he no longer felt capable of keeping up with his studies. And he dropped out, leaving the world of academia forever.

It was a bitter blow that fate had handed him, especially when he realized that his father's dreams for him would be shattered. This is the point that the author makes, that the fact is they saw this as a disability that would prohibit him from ever having a successful career in business. Marcus, too straightforward to disassemble his disappointment, wondered out loud what kind of career could be cobbled together for this son of his. And so at this point in the book, the author's already now transferred over. We're going to see the end of Marcus's career and end of Marcus's life with the beginning of Henry's career and really his career in business and just what he does really smart. Like you can't control people's other people's impressions of you. He didn't think he was as dumb as his father may have thought, or he didn't think that he was incapable of being successful in business as his

father thought, but how he responds to that is really, really clever. So let's get to there first. This was a Mark at Marcus's 60th birthday. This is when he's going to start Goldman Sachs after the toast of the, at the birthday had been offered and the candles on the cake extinguished, Marcus asked for a moment of silence. Again, we see more of his gratitude. He spoke of the amazing turns in the road of his life that his life had taken since he had left Germany 30 years before and of his joy in being surrounded by such a wonderful family, most of which have been now intermarried with Joseph Sachs' family. And then he invited his son-in-law, Sam, to join him in the business.

We'll get to more about this, but Sam and Henry are going to be partners, and they hate each other. I had no idea that the Goldman and Sachs' two families wind up not speaking for like 100 years. There's just crazy stories in the book about that. I've always believed that Henry, so now this is obviously the author who is the granddaughter of henry talking about her grandfather i've always believed that henry was seen by his father as unable to manage such a role because of his physical ailment while marcus decision was based on what he thought was common sense and not emotion

it was a crushing blow to henry how could it not be? Imagine like, stop here for a second. Just put yourself in the shoes of Henry. Like your father starts his firm. It's about to be called, called and turned into Goldman Sachs. It's doing really well, really successful. You want, like you have a good relationship with him. You want to follow in his footsteps. You're interested in finance and he chooses your brother-in-law. A year and a half passed and Marcus was so pleased with Sam's performance that he asked him to become his partner. From then on, the firm was known as Goldman and Sachs. Henry was still shocked that he had been passed over. He was dumbfounded. By then he was in his mid-twenties. And so Henry,

you know, could have said, oh, what was me? Could have just given up. He's like, okay, that's fine. He sets out trying to build his own career. And so he becomes a traveling salesman. And this is the reason this was really smart is because he winds up learning sales, learning people, and then learning the value of listening and the advantage it gives him over so many other people. He became a traveling salesman of textiles. It must've been a lonely life traveling cross country in the 1870s, but it afforded Henry the time he needed for introspection and observation. And as it turned out, the experience provided an education. So he's traveling all over the country on this relatively new technology of the day, which is the railroad, the railroads.

Right. And so that gets him out of New York and he gets to see how other people are conducting business. Henry was able to see beyond his reflection in the dark window and to gain a bird's eye view of the mom and pop retailers, the little machine shops, the small town banks that were popping up all across the country. And so it says as the railroads were carrying him from New York to Philadelphia, to Boston, to Chicago and St. Louis, he was able to overhear the ramblings and rumblings of his fellow passengers, most of whom were also in trade, and to learn what people outside of New York were thinking and talking about. This experience turned him into a consummate observer that made me think of, I think it was episode 212. I read like a 600 or 700 page biography of Michael Jordan.

I find myself thinking a lot about that book, actually. But there's something that Michael said in that book, which was fantastic. And he says that successful people listen and those who don't listen don't survive long. And I think if we could go back and ask Henry Goldman his opinion of that quote, he would agree with it. And then spread all throughout the book over hundreds of pages. There's just these like one lines that give you an insight into Henry Goldman's personality. This is the first one. I'm just going to go ahead and read a bunch of random lines to you. This is the first one. He was somewhat of a loner, comfortable with his own company.

Here's another one. He had important matters on his mind and he was not one to waste time on small talk. He was extremely averse to publicity. And then I like this one because it was Henry's advice to his sons when he was about to die. Ultimately, we have to set our own criteria for what constitutes failure and what constitutes success. It's not the same for everyone. So he's a traveling salesman for many years. I think he starts out in his mid-20ss and then he winds up working in the firm. He finally gets invited into the firm, but as a junior partner. So he's underneath his brother-in-law. Right. So it says in 1885, Henry was finally invited into family, but only as a junior partner. The firm's name was then changed to Goldman Sachs

and Company. And from then on. Oh, so I want to bring this up to you because the unique structure and the way that the firm was organized. So it says, and then from then on, for almost 50 years, all of Goldman Sachs partners were members of were members of the intermarried families. Their assets are a major portion of their assets were tied up in the firm and provided working capital as well as savings. The practice continued until Goldman went public over 100 years later, making it an extraordinarily profit-oriented organization. The partners were never allowed to withdraw any of their money without making a formal petition to the senior partners. So that may explain, that unique structure, may explain why he was still living at home

when he was 33 years old. There were no exceptions to this rule. This may have explained why Henry was in no hurry to move out to a home of his own, even as he approached the age of 33, because it sounded like all of his wealth was tied up into the firm, right? And so for 10 years, he's going to work as a junior partner while his father and sam sam sax are the senior partners and then it goes into something that just blew my mind so it talks about at this point they're obviously all intermarried the

patriarch of the family's still alive he marcus is kind of keeping everybody together once he dies this is going to be like this civil war that happens so it says in later years this occasion the social occasion would be remembered as one of the last times that the Saxons and the Golemans would gather on a social basis. Who could have guessed that this close knit intermarried family, who is also doing business together, would soon be enmeshed in a feud drenched in such animosity that the members and their children would not exchange a word for almost 100 years. And so once Henry is forced out of the partnership, it seems to me, if you read between the lines, I don't say this, but it seems like he was forced to resign, and I'll get into why that was the case.

But he never talked to his partner again, and Henry was like a hard dude. He kept a grudge. And so let me read this section. This comes at the very end. I think on the last page of the book, and it talks about where the fact that the families previously had built final resting places in a cemetery. And so the Goldman's did this and the Sachs did this.

And Henry picked a spot where his back was turned to the Sachs. So it says in his final resting place, Henry had built for himself and his heirs. It was larger and grander and its back is turned on the saxes in death as in life so there is no happy ending it's not like oh we had a big fight and then we reconciled no they hated each other till death so says henry bided his time still playing a watchful waiting game it wasn't until his father stepped aside two years later that he was finally elevated to the same level of authority as samuel When it did happen, he had just celebrated his 43rd birthday. So it's about 10 years as a junior partner. And after years of being made aware that he was expected to fail, he was determined to

achieve a role of leadership and dominance and prove all the predictions wrong. So it's very clear Henry Goldman had fire in his belly and used people doubting him as fuel. And so a way to think about what's happening now is Sam and Henry wound up being great and terrible partners. And it's a shame that they couldn't resolve their personal differences because I think they would have had more success if they were able to stay together.

There was like, Goldman had this almost near-death experience that actually Malcolm Gladwell writes in that essay that I link below, where they wind up using, there's this guy that comes in, winds up using a lot of leverage. I think that he grows their assets to like 500 million or something like that. And then a financial panic happens. I think they go all the way down to like 10 million or something like that. It's in the essay, but it's not in the book.

But I thought that was very interesting. So anyways, the new partners were polar opposites. They found it difficult to agree on anything. Sam was suspicious of everyone and worried all the time. He was deferential to the establishment, meaning the other houses, financial houses in Wall Street at this time and in London. Henry's much more of like has more of an entrepreneurial bent. He envisioned, Sam envisioned that the Goldman Sachs of the future has an international banking concern and harbored ambitions to expand the firm's currency dealings overseas. So that's actually a good role that he played. They went about having separate strengths, which, again, that's very valuable if they could have stayed together.

He was a hard worker, but he was never known to have an original streak. Sam met his match in Henry. Now they're going to compare and contrast the two personalities and their approaches to work. Sam met his match in Henry, who was stubborn and immutable in all his convictions. Henry was a creative, ambitious risk taker, and his forte was trading railroad bonds, which were the hottest commodity of the time. He proved to be an extremely successful speculator. And he winds up adding about $5 million to the company's balance sheet over a 10-year period, which would be an insane amount of money to this day. As new businesses started up every day and the distribution of goods.

So he's talking about, like, what is the technological impact that the railroad is having? I've mentioned this over and over again. I've read a bunch about the railroad founders. There's a lot of analogies there between the railroad network in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and the Internet of today. As new businesses started up, and check this out, because if you read this, or if you listen to this paragraph I'm about to read you, it almost sounds like they're describing the internet. As new businesses started up every day and the distribution of their goods was being revolutionized by the rapid spider webbing of railroads across the country, Henry was itching to get into the action.

But Sam shrank away from that plan. So Henry wants to invest in the new technology of his day, which is the railroads, right? So this is really going to set the tone, like the beef that Henry and Sam have forever, how they wind up, how Goldman Sachs grows through partnering with other firms in London, and how they made money. Neither Sam nor Henry could ever admit that he was wrong. In 1897, on one of his frequent trips to Europe, seeking to expand Goldman's currency exchange business, Sam was interested.

This is something smart that Sam does because this relationship he's about to build for Goldman Sachs was extremely lucrative. This also is going to cause Henry being asked to resign about 20 years after the fact. I think it happens in 1917, if I remember correctly. Sam was introduced to Kleinwert and Sons. At that time, they were one of London's most revered merchant banks.

The senior Kleinwert partners were very, very rich and also high in the pecking order of British society, which impressed Sam. Henry gives me the impression that he wanted the money. So I haven't got to why the book is named when money was in fashion, but it's fantastic because it has to do with his personal motto. So it sounds like to me that Henry is more interested in getting very, very rich, where Sam wanted to be rich, but he would also wanted to be like respected in society. So it says they were eager, Kleinworth, that is, they were eager to develop business and

commercial credits and foreign exchange in America. With the British flush with cash and the Americans giving birth to one brand new industry after another, a joint venture with them, with Goldman Sachs, promised rich rewards for both partners. Excuse me, both parties. A collaboration was brokered. Check who's brokering this deal. This is hilarious. It's the Rothschilds. So it says the collaboration was brokered by the Rothschilds. So it says the collaboration

was brokered by the Rothschilds wealthy agent in New York who vouched that Goldman Sachs quote is one of the firms about whom nobody can say anything against. So there was a similarity that popped in my mind when I was reading this book. If you go back to the founding of the Rothschilds like banking empire. So you have the founder who's extremely poor. He builds it up to, you know, it's rather successful. But then it's his son that takes it to another level. So if you think about Mayor Rothschild playing the role of Marcus Goldman in this story, and then Nathan Rothschild playing the role of Henry Goldman.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I did a two-part series. It's Founders 197, which covers the biography of the founder of Rothschild. And then 198 really talks a lot about what Nathan and the rest of the family, how they expand their banking empire. And so there is some similarities between the two stories, in my opinion. So let's go into the business they're doing and how they're making money. Goldman Sachs set up a foreign exchange department to increase their bond arbitrage and commercial paper businesses.

And the Kleinwerts would provide letters of credit for companies, which was a new and very profitable addition to their services. However, it was in the field of lending money to developing businesses that both companies really made a killing. I double underlined that section. I'm going to reread it again because you can think of this is like the Henry Central idea. He's going to take this to another level. It was the field of lending money to developing businesses that both companies really made a killing. But Henry finds himself in a pickle because the Saxes, the actual family members that have the last name Saxes, are actually expanding at a faster rate than the Goldman's in the business. They're going to wind up having all the power. A new bone of contention arose between the brothers-in-law when Sam hired his brother Harry and then his son Paul and elevated

them to positions equal to Henry's. Henry viewed the imbalance of power and money between the two branches of the family as thoroughly unjust. And then all hell breaks loose because his dad's going to die after Marcus passed away. All pretenses of brotherly love evaporated, and the partners no longer tried to conceal their innermost feelings. And I found this part very interesting, because it's Henry, excuse me, it's Sam telling Henry no, that actually leads to Henry developing a specialty in IPOs, IPOs rather, and so it says, Henry expressed to his partners the conviction that underwriting railroad bonds

was the road to the bank. And he was determined to follow it. The boom in railroad construction after the Civil War had transformed the country from an agrarian society to an industrial economy and produced tremendous money on Wall Street. And then it lists all these other families and companies that kind of have control over this railroad bond market. So you got the Siglemans, which is the family that inspired Marcus to start his bank. You got the House of Morgan, which you and I have talked about before. The Rothschilds are in on this as well. But really the part that jumped out at me is this guy named Jacob Schiff,

because this is an idea that I learned from David Ogilvie, and he says the good ones know more. And the idea behind that maxim I see over and over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. I'm about to tell you how Jacob Schiff was one of the good ones that knew more. I want to read where this idea came from. All the way back on Founders number 89,

I read Olga V's autobiography called Confessions of an Advertising Man and he just lays the foundation. He's like, you don't even have to be the smartest person. This is an echo of Bill Gurley's fantastic talk, which is called Running Down a Dream, How to Survive and Thrive in a Career that You Love. And he makes the point in that talk that you don't even have to be the smartest person. You can collect more information than other people. And just that act is so, it's not that difficult, but so few people do it. And so that's something that David Ogilvie

noticed back in the 1960s. And he says, listen, you must be ambitious. And he's giving advice. At this point, he's already super successful, right? And he only builds on the success over the next 20 years after the book is published, but he's giving advice to like the younger people. And he's like, do you want, and he's like, I'm going to give you this advice. And I know most of you are too lazy and pathetic to even do this. First, you must be ambitious. Set yourself up to becoming the best informed man in the agency on the account in which you are signed. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read textbooks on the chemistry, geology, and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the

research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research laboratories. Study the advertising of all his competitors. At the end of your second year, he's saying this takes, if you do this consistently, in two years. That's not a long time. Check this out. Study the advertising of his competitors at the end of your second year.

You will know more about gasoline than your boss. You will then be ready to succeed him. Most of the young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial. And it's funny. I'm looking at my read- wise as I read that to you. And the note I left myself, I didn't even see this till just now. The note I left myself when I read that it says Bill Gurley said you have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable person in any

subject you want. And he's dead right. So we see that with Jacob Schiff. And this is they box out. Remember, they box out Henry, he's not going to be able to. This feels already dominated by other people. So it says they were soon joined. These other banks were soon joined by this other bank called or I don't know their banks. I guess they're like financial houses called Kuhn, Loeb and Company, whose youthful partner, Jacob Schiff, was fascinated by railroad development in all the ramifications and became determined that his firm would dominate the field. This is an example of the good ones no more. There was not a facet of railroad investment or operation that Jacob did not carry in his head. Good luck competing with somebody like that. When Henry approached these giants who held a virtual lock on the business to announce his intentions, they did not take kindly to this upstart's intrusion into their territory and made And so Henry's like, I don't care. I'm going to find a way in.

And it's Sam that overrules him. Henry was always volatile and outspoken. He was incensed and minced no words about it. He insisted to Sam that Goldman Sachs should continue to pursue new railroad underwriting projects, major players of the day. So Sam says no. This leads Henry looking for other opportunities. The very next day, Henry met his best friend, Philip Lehman. You will recognize all these last names for lunch in the back room upstairs at Delmonico's. And so it says a Lehman family had also found a very founded a very successful bank. The Lehman name was synonymous with money.

So Phil, like Henry, is going to be the son of the founder. Like Henry, Phil was an assertive, competitive personality driven to achieve success in whatever he undertook. He had led Lehman Brothers into financing and developing the American Potash and Chemical Corporation, which eventually sold at a huge profit to the Standard Oil Company. You know I've just done a bunch of podcasts, the Henry Flagler podcast, and I reread Titan. If you haven't listened to those, if you want to learn more about the Standard Oil Company. It's amazing how all these stories kind of link together

one way or the other. So they're having dinner or lunch. What was it, lunch? Does it even matter? They're out to Monica's having some steaks, smoking some cigars. And so they're like, hey, why don't we do that, more of that? So it says, they discussed a remarkable number of family-owned businesses

that were turning to Wall Street to raise capital for expansion. Henry observed that they represented a unique, untapped investment opportunity, not very different if you think about the use of language there, of his father walking around trying to sell goods next to the river and be like, man, what are all these people coming off the boats into a new country need? Why don't I start a tailoring business? So it says, Henry observed they represented a unique untapped investment opportunity. What would Phil think about diverting some of Lehman's capital from commodity exchanges to underwriting issues for new companies? So if you think about that, this time Lehman has a lot more

money than Goldman Sachs at this time in history. Goldman Sachs, now we obviously know Lehman's gone and Goldman Sachs is one of the wealthiest financial institutions on the planet. You can learn more about that by listening to that episode I was telling you about at the beginning of the podcast, Fortune Favors the Old, which I thought was a fantastic title. But it's just mind-blowing when they talk about all the different businesses they're in and just how much money they interact with. It's inconceivable to me. Goldman Sachs would come up with the clients and lean in the money with the two sharing profits 50-50. This agreement was sealed with a handshake and it lasted for over 20 years. So this is an example of the kind of companies they were doing this for. This was the very first

one that they would take public. Their first underwriting was the United Cigar Company, which had previously been opened by a pair of brothers. And they started with just one tiny cigar store. The business thrived and grew, and additional workers were employed. Within 15 years, they wound up taking over several other tobacco firms, and they consolidated under the name of United Cigar Manufacturers. The reason they came to Lehman and Goldman is because they need money to build more factories and employ a larger sales force. $20 million was what they were looking for. And so at first they wanted, they came to Goldman to get a loan.

And it says Henry foresaw a perfect situation to test the viability of this new theory. Marketing the shares for the United Cigar Company took a little bit more time. A great deal of the preferred stock was sold in Europe through their partnership with Kleinwert. And then as you can imagine, a book that covers like the economic history of America in the late 1800s, early 1900s, just a ton of these financial panics. I want to give you a quick overview of a financial panic that ends in suicide. And the reason I think this is important is because this still goes on to this day. I've heard of people in this latest crash killing themselves, and it's just completely unnecessary.

For some reason, humanity has this flaw where we just refuse to learn from the past. So this is a brief overview. This goes on for several pages. I'm just going to pull out some what I feel are the most important parts. In 1907, a panic occurred. In the previous 10 years, there had been a dramatic increase in the number of small investors in the market. Remember, this book is written in 2010. It sounds like it could be written in present day. So in 1907, a panic occurred. In the previous 10 years, there had been a dramatic increase in the number of small investors in the market and a shift in interest from bonds to stocks. Everyone wanted to get in on the action of Wall Street where the easy money lay. And so

one of this main thing that pops off for the financial panic of 1907 is this Knickenbacher Trust Company. So the Knickenbacher Trust Company was considered eminently successful and among the most trusted fiduciaries in the city. You already know where the story is going if they started like that. While its primary business was to act as a trustee for wealthy individuals, corporations, and estates, it also issued interest-bearing certificates of deposit and offered checking facilities. I wonder what they're going to do with that money. The press reported that its capital was intact and secure. Oh my God, the press being wrong about something? That must have happened for the first

time in history. But there was a dirty little secret in the back rooms of Knickenbacher. Heinz, these are the founders and the controllers, Heinz and his brother Otto, and the bank president Barney. Remember Barney, because he's about to pop his own top. Heinz, his brother Otto, and the bank president Barney had been speculating with the depositors' funds, oh my goodness, in an attempt to corner the market in united copper shares, and their manipulation had fallen on its face. Government bonds at the time had to be deposited with the treasury in order to obtain banknotes, and the supply of government bonds at Knickerbocker was insufficient to cover a depositor's run on the bank.

Panic occurred when the public found out about the situation, a panic that threatened not only Wall Street, but also the entire financial fabric of the city and the nation itself. Money had simply dried up. When I got to that line, it made me think of what, back on episode 243, Francis Greenberger winds up as like a high school dropout, winds up becoming a billionaire real estate developer and investor in New York. And that book, his autobiography is like 40 or 50 years of real estate investing in the city of New York. And he goes through multiple booms and busts and he just he perfectly summarizes why he keeps this huge fortress of cash.

And he says markets can turn on a dime. You might think, oh, it's going to drop by a couple of percentage points over a few months. No, it's always like literally overnight it dries up. And so it says money had simply dried up. The panic quickly spread from one bank to another. Knickerbocker's funds were completely wiped out in 48 hours. Barney shot himself. And the reason I bring that up is because that happened then, it'll happen today, and unfortunately it'll happen in the future.

And if you've been paying attention to this podcast and you obviously know the greatest entrepreneurs that have ever lived, optimize for survival. So Henry spots another opportunity. At this point in history, department stores are rather a new concept and he's going to take a

bunch of these public henry immediately saw the huge potential of gathering a number of retailers under one name pooling their purchasing power and implementing a cooperative marketing push across the country he recognized it as a landmark approach to modern marketing that would benefit the consumer as well as the investor and agreed to float an issue so this is you know this is the world that we live in, but it was relatively new at this point. We're in about the 19, I think we're a couple years after the panic. So I think we're right around 1911, 1912. Soon the names of famous department stores owned and operated by this family that Henry's helping were strung out like Christmas lights

across the country. And a lot of these companies, they were founded many decades before and they don't wind up doing this public issuing until later on, and they use it mainly for expansion. Woolworths is an example of this, which was fascinating. The story I'm about to tell you, this is how humble the origins were, and 100 years later, this winds up becoming the largest department store in the world. So it's this guy named Woolworth, didn't give up on his idea. And in 1879, he opened a second store in which all the merchandise was priced at 10 cents. His concept was to purchase goods directly from the manufacturers and sell them to the public at fixed discounted prices, undercutting the offerings of local merchants. So those are his competitors of the day. And again, this is a basic idea that we've seen over and over again. At the time, it was new. The main like, let me, the main point here is like, you can analyze existing markets and realize, hey, there's always opportunity by doing things slightly different. And Woolworth's an example of that. So he says, listen, I'll buy the goods directly from the manufacturers. I'll sell them

to the public at fixed discounted prices. I'll undercut the offerings of my competition. He displayed everything so that customers could make a selection for themselves, eliminating the need for a clerk to fetch and carry stock from behind the counter. His operation was cost and time effective. He proceeded to open a large chain of stores across the country. In 1912, when Woolworths became a publicly traded company, the synonym for five and tens, I've heard of this is called five and dimes. I think that's what Sam Walton described this concept as. But it says Woolworths became a synonym for five and tens, and they were recognized as one of the hottest commercial phenomenon of the 20th century. Another company that Henry's going to help take public is Studebaker. This is very fascinating. I've obviously

heard the name, but I didn't know the background. I didn't know it was run by a bunch of brothers, and he's going to wind up sitting on their board for quite a while. So this is really just an overview of the Studebaker brothers and their business. Goldman Sachs issued stock in Studebaker, which is the first automobile manufacturer to go public. The company was founded by four brothers who had migrated to California in the 1850s to make wheelbarrows for miners during the gold rush. When they returned to the Midwest six years later, they invested their earnings in the manufacturing of wagons, which were widely success, excuse me, which were widely used in settling the American West. So they have this, this, they seem to have this thesis that in a gold rush, you should sell pickaxes, right? They were extremely successful

and became one of the largest wagon manufacturers in the world, supplying the United States Army throughout the Civil War. They eventually switched from horse-drawn to electric-powered vehicles. And then just two years later, they introduced gasoline-powered cars. And then we get to something that one of Henry's mentors, our mentee said he's on good relationships with some of the Sachs. So this guy, Walter Sachs, is going to wind up taking over the company as well and working with Sidney Weinberg as well. But he's hearing this conversation that's taking place between Walter and somebody else. This is he's trying to sell stock to this guy named Mr. Strasbury. So Mr. Strasbury is one of the people I offered the stock to and he turned it down.

Walter related. Some months or a year I offered the stock to, and he turned it down, Walter related. Some months or a year later, the stock had doubled in value. Fresh kid that I was, I said to Mr. Stalsbury, you should have bought that stock for me. You'd have doubled your money. Stalsbury responded, my dear young man, I can't make money in everything. Henry chuckled when he heard this, but we can always try, he said.

Just keep in mind, money is always in fashion. So that's his personal motto. He repeats it over and over again. It's the name of the book. Money is always in fashion. And so a few chapters later, they make the point like this opportunity that Goldman and Lehman wind up seizing, it was an opportunity hiding in plain sight. It was a segment of the market that was ignored by the established financial houses because they didn't think it was prestigious enough. So really, this is just a standard, not a standard, like a very important idea from the history of entrepreneurship is like you can find opportunities lurking where your competitors are just not paying attention. And the greatest way, like the greatest story,

the most distinct story I know to relate that idea is what william randolph hearst did to build his massive media empire which started with just one newspaper in san francisco him and the four or five other newspapers are all doing distribution selling their newspapers the same way they hire little boys called newsies to go on the street and sell copies of newspaper by hand hand, he realized, hey, people that live in the city of San Francisco, they're not, like, unique. They're just humans. Humans everywhere want access to the news. They want to know what's going on in the markets and sports and world news.

Why don't I, instead of just trying to out-compete and just do the same thing everybody else is doing, I'll just put my newspapers on a new technology of the day, which is railroads, and I'll send them out to all these cities that are surrounding the city of San Francisco. And he opened up a completely new market because none of his competitors were doing that. So it says the new issues co-led by Goldman Sachs, 114 of them. So this is where Henry's made all his money, kept spinning out like a river of gold. Who cared if the other investment houses considered the retail sector short on cachet and

long on risk? average man henry knew had money in his pocket so where is he going to spend that money he's going to spend it with retailers right clever man and then it talks about building up like finding unique ways to sell and market your product clever manufacturers recognize that product development and marketing were becoming almost indistinguishable. This is a shoe company. They sell shoes. And look at this. They basically combine entertainment with commerce.

The Brown Shoe Corporation pioneered the use of entertainment as a marketing tool and turned itself into a national brand, mixing showbiz into their sales pitch. They're selling shoes, for God's sake. They employed a troop of actors who were, there was like this popular cartoon strip of the day. So there's actors that were playing roles in there and sent them around the country to perform in vaudeville houses and on busy street corners, singing and dancing and telling jokes and playing tricks and selling shoes. By 1913, the company's advertising savvy had turned it into the largest manufacturer of children's shoes in the world

and marked another success for Goldman Sachs' list of publicly owned retail giants. So Henry had a deep love of Germany. This is going to cause his breakup with his partners during World War I because obviously America and Britain are on the opposite side of the war. And Henry didn't want to get really involved. He loved traveling and spending time in Europe. He was kind of like a vagabond or a nomad, couldn't stay in one place at one time, one place for very long. Even after he retired, he lives for like another 20 years.

He just constantly gallivanting around the world, even as he's losing his sight. But what was interesting, he had a really close call with death. And he was supposed to book passage on the Lusitania, which we know gets torpedoed. So it says, his wife was fearful for Henry's safety when he declared he would conduct business as usual and pay his annual visit to Europe in the spring of 1915, during the war's already popping off. It's a very interesting decision you have here, Henry. There had been repeated reports of German U-boats torpedoing unarmed ships. But Henry was skeptical, because he just had this love of Germany. But Henry was skeptical, insisted he would sail on the elegant ship, the Lusitania.

At the last minute, his wife persuaded him to delay the trip. She had heard of a wonderful camp and house and acres that was for sale in the Adirondack Mountains where they could share vacations with their children. Would you please go with me and at least look this over? He agreed. And so he wound up not booking passage and not dying. And so then we get into the part that surprised me the most. I did not know that he was forced out. So think about it. Goldman and then Sachs are on opposite sides of who they support for World War I, and this is going to wind up leading to Henry having to resign.

Henry turned the idea down flat, repeating that he intended to support Germany, not Britain and France. Dilemma now presented itself as the firm had two ironclad bylaws that had been mandated by Marcus Goldman from the outset. The first was to support its new issues with the partner's own money. The other was that Goldman Sachs could only make an investment if all the partners were in agreement. Henry's partners and his sisters, who are, and his

sisters are married to the Sachses, and so when they have the breakup, he never speaks to his sisters again either. His partners and his sisters were embarrassed by his views and urged him to cool down his rhetoric. Henry stuck to his guns and continued to speak out publicly about Germany's virtues. Sam, his partner, would tell anyone who listened that Henry's statements were purely personal and by no means representative of the beliefs and loyalties of the firm. But the damage was done. Headlines castigated the firm. Repercussions were swift, with the firm's London partners, the Kleinwerts, cabling to say that if the ill feelings generated by Henry's remarks was so great that they had become persona non grata in England,

meaning Goldman Sachs had become persona non grata in England, the Bank of England then forbade the Kleinwerts from participating in underwriting this company called the Jewelty Company. And they did this. This is the first time that ever happened because they were not this is they were forbade to do this because of Henry's support for Germany. And this is the first time that the Kleinwerts were not involved in a Goldman-Lehman new issue. Doesn't stop there. Kleinwerts were then called before the Ministry of Blockade, where they were shown a large number of intercepted cables

showing that Goldman had been involved in an active exchange of business with Germany. The Kleinwerts professed to be frankly astonished and withdrew from any further exchange business with their longtime friends until after the war. And this is what forces them out. The last straw came when the Kleinwerts called or cabled to express alarm at newspaper articles in London that put Henry's sentiments on public record. They warned that Goldman Sachs was in And this is what he said. now shaping public opinion. The world's war has deeply affected my viewpoint of life. My partners have been good enough to make my withdrawal from the firm possible. I retire with the best of feelings towards the firm and all of its members. That's a lie. With which I

have been associated for 35 years and to which I've given all that is in me. That has got to be devastating. If you've ever read, there's been a number of examples on the podcast where people are either forced out, they lose control of their business, or they sell their business and they regret selling it. And it's just devastating. It's heartbreaking to them. And so this idea where it's just like you've dedicated 35 years, a ton of your life energy, and you don't even have control over whether or not you get to keep doing that. That's just, that's a cautionary tale to me. And so Sam Sachs, Henry's partner, his nephew, Walter, was actually close with Henry and he didn't want to see him go.

He says, my God, Walter said to himself, what have we gotten ourselves into? And this is why he was asking that question. What have we gotten ourselves into? As the Sachs who had always been closest to Henry, the partner who realized the great debt that Goldman Sachs' success owed to Henry's dynamic personality and creative genius, the colleague Henry mentored and repeatedly reminded that money is always in fashion, he had the most realistic assessment of the consequences the firm would suffer and felt the greatest sense of personal loss.

In his memoirs, he recalled that Henry was an extraordinary personality, the original genius in Goldman Sachs, who made the first great imaginative contribution to the growth of the firm. Henry and Samuel Sachs never spoke again. Neither did Henry and his sister Louisa, Sachs' wife. The generations that follow never even made one another's acquaintance until almost a hundred years had passed. And so Henry lives for another 20 years. I would say he never retired. He's still investing like his own money, still working with a ton of people, still traveling the world, having these unique experiences.

But towards the end of his life, he knew he was dying because he's slowly dying of heart failure. And so there's a couple ideas from this point of his life that I think you and I can learn from. As Henry viewed his imminent mortality, his thoughts could not help reverting to the Goldman Sachs he had known and helped build to greatness years before. It was starting to make a comeback, but it would be a long haul. That story is told in a Malcolm Gladwell essay that I have linked in the show notes. But he held no simplicity for them. And this part is really important.

I double underlined it and it really gives you an insight into who Henry Goldman was. They had relied on the decisions of others, which he himself would never have done. His only concern was the restoration of Goldman Sachs's good name and the reputation and the public's faith in its integrity. And then because he knows he's dying, he talks about with his wife what his biggest regret is. Henry shared that his greatest regret was that he had never developed a greater rapport with his children. He thought that he had an inability to express approval, to overlook their minor slip ups and to embrace them and say, I love you. And that part is devastating because at that point in your life, there's nothing you can do to fix that regret.

I don't want to go to my grave with that regret. Henry's death came without much fanfare in in much the same low-key style he had maintained throughout his incredible life. He and his beloved wife were marveling about their ability to read each other's minds like old members of a symphony orchestra who had rehearsed together for years. Suddenly, his head dropped to his chest and the conversation stopped. A fabled life had ended for the Renaissance man whose ethics and morals never ran second to ambition and drive. And then the book ends with the granddaughter looking at a photo album of all the people that had passed away from both sides of the family. And she says, looking at images in the old photo albums, it's hard to believe that all these people

are gone now, along with their smiles and songs, will and wisdom and fears and hopes. And I wanted to end there because I think that paragraph serves as a reminder that that is coming for all of us. We have an obligation to live an incredible life for ourselves and the people that love us. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Buy the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. The very best way to support the podcast is to give a gift subscription to a family member,

a friend, or a colleague. That link, as always, is below in the show notes in your podcast player and available at founderspodcast.com. That is 253 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.