The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 401: David Rubenstein - Launching a Business, Living With Purpose, & Loving Your Life

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... For full show notes go to www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest and most successful private investment firms. Mr. Rubenstein co-founded the firm in 1987. Since then, Carlyle has grown into a firm managing $217 billion from 32 offices around the world. Notes: David is most interested in continuing to learn... He reads six newspapers per day and 100 books per year. Your commencement is the beginning, not the end. "Keep your brain active, it's a muscle. It will atrophy without use." David would give all of his money away to be one year younger... Keys to happiness: Thomas Jefferson said we all have the right to be in pursuit of happiness "It's the most elusive thing in life." Happiness is all about building meaningful relationships The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis -- "JFK showed tremendous leadership to avert disaster. He strategically ignored Khrushchev's second letter and responded to the first one when making a deal to avoid nuclear war. David was in 9th grade at the time and that moment of leadership impacted him in a big way. He worked in the White House for Jimmy Carter. "When I worked in the White House, everyone thought I was the smartest person in the world. When we lost and I didn't have a job anymore, nobody called, and nobody offered me a job." Why leave his job as part of a big law firm? "If you don't love what you do you can't be great at it." Launching The Carlyle Group: Raised $5m Hired incredibly competent people New idea: "I wanted to create a private equity one stop shop." How did he hire well? "I went after the best people I knew and sold them on why they should join me." What was said? Convince them they will have responsibility They will learn a lot They will make more money It will be enjoyable What does David ask in interviews with candidates to hire? "I want to learn mostly about what motivates them." Must have qualities to work at The Carlyle Group: Intelligent Hard working Get along well with others Share credit Effective communicator (both written and the spoken word) Help others Honest/High Integrity Why start The Carlyle Group? "I wanted to prove that my idea could work." What created the success of the company? "It was the luck of meeting great people... Like Bill Conway." "Prior preparation prevents poor performance." What are the keys to being a great interviewer? Good listener Enjoy it Sublimate your ego - It's about the guest, not the interviewer proving how smart they are Why does David like to interview so many people? "My mother said it's because I'm a 'yenta.' I want to know everything." Why own so many of our countries historical documents? (Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence) "I want to remind people of our history." He's one of the first 40 members of the giving pledge and plans to give ALL of his money away to charity. Advice to a young college graduate: Experiment, find things you enjoy Share credit Read a lot... Learn to speak in public Become a skilled writer Retain humility What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.' "Anybody who gives away money is mostly looking at things where they think they can make a difference. I'm trying to help people who helped me, educational institutions that helped me with scholarships, or organizations that were very useful to me in growing up."

experiment, find things that you enjoy. You aren't going to be successful if you don't enjoy what you're doing. Try to figure out how to share the credit. Get along with other people. Continuously learn. Keep reading. Learn how to speak orally. Practice reading.

Practice writing. Communicating is the most important way of influencing other people. You have to learn how to communicate. And ultimately, don't let it go to your head if you're successful. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show presented by, Hi, Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text learners to 4422. If you'd like to get direct access to my mindful Monday emails, I carefully curate my latest thoughts, reflections, best articles and ideas from myself as well as others. Every week, I've been doing it for more. than 240 weeks. I'd encourage you to check it out by texting Learners to 4-4-222. You'll also get more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leader, David Rubinstein, co-founder and co-executive

chairman of the Carlisle Group, one of the world's largest and most successful private investment firms. David co-founded the firm in 1987. Since then, Carlisle has grown into a firm managing $217 billion from 32 offices around the world. He also owns rare copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation, among others. David is the author of the latest book titled How to Lead. And this book is written about his interviews with people like Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, and many more. A few of the topics we discussed during our conversation, the keys to building meaningful relationships and how to deal with transactional people. Then David shares the must-have qualities to get

hired at the Carlisle Group and how these qualities may help you as you work to build your team. And then how President John F. Kennedy changed David's life and what he shares at all commencement speeches he gives. David is quite unique. Ladies and gentlemen, it's David Rubenstein. When I was looking at your attributes, as far as as far as what it means to like why you have done what you've done. And specifically number 11, the ability to keep learning. I mean, that speaks right to my heart, David, because that's why I named my podcast of the learning leader show,

because the leaders in my life who have impacted me the most are learning leaders. They've accomplished a lot. And yet, if you talk to them and asked them about that, they would tell you they have so much more to go and they're so curious to learn more. I'd love for you as we get going here to talk about some of these attributes and I'll point some of them out. And let's start with that one, though, number 11, which is the ability to keep learning and how that has been instrumental in you and all that you've built over the course of your career and your life. Well, as a young boy, my parents didn't have a lot of money to buy books, but my finally, when I was six years old, could get a book, a library card and I could take out 12 books a week. I would read them on one day and I had to wait another week before I could take out 12 more books.

So I really began a love affair with reading and learning and just trying to absorb as much information as possible. So I now am older, obviously, and I still have older reading habits. So I read six newspapers a day, but the physical newspapers. I try to read 100 books a year, but they're in subjects I know something about, so it's not that difficult to get through them for me. and I, you know, obsessed with just learning as much I can, lots of magazines and journals and so forth. And I'd like to remind people, when I give commencement addresses, I like to remind people, a commencement means beginning,

doesn't mean end. And so this is the beginning of your learning experience, not the end of it. Sadly, sadly, and it's hard to believe, 30% of Americans who graduate from college never read another book in their life. And 50% of Americans have not been in a bookstore or bought a book,

in the last five years, 50%. So I tell people keep learning, and I'm trying to keep my brain active because if you don't keep your brain active, it will atrophy. It's a muscle. And it's the greatest muscle ever invented by anybody because it's the only thing that ever,

that really separates us from all the other species on the face of the earth. When humans first showed up 400,000 years ago, I don't think the gorillas and the elephants looked at us and said, oh, these people are going to conquer the earth. But we did because the brain and the brain enables us to learn and you have to use it.

That was like any muscle. And if you don't use it, you lose it. So you cannot learn too much. David, I feel like I heard you say at one point. It might have been on JJ's show. I'm a big JJ's bound on this podcast. I have good banter with them regularly that you would give, you have many billions of dollars that you would give all of it away to be one year younger.

Is that accurate? Of course. One year. Why not? I mean, living, what could be more fun than living? So, you know, you need billions to be happy. The happiest people on the face of the earth are not the richest people in the face of the earth. Some of the saddest people in the face of the earth are very rich.

So I just don't imagine that anybody wouldn't do that. Now, I actually asked Bill Gates that one time. I said, Bill, would you give up all your money to live five more years? And he said, well, can I negotiate for 10? I said, but I mean, obviously the point is money is okay. it's nice if you have it and all that it can ruin your life too but of course i would give up everything i have every material possession i have if i could live one more year why not who wouldn't do that the i sense from from studying your work reading your books and watching your videos of of the interviews

you do that you are living a really happy life and yet that's not always the case as you just said with people who have accumulated a lot of wealth what are your keys to happiness. Well, remember, Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence that one of the things that he wanted to make it possible for people to do was to pursue happiness. Now, he never defined happiness in the ensuing 50 years of his life. And I suspect, though, he was a pretty happy guy, generally speaking. Happiness is the most elusive thing in life. Very few people are perpetually happy. Nobody probably is happy every second of the day. But it's very hard. You know people, how many people do you know, you say,

They're always happy. They're always happy. They're not. And happiness is elusive. You can have all kinds of mental, physical, family, economic challenges, and it makes people realize that life is tough. So I am pretty happy. But, you know, remember, I'm now at the stage in life where I don't have to worry about money.

I don't have to worry about a lot of things some people worry about. And I now know that I have a finite period of time before my brain or my body gives out. And I'm just trying to race through life and get things done. And amazingly, to my. astonishment, the things I think about people are more interested in hearing than they should be, maybe. So when I was my 20s or 30s, nobody wanted to hear from me. Now I'm 71. People want to hear from me. So I'm happy. People are listening to me. I wish my children would listen to me, but I don't know. They do. And I am pretty happy. I've gathered from the people that I come

across that seem to be the happiest, right? Nobody's happy constantly is that they have worked at and done a really good job of building meaningful relationships. And I sense that you've done that. Can you share more about your philosophy on building trusting, meaningful, great relationships with other people? Well, nobody, if I gave you a billion dollars, a $10 billion. And it's like, go live in this island for 10 years all by yourself. You got the $10 billion.

I'll give you a lot of cars and other things. But you're by yourself, how much happy are you going to, how happy are you going to be? You're not. Humans are people that have happiness comes about from relationships. Now, some species don't have that. For example, I've been involved in funding the pandas. When the panda is two years old in the wild, they go off and they live by themselves their entire life. Occasionally they might mate for about three seconds, but that's about it.

They just live by themselves. And there are some other animals like that are lived by themselves. Elephants or lions and tigers, they kind of live in packs. But pandas don't. Humans are people that are CCs that live. together and the relationships are the things that make them the happiest. If you ask people, what is the happiest thing about their life? They will not say, I won an award. I won the Nobel Prize. They won't say, I made $10 billion. They'll say, my children are successful, my parents,

I made them proud, I have a spouse that I'm in love with, or a partner I'm in love with. That's what people will say makes them the happiest. And the more relationships you can have that are productive, you can be happier. As you've seen the kind of things I've now been doing with my career lately, I have lots of relationships from all these organizations I've been involved with. And I like that because I get to meet so many different people and learn so much from these people. So I am happy. My only unhappiness is that I'm now 71 and I know I've lived more than I'm going to live.

So I call what I'm doing sprinting to the finish line. I'm racing to get stuff done before something bad happens. I want to go back to your childhood. And you said there is no leader in your boyhood. rivaled the leadership that you saw and looked up to as John F. Kennedy and how he showed leadership in 1962, the Cuban missile crisis that kept us, the United States and the Soviet Union from nuclear war. Can you take us back to that time? I believe you're a ninth grade. Yes. And how that exemplified leadership and how you looked up to that and what it made you want to become.

At the time, of course, my teacher said, I'm not going to give you any homework tonight because we're not going to be here tomorrow. I'm not very encouraging, but she didn't say that. That is wild. So what were you and your friend saying as freshman in high school? Of course, we were saying, hey, great, no homework. But, but, you know, it's kind of scary. And you're, you don't remember this. But in those days, you went through air raid drills. They went through air raid drills, not because we're afraid that somebody is going to bomb us with regular conventional weapons. They were going to have nuclear weapons going off and we were going to hide under the desk as if radiation didn't exist. I mean, crazy. Anyway, John Kennedy was informed that,

that the Soviets had put strategic missile nuclear missiles in Cuba. And the Soviets initially denied it. And it was a crisis because if the Soviets didn't back down, what were we going to do? The military in the United States wanted to bomb the Cubans. But inevitably, some of the missiles might have gone off against us. And there was a thought that maybe 100 million Americans would die. So we've never had anything quite like. And Kennedy came up with a brilliant strategy, which is now the stuff of legend,

about how he came up with a tactic that worked. And people remember it. To point out what it is, he got a letter from Khrushchev saying that we want you to, you know, we're not going to remove everything unless you remove your missiles from Turkey. And then he got another one from Khrushab saying that we're not going to remove everything at all. We're just not going to do it.

And he decided to ignore the second kind of a telegram and just pretend he hadn't gotten it. And he just followed the first one. and basically pretend that the second one hadn't occurred. And he said, okay, we will not bomb you. We will not bomb the Cubans. And we will, privately, we will remove our missiles from Turkey, which we did. But that was an amazing thing. When you think about it, we told the Soviets, we will remove our missiles from Turkey, but don't tell anybody.

I mean, you know, we're relying on the Soviets not to tell anybody that we had made the secret agreement, but that's what happened, actually. But in the end, he was the greatest accomplishment of World War post-war post. World War II diplomacy because we avoided a nuclear confrontation the closest we ever came to one. And did that get the wheels turning in your head that someday you wanted to like be in politics or be a lawyer or? Well, yeah, I was from a not a wealthy family. I was Jewish. Kennedy was Catholic.

That wasn't that much more popular probably in some respects. But he had wealthy, he had good looks. He had a great family and all that. So I didn't just think I could get to be a presidential. candidate, but I thought I could be an advisor. And so I was interested in politics and government and had no interest, zero in money. In those days, there were no things, things as hedge funds, private equity funds, tech startups, people just didn't start out and make lots of money. You work in a family business or you went to work in a big company like Procter & Gamble. That's what business meant.

There were no abilities to go out and be as an entrepreneur and get very wealthy. So nobody aspired to that. And I didn't. I just thought if I could work in government, that's good enough. And that's what you eventually did. I did. Went to work in the White House for Jimmy Carter, four years, never took a day off. It was great. But unfortunately, we got inflation to 19%. We had hostages in Iran and we didn't get reelected. And so I love to talk about inflection points and big moments along your career day. Because if you look back and study the decisions we make, because it's one of the questions people get when they're interviewing for a job is like, why did you leave that company or why would you want to come to this company? and you made some interesting choices along the way as far as where you went to work

and why you chose to leave places and start something your own. Can you walk me through? I don't normally do this, but for you, it's different. I feel like, can you walk me through that life from politics to losing when you're in the White House to then what you did next, the next couple of things? Well, when you work in the White House in the West Wing and you're 27 years old or you're advising the President of the United States, it will go to your head. Because the idea that, you know, the President of the States is listening to you,

you're three years out of law school, and you didn't even know the president before you got to the White House. You know, it's pretty heady stuff. So, yeah, I began to believe all the people that came to me and said, you're a brilliant young man. If you ever want a job, call me up. And of course, I said, when Carter's reelected, I'm going to be a senior advisor in the second term, so I don't want a job. But then when we lost, I had to go call these people and they said, you know, they don't want a White House aide. And I wasn't as smart as they pretend that I was in whatever it case. So I did practice law, but it took me a long time to get a job. And then I realized this, as you know, probably from what you're doing, if you don't,

love what you're doing, you can't be great at it. Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do. You have to love it. And I didn't love the practice law. And it clearly didn't love me. I wasn't that good at it. So I ultimately decided that what I would do is going to something that would be different. I didn't know anything about business, but I figured I would try to start the first buyout firm in Washington, D.C. and it took off. You're just acting like you just went and start a little old business. No big deal. The Carlisleau Group, nah. Like, tell me a little bit more. more about the Carlisle group. That was at the beginning and then how it, how you grew it.

I mean, I know that's an hour or more. I'll try to do it quickly. Look, look, there had been a man named Bill Simon who had been Secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration. He left after Carter got elected and he started a little buyout firm called Westray. And he basically did a company, he bought a company called Gibson greeting cards for which he put in about less than a million dollars and he made $66 million in about 18 months. And I read about that.

And I said, wow, I'd like to figure out how to do that. And so I tried to figure how I could get a buyout firm put together. And I couldn't get convinced anybody in Washington to do it because I didn't have any experience. I didn't have any money, no money, no experience, no talent in that area. But I eventually convinced some people, I'm not sure how to join the firm that we were going to get together. I then took about six months to raise $5 million to kind of keep it going. And then the reason it took off and became one of the biggest in the world is two things. One, I hired very good people who actually knew how to invest and they did a pretty good track record.

And secondly, I came up with an idea that won't seem like it deserves a Nobel Prize, but this was the idea. Private equity firms were tiny little mom-and-pop shops, 10 people, 15 people. They weren't doing that many things. They're doing one or two buyouts a year maybe. I decided I would build a fidelity of private equity, which is the say, have a buyout firm, a real estate firm, a growth capital firm, a fund, and a venture fund. And in one organization, have all kinds of private equity and then make it global.

And so we would be a one-stop shop for people that wanted to invest in private equity. You know, that depends on getting investors to come in, give you a chance, having a good track record. But I spent about 30 years of my life running around the world, raising the money for this and recruiting people in the firm. So I'm at loss now. I'm sitting in my home all day for the last nine months. I'm used to traveling all over the world.

Now I don't do anything but Zoom calls, but it's okay. How did you raise the first five million? I had a guy who had met me when I was in the White House. A guy who was at Tiro Price is a very good friend of mine. And he said he could introduce me to some investors. So we got four investors put up a million a quarter apiece. And it was supposed to last us for a couple of years. But we have to raise more money for each deal we might get.

This was the kind of money to keep us going. Now, that seems insignificant today, $5 million, but that's all we could raise. And then we raised some money deal by deal. And then ultimately we raised a fund of $100 million. And then later a fund of a billion, then we started getting much bigger. So one of the things the keys you said was that you, right after the raise, you said is you hired great people. David, the reason why this is really important, obviously people are everything, but is that there's a lot of people listening who are in some

sort of leadership role within a company building teams, hiring, firing, training, developing. What did you find to be the keys to hiring great people? What did you look for? What's some of the questions you may have asked? You know, you're a professional interviewer. So I'm just curious, what are some of those things that? I, when I was trying to find people to start the firm with, it's a little different than when I've done subsequent that. I've interviewed thousands of the people and hired some great ones and I missed some great ones and I've hired some bad ones. Unfortunately, I miss some of the bad ones too. I would say when I'm meeting with somebody, you have to convince them that they will have responsibility, that they will be able to make decisions to some extent on their own, that they will have a chance to improve their life, that they will learn a lot.

that while money isn't the only way to measure success and produce happiness, they're likely to make more money doing this than they wouldn't, something else they're thinking about, that it will be an enjoyable experience, that it won't be an unenjoyable experience. And you have to, you know, what I like to do when I'm interviewing people is ask them some questions. I learn about what their background is, what motivates them.

And once you know what motivates somebody or what are their key interests in life, you can frame the questions you ask them or the statements you want to make about why they should join you more appropriately. It sounds like to me, though, what you just said is that you're selling them more than they're selling you. Well, very often that's the case because very often when I'm recruiting people, yeah, I am trying to sell them for sure. And I try to sell the initial partners. I am. Yes, you have to sell them. I'm rarely are people trying to sell me because by the time they get to see me, I pretty much know. something about them. I want to recruit them. Now, sometimes I'll interview the young people coming in our

firm, and they're trying to sell me a little bit because they want a job. But I'm pretty used to that by now. I was going to say there must be a process in place prior to getting to you. If when they get to you, it seems like it's flipped. Yes. As a courtesy to the young people, you know, they'll trot me out as a senior guy, a founder, and I'll interview the younger people. But typically for the last 10 years, I was going out and recruiting senior people. I remember I went and recruited Jim Baker. I recruited George Herbert Walker Bush, John Major, Lou Gersner, very famous people. In that case, I had to sell. You know, George Herbert Walker Bush wasn't selling me on what he could do for me. Jim Baker wasn't selling me. I had to sell them. And so the selling process is one that you have to learn how to do and do it an

appropriate way and you can be successful at it. What are some of the must have qualities to work at the Carlisle group? Well, I think number one, be reasonably intelligent. We don't have to be a genius or not a lot of geniuses I've hired over the years. The ones I've hired are not really that great. So being reasonably intelligent, hardworking, know how to get along with people, know how to share the credit, know how to learn continuously how to improve themselves, learn how to speak publicly in a way that can be presentable, learn how to read a lot of materials, learn how to write an intelligent way, be somebody that has an interest in helping other people, so has some outside interest that are philanthropic, is honest, integrity,

is very important, and somebody that you trust so that when there's a crisis, you will trust them, you can rely on them, they're not going to melt in a crisis. One of the attributes you've written about in the introduction of your book is about failure. and it's number six. I would love for you because now it's, quite frankly, David, it's hard for people to relate to you at this point, right? We have this billionaire who has done so much,

you know, owns copies of the Magna Carta Declaration of Independence, all this incredible work. Can you point to a time or two when you failed miserably and how you were, and then what precisely you did following that? moment or those moments. Well, how many days do you have because I have so many failures? Pick one or two. You know, I tried to be a baseball, I played baseball in high school. I got cut from the team. I, but in the adult life, well, for sure, I've never been fired from a job,

but I clearly when we, when we lost the election in 1980, I had to go out and find a job. And it was for six months, I couldn't find a job. Nobody wanted to hire me. So, you know, it's hard. I tell my mother that I had so many offers, I didn't know which one to take, but I was truthfully, I didn't have any offers. So that was a failure. And at Carlisle, when we started, we had some investments that didn't work out. And I wasn't sure the firm could survive because we'd used up a lot of our money on deals that weren't looking like they were going to be very successful. So, you know, we've had failures. And obviously, I've turned down some deals that I should not have turned down.

You know, my son-in-law was working in Moderna, and I turned down that early on. I turned down Facebook at the beginning, essentially turned down Amazon. So, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes, turned down Netscape. But, you know, I'd say, you know, personal failures, you know, the biggest personal failures, I suspect that I, you know, probably am not the person I would like to be. I wish I was more articulate. I wish I was funnier. I wish I was better looking.

I wish I was a better athlete, all those things that everybody wants to be better than they are something. But on the whole, I'm reasonably happy with where I am because, I recognize my limitations. As you go forward in life, life is about realizing your limitations. When you're seven years old, you think you might be a professional baseball player. If you get older, you realize you're probably not going to do that. Or when you're in the investment world, you think you might be Warren Buffett, you realize

eventually you have limitations. So life is about adjusting to your limitations and trying to do something that's realistic. Where does the entrepreneurial spirit come from? I mean, you could have gotten another job. I mean, you could have, you could have grind it out and found another job. Instead, you decided to start your own company of something that had not really been done before. I mean, you've seen an example or two, but this was unique and different. So where does that come from?

Well, generally, you want to prove an idea. If you took it's, I wouldn't compare myself to them, but Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, they wanted to prove their idea and they didn't really care about money so much. And I wanted to prove that a buyout firm could work in Washington. It wasn't necessary to be a Wall Street person. And I wanted to prove that, you know, just because I'd work. in the Carter White House didn't mean I was incompetent. And just because I wasn't a good lawyer, didn't mean I wasn't worthwhile in some other endeavor. So I wanted to prove myself and also prove that

I could do something from scratch. Now, of course, my parents were not college or high school educated. So when I told him I was going to leave the practice of law and start a business, I think my mother was going to have a heart attack because she said, David, you know, you go bankrupt. You don't know anything about business. And I didn't want to tell her, well, you're right. And I just thought, No, it's okay. I've got people that know what they're doing. I also read that an entrepreneur will start his or her first company between the ages of 28 and 37. And if you don't do something entrepreneurial by 37, your chance of doing it is not unlike a woman's biological time clock. It just goes down and down and down. So I read that when I was 37. And so I was talking about

starting Carlisle, but I realize I better get it done because the odds are if I don't do it by 37, I'll have kids and mortgages and I won't have the interest in doing this. you mentioned the hard work long hours and I think people talk about this work like life balance and others say there's no such thing and and a recent guest of mine Scott Galloway also talked about this as grit, this willingness for the leader to essentially like he talked about polling all-nighters when he was running businesses and the willingness to work extremely hard and certainly not ask anyone to do anything that he wasn't willing to do. And I found it it's that's not really balance. I'm curious your thoughts as you're building Carlisle group on balance or lack thereof

and working long hours. Maybe to mask the fact that I wasn't really good at socializing, I wasn't a drinker, I wasn't a bon vivant. I worked hard, maybe because I wasn't sure I was that smart, so I had to work hard to do reasonably well. And so I got in the habit of working long hours and people would call me a workaholic and so forth. Maybe it's because I didn't have the social skills that would lend itself to doing anything else. But there's no doubt that you can't get anywhere great in life nine to five, five days a week. It just doesn't happen. You want to be Yo-Yo Ma. You want to be Renee Fleming. You want to be, you know, Tom Brady, whatever you want to be. That's great. You've got to put on the hours. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to do that your

entire life, but to perfect your skills, it takes a lot of time. Malcolm Gladwell has written in the famous book that says, in essence, that to perfect a skill and be really good at it, you probably have put in 10,000 hours. And maybe he's right. Maybe it's something close to that. But you have to work pretty hard for a while. And in terms of work-life balance, that is something that people, when they're building a company, they don't focus on that much. Bill Gates used to say when he was building Microsoft, he never took off any time. He didn't have any interest in doing anything else. And when you're building something, you don't take time off that much. Now, clearly, you don't want to do that your entire life.

I do think a work life balance is good. And everybody, even when you're working a company, you're building at the beginning, you should have some outside interest, some outside activity, something other than just work. But there's no doubt that working really hard will be more productive than not working hard. As a general rule of thumb, people who are smart, reasonably smart and work hard will do better things in life than people that aren't smart and aren't working hard as a general rule

of thumb. That's probably obvious. what was it that fascinates you or when you were younger and certainly even to the state because you're sprinting right now as you've said what is it that fascinates you most about leadership well it's fascinating when i was younger i wasn't much of a leader so i'm looking at people who became road scholars supreme court clerks first in their class all american athletes you know what produced that how did they have that skill set and i didn't so i guess It was leadership envy I might have had because I wasn't a great leader. I was a third tier type of leader, not a great leader. And so I always wondered, how do I get to be like these other people? And as I put in my book, it is a phenomenon that I've observed that some people who are the superstars when they're young turn out not to be the superstars later on in life.

The people running the world are not the superstars when they were kids. except for Bill Clinton, of the last 20 presidents of the United States, none of them were superstars when they were students, maybe only Bill Clinton when he was pretty good as a student leader. So think back to your high school class. I don't know who was first in your class. I don't know who was the president of student government, and I don't know who was the captain of the football team,

but probably they're not as famous as you are right now, right? I happen to be the captain of the football team. You were. Okay. It wasn't the other two, not even close, though, but yes. All right. So generally, I go back. I would say that that that that that was a formative time in my life because I was introduced to two of the greatest coaches and mentors of my life still to this day that taught me resilience and hard work and effort and preparation and the value of that and that led somebody who probably was not quite good enough to play in college to earn a college scholarship and play.

And I think that that was that was that's when I really learned about leadership and like I said, preparation and resilience and those things that are necessary. in order to do the types of thing that you've done. Now, were you, did you play in college? Yes. Where did you play? Ohio University. Okay. And what position were you?

Quarterback. So were you like the start at Ohio University? Were you up? I mean, I mean, I had an average career. I played for, I started for two years and got voted captain there. And it went well. I played a little bit afterwards in the arena football league, which is fun. But certainly nowhere, nowhere near good enough to play in the NFL.

but a nice little career and was able to get my college covered and certainly learned a lot through the process of who was first in your class in high school what happened to that person i have no idea i have no i had a class like 700 so i have no clue my high school class was 1,500 big public high school and there were some super superstar people in that class but in the end uh you know very few of them actually made a big mark in the world maybe one or two so you just you know you get lucky. It's a tortoise and the hair. And the people, you know, who sometimes are the slower actually catch up and pass the hair. And that's what happened to me. I got lucky. You got lucky. Yeah. Well, I got lucky. Sure. How did you get lucky? Well, because I built the company with the help of others and

it became successful. And then it gave me a lot of money to be able to give away and to get involved in other activities. And so I got very lucky. What percentage of your success? is luck versus your work ethic, talent, skill. A very large percentage because I hired the right people as partners. I came up. Is that lucky? Is hiring the right people? Is that luck?

It's somewhat luck because you can make, you make mistakes. I mean, you know, you interview somebody for a couple of days and you think be my partner, but you can, you know, make mistakes. Sure, you always make mistakes. I was lucky, sure, for me in this sense. Somebody introduced me.

I'll give an example. Yeah. Bill Conway, he is the person who really was the investment genius at Carlisle. I was the fundraiser, the recruiter, maybe the strategist, but he was the investor. So I never heard of the guy. So here's an example of luck. I went to, when I was trying to recruit people, I went to recruit a woman. I thought having a woman in that day and age was certainly unique, but I thought it would be a good idea.

There was a woman named Gratia Martori, then the treasure of Gannette, a big company in the Washington area. I went to see her, and I said, why don't you be one of our founding partners? And she said, David, I don't really know you, but, you know, you have to recognize what you're doing is, unrealistic. You're asking me to give up my job as the treasurer of Gannett, she later became the CEO, the treasurer of Gannett to join a firm where you have no money, you have no people that have worked together, none of you've ever done a buyout. Why would I do that? And I said, well, take a chance. And she said, thank you, no. But as I was leaving,

she said, oh, by the way, David, there's a guy who's the CFO of MCI, the telecommunications company in Washington. I heard he might be leaving. Give him a call. So I called him on a cold claw And ultimately I recruited him And he became a very famous investor That was luck And I hadn't gone to see her Or I hadn't called him

Who knows what would happen So that's the way You know That's the way things work It's like when you You made the intentional choice To go recruit her And then you followed up

And then you trusted her And believed in what she said And made the call So it's a combination Of Of your choices Combined with luck and you and you capitalizing on those opportunities.

Yes, luck, it plays a big role. Sure. Sure. I, I love that you regularly spend time interviewing world class performers,

some of the most effective leaders in the world, Jeff Bezos. I mean, everybody, Bill Gates, you name it thousands, right? Right. I've watched a number of them.

Before I even realized that, like I put it together once your team reached out. So I think this is really cool that it's a same guy that I've been watching. What do you find to be the keys to being an effective interviewer? Well, Jim Baker said, and I quote him in my book, prior preparation prevents poor performance. So prepare. Larry King, when he was doing interviewing, he always famously said, I don't prepare. That's not my style. And there's nothing wrong with his style, I guess. So I prepare, I know a lot about the person. Secondly, I generally like to interview people I know so that it's not a cold thing.

I tend to have better chemistry a bit. Third, as Oprah Winfrey said in my book when I interviewed her, she's not such a great interviewer, but she's a really good listener. And, you know, when you're interviewing, you have to listen to what the person says and feed off of that. The FBI sometimes will come to interview me and they'll have a list of questions on a background check. And I can say the person's an ax murderer, they won't listen.

They'll just go into the next question. Now, I can tell them this person's committed a crime. They won't listen. They'll go on the next question. So you have to listen to what people say. And then I guess it's enjoying it. You know, if I hated interviewing people, if I didn't really like people, if I didn't really have an intellectual interest in it, it wouldn't good.

And also, you have to supplement your ego. So here's what I mean. There's some interviewers, I won't mention that by name, but have had TV shows where they spend so much time trying to show you how smart they were by asking a convoluted long question. And then before the person can answer the question, they kind of answer the question for themselves, that's not a good interview.

Let the person talk and let them be the interviewee. And if you want to be an interviewee, you know, get a different format to do that. Why do you think you enjoy it so much? There's a Yiddish word called Yenta. And Yenta means you're always a busy body. You want to know everything. So I guess maybe my mother said I was a Yent.

I wanted to know everything. So I guess I have an intellectual thirst for knowledge and knowing as much as I can. and I always like to see how did this person get where he got or she got. What do they have? What are their secrets? What are their personalities? Just very observant.

So I enjoy it. And so for me, it's fun. I mean, if you watch me do interview, you know, I don't look like I'm pained or something. I'm enjoying it. And, you know, I use humor sometimes to kind of make it a little bit more enjoyable for people. Is it more for you or more for the people who are watching or listening? The humor? No, the overall process of you interviewing the people.

Well, obviously, I enjoy it. it. So I wouldn't do it if I'd enjoy it, but I'm hoping that people will watch. So, for example, we have this podcast that we're on right now. Well, if nobody was listening, you wouldn't be that happy, right? You're doing it for the listeners. So, and you, why are you doing it? Well, if you want to show that you're good at this, because everybody wants to show they're good at something and you're hoping to educate people and you're hoping, you know, people will say this guy is really talented, even though he was a football quarterback. He's pretty smart, right? What do you mean even know. Come on, man. No, I'm with you. I like trying to build skills in multiple life

categories. I think it's a worthy pursuit. And it's hard. It's really hard. David, I have, I have a couple more questions. One of them is I have to wonder that given everything you've accomplished, that at times you're going to come across transactional people, people who want something from you. And you don't want, you don't want transactional relationships. You want to build meaningful, real relationships. How do you manage that, the difference between those types? I have some friends that I grew up with in Baltimore 60 years ago. And I still am in touch with them. We still get together.

We socialize. They're not asking for anything for me because they've known me for all these times. It's a different kind of thing. But I have to be honest that today, most people that I have some relationship want something. And very often it's a philanthropic contribution. I give away an enormous amount. of money. And when you're giving away a lot of money, people say, well, this guy has a lot of money. He's going to give it away. Why don't I try to get some of it? So I'm often, you know, I'm asking,

I try to be polite with people who are my friends and just, and I tried to respond to letters and so forth. But, you know, I recognize that people want something from me. But, you know, if you don't accept that, you're going to have no friends, you have no contacts, and you'll become a recluse. So, you know, very often the richest people in the world have become recluses. I got tired of people asking them for money. And then I asked Bill Gates, how do you deal with it? with this. He says, well, I have other people. They say no. I don't have to do it. But I do it myself. So I say yes or no. I don't have a staff that does the philanthropic stuff. I just do it all myself. And you know, you upset some people. I try to be polite and say, this isn't for me.

And I've been amazed how many people are happy to get a letter that's thoughtful saying no, as opposed to not in responding at all. So people at least appreciate somebody listened to what they were talking about. You have copies of the Magnet Carta Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation. many others. Right. What is it about all of these historic documents that you wanted to have copies of? And I assume paid a significant sum of money to get them. I stumbled into it. It was by serendipity. Somebody invited me to see the magnet card. And then it turned out it was for sale the next night in an auction. I decided I would buy it because I heard it was going to leave the United States to a foreign buyer.

And I knew enough to know that it was the inspiration for the Declaration of Independence. It was the only one that was in private hands, the only one that would ever be in the United States. So I started buying these documents and I started fixing up monuments like the Washington Monument and so forth as a way of reminding people of our history and our heritage. We know very little about it. Right now, two-thirds of Americans cannot even name the three branches of government. The average American cannot pass the basic citizenship test that is given to somebody trying to become a citizen in this country. And that's because we don't teach history and civics very much anymore. And the result is we have an uninformed democracy. The theory of representative democracy is you have a.

informed citizens. If you have uninformed citizens, you'll have a less good government. So in the theory that it's better to let people be inspired by the Magna Carta, they let them see it in person, as opposed to just on a computer slide, that might lead them to learning more of being better informed citizen and maybe our democracy would be better. So that's the convoluted reasoning. I'm trying to educate people and make them more informed citizens. Like my first book was about interviewing great historians in front of members of Congress. Now, why did I do that? I did every month. I did it for five years. I'm doing it again when as soon as Congress reopens. to educate members of Congress about American history.

They are the ones making the decisions about our laws, and I think they should know as much about American history as anybody, and they enjoy it. And so it's also bipartisan. It kind of works out. What are you most proud of over the course of your career and life? Well, other than the fact that you'd be willing to talk to me, I guess I would say,

the thing that gave me the greatest pleasure would simply be that my mother lived see and my father lived to see what I did. So I'm the only child and they, you know, they didn't know what I was going to turn out to be and they would have been happy whatever I, whatever I did. But, you know, my mother was very proud of what I did. But actually, not so much making a lot of business. The only business thing she cared about was when we bought Dunkin' Donuts, I gave her cards. She should get free coffee and she would go into Dunkin' Donuts and say, my son owns Dunkin' Donuts. And of course, the person behind the counter would say, oh, sure, lady, this here's your coffee. So, you know, she never was that focus on my business career. But when I started giving away,

large sums of money, she would call me and say, I'm proud of you're doing this. And when she passed away a few years ago, I went through her scrapbooks. And the only scrapbooks she had about things that I'd done were the money I'd given away. So I made my parents proud. And that was probably the thing that makes me the most proud. How do you manage being a billionaire with kids and not having them be spoiled or selfish or any of the other bad things we see happen of rich kids? How do you manage that? Well, you make a lot of speeches saying you're giving away all your money. And you encourage your children to read those speeches. You're the first guy of the giving pledge, correct? I was one of the 40. We have 40 in the beginning, yes. 40 of Warren Buffs, meaning which states that you're going to

basically give all of your money away. It says half your money. I'm giving it all the way, but they say half is what you're supposed to do. And so I've said to repeat that I'm giving it all away. But I gave my children, a very good education. They all went to very good schools. They're all now in MBAs and all in private equity. So you can say, either failed or I succeeded there. I have no poets. I have no, no struggling artists, no, no script writers. They're all in private equity. And they're, you know, they're all pretty hardworking. And so, um, look, raising children is very difficult. Are you married? Do you have children? Yes, we're raising five, uh, daughters. Five. Yes. How old are you? Thirty-nine. Wow. Very productive. You don't look thirty-nine.

You don't have any gray hair. You have no gray hair. Okay. Probably soon. Who knows? Five children. Okay, well, look, Jackie Kennedy famously said, if you mess up raising your children, nothing else in life matters. I agree. And she's right. Your greatest legacy is not going to be your show. It's going to be your children. For sure. And as you know, and you're a reasonably prominent guy and you're going to be more prominent. The more prominent you are, the wealthy are, it's harder and harder to raise children. So the children of a lot of Hollywood stars or multi-billionaires, sometimes they're not that accomplished. It's very hard to give people an incentive when they need. know that their parents are wealthy. So I've tried to not spoil them. Obviously, I've given them a good education and so forth and paid for that. But I try to be a bit of a role model and I work hard and

they kind of see that. And they can see I'm not frivolous and I'm not trying to flaunt my money. And you know, I bought the Magna Carta, but it wasn't for a, it's not in my house. It's in the National Archives. It's not something I'm flaunting. And so I don't run around telling people how great I am. And I try to, you know, use some humility and try to get them to follow some of the things I've done, but they have their own views on things. But it's hard, no doubt. And I'm not perfect in doing it. Yeah, I feel like they, you know, they, they, they,

kids are so smart as far as what they watch. And so our job as parents is just to try to be a good model of what a good citizen, a good person, a good leader is. And that's, you know, we make mistakes. We fail. But I feel like that's the key. And I'm guessing that's a big part of the reason why your kids yet growing up with a billionaire dad seemed to be doing really well.

I didn't advertise. how wealthy I was. It was only when Forbes came out with it that they realized. How old were they when they realized that their dad was a billionaire? They were probably teenagers or something like that. Is that weird for you guys? Well, we didn't advertise it. And I wasn't, you know, running around the world telling people that. Did they not, did they, they had to know, though, that you guys were doing pretty well. Yeah, but we weren't. I tried not to do things that were excessive or or or flaunt money or, you know, things that were, you know, that made it seem like I didn't care about the value of money.

you know, and we weren't that way. So, but anyway, obviously they had a better, you know, more resources than I did when I was growing up. But look, I had my last child when I was in my early 40s, so you could go back for a, for a boy, right? Technically, I'm still able, actually. So I don't, I don't want to have, you don't want to have a, I think the, the, the, the odds. It's not how it works. You don't get to pick. That's not how it works.

Oh, really? Well, I mean, it's a 50-50 shot every time, I guess, you know. No, it's more, it's different. But, but, you know, not the... Wait, you're smarter than me. So what are the odds here? I don't know how this works. Well, to be serious about it, if you look at the, it's not just the odds, but if you look

at people that have had five of one sex, it is better than 50-50 that you will have something of a different sex the next time. Yeah, yeah. I think the tough part is like, I don't have to carry the baby and that's a hard job. Yes, I agree that. That is a really hard job. This is great. I guess just one more, David, is there's a, there's a young person who's probably,

finishing up with school, looking at what to do with their life. And one of their goals is to, since they're listening to a show like this, is to make a positive contribution and impact in the world. And they see that you've done this. And you were a late bloomer. And so that gives people hope. What are some general pieces of life advice you give to a person at that stage in their life? Experiment, find things that you enjoy. You aren't. going to be successful if you don't enjoy what you're doing. Try to figure out how to share the credit. Get along with other people. Continuously learn. Keep reading. Learn how to speak orally. Practice reading. Practice writing. Communicating is the most important way of influencing other

people. You have to learn how to communicate. And ultimately, don't let it go to your head if you're successful. Retain some humility. Now, there are great leaders who are not humble. I've Douglas MacArthur was not a humble man. And I don't imagine. imagine Julius Caesar was humble. And I don't imagine Alexander the Great, attached the Great to his name was humble, right? Or Charlemagne probably wasn't humble. But they shouldn't be your role models. You know, if I had a chance to interview Abraham Lincoln, he wouldn't have said, you know, David, I won the Civil War by myself. You know, I really did it by myself. You know, you can't imagine Abraham Lincoln saying that. He was humble. And that's what you should aspire to have is some

humility. So good. David, I really appreciate you invest in your time. What is that? behind you what is that what you what is that what is that Thomas Jefferson or what is that what is that on the wall there where are you looking you have I see something oh do you see this yeah what is so that is a print of the patent of the first flying machine oh that's what it is okay that's so right brothers Dayton Ohio Orville orville and Wilbur's name is on that wow I got it as a gift there's a great story in that in that in that book by the way that I cite a lot, which is about their willingness to go down to Kitty Hawk and spend time watching the birds. And that's like a reminder of me to like chill out every once and while and

watch the birds because it's time for deep reflection and thought and being reflective person, that that will lead to then good ideas like creating the first thing that can fly. And so if you read that book by David McCullough, when you ask him, as I did in my interview, what made them successful? He said it's because they learned to read. Yeah. They were not college educated, but they loved reading and they read all the time. They kept their mind active. That's what people did. Much like your parents, they had great parents, their dad Bishop, who would just pack their house full of books. And so they started when they were young. Their intellectual curiosity was formed at a young age. And I think that that is, was key to them

going from their bicycle shop to then building an airplane. I think it's an inspiring story, man. I love everything about it, man. That's why reading's the greatest thing ever. I mean, I paid like, what, 20 bucks for that book? Change my life. Right. like that's that's a that's a good good thought i'm glad that that's a big part of it because also reading will make you a better writer writer writing will make you a better speaker make you a better communicator and that's why we all should be doing it regularly right and i highly encourage people by the way i have it right here uh david's book here it's called how to lead it's got a really cool cover too and uh with with wisdom from the world's greatest CEOs founders and and game changers

just all these just incredible interviews and it's it's just awesome man thank you very much for me. I enjoyed it. Congratulations on your own success. Thank you, David. I really appreciate it, man. Bye. All right. See you. Okay. To finish this one out, I will answer a question from a loyal listener of the Learning Leader Show. Remember, we love alliteration here. It comes from a veteran, someone who has served our country, friend and colleague Michael Lewallan. Michael, thank you, first and foremost, for your service to our great country. Here is this question, Ryan. I mentor a few friends who have recently made the transition from individual contributor to manager.

As they are progressing on their journey, they are experiencing the difference between preparing for management with podcast and books and learning lessons by taking some lumps and finding out the hard way. I believe everyone has this experience. You can't have leadership figured out completely. but how can we look back and see our early blunders and use it for positive growth instead of just feeling like we should have known better or, quote, if only I had known then. Thanks, brother. Hope that one's useful.

Okay. I think this is very natural. When I look back at the early stages of my career, especially when I made that initial leap from individual contributor to manager, It was chalk-filled of mistakes. There are, I know a number of people I've worked with that worked on my teams that listen to the show, and they could probably list out many of them. In fact, I wrote about a lot of those mistakes in my book, Welcome to Management.

In fact, this is such a critical juncture and stage in your career that I decided to write 60,000 words about it and publish it in Welcome to Management. So there's far too much for me to get to answer here. I would encourage you to read Welcome to Management because that's what it's all about. But when I look back and think, oh, and get upset, if only I had known then, that's part of the deal. That's part of the process. When I work with people who are newer to management jobs, and this is a big part of my business style, is I'm hired by leaders and say, will you work with the leaders who report to me? part of the deal when it comes to leadership is knowing that you will make mistakes and I work to help them limit those mistakes but most importantly is that we regularly do after action reviews whether they've done something well or whether they haven't so regardless of their performance we are going to regularly review what they've done analyzed what went well analyzed what didn't analyze the response of their team, analyze the performance of their team, see what's working, see what didn't, and

then adjust as we go. I don't think we need to have regrets about mistakes made. That's a part of life. I want to try to help mitigate some of those mistakes. I want people to learn deeply as it's happening while they make those mistakes so that they can continue and progress much faster than I did when I was a first time manager. So that's the point of this is to look back and realize that it's part of the deal that we are going to make mistakes.

But we're going to try to limit them. But most importantly, we're going to try to learn as much as possible from each of the mistakes we make so that we don't continue to make the same ones. I hope that was helpful. There's a lot here. But I certainly want to say thank you to Michael for sending the question. and thank you, the loyal listener of the Learning Leader Show, because you continue to spread the message and tell a friend or two,

because you write a review, an Apple podcast, rate the show, hopefully five stars. You continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, and that is to have long form, deep conversations with highly thoughtful, people and I am so grateful that you continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love and because of that I will forever be grateful to you. If you have a question, feel free to send me an email Ryan at learning leader.com and I'll do my best to answer it. Once again, thanks so much for being here. I will talk with you soon. Can't wait.