#495: David Rubenstein, Co-Founder of The Carlyle Group, on Lessons Learned, Jeff Bezos, Raising Billions of Dollars, Advising Presidents, and Sprinting to the End

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So Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers of all different types from all different fields. My guest today is David M. Rubinstein. He is co founder and coexecutive chairman of the Carlisle Group, a global investment firm with approximately two hundred and thirty billion dollars under management. Mr. Rubinstein is chairman of the boards of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, and the U.S. and a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He is an original signer of the Giving Pledge and has made transformative gifts for the restoration or repair of the Washington Monument, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian National Archives, National Zoo and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Mr. Rubinstein is also host of the David Rubinstein show, Peer to Peer Conversations on Bluebird TV, and the author of The American Story subtitle Conversations with Master Historians, and his latest How to Lead.

Subtitle Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers. He is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Chicago Law School. You can find him online at David Rubenstein.com. David, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me, Tim. If we Hop back. Two

your I suppose adolescence or or childhood, depending on how we want to frame it. What direction did you think you were going to take when you were, say, in your early teens? At that point did you have an inkling of an idea of what you wanted to be or what you wanted to do? I I did. I was very interested in politics, maybe because my sixth grade teacher drummed in to me the uh and all of my classmates the

Inaugural address of John Kennedy. And how it was poetry and prose form, we studied it. And like many young people in those days, we were attracted to the image the The vigorous image, the young image of a president Who contrasted so much.

with the his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, in terms of image and youth and vigor and so forth. And so I uh always thought the politics was the I guess calling of mankind, so I would say n uh then. And so I was interested in going into politics and then I thought You go into politics, you have to be a lawyer.

And to be a lawyer you have to learn how to read and write. reasonably and talk reasonably on those re Probably skill sets that I thought I had. I didn't think I was a great scientist in terms of Went in medical school.

And I I really didn't know about business because business was not something that was really very common in those days. This is the nineteen fifties and sixties, there were no hedge funds. There were no private equity funds, there were no tech startups. If you went in the business in those days, you only had three choices. You went into your family business.

Which was typically a uh Small business. You would join a gigantic company like JP Morgan. guarantee or or proctor and gamble. Or you might find a local

Business in your city. That wasn't famous nationally, but basically had a local out of business. But those are the business opportunities. People didn't think about getting wealthy and I didn't aspire to make a lot of money. I didn't think it was realistic. So I really wanted to be in politics and be a lawyer to get into politics.

When did Ted Sorensen enter the picture and for those who don't recognize the name, as I didn't Who is Ted Swordson? You can tackle that in either direction. When John Kennedy was elected to the United States Senate. Nineteen fifty two. Uh, he started hiring new staffers. He had been in the House of Representatives from nineteen forty six on. He'd served three terms in the house.

And he was elected to the Senate. And um He started hiring some young people. He interviewed a young man who was then I think twenty Five or six named Ted Sorensen, who'd been first in his class at University of Nebraska Law School. Very smart person.

But didn't have roots in in Washington, D C, but he came there looking for a job. He had a choice between Scoop Jackson and a Senator from uh uh Washington State. where the new John Kennedy he decided Kennedy would Offer a greater career opportunity.

He became uh his Top advisor in many ways, but also his speechwriter, and later John Kenny would say his intellectual blood bank. And so John Kennedy's wonderful rhetoric, his great speeches, his His great writings, the Profiles Encourage.

Or to some extent written. with the great help of a man named Ted Sorensen. And so when Ted Sorensen stayed with John Kennedy when he elected president. He became his top

I would say advisor. On many different things, but principally his top speech writer. And so I admired a man who had written these brilliant words. And so at the time that I was getting ready to pr to leave the uh law school and go to law firms.

Um I decided I wanted to go to the firm in New York that he was at. In part because they had a lot of people in that firm, Paul Weiss. Had political backgrounds Adley Stevenson had been there. Arthur Goldberg had been there. Ramsey Clark had been there, T Sorence and many other

Prominent people were there. I thought it had the combination of what I wanted a lot of uh good legal training, but also people cared about politics and government. I thought if I work with Ted Swartz in a bit, he could help me ultimately get into government myself. Are some of the best and this is coming from someone who knows nothing about speed treading, especially uh from a political perspective.

Are many of the best speechwriters in politics extremely young? Is it like professional sports? Because I I'm I'm thinking of your description of Ted Sorensen. I'm thinking of John Favreau, the the speechwriter for Obama and not the director. Is that common to find uh that that that speech writers have their power zone in earlier years? Yes, for a number of reasons. Now mathematicians are generally said to peak at their you know, maybe at the age of thirty.

You don't uh find a lot of mathematicians doing great things at the age of sixty or so. And in the speech writing world, it requires a round the clock kind of dedication to writing because you're working for a senator or a governor or president, there are an infinite number of speeches you have to write. And it requires a a Pretty good work quotient, you know, when you're sixty or seventy, you probably can't work quite those hours that you can when you're in your twenties and thirties. Pulling on either.

Also Um, it's not a highly paid profession. It's not like you get equity in a in in in a private equity transaction. So you're not highly paid and therefore you tend to get people who are generally single. Uh or maybe newly married.

And people who are young, and that's what you see in all presidential uh staffs uh when when we look at their speech writing. Contingent. So yes, that's probably true. Uh, Ted Shorensen became the top speech writer thirty one. And then when John Kenny w died uh from assassination

I think Ted Sorens was then probably uh thirty four, thirty five. So you think about it. At the age of thirty four, thirty five, his whole career kind of Ended. in some respects. He then became made himself a a very good lawyer. He stayed with President Johnson for a while, but

But he was always known as the great speechwriter. in the you know actual blood bank for um For John Kennedy.

Intellectual blood bank. That's a term I'm gonna have to find a way to use at some point. Richard Nixon had said uh you know Richard Nixon who wasn't famous for those uh Those great uh speeches. And maybe you know, John Kenny deserves some credit for it. He was a a reasonably good writer himself. And he he he he aspired to be a writer had he not gone to politics, so I didn't want to make it sound like it's all sorts. And But

Richard Nixon once said to somebody If I had had Ted Sorensen. as my speechwriter, I could have given those great speeches and maybe I would have been elected president in nineteen sixty. Yeah. Yeah.

The secret weapon, weapon X. I've I've read a number of descriptions and also heard you describe Being told.

When you were practicing law. Some version of Hey pal, you're not really cut out for this. Maybe you should try something else. Did that Affect you? if I'm getting that that part of the story right. Or

W d did you just view it as a prerequisite intermediate step to politics and as such that that did not really affect you on any deep level? I've said that many times and it's somewhat tongue in cheek. I I was nobody was saying I was a Supreme Court clerk or gonna be the greatest lawyer of all time. I suspect had I stayed at Always I might have

work my way up maybe to becoming a partner. It took about seven or eight years to become a partner, but I might not have Um, in my class that started at Paul Weiss, we had about twenty four, twenty five people, I think only two. stayed long enough, or three, stayed long enough to be partner. So maybe I wouldn't have made it, but I would say I was an okay lawyer, but a great lawyer.

as a dedication that to the practice of law that maybe I didn't have. They have an attention to detail that maybe I didn't have. They have a relish or uh kind of having blinders on and just focusing on these narrow issues. And which is a very good skill.

And I was always interested in so many different things. I had more eclectic interests. So I'm not sure I would have been a great lawyer, but And I been a a reasonable lawyer and stayed. And I think the life A lawyer was all that great. You basically Or you know, had clients you weren't gonna

Make a lot of money as a lawyer relative to what you would make in business. You were um, you know, captive of the clients. And so I I really was interested not in practicing law and probably not living in New York at the time, so I really was interested in going to Washington. And getting involved in politics and maybe going to the White House.

Well well let's hop to the White House next, and this is always uh wobbly terrain for me because I unfortunately consider myself At least moderately. Politically Illiterate.

uninformed at the very best. Uh I'm trying to remedy that, but it's it's it's one baby step at a time. So how did you end up as I understand it the deputy domestic policy advisor under President Carter? How did you get there? Most people who get White House jobs uh tend to work in the campaign one way or the other and then know the candidate in one way or the other. Uh at a young age you have people who are in their twenties, three, four, five, six, seven, eight They're working in campaigns. Well my case. I got a job on Capitol Hill that Ted Shorensen helped me get.

The person I was working for, Senator Birch Bay, was running for president. I thought that was a two for I get to work on Capitol Hill. You might get to be president, so I could learn something about Congress, but I might get to work in the White House. He dropped out shortly after I joined his um Senate staff. And then an opportunity came to interview for the

Stay up. that was being assembled for the general election campaign. in nineteen seventy six for Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter had held had only one full time staff person. working on his policy staff.

And in those days I was Even then it was small and that person Ultimately it had to go out and hire Staff for the general election campaign. He came to Capitol Hill. interviewed some bright young Capitol Hill people. I got an interview

He hired me. I went to work down in Georgia. For three months of the general election, we won the election. My boss became the assistant to the president for domestic policy and I was one of his two deputies. So I got a job as his deputy and An office in the West Wing and

Here I am twenty seven, three years out of law school, and all of a sudden I'm uh making more than I would have been making in uh In in private practice, as it turns out, for some Strange reason. And then I'm you know, I got an office in the West Wing and I'm

running around on Air Force One and Marine One with the President of the United States. So Pretty heady stuff, I would say. Yeah. Would you describe yourself as qualified for that position, number one, and what does in any case what does

The first say month of being on that job. look like for you in terms of your priorities and how you're thinking about executing. I wasn't qualified by the traditional standards of of having a lot of experience. But you know, if you look at all White House staffs, they often are filled with at you know, the junior level.

With young people. These are people that work in campaigns and they get rewarded by working on the White House staff. Some of them turn out to be really great and some of them turn out to be less than great. And I knew a lot of people from the campaign, so I actually I was pretty conversant with the people who got the jobs in the White House. I even though I was not a Georgian. And I I was had not been involved with Jimmy Carter really, and I had not even met Jimmy Carter.

until about two weeks into the White House. I'd never met him in the campaign. So I uh you know, I it was a little unusual, yes. And was there a curriculum, so to speak, or a way of learning on the job. I'm just I'm I'm curious how someone who seems to be such a diligent student Uh in in all things, who has

what seems to be clearly uh an almost a deck memory. I mean you you have such a Incredible. ability to retain facts and figures and Two. then use them in speeches and fundraising and so on. W how did you approach learning the job of

Right. I would say the the first thing you mentioned is I can remember things pretty well and details the the things Ten, twenty, thirty years ago are things I read. Trying to find my keys from time to time can be a challenge. Particularly if I'm in my hand.

So you do find this bizarre that you You can't remember where you put your glasses, even though they might be on your forehead. But you can remember something that happened in thirteen twelve or something. I don't know. I don't know why the brain works that way. But to answer your quite specific question. Uh what what Jimmy Carter wanted to do was to To do everything at once.

He didn't really want to focus on one or two priorities, and people told him that was a mistake, but he said, Look Um as many presidents do. If you're so smart, how come I'm president of the United States and you're not? So many presidents say that. And so he basically thought, look, now's a chance to get things done that he wanted to get done. So we tried everything. So we have to have bills to Congress, we have to respond to things that Congress wants to do.

And so my job was to help my boss who was a domestic advisor who had known Carter For quite some time. And so he had really good insights as the Carter want on what Carter wanted. And we had a domestic policy staff, about forty people. And so my job is to help coordinate things with them. They had specialties in various areas. We had to worry about agriculture, housing.

energy, whatever it was. Since my job is to help coordinate Write some memos. And things like that. And then the ten meetings where these discussions are are being held. And it was a little

Yeah, Hetty when you're Your parents have not graduated from college or high school. And then one day they're walk they're standing on the south lawn because I invited them. And they see me walking out of uh the oval office with just Jimmy Carter and me and a secret service and we're getting on Marine One to go some trip. And so they were kind of saying, How this happened? Of course I'm saying that to myself, how did this happen?

But Lots of times in life people get jobs that they're not really that qualified for. And it wasn't that unusual. There were a lot of people who probably had less qualification than I did, and some had more qualification than I did. And That's just the way all White House staff tend to work.

We're gonna get to business, of course, uh to the finance world and so on. But but before we do, I'm curious, up to that point in time In retrospect. What were some of the best decisions that you made or investments of time? Up to that point in your career.

I mean you strike me as very least in in in many respects, in many facets of your life. quite methodical, thoughtful, analytical. So whether by design or by luck What were some of the Best decisions.

Th that you made. Up to that point. Decided not to drink alcohol. So I've never tasted alcohol. Um the club that I was in

The Lancers Club. Um I would say that uh the judge Probably didn't think. young men should be drinking alcohol and I just adopted that rule and that was probably a good thing. I didn't I I saved a lot of time and didn't get in any trouble.

And the same with other kinds of things like drugs or things like that. So kind of staying on the straight and narrow was probably helpful. Uh secondly being a hard worker, I generally had the view that if you worked hard it was better than if you didn't work hard, you're more likely to produce something and Get something done and so I

Can I make myself into a bit of a A hard worker. And admired people who had done that. As well. And so I also

Read a lot. I try to perfect three skills. A very simple ones. Learn how to write. I had a very good high school teacher and he taught me another in my class. how to write the King's English in a way that's comprehensible.

And so I like to write and I thought I was reasonably good at it. And so I was pretty good at writing memos or Things like that. Secondly Lear how to talk. You know, it you have to learn how to

communicate uh as well orally if you're gonna get somewhere in life. And I so I took advantage of every opportunity I could to learn how to speak by taking speaking engagements or just Watching people speak. or reading about people who have been great speakers and practicing the kind of things they had done. And then

Just reading Everything I could. Just reading just Reading every newspaper, every magazine article I could that was relevant to what I was doing. Soaking up as much information as I could. And so those kind of basic skills were helpful to me and

And ultimately, um, in the end, if you're willing to do all that and put the hours in, you can you can get somewhere in life. I've watched a number of talks that you've given, uh including uh uh one at Oxford from uh a handful of years ago, I think two thousand eighteen. Right. If you were teaching a freshman seminar on

You could pick either speaking well or writing well and understanding they're quite closely related in a lot of ways. How might you go about teaching? Either of those. Would there be any particular exercises or Principles that you would

Foot fours. Well, in like in anything, it's practice. So in in in writing uh writing as much as you can, writing m in my case memos or writing other things that people might read publicly, but just practicing writing, having somebody go over with you and Pointing out the mistakes and learning how to

Make sure you understand grammar and punctuation. Uh when Jimmy Carter was president He was obsessed with Proper punctuation and Grammar.

And so all of us were very careful. We we sent a memo to him. Uh, it had to be, you know, written extremely well because he was very careful about those kind of things. In terms of speaking, Worly. It's it's an important skill that I think

Many people don't practice as much as they should, but I in my case. I try to take advantage of all the opportunities I might get to speak somewhere and learn how to Speak in a way that works for for each person. Now if you watch that speech and I was in on I remember that event, I was invited to go to Oxford's

Oxford, I think it's called political union or Uh Think that's what it was called. And uh so I you know, I'd never been to Oxford, so I get there and And they say, Okay, well this is a great thing. Lots of famous people come here.

I said, Really, who was the speaker right before me? They said, Well, last week we had Monica Lewinsky. Said oh okay. So I you know, didn't know whether uh I should I was uh step up or step down I know in terms of attracting people she probably attracted a lot more people than I did. But if you saw that spec.

what I have tried over the years is develop a style that works for me, but may not work for other people. Which is to not read from a text. So if I give a commencement speech or any kind of speech these days. I I generally what I do is I write down the what I want to say. And so somebody might want a written text. Where I might outline it.

And then I try to commit it to memory. And I find when you're looking at an audience And you can look them in the eye, not looking up and down and up and down, up and down. You can be a more effective speaker. But you know, everybody can't do that style. Maybe people get nervous about not being able to remember

exactly what they were supposed to say. And my only view is it's not that hard if you practice it. So if you watch speeches I give Or interviews that I do, I don't use notes. My view is that I can commit most of it to memory and if I forget one or two things, nobody will really remember that.

I think it's easier to have a conversation that way. It's also easier to give a speech. that it is gonna be listened to as opposed to when you have your head buried down and you're just reading from a text. So the Oxford Union presentation portion was probably thirty to forty minutes and Uh you have a a very Action packed.

Word per minute rate. You do not dilly dally. So you get a lot in Probably you know hour hour to an hour and a half worth of material for a lot of other people. How do you commit that to memory? Is it reading it over and over again? Is it practicing it as a rehearsal? How do you what is your process? My process is if I'm going to give a speech and and it works Typically the kind of speech I gave at Oxford is a speech I've given before, so it's not that hard. A speech talking about my background and the things I'm working on or whatever it might be.

Um, so it's not that difficult to do. If I'm giving a commencement speech, you want to say something a little bit different. I do type trend tend to write it out. And then I try to take the the written thing and then I I'll say that I'll give it to the university if they wanna have a written record of what I was

You know, my my actual text. And then I'll commit the fifteen points that are the key ones and just kinda memorise the key points and I can do it because my brain works in a certain way. I remember after point one the logical thing is to have point two and after point two the logical thing would be go to point three. And so it's it's really not that hard.

Um I find that people who actually have notes in front of them Actually stumble more. Than people that don't have notes. Because when you're

Reading a from a page, sometimes you might misread something, you might mispronounce something, it's actually easier when you don't have notes in in in my in in many respects. So I have been surprised, honestly. Uh, sometimes people who are Gifted, gifted. Speakers.

Sometimes they they have notes in front of them and they're just better at reading a text than I guess I am. But sometimes I I've seen some really s famous uh lawyers and other people Who are great. political figures. They still feel uncomfortable in giving a speech without a a note.

They want to have it written down. And I understand that everybody has their own style, but that that's my style is to kinda look at the audience and talk to them. or look to the person you're interviewing and talk to him or her. And not use notes. It's it's not as hard as it sounds, honestly.

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How did you decide and when at what age did you decide Two Become an entrepreneur. Well, um

I didn't really decide at a young age I wanted to do that. I my goal in life was simply to work in the White House. And I thought, okay, I'm I go. I'm twenty seven years old. I'm at the White House. And um I thought that in the second term Carter would be reelected because most presidents get reelected. Most obviously we've seen the one that didn't get reelected recently, but most get reelected.

The ones that didn't in the twentieth century though were Gerald Ford. George Herbert Walker Bush and uh and Jimmy Carter. But they get reelected. My thought was Jimmy Carter's a really smart person. Ronald Reagan is very old. I thought how can he get you know he he can't get out of bed in the morning, he's sixty nine years old.

I'm now seventy one. So I I don't think it's quite as old as it used to. In fact, he looks kind of young now, sixty nine, how did he he was so young. But I thought, how could Carter lose? He's so smart. Yes, we had hostage problems, but we'll get the hostages out. Yes, we had inflation, but wasn't his fault. Yes, we had gas lines, but it wasn't his fault. So you there's a cognitive dissidence that works in the White House. Why can any

Place that has power, I guess. And basically your view is Anything that's bad information, it's because People don't know as much as you know. And if anybody knew as much as you know, they would make the same decisions you would make. And most presidents have that same view, which is they're making the decisions because they have the best information coming to them.

And then they make their decisions and then those decisions when they're implemented should work out. And if they don't, it's because they're not communicating properly, or people aren't understanding properly. So I thought Harder would ultimately be understood better. communicate better and he get reelected because he's running against an old man who was too conservative. When that didn't work out, I had to do what

you know, you may or may not have had to do in your life. Which is to re Calibrate my light. So all of a sudden people told me what a brilliant young man I was. I call them up and said, Okay, I'm I'm still brilliant. I'm ready to come work for your law firm. You wanted me to work for you when Carter was present. I didn't want to leave that now.

I'm ready to go to to work. And I hadn't planned on any of this before because I I had always thought Carter would be reelected and I would be in the second term maybe the senior domestic advisor. My boss might have become attorney general or something like that. So I would have risen up and And I done that.

Uh I probably would have been uh I had a different life because If I had spayed another four years for Carter I would have been old enough then, thirty-four, thirty five, to go get a great job practicing law in Washington, probably,'cause I would have been more well known. And then I would have settled into the convenient life and the easy life. Being a Washington lawyer lobbyist, you

And you have clients and you kind of influence pedal a little bit, maybe you practice a little bit law. You make some speeches, and then you go back into another administration, you go back and forth, and eventually someday you become a cabinet officer. If you're lucky. And that's probably what what I was destined to do. And my parents would have thought that was great and I would have thought it was great.

But what happened was I couldn't get a job practicing law so easily'cause I really wasn't qualified. Only practiced law for two years in New York. And nobody really wanted a Carter White House aid, so I all the famous law firms I interviewed with, none of them gave me an offer. And so I really had a struggle for about six months to get a law firm to hire me for any position, even a lowly position.

Finally a a mid sized law firm. either felt sorry for me or they took a chance they gave me a job but in a mid level position. I wasn't a partner or anything. And so I started doing it and I realized that I didn't like it. I wasn't that good at it. I didn't have a lot of contacts. I hadn't have specialty.

And I realise if you don't Love what you're doing, you can never be great at it. Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do. You have to love it. And so I as I would became eventually I became a partner in this law firm. But I realized every partner meeting was really just talking about how much money we're making or not making. And I realized it was really a business that it had been seen as a profession when I was in law school, but it's really a business. And I figured if I'm gonna be in business, I might as well be in a business that makes more money. And

I kind of switched a bit. I had never cared about money. But once I was out of government And I started to have a family and kids, I started caring about more money more. And so I said if I'm gonna be in the money making business, I might as well be in a more profitable business. And I

Right about Bill Simon who had started a uh buyout from in in New Jersey. Work very well. And that's when I decided I will try to start my own buyout firm in Washington, D C. So Bill Simon.

I think and uh please fact check me if I'm not getting this, but took one million two years later, had turned it into eighty million, something like that. So pretty good. Pretty good input output. For those who don't know, what does a buyout firm do? Okay.

In the early days when buyouts were done. What they were basically doing is they were taking a business that somebody didn't want a Like he bought Gibson greeting cards from RCA. or a family run business where there's nobody left in the family really wants to run it. And they were buying it using a lot of leverage.

Zen call to leverage buyout. And a lot of leveragment that you were basically putting in one to five percent of the purchase price In equity. Money that was at risk.

Theoretically. And then you're borrowing. You know Ninety five to ninety nine percent of the purchase price. So if you buy something that say

to make it understandable. uh let's say at five times the cash flow in other words the five times the cash flow, the free cash flow that comes off the earn uh off the company. You buy something for five times cash flow. You're levering it up.

Ninety five to five. If you make some fixes in the company and you improve it. in a couple of years you'll probably be earning a lot more and then you can sell the company or take it public. And make a pretty good profit. And the people that did this in the early days of the I have a buyout boom, let's say in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

They were making spectacular rates of return to put it in context for everybody who would understand it. Let's suppose you put your money in a bank account and those days you got a three or four percent rate of return on your bank deposit. Something like that. And maybe you put your money in the equity market equity fund, you got a six or seven percent rate of return. Well, in the the way these buyouts were working, people were getting twenty and thirty and forty percent r rates return.

So people, you know, said that that's a pretty good business. I'd like to invest in that business or work in that business. So a buyout is basically an effort to it fix a company, make it better. It's just different than venture capital where you're creating something. Brand new. But you're taking an older company and and managing it better than people did before. You're incenting the managers, giving them a piece of the equity. And their buyout boom boomed. In part because the first people that started venture capital and buyouts

Uh and this was so risky then that Venture capital was called adventure capital. It was so risky. They they went to their first backers and they said, you know what? This is risky business and we're gonna take a lot of risk here and it might not work out, but we wanna be rewarded if we really do something. So Don't just give us a one percent fee. Like we're managed we're an investment bank or something, we'd like

Let's say twenty percent of the profits. And the people said, Well, okay. twenty percent of the profits if they're profits, we get our money back. And you we get eighty percent of the profits, you get twenty percent, they agreed to that. And so that really fueled the whole industry because if you get twenty percent of the profits on a lot of money and you make

four or five to six times your money. You can make a fair amount of money as a person doing this kind of business. Were the buyouts at the time Effectively all leveraged

buyouts uh sort of in these kind of barbarians at the gate. Yes. Uh in Jar Nobisco. of that era were were were we were we talking in almost every case about Leveraged. Buyouts? Yeah. Yes.

Well the first days they were called bootstrap deals. You were bootstrapping yourself to bootstrapping yourself because you didn't have any money, you were basically borrowing all the money. They later became called leverage buyouts. But the word leverage became odious, so they went to management buyouts and finding it was friendly because some leverage buyouts were unfriendly. Then buyout became unfriendly.

Or became a word that wasn't so y like, so they went to private equity. And so now private equity probably isn't like the I haven't found a better name. But yes. In the early days, uh in the Bill Simon example, I think he put in a million dollars, he made eighty million dollars. I think he only had about a one percent of the equity in the deal.

The only put in one percent, they borrowed ninety nine percent. The banks in those days, for whatever reason, willing to let you do it. The regulators in those days weren't even focused on it because these deals were small. They weren't gonna affect the regulatory system that much because there weren't that many buyouts being done. Um in the R J R deal that you referred to, the Barbarians of the Gate, for those who don't know, that's a famous book. written about the R J R takeover done by KKR in nineteen eighty nine. McKayard did that deal. They beat out

Up other buyers. But they did the deal at uh with five percent equity and ninety five percent debt. And nobody at the time really thought that that leverage percentage was Was too high or too low. They thought it was okay, was consistent with what was normal then.

The way they structure the debt though had some problems like well But it was it was a lot of that so it worked it didn't really work out so well. Uh because of the way the debt was structured, but But had the um

deal worked out better if you have five percent of the equity and you control the whole company That five percent can make a lot of money. And so buyouts uh you know, we're tended to be really pro relatively profitable. And they incentive people to go into the business in part because

You got twenty percent of the profits and you know, twenty percent of somebody else's money can can be very profitable if you do a good deal where it makes two, three, four, or five times your money. I would love to dig into this a bit because I I rarely have conversations about either leverage buyouts or private equity on this show. Uh the listeners of the show who've listened for a long time are probably more familiar with venture capital, just because that's a world I was involved with for a long time. We've had investors like Mark Andreessen and Reed Hoffman and many others on the podcast. Which has

A Say a two and twenty or in some cases a three and thirty uh structure. The management fee, but then then the the the profit incentive. In the case of Assuming debt. Some of the examples that you gave. That sort of strikes

terror into my heart not understanding how these deals are are really structured, the subtleties of them. What are the threats and how do you or risks I should say and how do you mitigate the risks of things going sideways in in in those deals. In the early days of the buyout world

The people doing the deals were former investment bankers to some extent. So they were finance people. And they were borrowing ninety five percent of the purchase price. Well, that's a problem because um if the economy goes south then your your projections are probably gonna be off. You don't have a lot of margin.

Um, in the late nineteen eighties, around the time of the R J R deal. A lot of people were doing deals with five percent equity and then the economy went into a uh Recession. And there was a kind of a bubble burst.

And a lot of the deals went under. And so the biop industry reshaped itself. It basically Began doing deals. Where you were putting in twenty percent of the of it.

capital structure. And then thirty percent. Now it could be forty percent or so, or maybe sometimes it's even been fifty percent. And also the debt has been structured differently, so it's a little bit harder to default. Because they have covenants that are looser, let's say. on the default. But one of the major things that's changed

Is that today All the buyout firms have people in those firms who are not n so much former investment bankers But there are people that have worked in operational companies who have real management expertise. So as soon as you buy a company, You say, Okay, here's our hundred day plan or thirty day plan, we're gonna change the company dramatically.

by making these management improvements. Now in the early days of buyouts, these were are relatively novel kinds of things. Today they're well known. In fact public companies do the same things that private equity people do in many respects because the techniques are pretty well known. And so today I'd say the risk is much less. Because it the that often has it's harder to to default on it. You have so much more equity underneath it. You have people much more expert in how to run the how or see these companies.

Watching them. And so it they're it's much less risky. Now the returns are much less, too. The days of thirty percent and forty percent buyout returns are are very, very Yeah.

Because unless you get lucky on a deal Um it's unlikely you're gonna get Forty percent, fifty percent rate of return. Now that happens from time to time. you will see some deals from time to time, but generally people put their money in a fund And a fund does twenty or thirty deals.

Yeah, it'll probably in this day and age. I would say average in the mid teen net rate of returns. That's to say fifteen, sixteen percent annualized. Which is pretty good when interest rates are more or less at zero. Um, the old days people thought they could get twenty percent net internal rate return or even twenty five percent.

net internal rates of return. That those that's harder to do today because there's more competition. When I started Carlisle there were maybe two hundred and fifty buyout firms or investment firms of its type around the entire world. Today they're probably Oh.

I was I'd say six or seven thousand. So it's just more competition uh prices have been driven up. I would also people often ask me, where did the fr how did they get twenty percent? Who came up with that? And why is it called a carried interest? And let me explain. Um the first twenty percent really in the modern age was the first hedge fund was done

Pretty much after World War Two. And the first person who built the hedge fund, he asked for twenty percent of the profits. It's not clear why he asked for twenty percent. But the investors agree. The first venture capitalists, again, I said earlier, the adventure capitalists.

They they kind of ask for twenty percent as well and they're they're investors. Uh I said okay. Nobody knows exactly why they people ask for twenty percent now versus twenty five or ten percent. But it's it I analogize it to The the days and the week.

It kinda seems like five days of working works and two days of rest, five and two out of the seven. That seems to be normal around the World. As a way to kind of uh modulate the amount of time you have to work and so forth.

Well eighty twenty seemed like For most investors a fair way to split. Profits. We get eighty percent of our profits back, we get our capital back, and we'll give you guys who work very hard twenty percent.

In the old days in the Middle Ages, the Venetian ship owners used to send Empty ships. To Asia to bring back spices. And the people that worked on the ships would get a piece of the profits. They would carry

They would have a carried interest. They have an interest in what they carried back from Asia. So if you carry back a lot of spices from Asia, you have an interest in it. It's called your carried interest. And it was Twenty percent. So maybe it came from there. Who knows? But in any event, um that that's where the phrase probably came from and And twenty percent seems relatively normal. But as you point out, in the venture world

The best venture people today are probably getting thirty percent returns thirty percent. Carried interest. And sometimes now people in the buyout world in order to attract more capital or do things uh differently they might take a slightly lower than twenty percent return.

twenty percent carry interest, slightly lower. carried interest on spices. That is a fantastic story. Hope that's the yeah the etymology. If we look at a a lot of the the current day norms. Or we could just look at recent norms. Those could be Different instruments like convertible debt in early stage venture capital deals, just because I'm more familiar with that world, different types of standardized documents that are used by places like Y Combinator and so on. These were all innovations at some point that really rocked the boat or changed things, even though they're viewed as quite normal now. What were some of the

Not just what were they, but how did you And possibly a partner's arrive at some of the innovations that that drove the success of the Carlisle group. Well, as John Kennedy said, uh victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. So I'll tell you some of the things we think that were that were successful.

But a lot of people now take credit for it. Um, at the time we thought we were novel. Let me give you an example. In the private equity world, when the KKR for R J R was done in nineteen eighty nine. I think KKR had about seven investment professionals.

They were a very small firm, but The the firms were very small then. And one of the reasons the firms were small is that you were only allowed in those days to have one fun. So if you raise the buy off firm and you were KKR Uh or some equ equivalent firm.

uh you had to spend a hundred percent of your time managing that fund. Which makes sense if people gave you money. I I came up with an idea which I thought was novel at the time. Now maybe people other people said they did the same thing. I don't know, but I it seemed it seemed to me that after we raise our Small buyout fund at Carl Alman. Um

I said to my partners, you are the investment professionals. You know how to invest the money. I'm really not an MBA. When my skill set is I know how to go out and raise the money And I I'm pretty good at recruiting people. So here's what I have up.

Might. Let's build a fidelity or T ro price of private equity, which is to say not have one buyout fund, but have a buyout fund, a venture fund, a growth fund. real estate fund and basically take our brand name And as Fidelity had done

And as T Row Price and Don and Vanguard have many different funds and therefore institutionalize Our brand name, institutionalized our business by centralizing fundraising, accounting, tax, and everything in one place, let's say our headquarters in Washington, and then we have multiple funds. And the theory is, if you liked us in buyouts, give us a chance in venture capital. If you like us in buyouts in venture capital, give us a chance in something else. And that more or less worked and we built that an institutional business. And the second idea was to globalize it. When KKR did this R J R deal Everybody did deals in their own country.

But extent that that Deals were done in Asia, they were all minority stake transactions, but they were buyouts in Europe. They were basically done by Europeans, Americans had American deals. And Latin Americans did Latin deals to the extent they were doing them. I said, why don't we go and recruit a European team, an Asian team, a Japanese team, Middle East team. African team, Latin American team, and then have our own

people that we control they work for the firm, but we're doing global. So we basically built an institutional firm And global firm and that was the novelty. of it. And I became known as a a well known fundraiser because as we're raising all these funds, I had to be the person running around the world

So I you know, I would travel an enormous amount of of time to to raise the money for these funds. Did you start with that end in mind in some sense? You've you've been described as a virtuoso of private fundraising. Were you thinking about in your mind's eye, how to differentiate Carlisle in fundraising and then building the product

Around that in a sense with the Multi geography approach, multi product. Like you said, sort of fidelity type approach. Did that come from your strength as a fundraiser and thinking about how you would be most effectively able to pitch this? Well, well to some extent. I mean I don't wanna pat myself on the back, but I realize that I Once I raised the fund and I wasn't I was on the investment committee, so I still am, but I'm not

Day to day doing the deals. Um so I would say well I have time I could go out and raise another fund. I could recruit people for a fun and then I

run a fund and let me go raise money around them and then my partners can oversee the investments. So I I did think that that was something that that I could do. And it worked out and And so I built a large in house fundraising team. Historically, when you were raising a fund firms would use third party people to raise the the funds for them.

Because nobody really wanted to be a fundraiser. Um, you know, people who were doing deals, that was the high part of the food chain doing a deal, you're a private equity investor. that the low point of the food chain was being the fundraiser'cause nobody really wanted to go out And he asked for money, it's unpleasant, people thought.

And just not seemly. But I didn't have anything else that better that I could add to the firm. So I said, All right, I'll go out and recruit the people. And then I'll raise the money and I was willing to do that. One other innovation we came up with for which we got criticized

But it maybe helped us as well, and others have now used it. Because we're in Washington, D C We had a lot of former government people who were leaving the government and they Sometimes they didn't really you know, want to go practice law or they weren't lawyers. So we recruited Frank Carlucci, who's leaving the Reagan administration as Secretary of Defense.

And four years later we recruited uh Jim Baker, former secretary of state. And when these people joined our firm and we brought in other people like Arthur Levitt, the former head of the SEC. Dick Garmin, the former head of O and B. George Herbert Walker Bush is an advisor. We became very well known because we had these famous people. Now they weren't

Doing deals. But you know, if you were invited to a dinner with David Rubenstein in those days, you wouldn't show up. If you're writing to a dinner with Jim Baker, you'd probably show up. So that was it was really a uh uh not a on original idea of inviting people

uh to a dinner or an event where there's a draw. That's obviously something that a lot of people have used for many times. We we did that. And then eventually it it kinda backfired us on us a bit because We had so many ex government people, people thought we were uh lobbying the government or doing inappropriate things. We weren't doing that, but it backfired a bit when because when George W. Bush became president, And his And the war in Iraq went went south.

uh we were for whatever reason blamed for it. And so people thought, well, you know, the father's uh connected to the firm and Jim Baker's in the firm, he's close to Bush. So we we basically had to change our image a bit and I I recruited Lou Gerstner then the sixty, which seems very young today, to retire.

Hey, he retired from IBM at sixty and I uh recruited him to be the chairman of Carlisle and then the the government people Kind of uh retired. When That all went down.

With respect to the uh Iraq war. And How did that affect you? If it did. You just you seem, at least from a lot of the reading, to be very unflappable. Did it have a significant

impact on you? Or did you take it stoically and You know, keep calm, carry on. How did that Experience. Uh sort of travel through you if that makes any sense. Well it wasn't uh it was not a highlight of my life because uh you know, one day you're doing private equity deals

And you think you're doing a reasonably good job at it for your investors, and all of a sudden People are attacking you as being the people behind the Iraq war, which we have nothing to do with. So um wasn't a pleasant experience and our image I think was hurt. So we

looked at what we had to do and what we had to do was kinda decouple oursel from the people who were not responsible for it either, but just having an association with political people. Probably. engendered more criticism than probably worth.

And so all those people volunteer to kind of retire from the firm and then we brought in Lou Gersner as I mentioned, and we try to depoliticize our image. And so um you know, I would say it's Was a painful experience, but

You know, lots of things in life are painful. You live through'em, you do the best you can. If we come back to your reputation as a a virtuoso of fundraising. What mistakes do you think novice fundraisers make? What are some of the more common mistakes that you've seen in your career. Well, in the fundraising world there are three types of fundraising.

Basically There's political fundraising. There's philanthropic and there's business. In many ways. Business is the easier of them.

Because you're offering people a rate of return. And and therefore They're gonna theoretically gonna get their money back and plus get more money. Um, philanthropic is more challenging because you're asking people to do something for the good of the country or the good of the the organization.

And it's more ephemeral as to what the benefit is in political, the amounts are relatively smaller, so probably not as challenging. But In the mistakes that I see people make are number one They say, I'm sorry to ask you for money.

Well, if you're sorry, don't do it. If you want you want people to give you money, you should tell'em why they should give it to you. You should know what you're talking about. You should have as much information at your fingertips. You shouldn't have to keep saying, I'll get back to you, I'll get back to you. You should know the information

yourself or have somebody with you. Who can do it? You should always be uh polite and appropriately so. Uh not arrogant. You should give people a chance to think about it.

You should give people a follow up. note or card after the meeting is over. And then appropriate time follow up and see what what's done. And then keep them informed all the time. about how the the investment they might have made is doing.

You shouldn't raise money from people. And then not talk to them again until you're ready to raise another fund. Obviously Even if you treat people not as well as you should, if the returns are spectacular, people will probably reinvest with you, but returns are probably going to be in the median. And therefore not so spectacular that people will give you money no matter what you do. So

treating people appropriately is good, but knowing what you're doing In the old days it used to be important to show up. It was the kind of thing where if you really cared for me and you want my money Show up and show you care. Now in the era of Zoom.

You can't show up. And so it turns out it's a lot easier to raise money today if you have an established fund 'Cause you have a track record, people already know you. It's a lot harder to raise money if you're doing it for a first time because people really can't meet with you. And if they can't meet with you, they probably have a better excuse not to invest with you. But in the end, it's not anything more challenging than

doing the kind of things you would want people to do, which is give you information, be transparent, be honest. Give bad news up front. Uh interestingly, if you go to Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School or any other good business school, Wharton, the University of Chicago, are all very good places. And you say, You know what, I wanna be a fundraiser.

I don't want to be a manager. I don't wanna be an investor. I don't wanna be anything, I wanna be a fundraiser. I don't think you'll probably find a lot of fundraising courses, or maybe none. because people don't view it as a skill set.

that's worth intellectual Time. But I do think that People who actually know something about fundraising. I'm not looking for a job, but people know some of that fundraising.

Should probably You know. uh teach what it takes to to to ask for money. For example, you've been in the business world. And You would know that

Your experience is like mine. If I go to uh an audience, any o any audience, and I say, How many people in the last month I've been asked for money. or philanthropic political or um business thing and half the people will probably raise their hand. And I say how many people have asked other people, not been asked, but asked. The other half will raise their hands in other words.

Everybody is asking people for money or being asked. It's a very common thing in society. But it isn't treated as an intellectual kind of like difficult thing and therefore you don't tend to get courses in it. There are very few books written about you know, private equity fundraising or things like that. But anyway.

So in the So the embryonic stages of the Carl group. Two Questions. Did you have a placeholder name before it was called

The Carlis Group. And second. What did that initial You now have Approximately two hundred and thirty billion under management. What were you trying to raise then? If you look at the original business plan for Apple

Microsoft Amazon or any great company, and I wouldn't say we're in that league. You will see that the original business plan probably bore little relation to the company that they actually turned out to be because the world changes and so forth. Remember, Jeff Bezos was only going to sell books. That was his plan.

He didn't really think about doing anything else, so Much later. Or at least a few years later. In our case, we originally decided to have Uh name that would be.

one of the usual Greek and Roman names that you can role, you know, that you're named after Roman or Greek goddesses, but All the ones we looked at were either taken or we couldn't pronounce'em. So then we came up with Thing that says. Uh, how about why don't we just say what we are?

Washington. International Finance and Investment Corporation. But people pointed out that didn't exactly roll off one's tongue. It was too long. And so And one of my partners said, Well, what about Carlisle? Because he had read a book about uh the man named Andre Myer.

who was the then running Lazard Freyer. Carlisle Hotel in New York. And had a uh he was not married and he had a nice lifestyle. I guess my friend

Uh partner. At the time aspire to live. in the Carlisle Hotel and a and have a kind of a single man's lifestyle in the in the Carlow Hotel. And it you know, it seemed like a a good, easily pronounceable name.

It sounded a little British and therefore Maybe it sounded like we had some, you know, class behind us and so We went with it.

And uh what was the initial target fundraise? How much money were you aiming to raise? Well, we originally wanted to raise five million dollars. Not five billion, but five million. And so a friend of mine, uh, who is now in the firm helped us get it done. We raised it from four investors, one a West Coast Bank. Uh, one was T Row Price, one was Alex Brown.

And the other was the Mellon family out of uh Pennsylvania. And ultimately uh they put up the five million dollars. And then after about a year or so The Mellon family bought the others out and so they were became our main partner. Let's double click on that because you've mentioned it was hard to get a job. You were calling these people who had expressed all of this

hot interest in you when you were A player at the White House and then no return calls. What were some of the key decisions or factors that allowed you to raise That money.

Well the five million was really raised because Um the person who was helping us was a man from T Row Price. Um and he was a friend of mine. He helped us and he's his name is Ed Mathias and he he uh ultimately became part of our firm later on. But he basically had a really good network.

And again, five million dollars isn't that much. It was two million to operate the firm and three million dollars to invest. We were gonna each time we had a deal, we would raise money on a deal by deal basis. That was the theory. It was a little challenging to do that from time to time. But so it wasn't that much money, uh, obviously. And our first fund

We ultimately went out to raise a fund at one point after a couple of years and we raised a hundred million dollars. And so that was all we could raise. Our second fund was about a billion or so, but that was because we had invested a lot of money alongside the hundred million dollar fund co-invested it, and our track record was good. If you have a good track record, you can raise an infinite amount of money. if you're, you know, do reasonable things to ask people for money. If you have a bad track record, you know, no matter how polite you ask, it may not make much difference.

When you say good track record, could you give people an idea of what that track record looked like? Yes, we uh in our first couple of deals we we were making maybe two, three, four times our money on some of the early deals, and that was pretty good. They were small deals. And they weren't you know, gigantic deals, but they were good enough to give people a sense that yeah, we probably knew what we were doing and we were okay.

And I think people uh will really take a chance on us, but It's a concentric circle. First you raise money from your friends And your relatives. Then you raise money from people you might know in your city. And you state.

Then your you know, region. Then you know, the country than other countries. And so you just kind of work your way around the world. Eventually. Uh I learned

that no matter where you go in the world, there are always people that basically have been educated in investments. And in business and they Talk the same language, e bata. Ash flow multiples, PE ratios. know, carried interest. They all had a sense of what you're talking about.

In the end they they generally you find when you peel the onion you find if somebody in any organization It really the person that knows something about what you're talking about and they won't be the one that probably makes The session. What did you do differently?

from other Fundraisers. If you had to pick one or two things. You know, looking back, what did you do differently? I mean you were clearly A top performer. within that skill set.

Uh what did you do different, would you say? Well, uh for one, it was novel to have a big in house fundraising team at that time. Now it's fairly common for large firms, but it In the old days, I was saying earlier, If you were raising a fund you're probably only raising one fund a year or every couple of years. So you would go out and hire

uh Merrill Lynch or Lazard Freyer or somebody that had a full time team that did nothing but raise money. I built an in house team. That was unusual. And it was all around the world. And I heavily incented them. They were heavily uh rewarded for doing well. So we were paying our fundraisers

probably more than the market would dictate we had to. And as a result we got very good people and we retained very good people. And then I was willing to uh Slep around the world.

Go anywhere. See anybody do anything to kind of help make the case. And so since I was a founder of the firm I was willing to run around the world. you know, I could see a lot of people and people kind of respected the fact that I would show up in

you know, places that many people didn't show up in. Very often. If you're open to saying a little bit more about compensation, I'd be very curious to know how you ultimately, at least at that point in time, ended up Incentivising. Your

Fundraisers. Well fundraisers tend to get compensated in any business uh world or any s salesmen as generally you can call them fundraisers here. Salesmen generally get compensated as a percentage of the revenue they bring in.

Or some percentage of of something. And so we we had a kind of percentage That we would pay people. And if they had a spectacular year, we wouldn't say, Well, you're making too much money this year. So we'll we'll cut the percentage or we won't give you as much as you're entitled to. So we've been honor our commitments. Now

Th therefore we we our fundraisers were very highly compensated. I In hindsight. We could have changed the way we structured it and now we've got a system that's a little bit more Complicated in terms of We say well you get compensated more if it's a harder

fund to raise, compensate less if it's an easier fund to raise, so forth and so on. But I at the time to get it Going, I was Not interested in that nuance. I just wanted to get into the market, get the money raised.

And so we probably were more generous than than maybe other people. You mentioned a name earlier. That I know. Uh is featured in your book, How to Lead. wisdom from the world's greatest CEOs, founders, and game changers, and that is Jeff Bezos.

Right. Yeah, the implicit in the in the title, How to Lead, is is that one can learn At least how to be a better leader and you have a tremendous list of names of those you've interviewed Jeff Bezos, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Phil Knight, Oprah, and so on. What are

Some of the Deepest impressions. That have been made on you from your time with Jeff Bezos. What are what are the sort of learnable or emulatable? Aspects.

Of the M. Well, Jeff is a very smart person. Very hard working. My interview He pointed out some of his tricks.

Which I wish I'd known, which was getting eight hours of sleep every night, I'd you know, I could have gotten more sleep over the last, you know, thirty years if I realized that was the key. Doesn't make decisions before ten in the morning. doesn't really make decisions late in the afternoon, tries to make only a limited number of big decisions. In a week or so.

So he's very creative and very smart. Um, I first met him after our company helped him get in the business because when he was selling books over the internet, that was his plan, he had to get a bibliography of books in print. And our one of our companies had such a bibliography. And we rented it to him. Later I realized that probably we should have taken his original deal, which was the

I think it was twenty or thirty percent of the stock of his new company. Amazon. uh in return for rent renting the bibliography, but we said no, we wanted cash So that was probably a mistake. But we I went out to see him. first time and said I'd I'd rather have that twenty percent or thirty percent.

You said, Well, David, that was two years ago. I don't need you so much anymore, but you were very helpful and he did give us some stock. And that stock. was probably maybe one percent of the company, which today is worth what, you know twenty billion dollars or something like that. So um I probably should have held on to the stock, but we sold it pretty quickly.

Any other Tricks. Or mental frameworks, anything that really stand out for you.

From Jeff. From Jeff. Well, Jeff is a person that has uh Like a lot of very Successful business people, a lot of self confidence.

He's got a pretty good sense of humor. If you read the interview, you can see that he can laugh at himself. Any uh has pretty good uh insights as to what works and doesn't work. He as he said, intuition is what he really relies on, his gut. Um, if he relied on consultants, he probably never would have started the company.

So I would say uh Jeff is uh is an easy guy to get along with in many respects. And if you think about it, He's now the richest man in the world. And I'd say up until maybe a couple of days ago, the second richest was Bill Gates. If you think about it, when you're the richest person in the world, it can tend to be

Isolating. Many people been the richest people in the world have tended to isolate themselves. J. Paul Getty was relatively reclusive. Howard Hughes was extremely reclusive. Daniel Ludwig, who maybe was the first billionaire in the United States, was relatively reclusive.

Uh now you have these multi billionaires, these centa billionaires And they are accessible. I mean, you know, they're not walking around the street like everybody else, but they Now they go to meetings and they You know, you can get meetings with them, you can do interviews of them, then

You know, it's a much different phenomenon than you saw years ago. Think Jeff is like Person that's It's built an incredible company. When you think about it, the company didn't start, I think, till nineteen ninety four. And now the company's got a million employees and

Market cap of about two trillion dollars. It's just staggering what he's built in a relatively short period of time. Yeah, the annual letters also are just fantastic. There are for people listening PDFs of the collected annual letters to shareholders and they make for a really Really good read. Just a little Easter egg for people if they haven't run into it. Uh if you go to relentless.com, that will redirect to Amazon.com. That was an initial pet URL from Jeff Bezos. Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

What struck you or stayed with you most from your time with her. Uh her passing at a tremendous Well her life certainly had a tremendous impact on on countless Countless millions and her death had a a huge impact on a lot of people close to me also. about her to you.

Well, she was very diminutive. I've interviewed her a few times. One time was in the book. For the book. I done that did that at the ninety second street Y in New York. Um very small. If she weighed a hundred pounds, I'd be surprised. Uh ninety pounds of that was probably her brain. Brilliant person, first in her class at Harvard Law School, first in her class at Columbia Law School at a time when women were barely admitted to law schools.

And she couldn't get a job. But it's it's complicated person to interview in some respects because When you interview her. You she would not respond right away. In other words, if you ask me a question within

You know, a mini mini second I'm gonna give you an answer. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. And that's what most people do. She would sit there for like twenty seconds and you'd say, Uh oh. Am I

Is she having a senior moment? Is there a health problem? She can't hear that well. Did I say something wrong? But no, that apparently she did that her whole life. She actually had this incredible habit of thinking before she talked. Imagine that.

Thinking before you talk. And so she would think very carefully what she wanna say, and then she would say it. So a lot of times uh people were put off by that, but I wasn't. I got to know her reasonab well because as a chair of the Kennedy Center, she would come relatively frequently to see operas And um and she you know get the gigantic standing ovation. So I realized after a while

I have to be careful because every time I would announce she was there, it would be a twenty minute standing ovation. And you know, presidents of the United States to get two minute standing ovation. She would get twenty minutes. So we had to kind of Calibrate the times we'd introduce her because we knew it would set things back by twenty minutes, but she deserved it because she it really uh represented women in a time when women weren't really being represented for gender equality and she re revolutionized

And really created the gender equality law. That we now have. And uh and then as a member of the Supreme Court for More than twenty years she really helped. Write some historic opinions.

You've interviewed and certainly have met. Many iconic figures, the names that we've mentioned. Known to millions. Does anyone Pop to mind. Anyone you've spent time with who is

An extraordinary Leader. Who's perhaps lesser known. They could be well known within a niche. Or within a uh

A particular industry, but just is in terms of broad mainstream awareness, perhaps are not as well known as some of the names that we've mentioned. Well, there there are always people that uh you interview who are not as well known as I think they should be. They've done great things, but they're in a narrow niche or something, but Let me before I respond to that in detail, I would say that I as somebody that does interviewing yourself, you've done I don't know how many podcasts is it five hundred or a thousand or something? About five hundred.

Right, five hundred. It's an interesting format when you think about it. Why don't we have any interview transcripts of Julius Caesar. William Shakespeare.

Charlemagne, Alexander the Great. Henry the eighth. Abraham Lincoln. Well this format of interviewing people for information and to some extent entertainment is a relatively new phenomenon in the grand scheme of intellectual development and civilization.

Yeah, obviously lawyers uh depose people. And that's happens in court. But as a way to kinda learn Reading an interview and listening to an interview and being interviewed is a relatively new phenomenon. I kind of attributed going back to maybe the the early days of the of the ch tonight show.

In the nineteen fifties when people went on television, they were interviewed. And people thought it was not only interesting, but entertaining. And as you know, presumably podcasts and other things are now. And I just wish I had a chance to go back and interview some of these people. Yeah, think about it. If we had an interview of of George Washington, interview of Abraham Lincoln.

interview of Henry the eighth, you know, you could say to Henry eighth, why Why don't you just get a prenup and not And not uh you know. Or Alexander the Great, couldn't you have attached a little more modest name to your

Yourself rather than the great. I mean just It'd been fun to interview people like that. In terms of your specific question I interview a lot of historians for programs that I have. uh history programs and They have incredible stories to tell.

They themselves are not as famous as the the people they're writing about many ways, but they know the person so well that they can you feel like you're talking to the person. So When you talk to Robert Carrow, who's spent thirty five years of his life working on Lyndon Johnson, you feel like you're you're talking to Lyndon Johnson.

Or when you talk to Darish Kearns Goodwin, you feel like you're you can you're you really understand Lincoln. Or are the other people she's written about, the FDR or so many other people. I often like to interview. writers as well, because they can do a terrific job of Explaining things in ways that you didn't really understand.

Four. You mentioned Robert Carrow. And LBJ uh also The author. As I as I know you know of the power broker.

And Uh when you establish the the Carl group. Up you you established it in Washington, D C instead of on Wall Street. And I would love to and this is just my personal curiosity, talk about Your perception of power in Politics because I'm familiar with

Money as a currency. In the world of business and investing. I'm familiar with say status within the world of research and academia. The fl different flavors or species of political power though are not A uh it's a native language of mine. I really haven't had much exposure. When you spend time in a nexus of political power like Washington, DC What are the the different forms? that it takes. Because there are certainly many

benevolent drives among those who are forming policy and then there there seems to be also I mean a drive to power. And I'd I'd just love to hear given the amount of time you've spent What your experience of and perception is of Of power.

Well, throughout history some people have liked to have power. Because it gives them a sense of control over their lives and the lives of others, makes them feel more important. It makes them feel maybe they can accomplish something. It Just the thrill of having power isn't enough for them. They want to actually accomplish something with the power. And it's uh intoxicating in many ways, as Henry Kissinger famously said.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. In Washington, DC You could be a wealthy billionaire. Or multi billionaire. And try to meet with a senator.

or Congressman or Cabinet Officer. And they may not care how wealthy you are because If you don't have power in Washington You're a dead person. So

Now people in Washington care more about who the chairman of the Ways Who Means Committee is. And who is the uh You know, the the CEO of a major company. People uh in Washington They care about who's got a

important job in the White House. More than they care about who's starting the S vent venture capital fund that's gonna be a a terrific venture capital fund. So Washington is a place where Power really is the ultimate Hard.

And that means something to people. And it's interesting when you don't have the power, you're you know, you you're out hailing a cab with everybody else. But when you have the power. You can get almost anything done and you want in Washington. That's what people in Washington have as their currency, the coin of the realm here is having power.

And money isn't as important in Washington. as it is in virtually every other city. You've studied history. You've studied the historians who write history. And uh Yeah, I've spent a lot of time certainly restoring, preserving, highlighting, re highlighting.

history in many, many different ways through your philanthropy. If you look back as someone who I I believe as as you mentioned aims to read a hundred or so books per year. If you had to pick up You know, one or two books that really highlight Power of the White Hat variety, meaning the

The use and wielding of power for the forces of light. Sounds very grandiose, but I think you get the idea. And then uh you know, one or two that exemplify the opposite. You know, someone who is perhaps overly intoxicated, that fell into a delirium or just was otherwise wielding it in more of a black hat manner. Do any books, biographies or otherwise come to mind?

For either of those? Well, um I there's a new book out that I've interviewed the authors on, uh Peter Baker and uh Susan Glasser about Jim Baker. who was the ultimate gold standard as White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan and then the Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of State. It's basically

I wouldn't say it's completely favorable, but it's pretty favorable. But what he did. It has some of his warts in there, as we all have warts. He was a partner in our firm for a number of years, so I know him quite well. It's a really good read on On power in Washington, DC, because for twelve years.

He had incredible amount of power. I think the uh The book that uh won the Pulitzer Prize for Robert Carrow Was the book on Lyndon Johnson in the Senate. And that is the

Best book about What it's like to have legislative power. A terrific read. I'd say Presidential

Books, the ones that I Like her I think uh Ted Sorensen's book on uh On Kennedy was a great look inside the Kennedy White House from an insider.

A terrific book. Arthur Slessinger wrote a Really good book as well about the the Kennedy uh administration though. Those books were written before we have a lot of information that we now have. We they didn't really have then. I'd say most presidents have Biographies.

That are pretty flattering. There's another one out now that's not completely flattering one, my former boss, Jimmy Carter, by Jonathan Alter. A very good book and really the first f full length biography of Jimmy Carter that has the good and the bad in there. People tend not to write books about presidents. That say how terrible they are. Um

Obviously books about Andrew Johnson are not gonna be that favorable or James Buchanan are not that favorable. probably Warren Harding are not that favorable. But generally the people who write books If they're writing them, they're generally you have to live with somebody for three, four, five years to do that. You generally

gonna do it if you find reasonably good things about a person to say. You generally don't want to spend three or four or five years of your life writing a book about somebody you actually hate. So you don't usually get terrible books about people. They they do point out their warts. Autobiographies written by presidents

tend to be in a fairly unique category because they're not gonna say how terrible they are. They don't usually put out all of their insecurities or so forth. But some people have written really good books. uh who are presidents and It it you know, it's it's a genre that uh I think is not one where you you get a lot of political prizes.

from people who've written presidential autobiographies, but Uh the new one by uh Barack Obama. I haven't read yet, but I I hear it's pretty very well written because he's a very good writer. But it's only one of the two volumes, so it's not complete yet.

Do you read any fiction or is it entirely nonfiction? That's a good question. I do not read fiction. We all have our failings in life. We all have our weaknesses. But I my theory is that I'd like to get as much information as I can. And so more factual information is probably in

nonfiction than fiction books. So I recognize a lot of research is done for good fiction books. And I tend to read books that I know something about. So I to read a hundred books a year, And are meaningful books. You've gotta have a system and to do it uh one of the ways I get done to get it done is I'm interviewing authors all the time. And so I have to read the book. So I kind of force myself to do it, but I also I'm reading books about things I know pretty well.

So history Business. Um philanthropy. Or politics, things I know reasonably well.

So you know, I've read you know when I read the twenty third book on John Kennedy. You know, at that point I I know it pretty pretty well. So it's not that hard for me to get through it. If I had to read a physics textbook or a chemistry textbook It would take me about a ten years to probably get through it. So to read a lot of books, I'm reading things on things I know reasonably well and can absorb it pretty quickly.

And and and I can get through them. Pretty pretty readily. How do you choose those books? I mean, even though you're reading a hundred books, let's just call it per year. I know that you feel like you're in, as we all are, a race against time. You know, you're not you know, we're all in the process of sort of trending towards extinction, personal extinction. How do you choose your books, right? Because some people listening might hear a twenty third book and that might be an exaggeration, but I know you've you've read a lot of books that overlap. How do you choose the books that you dedicate time to? And

And do you ever quit books? Do you ever stop? When you're part way through. Um, I generally when I realize I'm reading a book that isn't that well written Or not as good as I thought. I might just skip to the chapters that I think I really care about. So sometimes I I generally don't like to do that, but I generally

You'll That sometimes books are not as great. I I won't mention some that I've read recently where I said, Why did I pick this book? I'm going to interview this author in this book. I can't even get through this book. It's just not You know, I mean English is, you know, not the person's native language. I I suspect I can't believe this book. But you know, I never will tell anybody that. I do think it's a courtesy to read the book if you're interviewing the author, so I try to do that. That's a way of force feed.

Myself a bit. And I I don't have any disrespect for fiction. I just tend not to be as a big a fiction reader as I probably should have been or I was when I was younger. But in in in terms of the way I picked the books as I I love to go to bookstores and

Haress. The books. Pick'em up, look at'em. You know, figure out what's what what might be appealing. Secondly Um, I read the book reviews of you know New York Times and other places to see what's coming out there.

And then I'm now in the In the category of People sometimes send me books. Friends of mine. or writing books all the time. And so I get a lot of those books. And then people think I might be a good for a blurb

So people send me books that they want me to put a blurb on or Say something about it. And uh in generally in in subjects I know something about, people tend to send me books so I I you know just do it that way, but What I wanted to comment about the books, though, is this this is very important to me. Um, I I care about books because it opened a new world for me.

And that's why I love reading because I can learn so much. And you you know, I'm I get wherever I got in life, I got through Education. And by education I mean Learning continuously. I'm I give a commencement speech. I like to tell students look the word commencement begins means beginning, not the end.

So don't think you're educated, you're just beginning. And I I remind people that Uh thirty percent of Americans who graduate from college never read another book in their life. Fifty percent of Americans have not bought a new book. in a bookstore or ordered a book online in the last five years, fifty percent.

And so that's called a literacy. You can read, but you choose not to. And I think reading books is better than reading newspaper articles or Or magazine articles, which I read enormous amount as well, but books focus the mind. It takes, you know, many hours to get through a book, and therefore it has a certain concentration skill. Which is useful. The other problem, which is even more serious, is illiteracy. It turns out that fourteen percent of Americans are functionally illiterate. They can't read past the fourth grade level.

And I don't mean that they they came from from a Spanish speaking country and they they can read Spanish, not English. I don't mean that. I mean they can't read it in Spanish either. And it's a sad situation. Uh eighty percent of the people in the juvenile delinquency system are functionally illiterate, and two thirds of the people in our federal prison system are functionally illiterate. That is one of the greatest causes of income inequality that people can't read. If you can't read, you're not going to get very far in life.

In my view. So I I really try to urge people and I've set up a lot of literacy kind of things to kind of encourage people to do more, but obviously I'm a drop in the bucket compared to what uh what is need necessary. What do you consider some of the most leveraged or intelligent ways to address that problem. Because uh you're

uh very uh effective, I think, in in a lot of your Giving, very thoughtful. And A lot of people are not. There's feel good philanthropy, then there's do good philanthropy, and there's late in between.

It in terms of addressing a literacy. What are some of the Most surgical Sort of highly leveraged approaches in your mind.

Well, to answer the question I say as a general rule, I try to find things that I can start in philanthropy, I could finish in philanthropy. I'm likely to be alive to see the benefit of it, and I have some intellectual interest in it. Literacy is something I've you know created the literacy awards, the library of congress and try to do some things there, but I don't have enough money Or enough time on the r on the face of this earth. to uh really tackle something as big as literacy. It's a gigantic problem. I think

We just need to do a better job of keeping people from dropping out of high school for one thing. We have One point seven million people dropping out of high school each year. Many of those cases it's for l lack of literacy. they just lost interest or other issues, but People dropping out of a high illiteracy factor.

So I I I don't have a solution for it. If I did, I would be in would have been in Iowa, New Hampshire. Maybe running for president, but Uh, but I decided not to run for president'cause I'm too young. I'm only seventy one years old and nobody's gonna be able to do it

So young and inexperienced could probably get to be president. So I I didn't go to Iowa, New Hampshire, but to be very serious, I I think it's one of the kind of problems we should get more people to focus on. You rarely, rarely I can't even think of when the last time a president of the United States Talked about. The importance of literacy and importance of reading.

And I I I think if we could get people to read and not drop out of high school That would be a big push towards ending uh Not ending, but reducing income inequality and enhancing social mobility. Yeah, I agree. Uh it's it's it could it could mitigate that.

I I think tremendously. There's a there's a if you have the time, there's an outstanding organization, very innovative, uh called Questbridge. Based in the Bay Area that that does uh some excellent work with addressing Some of the missing pieces in terms of uh matching and sourcing talent to

Scholarships and That helps to kinda span that that uh that missing Um

Kids. I have kids on my mind. I don't yet have any. Uh but I'm planning on parenthood in the not too distant future and I've Card you speak to the benefits.

The advantages of growing up working class. And I'd love to hear you describe uh Your advice to

New parents who may have Scrapped their way to some modicum of success or financial security. As to how not Two

Raise kids who are complacent. Or entitled or any of those things. It it's I've seen very few I have seen examples of it done well, but I haven't seen that many. And I'm just curious to hear your thoughts and what advice you would give. Jackie Kennedy famously said

raising you know, if you mess up raising your children, nothing else in life matters. And she's right. And it's the hardest thing in the world to do. People have been doing it forever. And some people done a bad job of it, some people done a good job of it. It's not easy to do. If anybody knew how to perfectly raise children, they would have told people by now and everybody be following it. So it's not easy. I would say it's easier.

To be a child. In many respects. when you're not from a wealthy family because you don't you realize you're gonna have to make it on your own. So

Poverty is not a wonderful thing. I'm not saying people should be raised in poverty and it's gonna be good for them. But if you come from a lower middle class family, as maybe I did, or a blue collar family. In hindsight It's it's a great thing. I wish at times I my parents had more money, I could have gotten certain things I wanted that I didn't get. But in the end I realized if I was gonna get anywhere, I had to make it on my own.

My own children have grown up in a time I have three children. Growing up in a time when You know, I would be reasonably wealthy by any normal human standards, not by Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos' standards, but by any normal human standard, a very wealthy person. So how do you raise them in that context? Well One, don't give'em too much money. Don't buy'em all the things they want.

Make them do well in school by by Showing them how important it is to you that they do well in school. Don't uh flash your money in front of them. Or in other people.

I try to live a more modest lifestyle. Now, if you're very wealthy y you you don't have to be a an a a Take a val of poverty all of a sudden. But I do think it's not good.

Make your children think that they're gonna have money. their whole life if they don't work. So I have made enormous number of speeches saying I'm giving away all my money. I hope my children are A are listening to these speeches. I try to give them a good education. They've all gone to really good schools.

They have MBAs, which you could say is either good or bad. Maybe they're not struggling artists, they're not poets, or not painters or something, maybe that's good or bad, but all of them seem to be pretty interested in uh In investing and and capitalism and And and but doing socially good things so they have money.

that I have given them to give away. Um not staggering sums, but enough to can they can Taste the the pleasure of philanthropy. Which is important to me, but I want them to be able to do it in a way where They really understand the value of it. It's their decision and

And they have to make the decision about how to follow through and and so forth. But look, raising children is not easy. You'll find out if you get children that It's one of the great pleasures of life. That's why so many people wanna have children. But it's also one of the great struggles of life. How do you raise children?

And people, you know, always say to me, Well, when do you stop worrying about your children? I say, Probably When they're about seventy or seventy five, you may not worry about'em that much because you're always worrying about your children. And'cause you know, something can always go wrong and It's a fear every parent has, which is that their child will not be happy or healthy. Yeah, at this point in your

Life. What do you fear, if anything? I mean, do you have any Present. Fears or recurrent fears. Well, I guess um I'm seventy one, so I would like to be able to live a reasonable life, and my parents made it to eighty five and eighty six. So it means my genes are reasonably good if I don't do something stupid or have a bad accident. So I

Think my fears are not getting everything done before I My time is up. So I call what I'm doing now sprinting to the finish line. I'm now trying to get things done. I probably should have done a long time ago, but I didn't do. I'm

At seventy I came out with my first book. At seventy one, my second book. I'm trying to do one book a year. What was I doing in my thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties? Why wasn't I writing books then? I wish I was um you know, I have a bucket list of things I place I haven't been. Things I want to go do.

I haven't done yet because I've been working pretty hard my life and Haven't really relaxed in quite the traditional sense. But you know, I maybe I'll get to do some of that. But I I wanna you know, just get more things done. I want to give away the money that I have Committed to giving away.

I wanna kind of do the kind of patriotic philanthropy things I'm interested in doing. I'm involve a lot of universities and medical research. I wanna see those projects Finish the center I can. So

You know, and and then You know, I want to do it in a way that would uh make my children proud of me and uh You know, my parents were proud and I often ask people Um in my interviews, if you've seen them. I generally get around to saying, Well, did your parents live long enough to see

Your success. And people ask me, why do you ask that all the time? And I said, Well, one of the great pleasures in life Is seeing a child grow to be successful. And I wanna know whether a child really had that.

before their parents passed away if they did. And I try to try to remind people That's a very good idea if you're successful, even if you're not successful, but if you have the means to do something to honor your parents while They are alive. It's a lot more fun. to do that for them and you.

When they're alive than when they're not alive. And I made some mistakes in that area. I probably should have done much more to honor my parents Then I did, but My father passed away relatively unexpectedly, I realized I really hadn't done enough to honor him other than, you know, he was happy with my

Success in life, but I I I decided to find something to do and he was a Marine, it worked in he was in World War Two. So I kind of realized that the Iba Jima Moria was kind of falling apart. A bit not falling apart, but it needed some repair. And so I put up the money to do it in his honor.

Then I realized my mother, she could Die suddenly so I decided to n have something named for her in Washington, DC and I Uh surprise or brought it to You see ya, her name was there.

And then I got her to sit down to at the dinner with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And which is one of her role models and she really loved spending a couple of hours with group Bader Ginsburg. So Uh but I should have done Should have done that earlier and probably I made a mistake in not doing that earlier. So I encourage people to try to do

Um Do more of that. Are your parents alive? They are alive. They are alive and uh They must be proud of you, right?

They are. They they say that they are and they uh tried And Uh worked very hard. a very similar uh on some level similar background. uh kind of uh middle class, lower middle class. And I mean I'm th I'm I'm

Scrolling through my mind's eye, thinking of how What honoring them might Look like I'd love to hear you speak further to that because if someone listening, say doesn't have the means to dedicate a memorial Or the connections to

Invite their parents to uh a dinner that might be as meaningful, which are amazing. Don't get me wrong, those are incredible gifts. What advice or or words might you have? Well, I'll give you some advice. Um not that you need my advice. But uh there used to be there was a very used to be a famous football uh coach named Bear Bryant. He used to coach for Alabama.

And One time. He was hired by A T and T. To do an advertisement. for I think it's Mother's Day.

The Mother's Day was traditionally and has traditionally been the most used phone day. This is when Before people had cell phones, I suspect. And so he went on T V And his mother had passed away.

Not too long earlier. And they had him do an ad it said You know? Today is Mother's Day, or tomorrow's Mother's Day. Please call your mother. I wish I could, but I can't anymore.

And it kind of reminded people You know, to call your mother while she's alive. And so when my father passed away, I my mother was living alone in Florida. And um she didn't want to move back to where I was living and she didn't want to

move into any kind of uh sister living or anything. So as you're living alone in a house And I I resolved to call her every single night. Which I did. Yeah, for the remaining five years of her life.

And uh she later told people that you know that was a highlight of her day. She getting a call every day with the clockwork wherever I was in the world. And so I wouldn't say everybody has to call their parents every single day. But calling them more frequently is probably a good idea. Just to kind of show some respect. And so that doesn't take a lot of money to just to do that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's got got me thinking. Uh Yeah, filial piety doesn't maybe come as instinctively in the West, at least in uh the United States as it as it does in some other places. When you talk about sprinting to the finish line and doing these various things on your bucket list I mean you're a hard charging Worth it. And you're very uh

very diligent in how you've applied. Aside from doing more in a sort of broadly sweeping way, are are there any must do bucket items for you that are just non negotiable. I need to do these before I turn to dust. Well, I just want to make sure my children are as

prepared for my not being around as possible. So I'm Happy to try to w still work on that. There's some philanthropic projects that I have in mind. That I wanna get Done before

Uh my time is up, you know, some in the patriotic philanthropy area, some in the education area, some in the medical research area. Like to get those done. And I also want to, you know, do as much as I can to give back to the country in many ways. That's what I patriotic philanthropy is about to me. And I I expect to have a book out and that not, you know, maybe year after next, where I a book on What

Giving back to one's country it means Uh my next book is gonna be about it's coming out next year. It's about What it means to be an American. And um You know, what are the qualities that make one

an American and as opposed to a European or somebody other country. And so I enjoy writing these books and I enjoy you know, giving speeches and talking about my thoughts and So I I'm really happy. My problem is I'm now seventy one and you're not gonna live uh forever. So I'm trying to just get things done.

And uh Giving away my money in an intelligent way. My children are ultimate legacy. That's an important thing to me. And giving back to the country in whatever way that I can. That those are the things I kind of focus on a bit. It's just a few more questions and I appreciate all the time. Sixty minutes because of this patriotic philanthropy, as you put it, it's called you Clerk Kent in a suit and tie. You have done a lot.

Of these many things that you have done that you would put in the category of patriotic philanthropy. What are you proudest of or what holds a particularly strong

sort of foothold in your heart. Is there anything that really stands out for you? I wouldn't say it I'll answer your question in a moment, but in interestingly, when my mother did pass away, I went through uh all of her papers and uh She had scrapbooks of all of my

Patriotic philanthropy things. And none of the scrapbooks, n none the articles about Carl. She was really interested in what I had done and she call me that when I started giving away money to kinda give back to the country, what I call patriotic philanthropy. She was extremely proud, and that's where she So

The interesting thing about patriotic philanthropy is it it's a relatively small part of my philanthropy. Maybe Five to ten percent. But it gets ninety nine percent of the attention for whatever reason. It's just because people aren't doing it so much. So If I you know, give a large amount of money to a cancer center at uh uh a cancer hospital.

Yeah, that's a good thing, though it's modest compared to what Bill Gates or other famous Cancer uh philanthropists are doing. But if I give ten million dollars to keep the Washington Monument kind of In reasonable shape. That gets an enormous amount of attention. Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't. But I I just I've been surprised at how many

how much attention it gets and how few other people seem to want to do it. But You know, I try to convince a lot of the people at the Giving Pledge and other places that they should do s they're a lot richer than me, and many of them. uh to do these same things, but doesn't seem to attract as much attention. Maybe because people think the government should be doing this I don't know, but

Yeah, my mother used to watch it and so one time I I just tried it to one of the The Lincoln Memorial, which is such a famous I thought it needed some repair.

And uh was kind of run down a bit. And the park service doesn't really have the money to do everything. So I said I'll put up a certain amount of money to fix it. And they said let's announce it in front of the Lincoln Lemural. I said, Okay, so we have an announcement there. And as soon as we're doing it, it's covered on C SPAN Live. It starts to snow. So I'm sitting there. Yeah, in the snow.

And I get a call my cell phone's from my mother. She's watching C SPAN. She said, David, put your hat on. It's snowing. So But okay. Yeah, so your mothers are always paying attention and uh you you know. Um I put my hat on. Um anyway. No, I've enjoyed this, um, you know, fixing the monuments or preserving documents like the Magna Carta or

I have a historic book collection that is probably one of the better American book collections of historic American books. And ultimately I'll give these things away and the places that seem appropriate. And I like putting'em on display. And the reason I put'em on display is that If you look at a computer slide of the Magna Carta

Or if you Read a computer slide of the Washington Monument, it doesn't have the same impact as visiting it. The human brain still gets much more out of visiting something, you prepare for it. You learn more when you're there, you may you learn more afterwards. And so I'm trying to get people to learn more. About our country's history. And the reason is this.

If you want to have a good democracy, you have to have an informed citizenry. That's what the founding fathers believe. Informed citizenry. Will lead to a better democracy. Right now, we don't teach civics very much in our country's history, and we don't teach in our current country's schools. And we don't teach very much about American history. You can graduate from almost any So uh to now situation is such so bad that Recently in a survey, two thirds of Americans couldn't even name the three branches of our federal government.

And while ninety one percent of people who apply for citizenship tests in this country can pass the basic civics tests. In forty nine out of fifty states recently. the majority of citizens couldn't pass the basic citizenship test that you have to take to be a citizen. So we just should do a better job of informing our our citizens and and that's why I Some of the things I do is design to kind of get people educated about this a little bit more than maybe they otherwise would be.

If you could get A message, a quote, a word, an image. Anything out to Billions of people, metaphorically speaking, on a huge billboard. Could be anything.

What might you put? on that billboard. Give back to your country. Do something that makes the world a better place and your country a better place. Honor your parents.

Your reputation is all you really carry around with you. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it. So don't do anything that destroys your reputation. But do things that'll honor Your children. Your parents

And yourself and give back To the country which You know, you presumably think it's the best country in the world or you wouldn't be here. Really enjoyed this, David. Thank you so much for the time. Appreciate it. Uh thanks for all your research. You're obviously well researched and you know your material pretty well. No thanks. I I do I do my best. And people can find more at David Rubenstein dot com, the new book

Or I should say the latest book, but certainly one of many to come is How to Lead. Wisdom from the world's greatest CEOs, founders, and game changers. So anything else that you would like to to say or request No, I would just say I've been interviewed by a lot of podcast people and you are as well informed as anybody I've ever been interviewed by. You obviously do a lot of research and I appreciate it. And you have a very soothing voice.

Which works quite well on podcasts. So I know you have done other things in the business world. And so forth, but you have a real future here and I look forward to uh listening to a lot of your podcasts and to

I'm gonna go back and reread some of your books, okay? Uh thank you, David. I I really appreciate it. And uh this is this has been really enjoyable for me and Perhaps at some some point post post COVID we'll bump into each other. Maybe so. Uh but I've my new book is gonna be Seven day work week. We need a seven day work we know. I was thinking when you were like oh this this person's native language isn't even English, I was like, you know, that that could be a blurb on the back of one of my books. Maybe I'll might send a galley for you to read.

But really appreciate it. And uh to everybody listening, we'll have notes for everything at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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