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- [00:00]
Lloyd Blankfein
The difference between somebody who's really, really good and somebody who can't make it is not that great. Goldman Sachs senior Chairman and former CEO Lloyd Blankvine.
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Host / Interviewer
Your portfolio as a pie chart, what does it look like right now?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me. I would say that 98% are equities.
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Host / Interviewer
What are some of your biggest holdings?
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Lloyd Blankfein
This is going to be controversial. I don't know who I'm going to upset. But you know, it's like, are you trading every day? Yes.
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Host / Interviewer
That's crazy.
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Lloyd Blankfein
No, it's not. It's like taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm talking right now. It's like that.
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Host / Interviewer
So you're bullish on big tech. Anything El.
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Lloyd Blankfein
It's been good to be bullish on big tech and I'll stop being bullish on it when it stops going up.
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Host / Interviewer
What did the people who couldn't outperform, what did the bottom half have in common?
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Lloyd Blankfein
The bigger takeaway is that I feel
- [00:45]
Guest / Motivational Speaker (brief interjection)
like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like no days off on a road, less travel, never looking.
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Host / Interviewer
The reason why it's interesting to talk to you is because I'm pretty good at building companies. You know, I built a company that was doing almost 20 million in revenue by the time I was 31. But. But I'm like, I don't know anything when it comes to investing. My portfolio is basically a nobody knows anything. Well, that's what I've learned. But it seems like you know a
- [01:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
lot because I'm so on the inside. Unlike a lot of people I know. Nobody knows anything. Whereas every everybody else just wonders, well, that's cool.
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Host / Interviewer
And so the, so I'm going to ask you a ton of questions and it's come. And it's going to come from a perspective of like, I actually don't know what I'm doing. The majority of my portfolios, which I actually think is smart, is just 90% index, 10% bonds.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, that's sensible.
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Host / Interviewer
But you day trade, which I thought was hilarious.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Two things. One, I'm a pro at it. I mean this is what I did my, you know, only for the last four or five decades. And the other thing is that nothing hugely positive or usually negative is going to affect my life.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Lloyd Blankfein
So to me it's like a hobby.
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Host / Interviewer
What age were you when you felt
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Lloyd Blankfein
that girl grew up in the project? So I always, I wouldn't say that I felt poor, but I certainly was incapable of feeling well to do. I can't even say the R word.
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Host / Interviewer
Rich.
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Lloyd Blankfein
I can't. It's hard for me to even just say it. But, you know, by any metric, I have been that way for, you know, for a long time, but I never feel that way. I mean, I'm still trapped in that mindset, you know, the kid from the projects.
- [02:10]
Host / Interviewer
So your father was a postal worker, I think you said you were an urban hick, which I liked.
- [02:15]
Lloyd Blankfein
Grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, you know. You know, at the end of two, you know, you know, you know, two subway lines and a bus in the eastern part of Brooklyn. You know, growing up, I think I went to. I think I went to Manhattan three times. I never left the country. Didn't. Didn't fly on an airplane till after I left, you know, to left school and stuff, you know. Yeah, I was pretty provincial. It turns out that if you look at the lists of most successful people or wealthiest people in the US you're not seeing a lot of Morgans or Rockefellers or any of these classical family names on that list. You're seeing basically people not necessarily growing up in poverty, but they were kind of middle class people who did, you know, who did. Well, these are not, you know, generational wealthy people coming along. A lot of people were socially mobile in their lives and, you know, created wealth for others and, you know, and a piece of it stuck to them.
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Host / Interviewer
What I'm curious about is because you have this perspective of knowing world leaders, potentially the most powerful people on earth. Is there anything that would shock them about what it's like to be around some of these?
- [03:21]
Lloyd Blankfein
I think what's shocking, not shocking, but I think what would be good if everybody understood is that, you know, look, there are very, very few geniuses in the world. I don't know if I've ever met one.
- [03:31]
Host / Interviewer
You don't think that you've met. Like when you meet Jeff Bezos, you're not like, this guy just has more horsepower.
- [03:36]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah. Or most of the people I meet, I can't. I'm not saying I can do what they do, but I could see how they can do what they do. Very few people have I met in my life where I can't even see the world through their eyes or I can't even see how they do what they do. Elon Musk may be a guy like that where. I don't know how have you met him? Oh, yeah, a lot. Don't forget, we underwrote his you know, a lot of his stuff.
- [04:00]
Host / Interviewer
When you met him, did you didn't think. When you. When you, you know, you know him, I guess you didn't think, this guy's different?
- [04:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, no, no. I'm saying he's very different. I'm giving you an extreme case where a guy. But when people toss around the word genius, there's a lot of words that get tossed around. Superstar, that get diluted. The bigger takeaway is that I've known people who've done very, very well and in high office and high there, and guess what? After they finish speaking, they said, how. They say, how did I do? Like, they want affirmation and they're insecure, and the kids don't always like them. People are a lot more normal than you think they are, and people are a lot more insecure and a lot more. And sometimes the most successful people that you know are driven by insecurity and their flaws or things like that. So you also have to be lucky that the ball has to bounce. You could be the fastest runner in the world, but the Olympics are once every four years. And if you peak in the wrong year, you'll never medal in the Olympics, even though you were the fat. You know. So I got to be CEO of Goldman Sachs because my predecessor got nominated to be treasury secretary. Had he not been that, maybe he would have lasted five more years in the job, and maybe I would have been, you know, too old for it at that point or something. So there's a lot of fortune, there's a lot of luck. But I wouldn't exaggerate. The skill set required or the degree of work required is beyond the grasp of many of your listeners. It's not.
- [05:26]
Host / Interviewer
So you've had teams of traders. You were like a commodity salesman, but you became to eventually lead traders. What did you. The people who couldn't outperform or who were not the best, what did they have in common?
- [05:40]
Lloyd Blankfein
The difference between somebody who's really, really good and somebody who can't make it is not that great. You know, when you, you know, you think of a golf tournament and somebody wins a golf tournament by one stroke, and there's six people tied for second, one stroke behind the winner. That's a very low margin of victory. And a lot of life is like that. And sometimes it's winner take all, where somebody is just ever so slightly better. But that thing stands out, by the way. A lot of life is like that. The difference between a great actor will get any part he or she wants in Hollywood and The second best one, you know, may have to like wait tables at night. You know, I wasn't cursed by being a great athlete and so I didn't have to, I wasn't tortured into thinking should I go, you know, should I dedicate myself to sports and athletes or should I try, you know, strive to do well in classes, in school and get another guy. I didn't have that. But imagine the unfortunate person who is the best athlete his high school ever produced, gets a minor league baseball contract and from the minor league something like 2% eventually make a living out of enough money, you know, get, become professional. You know, you get into a very rarefied area when you're talking about the people who are the best at what they do, where the market only rewards and can only give a full time job opportunity to people who are in, you know, 0.001% of that field.
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Host / Interviewer
You had this funny bit where you, I think something had happened where Goldman, you guys were like really nervous of
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Lloyd Blankfein
making mistakes when you know, we had the big financial crisis, the one that was like in 0708 when the regulators wanted to make sure that this kind of thing never happened again. Well, the only way you can make things sure that once you're in the risk taking world, anything can happen. Risk is risk and you don't always know the consequences of it. And if you try to legislate risk, you may think you're protecting the world from the Hundred year storm, but you're also going to forego the 99 years of in between when there was growth.
- [07:54]
Host / Interviewer
But you said even inside of Goldman you were like we were meeting with the 20 partners or something and people were throwing around ideas and some of the ideas were pretty good. And you were like what the hell guys? We're talking ourselves out of everything on this show. We have spent hours talking to some of the best investors alive.
- [08:10]
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- [08:11]
Host / Interviewer
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- [08:13]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
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- [08:15]
Host / Interviewer
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- [08:19]
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- [08:21]
Host / Interviewer
We're talking guys who have been on the pod like Howard Marks, Manish Prabhraai, Morgan Housel, Cathie Wood and a ton others. So these are all their frameworks, their mental models, their rules, basically how to
- [08:32]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
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- [08:37]
Host / Interviewer
Everyone's sewing around these ideas and everyone around here is saying like oh, we can't do this because it's like what the Hell, why aren't we, why aren't we trying some stuff, let's get after it. And I think you said the best traders are the ones who have resiliency. They bounce back and they look at the new information that they have, not the past, and they adapt quickly.
- [08:53]
Lloyd Blankfein
You know, the firm at that point had just gone through a period where it had, you know, big losses and people were gun shy. And, you know, you'd think a risk manager is always trying to repress people from taking risk. Sometimes a good risk manager has to promote the idea that people take risk because that's what you're there for. And if you don't take risk, you don't, you don't move forward. There's no growth. You can't be an entrepreneur. You've been an entrepreneur. You can't be entrepreneur unless you take risk. If you take risk, there's a not insignificant chance that you'll fail and you'll lose money for all the people that backed you. That's a terrible situation. But the alternative to never taking any risk will give you the comfort of not losing money for yourself or anybody else. But you also won't make progress.
- [09:33]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. And as you get more successful, at least I have, and I think you said, goldman, did you take less risk?
- [09:39]
Lloyd Blankfein
Well, I think that that's what makes people more conservative. Think of the word conservative. You conserve. You become interested in not losing what you have as opposed to making more. Now, when I say making more, are people going to be repulsed by the idea of making more? Waking more is another way of saying, advancing, creating wealth.
- [09:57]
Host / Interviewer
Can you tell that story about Warren Buffett in the book that was amazing, where he loaned you a bunch of money basically over a handshake and a phone call and was like, all right, I'm gonna go take my grandkid to Dairy Queen.
- [10:09]
Lloyd Blankfein
You know, Warren is one of those great men, which. He's brilliant in a way that I can't put myself in his shoes and see the world through his eyes. And during the financial crisis, he offered to, at a very important moment, invest money in Goldman Sachs.
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Host / Interviewer
Do you remember how much I think it was?
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Lloyd Blankfein
$5 billion or $10 billion.
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Host / Interviewer
And what'd you do? You called them.
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Lloyd Blankfein
We had talked before that. And you know, with him, he decides to do something or he doesn't, it's all gonna be with him. I didn't have to ask him. It would serve no purpose to ask him two or three times.
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Host / Interviewer
So what you said, you said, hey, Warren, we're going to this thing we might need a little liquidity.
- [10:45]
Lloyd Blankfein
No. And I'd done that before. Would he. Would he be willing, you know, willing to do this? And at the time, he wasn't grabbing. And then eventually he called in and was willing to do it for his own reasons, and he thought it was a good investment to make. He wasn't doing it because he was trying to, you know, help us, although it had the effect of helping us, but he was trying to help his own shareholders. And, you know. You know, he. He saw in us what I saw in us, which was a good investment that was being beaten down by, you know, circumstances that it would reverse. And I think he wanted to make an investment before it got better.
- [11:14]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
Well, I think that.
- [11:15]
Host / Interviewer
And the story was cool because you were, like, on the phone with him. You're like, hey, Warren, you want to do this thing? Or I think maybe he called you and he's like, hey, let's. You know, I'm willing to do $5 billion. Investment or a loan? I'm not sure if it's a loan or investment.
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Lloyd Blankfein
It was preferred stock. It's something between a loan and a stock.
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Host / Interviewer
And you were like, yeah, cool. That sounds great. We would love to work with you. Do you want to do some due diligence, or do you want to sign some paperwork? And he's like, no, no, no. I'll just send the money. And, you know, I gotta go. I'm gonna take my kid to. I'm taking my grandkid a Dairy Queen. Just. Just figure it out and let me know where you want me to send the money to. Talk later.
- [11:47]
Lloyd Blankfein
I like the fact that, yes, that was actually the flow of the conversation, but he's a pretty rigorous guy, and he knows that we're pretty rigorous people. And at one point, he said, you know. And I said, you know, I would feel better telling you all the things, you know, before you make this investment. I would feel better telling you all the things I'm worried about. And he said, you know, Lloyd, I know you well enough to know that you worry enough for the both of us. And then I pushed a little bit, and he said, Look, Berkshire, $5 billion, it's not even. You know, again, Berkshire is an insurance company. And so in their real business, Berkshire insures, among other things, property. And he said, Look, $5 billion, if it all goes bad, that's not even a bad hurricane on the East Coast. So put me in my place. So in other words, $5 billion wasn't a big number to him. That was a joke. And I took it that way. Nobody wants to lose $5 billion, not even him. But he was very good, and it was a very important. It wasn't just the money. In fact, frankly, the money was irrelevant to us. Cause we had the money. What we didn't have was we didn't have the confidence of the world. Because at that point, people, you know, some institutions that were similar to ours were kind of failing. Others were in distress. We weren't failing, and we weren't in that much distress. But people didn't know that. And if you just assert that, it scares people even more because.
- [13:07]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, and I think he said something like, oh, and hey, by the way, do me a favor. Don't sell any of your shares until I sell mine. Or something like that. Like, let's be in lockstep.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, no, it wasn't even a favor. It was. He asked for that. He asked for a commitment for that.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Didn't ask for it in writing.
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Host / Interviewer
And you were like, yeah, I'll put that in the contract. That sounds good. He goes, no, no, no. No need. It's cool. Just tell me you commit. And that was it. And that's pretty amazing.
- [13:29]
Lloyd Blankfein
You know, in our world, in my world of buying and selling stuff, most of the stuff we do is not written down. Is not. Is not a. Is not a written contract. People buy and sell bonds and things, and they don't get delivered for two days. I suppose somebody could lie and say, I really didn't do that, or I didn't intend it, or, I'm confused, you know, or something, but you'll never eat lunch in this town again. And people rely on their reputations for probity. It doesn't mean that things don't get documented so that each side really understands what the other person's perception is. Making sure you're literally on the same page.
- [14:04]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
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- [14:04]
Host / Interviewer
Did you see the attacks between. I think it was like, Ellison and Elon? Elon was like, hey, I'm gonna buy Twitter for, you know, whatever. I think 30 billion. Are you in? And he was like, yeah, I'm in for five. Or like, you know, it was like a. A fairly casual conversation for, like, a pretty huge thing.
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Lloyd Blankfein
No, but that sounds right. Just because something is big doesn't mean it's tricky or complicated. Some. You know, there are big things that are simple and little things that are complicated. I think, all things considered, it's always good to document stuff, but in a trading room, you never. You don't document stuff. When people buy and sell stuff also Sometimes the execution of what you've agreed to is so near in time that it's pointless to document it because in two days you're going to perform. And so there's no reason why you have to document something that will be accomplished before you could ever dot the I's and cross the t's in a document. But it's always, you know, all things equal. It's good to have a document, but it's largely not necessary. And most of the transactional world works without documentation.
- [15:08]
Host / Interviewer
So you're no longer the CEO, but in the book you're like, I now like to trade on my own. If your portfolio as a pie chart, what does it look like right now?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me. And that was what I did my whole career.
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Host / Interviewer
1% is in just index funds or boring stuff.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, index funds are risky. They're just, they're diversified across different things. But if you're in a diversified equity etf, you're in equities.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Lloyd Blankfein
And equities will. Is, is a lot different than being in debt and it's a lot different than being in short term money markets, which is more safe. And so it's, it's still risky. I would say that I am 98% in, in risky assets, of which, you know, 95 of the 98 are equities, probably a third a quarter is in ETFs and 75% is in single stock. And if I'm wrong, it's 10% are in ETFs and 90% are in single stocks. Because that's what I like to do.
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Host / Interviewer
Okay. Of that I'm so curious about this. Of the. So I'm in 90, 90%, just a Vanguard fund. And then 10.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, that's sensible because this is what you're doing. You're not doing this. You're not doing investing for a living.
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Host / Interviewer
Of course. And I'm not, I'm probably not going to change that, but I'm always interested in seeing how other people like to invest. So of the 75%, what are some of your biggest holdings?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, I would say that right now I'm very heavily focused in tech and have been for a long time for good reason.
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Host / Interviewer
Which companies?
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Lloyd Blankfein
All the big, you know, all the big hyperscalers and second tier ones.
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Host / Interviewer
What's a second tier one? What's an example of a second tier one?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I don't even know if they, if they have a big hyperscaler, like, you know, like the Googles. Of the world and the Microsofts of the world and Nvidias of the world. Maybe a second tier version down the. Slightly down the thumbnail with no insult intended to Larry Ellison. Maybe Oracle. I don't have to. I change my things all the time, so it doesn't matter specific names. I'm just giving you. I'm speaking in terms of category. That's how I think of it, is, you know, not necessarily the bluest of the blue chip ones, ones that are a little bit riskier. And by the way, they're companies that are probably going to be gigantic companies that some people know about today and are investing in. I never heard of them because I'm just not always, you know, I'm not walking around the corridors of Silicon Valley shops and I don't know the new, new thing and it might be commonplace knowledge over there, but it's not with, you know, everybody knows the world's a big place and everybody always knows their corner of it.
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Host / Interviewer
So you're bullish on big tech. Anything else?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I'm generally bullish. And by the way, it's been good to be bullish on big tech and I'll stop being bullish on it when
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Host / Interviewer
it stops going up for the foreseeable future. That's what you're thinking?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah. My foreseeable future is when I finish this conversation with you and then I'll check it again.
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Host / Interviewer
Are you trading every day?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yes.
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Host / Interviewer
That's crazy.
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Lloyd Blankfein
No, it's not.
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Host / Interviewer
It's like, I don't think it's really crazy. It's just crazy for me to.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, no, no, I. Multiple times. It's taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm
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Host / Interviewer
talking to you right now.
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Lloyd Blankfein
It's like back. It's background noise. It's like, you know, some people like to listen to music. You'd say, how much time do you spend listening to music? Well, they're not sitting at a desk slumped, hunched over, just listening to music and doing nothing else. Maybe if you're a record producer you do that. But normal people are listening to music while they're doing other stuff. To me, the market is like music. It's out there, it's going on.
- [18:24]
Host / Interviewer
What trades did you make today?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I think today I may have, you know, I'm not sure what I did because I put in orders because knowing that you were going to tie me up and I wasn't going to be able to look at stuff, I told people what to do. I'm so curious to sell, you know, Maybe sell some. You know, energy is rising. You know, I've been, I buy and sell a lot of stuff. I don't want to talk about specific things because people listen to these things on different days and they'll start, you know, sound smart or stupid, depending on.
- [18:50]
Host / Interviewer
Do you have a team?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, just me.
- [18:53]
Host / Interviewer
Just you?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah.
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Host / Interviewer
And so you're at your computer doing it on your own?
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Lloyd Blankfein
No, no, I'm not at a computer. I don't have a computer. I have an iPad.
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Host / Interviewer
So you're on your iPad doing it and a phone. Are you. And you're mostly. What's your source of information to make decisions?
- [19:05]
Lloyd Blankfein
I chat with people.
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Host / Interviewer
Texting. What, you're texting them?
- [19:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, usually I call, somebody will text me, I'll text them. Then I'll get tired of tapping things out and I'll be tired of fixing the typos because of my fat fingers. So I just call people up.
- [19:17]
Host / Interviewer
And you're doing that all day?
- [19:19]
Lloyd Blankfein
Some people follow, I follow the news, but I also follow business news and I like, you know, companies are like little stories and it's like gossip.
- [19:26]
Host / Interviewer
What do you, what do you read?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I read, you know, all the newspapers, of course. I start with the New York Post. Paper of record.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Lloyd Blankfein
And you know, when I read papers like, you know, like the Journal of the Times, the ft, you know, Bloomberg, I look at, you know, very financially or, you know, finance oriented descriptions to all of them. Yeah. No, I don't steal them.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah, well, you know, how many paywalls do you hit? And you're like, oh shit, I'm not going to read that. I got to find a different article.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Oh no, that happens every once in a while. There's something esoteric where I, you know, I click on something and it turns, you know, and it turns me down. So I don't read it. There's a million other things, but I do this and then I have to think of, gee, why am I quibbling about this? You know, I will tell you, I am still watching commercials on Netflix.
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Host / Interviewer
Are you really?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yes.
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Host / Interviewer
That's hilarious. Have you outperformed the market significantly?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yes, I have for a while. And I'm not. That's not because of, it's because of where I focus. So I started to say I'm, I'm mostly and have been in tech energy. Don't forget I have a background in trading energy.
- [20:25]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Lloyd Blankfein
And I'm also in financial services because I know a lot about financial services, having been in the financial services. So those are the three areas that I'VE been focused on. I haven't.
- [20:35]
Host / Interviewer
Well, I'm sure you still own a bunch of Goldman.
- [20:36]
Lloyd Blankfein
I do. I tend to have some affection for the organization that I spent almost 40 years in. So yeah, I kind of like those that, that company.
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- [21:13]
Host / Interviewer
So like I said, I'm boring and it's 9010. It's the most simple stuff.
- [21:17]
Lloyd Blankfein
It's the advice I would give to people. I think at your age it pays to be in riskier assets like equities as opposed to, you know, fixed income. But if I were in equities, and by the way, this is the same advice that a Warren Buffett would give. I would be in a diversified portfolio of equities like the S&P 500, which is spies or voos.
- [21:38]
Host / Interviewer
I do vo would be too.
- [21:39]
Lloyd Blankfein
And then I would also, because of the importance of tech and being on the threshold of great changes in technology, I might be mostly in those generic diversified things, but I might also have ETFs that were focused on more tech oriented ones that you know. So that would give me disproportionate. Although the general ones, the ones that are the broadest index are very heavily in tech because just tech are such a, the market cap of tech companies are so heavily weighted in those that you do get a fair share of tech even in a very broad index. And you know, frankly, that has gone well for a long time. And every once in a while something doesn't work, it goes down a lot and you have to be able to do that. That's why I say at your age, the older you get, the more conservative, the older you get, the more concerned you should be about not losing money as opposed to maximizing the money you make. But as a young person, you have time to, you have time, you'll outlive your mistakes.
- [22:33]
Host / Interviewer
What's your opinion on what's going on with like the Robin Hoods of the world and all these, like the Cal Shees and things that promote, like day trading, but also betting and things like
- [22:44]
Lloyd Blankfein
that, I think those things that kind of democratize investing and make it very, very accessible to people is in its own terms, a very good thing. So people should be aware of assets they could buy and make it easier to do some and maybe receive advertising promotion so that they focus on it more than they would. Maybe they would never focus on it. But for those companies, at the same time, if you make it too much like a video game, you can mask the fact that there's danger associated with it and you can lose and that people who don't have a lot of money can lose more than they can afford to lose. So that's the risky thing. So when you have some of these sites and they show confetti dropping because you did a trade and, you know, had a boy and high five and, you know, you should gamble and make that look too attractive, you know, for some people that's a disservice and for other people, it's exactly what they need. They won't go overboard, but they. But it needed to be more attractive for them to develop an interest in it.
- [23:40]
Host / Interviewer
Are there any interesting things that you didn't invest in that ended up turning out right and it was because you had poor input like you. Or you had a. You just let emotion control you or a million things. I didn't want an interesting one.
- [23:52]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, well, I thought, you know, SpaceX was overpriced at $100 billion market cap.
- [23:57]
Host / Interviewer
What's it going to go for now?
- [23:58]
Lloyd Blankfein
Like, I don't know, it's in the market. People are discussing that now. I think they were proposing something that would make it worth, you know, a trillion and three quarters. I'm not involved, obviously, I'm not involved in any.
- [24:06]
Host / Interviewer
And what did you say what you thought was expensive? 100 billion.
- [24:09]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah. So one instead of, you know, you know, 175.
- [24:14]
Host / Interviewer
Wow.
- [24:14]
Lloyd Blankfein
I mean, I could pick any number. I mean, I missed a lot of things. I remember a million years ago when they were auctioning off bandwidth or something for cell phones. And I'm thinking, why would anybody want to carry a cell phone with you when there's, you know, 20 million or 200, you know, 30 million, I'm not sure the exact number of telephone booths around. Why would you want to carry at that time? Cell phones were bulky and the batteries lasted 15 minutes or something like that. Why would anybody want that? So I showed them how smart I was and so I didn't make early investments in cellular opportunities or things I. Let me tell you, I missed a lot more stuff than I got.
- [24:51]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [24:52]
Lloyd Blankfein
And you know, Goldman doesn't miss as much as I miss, but that's because Goldman has a lot of people in it, not just me. But if it were just up to me, I would have missed. You know, nobody's great about, you know, predicting the future.
- [25:04]
Host / Interviewer
I try to like talk to like some of the younger people who listen to the show where I'm like, man, having a supportive partner is like without a doubt more game changing probably than any than anything.
- [25:15]
Lloyd Blankfein
And let's take the opposite side of it. And you know, statistically this is going to happen to a lot of people and it'll happen to good people and it doesn't make you a bad person. But people have bad marriages and they have breakups and they have children and they fight over custody and visitation and all those kinds of things. Life's a lot better if you can avoid those problems. And by the way, being lonely is not the worst thing in the world. A bad marriage is, you know, that you have to work out of and deal with, you know, kids and property settlements. That's worse.
- [25:42]
Host / Interviewer
I'm a very emotional person. I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurial tend to be quite high up and downs and I think people like you who are good CEOs tend to be a little bit more steady and optimistic. And I think that having like a great wife, it's really been like a one plus one equals five type of situation.
- [25:59]
Lloyd Blankfein
And by the way, I'm not and that I'm not just saying this for completeness, but it's worth saying it's about and wives to have great husbands. And that's a tough, you know, there's a lot of people I know, partners of mine and things where the husband in the relationship takes a less stressful job because needs to support his wife in her stressful job. And sometimes that's even harder because, you know, as much as we want to think things are calibrated and equal, guys don't have babies.
- [26:25]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also like hanging out with you now you seem super happy and optimistic, but in the book you were like, I'm prone to anxiety. And that was like I think a polite way of saying it. But like, you seem like a pretty anxious person occasionally.
- [26:38]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, well, I'm wired that way a little bit. You know, I inherited from my dad was an anxious person. You know, I made my kids anxious. You know, unfortunately I that there's benefits and burdens to every situation. Being anxious and looking around corners for problems and seeing things that could go wrong, I think that suited me and my job. I mean, not all of life is about your job. You could be happy in other things. You should be happy in other ways and other parts of life besides just your job. But just looking at that narrow point, I was in a, you know, I was in a risky business with a firm with a big balance sheet that had a lot of investments and that bought and sold and price risk and took on other risks that other people didn't want to have for a price. And you know something, if you're going to do that job and preside over other people doing that job, it helps to be somewhat focused on things that could go wrong. And in my life, I generally upbeat that I think things will tend to work out. But I know that before they work out, they go wrong. A lot of things go wrong.
- [27:35]
Host / Interviewer
Did you have any. It didn't seem like it when I was reading about it. Your travel schedule was crazy. Did you have any work life balance when you were doing it?
- [27:42]
Lloyd Blankfein
Well, when you asked me any, of course I still say yes. But not, not, not, not enough. That would be reasonable to most people. Yeah, no, I traveled a lot and then here's again where having a supportive spouse, you know, was very helpful. And look, my wife Laura, who's a lawyer, worked in big law firms and you know, now she's, you know, the chair of Barnard College and other things. She, you know, helped helps to oversee a charter school. You know, she's, you know, very involved, you know, in the world. But I'll tell you one thing she did, she was very supportive of my career when I needed to move. She took care of everything. And let me tell you, when we moved overseas, she's the one who got the car, got the house, you know, made sure the kids got to school. I took victory laps because I was doing a good job at work. But she was doing all the, you know, all the work that made it possible.
- [28:26]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. I think about my wife now. She's a stay at home mom right now. And it's awesome, man, having someone like who has your back. It's pretty great. Like, I don't even know how we pay a lot of our bills. We were talking the other day, we were talking last night and I was like, look, I'm not trying to be morbid, but like if you died, I wouldn't know how certain things happen at all. Like how does our rent get paid? Or like do, do we pay utility? Like I Didn't know anything.
- [28:49]
Lloyd Blankfein
I think we. I hope we're exceptional, but I will tell you that I haven't paid a bill in well over 40 years.
- [28:56]
Host / Interviewer
Really? She does it all. Laura does it all.
- [28:58]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, we have a bill paying service that she manages and she does it. And I, you know, what the hell? How much could she steal? It's all hers. Anyway, that's it.
- [29:05]
Host / Interviewer
Can I ask you about that? That's actually interesting. Do you guys meet to discuss finances at all?
- [29:10]
Lloyd Blankfein
I'm in charge of generating the money and she's really in charge of distributing it.
- [29:15]
Host / Interviewer
You told a story. I think you were close to 40, or maybe your late 30s, and you were like, we bought a vacation home and it was like maybe 300 grand, I think. And you're like, that was all of our money.
- [29:27]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, it was more than all of our money.
- [29:28]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, you were like, I'm supposed to be this big shot. I don't remember if you were a partner or not. I think you were, but you were, you were, you were like, yeah, it
- [29:34]
Lloyd Blankfein
was probably a new partner. But in the early days, the way I mean, too much. It would take too much time for your purpose here. But in a partnership, you don't take money out of the firm. So even when you own money, it stays in the firm.
- [29:44]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, you were like, you know, I.
- [29:45]
Lloyd Blankfein
I had a paper.
- [29:46]
Host / Interviewer
Well, I don't have a lot of, like, cash.
- [29:47]
Lloyd Blankfein
I had no, like, no money. And I, you know, we borrowed. And so we were driving to the closing, and now I'm a different kind of guy. I can buy things. I don't even go to the closing. Lawyers do it. But in those days, you know, we were angsting about everything. And we bought, you know, you know, we had a very small apartment in the city and we were having kids. And at that point, we had just had our second kid. And there was no place for them to, you know, breathe or run around in our little apartment. So instead of getting a bigger apartment in the city, we bought a relatively small place out in the, you know, at the beach. And we were going through the math, or my wife was really. My wife was doing this, and she was going through, in her mind where the money for the closing. And she had to come up to a certain amount. And she said, we borrowed this much, and, you know, I had this much in this account and that much in that account. And she couldn't make it work out to the total. We needed to close. And she was freaked out. And so we drove like, you know, 30 miles where she's going over and over this stuff and doing it. And finally we realized she forgot to count the down payment that we'd made on the house, which was 10%. So she kept coming short.
- [30:56]
Host / Interviewer
So you guys were, like, really on the edge?
- [30:58]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, yeah, we were. I mean, we were able to buy dinner that night, you know, not, you know, it wasn't a question of survivability.
- [31:06]
Host / Interviewer
I just don't think that I.
- [31:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
We exhausted more than all of our savings.
- [31:10]
Host / Interviewer
We do a monthly meeting. I learned this from my friend Ramit. He's a personal finance author where. And we've been doing this since, you know, I started dating my wife when we were 25, probably at 26. We moved in together, and we would do like a look back or like, here's what we spent this month. Is that in line or not in line with our expectations and our budget, and are we happy with it? Do we want to spend more? Do we want to spend less? Are we happy with what we spent on and that discipline has been nice, and we've never, ever, ever worried.
- [31:37]
Lloyd Blankfein
Look, I grew up in a household when my dad worked nights at the post office. But before he got that job, he had worked on a, you know, he'd worked in a private thing. I think he drove a truck for a while, and he worked in a dry goods store as a clerk. And he actually lost his job, was unemployed for a while. So I grew up in a household where, you know, where the rent was, you know, very scarce and stuff. So I'm used to that kind of fretting and being, you know, and being nervous about, like, really nervous about money.
- [32:06]
Host / Interviewer
What age did that stop?
- [32:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
You know, probably in my, you know, in my 30s, you know, so that's a privileged position. You know, I'm lucky that way. But I grew up at, you know, listen, I was pretty scarred growing up in a household where money was scarce. And so I'm familiar with what people think. You know, it's very funny because people, you know, I'm a, you know, CEO of Goldman Sachs, blah, blah, blah. I'm a real fat cat kind of guy that's at Vibo. But, you know, a lot of times people will assert that. I mean, being with some politicians where they're saying, what do you know about this or that or what do you, you know, And I'm going, listen, I, you know, I did some research on you before this conversation. Your dad went to Yale, my dad went to the post office. So why are you telling me what,
- [32:45]
Host / Interviewer
you know, that and that stuff doesn't go away either. Like the way that, like the first 20 years that you experience, it's like a lower T trauma a little bit. Not to be too woo woo. But like, I felt the same way. My mom and dad told me they were like, when. I think they said, like when I graduated high school, they were like, we had like $8,000. That was our situation. And I was like, weren't you nervous? And they were like, yeah, we were nervous all the time.
- [33:07]
Lloyd Blankfein
When I got to college, after I bought books and did this, and I remember bought a sweater, which was a very big deal for me because when I got to college, I wasn't dressed the way everybody else was dressed. And you know, I just didn't know I came from Brooklyn. I never saw it. And so I went out, bought a sweater to put over a tennis shirt. Cause that's how everybody dressed in those days. And then after I bought. And at one point I had. I remember this, I had $11 left over.
- [33:33]
Host / Interviewer
What year?
- [33:34]
Lloyd Blankfein
Freshman year. This would have been like 1971 or two.
- [33:38]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. So it's still only worth like, what, 50 bucks?
- [33:40]
Lloyd Blankfein
And I was on financial aid, like full financial aid. But full financial aid doesn't cover, you know, going to movies or things like that. And, you know, just, you know, buying a beer. And then so somebody said, you should go to the financial office and tell them that, you know, in this situation, can they help you? And I went to the financial aid office and they said, here, fill out this form. And on one side put what you have, on the other side put what you need and see whether there's a difference between that and I did that and I turned it in. And I remember making it so that there was a difference of $500. Like, my life cost $500 more than what I had. And so a clerk looked at it and said, oh, okay. And right there, while I waited, she made out a check for $500 and gave it to me.
- [34:22]
Host / Interviewer
And I said, whoa, I want more of that.
- [34:25]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, no, I didn't.
- [34:26]
Host / Interviewer
$5,000.
- [34:28]
Lloyd Blankfein
The jokey reaction is I should have asked for a thousand. No, but that would. The point was, it was the first time in my life that I wasn't really nickeled and dimed. It was like, you know, it was like unbelievable. And by the way, that. That had a big influence on me because I later went to Harvard. I was lucky enough to get in there. That's another whole set of stories. But as a result of that, you know, my. My commitment to my. Again, University is I, you know, I co chair the campaign for Financial Aid. And I did, you know, that was a big deal because it was not only that I got it, but I got it in a way that had a generosity of spirit to it. And so I didn't feel bad. I wasn't made to feel bad about it. And that was so. I think, you know, everyone, you know, in my category thinks about giving, but I also think about how it feels to receive.
- [35:12]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [35:12]
Lloyd Blankfein
And I. And so I came away with a feeling that, you know, it's not just enough to give people what they need, but you have to give them. You have to get to in a way where it's a positive experience also.
- [35:24]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. Where it doesn't. It feels a little dignified.
- [35:26]
Lloyd Blankfein
It's dignified. And again, that $500, I hope I repaid a lot, A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of times over. But that was still something. Look, I'm telling you the story today. How about that? That was well over 50 years ago. And it's still something that, you know, that I think about that, you know, moment when I got. Because I was relieved I got the money, but I was also. I didn't feel bad about it.
- [35:48]
Host / Interviewer
This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at
- [35:50]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
least $3 million a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company, and
- [35:58]
Host / Interviewer
you realize two things.
- [36:00]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you
- [36:05]
Host / Interviewer
realize, I am all alone.
- [36:07]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
I've outrun my peers. Which means you're now making $10 million decisions alone, by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company, Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable, call you out on your nonsense, and help show you the way. Because the fact is, is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there, and they're hard to find. And if you can find them, it's hard to have this explicit time, this explicit place where you sit down where the rules are clear, that we are here to help each other and to be one another's board of directors. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying shit. I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members. And I know this stuff actually works, whether you work with Hampton or you get your own group on your own. But having a group like this, a group of people who you meet with in real life once a month, it can change your life. It changed mine. And I know it will change yours. So check it out.
- [37:17]
Host / Interviewer
Joinhampton.com there's this book called Die with Zero. Have you ever seen that book?
- [37:22]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, but the title tells me everything.
- [37:24]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, and truth is, I haven't read it either. But the title does tell you everything. It's a great title. The guy, Bill Perkins, he seems like a great guy. But the premise is, like, spend while you're alive, because when you're dead, who cares? And so the premise is, if you're gonna give, if you can pull it off, give now. Because at least you can experience it with a joy of.
- [37:44]
Lloyd Blankfein
Express it. That. I didn't originate that. Somebody said it to me, but it resonated with me. He said he wanted to give with his warm hand, not his cold hand.
- [37:51]
Host / Interviewer
That's cool.
- [37:53]
Lloyd Blankfein
That was a very good visual for me, you know, to feel give with your warm hand, not your cold hand.
- [37:57]
Host / Interviewer
Is that what you're gonna. Is that what you intend to do?
- [37:59]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, I have to work things through. And I joked in the book, and it's kind of only half a joke. So putting aside philanthropy and stuff and just thinking of kids, sometimes I wanna. I give things, you know, like take. You know, I give stuff to them. And then I feel. Then I feel ambivalent that I, you know, that they. That they have what I gave them.
- [38:18]
Host / Interviewer
What do you mean, ambivalent? Like you don't feel good that, you
- [38:21]
Lloyd Blankfein
know, I sort of, you know, I'll give stuff to my kids. Cause I can afford to do it. And they're great kids and they work really hard. They're super. There's nothing, you know, nothing wrong with them. You know, it has not ruined my kids that they get stuff. Far from it. But, you know, I'll give them stuff. Then I'll say, you have no idea. You know, I didn't have what you have. And I live like this and you're living like that. And I'm saying, well, the reason why they're not living, they're living so well is because I gave it to them.
- [38:46]
Host / Interviewer
Dude, I had the exact same conversation with my wife yesterday.
- [38:48]
Lloyd Blankfein
So if I gave it to them, why am I then acting, you know, regretful that they have it?
- [38:55]
Host / Interviewer
I had the same talk with my wife yesterday. I remember saying, telling her we had just hung out with someone who was born into a wealthy family. And I was envious. I was like, that asshole hasn't worked hard for this and that. And it was rooted a little bit in jealousy of like, you know, I'm better than them because I worked for it and I wasn't given nothing. And then like I was like, well, but I intend to give to my kids. It's like I'm going to create. My children are going to be the people that I dislike. And I thought that was really strange. Well, you can think that way.
- [39:23]
Lloyd Blankfein
Kids turn out the way they turn out for a variety of reasons, one of which could be, you know, their neediness or the surpluses they have. But that could be a small part of it. And there are other things that make your kids my. I have no issues. My kids, you know, you know, terrific. They worked hard, they went to good
- [39:38]
Host / Interviewer
schools, they applied, they worked at Goldman.
- [39:39]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, each worked. You know, Goldman's a kind of firm that doesn't discourage people from bringing their kids into the business. You know, it was an old partnership family firm. You know, it was a good thing to big. So all my kids worked at least briefly at the firm but it was too complicated. It was complicated for them to work there. You know, my name was Smith. They could have hidden out but if your name is Blankfein, you know, it was just too. And by the way the burdens of being that were very heavy. You know, I can't tell you I'm not in my kids heads totally. So I can't tell you what they feel. So I'll just say generically if you're the son of a very senior or the daughter of a very senior person in the organization, you have to worry that people think you didn't get your job by merit. And they'll think, you know, you don't work hard and you'll think this. So there's a lot of pressure on kids to come in earlier, stay later, show, show their mock.
- [40:26]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, there's some baggage.
- [40:27]
Lloyd Blankfein
There's baggage that they have to overcome. And so it would have been too oppressive for them to see.
- [40:32]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, I saw someone. I think it was like I was researching. It was like an old Gawker article.
- [40:35]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah.
- [40:36]
Host / Interviewer
And you seem pretty tough skinned. I would have been very upset about that. About people writing that stuff. That would have been, that would have been really.
- [40:43]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
No, I was very.
- [40:44]
Lloyd Blankfein
It turns out I had a thick skin. Look, if I didn't have a thick skin, I wouldn't have survived there and there. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't have the. I wouldn't have the joy of sitting opposite you now. There'd be somebody else in this chair talking to you instead of me.
- [40:54]
Host / Interviewer
It's still hard.
- [40:55]
Lloyd Blankfein
I mean, like, oh, I didn't like it. But it turns out I could be. I could, I could take that. I could take a punch. Look, to be the CEO of a firm as high profile as Goldman, going through the stressful times that we went through, one, to survive that, you needed a thick skin. And I had one.
- [41:12]
Host / Interviewer
Was there a point where you thought, this isn't going to work? No, it felt good. The whole. Or it felt.
- [41:16]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, no, it didn't feel good. But the things that would feel bad to anybody would feel bad to me. I just could take it. I mean, now I don't want to test it. I don't want to get challenged more to get to the point where I can take it. But certainly everything that I've endured so far, obviously I could take because I took it. In life, there are people who could take a punch and people who can't take a punch. And so it turns out. I didn't know that until I got punched, but it turns out that I could take a punch. Not everybody can, by the way. It doesn't make them a bad. People have different wirings. Some people are athletic, some people aren't.
- [41:46]
Host / Interviewer
Do you think you're born a great investor?
- [41:47]
Lloyd Blankfein
I don't know. I certainly wasn't. So I can't tell you.
- [41:50]
Host / Interviewer
You don't think you were?
- [41:51]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
No.
- [41:52]
Lloyd Blankfein
I ran a firm that contained a lot of great investors. I'm not a bad investor. I can read balance sheet and plans and, you know, proposals and I have opinions on the future. A lot of times I'm right. But I didn't. Again, I didn't climb the ranks because specifically I was an investor. Goldman Sachs has great investors and great salesmen and great traders and great bankers and this. And, you know, fortunately I had, I didn't have to be the greatest at any one of those things. I was a pretty good manager and I was a pretty good strategist for the business and I was a good partner to other people. And that was what was required of my job. Just look, maybe once upon a time the captain of the ship got to be captain because he could do every job on the boat. I'm not sure that's true in a nuclear navy. And so I will tell you maybe there was a time that the person who ran a financial firm could do was best at every job in that firm. But I didn't, I couldn't have been. No one could be at a firm as complicated and as big and diverse as Goldman. And so I didn't have to be.
- [42:50]
Host / Interviewer
My last question, you had this really cool thought, it was awesome actually and I wrote it down and I've been thinking about it a lot. This idea that someone said it to you when you became a partner you were like, or they were like, you know, our goal here is that you become successful enough that when you die there'll be a really long multi paragraph obituary about you. And we hope that your time at Goldman is only a sentence or two.
- [43:12]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yes, that was when I got, when you made partner, had a conversation with senior partner there who was sort of assigned to acculturate new people to the firm and he gave you some rules of the road, things like make sure you don't get anywhere near anything that today would be called me too kind of activity, the warnings of that kind of stuff. Then a warning to make sure you're very rigorous and conservative on your taxes. And then there were two other things that they advised one of which is they set up a charitable foundation for you and they said we expect you to do this, to use it and to give money away and it's good for your personal life and it's also good for your professional life to be thought of as somebody who gives back to the community. And as a result of being on philanthropic boards and other things you'll engage with a set of people that's broader than the people you might need in your business life. So it's good for you, good for the firm. Do this. So that was another topic that was broached and then the final thing they said was and as far as you know, your balance in your life, you know, think of it this way. If you live the kind of life that you, that there's an obituary written about you and it's nine paragraphs long, make it so that you do enough so that there's no more than three of those nine paragraphs are about your life at Goldman. And now that's, you know, that may be the best but it's not going to be the case for me because I was, I stayed too long.
- [44:29]
Host / Interviewer
That's what I was going to ask you what are you going to. You have to do something now. What are you going to.
- [44:32]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
What do you hope?
- [44:33]
Lloyd Blankfein
That maybe I'll join the Foreign Legion or go up in a space.
- [44:36]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
But what do you hope the rest
- [44:37]
Host / Interviewer
of the paragraphs will be? Do you have a. Do you have, like, a goal?
- [44:39]
Lloyd Blankfein
I think at this point, you know, every hive has a queen bee and the queen, you know, the other. The other guy, the worker bees and the others, they kind of. They go off and the, you know, the queen stay. I was caught up, you know, as a CEO. Long time. I stayed a long time. And you do other things. But I don't think I'm ever going to be too separated from my experience at Goldman. And look, I wrote a book called Streetwise Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs. So when I wrote a memoir, it even has Goldman Sachs in the. In the subtitle. So I'm never gonna. I'm not gonna comply with that piece of advice. But I knew where the advice was coming from. The important thing is, and I do. I serve on boards and I do other activities and I'm interested in other stuff. I retired early enough with enough gas in the tank that I could go out and learn. You know, I tried teaching a little bit and I said, you know, something better than teaching? I wanna learn. And so I take some courses online and do some things. And that's the luxury of my position now. So I'm feeding my curiosity about things away from business. But I also like business and I like markets. And so, as I said to you, I still trade. I watch markets as background noise. I read a lot of financial stuff, but I also read about cosmology and the physics of small stuff. And I'm interested in linguistics and anthropology, and I read a lot of history.
- [45:57]
Host / Interviewer
I think you said you were like. If a trader asked me what to study, I tell him to study history.
- [46:01]
Lloyd Blankfein
I do.
- [46:02]
Host / Interviewer
What do you. What do you read?
- [46:03]
Lloyd Blankfein
You know, a while ago, for some reason, I chewed medieval history because it's hard to follow.
- [46:08]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, it is.
- [46:09]
Lloyd Blankfein
It's very hard to follow. But then I sort of got caught up in it because of, you know, the way people fought in those days, relationship with religion and the church. And I sort of got interested in reading it. And sometimes you pick up good authors that you really like the way they write, and so you less interested in the topic they pick to write about than the fact that they're writing it. I tend also to. I like reading a lot of biographies.
- [46:33]
Host / Interviewer
Which one moved the needle for you most? For me, it was Titan. And I know you did a thing with Ron Chernow.
- [46:37]
Lloyd Blankfein
Actually, I read Titan. I didn't love it as much as that. I mean, you know, the Rock, obviously, about Rockefeller. And I've read a lot of his. I've read a lot. You know, when I read like an author, I tend to read all of his stuff. There's a book I write. There's an author I always like. She's been dead a number. A good number of years now, named Barbara Tuckman, who wrote. She won, actually, two Pulitzer Prizes. So I didn't actually discover her. She's been discovered away from me. But she wrote Guns of August, about the origins of World War I. A great book, not a biography, but a fantastic book. And by the way, very influential book, World War I.
- [47:07]
Host / Interviewer
It's about.
- [47:08]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yes, and very influential because it shows how you can get caught up in a vortex. Forces started to mobilize. It almost couldn't be stopped. But she wrote a book that I found really fun. That I'm not sure it's not her most famous book, but it's called A Distant Mirror. And it's a history of a life that was led in the 14th century. And the guy was a very influential person. Not a king, but kind of an aristocrat. And he moved back and forth between England and France. And in the 14th century. Reason why it was called A Distant Mirror. She wrote this book, like, in the middle of the Cold War, when everybody was worried that the world was going to be blown apart in a nuclear war and stuff. And actually in the 14th century was a time when they had the Black Plague and the papal schism. And the Hundred Years War was a very stressful time in Europe and the world in general, but certainly in Europe. And people were very, very fatalistic in their attitude. And that's why it was called A Distant Mirror. It was like sort of like a mirror on the 20th century. And the jumping off point for telling the story was this particular guy. Baron Kucey was a French aristocrat, but he fought in the Hundred Years War. He ended up marrying an English woman. And so he appeared. It was like Zelig. He popped up in a lot of places. And so it gave you the opportunity to write a history of a lot of different. Of what was going on in that era. And that was. I enjoyed reading that book. That was one of the books I've read twice.
- [48:27]
Host / Interviewer
That's awesome.
- [48:27]
Lloyd Blankfein
I also liked Totally Different. I liked reading the Power Broker about Robert Moses by Caro.
- [48:33]
Host / Interviewer
Robert Caro. He just had a Thing at the American History Museum. Yes, it was awesome.
- [48:37]
Lloyd Blankfein
And I'll tell you the interesting thing is the reason why I reread that. I read that book once when I was starting, and your audience won't necessarily. There's no reason why they should know him. But it was a guy who basically built New York and called the power broker because he asserted power that on paper he shouldn't have had. But by dint of his personality and different offices he held and clever things, he really was a power broker to the point of dominating even the elected officials who were nominally his boss. And there were aspects of. He did great things. You know, he built, you know, from the Long Island Expressway to all sorts of things, you know, but he also, you know, had personality flaws that today look worse than they did in that era.
- [49:18]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
Yeah.
- [49:19]
Host / Interviewer
I mean, he's accused of being, like, a pretty big racist.
- [49:21]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, he was accused of that. And he was accused of rolling over, you know, building, you know, cementing parks that, you know, that were otherwise green that people today wouldn't do. But he did it, you know, so think of, you know, think of the Founding Fathers who, you know, created the template for a democracy when none had existed for, you know, and yet they had slavery. And so how do you evaluate that? And so people have different, you know, how do you look at that? Does that disqualify the good things that they did or, you know, it gets very confusing and hard to fathom, and different people have different views about these things. And he was kind of a personality like that in a different way. But, you know, when I first read the book as a young guy, I was focused on the flaw part.
- [50:03]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [50:04]
Lloyd Blankfein
And I said, oh, God, this is a, you know. You know, this was a tough human being, an instinct. Terrible, but tough. And, you know, this. And then after 40 years of trying to get stuff done and build in a business and, you know, try to influence people to do what I wanted them to do when they didn't want to do it, and the sacrifice I had to make and evaluating what I got done and the effort it took. I reread that Robert Moses book, and all of a sudden, his achievements started to go up.
- [50:36]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [50:37]
Lloyd Blankfein
And the other flaws kind of stayed the same. They didn't get better. But I became. I kind of valued him more. What it showed was, again, it was less about Robert Moses at this point than it was about me, because I had changed, because as a result of trying to get things done, and it made me appreciate the degree of difficulty of his achievements more than I had.
- [51:01]
Host / Interviewer
I feel that way about the founding fathers. I'm angry at them for a bunch of stuff. And then I'm like man, Thomas Jefferson, he was like 28 or 30 years old when he wrote this.
- [51:10]
Lloyd Blankfein
33 or 30, yes.
- [51:11]
Host / Interviewer
I think when he wrote this document and how much wisdom and there was
- [51:15]
Lloyd Blankfein
no template for really and you know, the idea of something that you know, we can get, you know, because democracy was a pejorative demos, it was anarchy.
- [51:24]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
Yeah.
- [51:25]
Host / Interviewer
And I think about that revolution because I've been. Cause Ken Burns has this American Revolution documentary and it's just I didn't realize how consequential the American Revolution was and how like for the most part there had never been democracy at such a large scale. And they made this document that was self amending. Like this idea that you can, like we are flawed and we can, you can fix it.
- [51:45]
Lloyd Blankfein
And that's just like that was. If you read a book, I just read a book on the Constitution that was even debated.
- [51:51]
Host / Interviewer
There's a cool one by the guy who did the Brooklyn Bridge one where it talks about how it was the most important words of the Constitution was we believe these truths to be self evident. And it just like goes.
- [52:02]
Lloyd Blankfein
And yet despite the self evidence of the rules, they still had us. You know, they debated slavery. And by the way, it's not that they didn't know it was wrong at the time and have missed it and there were no they knew they knew. But by the way, another good book to read is it's part of. It will ultimately be a three volume scene by Rick Atkinson on the American Revolution. But the first one is called the British are Coming and the second volume is out about. People don't learn enough about history in general, but Americans don't learn enough about the American Revolution and why it was fought. And of course people debate it because men, you have views, you know, people, you know, revise history and say, you know, these people were all evil. They weren't, you know, they weren't. You know, it's like Columbus, you know, they don't want. They renamed Columbus Day because he was, you know, bad to the indigenous people, which I'm sure he was. But in a ship that was not as long as your backyard swimming pool, you know, in, in the 15th century steered that ship to a continent that he wasn't sure was there. For crying out loud. Give a guy, you know, give. Let's have some credit on this stuff, you know, in other words, you can't, you know, nobody's going to Be perfect. But we have all these revisionary histories that stop admiring characteristics and achievements that are worth admiring just because there were other flaws in the person that delivered the achievement. It's crazy.
- [53:24]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. I've ignored the American Revolution for a long time, and now I've gone down this path because of that Ken's Burden documentary. And I think it made me feel like capitalism in America is almost a spiritual thing. I married into a immigrant family, and they are small business owners. And now that I'm in New York, I walk by all these bodegas that are owned by, like, you know, Vietnamese families or like, oh, spectacular. And I'm like, this is the greatest place on earth where someone can come with nothing. And, like, my favorite part is walking around here, you see these bodegas, and they're called, like, American Cowboy or, like, American Inc. And like, someone was so proud, but they didn't speak English enough to know, but they just knew that, like, cowboy in America was, like, cool.
- [54:03]
Lloyd Blankfein
I know this is going to be controversial. I don't know who I'm going to upset. But, you know, it's like, I would say that most of the people who are prominent social democrats grew up in prosperous families here, of course. And let me tell you, the people who grew up under communism don't wish the country was socialist.
- [54:16]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
Of course.
- [54:17]
Lloyd Blankfein
I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. But, you know, but.
- [54:20]
Host / Interviewer
But I love, like, this immigrant. I. I'm like, particularly like the immigrant journey, you know, I think I. I freaking love that. And, you know, I think, like, the American dream shouldn't be to move here and buy a home. It should be move here and start a small business. And I just think it's really cool.
- [54:33]
Lloyd Blankfein
But not everybody's competent. Everyone's capable. But the fact that people can do. Look, you know, I agree with you. And, you know, we're going through a moment where people. I guess people always question again, I grew up. I was a young guy during the Vietnam era. So I grew up and everybody was disgusted with the country and stuff. And listen, here's another good thing about the country. You can live here quite happily, you know, quite comfortably, while you express your contempt for the country, of course. Where else can you.
- [55:00]
Host / Interviewer
The way that I describe America is, I'm like, it's mostly good, and you can. And we can improve.
- [55:05]
Lloyd Blankfein
And you could talk about all the bad stuff, and you generally won't be arrested for it.
- [55:09]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, it's mostly great. And we can improve.
- [55:12]
Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, God, I. I am. But, you know, but look, everybody has to rediscover these things. And maybe it's, you know, maybe it's a function of age.
- [55:18]
Host / Interviewer
You know, I could talk to you about history all day. I'm so happy that you're into that.
- [55:22]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, no, but I think that's why
- [55:23]
Host / Interviewer
I like the upper Western part.
- [55:24]
Lloyd Blankfein
No, but I like the history part. And I'll tell you why it relates to the commercial life is that you can. Is that history, again, doesn't repeat, but to paraphrase a remark attributed to Mark Twain is it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And so patterns happen again. So we're going through these tough times and, oh, it's none like anything, but it's not that different from the late 60s when the country was very polarized or the McCarthy era, where we sort of went off the rails and then got back on the rails. So people say, oh, my God, I don't like, you know, the norms of society, you know, the norms of political, Proper political behavior are gone forever. Well, you know, we did have a civil war. We did have a McCarthy era. We did put, you know, Japanese American citizens who were Japanese descent in camps because we were freaked out by world, you know, by Pearl Harbor. And then we overcame those things and regretted them afterwards. So even at the worst, there's hope. There's always hope for America, and America has always fulfilled those hopes eventually.
- [56:26]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah. I think Warren Buffett or you, I think, quoted Warren Buffett in the book, book saying, like, you know, I, I wouldn't bet against America.
- [56:33]
Lloyd Blankfein
Or, well, I think a lot of people have said that I wouldn't bet. I wouldn't get against America. And though, you know, so if you watch the evening news, you read the newspaper, you'd walk away with one set of views.
- [56:43]
Host / Interviewer
Well, I think there's a lot of lazy phrases. For example, I see people online and they'll make comments, they're like, well, in this economy, blankety blank. Or it's so crazy out there. Like, there's like these lazy phrases. And I hate those phrases because it's sort of. I think the way that the words that you use shape how you think. Like, it's hard to feel a certain demotion if you don't have a word to describe that emotion. And so I think that when people use phrases like, well, in this economy, it's hard to do blank. It's like, well, that's a pretty defeatist attitude. This economy is actually quite good. And it doesn't matter what the economy is. That shouldn't prevent you from exercising the Action that you want to try to. I mean, it will always be hard.
- [57:21]
Lloyd Blankfein
Now I'm thinking today, you know, when I was, when I was a chi, you know, I was crossing into adulthood, they were drafting people, Vietnam War, literally the body count coming out of, you know, they would read every Friday evening. They, you know, they would read, you know, scroll down the TV, you know, 350, 450, 600 died. And then of course compare that to World War II when, you know, when millions of years.
- [57:48]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, four years.
- [57:49]
Lloyd Blankfein
And so, you know, every generation has its challenges. Every generation minimizes the challenges of the past because they're resolved and can't get worse and maximizes the challenges that people face today because they're still scared of them because they're not resolved. And so, you know, that's why it's good to read. That's why I think it's beneficial to read history because if they can go through that period, then we can get through ours.
- [58:14]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, I do that all the time. Like I remember I was reading about Sacagawea when she was with Lewis and Clark and I purposely read that book before I had my kid because a lot of people don't remember or they,
- [58:22]
Lloyd Blankfein
that's a good book too on undaunted courage.
- [58:24]
Host / Interviewer
Stephen Ambrose, the best. And people, this is way under discussed Sacagawea for the listener. Basically, Lewis and Clark went west from St. Louis.
- [58:31]
Lloyd Blankfein
And so you know that coming from
- [58:33]
Host / Interviewer
St. Louis, of course it's. And I'll tell you a funny story, started from. But they started in St. Louis, where I'm from and they basically said just go west and figure out if there's like a passage. And they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
- [58:41]
Lloyd Blankfein
Now they go to Portland and then they find, you know, progressive mayor.
- [58:45]
Host / Interviewer
Yeah, it's a lot different now.
- [58:46]
Lloyd Blankfein
Do you think Lewis and Clark would have been impressed by the progressivism?
- [58:49]
Host / Interviewer
Well, what's crazy is they went with 30 people and like none died. And so they go there but. And they find this woman named Sacagawea who spoke a variety of languages and they're like, hey, come with us. Well, a lot of people don't talk about this. She had a three month old kid and if you actually there's a Sacagawea gold dollar. Have you ever seen one of those?
- [59:05]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yes.
- [59:06]
Host / Interviewer
Her kid is strapped to her and I'm like, if she could do that. I don't need a baby thermometer for my bathtub. Like, you know what I mean? Like I don't need all these gadgets. If Sacagawea could carry this.
- [59:15]
Lloyd Blankfein
She had a kid, and I don't know how the kid turned out. I hope very well.
- [59:17]
Host / Interviewer
He turned out great. His name was Joseph. He went to my high school. By the way, he was in the first graduating class of my high school.
- [59:22]
Lloyd Blankfein
I can tell you the infant mortality rate was a lot higher then. So keep, keep.
- [59:26]
Host / Interviewer
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
- [59:28]
Lloyd Blankfein
Keep the thermometer.
- [59:29]
Host / Interviewer
Don't let the facts get away.
- [59:30]
Lloyd Blankfein
Give them vaccines according to the schedule and take good care of them because you don't want. There has been progress on infant mortality, so just because her kid made it through, I would.
- [59:40]
Host / Interviewer
She ended up dying of illness at, like, at her early 40s. So my story doesn't exactly hold true, but I appreciate you so much. This is awesome.
- [59:47]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, no, my pleasure.
- [59:48]
Host / Interviewer
All right, that's it. That's the pod.
- [59:50]
Guest / Motivational Speaker (brief interjection)
I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on a road let's travel Never looking back.
- [60:00]
Sponsor / Ad Reader
All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast, because if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.