How the Ex-Goldman CEO actually invests his own money

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 Blankfein.

Your portfolio as a pie chart, what does it look like right now?

I invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me. I would say that 98% are equities.

What are some of your biggest holdings?

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.

That's crazy.

No, it's not. It's like taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm talking.

Right now?

It's like that.

So you're bullish on big tech. Anything else?

It's been good to be bullish on big tech, and I'll stop being bullish on it when it stops going up.

What did the people who couldn't outperform, what did the bottom half have in common?

The bigger takeaway is that—

[MUSIC] 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 the road, let's travel, never looking back.

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 I'm like, I don't know anything when it comes to investing. My portfolio is basically—

Hey, nobody knows anything.

Well, that's what I've learned. But it seems like you know a lot.

Because I'm so on the inside, unlike a lot of people, I know nobody knows anything, whereas everybody else just wonders.

Well, that's cool. And so I'm gonna ask you a ton of questions and it's gonna come from a perspective of like, I actually don't know what I'm doing. The majority of my portfolio is, which I actually think is smart, is just 90% index, 10% bonds.

Well, that's sensible.

But you day trade, which I thought was hilarious.

Yeah.

Well, two things. One, I'm a pro at it. I mean, this is what I did my, you know, only for the last 4 or 5 decades. And the other thing is that nothing hugely positive or hugely negative is gonna affect my life.

Yeah.

So to me it's like a hobby.

What age were you when you felt that?

You know, grew up in the projects. So I, I always, I wouldn't say that I felt poor, but I certainly was incapable of feeling well-to-do. Yeah. I can't even say the R word.

R—

r—

r— rich.

I can't— hard for me to even to 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, of the kid from the projects.

So your father was a postal worker. I think you said you were an urban hick, which I liked.

Grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, you know, at the end of two, 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 3 times. I never left the country, didn't fly on an airplane till after I left, you know, to left school and stuff.

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.

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?

I, 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.

You don't think that you've met one? Like when you meet Jeff Bezos, you're not like, this guy just has more horsepower.

Yeah. Or most of the people I meet, I can't, I, I, I'm not saying I can do what they do, But I 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.

When you met him, did you— didn't think—

No.

When you, when you, you know, you know him, I guess you didn't think this guy's different?

Yeah.

So you've had teams of traders. You, you, you, you were like a, a commodity salesman, but you came, you became to eventually lead traders. What did, The people who couldn't outperform or who were not the best, what did they have in common?

You had this funny bit where you, I think something had happened where Goldman, you guys were like really nervous of making mistakes.

When, you know, we had, you know, the big financial crisis, the one that was like in '07, '08 when the regulators wanted to make sure that this kind of thing never happened again. Well, the only way you can make things sure that, you know, once you're in the risk-taking world, anything can happen. You know, risk is risk, and you don't, you know, always know the consequences of it. And if you try to legislate risk, you know, you may think you're protecting the world from the 100-year storm, but you're also gonna forego the 99 years of in between. Yeah. When there was growth.

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.

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Everyone's throwing 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.

Yeah. And as you get more successful, you, I, at least I have, and I think you said Goldman did, you take less risk.

Well, I think that that's what makes people more conservative. You think of the word conservative, you conserve, you become interested in what, uh, in not losing what you have as opposed to making more. Now when I say making more, are people gonna be repulsed by the idea of making more? Making more is another way of saying advancing, creating wealth.

Can you tell that story about Warren Buffett in the book? That was amazing where you, he loaned you a bunch of money basically over a handshake and a phone call and was like, "Alright, I'm gonna go take my grandkid to Dairy Queen." You know, Warren is one of those great men, which he's brilliant in a way that I can't put myself in his shoes and see the world through his eyes.

And during the financial crisis, he offered to, at a very important moment, invest money in Goldman Sachs.

Do you remember how much?

I think it was $5 billion or $10 billion.

And what'd you do? You called them? I think it was $5 billion.

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 2 or 3 times.

So what you said, you said, "Hey, Warren, we're going to this thing. We might need a little liquidity." And I'd done that before.

Would he be 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 saw it as a good investment to make. He wasn't doing it because he was trying to, 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, he saw in us what I saw in us, which was a good investment that was being beaten down by, you know, circumstances that it would reverse. And I think he wanted to make an investment before it got better.

Well, I think that, and the story was cool because you were like on the phone with him. You're like, hey Warren, you wanna do this thing? Or, 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 was a loan or investment.

It was preferred stock. It's something between a loan and a stock.

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, like, sign some paperwork? And he's like, no, no, no, I'll just send the money. And, you know, I got to go. I'm going to take my kid to— I'm taking my grandkid to Dairy Queen. Just, just figure it out and let me know where you want me to send the money.

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 on this.

Oh no, it wasn't even a favor. It was a, it was, he asked for that. Uh, he asked for a commitment for that.

Yeah.

Didn't ask for it in writing.

And, and you were like, yeah, I'll put that in the contract. That sounds good. He goes, no, no, no, no need. It's cool. Just tell me you commit. And that was it. And that's pretty amazing.

You know, in our 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 2 days. I suppose somebody could lie and say, "I really didn't do that," or, "I didn't intend it," or, "I'm confu—" you know, or something. But you'll never eat lunch in this town again. And if people rely on their reputations for probity, it doesn't mean that things don't get documented so that each side really understands what the other person's perception is, making sure you're literally on the same page.

Have you—

did you see the text between, I think it was like Ellison and Elon? Elon was like, Hey, I'm going to buy Twitter for, you know, whatever, I think $30 billion. Are you in? And he was like, yeah, I'm in for $5 billion. Or like, you know, it was like a fairly casual conversation for like a pretty huge thing.

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 2 days you're gonna perform. And so there's no thing, there's no, there's no reason why you have to document something that will be accomplished before you could ever dot the I's and cross the T's in a document. But it's always, you know, all things equal, it's good to have a document, but it's largely not necessary in most of the, transactional world works without documentation.

So you're 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?

I invest in risky assets. That's what's fun for me. And that was what I did my whole career in my—

What percent is in just index funds or boring stuff?

Well, index funds are risky. They're just, they're diversified across different things. But if you're in a diversified equity ETF, you're in equities.

Yeah.

Well, okay. Of that, I'm so curious about this. Of the— so I'm in 90%, just a Vanguard fund and then 10%.

Well, that's sensible because this is what you're, you're, you're not doing this, you're not doing investing for a living.

Of course. And I'm not, I'm probably not gonna 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?

Well, I'm, I, I would say that right now I'm very heavily focused in tech and have been for a long time for good reason.

Which, which companies?

All the big, you know, all the big hyperscalers and second tier ones.

What's a second tier one? What's an example of a second tier one?

I don't even know. You know, if they, if they, you 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 food mill with no insult intended to Larry Ellison, maybe Oracle, But I don't have to, I change my things all the time. So it doesn't matter, you know, 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.

Yeah.

Ones, ones that are a little bit riskier. And by the way, they're companies that are probably gonna be gigantic companies that some people know about today and are investing in. I never heard of them because I'm just not always, you know, I'm not walking around the corridors of Silicon Valley shops and I don't know the new, new thing. It might be commonplace knowledge over there, but it's not with, you know, everybody knows the world's a big place and everybody always knows their corner of it.

So you're bullish on big tech. Anything else?

I'm generally bullish. And, and by the way, it's been good to be bullish on big tech and I'll stop being bullish on it when it stops going up.

For the foreseeable future, that's what you're thinking.

Yeah. My foreseeable future is when I finish this conversation with you and then I'll check it again.

Are you trading every day?

Yes. That's crazy. No, it's not. It's like a—

I don't think it's really crazy. It's just crazy for me to— yeah.

Oh, no, no. I multiple times— it's taking a lot of discipline not to look at my screen while I'm talking to you. Right now.

It's like background noise.

Yeah.

It's out there, it's going on.

What trades did you make today?

I think today I may have, you know, I, I, I'm not sure what I did because I put in orders. 'Cause knowing that you were gonna tie me up and I wasn't gonna be able to look at stuff, I told people what to do.

I'm so curious.

You know, 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 wanna talk about specific things because—

That's right.

People listen to these things on different days and they'll start, you know, they'll sound smart or It's stupid depending on the data.

That's so interesting. Do you have a team?

Oh, just me.

Just you?

Yeah.

And so you're at your computer doing it on your own?

No, no, I'm not at a computer. I don't have a computer. I have an iPad.

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?

I chat with people.

Texting?

What?

You're texting 'em?

Yeah, but usually I call. Somebody will text me, I'll text them, and then I'll get tired of tapping things out and I'll be tired of fixing the typos 'cause of my fat fingers. So I just call people up.

And you're doing that all day?

Some people follow— I follow the news, but I also follow business news. And I like, you know, companies are like little stories and it's like gossip.

What do you, what do you read?

I read, you know, all the newspapers. Of course, I start with the New York Post, the paper of record.

Yeah.

And you know, when I read papers like, you know, like the Journal, the Times, the FT, you know, Bloomberg, I look at, you know, very financially or, you know, finance-oriented.

You have subscriptions to all of them?

Yeah. No, I don't steal them. Yeah.

Well, you know, how many paywalls do you hit and you're like, ah, shit, I'm not going to read that. I got to go find a different article.

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.

Are you really?

Yes. That's hilarious. Have you outperformed the market significantly?

Yes, I have for a while. And I'm not, and that's not 'cause of, it's because of where I focus. So I started to say I'm mostly and have been in tech, energy. Don't forget I have a background in trading energy.

Yeah.

And I'm also in financial services 'cause I know a lot about financial services having been in the financial services. So those are the 3 areas that I've been focused on.

I haven't done— Well, I'm sure you still own a bunch of Goldman.

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 company.

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So like I said, I'm boring and it's 90/10. It's the most simple stuff.

Yeah. I, I, I do VOO.

And then I would also, because of the importance of tech and the, you know, 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, you know, on, 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 know, you'll outlive your mistakes.

What's your opinion on what's going on with like the Robinhoods of the world and all these, like the, the Calshies and things that promote like day trading, but also betting and things like that?

Mm-hmm.

So that's the risky thing. So, you know, when you have some of these sites and they show confetti dropping 'cause you did a trade and, you know, "Attaboy" and "High five" and, you know, "You should gamble" and make that look too attractive. You know, for some people that's a disservice and for other people it's exactly what they need. They won't go overboard, but they, but it needed to be more attractive for them to develop an interest in it.

Are there any interesting things that you didn't invest in that ended up turning out right? And it was because you had poor input, like you, or you had a, you just let emotion control you or you—

No, a million things. I didn't want to—

What's an interesting one? Yeah.

What's it gonna go for now? Like $2 trillion?

I don't know what's in the market. People are discussing that now. I think they're 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 of that.

And what did you say? What you thought was expensive? $100 billion?

Yeah. So 1 instead of, you know, 175.

Wow.

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 wanna 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 of things. I, Let me tell you, I missed a lot more stuff than I got. Yeah. 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've missed, you know, nobody's great about, you know, predicting the future.

I try to, like, talk to, like, some of the younger people who listen to the show where I'm like, "Man, having a supportive partner is, like, without a doubt, more game-changing probably than any, than anything." Yeah.

And, and let's take the opposite side of it. And you know, statistically this is gonna happen to a lot of people and it'll happen to good people and it doesn't make you a bad person, but people have bad marriages and they have breakups and they have children and they fight over custody and visitation and all those kinds of things. Life's a lot better if you can avoid those problems. And by the way, being lonely is not the worst thing in the world. A bad marriage is, you know, that you have to work out of and deal with, you know, kids and property settlements. That's worse. I'm a very emotional person.

I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurial, tend to be 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 1 1 5 type of situation.

And by the way, I'm not, and that, I'm not just saying this for completeness, but it's worth saying, it's 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 he 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.

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.

No, I, 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 had, yeah. That there's benefits and burdens to every situation. Being anxious and looking, you know, around corners for problems and seeing things that could go wrong, I think that suited me in my job. I mean, not all of life is about your job. You could be happy in other things. You should be happy in other ways and other parts of life besides just your job. But just looking at that narrow point, I was in a, you know, I was in a risky business with a firm with a big balance sheet that had a lot of investments and that bought and sold and price risk and took on other risks that other people didn't want to have for a price. And you know something, if you're gonna do that job and preside over other people doing that job, it helps to be somewhat focused on things that could go wrong. And in my life, I generally upbeat that I think things will tend to work out, but I know that before they work out, they go wrong. A lot of things go wrong.

Did you have any, um, it didn't seem like it when I was reading about it. Your travel schedule was crazy. Did you have any work-life balance when you were doing it?

Well, when you ask me any, of course I will 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 was 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, 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 overseas. Overseas. 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.

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 happened at all. Like, how does our rent get paid? Or like, do you— do we pay utility? Like, I didn't know anything.

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.

Really? She does it all. Laura does it all.

Yeah. We have a bill-paying service that she manages and she does it. And I think, you know, what the hell? How much could she steal? It's all hers anyway.

That's it. Can I ask you about that? That's actually interesting. Do you guys meet to discuss finances at all?

I'm in charge of generating the money and she's really in charge of distributing it.

You told 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. We're like—

No, it was more than all of our money.

Yeah. You were like, I'm supposed to be this big shot. I don't remember if you were a partner or not. I think you were, but you were, you were, you were like—

I was probably a new partner, but in the early days, the way, I mean, too much, it would take too much time for your, your purpose here. But in a partnership, you don't take money outta the firm. So even when you own money, it stays in the firm.

Yeah. You were like, you know, I—

I had paper wealth.

I don't have a lot of like cash.

I had no, like no money. And, and I, you know, we bought, 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, a ha— 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 in, out in the, you know, at the beach. And we were going through the math, or my wife was really, my wife was doing this and she was going through in her mind where the money for the closing, and she had to come up to a certain amount. And she said, we borrowed this much. And, you know, I had this much in this account and that much in that account, and she couldn't make it work out to the total we needed to close. And she was freaked out. And so 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.

So you guys were like really on the edge.

Yeah. We were fit. Yeah, we were. I mean, we were able to buy dinner that night.

Of course.

You know, it wasn't a question of survivability.

I just don't think that I—

We exhausted more than all of our savings.

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 where 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 wanna spend more? Do we wanna spend less? Are we happy with what we spent on? And that discipline has been nice. And we've never, ever, ever worried.

Look, I grew up in a household where 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 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, scarcity, 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.

What age did that stop?

You know, probably in my, you know, in my 30s, you know? So that's a privileged position.

Yeah.

You know, I'm lucky that way. But I grew up, but, you know, listen, I was pretty scarred growing up in a household where money was scarce. Totally. And so I'm familiar with what people think You know, it's very funny 'cause 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 Zeebo. But you know, a lot of times people will assert that. I remember being with some politicians where they were 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 you know that I don't?

And that stuff doesn't go away either. Like the way that, like the first 20 years that you experience, I call it, it's like a lower T trauma a little bit. Not to be too woo-woo, but like, I, I felt the same way. My mom and dad told me, they were like, when I think they said, like when I graduated high school, they were like, we had like $8,000. That was our, our situation. And I was like, weren't you nervous? And they were like, yeah, we were nervous all the time.

When I got to college after I bought books and did this, and I, I remember bought a sweater, which was a very big deal for me because when I got to college, I wasn't dressed the way everybody else was dressed. And you know, I, you know, I just didn't know. I came from Brooklyn. I never went, you know, I never saw it. And so, you know, I went out and I bought Bought a, you know, sweater to put over a tennis shirt. 'Cause that's how everybody dressed in those days. And then after I bought— and, and, and at one point I had, I remember this, I had $11 left over.

What year?

Freshman year. This would've been like 1971 or '72.

Yeah. So that's still only worth like what, 50 bucks?

And I was on financial aid, like full financial aid, but full financial aid doesn't cover, you know, going to movies or things like that. 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 out? 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, and I did that and I turned it in and I remember making it so that there was a difference of $500, like think my life cost $500 more than what I had. And so a clerk looked at it and said, oh, okay. And they, and right there while I waited, She made out a check for $500 and gave it to me. And I said, whoa.

I want more of that.

No, no, you want more of that.

You should have said $5,000.

You know, I know you heard the jokey reaction is I should have asked for a thou— no, but that would, the point was it was the first time in my life that I wasn't really nickled and dimed. It was like, you know, I, it was like unbelievable. And by the way, that would, 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-chaired the campaign for financial aid and I did, you know, that was a big deal because it was not only that I got it, but I got it in a way that had a generosity of spirit to it. And so I didn't feel bad. I wasn't made to feel bad about it. And that was, so I, I think, you know, everyone, you know, in my category thinks about giving, but I also think about how it feels to receive.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And I, and, and so I came away with a feeling that, you know, it's not just enough to give people what they need, but you have to give them, you have to get to it in a way where it's a positive experience also.

Yeah. Where it doesn't, it feels a little dignified.

It's dignified. And again, that $500, I hope I've 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, 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, 'cause I was relieved I got the money, but I was also, I, I, I, I didn't feel bad about it.

This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least $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 you realize two things. One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. 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 solve this problem by giving you 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 gonna 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 1,000+ 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. Joinhampton.com.

There's this book called Die with Zero. Have you ever seen that book?

No, but the title tells me everything.

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, like, who cares? And so the premise is, if you're going to give, if you can pull it off, give now. Because at least you can experience it with joy.

Is that what you intend to do?

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 your kids, sometimes I want to give things, you know, like, I give stuff to them, and then I feel ambivalent that they have what I gave them.

What do you mean ambivalent? Like you don't feel good?

That, you know, I sort of, you know, I'll give stuff to my kids 'cause I can afford to do it. And they're great kids and they work really hard. They're super. There's nothing, you know, nothing wrong with them. And you know, it has not ruined my kids that they, they get stuff. Far from it. But, you know, I'll give them stuff. Then I'll say, you have no idea. I've got, I, you know, I didn't have what you have and I live like this and you're living like that. And I'm saying, well, the reason why they're not living, they're living so well is because I gave it to them.

Dude, I had the exact same conversation with my wife yesterday.

So if I gave it to them, why am I then acting, you know, regretful that they have it?

I had the same talk with my wife yesterday. I remember saying, telling her we had just hung out with someone who was born into a wealthy family and I, and I was envious. I was like, that asshole hasn't worked hard for this and that. And it was rooted a little bit in jealousy of like, you know, I'm better than them cuz 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 gonna create, my children are gonna be the people that I dislike. And I thought that was really strange for me to think that way.

Well, your kids will turn out, kids turn out the way they turn out for a variety of reasons. One of which could be, you know, their neediness or the surpluses they have, but that could be a small part of it. And there are other things that make your kids. My, I have no issues. My kids, you know, you know, terrific. They worked hard, they went to good schools, they applied.

They work at Goldman?

No, each worked, you know, Goldman's a kind of firm that doesn't discourage people from, from bringing their kids into the business. Like, you know, it was an old partnership.

Yeah.

Family firm, you know, it was a good thing to be. 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, totally. My name was Smith. They could've hidden out, but if your name is Blankfein, you know, it was just too— and, and by the way, the burdens of being that were very heavy. You know, I can't tell you, I'm not in my kids' heads totally, so I can't tell you what they feel. So I'll just say generically, 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 they'll think this. So there's a lot of pressure on kids to come in earlier, stay later, show, show their moxie.

Yeah, there's some baggage.

There's baggage that they have to overcome. And so it was, it was, it was, it would've been too oppressive for them to stay.

Yeah, I saw someone, I think it was like an, I was researching, it was like an old Gawker article.

Yeah.

And you seem, pretty tough-skinned. I would've been very upset about that, about people writing that stuff.

That would've been, that would've been really bothersome. No, I was very, 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.

It's still hard. 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, if, you know, one, you know, to survive that, you needed a thick skin, and I had one.

Was there a point where you thought, "This isn't gonna work"?

No.

You felt good the whole— or it felt—

No, no, it didn't feel good.

Not 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't 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 'em a bad— people have different wiring. Some people are athletic, some people aren't.

Do you think you're born a great investor?

I don't know. I certainly wasn't, so I can't tell you.

You don't think you were?

No, I, I, I ran a firm that contained a lot of great investors. I'm not a bad investor. I can read balance sheet and plans and 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.

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.

Yes, that was when I got, when you made partner, you had a conversation with, you know, senior partner there who was sort of assigned to acculturate new people to the firm. And he gave you some rules of the road, you know, things like, make sure you don't get anywhere near anything that would today would be called MeToo kind of activity. Yeah. You know, the warnings of that kind of stuff. Then a warning to, you know, make sure you're very rigorous and conservative on your taxes.

And then there were two other things that they advised, one of which is they set up a charitable foundation for you. And they said, we expect you to do this, to use it and to give money away. And it's good for your personal life and it's also good for your professional life to be thought of as somebody who gives back to the community. And as a result of being on philanthropic boards and other things, you'll engage with a set of people that's broader than the people you might meet in your business life. So it's good for you, good for the firm. Do this. So that was another topic that was broached. And then the final thing they said was, and as far as, you know, your balance in your life, You know, think of it this way. If you live the kind of life that you, that there's an obituary written about you and it's 9 paragraphs long, make it so that you do enough so that there's no more than 3 of those 9 paragraphs are about your life at Goldman. That's the best. And now that, you know, that may be the best, but it's not gonna be the case for me because I was, I stayed too long.

That's what I was gonna ask you. What are you gonna, you have to do something now.

Well, good.

What are you gonna, what do you hope that—

Maybe I'll join the Foreign Legion or go up in a space—

Well, what do you hope the rest of the paragraphs will be? Do you have a, do you have like a goal?

I think at this point, you know, every hive has a queen bee and the queen, you know, the other, the other guy, the worker bees and the others, they kind of, you know, they go off and the, you know, the queen stay. I was caught up, you know, as a CEO a long time. I stayed a long time and you do other things, but I don't think I'm ever gonna 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.

Yeah.

The important thing is, and I do, I serve on boards and I do other activities and I'm interested in other stuff. I, I retired early enough with enough gas in the tank that I could go out and learn, you know, peop— I tried teaching a little bit and I said, you know, something better than teaching, I wanna learn. And so I, you know, take some courses online and do some, you know, things and, and, and that's the luxury of my position now. So, you know, I'm feeding my curiosity about things away from business. But I also like business and I like markets. And so as I said to you, I still trade. I watch my markets as background noise. I read a lot of financial stuff, but I also read about cosmology and the physics of small stuff. And I'm interested in linguistics and anthropology. And I read a lot of history.

I think you said you, you were like, if a trader asked me what to study, I tell 'em to study history.

I do.

What do you, what do you read?

You know, a while ago, and for some reason I, I chewed, medieval history because it's hard to follow.

Yeah, it is.

It's very hard to follow. But then I sort of got caught up in it because of, you know, the way people thought in those days, relationship with religion and the church. And I 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're 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.

Which one moved the needle for you most? For me, it was Titan, and I know you did a thing with Ron Chernow.

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 like an author, I tend to read all of his stuff. There's a book I write— there's an author I always like. She's been dead a number, good number of years now, named Barbara Tuchman, who wrote— 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, it's about?

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, the 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 gonna 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. It was a very stressful time in Europe. Mm-hmm. 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 Coucy, was a French aristocrat, but he fought in the Hundred Years' War. He ended up marrying an English woman. And so he appeared— it was like Zelig. He popped up in a lot of places. And so it gave you the opportunity to write a history of a lot of different— of what was going on in that era. And I enjoyed reading that book. That was one of the few books books I've read twice.

That's awesome.

I also liked, totally different, I liked reading The Power Broker about Robert Moses.

By, uh—

Caro.

Robert Caro. He just had a thing at the American History Museum.

Yes.

It was awesome.

And I'll tell you, the interesting thing is, the reason why I reread that, I read that book once when I was start— And your audience won't necessarily— There's no reason why they should know him, but he was a guy who basically built New York. And, well, The Power Broker because he asserted power that on paper he shouldn't have had, but by dint of his personality and different offices he held, and clever things, he really was a power broker to the point of dominating even the elected officials who were nominally his boss. And there were aspects of things— He did great things. You know, he built, you know, from the Long Island Expressway to all sorts of things. And, you know, but he also, you know, had personality flaws that today look worse than they did in that era.

Yeah. I mean, he's accused of being, like, a pretty big racist.

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. And, 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? Yeah. And so people have different, you know, how do you look at that? Does that disqualify the good things that they did? Or, you know, it gets very confusing and hard to fathom, and different people have different views about these things. And he was kind of a personality like that in a different way. But, you know, when I first read the book as a young guy, I was focused on the flaw part.

Yeah.

And I said, "Oh, God, this is a, you know, this is a tough human being. I mean, this thing 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.

Yeah.

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.

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." He was 33 or 30, yes, I think. When he wrote this document. And— How much wisdom.

And there was no template for it, really. And the idea of something that we can get— Because democracy was a pejorative. Demos. It was anarchy.

Yeah. And I think about that revolution, 'cause Ken Burns has this American Revolution documentary, and it's just— I didn't realize how consequential the American Revolution was and how, for the most part, there had never been democracy at such a large scale. And they made this document that was self-amending, like this idea that you can, like, We are flawed and we can— you can fix it. And that's just like crazy.

And by the way, that was— if you read a book, I just read a book on the Constitution, that was even debated.

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 through—

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 they missed it.

No, they knew.

They knew. But by the way, another good book to read is— It's part of— It will ultimately be a 3-volume thing by Rick Atkinson on the American Revolution. But the first one is called The British Are Coming, and he has— The second volume is out about— People don't learn enough about history in general, but Americans don't learn enough about the American Revolution and why it was fought. And of course, people debate it because then you have views. You know, people revise history and say, "These people were all evil." They weren't. You know they weren't. It's like Columbus. You know, they don't want to— 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 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.

Yes.

But, you know, we have those, you know, all these revisionary histories that stop admiring characteristics and achievements that are worth admiring just because there were other flaws in the person that delivered the achievement. It's crazy.

Yeah, I've ignored the American Revolution for a long time, and I've now gone down this path because of that Ken Burns documentary. And I think it made me feel like capitalism in America is almost a spiritual thing. You know, 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 Ink. And like someone was so proud, but they didn't speak English enough to know, but they just knew that like cowboy in America was like cool.

I know this is gonna be controversial. I don't know who I'm gonna upset, but you know, it's like, I would say that most of the people who are prominent Social Democrats grew up in prosperous families here.

Of course.

And let me tell you, the people who grew up under communism don't wish the country was socialist.

Of course.

I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. But, you know.

But, but I love, like, this immigrant— I'm like, particularly like the immigrant journey, you know, I think 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.

You know, but not everybody's competent, everyone's capable. But the fact that people can do, look, I, you know, I agree with you and you know, we're going through a moment where people, I guess people always question, again, I grew up, I was a young guy during the Vietnam era. So I grew up when everybody was disgusted with the country and stuff. And listen, here's another good thing about the country. You can live here quite happily, you know, quite comfortably while you express your contempt for the country.

Of course.

Where else can you do that?

The way that I describe America is I'm like, it's mostly good. And you can, and we can improve.

And you could talk about all the bad stuff and you generally won't be arrested for it.

Yeah, it's mostly great and we can improve.

And I'm guessing you would be, no, God, 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.

I could talk to you about history all day. I'm so happy that you're into that.

No, no, but I think—

That's why I like the Upper West Side.

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, you know, Twain, Mark Twain, is, "It doesn't repeat, but it rhymes." And so, patterns happen again. So we're going through these tough times, and, "Oh, it's none like anything." But it's, you know, it's not that different from the late '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 will 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. Yeah. Because we were freaked out by world, you know, by Pearl Harbor. And then we, we overcame those things and regretted them afterwards. So even at the worst, there's hope. There, there's always hope for America. And, and, and America's always fulfilled those hopes eventually.

Yeah. I think Warren Buffett, or you, I think quoted Warren Buffett in the book. Book saying like, you know, I wouldn't bet against America 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.

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 emotion if you don't have a word to describe that emotion. And so I think that when people use phrases like, well, in this economy, it's hard to do blank, it's like, well, that's a pretty 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.

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— they would read every Friday evening, they would read, scroll down the TV, 350, 450, 600 died. And then, of course, compare that to World War II when— 60 million people were—

Yeah.

—who died in 4 years.

And so, 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.

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, That's a good book too. Undaunted Courage. Stephen Ambrose, the best. And people, this is way under discussed. Sacagawea, for the listener, basically Lewis and Clark went west from St. Louis.

And they just said— Sure, you know that coming from St. Louis.

Of course.

Yes.

It's, and I'll tell you a funny story.

That's where they 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.

Now they go to Portland and then they find, you know, progressive mayor.

Yeah, it's a lot different now.

Do you think Lewis and Clark would've been impressed by the progressivism of Portland?

Well, what's crazy is they went with 30 people and like none died. Uh, and so they go there, but, and they find this, uh, woman, um, 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 3-month-old kid. And if you actually, there's a Sacagawea gold dollar. Have you ever seen one of those?

Yes.

Um, her kid is strapped to her. And I'm like, if she could do that, I don't need a baby thermometer for my bathtub. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't need all these gadgets if Sacagawea can carry this kid.

Yeah, of course she had a kid, and I don't know how the kid turned out. I hope very well.

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.

I'll tell you. The infant mortality rate was a lot higher then. So keep, keep—

Don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

Keep the thermometer.

Don't let the facts get in the way.

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—

She ended up dying of illness at like in her early 40s. So my story doesn't exactly hold true, but I appreciate you so much. This is awesome.

Yeah, yeah. My pleasure.

All right. That's it. That's the pod.

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 the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

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&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.