Wharton '14 MBA Commencement - David Rubinstein Speech
Hey monkeys, yesterday I watched the speech of David Rubinstein in the Wharton '14 MBA graduation ceremony. Here's the video:
Great speech overall. Inside the post I created a summary of some parts of the speech that I found quite interesting.
About making money:
Here's what you need to know in 5 minutes or so in order to make a great deal of money:
- Perseverance is infinitely more important than brilliance or even a reasonably high degree of intelligence. Not taking no for an answer will yield far more financial rewards than will acquiescence to conventional wisdom. Do not give up your own beliefs and passion easily or quickly.
- Hard work will yield greater financial rewards than a 9-5 work style. If you really want to get ahead financially, long hours are unfortunately a prerequisite....
- Focusing on one subject or one area where you can truly make yourself an expert, your organization’s indispensable resource, will lead to further responsibilities and related benefits. Avoid spreading yourself thin by trying to do too much before you do one thing extremely well. Once you are established as the expert or go to person in one area, other opportunities will inevitably come to you and your responsibilities and rewards will inevitably increase.
- Learning how to persuade others to do what you want is the essence of a successful business career and the essence of life in many respects. To do that well you need to learn how to communicate effectively by writing and speaking well, but more importantly you need to learn how to communicate well by the most effective means of persuading - by the example you set in your own actions...
- Place your energies into providing the best service or the best product possible. Do not focus on how much money you will make. The obsession with the making of money rarely leads to the actual making of money. The obsession with achieving excellence and with doing the best job possible, doing something no one else can do as well is usually what leads to making a fortune. Money needs to be the happy by-product, not the principal goal.
- Whatever financial success you might have at the outset, that success can be multiplied many times as people observe how you handle your initial success. Humility, rather than arrogance, will lead to far greater eventual success. There are exceptions to this rule unfortunately, but you should not honestly want to be one of these exceptions. You should want to be someone who recognizes that luck likely played a real role in your success and bad luck could come along at any point. So stay humble.
About his philanthropic endeavors and about giving back:
I wanted to let you know that I have achieved, as a result of these acts of giving away my wealth, far greater happiness than I achieved making the wealth.
...
My only regret is that I did not learn the lesson of giving away money to help others, to help one’s community, to help one’s country a bit earlier in life. Had I done so, perhaps I would have enjoyed the enormous happiness that I now enjoy a bit earlier.
...
Do not make my mistake. Do not wait until the last third of your presumed actuarial life to give back. Do not wait until your opportunities to make a real difference in the world may have passed you by. And most importantly, do not assume that the money you are now poised and certain to make in whatever amount will buy you real happiness. It honestly will not. And therefore, I urge you to learn from my lesson and the lesson of so many others like me: do more than make money. Give back to your community, your society, your country. And do so even when you may not have large sums of money. By doing so, you will surely achieve happiness much earlier in your life.
...
Focus on how your presence on the face of the earth, as fleeting as it is, is justified by what you have done trying to make society and the world a slightly better place than you inherited. Do not get to the end of your life and regret what you did not do during the earlier part of your life. Try to make the world a better place.
Thanks for posting. +1.
He talks pretty fast for an official presentation... Otherwise, decent speech. Points 3 and 4 on how to make money are definitely solid. Thanks for posting!
Interesting post
Decent speech.
speech was good, but man, was he in a hurry to catch a soccer game or a happy hour or what not?
Usually the people who don't think about money, is the ones who get rich, the ones chasing the money won't get anywhere in life.
He gets paid for 15 minutes of his time to bullshit about how money isn't everything. While the MBAs toil away increasing the exit values of companies controlled by Rubinstein. Everyone at Carlyle should demand more salary or equity (#4 in persuading others) as David has found a calling other than $100m + annual salary with carry. Then again this is not how life works.
While he believes in a greater cause, at the end of the days shit ain't cheap. And eager beaver MBAs are more than happy to prove themselves to old dudes wishing for their lost youth.
He could have kept in even shorter : demand equity if your work impacts top line growth. And if you hear no ... keep asking or take the future cash flow you are bringing in to another shop .... or set up shop yourself.
David understands that in order to get richer, you make other people do the work yourself. Sure you can disguise it as 'being the best at xyz.' Or even luck, but I believe it's asking for equity as you are making more of an impact than you may think. Just as management can force feed the "you are replaceable" bullshit ... management to is replaceable. So is David Rubenstein. He knows it. So while the speech is a great hoorah, he's just not cutting to the core: equity/profit sharing in a business is how you get filthy rich. With or without an MBA. A quality work product can always be produced by quality MBAs.
For some reason I just heard an old wizard reading bullshit off a script written by a 'social media intern.'
I'd be very surprised if he gets paid for this or was doing it for money.
You must have suffered a lot along your life. I'm sorry man. Understood.
good speech.
Money couldn't buy you happiness but it solves 99% of the problems that makes you unhappy. #justsaying
Anyone see the UT Austin speech? Navy SEAL Admiral gave the speech. Pretty cool
nice speech
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