Greg McKeown:
Welcome everybody. Before we get to the podcast itself, a reminder to sign up for the 1-Minute Wednesday newsletter. You’ll be joining more than 175,000 people. You can sign up for it by just going to gregmckeown.com/1mw. And every week, you will get 1 minute or something close to it of the best thinking to be able to help you design a life that really matters and to make that as effortless and easy as possible. So go to gregmckeown.com/1mw.
Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. And we have a fascinating figure on the podcast today. Someone whose impact in global financial matters in the US and in economic policy around the world has been profound. This is Wilbur Ross. He has just decades; I think we should say more than half a century, just so that we can add that phrase in there, experience in investment banking, and private equity. He’s built a legacy as one of the most influential people in global finance. I think that’s clear to say. He’s been named by Bloomberg Markets as among the 50 most influential people in global finance. He’s been in the Private Equity Hall of Fame, around management Hall of Fame, and the like. Now, you may know him as the 39th US Secretary of Commerce, which means that he was the principal voice of business in the Trump administration.
He survived, I should add, I think, the entire four years, which is not nothing. He did a lot of interesting things in that time. We’ll get into that. But he has written a new book. I think I could summarize it by saying the key moments of defining his life, 200 key anecdotes put together into a book, broader narrative, capturing, let’s say, something like this, a view from the top. He’s been awarded many different things. President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea awarded him a medal for his assistance during the country’s financial crisis. The emperor of Japan honored him with the Order of the Rising Sun Gold and Silver star. Not many people can say that. He has lived, by any measure, an unusual, even extraordinary, life.
Everybody can relate to this, even if they’re not the commerce secretary, just, you know when they’re paying their taxes, to hire somebody to go through all of the complexity and to be catching up with what the latest changes are and so on.
Would you serve again? I mean, would you, if you were asked to serve again, would you serve again now? Or do you think four years was enough? I’m done.
Wilbur Ross:
Well, let’s first get him elected.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. So that sounded to me, that sounded to me that, you know, of course, you don’t want to comment now in a public way. I understand that. But actually, what I hear is you’d be open to it because you could have said no. That’s not dependent on whether he’s elected being open, you know, that’s how I’m interpreting it. You don’t have to confirm. I mean, that’s interesting, right to me if I’m reading that right, because it means that you felt that there was enough, you were able to do enough good, have enough impact, enjoyed the role enough, and so on, that you’re not close to it.
I want to move to the next question, which is a change of subject. But it was somebody that you talked about in a reasonable amount of detail in the book. And I didn’t know about him before, but it was one of your mentors, a General Georges Doriot. But my goodness, the more I read about him in your book, the more I went back and studied more about him outside of your references. This is a very interesting person. I’m going to share a little of what you actually wrote. You said, “By far the biggest influence on me during my HBS, your Harvard business school years was Georges Doriot, a French army private in World War I who later became a professor at HBS in 1926.
During World War II, Doriot served as an American general with responsibility for planning and research. After the war, Doriot founded INSEAD, and organized the first publicly listed venture capital company in history, American Research and Development Corporation. The achievement earned him the moniker, the father of venture capitalism.”
My question is, just maybe share a little more of what you learned from him because it’s not that bio is what. That’s not really why he impacted you so much. It was more the other ways of living and leading and being as a person that gave you rules for operating. That’s how I read it, anyway.
Wilbur Ross:
Well, you read it quite correctly. He also was very generous with his time and his ideas to me. In my second year at the business school, it’s a two-year school instead of two regular courses, he let me do two research electives under him, one of which ended up being published as a little book. So he was very good at bringing out capabilities in people. And he also, for example, the first time he called me to ask me to go to dinner, he said, “Tomorrow night, I have the governor of the Bank of England coming for dinner. Would you be available?”
You can imagine here you are, a student in business school. Here’s an opportunity to sit with Doriot and the governor of the Bank of England, so that was one set of ways he influenced. But he also had a lot of ideas about how you should conduct yourself. For example, he said, “You should dress like the important person you hoped to become.” And that was a shot at me because I was wearing typical college kid clothes, a blue shirt, and a Shetland sweater, and he felt I should wear a suit.
So we had that kind of trivial level. At a more serious level, he was very opposed to speeches that involved PowerPoint presentations.
Greg McKeown:
He was ahead of his time.
Wilbur Ross:
Yeah. If you know your material, he felt you don’t need a PowerPoint. And also, it’s bad enough if you say something dumb to an audience but to have something dumb written up on the wall. So that was a very real cautionary note. And as a result, if you’ve seen any of my speeches, I don’t use notes. I’d speak extemporaneously, following along with Doriot’s theories. So he profoundly affected me, both at the trivial level, like how do you dress? And at the more substantive level, how do you present yourself to an audience? Because anybody making a big career in business or in government, you’re often having to present yourself to an audience. So that was an extremely valuable thing. One of the more trivial things was he said, “The people who ruled the world wear long socks and Hermes ties.”
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I love so much of what you’re sharing with him. There’s another line that you’d written that he said, “The people who rule the world refer to others as gentlemen, not guys.” Which I don’t know if one could say the same today, but it doesn’t really matter because he’s just saying there’s a way to be in the world, and you don’t need to wait until you grow up to be like that. You need to be like that so that you can grow up in your influence. It seems to me that he’s saying he insisted your shoes were well-shined and your clothes well-pressed, hated speeches cluttered with ancillary phrases such as what I mean to say and you know, and that is to say ums and uhs. You know, he didn’t want speeches that lasted too long.
These things, youve already described the clothing as trivial and the speaking is more significant. But I think they were clues that he’d learned, let’s say, the hard way like he’s acted. They were hard won and he was passing them on to you almost for free right up front. “Just don’t question this. Just trust me. Get these things sorted, and your opportunities will grow because you are doing these things.”
That’s how I read it.
Wilbur Ross:
You read it correctly. That’s how I, in retrospect, interpreted it. It’s just a remarkable phenomenon. Especially, it’s unusual at the business school in that Harvard is on the case study method. So their way of doing things they give you a real-life situation. You work on it overnight, and then you debate the solutions in the classroom. Doriot’s was, on one hand, a lecture, not a case study. Second, he had a textbook, which he euphemistically called “Manufacturing”. Well, it was a little bit about manufacturing, but it was really Doriot’s views on everything. And you would be amazed how often in later life, I referred back to that textbook. Big, fat, thick textbook. And in fact, when the Harvard Business School Club of New York honored me some years later, I devoted my whole speech to the impact of General Doriot.
And after the speech, lots of alums from back in my day came up to me and said, “You’re right. He had almost as a profound impact on my life.”
So it wasn’t just me. It was lots of other people as well that he impacted.
Greg McKeown:
A phrase that I picked up years ago is that, “We don’t teach by what we say; we teach by what we are,” which seemed a little contradictory, given that we’re talking about some of the things that he said and the book and so on. But something about him was so credible to you, was so substantive about him, that you were open and eager to the other things that he was sharing. That’s how I read it. And I wish I’d known him. I wish I’d known Doriot.
Wilbur Ross:
Oh, he was a remarkable individual, and I don’t know of anyone in the professorial world of business that is of the same ilk that he was.
Greg McKeown:
Really. You haven’t seen his equal since then?
Wilbur Ross:
No. I mean, there are plenty of very good scholars, there are plenty of good businessmen who are now professors, and they’ve all done good things for their students. But in terms of the intense, lifelong impact that Doriot had on me and on other people, I don’t see anyone the same nowadays. He was one of a kind, and I’m very fortunate to have benefited from him.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I look forward to getting a copy of Manufacturing if I’m able to get my hands on it. I’m very curious to know as much as I can about him. Your descriptions of him were really very intriguing to me.
Talking of one of a kind, what do you think Doriot would have made of President Trump?
Wilbur Ross:
That’s a fascinating question. First of all, he would have met Trump at a much later phase in Trump’s life, whereas when I met Doriot, I was still a work in progress. I think you could call Donald Trump not a work in progress. He’s 70-odd years old, and he has the complexity that he has. I’m sure. One thing, I’m sure that Trump would have been impressed with Doriot because before they met, he would have looked up what was Doriot’s record and he would have come to, I think, the same conclusion that you did, that this is a very interesting human being. Forget about the specifics, just as a person, and especially the fact that after his distinguished career and when he was my professor it was in the early 1960s, 61 was my class at Harvard. So, look how old he was then. And he was still teaching, and he lived another twelve or 15 years beyond. So it’s remarkable that he was still that interested in helping young people and creating future business leaders, even though he was old and had accomplished so much on his own.
As you point out, any one of his accomplishments would be enough for a normal person for their whole life.
Greg McKeown:
Now, you answered the question I asked, almost like I asked a different question, because you said, “Oh, it’s interesting to ponder about how Doriot might have influenced him, given that President Trump is so developed as a personality and as a person, and he’s older.”
But the question of what would he have made of him, you know, do you have a reaction to that? Did President Trump fit the archetype of what he was trying to mold people into?
Wilbur Ross:
Some of Trump’s characteristics would be clearly consistent with Doriot’s ideas.
Greg McKeown:
For example?
Wilbur Ross:
President Trump hates to use a prepared speech, and you can argue sometimes; maybe he goes off message, but he shared, as a philosophical thing, Dorio’s general views about the uselessness of. He always is pretty well dressed, if you notice.
Greg McKeown:
Dressed almost identically.
Wilbur Ross:
Yes. And mostly using the same so…
Greg McKeown:
Unless he’s playing golf, he’s wearing the same outfit. The same. It’s more than an outfit. Eighties, nineties, the red tie, the suit. I mean, it hasn’t, you know, that’s a decision made, so to speak.
Wilbur Ross:
Yes. So, I think some of those characteristics would have sounded intriguing. I think he also would have found it intriguing that Trump, at his age, made the decision to leave the private sector, even though with all the turmoil that he had there, he accomplished one thing that no person ever had before, and that is he made himself as an individual, an international brand name. That’s a very big deal. And even if he had never done anything else, that would be an extraordinary achievement.
I’ll give you an example. Korea was going through it’s big financial crisis. One day, my secretary tells me there’s no first class seat available on the flight to Seoul. Well, Seoul’s about a 16-17 hour plane ride.
Greg McKeown:
It’s going to matter. You don’t want to red eye to Seoul.
Wilbur Ross:
So I said, we’ll call the airline and find out. How can it be? Normally, I’m the only one in first class. Turned out Donald Trump had booked the entire first class. So I called him. I said, “Donald, you have to bump one of your guys.”
And he had a big laugh, and he said, “Oh, it’s no problem. It’s really just my wife and me, and now it’ll be you as well.”
I said, “Well, why then did you book the entire first class?”
And he said, “When we get to Korea, you’ll see why.”
And I did. And here’s what happened. The airport was swarmed with press. They were all dying to find out what he was doing in Korea and what he was thinking about this and that. So the front page of the local Seoul newspaper had a huge photo of Trump, his wife, and what they referred to as an unknown American. I was the unknown American. So what he had very cleverly orchestrated was a huge PR event that God knows what it was worth in terms of press, but a real fortune.
And that’s something. Doriot was very sensitive to people’s public appearance to their public Persona, and Trump has been enormous at both.
Greg McKeown:
Let me ask you this. If you were going to have this meeting with Doriot now, if you could have a one-on-one with him, what’s one thing that is essential in your life that you’re proud of?
Wilbur Ross:
I think it’s having several different careers, just as he did. He had the commercial career, he had the government career in the form of the military, and he had an intellectual career in terms of the schools. Well, I had a business career, I had my government career, and now I’m trying to have an intellectual career as a writer.
Greg McKeown:
I love that answer. And it’s extremely hard, in my view, to be successful in different fields without competence. It may sound obvious to you, but I think it’s worth saying that I don’t think success is what it looks like from the outside, that, “Well, because you’re successful in this, of course, then you’re going to use that success to be successful over there.”
You have to learn a new competence. You have to figure out at a high pace of understanding how to succeed in this environment. And so I think what you’re describing is a compelling achievement. It’s not just I was successful, I carried on being, it’s the shift into different areas.
The second question is sort of the opposite, which is, what is there something that’s, maybe I could say it this way, something nonessential that you feel like you’ve overinvested in, or something essential that you feel like you’ve underinvested in? I suppose, in a way, I’m asking about regret, but it doesn’t have to be that word. It’s just when you look back at the portfolio of your life, you say, I think I gave too much to this, not enough time to that, not enough of myself to this. What would be something you would change about the portfolio of your life?
Wilbur Ross:
Well, it’s a very good question, and it’s one that I have thought about. In retrospect, I should have become an entrepreneur and left Rothschild sooner. Not that there was anything wrong with being there. It was a wonderful firm. I had a very excellent career there. They treated me very well and all that. I became an entrepreneur on my own at the age of 63. I would have been better off becoming an entrepreneur a few years earlier.
Yeah, at 63, most people are getting ready to retire or even have retired. So it was quite an anomaly to have me leave a big, powerful institution, a famous institution like Rothschild, and start up my own business. So, I should probably have done that earlier. And that’s the biggest thing I think I would do differently.
Greg McKeown:
And then, just beyond professional in a personal environment, is there anything in the personal domain that you say, oh, I would have changed my investment strategy.
Wilbur Ross:
Not so much the investment strategy, but I started out life as a Democrat. My parents had been lifelong Democrats in New Jersey, and my father was a local elected Democrat official. My mother was a Democratic county committeewoman for 50 years. So, I started out as a Democrat. And then over a period of time, I felt the Democratic Party had changed from being the party of working people to being, in large measure, the party of people who didn’t want to work.
And so I ultimately became a Republican. I waited until a few years after my mother died because it would have broken her heart to have me become publicly a Republican rather than a Democrat.
Greg McKeown:
You didn’t need another phone call from her saying, “What have you done?” One was enough.
Wilbur Ross:
Yes.
Greg McKeown:
Maybe we could end on this. You have a chapter called “How Washington Works”. You tell a story about Barron; you’re on Air Force One. And over the intercom, “Baron, come to the conference room. I have to talk with you.”
It’s Donald Trump, and he’s sort of yelling at his son. Go ahead.
Wilbur Ross:
Yeah. And Baron, who’s a big, strong, very self-reliant kid, very nice young man, was obviously worried because it was, with all the times I’ve been on Air Force One and he’s been on, he never got summoned like that. So I’m sure he was worried.
Greg McKeown:
No one wants to be summoned like that.
Wilbur Ross:
But then, when he got to the room, everybody sang Happy Birthday, and Trump had had the chef prepare a wonderful birthday cake for Barron.
So, it was an interesting sort of human insight into the relationship between them.
Greg McKeown:
You build from there on this idea that Washington is different than other industries because its primary currency is power, even in industry and corporations. It might be more about money; for example, it might be about your title, but power seemed to be the primary center of how you would engage with people. Can you just comment a little more on that?
Wilbur Ross:
Oh, it absolutely is. And it produces. Think about it. What is the product of government? The product of government is influencing everything. What could be more powerful than to be a high operative in the US? Government? And power is infectious. Just as the pomp and ceremony of being a high official is highly infectious, so is the thing of power. And the way it gets symbolized in Washington is by your title.
In Washington, your title determines whether you’re invited to cocktail parties and dinners or not, whether, where do you sit, and where do you stand in a reception. I mean, it’s a very highly stratified environment.
Greg McKeown:
Hierarchical.
Wilbur Ross:
Yes. Extremely. But the unusual thing I noticed was that the power of a title varies inversely and exponentially with its length. Think about it. President, very short title, very, very powerful. Third assistant to the undersecretary, to the deputy secretary of the Department of Defense. Big long title, not so much power, but at least it’s a differentiation from someone who doesn’t have such a title. So power is really the business that’s conducted in Washington. And I’ve noticed every government, but more particularly communist governments, always devolve into being dictatorships. Think about a communist country in the whole world that is not, in fact, a dictatorship.
You won’t find one.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening, what is one thing that stood out to you? What’s the news of this episode? And now, what can you do about it? Immediately, within the next few minutes, a tiny action to be able to as much just make things in your life a little bit better. Thank you for listening.
