Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Graham Weaver: How to Scale Bright Spots, Overcome Limits, and Achieve Asymmetry | E141

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Graham Weaver: How to Scale Bright Spots, Overcome Limits, and Achieve Asymmetry | E141 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Graham Weaver: People probably hate when they hear people who've made a lot of money say this, but I would say 95% of the utility of money comes from not having to worry about money. I think a lot of times people are focused on stuff and status.
• 0:16
  Graham Weaver: That's really what they want money for. And again, sounds very cliche to say those will not do very much for you for any long period of time at all. On the status part, no one gives it, and on the stuff part, you know this, anything you've ever bought, you get a little bit of a boost, and then it goes away.
• 0:34
  Graham Weaver: So that really doesn't provide that much utility, and maybe even negative utility in many cases. What I think provides the utility is the peace of mind of not having to worry about money.
• 0:50
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Graham Weaver, the founder and CEO of alpine investors, one of the highest performing and fastest growing private equity firms in the world. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two with my incredible interview with Graham. So you started your own fund. What's your advice to the 28 year olds out there, or the 25 year olds we all know, and I'm sure there's people who may even leave your firm. They want to get their own firm, and they can grow it, and they want, a lot of them do it because they want to grow it themselves, and a lot of them will do it for the money. But it's the same way in the VC business, you know, you want to start a fund. What if you don't know Tom Steyer, and what if you don't know somebody?
• 1:35
  Randall Kaplan: What's the what should you what are the three things you should do to start a fund? If you don't have relationships, either go to Stanford and you don't have friends that have money,
• 1:44
  Graham Weaver: yeah? And to be clear, I didn't know Tom. I'd never met before, but, but yeah, but if I can't even pick somebody, Yeah, same advice, though. I think that the first part is, so I'll use, I'll use a real example for fun, for for myself, because I can talk in more detail about that. So let's say you were raising a first time you know, private equity fund to do buyouts is the first I talk about in sales. You know, you first find your ideal customer. That's the first part, and that's huge. If you're selling, no matter what you're selling, you find the ideal customer. So if you're raising a first time fund that's going to do industrials, for example, let's find all the people who do first time funds and do industrials. Like I know it sounds simple, but probably 95% of investors are going to call on are not even interested in first time funds or industrials.
• 2:37
  Graham Weaver: So you like the effort put into creating a list of ideal customers is a way better use of energy than the effort put in calling 100 people, 95 of which are not ideal. So that would be Advice number one, and there are tons of investors that only do first time funds or have allocations to first time funds.
• 3:02
  Graham Weaver: And so, you know, today with AI and I mean, it's not going to be that hard to find out who those people are. So that's kind of part. One is get rid of the 95% figure and put all that energy on building as big a pipeline as you can to that 5% who's actually going to buy your thing. Second is, I always say the second. So, first is ideal customer. Second is irresistible offer. So, you know, and, and so what's your irresistible offer like? If you sat on the other side of you and you were, and you were, you know, you had lots of funds to look at, what would make you have to say, yes, you know, what is that thing? And in my case, I had zero track record. My irresistible offer was conveying my will to win and my how my track record from the rest of my life and will to win was going to translate into running a private equity firm.
• 3:57
  Graham Weaver: That was my irresistible offer.
• 3:57
  Graham Weaver: It wasn't my track record of three label deals that didn't work out. You know, it was it was it was it was my kind of what I was saying, like, will to win, like, I'm going to make this work come hell or high water. Here's the plan I have.
• 4:09
  Graham Weaver: You know, that was kind of my irresistible offer. And then the last thing is, you could used to need lots of at bats. So those are the, I think that's the kind of three part, simple formula, really for selling anything, and almost anything will yield to that formula.
• 4:27
  Randall Kaplan: So you said that first fund, I think you made eight investments, five lost money. The fund didn't make any money, but you were sitting in a room with Tom overlooking Alcatraz, right? One of the mistakes you made was you wrote a memo to the investors that it was impossible to lose money right now, that's, that's not a very good memo to write. So what lessons did you learn? Yeah, with that memo.
• 4:54
  Graham Weaver: Well, the the memo I wrote about impossible lose money was because we bought three companies below. Below their net asset value, and that, in my mind, said, Well, how could you lose money paying below net asset value? It turns out you can, and we did. So the first lesson was probably, you know, I, you know, we were, we were looking for, I was so inexperienced and so fearful that I was spending all my time trying to buy businesses where I was not going to lose, you know, I was focused on not losing. And the magic that I found subsequently is the opposite of that, like looking for ways where, where, if things go right, they go really, really, really right. So, you know, I use a term asymmetry and investing. And you have, I'm sure see this all the time in venture capital too. I'm sure that's a huge part of it. But, like, I don't want to invest in something that if it goes right, is going to be a 3x deal. You know, I that that's because I know they're not all going to go right. And I need, I need things that if they go right, they can be a 20x even in buyouts. I need, I want to have deals that are like that. And in the early days, I was exactly flipped the opposite. I was looking at things that if they went right, maybe they were going to be a 2x but I thought there was a really low chance they'd go wrong. And it was just based on fear. You know, it was just inexperience and fear. But yeah, losing money on that first fund was it was an like, now, when we fundraise, the first fund is kind of a fun story to tell. It's like a footnote. People really like they kind of like it. They're like, Oh yeah. You know, most people had some hard things they overcame. But at the time, it was 11 years, you know, that that wasn't like a footnote.
• 6:41
  Graham Weaver: That was 11 years that we had to work out that fund, and we had 11 years where we had longer than that, where we had that anchor hanging around our neck from losing money on that fund.
• 6:51
  Graham Weaver: So it was, I definitely do not recommend, you know, having a lot losing money on your first fund. It was, it was really tough. Steven
• 7:00
  Randall Kaplan: Romek is a good friend FPA capital, I think they managed $20 billion maybe $22 billion these days. He's been up for Morningstar manager the decade before, and I remember having lunch with him one day, and he's in a suit and tie. I said, Steve, you look so nice.
• 7:14
  Randall Kaplan: What's up? He said, Oh, something stupid. I said, What's up? He said, Yeah, I've been nominated for Morningstar manager of the decade. Oh, I said, Wow, that's incredible.
• 7:23
  Randall Kaplan: Steve, wow. You know, congratulations. He said, it's only a matter of time before I look like a fucking idiot again.
• 7:29
  Randall Kaplan: And he meant it, yeah, right. So I think you have to be very humble and have humility as an investor. Well, absolutely. It really doesn't matter if you're private equity, venture capital, whatever the case may be, the case may be, I
• 7:43
  Graham Weaver: think that's the real benefit of us losing money on the first fund, was we had to get better. Like we had to get a lot better. We had to have one of our core values of continuous improvement. You know, I started hiring executive coaches. I just had this belief that I we needed to get better. And that's never ended, you know, I think if our first fund had been like a good fund, we'd say, Oh, we kind of know what we're doing, you know, we'll just keep doing that. And it was the opposite. We just we like we're right now. I mean, I'm 23 years into running Alpine. We've had a really amazing run, and we're almost starting over, like we're taking our firm down to the studs.
• 8:24
  Graham Weaver: We're, you know, really looking hard at our strategy, the way we're structuring our firm, our I mean, we're not starting over, but, you know, we're, we're looking at, like, almost like, I'm a day one CEO walking into Alpine. What would I do, you know, how would I structure the firm, the investing team, you know, what? How would I look at sourcing? I mean, we're, we just have a real intense focus on, you know, getting better. And it came probably from, from losing money the first fund. I
• 8:52
  Randall Kaplan: think one of the interesting things that you did, and we'll fund an entrepreneur for a second time, even though they lost money on the first time, depending on how they handled the situation and the communication. Yeah. So your two investors invested in your second fund. Again, they did.
• 10:02
  Randall Kaplan: They liked you. They backed you, which is very hard to do. It's a six to $8 million fund, yeah.
• 10:05
  Randall Kaplan: And then you had several things happening during that fund. You have a.com explosion, which I was very fortunate and lucky to be a part of. And then you had Lehman Brothers blow up, yep, and I think you had your first child right around that time, yep. And you had spent the last dollar of that fund, and you realized you needed to do something different, so you hired an executive coach. We're going to talk about the details of the lessons you learned. But why did you say I need to hire this guy? JP Flom, and because most people don't have the self awareness and would never hire an executive coach.
• 10:48
  Graham Weaver: Yeah. Situation, well, first at the time, I mean, in 2000 Eight or 2009 the term executive coaching was actually pretty novel. People didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what that meant. But as I talked to JP, who I was so lucky to be introduced to him, I was like, Yeah, this is kind of basically another version of, going back to the audio tapes, you know, I'm like, Hey, I'm I'm gonna just, like, really invest in myself improvement and I can get better as a leader and and JP was just life changing because he came from a background of talent assessment and and executive coaching, so he was kind of the marriage of those two things, and it was absolutely life changing because that I really, I really started to just completely shift my mindset. And you probably have heard me say this before, but like, by the by the end of our engagement, or even in the middle of our engagement, I remember writing on this in my in my notebook, like I am in the talent business. Like, that's actually the true business I'm in, yes, I'm applying that to software companies or services businesses or private equity firm, but like, the true business I'm in as a talent business. And then so the realization of that, like at a cellular level, was really powerful. And then, and then the application, the tactics of how to actually roll that out, that was what I I got from him, and that was, that was absolutely, you know, transformative.
• 12:17
  Randall Kaplan: I get lots of emails, and I had lots of emails coming in. Oh, I'll give you some executive coaching. Most of these are kind of ridiculous. We talked about, you know, people who have are teaching these lessons online, who have never managed to Starbucks before, how did you evaluate? First of all, how did you meet JP, and then, how did you evaluate? At what point did you realize, yeah, I trust that guy, because at some point it's a leap of faith. I
• 12:42
  Graham Weaver: had a number of meetings with him, and so I met with him and really liked him.
• 12:45
  Graham Weaver: He had, you know, I really, I really, he was a real magnetic person that was just speaking a language that I understood, and I could, kind of, like, I could understand how what he was pitching was really going to help me. But this is actually the story. This third time I met with him, so I was with a analyst. I don't remember why, but I took him to lunch. So the three of us are at lunch, and JP is like, all right, I'm just, let's just do a like, let's do an actual, real thing here.
• 13:14
  Graham Weaver: Okay, I'm not gonna explain this in theory. Let's actually do it.
• 13:17
  Graham Weaver: Said, Okay, great. He said, tell me a problem you're having. I said, Okay, I told my problem.
• 13:22
  Graham Weaver: He said, Okay, so it sounds like you're having this problem with the CEO, and you need to deliver this really tough message to him. I said, Yeah, that's exactly right. He said, Okay, let's practice. Why don't you do it? I'll be him. I'll be the CEO. You be you. Okay, deliver it, and I deliver it. And he said, Okay, you got to amp it up a lot, you know, you were, you were really, kind of, like, you weren't really getting your point, you know, I want to see a 10, you know, on a scale of one to 10, where you're being really direct and really harsh. Give me a 10. And I so I delivered it, in my mind, I was a 12. I was like, you know, just going at it and, and then JP said, okay, so how do you think you do? I said, I think I did really well. He turns to this analyst who's sitting here. He goes, he goes scale one to 10, and the analyst goes to and then we worked on it, and we worked it out, and, and I got to, like, probably an eight. I delivered the message to the CEO, like, that afternoon, and the CEO, like, absorbed it, and we made we got through the thing and that, and I hired him, you know, because I was like, Okay, that was, like, that was actually worth, you know, a price of probably your first x months of coaching right there, just with that exercise.
• 14:28
  Graham Weaver: So he maybe that was why, you know, I gave him a lot of credit for that. I still joke with him about it. Are you comfortable
• 14:37
  Randall Kaplan: saying what he charged you? And then how did you think about return on investment? Oh,
• 14:43
  Graham Weaver: yeah. I mean, I'll he today. Could charge anything he wants, and he's a big deal. Yeah, he could. He could charge whatever he wants to charge, and people would pay it. And he doesn't. I don't even think he does coaching anymore.
• 14:55
  Graham Weaver: Coaching anymore, but back then, you know, he was scrappy, and I think his normal fee for six months at the time was like, gosh, I might get these numbers wrong, but directionally, let's say it was like $150,000 or something, which is a lot for six months, a lot we, by the way, didn't have management fees coming in because we hadn't raised the fund. It's the recession. So, like, that's a lot of money anytime, but back then, so I think he cut it his, you know, he was feeling the recession too. So I think he gave me like a half price. So it was like $70,000 I think, which is still a ton of money for us at that time. And so I to this day. I don't really know why, what got me over it, but, but I guess it was going back to the Tony Robbins days, where I just kind of like felt like I wanted to make an investment in myself and my self improvement. So then I had an assignment with JP, life changing, really. Shortly after that, had another coach named Tom vicola, who was I.
• 15:52
  Graham Weaver: Complete Coach is like a word, like leadership or so. I mean, it means tons of things to different people, like it's so the second coach I had, this guy, Tom Bucha and his wife, Frances Fuji, they taught lean manufacturing, which is crazy, because you wouldn't think a private equity firm would need lean manufacturing. But then that gave us practices like process mapping and continuous improvement, kind of the Kaizen process that we use. I mean, we've done, to this day, we've done like, 130 Kaizen projects at Alpine. That's just been life changing. So I just had some great coaches. I today, I have three, and I I'm just, it's so fun, like I just, I love learning that things I love getting better are we have, we have 23 coaches now, and that kind of on the Alpine platform.
• 16:37
  Graham Weaver: And I think we're, I think we're doing like 500 coaching engagements right now across our portfolio. So it's a, it's, it's, it's just, I think it's just phenomenal. It's just like, it's these, it's leaders being able to just invest in themselves. So
• 16:52
  Randall Kaplan: talk about the three promises that he instilled in you, and then what, what are they and how do they work? So our
• 16:59
  Graham Weaver: three promises at Alpine, you mean, yeah, yeah. So we, one of the things we came up with is we came up with our three pillars, which is, you know, be the number one performing private equity firm in the world, as measured by net moic. That was one of our pillars. Tell people what see means an investor gives you, you know, ten million how much money you give them back. A lot of investors measure their performance on IRR, which is the rate of return that you're getting. Rate of return kind of takes care of itself if you give them back a high a high number, but you can play around with the IRS. You could give someone back 1.2 times their money in a really high IRR with, you know, it's just, it's just, so we focus on net moic. So we want to be the number one performing fund in the world as measured by net mo I see we want to be the place where the best people want to work and spend their careers.
• 17:48
  Graham Weaver: And then we want to be a place that has social where we're a force for social good. Those are our three promises that we make.
• 17:55
  Graham Weaver: And then if you look at pretty much every activity that we do falls into one of those three categories,
• 18:00
  Randall Kaplan: what was the main lesson that he taught you after when you were working with him all this time with Tom dead?
• 18:05
  Randall Kaplan: No, that JP. JP, yeah, taught you. I
• 18:07
  Graham Weaver: mean, JP, is biggest thing that he taught me was probably, I mean, a number of things, but the we're in the talent business, and then how to how to invest in talent, was probably one of the biggest ones. And then we just did, we would always do a practice of overcoming limiting beliefs. So you'd throw out some incredible goal, like a genie goal or something, and then you get flooded with all these reasons you're not good enough, you're not going to do it. And then we kind of like write all those down on a piece of paper and overcome them one by one. And that was a really, really powerful way to go go through that. So a lot
• 18:39
  Randall Kaplan: of people, when they're analyzing a problem and how to get better, they really don't. They think about how to fix all the things that we've gone wrong. Yeah, what's wrong with that?
• 18:49
  Graham Weaver: So there's this awesome book by Dan and shapith called switch, and they have a chapter in there called scale your bright spots. That chapter has probably made Alpine more money than any any other chapter in any other book I've ever read, including any you could all Warren Buffett's things. So basically, what they say is the best strategic statement of all times is find what's working and do more of that. It's the simplest thing. It's better than I've read 17 books on strategy.
• 19:17
  Graham Weaver: Those nine words, find what's working and do more of that is, is, is the best strategic statement that I've ever come across. So it applies to absolutely everything. So you have a great employee who's crushing it and doing amazing things get find ways to give them more capacity, give them more resources, more capital, whatever. So find what's working and do more of that. We launched a CEO and training program. We had a couple people in there that were doing really well.
• 19:47
  Graham Weaver: Okay, that's great. There's a bright spot there. We've scaled that. You know, here's some industries that have worked out really well for us. Let's find more that look like that. You know, we had really a great luck with this one. You know, particularly way of sourcing deals direct to founders. Let's just scale that so it's just been, it's just and it's just way more fun. You know, you're focusing on your strengths.
• 20:09
  Graham Weaver: You're focusing on the things you're good at, you're you're holding your best companies longer. You know, it's just, it's the simplest way to run, run a run a firm.
• 20:21
  Randall Kaplan: At what point should people get an executive coach? Does everybody need one?
• 20:25
  Randall Kaplan: And how do you find one? If
• 20:28
  Graham Weaver: you have no idea where to go? I would say yes.
• 20:31
  Graham Weaver: And the reason I think everyone needs one is I'll use myself example like I'm probably in the top 1% of the world in setting goals, you know. Let's just say, I mean, I write them down, you know, I teach classes on it. You know, I'm and I still love i.
• 20:52
  Graham Weaver: Benefit tremendously from having a coach just create space to hold me accountable, to setting and then looking at how I'm doing against my goals. Like, so it's like a personal trainer for your life. Like, I don't need a personal trainer to go figure out what waste lift, but what if you had a personal trainer who's just making sure that you're on your life path? Like, it like there's, I don't think there's a better investment. You could make therapists do that, though, therapists, a lot of times, are looking backwards. I mean, this is the simplest way people define the difference between a coach and a therapist, and I don't it's a blunt way to describe it, but therapists are going to want to know, like, Hey, tell me about mom and dad and all that. Coaches are looking forward. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? What's What are your goals?
• 21:33
  Graham Weaver: What's your dream, what's your vision, what's your path? And I think, and so, so it's a personal trainer for like, you being on your life path. I mean, I think everyone should have one. The other thing is, you activate different parts of your your brain, when you talk than when you write or you think. So you have someone here that you're talking and you're activating, you know, your energy to go, you know, in the direction you want to go. So I think, I think coaching is incredible in terms of how to find them. I mean, there's a whole bunch of platforms that you could look at online. I don't, I don't know that I have a great algorithm for that, but there's international coaching Federation. There's better up, there's Tony Robbins coaching.
• 22:10
  Graham Weaver: There's co active coaching.
• 22:13
  Graham Weaver: Those are all resources that you could give to your listeners.
• 22:18
  Graham Weaver: And then you you know you do like a trial with a number of coaches and see how you know if there's a fit. Because you really, definitely want to have a have a good fit with the coach. Most people listening to this show cannot afford a coach.
• 22:30
  Graham Weaver: So what do you do if you can't afford one, I would say, find one of your really close friends that shares your passion for personal improvement, and coach each other. So I did this with my roommate in business school.
• 22:41
  Graham Weaver: I had a my roommate and I, we used to get together and we would basically coach each other. You know, we'd spend 30 minutes. We'd go on a walk and spend 30 or 45 minutes talking about him, and we turn around, spend 3040 minutes talking about me. So you can, you can just do, you could do this with a really close friend, and then the magic of that is you'll have, you'll actually, you'll actually your friend will know you really well, and you'll also create a really deep friendship with that person. Many
• 23:09
  Randall Kaplan: people in the private equity business go into it, because not only are they interested in but they go in for the money. Yeah, we all know, you read the four 400 and I don't know how many private equity people are on, but I'm guessing 10% or more in the private equity. And I've had, I've had some of those people on my show who've been great. The way to make money in the private equity business on something called carried interest. Yep, you were making $100,000 for the first 14 years, right? Of your business, which is crazy, right?
• 23:38
  Randall Kaplan: Net of tax, and you're married, and I don't know, is that$70,000 after tax? Yeah, and you got a family, and you started making a carried interest finally, and you're in your third fund, and you were depressed, right? Why that doesn't make sense. Yeah, and you stopped drinking,
• 23:58
  Graham Weaver: yeah, as well.
• 23:58
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, it's a good question.
• 24:01
  Graham Weaver: Like, I think, I think what happened is, I'd bet, I think I realized at that time I'd been driving for so long, you know, starting when I was 12, mowing lawns, all the wrestling and starving myself, getting into college, getting grades in college, Wall Street, raising a fund, X 14 years of plowing through, and then I had this financial event. We sold our last company in our second fund, and that created this big carried interest check, and I saw the money go in my bank account, and then I just thought, Oh, I thought that was going to feel different. Wait a sec, you know? I thought, I thought that would feel different. And it was really exciting for a couple days, and then I just had this big let down. And I don't mean it to sound like, oh, you know, I mean, I'm very grateful that I was able to have financial security. It wasn't like I could never work against money. It was money that I could exhale a little bit. But I just thought it would feel different. You know? I thought I'd been working all this time to have this outcome, and you know what? I was still it was still me. I was still there, and I had still had all the same demons and same problems. And it didn't, it didn't make all that go away.
• 25:14
  Graham Weaver: And so it was, it was hard, you know, I felt like I'd worked for probably 25 years, 27 years, or something like that, to get to this point. And I just thought it would I thought it feel different. So, yeah, I actually, actually was clinically depressed, like I I had a hard time getting out of bed. I felt just tired all the time. I was in a bad mood all the time, and there was probably actually one of the lowest points of my life.
• 25:42
  Randall Kaplan: How'd you come out of it? So
• 25:46
  Graham Weaver: I little by little. So I started doing a lot of research on depression. Yeah, because, because, I think, I think I took, like, a survey or something online, I don't remember, and I answered all these questions. It's like, Yeah, you, you might have depression. And so I started doing a lot of research, and then I started looking up, like, like, it was some, some basic stuff. Well, first I went on antidepressants, and then I, but I fired all kinds of bullets. So I I saw, you know, alcohol was really highly correlated depression, as you would imagine, I wean myself off alcohol. Did
• 26:20
  Randall Kaplan: you have a drinking problem? Or you I don't know that I
• 26:22
  Graham Weaver: had a drinking problem, but I drank most nights. I think it interfered with my sleep more than I realized. I wouldn't say I wasn't, I wasn't by any stretch.
• 26:31
  Graham Weaver: You know, had a had a drinking problem, but it was, it was definitely just not serving me.
• 26:34
  Graham Weaver: So, and if you go, you know, Google depression, it's like, on every single list was alcohol, it's a depressant, you know. So, so I cut alcohol out of my diet.
• 26:47
  Graham Weaver: I got my food, believe it or not, food allergies showed up a bunch on those lists. So I got my food allergies tested. I had a severe intolerance to gluten, which was probably 60% of my calories at the time. I gave up gluten. I stopped having sleeping pills, which I needed because the alcohol. I started just eating way healthier. I started working out a lot more and little. It didn't all happen at once, but little by little, I started to realize a lot of it was just daily habits and that, you know it. And so I started, you know, started talking to therapist, and so little by little, started doing that. I wean myself off antidepressants and and haven't looked back. So I still have all those, all those habits, you know, I still, I still don't, you know, don't drink, don't eat gluten, don't have sleeping pills.
• 27:33
  Randall Kaplan: Someone told me a long time ago that if someone tells you they're not interested in money, they're full of shit.
• 27:39
  Randall Kaplan: So what part of making money was a motivator for you in starting this fund? And what's your advice to people who are motivated by money as a number one important
• 27:52
  Graham Weaver: Well, I think, I think you go through a phase of of money. The first phase is, like, survival, right? Can you pay your rent? And can you, you know, can you actually, you know, pay your car payment and pay rent? And I never, I never, to be fair, like I was never really up against that. Like I saved money starting in college with this business, I saved money when I was on Wall Street.
• 28:21
  Graham Weaver: So I was never up against it, where I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna make rent this month.
• 28:27
  Graham Weaver: So I've been very lucky that I don't, I haven't been there, but the first but then it's like, okay, can I pay my mortgage? Can I put my kids through college?
• 28:35
  Graham Weaver: You know, I have obligations now to family and that. So the first, the first kind of bar is like, just survival. And that was probably the most intense desire to make money. Was like, just literally survival. Then I think the next bar is probably financial security of just kind of like being able to exhale, and maybe slightly above, but that is, you just don't worry about money. You know, you're not, you're not thinking about it. And I would say, like, if I'm, if I'm being like, I know people probably hate when they hear people who made a lot of money say this, but I would say 95% of the utility of money comes from not having to worry about money that I've experienced. I mean, I have more recently in the last couple years, I bought a nice house, but I never drove a nice car until, till I was, like, in my late 40s. Like it was never about the stuff. I think I realized, yeah, 95% of, maybe even higher than that, is just not having to stress about money and, and I don't mean, like, just the car payments and things, but more like, oh, I have to, I have to change a flight. Or, you know, my car breaks down, just like, literally, like not spending any emotional energy stressed about money is and you can actually get there without too much money, and more, it has more to do with your expenses, actually, than your your income. What's
• 30:07
  Randall Kaplan: your advice to people who are motivated by money? A lot of people, I bet if you took an anonymous poll, yeah, all the employees, people are super motivated. Yeah. You know, I bet money would be number one on 90%
• 30:19
  Graham Weaver: I think if, like, if I sat down with someone for an hour or so and, like, we actually, we actually said, Okay, let's say they were nice enough to be honest about the fact that they were motivated by money. Okay? Anonymous poll, yeah, and I'd say, okay, like, let's talk about it. Like, what is it about this that you're really excited about? Oh, because I want to have a cool car. Okay, great. So how much is that going to take? Oh, when I want to have a nice house. Okay, great. But I think a lot of times people are focused on stuff. And status, that's really what they want money for. And those, those are both sometimes related in their head, like, if I have a house, if I have a car or a watch or whatever, so stuff and status is where we're like, their energy is going. And again, sounds very cliche to say. Those will not do very much for you for any long period of time at all. On the status part, no one gives a shit, right? And on the stuff part, you know this, anything you've ever bought, you get a little bit of a boost, and then it goes away.
• 31:22
  Graham Weaver: So stuff and status, like, if people actually understood that that really doesn't provide that much utility, and maybe even negative utility, in many cases, what I think provides the utility is the peace of mind of not having to worry about money.
• 31:36
  Graham Weaver: So if you could shift someone's mindset to be like you can still be really fired up about money, but maybe you're fired up because you could help people that you care about or you don't have to worry about it and stress about it. And focusing on that, I think, I think would make you a lot happier. It would also shift how much money you need, how much money you spend.
• 31:56
  Graham Weaver: And I think it'd be way healthier.
• 32:00
  Randall Kaplan: Most people, including me, including mentees and even my friends, we talk about this all the time, have had and it shifts over time, as you get older and you have family and homes and other things, a financial goal of how much money you want to have.
• 32:16
  Randall Kaplan: Yep, did you have one at a young age? What was it? Has it changed? And what is it now?
• 32:25
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah,
• 32:25
  Graham Weaver: I mean, I'm really putting that's fine. I mean, I'm gonna go there. So I think, I think in the early, early days, it was probably, like a million dollars, you know, that was mine. That seemed like all the money in the world, I mean, and that, I mean, I couldn't even, I couldn't even imagine what that would be like.
• 32:42
  Graham Weaver: And so that was probably my goal, from, like, being really young till, I don't even know, in my well into my 30s, maybe even, or, you know, it was, like a million dollars and then, and then I shifted, and I said, Okay, if I had, if I had $20 million in in the bank earning like in treasuries, I could live off the Treasury income, and I, and I would have that, like, security blanket, and I'd never have to then anything else that happened, I'd be fine, like, if I kept my lifestyle and in check. So that was kind of my, my next goal. But not like, rap, how
• 33:24
  Randall Kaplan: old were you when you had that? That
• 33:25
  Graham Weaver: was probably, like, you know, late, probably in the early 40s. I was like, okay, that and then that was kind of like, my to use the term, kind of fucking money, like, I never have to worry about anything again, presuming I didn't increase my living expenses too, too big. And I thought that was a great goal, because I felt like, and I did achieve that goal. And then once that happened, I felt like, at that point, I'm playing with the houses money. And I actually became a better investor. I, you know, I, I think I've made better decisions, and I haven't reset another goal. So I have, like, the 98% of my wealth is in Alpine, my business in private investments, and I love having it there. I feel really good about it. And so I get to be that voice of let's do what's right for investors, and then let's find liquidity for the people in my firm or the people in the management team. Let's do that separately. Maybe we raise a separate round to get them secondary money. But I'm not personally making a poor decision because of my own financial needs or my situation, I've hit my goal, and so I can now just do what's best for, you know, my investors, or the firm, which, in many cases, has hold these companies for a really, really long period of time.
• 34:43
  Randall Kaplan: My mom told me a long time ago, don't count other people's money, but obviously you've made more than $20 million in your in your lifetime, you're going to continue as your firm grows.
• 34:51
  Randall Kaplan: It's exponential, actually, right? It is, you know, you get you're probably the biggest shareholder in your firm at this point. And we all know what the top performing private equity firms make, and some of the best firms, you know, some, if you just look at those firms who go in public, you got founders making $100 million a year, yeah. And so, how do you think about money? And as a dad, having all that money in your children and raising your children in a normal, humble environment, on the
• 35:22
  Graham Weaver: making money part, and how I think about it?
• 35:24
  Graham Weaver: I think about it as I honestly think about my goal is to be the number one performing private equity fund in the world, and that's the scorecard I have, there will be lots of financial gains that come with that, but the absolute North Star is our net moic performance at Alpine, which, which runs counter actually, to making more money, because there's, we could charge more carry than we do. We could, you know, kind of take liquidity earlier and raise more. You know, there's a lot of things we could do, but I want to be the.
• 35:51
  Graham Weaver: One performing fun in the world.
• 35:54
  Graham Weaver: And that's, that's, that's kind of the North Star, to be honest.
• 35:58
  Graham Weaver: And then with the kids, it actually worked out really interestingly. I never planned this, but my kids had almost the exact same situation that I had as a kid, where their dad started a business when they were born. You know, didn't make money. Notes drove, you know, worked really hard. They saw the grind. They saw they saw it start with nothing, where they would come to like a Alpine event, and there'd be the whole firm, was seven people, and then they've watched it kind of grow, and they've seen all the work that went into that. And I think I gave them that they absorb that. That's how they're showing up in their life and and I love that for them, you know, it's almost the same thing that my, you know, I had what I had with my dad. So they, my kids are really driven, you know, they're getting up at 5am and going on runs when no one's looking.
• 36:47
  Graham Weaver: They're, they're they're doing those things. And I, I never told them to do that. They they just, they're doing those things, all three of them. I honestly am not exactly sure how we're going to structure giving them money, or if we're doing like a charity trust or, you know, I have, you'd think I would have that all figured out.
• 37:01
  Graham Weaver: I don't. I don't have a great answer for you yet on that. When I was
• 37:05
  Randall Kaplan: young and I didn't have money, I go into the Porsche dealership every year, and I'm sorry if I'm repeating the story for those people who listen to the show, but I sit in the Porsche every year and said, One day I'm gonna buy this, this Porsche. And when I finally, our company went public, and I had the opportunity to do it, it took me a year to buy the Porsche. And like you said, at some point, you know, the oral wears off, I felt guilty. Was$107,000 I still have it today.
• 37:29
  Randall Kaplan: 22 years. Oh, that's awesome.
• 37:29
  Randall Kaplan: Has 57,000 miles. First day, I took it home, Graham, I washed the car, like, Oh, this is gonna be great. And I dropped the bucket on the car. I filled the water, but it still has a little quarter size ring on the car.
• 37:42
  Randall Kaplan: But I bought, I bought the Porsche, yeah, I bought my dream home, and I treat myself to nice art, which has become an investment more than anything else. What is the nicest thing you've bought yourself? Are there any extravagances that you said, I mean, or Ferrari?
• 38:01
  Graham Weaver: I mean, yes, I up until two years ago, my answer would have been like, I just spend money to save time. So I, you know, have administrative assistant, I have accountants, you know, things that I just take all the stuff I don't want to do, and I do none of it. And that is the best extravagance, okay, but then two years ago, I had this one label company that I bought during business school, the very last one I bought. And we got very lucky, we had Trader Joe's as a customer, and it grew. I hold. I held the business for 21 years, and we sold it in 2022 and it was, it was on a on a net investment. It was the best investment I ever made, because I put in a tiny amount of money, and it became a really big business. So we sold it in 2022 I wasn't counting on it. I i wouldn't say I forgot about it, but it was kind of like not part of my daily planning. And so I had this a big amount of money come in from that sale, and I used that to buy a house in Hawaii. So that was my, that was my, my one kind of extravagance and and I love it. I love having, I don't think I'm gonna buy any more houses, because it's, it's a lot of work, and it's, you know, you can rent, you don't have to own, but, but I have a really sweet house in Hawaii. That's where we're in Hawaii. It's in Maui, nice, yeah, and it's, and I really do enjoy, and I do feel really proud when I'm in it, and it makes me really happy. So that's, that's my big extravagance. But that, I mean, I was 50 years old when I, when I did that, and, but, but I it has, it has been kind of nice. I always
• 39:35
  Randall Kaplan: said, I'm never going to a second home, because, like you said, it's a lot of work. It's expensive. Yeah, we have the money where we can go where we want, and I didn't want to feel tied down. Yeah? Now we went up to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and then we saw this incredible house, and we bought the house, and it's been the best thing we've ever done as a family.
• 39:50
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, exactly. Because I have younger kids. I have three, three kids from a previous marriage. They all want to go, and it's just been the best.
• 39:56
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, you know, we've
• 39:58
  Graham Weaver: done, you nailed it. And exactly like, you know, my kids are now, I have two kids in college, and, you know, during spring break, they want to go to Hawaii, and they bring their friends and their girlfriend. And so that that's been awesome is just keep, you know, keeping having the having the family together. So that's that's been really, that's been really, really nice. Yeah, I, you could probably tell from just talking about, I feel kind of guilty about for some reason I but it has been, has been really
• 40:24
  Randall Kaplan: nice. You know, I felt guilty about my house as well. And this may seem so weird, and I know, and people are gonna write in on this, and it's gonna be a weird concept, but we learn a beautiful home here, but a lot of our friends also have beautiful I mean, we have friends who live month to month, but, you know, our kids go to school. You're friends with the parents. We live in Brentwood, California, home, yeah, very, very expensive, yeah. And so it's normal to have a nice house, maybe not as nice as ours, but there's a lot of very, very nice homes. When I bought. My second home, and I'm sitting up there in our we have a beautiful view of the lake, and I just, I feel at peace there. I never want to leave, and I don't want to work while I'm there, but I have my summer intern program. It's summer only, but it's, this is gonna sound so weird. It's the only place where I really thought and I felt successful. Wow. Yeah, I mean wow, yeah, it's weird.
• 41:20
  Graham Weaver: That's really cool. Thanks for sharing that.
• 41:23
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the word asymmetry, yeah, which you've used already, and you said there are four things you can do to have a great life.
• 41:30
  Randall Kaplan: Yep. And when I read this, I thought, I've never heard anything like this before. It actually one of the things about having great guests on the show, like we talked about before, I get to meet lots of people, and I like to take things from each show. But this one was like, Holy shit, that's amazing. So talk about, talk about the four.
• 41:56
  Randall Kaplan: These are things that I'm going to do and I'm going to adopt, and I've written them down so
• 41:59
  Graham Weaver: well. Thanks.
• 41:59
  Graham Weaver: Thanks for that compliment. So the concept was what we were talking about before, about investing where you know you, if you're if you plant, you want to play for the upside, not protect the downside. And so I kind of thought about my life as I started to uncover that for investing, I started to realize I was doing the same thing in my life. I was playing small. I was playing not to lose. And so I started to kind of think about what was were the principles that if you stack them on top of each other, would lead to a wildly asymmetric life, just like principles of investing would lead to wildly asymmetric investments. So the first one was, do hard things. And that that is, I think maybe they're all really important, but do hard things probably comes first, because I had, I had this expression that everything you want in life is on the other side of worse first. So if you really think about you know you want a better body. Okay, it's going to get worse. First, you're going to go to the gym.
• 43:01
  Graham Weaver: You're going to have a diet you might not like as much as the old diet. You know, if you want, you know to do better at your job. You know you're going to have to work a little bit more.
• 43:09
  Graham Weaver: You're going to have to study harder. You know, every everything that you want is on the other side of doing something you don't want first.
• 43:13
  Graham Weaver: And so when I, when I cut weight wrestling I started, I just realized I had a very, very high capacity to do hard things, which has been good. So that's that's kind of principle one.
• 43:26
  Graham Weaver: Principle two is, do your thing.
• 43:31
  Graham Weaver: And the idea there is that if you are doing something that you're doing because you think you know it's the you know that it's going to make you money, or it's going to it's a thing that your friends are going to be impressed by your parents, or something you're supposed to do like you're you're not, you're not going to stay with that for a long period of time. So you talk about, yeah, people could do investment banking for a couple years, but like, like it, you want to align. I said this earlier. You want to align your soul with your day, you know.
• 44:04
  Graham Weaver: And if, if, when those things are happening, you're unstoppable when you're doing something that you're you really want to be doing, and you, you're going to do it for a long period of time. You're going to, you're going to you're going to work early and late, and so, like, you're not going to do that doing someone else's thing.
• 44:17
  Graham Weaver: So find out what your thing is, and get on a path to doing that.
• 44:21
  Graham Weaver: Like I don't, I don't think there's any, almost any exceptions to that. Now, it doesn't mean you can do it tomorrow. Maybe you have some financial things you have to sort out in your current thing, but get on that path there's some time in your lifetime.
• 44:33
  Graham Weaver: Number three is, do it for decades. And this is kind of like the, just the power of compounding over time. You know, I'm, I'm in my 23rd year running Alpine, like, I'm pretty good at running a private equity firm at this point. You know, we've done 600 deals. I've hired a lot of people. I've hired a lot of CEOs. I've seen a lot of industries. I've tried everything you can imagine. I'm trying new stuff. I've had new coaches, like, I'm better in year 23 than I was in year 22 and 21 and so, you know, that gets asymmetric over time too.
• 45:06
  Graham Weaver: You just get, you get so much better. So you do things over a long period of time. I mean, if I think, if I stopped Alpine in year 14, it got, it got kind of asymmetric, you know, at the longer I, I stayed with it. So do it for decades. And the last one is, write your story. And this is really the, maybe even the predecessor this. But like, you get one life. So like, take the time to really step back and think about, if you know what, what? What is that? What is the picture you want to paint? What is the life that you want to have? And imagine, imagine it as though you could have anything that you wanted, and get as clear as you can on that, because that's the hardest part.
• 45:46
  Graham Weaver: Bringing that to fruition is usually just kind of working backwards. And then I like to say, you know, almost any, any goal that. You can set you can you can work backwards and create an endogenous set of activities that will yield that goal over a long enough period of time. But most people don't know exactly what they want, so, so that's the fourth one, is write your story.
• 46:06
  Randall Kaplan: And for write your story, you're talking about a five year story, yeah, a five
• 46:10
  Graham Weaver: year story like, what? What's nirvana? What would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail? And what would you do and if you knew you didn't fail in your relationships, your career, your body, spirituality, you know in your friendships, you know in all those areas, like what's what do you want? You know, and take the time to really explore that, which is the thing I do a lot with my executive coaches.
• 46:28
  Randall Kaplan: You made an Instagram post, I don't know, a few months ago that said I read every self help ilk in the world, and these are the four or five things that you need to do.
• 46:39
  Randall Kaplan: And one of them was to, I'm going to summarize, and I'm not going to get it right, but maybe you can fill in the details. But it was, get a notepad out, make a five year goal and write. And you did this in college, essentially, it's where it began. And write your goals down, high goals, not those that you think you're going to hit.
• 47:01
  Randall Kaplan: And write three things down every day that you did to achieve those goals. Exactly.
• 47:07
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, and I think that's genius.
• 47:07
  Randall Kaplan: It's
• 47:08
  Graham Weaver: so simple and like, what I would also say is, like, if you really look at successful people, I think that what gets the most underrated thing is like, the tediousness of being successful, like, it's tedious. It's like having, having a great body, is tedious, you know, it's reps in the gym, it's hours, you know, running, it's, you know, it's, it's not, it's not hard. It's just tedious, you know, and achieving a goal is not difficult. It's tedious. It's daily, writing it down, writing the three things you want to do toward that goal down, and then doing those things, and then getting up tomorrow and doing it again like and I think, I think people mistake. They think it's going to be these big, sweeping, sweeping motions, because they hear about that, but they don't realize that there was 25 years of work that went into whatever that outcome was. And those 25 years are tedious, right? I
• 48:03
  Randall Kaplan: think one of the things too, I mean, we have a summer intern program. They work on tedious things. We work on sandy which is getting data points. We're have built, we've built the largest beach database in the world for the $5 trillion year beach tours of business.
• 48:17
  Randall Kaplan: There's nothing like it. We've cataloged 100 categories of data from now more than 140,000 beaches in 212 countries. And it's a lot of work. It's manual work. Is there a bathroom there?
• 48:28
  Randall Kaplan: What's the cell service there?
• 48:31
  Randall Kaplan: These are things that people want to know before they visit the beach, and that's one use case is for people going to the beach and planning a beach vacation. The average person before they plan a beach vacation looks at 38 different websites before they visit there. So we're trying to cut all that down, yeah, and really put everything on one beach page, but that includes pictures of beaches, and it's laborious to get the licenses and make sure we have the right licenses for the photos. We have drone videos now I think of, I don't know, 20,000 beaches as well that we've manually got on YouTube. We put the link back to YouTube on as people want to really see video of it. We've compiled now a list of every shark attack last 100 years.
• 49:12
  Randall Kaplan: We're about to launch a shark map as well, and we've done some really, really cool things. I love it. And we have all these interns come in, right? And we tell them before the summer, said you're gonna be doing shit work the whole summer, what you're doing is beneath your intelligence level. Wait, because we've kids. We got kids from Stanford and Harvard and all the best schools. But we also have kids from San Diego State or a firm like college like Biola. Which do you know Biola? I do not know. Okay, most people don't. Yeah, it's a small Catholic school outside of Los Angeles. That's where Matt Hickerson goes. His Best Intern we've ever had, and best right hand that I've had as well, but it's like these kids don't want to do it. And throughout the summer I said, you're going to get bored. You're going to complain. I said, complaining is a cancer. I better not hear one complainer. We're going to have a gnarly meeting in my office.
• 50:07
  Randall Kaplan: But what I tell the kids is, I'm doing the same work. I'm sending my team emails. Hey, what? Why don't we have a photo here? Is this really a nude beach, right?
• 50:16
  Randall Kaplan: Is this really a gay beach? You know? Try to try to try to find it. I'm doing the work too. I'm uploading photos onto our website. And that's, that's the thing. It's tedious. It is hard work. I mean, everyone wants to sell company for a billion dollars gold, a huge, huge fund, and we've seen the today. It's different than when we start recovery. You're in a highly competitive business, so you're getting the best of the best.
• 50:41
  Randall Kaplan: I'm not saying that we're not getting the best of the best, but the work ethic today and what the expectations are, in a world where everyone's making gobs, Oh, totally Yeah, it's just a different game. Yeah.
• 50:52
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, but I love, I love the I love that story. I
• 50:55
  Graham Weaver: hope, I hope everyone who your listeners really understand what you were just saying about the tediousness. I mean, it's my favorite quote of all time. Is Michelangelo. He says, if people know how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful. And I think, you know, it's like, you know, teaching at Stanford is, it's like each class is meticulously planned, minute by minute who I'm going to call on, in some cases, you know, the exact, you know, characters I'm going to assume. And I mean, it's like, it's just like we talked about it in the green room, preparation. And it's, and it's, it's tedious, you know, we just had an off site yesterday, and I was, I was telling Audrey before we were meeting here. I mean, I think I wrote, or I was involved in just about every single PowerPoint slide that was shown over the entire, you know, two day period. You know, just how many minutes are we going to give for this exercise? Is this flowing? Right? I mean, it's just, yeah, it's tedious.
• 52:00
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about preparation for a minute, because it's one of the things been the hallmark of my success.
• 52:05
  Randall Kaplan: And I'm teaching something. I'm giving talks at colleges. I'm going to be doing some paper public speaking. I'm writing a book on preparation, on extreme preparation. So how important has extreme preparation been to your success? That means, how preparing everybody, I
• 52:21
  Graham Weaver: think it's been the the character characteristic. I mean, if I, if I go back to high school grades, I mean the, you know, I would have a geometry test. The teacher would say, Hey, here's the last eight geometry tests. I would do every problem on all eight, understanding it, you know, and, and, you know, if, if I, you know, we had for rowing, I put in probably, on average, an extra hour a day, at least on the rowing machine. My classes I meticulously prepare for the speech that you were referencing about an asymmetric life.
• 52:59
  Graham Weaver: Probably took six months to write that. And, you know, there, you know, there were four principles, but we started off with like 12, you know, and had to test them and see, you know, and, and so it, I think it's a superpower. It can also be, sometimes can be a negative, because sometimes it keeps me from engaging in things where I don't have that ability to prepare for it. So I might just say no to something where, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to be as prepared. So I think there is a negative side to that, you know, like you it sounds like I'm a perfectionist, so that that can be a negative. But in general, over preparation has been, has been a real key tool.
• 53:39
  Graham Weaver: But even more than that, it's like when I'm over prepared, I'm really confident too. So I think I just show up differently knowing that I did the work. You know, I'm ready for the speech, or I'm ready for the class, and I know the material, so that that helps a lot to less anxious you're doing the reps. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's
• 54:01
  Randall Kaplan: really helped me a tremendous amount as well. I mean, you're phi, beta, kappa in college. And for those people don't know it's, it basically means you're graduating the top 2% of your class. And for me, it was because I outworked everybody. I don't consider myself the smartest person in the room, and I tell people, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room. But if I have to go back and look at all those semesters in college, maybe there were five or eight tests where I knew I may not get an A.
• 54:28
  Randall Kaplan: I got 1b plus in college first semester, I was pissed, but it was really something you can control the outcome of. And I also think that's true of work ethic as well. So what's your advice to people who don't want to get there at five o'clock in the morning? Can you be successful if you work on average, like everybody else?
• 54:51
  Graham Weaver: I don't. I mean, I think if, if you know, it's funny, I have a hard time giving advice that I don't follow myself. So I can only share what's worked for me, you know.
• 55:05
  Graham Weaver: And what's worked for me is like, if I'm going to take something on, you know, I'm going to have a bar of wanting to be the best in the world at that particular thing, and I'm going to put in the work to do that, and that's really invigorating for me. And so, you know, it's hard for me to give advice to someone to say, hey, you know what? Why don't you just try to be average at that?
• 55:26
  Graham Weaver: And, and that's going to be fine. Now, if that's someone else's own, you know, kind of compass, and that's where they are then, you know, I guess they can, they can show up however they want. But, you know, I've just found a lot more joy in trying to, like, throw yourself into things 1,000%
• 55:44
  Randall Kaplan: so you work at a sexy, you started a sexy firm, right? Private equity, and again, we talked about money and, and I think there's a traditional. Path, which is banking, investment banking, and most bankers I know want to go into private equity. It's not as harsh in terms of the time commitment, the hours and the weekends only. It doesn't mean that you you don't work hard.
• 56:02
  Randall Kaplan: How does someone get a job at Alpine? And would you hire and do you hire students from lesser known colleges that don't have straight A's and maybe have a 3.2 grade point average. Yeah,
• 56:19
  Graham Weaver: so I think, like, what we're trying to do, we hire, say, 12 summer interns to do investing. And what we're really just trying to do is is find the highest yield that we can have. You know, we want all 12 to be successful. We want all 12 to work out. We have found it to be very highly correlated.
• 56:40
  Graham Weaver: You know, the under undergraduate grades and performance has been really correlated to doing well on the job. And it probably is less about the grades themselves and more about the work ethic that went into the grades, more about the preparation and things that went into that. So we've, we've found that, for better or for worse, to be really highly correlated. So, you know, we're not, you know, we're, we're typically indexing on grades when we're, you know, making those, those hires.
• 57:08
  Randall Kaplan: What's the best interview question that someone has asked you, and for 23 years, my
• 57:15
  Graham Weaver: favorite, I'm going to steal two questions that my all time. Favorite question probably is Peter Thiel his question, which is, what's something you believe that not that many people agree with you on? I think that's a great question. And then Elon Musk has a question he asked, which is something like, you know, what's, what's the most difficult problem you've ever had to solve, and how did you solve it? I think those are great questions. Yeah, I think you'd learn a lot about people with with those two,
• 57:45
  Randall Kaplan: I read one, and I love this question. And again, I teach this one, which is, what are the three things that I can do after six months that would help me be successful and add value to your firm.
• 57:57
  Graham Weaver: Oh, I love that.
• 57:57
  Graham Weaver: That's a quote. Oh, you're saying. What
• 58:00
  Randall Kaplan: would it that's a student. Yeah. Sorry,
• 58:02
  Graham Weaver: I thought. What was I asking?
• 58:04
  Randall Kaplan: Well, okay, so let's turn around. So what?
• 58:07
  Randall Kaplan: What's the best question someone has asked you that you said, Holy cow, that's a great question.
• 58:15
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, probably similar to what you just said, something about, like, what are the attributes that I would have? Or, you know, how would I be showing up that I would be the best analyst that's ever come at this firm, you know, give me the playbook. Tell me what to do. What would that look like? You know, and they actually are really intent on wanting to know. They're not saying that because they heard they were supposed. But you can tell they actually want to be the best. Want to be the best analyst that we've ever hired.
• 58:37
  Graham Weaver: And you know where they're asking me for that Formula
• 58:39
  Randall Kaplan: One of one of the mistakes I think people make, and I again, this is something that I think people should really think of when they're interviewing for a job.
• 58:49
  Randall Kaplan: I me not value add, value add, value add. Do you see that as well, where in the interviews, people are just saying, I'm great for this role, because I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, as opposed to how it can add value to your firm.
• 59:04
  Graham Weaver: I don't know that I could count on maybe one hand the number of conversations I've had where someone has talked about adding value to my firm.
• 59:10
  Graham Weaver: So yeah, I think that's really, really rare, and I think it would be a really refreshing conversation, if I were to have that for sure.
• 59:20
  Randall Kaplan: So if someone from a lesser rank school sends you this incredible analysis of a company where you say, Holy cow, this person has done a 40 page presentation. He or she is a 3.0 grade point average.
• 59:31
  Randall Kaplan: They've really mapped out everything that you could ever imagine, and they said, not only can I do this, but I hear other ways that I could add value to your firm, and I'll work for free for six months, you don't have to pay me, and after six months, if I've done good things, then you put me on the payroll. That'd be
• 59:53
  Graham Weaver: super compelling.
• 59:53
  Graham Weaver: I love it. It's a great pitch.
• 59:55
  Graham Weaver: That'd be really, really compelling.
• 59:57
  Randall Kaplan: I love it. Let's talk about something that you said as well that really hit home with me in being successful, is time management.
• 1:00:05
  Randall Kaplan: And I thought what you said about that was really profound, and I hadn't really thought about it in the way that you said it. I think about it. Think about all the clover that comes on my desk. I think about, Gosh, I'm spending so much time on these worthless emails. What's your view on time management, and what should people be doing to and focusing on during their day?
• 1:00:27
  Graham Weaver: So I think the best formula that I've come up with for time management goes back to you knowing really clearly what your top goals are, and then putting time on your calendar to work on those goals.
• 1:00:37
  Graham Weaver: So you know, my my three goals are 123, here are the activities I need to do, to hit one and two and three, and then scheduling those blocks on your calendar.
• 1:00:48
  Graham Weaver: And we're, you know, using your calendar to work on your things that. Are moving you to where you want to go. Email, if you think about it, is really what everyone else wants from you.
• 1:00:59
  Graham Weaver: You know, like it's, it's, it's people telling you all the things they need from you. And so if you find yourself reacting to emails, there's almost a 0% chance that that's moving you toward your goals. It's moving you maybe toward other people's goals. So you and certainly you have to return emails, but like, I think that needs to fit in around. You know, you really blocking the time on the things you want to do,
• 1:01:19
  Randall Kaplan: right? So as part of your advice, and summarizing all of those five year goals and writing free things down each day, I'm I bought a Lucite frame eight by 10. I'm going to put it in the frame and in my notebook. I'm also going to put down in each of the three things I did each day, how long each one took. I love that. And I'm also going to put down how much of my time was devoted to emails or things that had no value to the success of those goals.
• 1:01:51
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times, like, I'll coach one of our CEOs, and, you know, the CEO knows what I'm that, you know, we say we're in the talent business. They know how much I care about talent. So I'll coach one of the CEOs, and I'll say, Well, how much, if you had to guess, what percent of your time do you think you're you're spending on, you know, building a great team and building talent, and they'll say, oh, a lot of my time I'm spending a lot. Like, why don't you pull out your calendar and let's go look at the last two months and look at how many, how much time you spent on building a great team. And they look at me like they their face turns white, because the answer is, they're like, Oh, well, HR does that. And, okay, what you just said, your top priority is building a great team and talent. And yet, if I look at the last two months of your calendar, you spent no time on it, yeah, but I had to do this.
• 1:02:42
  Graham Weaver: And we had this customer, and we had that and, like, that's what I'm talking about. It's like you have to, you have to, like, take your top priorities and really align your schedule. This Stephen Covey has this great matrix where he says, what's urgent and what's important, and he says that all the magic happens in the quadrant of your life that is important but not urgent. That's where all the magic is. And so but we all we spend all our time on the things that are urgent. So the unlock is to take all the important things, like working on your management team, working with your team, on your goals, maybe designing a new product, innovating things that are important but not urgent, and schedule them that makes them urgent when they show up on your calendar as a meeting with a team to work on this really big priority, all of a sudden it's you've made the important Urgent. And that's kind of the unlock about how to how to get in that quadrant of important things. You're becoming
• 1:03:39
  Randall Kaplan: very well known.
• 1:03:39
  Randall Kaplan: You're a great professor. I'm sure people reach out to you on LinkedIn every day, yeah. And maybe you get some things that I get every day, which is, oh, Graham, I'm so impressed with you. Do you have 15 minutes for a cup of coffee? Yes. And I get, I get a lot of there's 10 of those a week, yes, and the answer for me is no, but if you want to join my summer internship program, you get a whole 12 weeks with me. Nice. So how does somebody earn a meeting with you? Obviously, that's not going to work. Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  Graham Weaver: I mean, that's a great question, and it's something that I actually really struggle with over the last couple years as I've gotten more and more those requests. Because in the early days, I was just honored. I said yes to 100% of the time, and I thought it was a real blessing that someone wanted to talk to me and I and I still feel that way, and so but I just I can't I don't have the capacity. I can't fill my calendar, so I kind of have to just prioritize and say, okay, at the very top of the list is, you work at Alpine, you're going to get on my calendar, you know, probably right under that as you're taking my class right now. You're enrolled in my class, you know, I'm going to spend time, you know, I have office hours, and you can be in my class, probably right under that as you have taken my class in the past years. And then, you know, below that might be you currently are enrolled at Stanford, because it is part of the job of a professor to meet with students. And so I want to, and then, you know, I so I try to have this kind of algorithm of, how do I, how do I prioritize those requests? I do, to your point earlier about persistence. If someone writes me and did a ton of work and research and has something smart, and they send me 17 emails, I will 100% meet with them, like they they 100% will get a meeting. So they get jump, they can jump the queue of that prioritization. But I wish I had a I wish I had an infinite amount of time. There's probably some other unlock, like your internship like, maybe I could have, like, online office hours on, you know, on Instagram or so, I don't know, I haven't thought about that, but, but I really do try to get to as many of those requests as I can and and I still have to, unfortunately, not not do a lot of them
• 1:05:49
  Randall Kaplan: when you're successful, and there's a you.
• 1:05:52
  Randall Kaplan: Spectrum of success, we get more and more busy, and as we get older, we've got kids. I mean, I've got five kids. You've got kids. I'm into philanthropy.
• 1:06:00
  Randall Kaplan: You're into philanthropy. So you really don't have a lot of time.
• 1:06:04
  Randall Kaplan: But I think mentors are very important in our success. And for me to earn a mentorship, it's not sending 17 emails as people who write me long letters listen every podcast exactly, they're pulling names out of my mentors. Yeah, when I was younger, how does somebody become one of your mentees?
• 1:06:25
  Graham Weaver: I mean, probably the actually being a mentee of mine, I just probably don't have capacity. I mean, just because I, I mean, I'm trying to give as much of that time to the people who work at my firm and I have current students, so it'd be, it'd be really hard for someone that I've never met, no matter what they're sending me, to become, like, where I'm gonna actually have ongoing, you know, weekly or monthly or something relationship. I just, at this point, probably don't have capacity for that. Or we're
• 1:06:53
  Randall Kaplan: at the end of our show right now. And I always concluded by a game I played.
• 1:06:55
  Randall Kaplan: Fill in the blank to excellence.
• 1:06:58
  Randall Kaplan: Are you ready to play? Fill in the blank for excellence. Okay, so of all the coaching you've done, what are the biggest lessons you've learned?
• 1:07:06
  Graham Weaver: You can have just about anything you want if you're willing to do the work.
• 1:07:08
  Graham Weaver: My number one professional goal is build a number one performing private equity firm of all time.
• 1:07:16
  Graham Weaver: My number one personal goal is try to live my life in a way that I'm creating as much impact on everyone who's in my life as I can.
• 1:07:24
  Randall Kaplan: The biggest regret in my life that I've had is probably
• 1:07:28
  Graham Weaver: missing some early things with my kids. When I was in the early years of building Alpine, my biggest fear in life is, I guess, that I will die having not, you know, fulfilled what I feel like I'm on this earth to do, which I'm still kind of figuring out.
• 1:07:43
  Randall Kaplan: The craziest thing that's happened to me in my career is
• 1:07:47
  Graham Weaver: the entire journey of starting Alpine, from dorm room to where it is now, has just been an unbelievably crazy journey.
• 1:07:55
  Randall Kaplan: The funniest thing that's happened in my career is,
• 1:07:58
  Graham Weaver: oh gosh. I mean, I could go back to so many crazy management meetings of visiting companies in the early days when we had no idea what we're doing.
• 1:08:06
  Graham Weaver: And craziest one would be probably my partner and I met two guys who were so stoned they never turned the lights on in the meeting. I mean, that was probably the craziest thing.
• 1:08:20
  Graham Weaver: Yeah,
• 1:08:22
  Randall Kaplan: the best advice I've received in my career is
• 1:08:26
  Graham Weaver: ask yourself what you would do if you knew you wouldn't fail, and then go do that thing. 10 years from now, I'm going to be doing probably very much, a lot of the same things I'm doing now, hopefully just a little bit with I'll have a little more people helping me, particularly at Alpine, where my role will hopefully be a little bit less than it is now. 20 years from now, I would hope, I'd hope similar, but probably I'm a lot more mentoring people than doing myself.
• 1:08:56
  Randall Kaplan: If you could pick one trait that would contribute most to someone's success, it would be persistence. The most important thing that's contributed to your success has been persistence. I love that. Out of the hundreds of books that you've read over the years, self help, motivational. The one book that you would recommend, above all others, to somebody is, I'm
• 1:09:19
  Graham Weaver: gonna go, I'm gonna go old school and say, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People,
• 1:09:25
  Randall Kaplan: which has sold over 250,000 copies. I think he, he wrote that book in something like 1936 Yeah, it's the first book I recommend to people. It's
• 1:09:34
  Graham Weaver: got a lot of sexist stuff, so you got to look past that. It's, you know, it's it's old, but it's the content of that book. Is life changing if you actually internalize it.
• 1:09:44
  Randall Kaplan: The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time, but haven't, is I've been
• 1:09:49
  Graham Weaver: trying to do a standing back flip for about a year and a half, and I'm gonna land it. I'm gonna land it in the next 12 months.
• 1:09:55
  Randall Kaplan: Are you taking gymnastics? I'm
• 1:09:57
  Graham Weaver: working on it.
• 1:09:57
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, I keep getting injured. Is the problem. I've had like four injuries,
• 1:10:04
  Randall Kaplan: trying to do that back, but I'm gonna get it.
• 1:10:05
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, the best entrepreneur of all time is
• 1:10:08
  Graham Weaver: I'm gonna go Elon Musk, other than
• 1:10:11
  Randall Kaplan: you and Warren Buffett, the best investor in the world is,
• 1:10:16
  Graham Weaver: I mean, Jim Simons has the best track record of all time. Yeah. So I'll go with, I'll go with Jim Simons.
• 1:10:23
  Graham Weaver: If you could
• 1:10:23
  Randall Kaplan: go back and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice. What would it be
• 1:10:28
  Graham Weaver: my I would say it's gonna be okay. It things are gonna turn out fine, and I would have saved myself a whole lot of stress and worry. The
• 1:10:37
  Randall Kaplan: one question you wish I had asked you but didn't, is, what's the meaning of life?
• 1:10:39
  Randall Kaplan: What's the meaning
• 1:10:43
  Graham Weaver: of life? Shoot, I think you're going to say that.
• 1:10:45
  Graham Weaver: That's the quest I've been on for the last, like, two, three years. And it's, I think, the.
• 1:10:49
  Graham Weaver: But the ultimate question i i think the meaning of life is for each person to find their meaning of life and and for me, my meaning of life is probably to live like fully, you know, throw my entire soul into whatever I'm doing, you know, at all times, whatever that is, but I think each person has to kind of answer that question for themselves.
• 1:11:18
  Randall Kaplan: I'm grateful for you coming today, I've learned a ton. I've interviewed tons and tons of people, some of the most successful people in the world, and I've said this to my team, and I want to say it too. I've been so excited for the interview today, because doing all the research it really has, I've learned so much, and I'm doing things that I think will change my life, starting with the Lucite and all the things that you said, I'm big on coaching different people. I mean, you've coached me without actually giving me any direct coaching. So I appreciate you being here. Super excited, super grateful, and hopefully we'll get the chance to know each other better.
• 1:11:51
  Graham Weaver: I really appreciate the interview, and you asked amazing questions, did incredible amount of research, and it's been a real pleasure.
• 1:11:56
  Graham Weaver: Thanks so much. Randall. You.