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Graham Weaver: How to Achieve Your Goals, Manage Your Time, and Live Purposefully | E140 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: What are the three most important things that you find in a leader? Number one attribute, by
• 0:04
  Graham Weaver: far, is the will to win, and this is someone who is just going to put the company or the project or whatever on their shoulders and run through the burning building with it and come out the other side one way or another. Or number two would be probably persistence, because you're gonna in, at least in almost anything, you're gonna get kicked in the teeth a number of times, and then three would probably be just like self awareness. And there's a lot of things captured under that, probably humility and emotional intelligence and things like that are all kind of like sub bullets of of self awareness.
• 0:39
  Graham Weaver: You Randy,
• 0:45
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers and trailblazers of excellence, with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Graham Weaver. Graham is the founder and CEO of alpine investors, one of the highest performing and fastest growing private equity firms in the world. Graham also teaches one of the most popular classes at Stanford Business School and won the 2024 distinguished teacher award there. Graham, thanks for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thanks
• 1:28
  Graham Weaver: so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Randall, alright, let's
• 1:31
  Randall Kaplan: start at the beginning. You were born in Perrysburg, Ohio. Your mom was a fundraiser for University of Toledo, and your dad was a veterinarian, which he started a business right around the time you were born. Talk to us about the influence your parents made, in particular, your dad getting calls in the middle of the night as you were growing up. Yeah,
• 1:50
  Graham Weaver: yeah. Obviously you've done a lot of research, which I really appreciate, really. That means a lot. So yeah, I, as you said, my dad started a business almost around exactly the time I was born, and he had, he started basically from scratch. So he the only way he would get clients is he would sign up to get emergency calls in the middle of night. So he had this beeper that he wore. We didn't have cell phones back then, and at any time, his beeper could go off any night.
• 2:19
  Graham Weaver: Doesn't matter what he did that that night, his beeper go off, and he would get up and he'd, you know, drive to the office and, you know, fix a dog's leg or something. And then he'd, then he'd go, you know, come back. And then he'd go in the office sometimes and see clients. But he did that as long as I can remember, to and I talked to him later, and he said that he gave him for his 50th birthday present to himself was to stop taking emergency calls.
• 2:43
  Graham Weaver: So he started his practice at like the age of 32 or something.
• 2:46
  Graham Weaver: So for 18 years, in the middle of night, he got up every time that the phone rang. And that was how he he built this practice, kind of brick by brick and and I watched that, and I think I absorbed more of that than I really realized that just the intensity that he threw into his his job, I mean, he, to this day, probably worked harder than anyone I've ever met, and his drive was pretty insatiable. So definitely, definitely I absorb, I have definitely absorbed that through osmosis, I guess. And then what about your mom? So my mom, so my dad wasn't around much because he was building his company, you know. So he didn't go to my sporting events or parent teacher conferences. He actually a lot of times wasn't home for dinner. So my mom really kind of filled in. She stayed at home and was just like the perfect mom. I mean, she she her lifelong dream was to be a mom. She was a great mom. She was the angel in my ears, you know, believing in me, taking my side on things, telling me that I could do anything, and, you know, giving me unconditional love. She was the person at every single sporting event and conference. And, you know, I clipped out all the things in the newspaper, and still has all those things. And so just just, you know, wonderful. I couldn't have, I couldn't have written a script for a better mom. I don't think so.
• 4:07
  Randall Kaplan: We're to talk about all the momentous events in your life, really, from 13 on, which is really where the crux of all of your self development and self help got going. But what were you like before that? Say, from five to 12 years old,
• 4:22
  Graham Weaver: I'd say, like, I was a pretty normal kid. I was I was I was I was a kid, you know, my, my my, my parents had created an environment that allowed me to, you know, enjoy being a kid for for that time.
• 4:33
  Graham Weaver: And so I didn't really give much thought. I didn't, I didn't, like, set goals or anything like that. I kind of, I kind of just what you know was, was myself, you know, I had good friends and my siblings, and I got along well, and so I'd say I was pretty normal, like I maybe even average for that, for that time, and I wasn't upset about that or anything. It just, I never really, I. Know if I even had ambition to be different, but, but, yeah, pretty, pretty normal childhood, growing up in the in the Midwest, we talked
• 5:07
  Randall Kaplan: about midwest. I had a lot of menial jobs in the Midwest. I picked weeds. I'd knock door to door to pay people's driveway. Never got a single job, by the way, but I like the the cold calling. I learned a lot about that that summer. Two seminal things happen one summer or few, I want to take them one by one. So let's talk about mowing lawns.
• 5:25
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, all day long. And then those Sony Walkmans, which people don't even remember what they are, yeah, what were you listening to? And how did that change your life?
• 5:34
  Graham Weaver: So I started mowing lawns to make money, and as a kid, I think minimum wage, three bucks an hour or something like that. But you can make 10 bucks an hour mowing lawns.
• 5:43
  Graham Weaver: That's a pretty big difference.
• 5:43
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, exactly. So I'd go exactly. There was no withholding or anything so or taxes, but I would, I would, so I would go get local jobs and in the neighborhood and take my little mower over and mow and, and it was, you know, it's, it's a pretty monotonous job. I mean, you walk in line and turn around and walk back. It's hot, sticky.
• 6:09
  Graham Weaver: And, yeah, when the Sony Walkman came out, it was, it was, like, amazing. I mean, I couldn't believe that you could carry around something like that. And let's,
• 6:17
  Randall Kaplan: let's tell people what that is, yeah, because I think probably half or three quarters of people don't even know what is
• 6:23
  Graham Weaver: so well, the first Sony Walkman that came out didn't have a cassette player, just had a radio. So you listen to the radio on your belt. Yeah, this little thing you clip on your belt. It had wired headphones that, on one of them never worked. You know, only one of them worked, and and then you would, and then it gobbled batteries like crazy, right?
• 6:41
  Graham Weaver: Because it's actually mechanical. And then they came out with one of the cassettes, so you could play, you know, you could play tapes, which, again, people probably even know what those are, but, and so first I started just listening to music and stuff. And I didn't, it was, it passed the time a little bit better. But then one time I went to the library and I was returning my music, maybe the Beatles or something. And there was this program that said, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, which is a famous program.
• 7:09
  Graham Weaver: And then there was another program probably that even influenced me more, by Brian Tracy, that was like the universal laws of success and achievement, or something like that. I probably listen to that, I mean, and when I say that, it would be like six cassettes, double sided, and I probably listened to the whole program 10 times, and it was just like, it felt like someone was giving me, like the answer key to life, like it was things I'd never even thought of before, about, you know, deciding what you wanted in life, about setting goals, about writing them down, about working backwards, and all these stories of people that had, you know, brought things into their lives they never imagined. I just thought, like, Oh my gosh. It like it was like, it was like an awakening of some kind. When I started listening to this stuff,
• 7:55
  Randall Kaplan: I think Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich is sort of a rite of passage. I think students should still read that book, yeah. But when I read that book, I said, Okay, I want to be rich. Was that the motivation? I mean, what did you take out of that book?
• 8:08
  Graham Weaver: It wasn't that so much. I don't know that that was really the motivation. I mean, that was probably what the title is, probably what got me to check it out in the library. But it was more about how the internal, your internal programming, was really so important, and how you had so much control over that. So it was like your attitude about your the way you talk to yourself, how you know what you were setting your mind upon, how you were spending your time. And it never really just occurred to me just how much, how much you had this internal locus of control. That's, that's the geeky word for it. And I just, I just, I just found that unbelievably like freeing, and I thought it was just incredibly powerful.
• 8:52
  Randall Kaplan: So you're 13 or 14 years old, it's very unusual for you to find this in the library yourself as a parent, do you advise your friends or parents? And what's your advice to parents? Should you be telling your kids to read Napoleon Hill, Tony, Robbins, Dale, Carnegie?
• 9:06
  Graham Weaver: Well, yeah, we're jumping a little bit ahead. But if you're okay, yeah, me to go there. So like, I, I'm on, I'm on social media now, and it's, it's completely different. So my kids, you know, they this, the content that they consume is in 30 and 45 and 62nd bites, right?
• 9:21
  Graham Weaver: That's what's out there. And the quote self help content is, it's awful. It's not only not good, it's actually destructive. You know, it's the kind of thing of like, if you haven't, you know, it's going to be, I'm not going to name any names, but imagine a guy standing in front of a Ferrari, you know, saying, if you don't have a Ferrari, you know, or you have a Ferrari,
• 9:48
  Randall Kaplan: no, I know, I would never have one. It's too showing, although I Yeah, think about having no we know someone Okay, who fits this profile, probably the same guy
• 9:58
  Graham Weaver: I have. I have nothing against. Ferraris are people that own Fridays, but, but you imagine a guy standing in front of a red Ferrari saying, you know, if you, if you are not making $20,000 a month or whatever, then you're, you know, you're, you're worthless.
• 10:12
  Graham Weaver: And you know you shouldn't call yourself a mayor, a man and things like that. Literally, that's what they're saying. And and then, of course, there's a link to buy their, you know, insert program, real estate, crypto trading, option trading, you know, whatever that they're selling. And you know, if you're 12 years old or 13 years old, you don't know the difference.
• 10:34
  Graham Weaver: You don't know that that's not actually the path, and and so, anyway, so, so, yes, 100% I would encourage you know, the young generation to read Napoleon Hill, but understanding that their attention span and their and the content that they're consuming is so different from that now it's it's really kind of scary
• 10:57
  Randall Kaplan: as part of the books you Read this summer, Matt, Sommer, you talked about a book about genies. Let's talk about that for a second, and then we'll go in later on to where that fit in.
• 11:07
  Graham Weaver: Yeah. So I think I don't I'm, I'm like, 90% sure it was Brian Tracy who had this exercise, and I can still remember where I was when I heard it. And he said, Okay, imagine that you're, you're, you know, you're going about your day, and you see this magic lamp, and you walk over and you pick it up, and you rub this lamp, and this genie comes out.
• 11:29
  Graham Weaver: And the genie says to you, you know, I'm not a full, powerful Genie. I can't give you three wishes, but what I can give you is whatever you throw yourself into with your career and your life and the journey you go after go that you undertake.
• 11:42
  Graham Weaver: It's gonna go great. It's gonna be amazing. You know, what would you wish for? And I remember doing that as a kid thinking, oh, gosh, you know, I think I'd start a business. And, you know, this is what I'd want to do. And then, and then, and then he, the author, goes on to say, that's what you should do with your life. That's your answer. Like, if you actually want to know what to do, that's it. And I remember thinking, it's not that easy, like that. That's not right, you know. And, and then, but, but he goes on to say, because that's your answer, absent fear of failure, that's what your heart really wants to do. And believe it or not, like my heart didn't pick I'm going to be in the NBA or something like that. Because, you know, there's a lot of factors that are exogenous that go into that.
• 12:22
  Graham Weaver: So I'd say, you know, people, whenever I say that exercise, people are like, Oh, well, I'm gonna go win the World Series.
• 12:26
  Graham Weaver: And I'd say, Okay, well, yeah, but take out some really crazy exogenous, you know, factors like that, you know. And you know. So there's a little bit of realism, but not, not much. And, and that, that exercise that I did when I was 13 years old. I have pretty much almost throughout my entire life, done that exercise, answered that question, and then gone and done that thing. And that's, that's a big thing of what I try to bring to my students at Stanford or Al, my, uh, people at Alpine, or, you know, the people on social media.
• 13:53
  Randall Kaplan: We all have certain movies when we're young kids that are influential in our life. I'm gonna bring up Beverly Hills, cop, yeah, for me, Detroit, Detroit. Eddie Murphy, yeah, plays this cop. Phenomenal movie. Great, great movie. But what I learned from that movie among many? I mean, it's funny, but he would walk in to places say things in an authoritative manner, yeah? And people would respond, yeah, you know, park my car all up front. You know, this shit all happened. The last time I was there was he's driving an old beater car. Let's talk about when you were seventh grade. You got into wrestling and the second big event that summer, yeah, was you watching vision quest? Can you talk about that and how that changed your life.
• 14:34
  Graham Weaver: Yeah? So for those of you who don't, for those of people who haven't seen vision questions, I imagine is almost everybody who's listening to this,
• 14:41
  Randall Kaplan: including me, I have to be honest. Okay, no problem, no problem.
• 14:44
  Graham Weaver: I mean, yeah, I've realized this is, this is kind of a very niche movie, so, so it's, it's basically rocky for wrestling, okay? And the movies about this high school wrestler named loud and Swain, who's kind of a little dorky, and at one point in his senior year, he's in a class learning about, I think, philosophy or something, and he kind of realizes he's going to die like it kind of really dawns on him.
• 15:09
  Graham Weaver: He's in high school, but he realizes this isn't going to go on forever, and so he decides he's going to go on this vision quest, and he's going to do something that he just, he's just going to go for it. And so he drops down. He's a very good wrestler. And he drops down two weight classes to from anyway, I think, to 168 and he, he wants to wrestle the best wrestler in the state, this guy, Brian, shoot, of course, you know, you know, the ending before it even starts, you know, last second he wins, you know, gets the girl, the whole thing and but, but as a wrestler, I was a media you know, I was, I was above average wrestler. But this was, like my anthem, this movie. I mean, I can say every line of the whole movie, and I've watched it so many times. It was so inspirational to me. Music and everything and so. So that that that influenced me a lot in wrestling, and I ended up going on my own little vision question, which you can talk more about, but that that was that kind of combination of the self help tapes about setting and goals and being really clear what you want on your goals, plus, then that was my goal now, was to drop down, make the varsity, and, you know, be part of this really, really good wrestling team. I put those things together, and that ended up being probably the, probably the biggest turning point of my life.
• 16:27
  Randall Kaplan: At some point you weren't a good wrestler, and then you ended up being the number one wrestler, maybe even in the state, talk to us about dropping 25 pounds, not eating the pizza, yeah, not winning the match against the number two person, yeah. And what's, what's the lesson about quitting? Yeah, should we quit or shouldn't we quit when we have unsuccessful Yeah?
• 16:49
  Graham Weaver: So what happened is, my sophomore year, I got bumped off the varsity. I wasn't good enough to make it, just to be candid, I was 150 pounds. I was about six feet tall, and I and the really, the only real opening that I had to make the varsity, given like who was seniors and all those kinds of things, was at 125 so I had to drop 25 pounds and six feet, at six feet tall, rail thin, like I'm six one now, and I weigh 185 so this is 60 pounds less than I weigh now and and it was the hardest to this day, the hardest thing I've ever done. I mean, I was eating 900 calories a day. I was working out three times a day. I was running in the morning, doing wrestling practice, and then getting on exercise bike at night. I was hungry all the time. On the day of weigh ins, I was also thirsty because you couldn't drink. And I just, I just like I found, I found that this limit that I thought was there wasn't there.
• 17:47
  Graham Weaver: And so I put myself through hell, and I realized I was still standing and I was able to do it, and I actually hit the goal.
• 17:54
  Graham Weaver: I hit the weight. And I wasn't.
• 17:54
  Graham Weaver: I was the number one wrestler in the league, not in the state, and and I and then I'm fast forwarding a bit in the story.
• 18:03
  Graham Weaver: But my my my junior year, the biggest match in my life. I was number one. I was wrestling the number two wrestler in the league, and that we would have this big matte light that would come down. The whole gym was packed. It was a sport our high school was the best at, and I lost, and it was just crushing, like it I also wasn't really completely rational, because I've been cutting so much weight, so it felt like a much bigger thing. And that's the last match ever I was a junior, so that, and that was the last match I ever wrestled like I ended up quitting, and that really haunted me. I I, it just haunted me. And the next, like, year and a half, I just sat with that. And, you know, I It's interesting, because if you looked at my high school resume, and, you know, the grades I got.
• 18:53
  Graham Weaver: I was president of the class. I did really well in tennis and and I started plays, and I got into Princeton out of a small school in the middle of the Midwest. Like, you'd be like, Oh, that was great. But that's what I would say, was, like the external scorecard. My internal scorecard was, I quit wrestling, like when I graduate, I was like, oh, you know that that's actually how I felt about myself. I was like, that's how, like, devastating that was for me. Like, I was like, Oh, I'm a and I just remember thinking, I'm that will never happen again in my life, and it hasn't. Why
• 19:27
  Randall Kaplan: didn't? Why at the time? Why didn't you just, if you're feeling so bad, why didn't you want to go back? My daughter was a cheerleader. They had a new cheer coach. Cheer coach was abusing the kids, making them weird things that they were uncomfortably physically wearing. This was just crazy stuff. And she'd come home crying every night, as would half the team, and around a third of the team quit because of this guy. And she'd come home and, you know, 11 o'clock at night she'd be crying and she's miserable, and this was her thing. Had a great coach the year before, who left to go to another school. And here she is.
• 19:55
  Randall Kaplan: I said, you know, Bianca, it's this is not healthy, that she went to a very tough school, academically, tons of pressure.
• 20:04
  Randall Kaplan: So that was busy by itself. And then she had this, I said. She said, you know, Dad, I I'm thinking about quitting and and what do you think I should do?
• 20:13
  Randall Kaplan: And I said, Well, this isn't a straight line black and white.
• 20:17
  Randall Kaplan: You make a tough call like this, and there's pluses and minuses, but it's not that easy, right?
• 20:20
  Randall Kaplan: So ultimately, she was so worn down, so tired, she quit, yeah.
• 20:24
  Randall Kaplan: And then she was more miserable than she thought, and she asked to get back on the team. She had to work her way back on the team. So what's your advice to people? As you know, you quit, you didn't go back. She quit, she went back. She was glad she did. She still suffered at the hands of this coach, who was just the biggest jerk you could ever think of. What's your advice here? Well,
• 20:46
  Graham Weaver: you know, in terms of, I think, going back to what like. I don't know that I have enough context to give advice to your daughter and,
• 20:57
  Randall Kaplan: you know, just be with their parents who have young kids, yeah, or young professionals who are coming out into the work world.
• 21:03
  Graham Weaver: Well, I think that there's because I've had the same thing with my kids as well, where they are doing something and they've wanted to quit, and like I had, I had one with my son, and he was playing lacrosse, and he had his coach was really tough, and it was the hardest thing he ever did. And I just did kind of a coaching thing with him, and we sort of visualized him going through high school and quitting, and then he okay, what would that open up? And what would be, what that feel like? And you know, how would you feel at the end of that? And you know your friends are playing still, and, you know, you're doing this other thing. And we kind of, like, really went there, almost, like, in a real deep kind of visualization, and then, then we did it the other way. Okay, you're going to stick it out.
• 21:41
  Graham Weaver: It's going to be tough, you know, you're going to have to get up in the morning and train you're going to have to do this.
• 21:46
  Graham Weaver: Let's go through that. And, like, in each case, we got to the end of high school and we and we look back, and he was like, I gotta, I gotta stay, you know, like, I mean, I have to do this, I know. And he's realizing, like, he was scared, you know, it was hard, it was tough, it was but, but he, he realized, like, he, that's what he, that's why he was quitting.
• 22:05
  Graham Weaver: Now, it could be the other, it could have been the opposite of that, where he had other things that were more exciting to him, and that visualization might have helped him otherwise, but I think, I think for me, I was kind of scared. I was like, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I was, I was exhausted, you know, I had eaten for, at this point, three years, and it was consuming me.
• 22:28
  Graham Weaver: And I I was, I was just exhausted, and I was also, I was also scared. You know, I had never thrown myself into something like that, not even close, and I felt like I was failing at it. And I think I was if I, if I had had that visualization, I would have realized like that that I wasn't quitting because I didn't want to wrestle. I was quitting because I was scared of of losing and I was scared of throwing my entire soul into something and failing.
• 23:00
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the concept of quitting in the real world and professional world. Yeah, so many students that I coach, and I know people you coach, and young professionals, they're unhappy in their job. Their boss is an asshole. Yeah, I hate going to work. Yeah. I tell young professionals, when you get out of college, you have to stay in your first job for two years no matter what. I don't care how unpleasant it is, because if you can't work in that environment, you can't be successful, right?
• 23:22
  Randall Kaplan: Work is not perfect. And a lot of people say Work is work. And I think very few people who just bounce out of bed every day, you're really lucky. If you do, you're in the very small percentage say, like, this is the best thing that I've done.
• 23:33
  Randall Kaplan: What's your advice? Yeah, to people, either that people in your company or people in your portfolio companies who are unhappy, is, should they quit if they're that, what's the threshold and is the grass always greener?
• 23:49
  Graham Weaver: This is the this is the advice that I give. And I give this advice a lot, because I a lot of people who come to business school are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. So they're, they're like the people I probably talk about the most of this exact thing. And what I, what I kind of talk about, is what so let, I'll give you a real example. Let's say I'm having a coaching conversation with a student. It's pretty much the same conversation every time they're saying, Okay, I could do X and I could do Y, and let's say, let's just take a student who's an alumni, so they're actually exactly the situation you're saying. They're in a job that they don't like. Let's use that as an example. So, you know, I talked to them for a little while, and they have, you know, a couple different paths.
• 24:26
  Graham Weaver: They could do three or four. At some point, I ask them enough questions I can tell, like, what their heart wants to do. You know what their what their Genie goal is? You know what their real like soul, so to speak, not to be too woo, woo. But that what like, what's really tugging at them? If you ask enough questions and get them in a place where they can get out of their head, you can see what like, here's what they really want. And then my advice is kind of the same advice that Brian Tracy gave me when I was 13.
• 24:56
  Graham Weaver: Like, that's where you're going to go. Okay? Like, let's be clear, you want to spend your life in pursuit of that, and then now all we're talking about is tactics. We're talking about the path to get there. So yes, you're in this job right now.
• 25:10
  Graham Weaver: Should you quit tomorrow? I can't answer that, like, on a blanket basis for everyone in the world, because everyone's situation is different. Maybe you need to accumulate some savings, maybe some skills, whatever. But let's make no mistake, you're doing that in service of the path that you're going to go down and spend your life on. And let's make sure that we're back. We're working backwards from that path starting today where you are. So should you quit tomorrow? Again?
• 25:34
  Graham Weaver: Every everyone's situation is a little different, but irrespective of where you're starting, I want to map a path to get you on the path, because that's the path where you're going to feel like you're in flow. You're going to stay with it for longer, and you know, you only get one life. So why not?
• 25:50
  Randall Kaplan: We talked about high school. I said. You were the captain of your team in high school, and then you were captain of the rowing team in college. We'll get to that in a few minutes. But you said you were a normal kid, but obviously you had leadership skills. So when did you learn that you had them? And can you teach someone to be a natural born? Can you teach someone to be a leader, for not a national born leader?
• 26:09
  Graham Weaver: Yeah. I mean, I think you can if, if you in terms of when I would say, I first realized that it was kind of surprising to me, you know, it was surprising to me that younger people, either tennis or wrestling or rowing, that they looked up to me. I didn't, I didn't almost feel that about myself, but that, I think I just it was more like the way that I was conducting myself. They they responded to that. It was not me giving rah rah speeches. It was like, Hey, I'm going to be at the gym tomorrow at 5am you know, who wants to come? It was more, it was more like leading by leading by example. Exactly.
• 26:48
  Graham Weaver: It wasn't, I wasn't giving big speeches or anything. But when so so that was probably how I first started to become a leader. Was I was just, I was I was doing things that other people wanted to be a part of, and they wanted, they wanted to follow that path in terms of, can you teach leadership? I'd like to think so. I try to do, you know, at Stanford and in our CEO and training program, I mean, I don't think it's one of these things that you're born or you're made a leader. I think, I think there's 100% you can teach leadership. And I also, if you look across our portfolio of leaders, I mean, we have leaders who are quiet and they they are introverts, and they're they never give these rauru speeches, and people will follow them to the end of the earth. We have leaders who are military veterans, ballerinas, investment bankers, you know, everything in between. So I definitely don't think there's one profile. I don't think it's a gene. I think it's a I think, I think probably people, more than anything, are going to follow someone who's authentically in the path of the thing they should be doing as well.
• 28:01
  Randall Kaplan: So what are the three most important things that you find in a leader? We interview
• 28:05
  Graham Weaver: people for attributes versus experience. We We learned this a while ago, that who someone is at their core, is way more correlated to success than what they've done on their resume. And that's a really freeing thing, because that opened your pool up dramatically. And also, you know, has had some really powerful positive things for diversity and gender and things like that, where you're not requiring someone have done something for 20 years, where that battle was won or lost 20 years. Because Tony we were, we're very focused on attributes. It's been way more highly correlated. Number one attribute, by far, is the will to win. So and we you can, you can interview for that, and this is someone who is just going to put the company or the project or whatever on their shoulders and run through the burning building with it, and come out the other side one way or another, and and we can't teach that. So you said, Could you teach leadership? We can teach.
• 28:59
  Graham Weaver: We cannot. We cannot teach the will to win. So we have to hire people that already have that, and they and, like I said, you could have that as a ballerina or a military veteran or any, anything. That's number one by far. Number two would be probably grit persistence, because you're gonna in, at least in almost anything you're gonna get kicked in the teeth a number of times. And then three would probably be just like self awareness, and there's a lot of things captured under that, probably humility and emotional intelligence and things like that are all kind of like sub bullets of of self awareness. So those would be the three you
• 29:37
  Randall Kaplan: talk about. Will the wind. When I interview a CEO looking for funding, I look for a lot of things as well, and I look for the killer instinct and the survival instinct. So one of the things I used to think about before I became successful was someone dropped me off the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I'm terribly afraid of sharks, by the way, so I just can't, even probably not make it, just on the fear of, you know, being eaten by shark, that I would find land. And those are somehow, some way, I was going to survive and find land. So I don't call it the will to win, but now I am going to call it the will to call it survival instinct. And the word it
• 30:11
  Graham Weaver: sounds like a very similar criteria, yeah,
• 30:13
  Randall Kaplan: where does sales skills fit into this? Because not sales good, sorry, you need I mean, people talk about sales where you're selling a product, but it's way more than everything we do is related to sales. You got to sell people. I mean, I had to sell you to be on my show, yeah, right. I had to sell Matt Hickerson to come work with me, right? I have to sell my team that I can lead the team and be successful. Anything that we do is about sales. So where I didn't hear you say sales skills 100%
• 30:46
  Graham Weaver: I think one of the one of the most important things as a leader is ability to hire and build a team. Ability to sell, ability to prioritize, I think, are probably and move quickly. Those are probably the fourth thing. So sales is on the list of being a great leader.
• 30:58
  Graham Weaver: You only gave me three, okay, and I should have said five. You gave me three. And sales is probably something that has, you have a little bit more of an opportunity that can be learned versus the things I mentioned, I feel like are a lot harder to teach. So if you gave me five sales, would have actually been in the top five, but, but, but, but it is a little bit more, a tiny bit more teachable than will to win or grit, which, which are, are just I can't do with some anything with someone doesn't have those things. So,
• 31:36
  Randall Kaplan: so you're, let's go back to high school, yeah? So you're a great student. You apply to Princeton, you get in, yeah? Bachelor's of Science, in engineering, that's right. Let's talk about when you got there.
• 31:45
  Randall Kaplan: Let's go back to the genie, yeah. So tell us your experience with the genie and these crazy goals, yeah, for yourself when you got on campus. Well,
• 31:54
  Graham Weaver: so when I got to college, it was like the shackles just came off. And, I mean, my at the time, my parents were divorced, so I was spending kind of, you know, certain time here, certain time there. I was, you know, an athlete. I was a student. You know, your time is very structured. All of a sudden I got to college. It was literally like, almost like the the force Gump scene, like the the braces come off when he's running. It was just like, wow, I've got no constraints. I have all this free time. You know, what do I want to do? And and I set three goals. I actually wrote them down. My Genie goals.
• 32:33
  Graham Weaver: I was going to be valedictorian, I was going to be the best rower in the country, and I was going to start a business that was going to pay for school. Those are my three goals. And those are pretty much the three activities I did at college.
• 32:45
  Graham Weaver: There wasn't a lot in the four years. I mean, I made toward the end, when things loosened up, and I kind of had the academics down, and my rowing was coming along. Then I started to introduce social in the first few years. I just, I just went hard at at those three things.
• 32:59
  Graham Weaver: So when
• 33:03
  Randall Kaplan: people write goals down, I write goals down, after doing some research on you, I'm going to change my goals and how I write them down.
• 33:09
  Randall Kaplan: So most people will be, I want to be the number one rower. You would write down I am the number one rower. So talk about the difference between those two and why one is more effective than the other. Well, it was
• 33:22
  Graham Weaver: something I learned in those motivational tapes that I listened to about writing your goal as though you've already achieved it in the present tense and like, I'll give you just an example, I am the number one rower in the United States. I literally had this green notebook that and I several green notebooks that I wrote that down every single day I was in college. And something happens where I think when you write it down, I don't know if you have to say it exactly the way I said it, but when you write down something like that every day, I think a part of you assumes the identity of someone who's already achieved the goal.
• 33:54
  Graham Weaver: So I'm the number one row in the United States. My alarm goes off at 445, and I have a choice about turning it off and going back to sleep, or getting dressed, going down to the boathouse and rowing on the rowing machine, the ERG, for an hour before class, when it's dark, there's no one there. No one's gonna know if I did it or not. But hey, part of me is the number already behaving like the number one rower, even when I'm 135 pound novice from Toledo that didn't even know the boats go backwards. You know, like you never rode before. I never rode before. I never been in a boat before. So
• 34:30
  Randall Kaplan: you never rode before, and your goal is to be the number one rower in the world.
• 34:34
  Graham Weaver: I took on, I took the genie goal very seriously at literally, yeah, so I wrote I literally. Took it literally,
• 34:41
  Randall Kaplan: but you didn't achieve those goals. I do which?
• 34:44
  Randall Kaplan: What do you learn from the lessons of not achieving the goal? Yeah, I
• 34:47
  Graham Weaver: didn't achieve any of them. So the business I started didn't, I mean, I made money in the business, but it didn't pay for college. I was not valedictorian. I did very well in school, like it was Phi Beta Kappa, but I was not valid.
• 35:00
  Graham Weaver: I was not valedictorian. My daughter just made Phi Beta Oh, that's great Wisconsin. That's awesome, yeah. And I was also Phi Beta Kappa, yeah, like I said, like, you Yeah, I know that, yeah. That's great. So I did really well academically, and I did really well rowing. I was captain of a team that ended up winning the national championship, but so I but I was definitely not the best. I was probably the one of the worst rowers in the boat, and I I was the strongest rower on the rowing machine, but I was technically probably the worst rower in the team, so I didn't hit any of the goals, but I going back to what I was saying about your internal and your external scorecard, like my internal scorecard, I I was good. I had done everything I wanted to do. I left it on the field, and I, I felt really, really good about how I how I spent those years. So it really wasn't as much about the goals as about like, how. Thing, having three things I was excited about enough to throw my entire soul into them. And then I realized just how gratifying that was. And I've and I've tried to basically do that, you know, since then too.
• 36:07
  Randall Kaplan: I think a lot of successful people I know start businesses in college, and we learned financial lessons doing that, I sold T shirts. I went to her door cost me five bucks. I sold it for 12. Long Sleeve cost six. Sold it for 18. So I learned about margin and all kinds of things. And also that was a cash business. Tell us about negative cost of goods sold, and your New York Times experience and the lessons you learned from
• 36:32
  Graham Weaver: that. So we had a business where we delivered newspapers to college kids. And yeah, the New York Times actually paid us to deliver to get subscribers, like usually, usually one would have to buy the paper and then sell it at a margin. They they paid us to because they thought printed people should read the New York Times. And so it was incredible.
• 36:54
  Graham Weaver: And then the and then the daily Princetonian was the paper, and they, the thing I learned there is, we said, Okay, we're, we're only going to charge you. I don't remember what it was, nine cents per paper per day. That's it. That's, I mean, that's not much. And they're like, Yeah, that sounds great. But you multiply that by 2000 papers, times seven days a week, times the whole year it was. It was unbelievably profitable. So the hard part about that business was I had to get 15 college kids up seven days a week. One of them had to get up at 4am to drive the van to drop off all the papers of the sites. The other ones had to all get up at 530 or 6am the amount of stuff that went wrong in that was almost infinite. There was, you know, you could imagine what that was like. So that was tough, but, but it was, it was a great experience. It was really, it was really great experience.
• 37:44
  Graham Weaver: So
• 37:45
  Randall Kaplan: let's go back to the rowing team for a second.
• 37:47
  Randall Kaplan: Your freshman, you never got in the boat, so you had this goal, and tell us about your coaches, John Parker and Mike Teddy Yeah, and what you actually did, you went from nowhere to essentially having the best ERG time, yeah, of anybody in the country. It was crazy. That's a crazy story.
• 38:05
  Randall Kaplan: It is.
• 38:07
  Graham Weaver: Thank you. Yeah.
• 38:07
  Graham Weaver: Well, my freshman year, John Parker and Mike Tade were both so it was kind of a cool timing for me, because the Olympics were in 1992 and I started Princeton in 1990 so all the Olympians were rowing out of the Princeton boathouse. That's where the training the main training camp was, including John and Mike, who rode in the 1992 eight, you know, in the Olympics. So my coach and Mike, who was the heavyweight coach.
• 38:33
  Graham Weaver: So it was just like, unbelievable. I mean, when I say I would go down to the boathouse by myself, which I did at five, six in the morning. I mean that usually I would be the only one there, but Mike, Mike tadey, probably half the time was was there training right next to he had no idea who I was for the first, you know, maybe month, and then after a while, after he, I think his curiosity just got the better him, because there's this 135 pound kid with a mullet who's coming down to the boathouse. I had a mullet, yeah, because I was from Ohio, you know. I mean, you probably had one in Michigan.
• 39:11
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, even Seagal was a big actor at the time, and I was trying to grow a little ponytail, yeah, didn't really work, but I thought he was cool.
• 39:17
  Graham Weaver: Yeah, exactly.
• 39:17
  Graham Weaver: That was the, that was the cool look back then. So I'm this 135 kid, pound kid with a mullet, and I think, and I'd run into Mike, and he just ignored me.
• 39:27
  Graham Weaver: And then, and then one day we're taking a shower, it seemed that he just like, like, what are you doing? Who are you? And like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm gonna be the number one rower in the United States.
• 39:36
  Graham Weaver: And he's just like, well, your forms terrible. And, like, and he started helping me a little bit with my form and also just telling me what workouts to do.
• 39:47
  Graham Weaver: And really, really simple thing, which was, and I want to geek out too much on this, but duration over intensity. So, like, you could train, I could train seven days a week, if I keep my heart rate at basically 85% if I start doing what everyone else does, come down and do these hard pieces and, you know, 10, you know, one minute on, one minute off, and go as hard as they can, you're going to build up lactic acid the next day. You're not gonna be able to train as hard. So Mike was like, hey, you know, row at 85% just slightly harder than conversational pace, and just do as much volume as you can. And that was like life changing. I mean, that I could train an infinite number of, literally infinite number of hours and not, you know, have any any soreness or anything. So he gave me that that and also just kind of like being in the boathouse with with Mike and John. It was just, it was, it was awesome. I mean, it was, it was just Mike tatey went on, by the way, to be the US Olympic coach won a gold medal, is just an absolute legend, and that I.
• 40:48
  Graham Weaver: I mean, to be able to have had that experience with him at that age, was just it was really cool.
• 40:58
  Randall Kaplan: So many athletes I know and professionals will do things no one else has done, and there's so many on the list, one of the things they do is get there before anybody else. When it's quiet, you're the only one in the gym. Cliff Kingsbury is a professional football coach.
• 41:10
  Randall Kaplan: He's a good friend who's on my show, he gets to the gym as a head coach of the Cardinals before any of the players do, which is actually shocking, even being leading by example. In my professional world, some of my coaching is first in last out.
• 41:25
  Randall Kaplan: Philo is what I call it, and I teach that. I preach it. How important is it in the private equity business to outwork everybody. And one of the things that I teach my mentees is you really don't understand what it's like to outwork everybody else you have. I have that means getting I get to the Law Library at three o'clock every day. I'd leave at 11 o'clock when there was no one there. There were like, three of us in the whole law law library. So how important is it in your success and in your business, do people in the private equity business who work the most to get there before no one else does do the best?
• 42:06
  Graham Weaver: So it's a great question, like, I think that, I think that's a big part of it.
• 42:12
  Graham Weaver: You know, it's necessary, maybe necessary, but not sufficient in the early years. So I think for using, using myself an example like I, I did, I was that I took that same rowing algorithm to to work and and, and worked out, worked everyone. I would like to think, as I started to get up the curve and learn more and and become, you know, skilled, I actually started to try to figure out a model where I didn't have to do that, you know, because I wanted to have a family, right? I know you and I shared, like trying to be home with them. And I actually wanted people to be able to come to Alpine and not have to pull all nighters and not have to make a decision between whether they could have a career or have a family. Because when I came out of school and did an analyst grind on Wall Street, and I looked at the associates and the senior associates and the vice presidents and the principals and the partners, none of them had lives, you know, and I didn't, I didn't want to be them. And so I think it's, it's interesting because, because the people who are young at Alpine, it doesn't matter what we tell them about the hours they're going to just, they're going to, they're going to work 16 hours a day, because that's who they are. And they're, they're learning who they are, and they're, they don't have a family at that time, and they're, you know, that's the kind of people we hire. And no matter what we tell them, that's just what they do. But I think I want to provide a path where as people do have families that we've built a model that has intellectual property, that allows us to be really successful with, without the, you know, without the like, 16 hour days.
• 43:56
  Randall Kaplan: We're hard on ourselves. We compare ourselves to different people. But you said that's not the right way to think about comparing ourselves.
• 44:02
  Randall Kaplan: You said we should compare ourselves to what we did yesterday. Yeah, I think that's counterintuitive to most people.
• 44:07
  Randall Kaplan: So can you explain that? Yeah, it's kind of,
• 44:10
  Graham Weaver: it's kind of what I was saying before about like, your internal scorecard and your external one, like, I think if you're winning on your internal scorecard, like that, that's ultimately what's going to be most important. And you're the only one who's going to know, you know. You're the only one who know if you're if you're getting better, if you're doing the work, if you're going to the gym in the morning. I mean, you're really the only one, and you're actually the only customer too. You're really the only one you're trying to impress. If you think about the external scorecard, why do you want an external scorecard, ultimately, so you feel better, but like you could just start with what's your real scorecard?
• 44:48
  Graham Weaver: So, yeah, I sorry. I lost track.
• 44:48
  Graham Weaver: The Did I answer your question?
• 44:55
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, it was more of the advice you give is counter to what? Oh, yeah, comparing yourself to where, where you were yesterday.
• 45:02
  Randall Kaplan: Because I don't write down my goals where I was yesterday. I start to think about, okay, if I want to be the best, here's the bar that different people set.
• 45:11
  Randall Kaplan: So,
• 45:11
  Graham Weaver: yeah, I mean, so, for example, we're in, we're in a crazy, competitive industry.
• 45:14
  Graham Weaver: You know, we in private equity.
• 45:17
  Graham Weaver: We there's 5500 funds there.
• 45:17
  Graham Weaver: It's, it's unbelievably competitive. Really smart people go into the field. You've had some on your show and and like we do, we do compete for dollars with, with all those, all those folks. So we have to have some kind of idea of what, you know, what the benchmarks are. And we, and we derive a lot of our mission off of, you know, being selfish standard deviations better than those benchmarks.
• 45:47
  Graham Weaver: And that is inspiring to the team. So it would be, it wouldn't be fair to say, like, Hey, we're playing. A competitive game, and we're not even going to know what the score is, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that, but I'm in terms of, when you go home and are you sleeping well at night?
• 45:59
  Graham Weaver: You know a lot of that's going to come down more to like, Are you winning on your own scorecard?
• 46:04
  Randall Kaplan: So you do well at Princeton? Yeah, you've got some choices to make. You have Morgan Stanley private equity or McKinsey, and I'm sure you probably had more. And I want to talk about the importance or of being wined and dined, how we can be kind of hoodwinked into that. We can talk about sending a black car to take it from Princeton in New York City. And I also want to talk about the importance and craziness of FOMO. We'll get into actually, what what happened at Morgan Stanley in a minute. But so many students that I mentor, it's like, oh, I want to go into investment banking. I want to work at Goldman Sachs. And we have lots of conversation a group of 32 so you know what?
• 46:41
  Randall Kaplan: Half of you who think you want to do it are not qualified to do it, frankly. And two, you couldn't handle what happens there. It's wrong for you, but Oh, my God, I can do it.
• 46:51
  Randall Kaplan: Everyone else is doing if they're making so much money. So talk about the advice and FOMO, and not only how it applies to students, but investors as well.
• 47:03
  Randall Kaplan: And we could talk about the crypto, the.com all that stuff.
• 47:07
  Graham Weaver: It comes back to what I was saying before, which is like, how clear Are you on what you really want long term, and then is that part of that path to get you on that you know, on that journey? So let's say that you had an idea that you wanted to be in private equity long term, and taking that banking job was your best path to ultimately getting to that goal. Then I'd say it's directly in path, and you're going to have to probably suck up a couple years. That isn't going to be very fun. I hope you could find another alternative path, but maybe that is the best option. So I think it's like making the short term decisions is, to me, in service of the that longer term career, career trajectory that that your, your soul is, wants to go on.
• 47:51
  Randall Kaplan: And then what about in the investing world?
• 47:54
  Randall Kaplan: We've seen this with all the trends, nfts, the latest one and, and, I mean, someone bought a painting, right? Wasn't even painting for sky people who was a graphic designer in North Carolina for $69 million and everyone was, I mean, Mark Cuban, everyone was in on this.
• 48:08
  Randall Kaplan: You got the crypto craze. You have the.com craze. I mean, you mean, you, you look at historical cash flows, right? I mean, you can look at these businesses, see the growth rates and margins and all kinds of things, but you're also around this world, yeah, absolutely everyone wants to get rich.
• 48:25
  Randall Kaplan: Everyone jumping on the bandwagon.
• 48:30
  Graham Weaver: I mean, the thing, the thing that I say, that's really the simple, simple way I think about it, is there the term greater fool theory means that the only reason that something has value is that you think that someone else is going to pay you more for that in the future. That's the only value that it has, not that it's sending you dividends, not that it's a house you're going to live in or a car you're going to you know, but it's the only value it has is that the greater fool is going to think it's worth more in the future. That's a painting. That's crypto, you know, that's nfts They all fall into. It's even gold, you know, they all fall into that bucket.
• 49:04
  Graham Weaver: A lot of people don't agree with that. Lot of people talk about all kinds of different reasons why that doesn't apply. But if you really break it down, the only value they have is you think someone is going to pay you more. That's just a very, very dangerous game to play, because you're, as you would imagine, you're relying on some external factors that you have no control over, and you're and you're and you're you're you're relying on someone being a greater fool. And I think if you had the algorithm of avoid 100% of those games, you would be way better off. It you wouldn't get lucky to buy, you know, Bitcoin at whatever price you bought it, you know. So you're gonna have to give up on that. But I think on the whole the whole world would be way better off if they avoided all those games.
• 49:53
  Randall Kaplan: There's a lot of people watching this show who are not sophisticated. They go to Stanford. They just don't have a background in finance.
• 49:58
  Randall Kaplan: What? How fast should people run for the exits when they hear that someone has a hot stock tip, you say both or they should run.
• 50:10
  Graham Weaver: I mean, the very, very best investors are not giving away stock tips typically. And I can tell you that if you had an algorithm like Jim Simons, probably the best quantitative trader the world has ever seen, was the most secretive person in the world about his I mean, he wouldn't ever give interviews.
• 50:28
  Graham Weaver: You wouldn't let his employees give interviews. He wouldn't tell investors what he was doing, because he actually had the magic formula. I can promise you, if someone's selling it to you on Tiktok for, you know, 1999 a month, they don't have the formula, or they wouldn't be sharing it. So hot tips, you know, option trading, program, real estate flipping, if someone knew how to do that, really.
• 50:52
  Graham Weaver: They wouldn't be selling it. So So run. So, right, yeah, okay,
• 50:57
  Randall Kaplan: so you have a little bit of FOMO. You're graduating, or your friends are going to private equity. Maybe I should go into private equity.
• 51:02
  Randall Kaplan: You're at Morgan Stanley Capital Markets. Tell us about the pig farm. Tell us about what what it was like when you were actually working there. Tell us about your mom being single, divorced, and this goes to just demands on the work, right? And so many of us take take jobs right out of college, especially the bankers, right? Investment bankers, despite all the bullshit that we're softer right now. I mean, you read in the newspaper about young junior bankers dying because, you know, they work so much, yeah, but in the investment banks, despite what they say, I mean, I have a lot of former students and friends work there, it's still pretty much the same. So you're at Morgan Stanley Capital Markets.
• 51:47
  Randall Kaplan: You're sent to this pig firm.
• 51:47
  Randall Kaplan: You're excited a billion dollar investment there, and then your mom, at some point, comes to visit you. She plans all these things, skating at Rock Center, and then tell us about the phone call that you got about your friend Monty one day and how that changed your life. Yeah.
• 52:05
  Graham Weaver: Well, taking those one at a time. So the first assignment that I had in the in the pig farm was, or first assignment at Morgan Stanley was to go out to, actually, ironically, Princeton, Missouri, and work on this pig farm. And I was like, I didn't.
• 52:20
  Graham Weaver: So Morgan Stanley had put a billion dollars into a pig farm, like a green field, like, there's, there's, there's grass, and there's nothing there. And they built from scratch, this hog farm. And people are like, they're either brilliant or really stupid. What's the
• 52:37
  Randall Kaplan: purpose? What's the revenue model? I
• 52:39
  Graham Weaver: mean, the idea of bacon plant. Yeah, the idea is that as as the emerging economies evolve, they would want to consume more meat, and pork was a cheaper version, because a cow can have one calf, but a pig can have 20 sow or a sow could have 20 piglets, or whatever. So the math was like, just better using pigs than cows for that simple reason. So Morgan Stanley was gonna, you know, Greenfield this, and take it straight from from a farm all the way through the processing plant and put it on your shelf.
• 53:14
  Graham Weaver: You know, that was the kind of thesis. The problem was that they built their model on historical pig prices of $47 100 weight, which was, it turns out, the last 100 years average, and it was the next 100 years average, but, but, you know, it's the kind of common thing.
• 53:34
  Graham Weaver: How does a as a five foot man drown in a six or, how does a six foot man drown in a an average of river that's an average is five feet deep, you know, because it gets deeper at certain points of the river and and so hog prices promptly dropped to $18 and the business made zero EBITDA and had, I don't know, half a billion of debt. So the banks took the business. Two years later, hog prices went up to 80 and the business went from making zero of EBITDA to 250 million of EBITDA with zero changes except hog prices. So Morgan Stanley just really didn't think through the implications of leveraging a highly commoditized product, but for me as a young analyst, I mean, it was a blast. I mean, it was crazy. I was in the I lived in the CFOs basement, and we built models, and we were, I mean, we were trying to get this thing refinanced. I was watching, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion, because I was building the financial model just saying, there's 100% chance we're gonna run out of money, and I was trying to communicate that to the C I communicated it the CFO.
• 54:37
  Graham Weaver: He communicated it to the person on the deal. The guy who was on the deal didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to, you know, deal with it, because it was his deal, and it was going to make him look bad. So we were like, all right, I guess we're just going to watch this thing crash, which we did. And it was a wild experience. It was, it was, it was totally wild. But then the story about my mom was, you know, I was in, I was in, you know, in Manhattan, my mom had lived there for a little bit in her life. She's single, you know, she, she worked an hourly job, didn't, you know, didn't have a ton of money, and saved up her money and was gonna, she drove from Ohio out to New York, she made tickets to see two shows and we're gonna go skating in Rockefeller Center. She had this whole agenda all planned out for the two of us, and my mom and I were really close, and she comes and like the associate, who's 18 months older than me, is wants to stay in the office all day, and I gotta stay. And it was Friday, and so I didn't see her. That happened Saturday. We were working on something stupid, by the way. I was there for two years, worked 100 hour weeks left, you know, had zero weekends off and closed zero deals. So nothing I worked on mattered. But it was just like this associate wanted to look a tiny bit better for the Vice President. And so he stayed in the office all weekend, which meant I had to stay in the office all weekend. I think I saw my mom for a total of, like, three or four hours. That whole time she was really bummed, obviously. But the worst part about it was, I remember thinking, Mom, I don't understand why you don't understand why I can't come see you like, I can't, like, it's my body. Well, just tell your boss your mom's in town. I remember thinking, yeah, that's not really how it works. But in a very short period of time, I had almost become that culture, you know, where I was, like, I didn't even think it was that crazy that I didn't get to see her. I mean, I was, I was disappointed, don't get me wrong, but I didn't think it was that crazy until a number of years later, where I look back and I was just embarrassed and but I think it's a real big lesson, which is like you do become the people you spend time with. You become the environment you're in. Morgan Stanley wasn't going to become more like Graham. Graham was going to become Morgan Stanley, which I did in a short period of time.
• 56:50
  Graham Weaver: So I only realized that until once I got out of that environment. And
• 56:54
  Randall Kaplan: then tell us about your nickname, The Dream, yeah, and what the final end point was at at Morgan Stanley, when your friend passed away, yeah?
• 57:05
  Graham Weaver: So that. So what happened is I had this really close friend of mine who was on the rowing team named Monty razor it was a great guy. And he was, I was a sophomore, he was a senior. He gave me this nickname, dream weaver on my last name, and he would just call me dream and and he was like, he kind of looked out for me. And just, just one of these amazing people, lights up the room when he's in the room, makes everyone feel like the most important person, like, when he's talking to you, and so, yeah, like, right around the time I'm, I don't remember exactly what year it was, but I'm sitting down. I was at, I was in Washington, DC, living for the summer, and my phone rings, and my buddy says, Hey, Grammy, you know, you might want to sit down. He says, you know, hey, Monty's gone, you know. And I was like, What do you mean, Monty's gone? He said, Well, he, he died in a plane crash, you know, two nights ago. And, I mean, I think I was 20 he was like, 2322 or 23 at the time.
• 58:05
  Graham Weaver: And I just remember thinking, like, that's not, like, that's just not even possible, you know. Like, how's that? You know, he had his whole life in front of him, and he was going on a fishing trip or something, and took a small plane and crashed. And that really didn't sink in. I don't, I don't know that I really processed it until a number of years later. I now gone through business school, and I, I'm jumping a little ahead, but I'd, I'd taken a corporate job that I was supposed to take, and I was probably in a relationship that wasn't that great, and I was kind of doing all the things I advised my students not to do back then. And then I went to New York with a number of friends, and we started talking about, we, all of us were kind of process talking about Monty and telling stories and stuff.
• 58:55
  Graham Weaver: And I, I got on the plane ride home and just started bawling and just thinking to myself, like, Monty would be so disappointed in me, like he he had, he called me Dreamweaver, and he had, like, this incredible thing, way he thought of me. And I remember thinking like, you know, he died. He didn't have a chance to live his life, but like, if he saw what I was doing with mine, he'd be so disappointed. And I literally landed I ended a relationship. A few days later, I quit my job and, you know, started my own company. So I that that was really impactful for me, right?
• 59:28
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so let's go back for a second to something that we talked about before. There's a spectrum of harshness. I think in the working world, investment banking is at the far end, right? You have so much busy work there, right? Like you said, I mean, I know a lot of investment bankers, a lot of my former interns and mentees say the same thing. I'm creating these crazy financial models for all these deals that never happen, and then you've got plans, right? Every working person I know has plans. I can't tell you how many phone calls I've had, even from my own kids and said, Hey, I just got tickets to this game, or my parents are coming in town.
• 1:00:04
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. Do you tell your boss and say, Hey, I've got plans. What's the right what's the right way to handle these issues without your boss saying, Gosh, you know, you're weak. I mean, or the firm's not important,
• 1:00:17
  Graham Weaver: you know. I mean, I'll just say what's actually true at my firm, which is, I mean, the number of times that someone has said, my mom's in town and we've said, Oh, too bad you have to work. I mean, zero, you know, we like that. People fill in. People you know, have people's back. I mean, whether you're going to a wedding, going to a funeral, you know, you know, we have people have real life, things where they're, you know, one of one of our close principals, you know, his mom recently passed away. He took you. Know, literally months where he was spending a lot of time down there. And like, of course, that's way more important. And so I have tried to design a firm where, you know, you're a real a real person, and like, for a short period of time people can cover for you. And like, people are thrilled to do that when they realize you're doing something that's important for you. And the kinds of people we hire, they're not taking advantage of the system. They're not, you know, they're not trying to pull one over on you or anything. I mean, they're they want to do really great at work. And you give them that benefit the doubt that they're going to, they're going to cover for that other friend when that, you know, when that friend has something. So it's hard for me to give that advice, you know, because I, I really, I just really tried to almost go the other direction as as we were building, you know, building our company. So I, I do recognize the harshness of it. I do recognize that. But I, I probably wouldn't advise someone to go be part of a culture that that they where they don't admire the values of that place, because they will become that place over time. But
• 1:02:02
  Randall Kaplan: what if they are there? So, so you're an investment banker? A lot of people listening to the show are investment bankers. I guess this show has gone viral on the investment bank. Yeah, from what I get a lot of feedback. Do you go and tell your boss my mom's in town, or someone just gave me tickets to the World Series tonight? Is that career suicide?
• 1:02:22
  Graham Weaver: You know, it's just hard to say in a vacuum what the context of that would be. I would like to think that it. I would like to think that if your mom's in town, you would be able to have a conversation with your boss to say, hey, look, two Fridays from now, my mom's coming into town. You know, it's really important for me, let's, let's kind of map out the work I've got. I will work, you know, one and a half times as much as until then. But from this time to this time, I'd really like to try to have that time off, and I'm willing to put in the time before the time after. By the way, you know, my my colleague, Haley's gonna cover for me during that time if you need me right at that time.
• 1:03:03
  Graham Weaver: But like, you know, I think you, I would hope you could have that conversation. Be a good communicator. Yeah, be proactive. Be a good communicator. Put yourself in your boss's situation. What do they want? Do they want you to not to see your mom? No, they want the work to get done. They want to know that there's someone they could call if it's urgent during that time. So that's where your friend covers for you. So you can be proactive about that. I would say, if you're getting pushback on that consistently, you're at the wrong place and that now all we're talking about is how long you're going to stay there until you are in the path of the job that you want. When I
• 1:03:38
  Randall Kaplan: was a lawyer, miserable lawyer, yeah, working for miserable bosses, horrible culture. I My mom came to town from Detroit, and she was here for two nights or staying in Beverly Hills. My step sister to organize this dinner, so it was a family dinner. I remember a Chinese restaurant, and I was in Costa Mesa, and I was driving every day back and forth to Costa Mesa, three hours a day minimum, on the 405 freeway, which is just hell. And I we were doing a public offering, and basically, what happens? And today, I don't know how it works, but back then, you'd go to the printer, and at the printer, there's a firm called bound, and you're there looking at documents the whole night. I mean, you're pulling all nighters, you're sleeping there, you're not going home. And I remember thinking, Uh oh. And I left bound, and I didn't tell people where I went, and I drove all the way back to Beverly Hills. I was bitching the whole way to myself, telling me how miserable I am, and I knew I wasn't going to be. I hated law school as a means to an end. And I remember driving to Beverly Hills took almost two hours. And then I remember eating dinner, how unpleasant it was for me, because I had to drive all the way back to Costa Mesa again and then not sleep all days. And you know what? I didn't I didn't say anything to my boss, because it would have been very difficult.
• 1:04:54
  Randall Kaplan: It was unforgiving environment.
• 1:04:58
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, I was already going to leave, but I remember thinking, Gosh, it's the most miserable I've ever been in my career, except when I lost my job. Yeah, no, that's,
• 1:05:05
  Graham Weaver: I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal. There are, yeah. I mean, to have to have a situation like that where you you have to make a choice between two things that are valuable to you, like that.
• 1:05:13
  Graham Weaver: It's, it's tough, and there's not, there's not a simple answer, just what I was saying before, but it's not always that easy, like in your situation that I don't, I don't know what the rates. I think you probably did it, you know, yeah,
• 1:05:26
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, I mean, you do what you had to. I had to pay rent, and so it was, it was not, it was not something I could just leave and say, Okay, I need to find something better.
• 1:05:33
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, we skipped ahead a few minutes ago to starting your own firm, but I really want to go back to your second job. You worked at American securities.
• 1:05:40
  Randall Kaplan: There's only three people at the time. You did do deals there.
• 1:05:42
  Randall Kaplan: You learned private equity there. At some point, you were a VP, and then you had this closing dinner in Napa. Tell us about this woman who. Was talking about the Hamptons 13 or 14 times during during your dinner and fish. And then I found it very interesting about you hiding out in the bathroom and going out on this run, and then tell us more of the details about the drive to Steamboat Springs in your 1986 Volvo and what you were doing on that trip, because it's you just said, Oh, I started my own firm, but it was really more than that, yeah,
• 1:06:17
  Graham Weaver: so I'll just kind of go chronologically. So yeah, I worked at American securities at the time. The firm had no fund. They were a fund. The sponsor. They wouldn't have said that, but they didn't have a fund. So tell people what that so that's basically two guys at the time, Mike fish and David horn, who are very, very good investors. And in 1995 I think it was they, they were they'd been in private equity for like, 10 years, which almost no one had back then, so they knew what they were doing, but they had spun off and done their own thing, and they didn't really have a they didn't have a raise committed capital. So they'd go find a deal, and then they would, they'd sign the deal up, and then they'd go raise debt, and then they'd go raise equity with the deal. But they'd have to, like, do a bunch of tap dancing to make that happen. So the first six deals, I think, that we did were all in that model. And I learned a ton. And because, I mean, there's only, there were only there were only three of us. And so it was great. David horing and I would sit in the office, and we'd go through a conversation with a seller, and we'd hang up the phone, and then he would say, Okay, do you know why I said that? And do you know why I said that? And then we would, and then, you know, we'd be negotiating a legal document, and he would, you know, he we'd get done, and he'd walk me through what networking, capital adjustments, you know, meant, and how that was working. And it was just, it was great, great mentorship. It was like just drinking from a fire hose. I feel like I got 20 years of experience in like two years. I left there to go to business school, and and then while I was in business school, I remember this, sitting in very first quarter, I'm sitting in this strategy class at Stanford Business School, and this this perfect professor. He's a TA he's probably 25 years old, and he's teaching this class out of a textbook. He's never worked a day in his life. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, what did I do? How did what did I do? I didn't even I can't believe I left this job to be here. So I said, I'm gonna start buying companies. And just like American securities, I had no money, no fun, whatever is real.
• 1:08:20
  Graham Weaver: I'd seen this playbook that they had where they could, you know, put together a deal first and then go raise money. So I started doing that, and I bought three companies while I was 25 years old. When I bought my first label printing company in business school I was taking, I would take a flight to I would take a red eye flight out on Tuesday night because we didn't have school on Wednesday. My companies were in the Midwest and the East Coast. And then I would do my bank meetings and whatever all day. And then I take a flight home and be a class the next day. I did that for two years, and it was absolutely the most fun thing I ever did, and it was exhausting and it was terrifying, and everything else, and they didn't go well, you know, the you think the end of the story is like, Oh, it was amazing, and made every single mistake you could imagine,
• 1:09:07
  Randall Kaplan: but so, but I want to go back to, well, okay, let's, let's talk about Starting a business out of your dorm room, yeah. And let's talk about using credit cards, yeah, to finance a business. How in the world can you buy a company and finance a business on your credit card? What charging?
• 1:09:26
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah.
• 1:09:26
  Graham Weaver: What happened was, back then, in the this is like 1997 so first off, the vast majority, let's say there was a, I'll use a real example. I bought a business for $5 million the seller took back 2.3 million in a seller notes. Now I only had to come up with 2.7 then I got bank financing for another portion, then I had asset backed financing for another portion.
• 1:09:50
  Graham Weaver: Then I got sub debt. So all this is debt. You know, the whole structures debt, but the sub debt lender needed there to be a little bit of equity, like a couple $100,000 which also, of course, didn't have. So at the time Capital One was launching, and there was, like, this kind of credit card, like, intense competition between the credit card companies. And they would, they would, you would, I would get this thing in my in my mail that would say, you know, write yourself a check for $50,000 and pay no interest for a year. And then you would get one that would say, roll over your balance and pay no interest for a year. So I had this spreadsheet of, like the credit cards, and when they were gonna actually gonna say I was gonna have to start paying interest.
• 1:10:31
  Graham Weaver: It was the dumbest thing ever. I did not never. This is like recommending you what not to do, but this was my only source of funds that I had at the time, because I was in debt from business school, and, you know, hadn't saved up a month. You paid for your own business I paid for my own business school.
• 1:10:47
  Graham Weaver: Yeah. So so that, that was how I financed some of these early deals. And it. Was, I was tight, you know, doing walking on a tight rope,
• 1:10:57
  Randall Kaplan: but, but we say you, you finance them. Are you getting cash advances from these credit cards?
• 1:11:02
  Graham Weaver: Yes, yeah, that's exactly right. You write yourself, yeah, write yourself a check for $50,000 pay no interest for, you know, 12 months. That's what the offer was. And I read through the fine print, and that was $50,000.50
• 1:11:13
  Unknown: well as
• 1:11:15
  Graham Weaver: probably 30, and then 20 and, you know, but yeah, you would get, you would get those in the, in the in the mail.
• 1:11:21
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so then tell us about you dumped the girlfriend. He drove to Steamboat Springs, yeah, and for somebody you knew you knew before. So I what I want you to talk about because, because it's, it's, we all have these seminal moments, right? Like, I am done. I'm done. This is it.
• 1:11:40
  Randall Kaplan: I'm I'm rethinking everything.
• 1:11:40
  Randall Kaplan: So, yeah, tell us about the drive, and then tell us about the boom box, and, and, and, you know, the cassette tapes. Yeah,
• 1:11:50
  Graham Weaver: yeah. I love all the research you did. So just one part of the story to get to that is, when I graduated, I was, if you'd asked me anytime during the two years at school, what was I going to do? I said, I'm going to keep doing buying these companies. I was loving it, having a great time. And then I said, All right, you know, that's what I was going to do. But then all my classmates started me getting jobs, and I started getting FOMO. So I took a job, and I took a job at a great private equity firm. It was a good firm, a good job, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. I want to do my own thing. And so that was when I had that plane flight that I mentioned you before. So I fly home, I land on that plane flight. I'm in this job. I don't I don't want to be in and that's when I quit my job, you know, ended things with my then girlfriend, and then packed up this 1986 Volvo and drove across the country to Steamboat, where my high school girlfriend was living at the time. I was thinking about her this whole time, pretty much, yeah, I pretty much was, I mean, more or less. And so, yeah, I had, going back to the tapes. I had, like a boom box, which people don't know, it's like a portable cassette player. I had a whole, you know, slew of D batteries, and I had all of Tony Robbins. I think it was personal power, unlimited power, one of those two, maybe both. And I listened to, like, 18 hours of Tony Robbins on the drive out there. And I was just like, putting together my life plan.
• 1:13:13
  Graham Weaver: And by the time I arrived in Steamboat, I was like, I'm going to start my own private equity fund. That's what I'm going to do. So that, yeah, that that was, that was how that started.
• 1:13:25
  Randall Kaplan: So you're 28 years old, and you say, I want to go start this first fund.
• 1:13:27
  Randall Kaplan: It's super hard to do. Most sophisticated investors want to see a track record which you didn't have. And the advice I give to people, and I know you do, too, is you start with friends and family, right? You had 10 classmates invest in this fund. Yeah. Took a long time to raise the fund, and then you got, I wouldn't call it lucky, but you had people who believed in you, yeah, talk to us about those two people, yeah, and how did you do that?
• 1:13:55
  Graham Weaver: So when I was at the firm, right before I started, was called Oak Hill, and we did a deal with the firm called the Stevens family. I was the lead on that deal, and it's, I won't get into all the diesels, but Stevens family had this kind of asset that they were trying to dump into this company and get like, shares of the bigger thing for contributing it. So I went down to, I think it was like, Jacksonville, Florida or something, and I spent three days analyzing this thing they were trying to sell to us. And our, our, our team thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I spent three days, and I was like, This is the worst thing in the world. Stevens knew that, and so I kind of like said, Hey, very politely, like, we're we're not interested. And I showed them all the analysis.
• 1:14:37
  Graham Weaver: They were really they were angry, but they were also super impressed, because I'd seen through, like, their their ruse, so to speak. So anyway, we go through this, this thing, and we end up, we end up partnering with the Stevens family. They were fantastic to work with. You know, we maybe gave them less money for for the combination.
• 1:14:58
  Graham Weaver: It's a complicated story. But anyway, we ended up exiting this thing. Everyone made money so, so when I started raising my my funds, I was talking to the lead guy, this guy, Doug Martin, who's an incredible guy, and he was, he was kind of trying to hire me to work at Stevens. And I said, Well, you know, I'm, I'm interested in starting my own thing. And so he agreed to potentially invest, and he wanted me to talk to his business school classmate, this guy, Tom Steyer, who was a hedge fund, a guy who ran far along, ran for president a number of years ago, also an incredible guy. I probably did seven or eight meetings. Well, my the actual story about Tom is I called, I would call Tom's assistant and try to get on his calendar, and she would blow me off. And I called him, I think, 11 times. And finally his assistant said, Tom, we'll see you on April 30, at this time for 15 minutes, you know, stop calling and, uh. And I think it was the 11th time I called him, and she didn't say, are you in town that day? Could you do you have time that day? She just gave me that. And so anyway, I had the meeting, and Tom and I spent more and more time together, and then Tom and Doug together were basically the bulk of our first fund. As my business school classmates, my parents, you know, everybody I knew I was calling on all my favors, and then lost money on that fund. So I, I like, Oh, I'd spent this entire, you know, energy, doing all this work to try to finally get this thing off the ground, and then, like, we made every mistake, we lost money. And it was, it was absolutely devastating.
• 1:16:34
  Randall Kaplan: There's a couple of things that you mentioned the story, and then we're gonna come back to what happened after you lost your money. But one thing noteworthy about your story is that you called someone 11 times before they actually took the meeting. I've done that so many times, and I get this question all the time. Well, I called one time. They didn't call me back.
• 1:16:52
  Randall Kaplan: They're not interested. And this is a huge one for people. By the way, I've had people call me 15 times, Sarah zap, if you're listening to me right now. I mean, she hounded me on LinkedIn for a gazillion I don't know, 14 times, 15 times, and want to come in for a meeting. And finally, I just got stopped.
• 1:17:14
  Randall Kaplan: Same thing, 20 minutes, and the 20 minutes turned into one hour, because someone's doing a good job. I mean, you know, you're going to give them the time. So looking at the camera on this one, I mean, everybody, I 99.99 my own kids, and we've talked about our kids, you know, not listening to you. What's the advice should people how many times should people call when they don't call you back? And what's the point where you're being an annoyance versus not an annoyance? And I
• 1:17:45
  Graham Weaver: mean, I think, like my advice in general, in looking the camera, my advice in general is selling is the first person you need to convince is yourself. And you have to have conviction in what you're selling. Once you have conviction in what you're selling, then I actually want everyone to buy it, you know.
• 1:18:01
  Graham Weaver: And so I want, I thought I was the right partner for Tom Steyer, like I believe that in my soul. And so I would have called him 35 times, you know? I mean, it was just, it wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, I wasn't taking it personally. I was like, Well, Tom hasn't heard my story yet. I mean, he's not saying no yet. He doesn't even know what I'm pitching. So it was, it was just, I felt like I I had the conviction, and I wanted to just convey that conviction to him. So my answer is, yeah, as many times as it takes, when
• 1:18:35
  Randall Kaplan: I was writing letters to CEOs asking for informational meetings, I was a miserable lawyer, and that's how I got my big break. Eli Broad, who, that's a longer story as well. But I called Stephen bolenbach, who at that point was the senior executive vice president crazy title Disney.
• 1:18:52
  Randall Kaplan: Well, then he became CEO of Marriott, yeah, and I call them his assistant's name was areza, and it was I called every week for something like 20 weeks in a row at the same time Randy, yes, I'll put a message, thank you, goodbye. And finally, she called me one day, and they were on the East Coast, I think, at some point, and I was in my office, it was 630 in the morning, and said, you're in the office. Yes, okay, don't go anywhere. Mr.
• 1:19:20
  Randall Kaplan: Bullenbach is going to call you back right now. And it was a, by the way, of like a four minute phone call, but at least it taught me the lesson of keep going. Yeah, you're listening to part one of my amazing interview with Graham Weaver, the founder and CEO of alpine investors, one of the fastest growing and most successful private equity firms in the world. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible episode with Graham.
• 1:19:42
  Randall Kaplan: You.