Graham Weaver: How to Achieve Your Goals, Manage Your Time, and Live Purposefully | E140
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What are the three most important things that you find in a leader? Number one attribute by 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. Number two would be probably persistence because you're going to, at least in almost anything, you're going to 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 self-awareness. 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 so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here, Randall. All right, let's 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, yeah. Obviously, you've done a lot of research, which I really appreciate. Really, that means a lot. So, yeah.

Yeah, 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, 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, doesn't matter what he did that night, his beeper would go off.

He would get up and he'd drive to the office and fix a dog's leg or something and then he'd come back and then he'd go in the office sometimes and see clients. But he did that as long as I can remember and I talked to him later and he said that he gave him his 50th birthday present to himself was to stop taking emergency calls. So, he started his practice at like the age of 32 or something. So, for 18 years in the middle of night, he got

And he got up every time that the phone rang and that was how he built this practice kind of brick by brick. And I watched that and I think I absorbed more of that than I really realized, just the intensity that he threw into 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, I 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 it was just like,

The perfect mom. I mean, 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 everything.

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, you know, wonderful. I couldn't have written a script for a better mom, I don't think.

So we're going 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 5 to 12 years old?

I'd say like I was a pretty normal kid. I was a kid, you know, my parents had created an environment that allowed me to, you know, enjoy being a kid for that time and so I didn't really give much thought. I didn't like set goals or anything like that. I kind of just, you know, was myself, you know, I had good friends and my siblings and I got along well and so I

I'd say I was pretty normal, like maybe even average for that time. And I wasn't upset about that or anything. It just, I never really, I don't know if I even had ambition to be different. But yeah, pretty normal childhood growing up in the Midwest. We talked about Midwest. I had a lot of menial jobs in the Midwest. I'd pick weeds. I'd knock door to door to pay people's driveway. Never got a single job, by the way, but I liked the cold calling. I learned a lot about that that summer.

Two seminal things happen one summer. I want to take them one by one. So let's talk about mowing lawns all day long. And then those Sony Walkmans, which people don't even remember what they are. What were you listening to? And how did that change your life? 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. That's a pretty big difference. Cash. 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 a pretty monotonous job. I mean, you walk in line and turn around and walk back, it's hot, sticky. And yeah, when the Stoney Walkman came out, it was like -

I mean, I couldn't believe that you could carry around something like that. Let's tell people what that is, actually, because I think probably half or three quarters of people don't even know what a Sony Walkman is. Well, the first Sony Walkman that came out didn't have a cassette player. It just had a radio, so you'd listen to the radio. This thing you'd clip on your belt. Yeah, this little thing you'd clip on your belt. It had wired headphones. One of them never worked. Only one of them worked. And then you would...

And then it gobbled batteries like crazy, right? Because it was 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, you know, maybe the Beatles or something. And there was this program that said Think and Grow Rich, you know, by Napoleon Hill, which is a famous program. 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 listened 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 deciding what you wanted in life, about setting goals, about writing them down, about working backwards and all these stories of people that had brought things into their lives they never imagined. I just thought like, "Oh my God.

Oh my gosh, it was like an awakening of some kind when I started listening to this stuff.

I think Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich is sort of a passage, and I think students should still read that book. 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? 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 of the library. But it was more about how the...

Your internal programming was really so important and how you had so much control over that. So it was like your attitude about the way you talk to yourself, 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 the geeky word for it. And I just found that unbelievably like freeing and I thought it was just incredibly powerful.

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 who are parents and what's your advice to parents? Should you be telling your kids to read Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie? Well, yeah, we're jumping a little bit ahead, but if you're okay, you want me to go there. So like I'm on social media now and

It's completely different. So my kids, you know, the content that they consume is in 30 and 45 and 60 second bites, right? That's what's out there. And the quote self-help content is 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 you imagine kids

guy standing in front of a Ferrari, you know saying if you don't have a Ferrari, you know, are you ever Ferrari? No, I know I would never have one as to show it Yeah, think about having but no, that's not we we know someone who fits this profile probably the same guy I have I have nothing against Ferraris are people that own fries but but you imagine the guy standing in front of a red Ferrari saying

you know, if you are not making $20,000 a month or whatever, then you're worthless and you shouldn't call yourself a man and things like that. Literally, that's what they're saying. And then, of course, there's a link

to buy their insert program, real estate, crypto trading, option trading, whatever that they're selling. And if you're 12 years old or 13 years old, you don't know the difference. You don't know that that's not actually

the path. And so, anyway, so yes, 100% I would encourage, you know, the young generation to read Napoleon Hill. But understanding that their attention span and the content that they're consuming is so different from that now, it's really kind of scary. As part of the books you read this summer, that summer 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 later. Yeah. So I think I don't, 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, um,

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 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 that you undertake, it's going to go great. It's going to be amazing. You

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's not right, you know? And then - 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. So, I'd say, you know, people whenever I say that exercise, people are like, oh well, I'm going to go win the World Series. And I'd say, okay, well, yeah, but take

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 much. And that exercise that I did when I was 13 years old, I have pretty much...

almost throughout my entire life done that exercise answer 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 out my People at Alpine or you know the people on social media We all have certain movies when we're young kids that are influential in our lives. I'm gonna bring up Beverly Hills Cop Yeah for me Detroit Detroit

Eddie Murphy plays this cop. Phenomenal movie. 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, and people would respond. You know, park my car up front. You know, this shit all happened the last time I was there. 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 was you watching Vision Quest. Can you talk about that and how that changed your life? Yeah. So, for those of you who don't, for those people who haven't seen Vision Quest, as I imagine is almost everybody who's listening to this. Including me, I have to be honest. Okay. No problem. No problem. I mean, yeah, I've realized this is kind of a very niche movie. So, yeah.

So, it's basically Rocky for wrestling, okay? And the movie's about this high school wrestler named Loudon Swain. He'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. He's in high school, but he realizes this isn't going to go on forever.

And so, he decides he's gonna go on this vision quest and he's gonna do something that he just - he's just gonna 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 wants to wrestle the best wrestler in the state, this guy Brian Shute. Of course, you know the ending before it even starts, you know, last second he wins, you know, gets the girl, the whole thing.

But as a wrestler, I was a media - you know, 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, the music and everything. And so, 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 was that kind of combination of

the self-help tapes about setting in 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 um a really really good wrestling team um I put those things together and that ended up being probably the probably the biggest turning point in my life 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, we quit or shouldn't we quit when we have unsuccessful? Yeah, 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

And I, and 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. At six feet tall. At six feet tall. Rail thin. Like I'm 6'1 now and I weigh 185. So this is 60 pounds less than I weigh now. And, 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 an 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 that this limit that I thought was there wasn't there. 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. I hit the weight. And I wasn't, I was the number one wrestler in the league, not in the state. And then I'm fast forwarding a bit in the story, but my junior year, the biggest match of my life

I was number one, I was wrestling the number two wrestler in the league.

and that we would have this big mat 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, it's interesting because if you looked at my high school resume and you know, the grades I got, I was president of the class, I did really well in tennis and I starred in 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'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, that will never happen again in my life. And it hasn't. Why didn't... At the time, why didn't you just... If you're feeling so bad, why didn't you go back? My daughter was a cheerleader. They had a new cheer coach.

cheer coach was abusing the kids um making them wear 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 uh 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 here before who left to go to another school and here she is i said you know bianca it's

This is not healthy. She went to a very tough school, academically tons of pressure. 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? And I said, well,

This isn't a straight line, black and white. You make a tough call like this and there's pluses and minuses, but it's not that easy. Right. So ultimately, she was so worn down, so tired, she quit. Yeah. And then she was more miserable than she thought. And she has 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 quit, you 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 you know in in terms of i i think going back to um what like i i i don't know that i have enough context to give advice to your daughter and i'm not talking about my dog okay yeah you know just people their parents who have young kids yeah or young professionals who are coming out into the work world well i i think that there's um 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 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'd, okay, what would that open up? And what would 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,

in a real deep kind of visualization and then we did it the other way. Okay, you're going to stick it out, 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, let's go through that. And like in each case, we got to the end of high school and we look back and

he was like, 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 he realized like that's what he - that's why he was quitting. 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 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 exhausted, you know. I hadn't eaten for at this point three years and it was consuming me and I was just exhausted. And 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 had had that visualization, I would have realized like,

I wasn't quitting because I didn't want to wrestle. I was quitting because I was scared of losing. And I was scared of throwing my entire soul into something and failing. Let's talk about the concept of quitting in the real world, in the 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. They hate going to work. 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? Work is not...

perfect. And a lot of people say work is work. And I think there's 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. Like, this is the best thing that I've done. What's your advice to people, either that people in your company or people in your portfolio companies who are unhappy? Should they quit if they're that? What's the threshold? And is the grass always greener?

This is the advice that I give. And I give this advice a lot because 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 like the people I probably talk about the most of this exact thing. And what I kind of talk about is, so 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 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 of different paths 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 genie goal is, you know, what their real like

soul, so to speak, not to be too woo-woo, but that 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, like that's where you're gonna 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. 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 working backwards from that path starting today where you are. So, should you quit tomorrow? Again, everyone's situation is a little different but

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 only get one life, so why not? We talked about high school. You 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 leader if they're not a natural born leader?

Yeah, I mean, I think you can. 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 almost feel that about myself but that I think I just - it was more like

The way that I was conducting myself, 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 5 a.m. You know, who wants to come? It was more like... Leading by example. Leading by example, exactly. I wasn't giving big speeches or anything. So that was probably how I first started to become a leader was I was just...

I was doing things that other people wanted to be a part of and they wanted to follow that path.

In terms of can you teach leadership, I'd like to think so. I try to do that 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 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're introverts and they never give these raw, raw 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. So what are the three most important things that you find in a leader? We interview people for attributes versus experience. 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 opens your pool up dramatically and also has some really powerful positive things for diversity and gender and things like that where you're not requiring someone to have done something for 20 years where that battle was won or lost 20 years. So anyway, 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,

And we can't teach that. So you said, could you teach leadership? We can teach that. We cannot teach the will to win. So we have to hire people that already have that. And like I said, you could have that as a ballerina or a military veteran or anything. That's number one by far. Number two would be probably grit, persistence, because you're going to, in almost anything, you're going to 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 self-awareness. So those would be the three.

You talk about will to win. 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 being eaten by a 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 win. I'm going to call it survival instinct and the where to win. It sounds like a very similar criteria. Yeah. Where do sales skills fit into this? Because not only... Sales... Go ahead. Sorry. I mean, people talk about sales where you're selling a product, but it's way more than that. Everything we do is related to sales. You've got to...

sell people. I mean, I had to sell you to be on my show, 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. So where does that fit into the Rubicon?

I think 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, and move quickly. Those are probably the four things. So sales is on the list of being a great leader. You only gave me three. Okay. I should have said five. I should have said 10, actually. You gave me three. And sales is probably something that

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 it is a little bit more, a tiny bit more teachable than will to win or grit, which are...

I can't do anything with someone who doesn't have those things. So let's go back to high school. So you're a great student. You apply to Princeton. You get in. Bachelor's of Science in Engineering. That's right. Let's talk about when you got there. Let's go back to the genie. Yeah. So tell us your experience with the genie and these crazy goals you set for yourself when you got on campus. Well, so when I got to college, it was like the shackles just came off.

And I mean, at the time my parents were divorced so I was spending kind of certain time here, certain time there. I was an athlete, I was a student, your time is very structured.

All of a sudden, I got to college, it was literally like almost like the Forrest Gump scene where like 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 I set three goals. I actually wrote them down, my genie goals. 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 were my three goals.

And those are pretty much the three activities I did at college. 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, you know, but in the first few years, I just...

I just went hard at those three things. So when 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. 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 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 had 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. So I'm the number one runner in the United States. My alarm goes off at 4.45 a.m.

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. Well, it's dark. There's no one there. No one's going to know if I did it or not.

But hey, part of me is already behaving like the number one rower even when I'm a 135-pound novice from Toledo that didn't even know the boats go backwards, you know? You never rode before. I never rode before. I've never been in a boat before. So, you never rode before and your goal is to be the number one rower in the world. I took the genie goal very seriously and literally. Yeah. So, I literally took it literally. But you didn't achieve those goals. I didn't. Which...

What'd you learn from the lessons of not achieving the goal? Yeah, I 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 valedictorian. My daughter just made Phi Beta Kappa too. Oh, that's great. That's awesome. Yeah. And I was also Phi Beta Kappa. Yeah. I said like you. Yeah. 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 I was definitely not the best. I was probably one of the worst rowers in the boat. And 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 going back to what I was saying about your internal and your external scorecard, like my internal scorecard, I was good.

I had done everything I wanted to do, I left it on the field and I felt really, really good about how I spent those years. So, it really wasn't as much about the goals as about like 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 tried to basically do that you know, since then too.

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 door to door, cost me five bucks. I sold them for 12 long sleeve cost six, hold them for 18. So I learned about margin and, and, uh, all kinds of things. Uh, and, and also that was a cash business. Tell us about, uh,

negative cost of goods sold and your New York Times experience and the lessons you learned from that. So, we had a business where we delivered newspapers to college kids. And yeah, the New York Times actually paid us to get subscribers. Like usually one would have to buy the paper and then sell it at a margin. They paid us to because they thought Princeton people should read the New York Times. And so, it was incredible. And then the

And then the daily Princetonian was the paper and the thing I learned there is we said, "Okay, we're only going to charge you - I don't remember what it was - nine cents per paper per day. That's it. I mean, that's not much." And they're like, "Yeah, that sounds great." But you multiply that by 2,000 papers times seven days a week times the whole year, 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 4 a.m. to drive the van to drop off all the papers to the sites. The other ones had to all get up at 5.30 or 6 a.m. The amount of stuff that went wrong in that was almost infinite. You know, you could imagine what that was like. So that was tough. But it was a great experience. It was a really great experience. So let's go back to the rowing team for a second. You're a freshman. You never got in the boat. So you had this goal.

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. My that's a crazy story, but it is a thank you. Yeah. Well, um my freshman year John Parker and Mike Tatey were both so it was kind of a cool timing for me because the Olympics were in 1992 and

and I started Princeton in 1990. So all the Olympians were rowing out of the Princeton Boathouse. That's where 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,

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, usually I would be the only one there. But Mike, Mike Tatey probably half the time was there training right next to me. He had no idea who I was for the first half.

you know, maybe month. And then after a while, after he, I think his curiosity just got the better of him because there's this 135 pound kid with a mullet who's coming down to the boathouse. You had a mullet back then? I had a mullet, yeah. Because I was from Ohio, you know, I mean, you probably had one in Michigan. Yeah, Steven Seagal was a big actor at the time and I was trying to grow a little ponytail. It didn't really work, but I thought he was cool. Yeah, exactly. That was the cool look back then. So, I'm this 135 pound kid with a mullet and

I think - and I'd run into Mike and he just ignored me and then one day we're taking a shower at the same day, he's just 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." And he's just like, "Well, your form's terrible." And like, you know, and he started helping me a little bit with my form and also just telling me what workouts to do and really, really simple thing which was - and I don't 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 gonna 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, I could train an infinite number of

literally infinite number of hours and not, you know, have any soreness or anything. So, he gave me that. And also just kind of like being in the boathouse with Mike and John, it was just, it was awesome. I mean, 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 I mean, to be able to

have had that experience with him at that age was just, it was really cool. So many athletes I know and professionals will do things no one else has done. 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. He's a good friend. He was 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. You wouldn't think leading by example.

In my professional world, some of my coaching is first in, last out, 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 out.

I'd 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 library. So how important is it in your success and in your business? Do people in the private equity business who work the most, who get there before no one else does do the best? So it's a great question. Like I think that

I think that's a big part of it. You know, it's maybe necessary but not sufficient in the early years. So, I think for using myself an example, like I did, I was at, I took that same rowing algorithm to work and worked, outworked everyone I would like to think.

As I started to get up the curve and learn more and become skilled, I actually started to try to figure out a model where I didn't have to do that because I wanted to have a family. I know you and I share trying to be home with them. 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 want to be them. And so, I think it's interesting 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 gonna work 16 hours a day because that's who they are and they're learning who they are and 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 without the - you know, without the like 16-hour days.

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. You said we should compare ourselves to what we did yesterday. Yeah. I think that's counterintuitive to most people so can you explain that? Yeah, 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'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's going to know 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? So yeah, I Sorry, I lost track The did I answer your question? Yeah, it was more of the advice you give is counter to what oh, yeah Comparing yourself to where where you were yesterday 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 and

Here's the bar that different people set. So, yeah. I mean, so for example, we're in a crazy competitive industry, you know, in private equity. There's 5,500 funds. It's unbelievably competitive. Really smart people go into the field. You've had some on your show. Yeah.

And like we do compete for dollars with all those folks. So we have to have some kind of idea of what, you know, what the benchmarks are. And we derive a lot of our mission off of, you know, being several standard deviations better than those benchmarks. 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 say that. But in terms of when you go home and are you sleeping well at night, you know, a lot of that's going to come down more to like, are you winning on your own scorecard? 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 of being wined and dined, how we can be kind of hoodwinked into that. We can talk about sending a black car to take you from Princeton to New York City. And I also want to talk about the importance and craziness of FOMO. We'll get into actually what happened in 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? 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. Everyone else is doing it. 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. And we could talk about the crypto, the dot-com, all that stuff.

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 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 of 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 that longer term career trajectory that your soul wants to go on.

And then what about in the investing world? We've seen this with all the trends. NFT is the latest one. And I mean, someone bought a painting, which wasn't even a painting for this guy Beeple, who was a graphic designer in North Carolina for $69 million. And everyone was, I mean, Mark Cuban, everyone was in on this. You got the crypto craze. You have the dot-com craze. I mean, 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 where everyone wants to get rich, everyone jumping on the bandwagon. I mean, the thing that I say that's really the simple way I think about it is 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 drive, 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, that's NFTs. They all fall in, it's even gold. They all fall into that bucket.

A lot of people don't agree with that, a 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 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. You wouldn't get lucky to buy, you know, Bitcoin at whatever price you bought it, you know, so you're going to 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. 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. What

How fast should people run for the exits when they hear that someone has a hot stock tip? Usain Bolt? They should run. 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 investor

the most 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. He 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, $19.99 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, they wouldn't be selling it. So run. So run. Yeah. Okay. So you have a little bit of FOMO. You're graduating. Your friends are going to private equity. Maybe I should go into private equity. You're at Morgan Stanley Capital Markets.

Tell us about the pig farm. Yeah. Tell us about 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? Yeah. And so many of us 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 breakers 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. You're sent to this pig firm 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 and

about your friend Monty one day and how that changed your life. Yeah. Well, taking those one at a time. So the first assignment that I had 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 ever... So, Morgan Stanley had put a billion dollars into a pig farm, like a greenfield, like 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 purpose? What's the revenue model? I mean, is this like a bacon plan? Yeah, the idea is that 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, green fill this and take it straight from a farm all the way through the processing plant and put it on your shelf, you know, that was the kind of

thesis. The problem was that they built their model on the historical pig prices of $47 a hundredweight, which was, it turns out, the last hundred years average.

And it was the next 100 years average, but, you know, it's the kind of common thing. How does a five-foot man drown in a six or how does a six-foot man drown in a river that averages five feet deep? You know, because it gets deeper at certain points of the river. And so hog prices promptly dropped to $18 and the business made zero EBITDA and had, I don't know, half a billion in 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 lived in the CFO's basement and we built models and we were

I mean, we're 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 a hundred percent chance we're going to run out of money. And I was trying to communicate that to the CFO. 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 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 totally wild. But then the story about my mom was...

You know, I was in Manhattan, my mom had lived there for a little bit in her life, she's single, you know, she worked an hourly job, didn't have a ton of money and saved up her money and was going to - she drove from Ohio out to New York, she made tickets to see two shows and we're going to 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 wants to stay in the office all day and I got to 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, 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. 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 boss. 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 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

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. So I only realized that until once I got out of that environment. And then tell us about your nickname, The Dream. Yeah. And what the final...

end point was at Morgan Stanley when your friend passed away? Yeah. 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 he was like, he kind of looked out for me

And 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.

Yeah, like right around the time - I don't remember exactly what year it was but I'm sitting down - I was in Washington DC living for the summer and my phone rings and my buddy says "Hey Graham, you know, you might want to sit down." He says "Hey, Monty's gone." You know, and I was like "What do you mean Monty's gone?" He said "Well, he died in a plane crash two nights ago."

I mean, I think I was 20. I mean, he was like 22 or 23 at the time 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 know that I really processed it until a number of years later

um i'd i'd now gone through business school and i'd um 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 um i was kind of doing all the things i advised my students not to do back then and then i went uh 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 and i

I got on the plane ride home and just started bawling and just was thinking to myself like, "Monty would be so disappointed in me." Like he had - he called me dream weaver 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, that was really impactful for me. Right. 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 kind of the far end, right? Yeah.

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. Yeah. Do you tell your boss and say, Hey, I've got plans. What's, what's the right, what's the right way to handle these issues without your boss saying, gosh, you know, you're, you're weak.

I mean-- Or the firm's not important. 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, we have people have real life things where they're, you know, one of our close principals, you know, his mom, you

recently passed away, he took 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're 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 want to do really great at work and you give them that benefit of the doubt that 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 really, I just really tried to almost go the other direction as we were building, you know, building our company. So, I do recognize the harshness of it. I do recognize that. But I probably wouldn't advise someone to go be part of a culture that...

where they don't admire the values of that place because they will become that place over time. - But what if they are there? So you're an investment banker, a lot of people listening to this show are investment bankers. I guess this show has gone viral among the investment bankers 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? You know, it's just hard to say in a vacuum what the context of that would be. 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 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 colleague Haley is going to cover for me during that time if you need me right at that time. 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 wanna 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 gonna stay there until you are in the path of the job that you want when I was a lawyer miserable lawyer 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 as a family dinner and

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 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 able to, I hated law school as a means to an end. And then 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. Um, it was unforgiving environment. I mean, I was already going to leave, but, um, I remember thinking, gosh, this is the most miserable I've ever been in my career, except when I lost my job. Yeah, no, that's, I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal. There, 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. It's,

It's tough and 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 know what the right answer is. I think you probably did it, you know? Yeah, I mean, you do what you had to. I had to pay my rent. And so, it was not something I could just leave and say, "Okay, I need to find something better."

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. There's only three people at the time. You did do deals there. You learned private equity there. Yeah. 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 your dinner and the 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's

springs in your 1986 Volvo and what you were doing on that trip. Because you just said, oh, I started my own firm. But it was really more than that. Yeah. 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 fundless sponsor. They wouldn't have said that, but they didn't have a fund. So tell people what that is. So that's basically two guys at the time, Mike Fish and David Horing, who are very, very good investors.

And in 1995, I think it was, 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 were only three of us and so it was great. David Horring 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, 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 then while I was in business school, I remember this, I'm sitting in the very first quarter, I'm sitting in the strategy class at Stanford Business School and this

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? What did I do? I didn't even - I can't believe I left this job to be here." So, I said "I'm going to start buying companies."

And just like American Securities, I had no money, no fun. 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, you know,

Two, I would take a red-eye flight out on Tuesday night because we didn't have school on Wednesday. My company's were in the Midwest and the East Coast.

And then I would, you know, do my bank meetings and whatever all day. And then I'd take a flight home and be in class the next day. And 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, you'd think the end of the story is like, oh, it was amazing. And it made every single mistake you could imagine. But I want to go back to, well, okay, 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 are you charging? Yeah, what happened was Back then in 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 five million dollars the seller took back two

2.3 million in a seller note. So 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. Then I got sub-debt. So all this is debt, the whole structure is debt. But the sub-debt lender needed there to be a little bit of equity, like a couple hundred thousand dollars, which I 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 - I would get this thing 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 going to actually, I was going to have to start paying interest. 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. You paid for your own business school? I paid for my own business school, yeah.

So that was how I financed some of these early deals. And I was tight, walking on a tightrope. But we say you finance them. Are you getting cash advances from these credit cards? Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. You write yourself a check for $50,000, pay no interest for 12 months. That's what the offer was. And I read through the fine print and that was actually- $50,000? Well-

probably 30 and then 20 and you know but yeah you would get you would get those in the in the in the mail okay so then tell us about

You dumped the girlfriend, you drove to Steamboat Springs. Yeah. And for somebody you knew before. So, what I want you to talk about because we all have these seminal moments, right? Like, I am done. I'm done. This is it. I'm rethinking everything. So, tell us about the drive and then tell us about the boombox and, you know, the cassette tapes again. 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 any time 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,

That's what I was going to do but then all my classmates started 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 wanted to do my own thing and so that was when I had that plane flight that I've mentioned to you before. So, I fly home, I land on that plane flight, I'm in this job 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. You were 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 boombox which if 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. 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 was how that started. So you're 28 years old and you say, I want to go start this first fund. 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? So you had 10 classmates invest in this fund. It 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 and how did you do that?

So, when I was at the firm right before I started, it was called Oak Hill and we did a deal with the firm called the Stevens family. I was the lead on that deal and I won't get into all the diesels but the 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 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 not interested." And I showed them all the analysis.

They were really - they were angry but they were also super impressed because I'd seen through like their ruse so to speak.

Anyway, we go through this thing and we ended up partnering with the Stevens family. They were fantastic to work with. You know, we maybe gave them less money for the combination. It's a complicated story. But anyway, we ended up exiting this thing. Everyone made money. So, when I started raising my funds, I was talking to the lead guy, this guy Doug Martin who's an incredible guy.

And he was kind of trying to hire me to work at Stevens. And I said, "Well, you know, 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 guy, ran Farallon, ran for president a number of years ago. Also an incredible guy. I probably did seven or eight meetings. The actual story about Tom is

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 will see you on April 30th at this time for 15 minutes, you know, stop calling. 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 to

And then lost money on that fund. So, 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 absolutely amazing.

There's a couple of things that you mentioned in the story, and then we're going to 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. They're not interested. And this is a huge one for people, by the way. I've had people call me 15 times. Sarah Zapp, 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 I want to come in for a meeting. And finally, I just said, God, stop it.

Same thing, 20 minutes. And the 20 minutes turned into one hour because if someone's doing a good job, I mean, you know, you're going to give them the time. So look at the camera on this one. I mean, everybody, 99.99, you know, 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 mean, I think like my advice in general in, look in 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? 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 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 just, I felt like 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 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 is

That's a longer story as well. But I called Stephen Bolenbach, who at that point was the senior executive vice president, crazy title at Disney. Well, then he became CEO of Marriott. Yeah, yeah. And I called him. 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. Bolenbach is going to call you back right now.

And it was, by the way, it was 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.