Just another thinly veiled positive speech not really talking about much.
How about they guide us on how they made their fortune and update methods that could work today since the time when they ventured off into their said field to become billionaires.
They just wanna tour the country making extra money without actually helping.
Do y'all listen to talks or do y'all just skim through it.
Dude has put people on game. He said all that needs to be said. In the first talk he mentioned being a master/expert at your craft. This is very very true. Learn your industry in and out, spot out the arbitrage or opportunity and then build a business to address the opportunity, and then build a structure to retain your advantage.
Summary of his rise to the top
1. Did very well in school. Graduated from Cornell Engineering although he was offered a place at Stanford.
2. Worked his ass off as an engineer for Kraft and GoodYear Tires
3. Went to Columbia Business School. Was top of his class and when picking up his award, he was introduced to some guys in finance.
4. Worked at Goldman Sachs for 6 years on Tech M&A
5. Started his own private equity firm leveraging his contacts at Goldman and the like
6. Put in the work to grow his firm for the past 20 years.
Just knowing investment banking and private equity, I can tell you 1 thing. Dude put WORK in. Goldman Sachs will have you working 80-100 hr work weeks. When others are at HH you're in the office grinding. When people are at Sunday brunch you're out there grinding. Private equity is the same way but to a larger degree. You're taking billions of dollars from pensions funds, high networth individuals and sovereign wealth funds to invest in companies with the intent to sell at a later date for profit. When billions of dollars are on the line you have to be on point.
Just look at it from a mathematics point of view. If you work 80 hrs in a week and your colleague works 40 hours in a week, in the span of a month, you've learned 2 times than he/she has.
Dude is authentic in that his not from a silver spoon so to speak. From an educated family yes, but not necessarily financially well connected.
Smith said it in his talk, Software has been the biggest game changer in the economy over the past 50 years. And this is true. I mean look in the IT Certs and Software Engineers threads even on the coli. You got dudes with no college degrees learning about coding and IT all online for free and are out there making a good living for themselves.
Now, to get to the level of Robert Smith, you'll have to do a little more legwork, you'll need to have access to capital and the resume to get aligned with the big money deals.
There's a bigger picture view.
