Navigating the American Dream: Ed Hajim's Journey
Ed Hajim, a distinguished Wall Street executive with a remarkable tenure spanning over five decades, shares his profound journey as the son of a Syrian immigrant. In this enlightening discourse, he emphasizes the fundamental tenet that "anything is possible," a mantra instilled in him during his challenging upbringing in an orphanage. Hajim recounts the pivotal role of mentors throughout his life, illustrating how their guidance shaped his resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity. Furthermore, he articulates the importance of education as a vital solution to life's challenges and underscores the necessity of embracing difficulties to foster personal growth. As he reflects on his legacy, Hajim expresses his aspiration to empower others to surpass their perceived limitations, advocating for a proactive approach to navigating life's complexities.
Takeaways:
- The guest, Ed Hajim, emphasizes that resilience is cultivated through overcoming life's adversities.
- He asserts that education is a fundamental solution to many of the daily challenges we face.
- Hajim emphasizes the importance of mentorship in fostering personal and professional growth throughout one's journey.
- He notes that recognizing and adapting to the complexities of modern opportunities is crucial for success.
- The importance of setting clear goals and maintaining a proactive approach to life's challenges is a recurring theme.
- Ed Hajim discusses how personal experiences and challenges shaped his approach to mentoring young people.
Transcript
My guest today is Ed Hijam.
Speaker A:He's the son of a Syrian immigrant, is a seasoned Wall street executive with over 50 years of investment experience.
Speaker A:He has held senior management positions at The Capital Group, E.F.
Speaker A:hutton and Lehman Brothers before becoming chairman and CEO of Firman Sales.
Speaker A:He is currently the chairman of Hivista, a Boston based money management company.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Upon assuming that office, he donated 30 million, the largest single donation in its history.
Speaker A:Well, Ed, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker A:How you doing today, my friend?
Speaker B:I'm doing great.
Speaker B:I'm up in Nantucket and the sun is shining.
Speaker A:Well, there you go.
Speaker A:You can't argue with those things, can you?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:So I'm going to ask you my favorite question.
Speaker A:I ask all of my guests.
Speaker A:What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Speaker B:Best piece of advice I ever received.
Speaker B:Anything is possible.
Speaker A:Oh, I love that.
Speaker A:Who told you that?
Speaker B:You remember, I told myself, I told myself that.
Speaker B:No, I think early on there was a.
Speaker B:It was when I was in the last orphanage in Yonkers, New York.
Speaker B:The headmaster or the head of the orphanage told me that.
Speaker B:He said, you know, anything is possible.
Speaker B:And, you know, I didn't think about it that time.
Speaker B:I didn't really print it or anything.
Speaker B:And later on in life, it started to come home to me.
Speaker B:And that's one of the messages I give all my young people, is that basically in America, anything is possible.
Speaker B:And I'm living proof of that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting to your stories.
Speaker A:You can share that with the audience because it's a fascinating journey that God took you on.
Speaker A:So he did.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He decided he'd take me on a very tortuous, ortuitous path, that's for sure.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:So I'm curious, Ed, who are some people in your life, you think back, who served as mentors for you?
Speaker A:If you want to kind of give them a shout out, here's a good chance to do that.
Speaker B:Well, you have to go back.
Speaker B:I mean, everybody has to focus on their parents.
Speaker B:And I essentially had no mother.
Speaker B:She supposedly died when I was three.
Speaker B:We can talk about that later on.
Speaker B:But my father, obviously, who loved me beyond anything and the reason he kidnapped me was because he loved me so much, but he didn't realize that I still was a responsibility.
Speaker B:And during my first 18, 15 years, he abandoned me four times.
Speaker B:Most cases not his Fault, but, but he sent one message constantly, was that I was the greatest.
Speaker B:He believed in me.
Speaker B:He gave me unconditionally love.
Speaker B:So even though it was only in letters or in phone calls or in telegrams, he continued that, in fact, he overdid it.
Speaker B:In one of my letters when I was 10 years old, I said, I'm not that good a person.
Speaker B:So that was first turned off.
Speaker B:And he was there all the time.
Speaker B:Whereas, you know, in the foster home, some of them were very difficult.
Speaker B:The second mentor, I think most of all was his headmaster at the second orphanage.
Speaker B:He basically, you know, believed in me, knew, thought that I could do it, actually supported me.
Speaker B:Even though I didn't take his advice by that time I didn't trust anybody.
Speaker B:And I think one of the other groups that really helped me out was even when I was in foster homes, I was in the Catholic welfare system.
Speaker B:And the nuns were really good mentors.
Speaker B:They really, they gave you.
Speaker B:It was unconditional love, but, you know, you had to pay, toe the line.
Speaker B:So they had a good stick in the carrot experience.
Speaker B:And I must say, those five years I spent in Catholic schools were excellent.
Speaker B:And they made some, you know, gave me some definite rules that I still follow, you know, because they told me that if I do the right things, I'll end up in the right place.
Speaker B:If I do the wrong things, I'll end up in the other place.
Speaker B:And that sort of stuck with me and some other rules as well.
Speaker B:Then finally, my freshman year in college, I had a real difficulty with mechanical drawing.
Speaker B:A mechanical drawing professor got me through mechanical drawing and he spent four years as my mentor and we did lots of things together.
Speaker B:I was the chairman of the finance board, which gave out all the money in the school.
Speaker B:And he was a, he was the faculty advisor.
Speaker B:You know, as I went through my courses, he helped me quite a bit.
Speaker B:But I would say I had mentors all my life and I believe it's very strongly try to find someone who's been there, done that, that you want to do and, and you know, attach yourself to them if you can.
Speaker A:No, that's good advice.
Speaker A:I've had mentors too, and they have been such a blessing to me.
Speaker A:They come along at just the right time and give you just the kind of information you need at the time.
Speaker A:So, yeah, that's a invaluable thing to do.
Speaker B:And different vendors in different situations.
Speaker B:I mean, when I was a, you know, I was a senior so called senior executive on Wall Street, I still had a guy named Wally who was 10 years older than I didn't.
Speaker B:Had progress through the industry, you know, 10 years ahead of me.
Speaker B:And whenever I had to make a decision was difficult, I would call Wally and talk it over.
Speaker B:And it was very important you had somebody you could really who'd been there, you know, I struggled through.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker A:So tell us a bit about your.
Speaker A:You had a highly successful career on Wall Street.
Speaker A:What about business inspired you?
Speaker B:I just, I was, I was an engineer and, you know, I understood what it was to look at a problem, design a methodology to solve that problem, execute that methodology, then study the results.
Speaker B:That's the engineering mentality.
Speaker B:And when I went back to business school after being an engineer, I found that business actually you could use the same techniques.
Speaker B:And I found it fascinating.
Speaker B:Also having a rather short attention span.
Speaker B:I found the finance gave me.
Speaker B:It was a good, a good thing to have in finance and other businesses and so forth.
Speaker B:You had a much longer attention span.
Speaker B:You could move from subject to subject because when you're discussing a company, you don't discuss one part of the company.
Speaker B:You don't talk just about marketing, talk about manufacturing, marketing, you know, personnel and so forth.
Speaker B:And to be able to jump from one idea to the other and discussing it and putting them all together afterwards fascinated me.
Speaker B:And I must say, I got fascinated.
Speaker B:What I call strategy, trends, waves, things like that.
Speaker B:And I found that the.
Speaker B:Where you really got paid and the most interesting place to be was in the finance business because you're always constantly looking for trends.
Speaker B:And my famous two words is what's next?
Speaker B:And I must say I've carried that all through my life.
Speaker B:And I love talking to executives and constantly asking them, what's next?
Speaker B:And I had to ask myself, what's next?
Speaker B:And so things like you go into an industry such as the oil industry.
Speaker B:I was there in the 60s.
Speaker B:What was next was offshore oil.
Speaker B:You know, everything was onshore in those days.
Speaker B:So I went out and looked for the offshore companies that were brand new and so forth in each industry.
Speaker B:I found this to be, you know, fascinating to go on and find out what's next and go into, see if you can find a real wave or trend.
Speaker B:And I found that people that are successful normally spend a significant part of their life with the winds at their back.
Speaker B:And that because you find a trend early and get involved in it.
Speaker B:That's a long answer, short question.
Speaker B:That's one thing.
Speaker B:You're going to have to stop me.
Speaker B:Raise your hand when I start talking too long.
Speaker B:My.
Speaker B:My daughter is at Ted Talks and she's dad, you answer all the questions too long.
Speaker A:No, I like, I like detailed answers.
Speaker A:That's good.
Speaker A:I was in computer science, so I was studying computer analytics and so I love studying like you talk about organizations and figuring out like you too, you know, what's the next thing.
Speaker A:Because if you, if you're stuck in, in that place where you're always kind of reacting versus for being proactive, you're always going to find yourself behind.
Speaker A:So I appreciate that your perspective on business.
Speaker B:Well, it's just, you know, I think what you said and computer science is just continues to change.
Speaker B:You have to keep up with that because yeah, that started, you know, with a very, very sort of minimal experience and now it's, you know, they, they're breaking computer science into parts now.
Speaker B:You know, AI over here, computer science over there, so on.
Speaker B:So that's what's next and that's very important.
Speaker B:In fact I'm involved at the university and we're actually, I've been pushing and she's doing it.
Speaker B:The dean is going to have a course on this for, not just for computer sciences but for everybody because it's changing the world and I think that's very important.
Speaker B:But that is what's next.
Speaker A:It definitely is.
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:So tell us about your.
Speaker A:So your father kidnapped you at age of 3 and told you your mother was dead and then he abandoned you.
Speaker A:How did you, in the middle of all of that, stay positive, build resilience and forward thinking through all of that?
Speaker B:It's a question that a lot of people have asked me and I come back to this unfortunate, you know, situation where little kids, I was five years old, they have no choice.
Speaker B:And you know, and you basically have no choice, you just make the best of it and you do the best job you can.
Speaker B:And almost by natural, you develop a natural resistance, you develop a natural resilience, you develop a natural adaptability, you develop a natural perseverance after you go through a couple of these things.
Speaker B:The first foster home was awful and they were abusive, they were cold, they were in it just for the money.
Speaker B:They argued with my father, they treated me badly, you know, but that was good in a sense.
Speaker B:Looking back, when I tell people about these experiences, these disadvantages became advantages.
Speaker B:In fact, one of the problems with a lot of the young people today is they haven't had a difficult experience so they don't know how to overcome it and therefore they get anxieties.
Speaker B:But you know, by the time I got to be 17, 18 years old, I could Overcome almost any difficult circumstance.
Speaker B:I mean, I went to college in my black leather jacket and got rejected by all the fraternities.
Speaker B:But, you know, the room was nicer than the orphanage, the food was better, and so what the hell.
Speaker B:I've come through difficult times before and I'm going to do it again.
Speaker B:You develop over because of that.
Speaker B:And say children have in their system a natural tendency toward resilience.
Speaker B:They can sort of make things happen or they can, you know, they can also, you know, they can leave the situation.
Speaker B:They still have their imaginations and that's very important.
Speaker B:But in my case, I, I just persevered.
Speaker B:And after, you know, a couple of successful experiences with one four strum and then another four strum, I got used to doing it.
Speaker B:I said, oh, here they come again.
Speaker B:I'm going to be adaptable.
Speaker B:I'm going to bring out that old resilience again.
Speaker B:And that little boy, a little person on my shoulder said, you know, gave you a certain self confidence that you get by accomplishing certain things.
Speaker B:And I, you know, my young people, obviously my children didn't have difficult, but I put them into difficult situations like Outward Bound and Knowles and so forth.
Speaker B:You know, if you go out on a raft trip or go to Alaska, my grandson went to Alaska for 60 days, 30 days in the rain.
Speaker B:Most best thing ever for them.
Speaker B:So this is the kind of thing that I.
Speaker B:That's why I preach this concept of disadvantage.
Speaker B:Make your children uncomfortable, get them out there on their own somehow, as early as possible so they have difficulties, overcome them and gain confidence.
Speaker A:Yeah, that is so critical that that does build resilience.
Speaker A:If you never have difficult times, then you don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker A:I mean, that's so biblical and we run across it all the time.
Speaker B:That's exactly.
Speaker B:You come to a situation in your work where, you know, you come to a really question where there's a moral question or it's kind of borderline and you've never dealt with it before, it becomes very difficult.
Speaker B:And I find, you know, that was one of the things I dealt with with all my employees.
Speaker B:They have never really dealt with, you know, impossible situations or impossible people.
Speaker B:One of the things you have to learn about is that everybody's a package and some of the packages are not so good.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:They're not wrapped you tight.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:So tell us about your memoir, on the Road, Less Travel.
Speaker A:What made you write that?
Speaker B:Well, you know, I was embarrassed and ashamed of my background.
Speaker B:So when I arrived at The University of Rochester.
Speaker B:At 18 years old, I basically buried it.
Speaker B:No one know.
Speaker B:People could ask me, what's your background?
Speaker B:I said, my father's a radio operator aboard a ship.
Speaker B:We live in a post office box in San Francisco.
Speaker B:My mother died when I was three.
Speaker B:No more questions.
Speaker B:And so I kept that.
Speaker B:I buried it for 70 years.
Speaker B:So in my 70s, 72 years old, I became the chairman of the board of the University of Rochester.
Speaker B:And they started digging into my background.
Speaker B:They wanted to know more.
Speaker B:Simultaneously, my kids and even my wife said, we don't know the whole story.
Speaker B:Why don't you try and write it?
Speaker B:And I had saved all the letters from my father, and when he died, he had a suitcase full of all of my letters.
Speaker B:So we had a good, good chunk of history spread out over the kitchen table, and I started in writing it.
Speaker B:And first of all, I did have extreme difficulty in writing my childhood.
Speaker B:In fact, the first draft of my childhood was written by my daughter.
Speaker B:She's a writer.
Speaker B:And I just couldn't write it because it kept welling up, and it was difficult.
Speaker B:Now I can talk about it after a couple of years, but I couldn't talk about it.
Speaker B:But as I started to write it, I found that I was learning things about myself.
Speaker B:I was learning why I made certain kinds of decisions.
Speaker B:And I sent the first galleys out to people, and they said, no, this is something you can take public.
Speaker B:I was just going to do it for my family.
Speaker B:They said, no, this is inspirational.
Speaker B:This is going to tell people how maybe they can get over a few of the bumps early in their life.
Speaker B:But I found writing and understanding what I was doing all during this period, and especially the junctions and the pivots that I made in my life, I started to understand them better.
Speaker B:So it became quite interesting to me.
Speaker B:I also found that writing was a great experience.
Speaker B:Communicate.
Speaker B:Taking an idea that you want to communicate and then put it on paper and see whether the reader gets that idea.
Speaker B:That was fascinating to me.
Speaker B:And I must say, I went through four ghostwriters in order to get it right.
Speaker B:Does that answer your sort of question?
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:All of a sudden, at 72, I thought, you know, it was, you know, late enough for me to go and do something and put it on paper.
Speaker B:And I didn't think it would be anything.
Speaker B:I just thought it'd be a history of my life and give it to the kids.
Speaker B:And, you know, I started realizing that this was something that, you know, might be useful to other people.
Speaker B:And then I.
Speaker B:I sent the galleys out of 15 blurb requests out, 10 of them said one of them, most of them said, every freshman United States should read this book.
Speaker B:So, you know, that was an interesting thing to me and I will tell you later on what I'm doing right now with the book.
Speaker A:So as you, when I write my book, I remember thinking to myself, after I got the book written, I didn't want to publish it because it was, it was so personal.
Speaker A:Did you struggle with do I.
Speaker A:Do I share this with the world because it is so deeply personal?
Speaker B:Scared me to death.
Speaker B:I lived on Wall Street.
Speaker B:I lived on Wall street under the mantra to live happy was to live hidden.
Speaker B:No press, no television, no interviews.
Speaker B:You know, I was running the company, I was the CEO of was a big enough job.
Speaker B:I felt it was dangerous to get out there all alone all my life.
Speaker B:I felt living happy was to live hidden.
Speaker B:And then here I'm now going to expose myself.
Speaker B:But was it worth it?
Speaker B:It started, you know, it started with this response from my blurb request.
Speaker B:People said, this is something that can really, really, you know, change people's lives.
Speaker B:So I was going to take a chance.
Speaker B:And my daughter was very uncomfortable.
Speaker B:She said, somebody's going to come out and say something awful about you.
Speaker B:I said, I'm old enough.
Speaker B:Most of them are dead now.
Speaker B:So it's not a problem.
Speaker B:The skeletons in my closet are dead.
Speaker A:They are skeleton.
Speaker B:Somewhere back there I may have done something, you know, awful to somebody.
Speaker B:And you know, if she or he was still alive, they might bring it up.
Speaker B:But so far, knock wood, we haven't had that yet.
Speaker B:But, and that, of course, once you do it and some, you know, someone says to you, my daughter read your book and now she's a freshman at the university because of that, that starts to make them, that gives you momentum.
Speaker B:You say that you really are doing something.
Speaker B:You are changing lives and is important.
Speaker B:And also I was at a certain age.
Speaker B:Now that, you know, what else am I going to do?
Speaker B:And you know, I hate to say it, I'm not a very religious person, but I think that God has a way of taking you in the direction I believe in flow.
Speaker B:And it was time for me to pivot into something to really, truly giving back, you know, nearly full time, if not full time.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:So what kind of response are you getting from your book?
Speaker A:Kind of feedback?
Speaker B:Well, you know, if you read the 240, you know, reviews, it's it, it, it's it, you know, it gives you goosebumps.
Speaker B:People, you know, now I'M not one of my problems.
Speaker B:I'm not a celebrity.
Speaker B:So you don't get everybody to read your book.
Speaker B:We sold about 20,000 books so far, and I have 250 people who have written reviews.
Speaker B:And, you know, I had one bad review, so that was pretty.
Speaker B:I didn't get that, actually.
Speaker B:The bad review came in the second book.
Speaker B:There's no bad reviews in the first book.
Speaker B:And I do get every place I go, people say, this is wonderful.
Speaker B:I've given it to my grandmother, who's 92.
Speaker B:I've given my son, who's 17.
Speaker B:You know, and so that what the book basically says, the three things that you know, that I can tell you, what the book says is this.
Speaker B:Anything is possible.
Speaker B:This kid started with nothing.
Speaker B:No parents, no money, no support, no mentors.
Speaker B:And the second thing was education is a solution to everything.
Speaker B:He went to school, he worked hard, you know, he got advanced degrees.
Speaker B:He continues his education.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:Well, the other third little point was that never be a victim.
Speaker B:He was never a victim.
Speaker B:Things were terrible, but he kept looking at what's next because the energy you use in being a victim is substantial.
Speaker B:You know, if you hate people or, you know, woe is me, you take that energy and place it over here, trying to figure out what's next.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's your fault.
Speaker B:The situation you're in, you still have to go, what's next?
Speaker B:And if it's somebody else's fault, also, what's next?
Speaker B:Continue to go forward, because that's all there is.
Speaker B:And so many people get stuck.
Speaker B:And that's when my book basically says, this guy never got stuck.
Speaker B:You know, he just kept going.
Speaker B:And, you know, in the middle of my career, I was a big, big shot at Lehman Brothers.
Speaker B:I was on the board.
Speaker B:I was a major shareholder.
Speaker B:I was a president of this and chairman of that, and my boss.
Speaker B:And I just really didn't get along.
Speaker B:And he forced me, you know, essentially forced me out.
Speaker B:No reason at all, no route.
Speaker B:It was in the book very clearly.
Speaker B:And instead of force, you know, fighting, which I could, because I was chairman of outside boards, I just said, what's next?
Speaker B:And I found my dream job.
Speaker B:So that's why I say I don't necessarily.
Speaker B:I'm not sure that he's up there pulling the dials on me, but he has directed me or she's directed me all my life to take the next step.
Speaker B:And this teams to me like the next step is writing two books.
Speaker B:And I'm working on the third right now of basically Trying to help young people, that 17 to 25 year old or the transition people, helping them get over a few of the bumps.
Speaker B:And I think this is, this is a need today.
Speaker B:This is a long answer I've got.
Speaker B:I'm developing a course which is now in certain universities.
Speaker B:Basically, universities do a decent job of teaching people how to make a living.
Speaker B:They do a poor job of teaching how to make a life.
Speaker B:This is what I'm focused on.
Speaker B:I hope that's to it.
Speaker B:Again, stop me, please.
Speaker A:No, no, you're good.
Speaker A:You're good.
Speaker A:So I also ran another book you wrote the island of the four Ps, a modern fable about preparing for your future.
Speaker A:Tell us about the four P's.
Speaker B:Four.
Speaker B:Four P's.
Speaker B:See, I want people to.
Speaker B:There's only one constant.
Speaker B:Two constants.
Speaker B:Not death and taxes, by the way, taxes.
Speaker B:You don't start until you're in twenties.
Speaker B:And death only happens once.
Speaker B:Two constants are change and your inner voice.
Speaker B:I want to give your inner voice a very simple both vocabulary.
Speaker B:All right?
Speaker B:And the vocabulary that I came up with.
Speaker B:And I came up with it because I used to have these yellow pads that I sat down and figured out what my next decision was.
Speaker B:Kept coming up with these words, find your passion.
Speaker B:What really makes you get up in the morning and jump out of bed?
Speaker B:What makes you take two steps at a time?
Speaker B:What really excites you?
Speaker B:Now, it's an overused word.
Speaker B:It's, you know, your interests, your talents and your situation, the context that you're in.
Speaker B:If you're in Kiev, it's totally different than if you're in New York City, you know, so, but it's, you know, that figure out what you really want to do.
Speaker B:Okay, that's find your passions, find your principles.
Speaker B:Find those things that basically, you know, those rules you want to follow those lines you won't cross.
Speaker B:You know, set those up as early as possible and then develop principles which are, you know, sort of second level principles that in particular situations.
Speaker B:For example, in work, I found that my great passion was to help people do better than they thought they could.
Speaker B:That was a sort of.
Speaker B:I learned that in college when I started a humor magazine.
Speaker B:I really enjoyed helping people.
Speaker B:Now the principle after that was.
Speaker B:And it's a simple one.
Speaker B:It's a, you know, you can accomplish almost anything if you don't care who gets the credit.
Speaker B:That's a cliche.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But it's true now that.
Speaker B:Now I extended that with a second principle is try to deflect credit.
Speaker B:I developed a Habit of deflecting credit.
Speaker B:I would say, you know, they would say, ed, you did a great job.
Speaker B:No, no, I did a good job.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:But Jose and Mary, they're really the person that did it.
Speaker B:And by the way, nobody does anything by themselves.
Speaker B:One of the trifecta, right away, you feel good.
Speaker B:Person talk to, you feel good.
Speaker B:And when Mary and Jose find out, they feel good.
Speaker B:So that's the principles.
Speaker B:And principles go on.
Speaker B:You know, my biggest principle today, ask me very simple, is gratitude.
Speaker B:I'm very grateful for everything given to me.
Speaker B:So your principles evolve and some principles go away.
Speaker B:Like I just said, my principle, one of my principles on Wall street was to live happy, was to live hidden.
Speaker B:Well, if you're in the book business or selling idea business, that has to be eliminated or decreased.
Speaker B:It goes away.
Speaker B:I can't live hidden anymore.
Speaker B:Fact is, you know, every week we look and see how many followers I have on my Instagram account, you know, so that's just the opposite.
Speaker B:So some principles last.
Speaker B:Like the golden rule, which I got from the nuns, has lasted my whole life, you know, and that, you know, that's very important.
Speaker B:Find your partners.
Speaker B:You're only as good as the people you surround yourself with.
Speaker B:Nobody does anything alone.
Speaker B:All right?
Speaker B:And I find what I consider three kinds of partners.
Speaker B:Partners who can do things I can't do.
Speaker B:Partners who do things better than I can do them.
Speaker B:And then there's partners who do things that I do really well, that I don't want to do.
Speaker B:Partners.
Speaker B:If I can find those three kind of partners, I did find them when I was in work and I saw them, you know, then I really am way ahead.
Speaker B:Then I'm doing things that I really do well, that I want to do.
Speaker B:And each.
Speaker B:Each operation, each situation you're in requires different kinds of partners.
Speaker B:My business partners were totally different than my partners at the University of Rochester.
Speaker B:And you couldn't transfer a lot of those skills.
Speaker B:A great salesman, not necessarily a good development person, you know, a great administrator in business may not be a great administrator at a university.
Speaker B:So each time you have to have different partners.
Speaker B:And of course, there are some.
Speaker B:The most important partner, of course, is P1, which I call is my wife Barbara.
Speaker B:And I recommend to people you can.
Speaker B:The most important decision you make, maybe more than your passion, is find someone who you can support, who will support you, who can share your life with you, you know, because very few people really are interested in anybody else except themselves.
Speaker B:You find someone who's really interested in you, and you can be interested in them, you got a hell of a team.
Speaker B:We've been married nearly for this one will be 60 years.
Speaker B:And she's really interested in me.
Speaker B:She wants to keep me around, and so that's very important.
Speaker B:But P1 is the most important.
Speaker B:The other person that's important is find a friend.
Speaker B:I'll go to graduation.
Speaker B:I look to your left.
Speaker B:Look, find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and cultivate them.
Speaker B:Call them once or twice a year, you know.
Speaker B:And I had that particular person in college where he was the fellow who, after we were both in the Navy together, and he went to Harvard Business School and I went to work with Hercules Product, and he wouldn't leave me alone.
Speaker B:He said, ed, you've got to come up here.
Speaker B:This is your life.
Speaker B:He talked me into it, and I finally went up there.
Speaker B:I don't know how the hell I got in, but he talked me in at least a applying, and I did get in, so.
Speaker B:And Dick and I were together for all of our lives.
Speaker B:He died about 10 years ago, which is very sad.
Speaker B:But, you know, he was more interested in me to the day he died.
Speaker B:I mean, I call him up when he was.
Speaker B:He had terminal illness.
Speaker B:He'd ask me about my problems, was I working too hard, how was Barbara, how are the children?
Speaker B:He was my friend.
Speaker B:And having a friend is.
Speaker B:You know, I've had some very good friends in life, so I'm.
Speaker B:I've lost a lot of them because of my age, but I've had a lot of good friends.
Speaker B:So find your partners and then finally find your plans.
Speaker B:And that.
Speaker B:There's my mind.
Speaker B:Find your plans.
Speaker B:I get the same question for you.
Speaker B:One young man said to me, give me two of the ideas, Mr.
Speaker B:Hasring.
Speaker B:Give me one idea that I can use.
Speaker B:I said, sit down right now.
Speaker B:Write down where you want to go and how you expect to get there and why you want to go there.
Speaker B:So write your plans down.
Speaker B:And then when you're writing your plans down in my book, you'll see under the plan section, think about the drivers of the world, demographics, the economy, the government, geography, and most importantly, technology.
Speaker B:And try to find that wave or that cycle that you get involved in, because that will make your joint journey a lot easier.
Speaker B:Or if you decide to go into something where the wind is in your face, that's okay, as long as you recognize that the wind is in your face, and therefore it's going to be more difficult.
Speaker B:You may not get to where you want to go, but you may want to do that in particular situations.
Speaker B:I mean, a friend of mine went to Ethiopia.
Speaker B:He's a spinal surgeon.
Speaker B:The wind is going to be in his face all his life.
Speaker B:Yet the demand for his activity was so great that satisfied him.
Speaker B:He changed lives.
Speaker B:Last 25 years, he's changed and saved more lives than almost anybody I know because he's one of the two people that do what he does.
Speaker B:Almost the whole continent of Africa.
Speaker B:His name is Rodis and he's in the Mary Theresa Clinic in Ethiopia.
Speaker B:Now, about me.
Speaker B: You know, what did I do in: Speaker B:I became the chairman of the chairman, basically the managing partner of a very small brokerage firm.
Speaker B:And over 20, a 14 year period, we grew it 20 times.
Speaker B:20 times from 20 million in sales to nearly half a billion.
Speaker B:And for me, 70 employees from 800.
Speaker B:And Ed, you did a great job.
Speaker B:Yeah, I did do a good job.
Speaker B:But the stock market was up 10 times during that period too.
Speaker B:So I had the wind at my back.
Speaker B:And I go through all the biographies.
Speaker B:That's the same thing.
Speaker B:Write those plans down and try to find that niche that, you know, sends you, that's pushing you instead of riding your bicycle into the wind.
Speaker B:So write your plans down.
Speaker B:So it's passions, principles, partners and plans.
Speaker B:And I can give you.
Speaker B:And I want to put it into what I call the four parts of life.
Speaker B:Self, family, work and community is my word for giving back.
Speaker B:Take those four P's and put them into self.
Speaker B:Put them into family, put them into work, put them into giving back.
Speaker B:Self, for example, self is a combination of your genes and your environment until you're 17.
Speaker B:That's why this book is so interesting, this four P's.
Speaker B:This young man arrives on an island.
Speaker B:You can tell he's about 18 years old.
Speaker B:You have no control over your life for the first 16 or 18 years.
Speaker B:You know, you have your genes, which you have no control over, and your environment, which have no control.
Speaker B:But you pop into a first job or a university, all of a sudden you ask questions about who am I?
Speaker B:That's what my course tries to come up.
Speaker B:Who am I?
Speaker B:You know, what part of me do I want to keep?
Speaker B:What part of me do I want to improve?
Speaker B:What part of me do I want to eliminate?
Speaker B:One of the things I want to add.
Speaker B:And that's why I want to do that formally at universities.
Speaker B:That's my crusade today is have a course where a freshman sits down and asks these kinds of questions.
Speaker B:Who am I?
Speaker B:You know, what do I want for family?
Speaker B:What do I do for Work and what do I want to give back someday again.
Speaker B:We can spend a lot of time on each one of these, but those are the four words.
Speaker B:And I want the inner voice to be able to sort of focus in on those.
Speaker B:If you get it too complicated, then it gets a little bit difficult.
Speaker B:It makes the decision much more difficult.
Speaker B:You keep going back.
Speaker B:One of my passions, my passions change.
Speaker B:They change.
Speaker B:High school, what was it?
Speaker B:Baseball, basketball, math, science and girls.
Speaker B:That was my passion, right?
Speaker B:You go to college, what happens, you know, after my freshman year of baseball and basketball, I realized I was not going to be a professional athlete.
Speaker B:So I shifted from there to extracurricular activities.
Speaker B:Math and science morphed into engineering.
Speaker B:It took a little trip toward physics and I found that that wasn't for me, back into engineering.
Speaker B:But, you know, your passions change.
Speaker B:And I look at my passion, my passion was, you know, when I was in Wall street was to build a company.
Speaker B:My passion today is totally different.
Speaker B:My passion today is really to communicate an idea for a particular segment of the, of the, of the world.
Speaker B:This 17 to 25 year old who's got to make key decisions.
Speaker B:And I'm going to try to help him make those decisions by putting forth a formal experience where he ends up with a degree from a university or a school and a life design written in pencil, you know, so you got to erase it.
Speaker B:You know what I say?
Speaker B:When he comes to the turn of the road, it's not the end of the road, it's just a turning road.
Speaker B:He's got a plan.
Speaker B:He can start, take his pencil out and make that turn more easily.
Speaker B:I'll stop, I promise.
Speaker A:I am curious though.
Speaker A:As you think about your journey and your success and you becoming American dream, what do you see are the challenges that this next generation will face trying to accomplish even some of what you accomplished?
Speaker B:This is.
Speaker B:I think there's more opportunity today than ever was before.
Speaker B:More opportunity, more capability.
Speaker B:But it's much more complex.
Speaker B:That's why I think very early on your career you got to sort of focus in on what you really want to do.
Speaker B:There are a lot of blind alleys in this particular arena as well.
Speaker B:You can go into an industry that can be over in three years.
Speaker B:You go into an area can be over in three years or two years or even worse than that, you go to a business that's just topping out.
Speaker B:So I think that there's got to be much more time spent, you know, early on figuring out what you want to do.
Speaker B:And testing, first of all, testing.
Speaker B:I tested all through my life, I tested physics, which I looked around after six months and I said, boy, I took an advanced physics course.
Speaker B:This wasn't for me.
Speaker B:My junior year, I get fascinated with large projects, you know, big, like dams.
Speaker B:And they were building the St.
Speaker B:Lawrence Seaway.
Speaker B:So I hitchhiked up there and got a job, and I loved it.
Speaker B:Pouring cement, you know, 200 foot structures and so forth was great.
Speaker B:Then I looked around and I said, wait a second.
Speaker B:You know, these guys got to live in trailers for a year, for 10 years.
Speaker B:And, you know, St.
Speaker B:Lawrence Seaway was a nice place compared to the, you know, jungles of Venezuela or the mountains of Pakistan where they're building big electrical plants and so forth.
Speaker B:So I decided that wasn't for me.
Speaker B:I did the same thing in graduate school, going, I wanted to be an international businessman.
Speaker B:So I worked in Belgium, learned French.
Speaker B:Next summer I worked in Central America, learned Spanish.
Speaker B:Both was just too early.
Speaker B:In the 60s, it was too early for international business.
Speaker B:So today it's much more complicated and they got to do much more testing.
Speaker B:And I think that's very important.
Speaker B:And that's why I think again, you have the ability too, you could pump into AI.
Speaker B:You know, here are the six things that I want, and they come back with a series of possibilities.
Speaker B:You know, you got a lot more.
Speaker B:You have a lot more resources than you had before.
Speaker B:And I'm just.
Speaker B:I'm worried about the era.
Speaker B:I think the era is a little more difficult.
Speaker B:You know, one of the things I considered always historic eras are very important.
Speaker B:We could spend a day looking at my father's life.
Speaker B: He was born in: Speaker B:By night, when he 14, the Spanish flu.
Speaker B:1918, you had the First World War.
Speaker B:Then you had a few crazy years where he made a lot of money.
Speaker B:Then he lost everything in the 20s with depression.
Speaker B:Then the Second World War.
Speaker B:The 60s weren't simple.
Speaker B:70s were inflation, you know, so you can have a difficult period of history as well.
Speaker B:And if that's the case, and young people are going to have to sort of, you know, cope with that because realize in the last 40 years, it's been pretty damn ex 9, 11, which was, you know, somewhat of a situational situation.
Speaker B:One part of America.
Speaker B:Last 40 years have been unbelievable in so many areas.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, medical science, transportation, just about everything.
Speaker B:You know, it's been just.
Speaker B: to use the stock market, but: Speaker B:Today it's 45,000.
Speaker B:So think about that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or real estate.
Speaker B:You know, real estate in the world has gone absolutely crazy.
Speaker B:I mean, I bought my first house for $60,000.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:I can.
Speaker A:I could talk to you all day, Ed, but I am.
Speaker B:Does it doesn't answer your question?
Speaker B:I hope that more than answers.
Speaker A:No, it did.
Speaker A:No, you're.
Speaker A:You're good.
Speaker A:I love to ask my guests this question.
Speaker A:As you think about all that you've done, what do you want your legacy to be?
Speaker B:That I tried to help people do better than they thought they could.
Speaker B:It's a very simple legacy.
Speaker B:I'm very lucky.
Speaker B:I have a number of legacies already.
Speaker B:Of course, the most important legacy is being married for 60 years and having three children and eight grandchildren.
Speaker B:And that's a legacy by itself.
Speaker B:But at the University of Rochester, I was the chairman of the board of trustees, and they were nice enough to name a engineering school after me.
Speaker B:And that's a legacy.
Speaker B:In fact, these kids who graduate from my school now have to learn how to pronounce my name correctly, which is really important.
Speaker B:And I have a legacy.
Speaker B:I have a legacy in business, because I did, you know, I started a company, grew it very well, sold it, bought it back, sold it again.
Speaker B:So anybody who was partners with me did very well during that period.
Speaker B:My final legacy is the golf club.
Speaker B:I came to Nantucket, they rejected me at the local golf club.
Speaker B:So I built my own club, you know, and I found.
Speaker B:I found the land.
Speaker B:I found the guy, bring him in.
Speaker B:We put together.
Speaker B:25 years later, we're no longer a golf club.
Speaker B:We're an institution.
Speaker B:We're the largest charity on the island.
Speaker B:Last the other night, we gave 20 scholarships to the students at the local high school.
Speaker B:We have 90 kids in college.
Speaker B:We support 90 charities on the island right now.
Speaker B:That's the legacy.
Speaker B:I'm member number one.
Speaker B:I mean, nothing's better than going up to the snack bar when they ask you what your number is, number one.
Speaker B:So that's like, what I really want to say is, all through my life, I want my legacy to be that I tried to help people cope, do better than they thought they could.
Speaker B:You know, just.
Speaker B:That's a very simple legacy for me.
Speaker B:And also, you know, I want people to recognize that, you know, you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to push other people around to get where you're going.
Speaker B:I've always found that, you know, if things don't work out for you as they didn't for me, Lehman Brothers is to change your direction and find out what's next.
Speaker B:There are two other.
Speaker B:There are two sets of two words.
Speaker B:One is what's next?
Speaker B:The other one is thank you.
Speaker B:If you'll see my email, the end of my email, if all my emails have automatically have thank you on there.
Speaker B:And that's really very important to me.
Speaker B:So that's my legacy.
Speaker B:It's simple.
Speaker B:It's just, you know, maybe couple those two together.
Speaker B:Helping people do the and by the way, one of the reasons helping people do better than they thought they could is allowing them to recognize that if they get blunted in the direction, they can change direction and they'll be fine.
Speaker B:And I did that a couple times in my life.
Speaker B:I'm doing it again.
Speaker A:It's awesome.
Speaker A:Where can people find your book on the Road, Less Travel.
Speaker A:And your new book that's coming out, the island of the Four P's you just pump in.
Speaker B:What's nice about having a crazy name like mine?
Speaker B:If you just go to Amazon and put in Ed Hadron, you get the two books.
Speaker B:So there's some benefit to that.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker B:A couple of the book companies have it as well.
Speaker B:You can go to my website to www.and there if you there's enough stuff on there, they don't have to read the book.
Speaker B:So it's a bad deal.
Speaker B:But there you can also buy the book on my website as well.
Speaker B:And by the way, the both books are audible.
Speaker B:And the second book, the island of the 4Ps has six voices in it.
Speaker B:The gal did.
Speaker B:First time she's ever done that.
Speaker B:And it's really fun.
Speaker B:She has six voices and it goes very quickly and it's written.
Speaker B:It's like a play.
Speaker B:She takes out all the hard stuff at the end of each chapter.
Speaker A:So that's so good.
Speaker A:Ed, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast and providing such great content.
Speaker A:And thank you for pouring into people and helping them do better than they thought they could do.
Speaker A:So I appreciate this conversation.
Speaker B:Good questions, always make a good interview.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:I appreciate it.
