Cal Fussman - Compounding Human Connections

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome to The Art of Investing, the pod class devoted to helping you more fully experience the joys of compounding in all its forms. I'm Paul Beuser. And I'm Rick Berman. We're your hosts. In each session, our teachers will be some of the world's most compelling people from across the vast range of human achievement. Take your seats. Class is in session. This show is brought to you by Pine Grove Studios in collaboration with Colossus. The hosts of the show, Rick Berman and Paul Beuser are the co-founders and co-ceos of SATA Grove Holdings and co-ceos of SATA Grove Management Company. All opinions expressed by any of Rick, Paul, or their podcast guests are solely their own. Do not reflect the opinion of either SATA Grove Holdings or SATA Grove Management Company. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions. SATA Grove Holdings are clients of SATA Grove Management Company named and maintained positions and securities discussed in this podcast. Our teacher today is a legendary journalist, Cal Fussman. Simply put, whatever we do with our lives, our ability to connect with others is one of the most value-creating forces that we can harness. Whether you're trying to get your first job, or you're leading a large company, your ability to authentically connect with others is one of the most important skills you should be cultivating. And yet, for a variety of reasons, spanning both societal and technological, connecting with others is becoming a bit of a lost art. To help us explore this topic, we track down world-renowned interviewer and storyteller, Cal Fussman, whose curiosity and gift for asking good questions has led him to a career centered on connecting with others. From his time in Esquire to his podcast, Big Questions, Cal has interviewed nearly every prolific figure imaginable. Business icons like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, actors including Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood, sports figures like Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Serena Williams, and even Paley, and of course, world leaders, including several US presidents. Today, we try the tables on Cal, putting him in the hot seat that he's accustomed to reserving for his guests, in order to examine a range of topics, including what he's learned from interviewing so many exceptional people, why human connections matter so much, and how we can get better at making them ourselves. Now, in addition to this fireside chat with Cal, he also led our class in a fascinating workshop on the power of storytelling. We didn't record that bit, but for those interested in exploring having Cal speak to your company or team, on harnessing the power of strategic storytelling to forge a unified vision and building stronger connections, visit calfussman.com. With that, I hope you enjoy our class with Cal Fussman. (upbeat music) - Come on, woo! (upbeat music) - Cal, welcome back to the Art Investing. - Thanks. - I think we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about compounding human connections today, and there's nobody better to unpack that topic with than Cal Fussman. I was just hoping that you would go back for us and talk to us a bit about where this all started. I mean, where did you get this impetus to begin to find ways to connect with people through asking questions? How did that all originate? - I'll take you back to a day in 1963 that may seem like a long time ago, but what you really see, when I tell this story, is everybody has felt this story in a different way. It just, you were in a round in 1963, but sometime in your life, I guarantee you felt this sensation deep inside. And in November, '63, I'm in second grade, small sky in the class, and Miss Jaffy, the teacher, goes outside for a few minutes. It's a Friday afternoon, Eastern time, and she comes back two minutes later, a different person. Same clothes, but her face is blanched, and she starts talking so carefully, is almost as if it's scary. And she tells us that President John F. Kennedy has just been shot. Well, at that point, school was not far from ending, so when it did, we all ran home. Every television in America was on, and Walter Cronkite, the CBS announcer, told us all that, John F. Kennedy, have been assassinated. That's all that was on, anybody's mind, anybody was talking about it in that night. My parents sets themselves, wow, this is the first time that cows had to deal with death. I don't know how he's gonna handle it, maybe he won't be able to sleep well. So he called me over to kitchen table and said, "Cat, we just want you to know this has been such a tragic day. You know, you've never been through anything like this, but the country has a plan. This has happened before, and we're all gonna move forward. And the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, is in place, so you don't have to worry. Tomorrow morning, you get up, you're gonna have breakfast like you did this morning, and you're gonna go out and play like you did last Saturday." And so they leave me there, and I'm sitting at the table, and I'm thinking of this guy, Lyndon B. Johnson. And to show you how naive I was, I thought, if you had a middle initial, that meant you got to be president. 'Cause the only people I've ever heard of with middle initials were like, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. So I'm thinking this guy, Lyndon B. Johnson, he knew he was gonna be the president. Is he happy? Is he the president? Or is he sad that he's the president? 'Cause of assassination. And then I thought, oh man, what if he's scared that they're gonna try and get him to? So I immediately picked up a piece of paper and a pen, and I just start writing, "Dear President, Johnson, how does it feel?" And I asked him if he's happy, if he's sad, if he was scared and wished him well, and folded this sheet up and thirds, stuffed in the envelope and the timing was just right, because I just learned how to address the envelope. I wrote, "President Lyndon B. Johnson, the White House put my address in top left hand corner. I knew where the stamps were. Grab them, lick the stamp." That's how we used to do it. Put it in the top right corner. And I took this envelope in my pocket. I didn't tell anybody about it. Next day I went out and I dropped it in the mailbox. I had a time start to pass, and it was a very, very crazy time, because right after that, the suspect in the case on National TV was seen shot dead. And this thing just wouldn't go away. And then there was the funeral procession and the time of Kennedy's son saluting, as coffin went by, and it just took America in a completely different place. But I just forgot all about the letter. Till about five months later, my mom comes racing up the apartment, holding an envelope in her right hand. From the White House, addressed to me. And we opened this letter, and it's from the president. And the crazy thing about it is he didn't write it back to a second grader. I had just turned seven a week before. He wrote it with reverence. And we knew that because the second sentence began something like an answer to your query. And I had no idea what a query was. But I knew that the apartment was filling up with people. And the principal at my elementary school found out about it. And he was calling asking me to bring it to school. And I learned something really important that day, that a single question could get you to the most powerful person on earth. And so that day shaped the rest of my life in so many ways. Now, here's the thing about curiosity. You can tell me if you've seen this in your own lives, would I just referencing that moment from when Kennedy was shot? Other people that I've told that story to have had a similar moment on 9-1-1 or in 1985 when challenger spacecraft went up with a teacher for the first time and exploded before everybody's eyes. So you had all these kids in elementary school that were watching TV as spacecraft went up. And so everybody knows that feeling of something happening that's so big and enormous. And there's tremendous sadness attached to it. And you can resonate with that. But here's the ultimate curiosity takeaway that I found. When you're four years old, you're asking up to 300 questions a day. You're probably driving your parents nuts. I said, why? Why? Why? But why? And then something happens when you go to kindergarten. They tell you, you can't just blur it out. Why? You can't just ask a question. You got to raise your hand. And then he said, see the kids just go, excuse me. But as time goes by, the questions get less and less. And then middle school comes. And it can be embarrassing to ask a question. And then the more time passes, the more curiosity can be tamped down. You get your first job at a college. Imagine you're in a position where you're around all people in the company who are older, experienced, And something comes up that you don't understand. Are you gonna ask the question and say, I don't understand or admit that you don't understand or you're just gonna be quiet and hope that you'll somehow figure it out. A lot of people remain quiet. And curiosity just keeps on getting tamped down. And my curiosity, because of that day, just kept compounding. Wherever I went, I just looked for ways to ask the right question. And it took me to interview many presidents and Nelson Mandela and the Kel Gorbachev and people who shaped the world over the last 75 years. So that was a moment for me that got it off the ground. - It's a remarkable story. I do think about, of course, the presidents that you've interviewed and a lot of individuals who on the one hand have accomplished the extraordinary, but also many who are very hard to exit or hard to crack. And you've had a gift at opening up some of these individuals in a way that others have not been able to. In a really authentic way too, when you are sitting down with somebody and this can apply to all kinds of interactions with people whether it's an interview or some other context, with that first question. There's so much writing on where you begin. And your advice to us into the class was to take that first question and don't aim for the head but aim for the heart. And we've actually sought to apply that in art of investing since that point. But I'd love to hear again just where that wisdom came from and I'm sure it was reinforced over time. - Yeah, two stories come to mind. I'll explain the setup and then how it came to light right in front of my face where I was doing it, but then I understood what I was doing many years later. So what happened is when I graduated from college, I got a job as a journalist and that makes sense because I was asking questions all the time and lemme to write stories. And after a couple of years on newspapers, I found this amazing job in New York writing for this magazine where I was able to go to the bar every day after work with some of the best writers in America. And it was like a dream. I'm going to interview the Pittsburgh Steelers while they're trying for their fifth Super Bowl ring and I couldn't ask for a better. This was my dream. And then this magazine just went out of business. It was a critical success but not so financially. And so I just didn't know what I was gonna do. And so I called up my mom. I said, "You know, I think I'm gonna take some time off and do a little traveling." She said, "Oh, that's a wonderful idea." And she had no idea when she said it that it meant I wasn't coming back for 10 years. I'll tell you how the trip got going and the way it played out. It really comes down to four words. I had no money. I had a little money but not enough to stay in hotels, certainly not every night. So what I would do is I would go to a train station or a bus station and I would get a ticket. I wouldn't even ask where it was going. It didn't matter to me. What mattered to me was the trip down the aisle. 'Cause I'm walking down the aisle of this train or this bus. And I am looking for an empty seat. I empty seat next to somebody. I'm looking at feeling like I can trust them and they can trust me because once I sit down and that train starts rolling, I know a conversation's gonna start. At the end of that conversation, at the end of that ride, I need them to invite me home. 'Cause otherwise I got no roof over my head. And so that is where it started. And I'll tell you how serious I took this. I had to be walking down the aisle and I passed just approaching a beautiful woman. Could be a supermodel. There's no rings on her finger and she sees I'm different and she smiling at me. And I just walked right on by. Because let's face it, there was no way she was taking me home. Grandma in the back, that 87 year old Hungarian toothless grandma, she could be winner. So I go back to the spot next to Grandma, I sit down and train starts rolling and I turn to and say, what makes a great gulash? She doesn't speak any English. Now we're trying to place your aids. It's making no sense to either of us. But the great thing was, this is before the Berlin Wall came down, there were always young people in college who wanted to learn English and they would come over. He wants to know, how do you make a great gulash? And then you see her just swell. I'll tell him how to make a great gulash and she starts talking about the care and the love, the time, the ingredients and her grandmother's gulash, and then she turns to these students and says, I've been on this train a long time and I've seen some of you. And never once has any of you come over and asked about my gulash. And this young man comes from thousands of kilometers away just to find out about my gulash. Will you tell him he's coming home with me and he's going to taste my gulash. So, train stops Grandma takes me home. And the next night, I am at the head of the table surrounded by people because Grandma has just alerted all the neighbors, friends, distant relatives. What's up? And the whole room is packed with people as I lift the gulash up to my lips for the first time. I tasted my eyes closed, my cheeks rise were rapture, and the room goes nuts, you know. He loves Grandma's gulash. Four-day party breaks out during which time somebody else comes over and says, have you by any chance tasted homemade apricot brandy? No, my father, he makes the best homemade apricot brandy you will ever taste in this world. You gotta come and go, okay? So, he goes to his father's place, another party breaks out. This one's like for a week. And during which time, another guy comes over and says, have you ever visited Sega, the capital of paprika, the world capital? And I said, no. And he says, you cannot leave hungry as without visiting Sega as my guess, okay? And that's how I got passed around the world. Because people would tell their friends about me, and then I would show up where their friends live, and they would be waiting at the bus station. They would take me in and show me around. And so, it was a grand tour of the world for 10 years. And that is where I really learned to interview. Now, I don't know what it would be like if you tried something similar now, because number one, you get on a train or get on airplane, people got earbuds in. It's not as easy as start a conversation. And then I was just in South Korea, and I realized, another thing that I would do is I would go to a restaurant, and I would try to order the local food in their language, which I always messed up, which always made the person who was in charge of serving starts laugh. And then this whole conversation would break out to help this poor guy get the best food, which would lead to, well, you've got to try this restaurant. And they'd all want to take me around. It was just so natural. All I had to do was mess up somebody's language. Whereas now in South Korea, I went into this restaurant, and there was this video display up, and it had a picture of the breakfast, and the price, and you just tap it, and it comes to you. So there was no connection other than the transaction. That got me very concerned, because I'm just seeing how we are all being disconnected in really small and some very big ways. And it's one of the things that I'm trying to stop. And help connect people, even with the stories that I hope you'll be telling later on, perhaps you'll be able to use them in a job interview and connect with the right company. So that is the setup to when I first noticed the moment you're talking about. Do you want me to tell the Gorbachev story now? I'd love for you to tell it. Let's go. We'll get out. So after going around the world like this, and meeting so many people on buses, it was the way I learned to interview. So when I came back to United States, and I started working for Esquire Magazine, and I'm interviewing people who shaped last 75 years, my interviews were different from everybody else's, because in my mind, I was putting them in the empty seat on the train next to me. And the best example of this came in February [BLANK_AUDIO] 2008. I want you to come with me to New Orleans because Michael Gorbachev is in town to speak about abolishing nuclear weapons. Now this was years after he was the leader of the Soviet Union. But as they tell this story, it's even more impactful now because everything that you're seeing going on in the world in Ukraine is happening because we're not following what Gorbachev hope to achieve with a sense of openness and breaking down barriers. So I'm sitting at hotel lobby waiting to meet him. I got an hour and a half to ask him any question I want to fill up square as what I've learned column. I've done my research, well prepared, ready to go, phone rings. It's the publicist. Cal, sorry to tell you this but your time Mr. Gorbachev is gonna have to be cut short. So now I'm a little concerned because this column that I write what I've learned is not in my words. It shows up in Gorbachev's words and those words can't just be any words. They got to be extremely wise words, nuggets of wisdom. So there's no way I can fluff this up or fill it out. I need an hour at the very least 45 minutes to reach into him and extract the wisdom to fill up that column. So I say how much time do I got? And the publicist says 10 minutes and I say 10 minutes. That's crazy. I can't make this work in 10 minutes. You promised an hour and a half. And she say, "Cal, I'm sorry. A lot of very important people have been added to the list to see Mr. Gorbachev. There's nothing I can do about it. Do you want the time or not?" So of course I take the time but as I hang up the phone I'm feeling more and more and more and more about this because I know that I'm in a walk in the room. We're going to shake hands. We're going to exchange pleasant trees. We're going to be seated. And that's two minutes right there. Plus my question's got to be translated into Russian. And his got to be translated in English. That's another two minutes there. So this interview is down to six minutes before it even starts. But you can only do your best. But here's where that first story came in. Because when I wrote that letter to President Johnson and I got the response that I did, it was like putting a payment in that was going to compound and start compounding. And so I wasn't panicked. I just was able to go in there because I knew there was a lot of compound curiosity in there. And I knew a secret that I hope everybody will walk out of this room with. And that is that the best questions make the person asked just as curious about the answer as you are. They might be even more curious about the answer than you are. So the point of time arrives. Publicists squirts me into the conference room. And there he is. Scorby. Look over me. He's a little older than I remembered. And I just looked at him and I knew he's there waiting for the first question to be about nuclear weapons, to be about Ronald Reagan, to be about world events. And I just write the bet. Looked him in the eye and said, "What's the best lesson your father taught you?" And he's surprised. Doesn't say anything. It looks up. He's searching. And then it's like he's seeing a movie of his childhood playing out on the ceiling. And he starts telling me this story about when he was a boy. And his father got called up to fight in World War II. Now the Gorbachev's lived on a farm. He starts describing the journey from the farm to this town where they were going to see the dad off with the other people who had joined the army. And as he's describing this trip, I'm thinking I never heard of this before I've done this research. I just hasn't come up. This is amazing. And then another part of my brain just starts screaming. Wrong question. This interview is going to be over before the Gorbachev's even get to this town. But they do get to the town. And when they do, Mr. Gorbachev buys them ice cream. And he's remembering this ice cream. He's remembering the aluminum cup that it was served in. He's talking about this ice cream as if it's in the palm of his hand. And the more he talks about this ice cream, the more we both seem to have this realization that this cup of ice cream was the reason. He was able to make peace with Ronald Reagan and then the Cold War. Because this cup of ice cream contained the memory of what it was like when his father went to war. The dread of not knowing whether you'd ever see his dad again. So he's looking at this ice cream. I'm looking at ice cream. He's looking at ice cream. We look at each other and we're thinking, man, this is deep. Just saying knock on the door. It's the publicist. Mr. Gorbachev, time for the interview will have to conclude. And he looks to publicist, looks to the interpreter, looks at me and he says, "No, no, no. I want to talk to him." And publicist is shocked and she backs out the room. And the conversation continues, goes deeper 10 minutes later. Another knock on the door. Publicist comes in this time a little more sheepishly, if he's Mr. Gorbachev, Cal, time, and Gorbachev said, "No, no, no, no. I want to talk to him." Publicist backs out of the room. The conversation is really going great now. It's going deeper and deeper. And 10 minutes later, there's another knock on the door. And this time she comes in and she's in full out panic. Mr. Gorbachev, Cal, please, the day was planned for the second. We've got the events lined up. There's a long line of people out the door waiting to meet you. The mayor's out there. I don't know what to tell everybody. Please. And so he just looks at me with this shrug and a grin that says, "Hey, what can I do?" And we concluded the conversation and I got enough to fill out the column, turned out into a huge success. And when I thought back on why, I realized if I hadn't asked my first question for the heart, I never wouldn't have gotten that insight. If I had asked a can question, I would have gotten a can to answer. And six minutes later, the interview would have been over. And I never would have known what's possible, which is why one of the gifts I'd like to give to everybody here is if you want to make a connection, aim your first question for the heart, then follow with the head and then follow the heart and the head on a pathway to the soul. And you'll have a deep conversation with somebody and you just never know where it's going to lead. We were lucky to meet you a few years ago through a good friend, Will Barker, who runs Camelot, partners, and he told us we had to me count because he's the best storyteller and he knows how to get to the heart and the soul of an organization or a person. Give us some other examples. I know we talked about Larry King last night, a mentor and hero of yours. There's other sports figures, movie figures, but we'd love to just unpack a few more. Okay, anybody here have fears about a head shake today. Everybody has fears. This is a great way to change way you look at fears. It came to me to Kobe Bryant who sadly passed away a few years ago, but he was telling me this story about when he was four years old and he got enrolled in karate. I guess the little outfit that he was in arranged, a tournament and there was some combat involved. And Kobe was a white belt. He had just started, but somebody must have recognized his athletic talents and he was then paired to go into battle against a brown belt, which is way up the ladder. And Kobe just broke down and started crying. This guy's going to kill me. I'm not going out. There's no way. I'm done and his mom came over and said, "You get out on those mats and you can front that guy." And he had to do it and he walked out. The combat started and he said, "Oh, I got my ass kicked. There's no mistake about it. The guy knew what he was doing and I really didn't." But after a while, I was able to land. By the end of it, I realized, "Yeah, I'm still here and I did okay." And on the right home, he just, at four years old, recognized, "Look how I was before I went out on the mat. I was filled with fear." And the reason I was filled with fears because my imagination took into account all the worst things that could happen to me. And it just blew them up. Then I went out and it wasn't anything like those worst things. It wasn't real. And so he said from that moment on, he was never afraid of a challenge because he was go back to that first moment where he was able to develop the sense of awareness around. It doesn't mean that something couldn't be difficult. It doesn't mean that there was something not to be concerned about, but he just made himself aware that I have a choice to let my imagination take this as far as it possibly could, or I could just think of what happened to me on the mats that karate tournament. I know that maybe this fear isn't really as big as I'm cranking it up to be. And that lesson will serve anybody here today because I'm trying it and it works. That characteristic of self-awareness and self-reflection, it's crazy to think that Koby had that at four, but it does seem common in a lot of these individuals that ultimately go on to achieve some level of greatness in different fields. I'm just curious, have you thought about other commonalities of all the people that you've studied? There's obviously these great athletic figures like Serena Williams, we've talked a lot about her last night in Koby and Muhammad Ali. Then there's presidential figures and you were telling a Tom Cruise story last night, which was super fascinating. Are there other elements of these extraordinary human figures that you've seen, that you ultimately feel there's a pattern to? Well, you're always going to see, no matter who your hero is, I guarantee you that they made great connections. Maybe they had it, they were blessed with it. I'll tell a story about Serena Williams in her first tournament. You will see that nobody does anything by themselves. We need to fly you to show me somebody who, on their own, with no help, with no mentoring, did it by themselves. There are no heroes like that. There are so many people behind them, which is why it's scary to me to see us being disconnected. We can also think we're being connected when we're looking into a cell phone or we're looking into a computer, but it's not quite the same thing as an authentic legitimate connection. I'll use this story of Serena Williams because it just shows you how different her life could have been if there was a different dynamic in her family or she was born Serena, but didn't have the family emphasis on tennis, everything that happened, it was all built for her. What happens is her dad starts both Venus, her older sister, and her playing tennis at a very young age. They're in Compton, California. It's not like they're a beautiful clay courts to play on. It's a very rough neighborhood, but they start to get really good at a young age. In fact, by the time Venus is 10 and she goes into a tournament, it's hard for other players to even win points. That's how good she was. Serena, and I believe she's nine years old at this age, her dad says you're not old enough to play in the tournaments. She's watching Venus and she said, "You know what? I really should be able to go out there and play. I think I can do pretty good." So while Venus is out playing and her dad is watching Venus, she goes over to the table and registers, even though her father told her you're not ready, we'll talk about this at another time. They know her dad and so they don't ask for any money. They just, "Okay, Serena, if you've seen her around, they sign her up and say, "Right, you're on court too," or whatever it was. She goes out, she starts playing, and her dad is looking around while Venus is playing, so what happened to Serena? And so I'm saying, "Oh, I saw her playing on the other court." And he said, "She's not playing. She's not allowed to play. There's no way she's playing." And he said, "Well, I saw her out there." And so Venus wins her match and he goes around looking and he finds Serena on the court playing and Serena looks over and is thinking, "Uh-oh, I've been busted." And she wins the match. She thought she might be in big trouble, but after she won, her dad said, "Well, maybe she is ready." And he went back over to the registration table and he officially registered her. And now Serena moves through the competition and it's her and Venus in the finals. They play and Serena wins a couple of games which to anyone else would be a huge victory. But Venus wins six, six, six, one, something like that. I don't even think Serena remembered. But here's the nugget in the story and you talk about connection and you talk about everything her father put into their careers, but this was a real, crucial piece. They get their trophies. And Venus picks up her winning trophy. Serena picks her second place trophy in one's gold, one silver. And Venus looks over at Serena and says, "You know, silver's my favorite color. Would you mind trading with me?" And Serena says, "Yeah, sure." And Serena got the gold trophy. Now if you think what if the older sister there had just had the attitude, she might come after me someday. I'd better smash her here at the start. No, she was there to protect her and connect with her in any way. It was a mad sort of protection around Serena that Venus gave and it just followed her through the rest of her career. And so you think of what she was blessed with from the start, the dads ambition for them both, but then to have that protection and to be given the permission to be as good as she could possibly be followed her for the rest of her career. Inside of compounding connections and having a partnership, you've often talked about the need for resiliency and how tough life is. I know we're here with some younger folks who maybe have seen a lot of challenges, maybe haven't yet, but with the passage of time, it's inevitable in any life. What stories do you have? Maybe looking at someone over the course of their entire life where they've fought through and they've compounded in unique ways, whether it's with capital or companies or relationships or knowledge, but we'll look for you to unpack that a little bit. I got one they just found. This guy became a hero to me. I had never heard of him. I was in Korea not long ago and I was up by the DMZ where the border between North and South Korea is. And I saw a picture in the museum they have there of a man next to a cow in this museum. And I'm thinking what is going on. I'm told that his name is Chung-Ju Young. And he was born in 1915. He was born in North Korea as a farmer. I think he's the oldest of seven kids. He was doing a lot of labor and it just made him wonder is this all my life is ever going to be? And he wanted more. So when he was about 16 he ran away from home to try to make it somewhere. His father immediately found out. Got him brought him back. I don't know if it's a year later. He ran away again. His father went out and brought him back. On the third time he took one of the family's cows and he sold it to get money for a ticket. Now take him as far away as possible so that he wouldn't get caught. And he did go far but eventually they found them and they brought him back. One till the fourth time that he was able to spring his escape. And he ended up in South Korea doing some odd jobs. He was taken advantage of like a construction site but he started to make money on his own. And he got a job as a delivery boy for a rice company and all the people that he delivered to apparently just were really impressed and they told the owner who promoted him to the store. And then a year later the owner of the store got sick and he just turned to Chung and he said, "I want you to take over the store." So he takes over the store and it just starts going into the stratosphere. It's doing great but it was the time of Japanese colonization and the Japanese said, "No money's going to be made through rice from a Korean store and they shut them down." And so he went back up home but he still has ideas and he eventually comes back to the south. Knowing much about cars, he starts an auto body. And same thing, he figures out ways to hire people, to do the work faster, cheaper, people love it. And then, just as it's rising, the war breaks out and Japan says, "No, we need this factory for our war effort. They shut him down." It goes back up north, and after the war, it didn't know much about ships, but he started to build ports, did some shipbuilding, and then started a car company, which you all probably know it's called Hyundai. And so now, I think the third largest seller of cars in the world, or at least in the United States. And years later, and you talk about connection, like in 1998, as an older man, he goes back across the border from South Korea to North Korea. Of course, permissions were aligned with a thousand head of cattle as a gift to the North Koreans to pay back for the one cow that he had sold in order to try and make his escape. I'm watching this, and it's just a great lesson for everybody. And it doesn't matter what your situation is, because things happen in the world that can catch you off guard no matter how high you think you've gotten, and you can get knocked low. His life, to me, was a symbol of, in his own word, was it's all about conviction, no matter what the problem is, you just keep going to get to the place that you want to go to. And I forged a deep connection just through that story. I hope that somebody gets in a position where things are not going right. You will be able to access that story, and just keep going. Because if you have in your mind where you want to go, you will get there. I've got some other stories of young people out of college who came into crazy situations, but through the art of connection, they were able to leapfrog to incredible places. I'm happy to share them. It's good. So this one, I had her on my podcast. Her name is Nelly Galan, and she is a Cuban immigrant who came here, I think, at five years old to New Jersey. I think it was a struggle for her parents to enroll her in a Catholic school, but she studied, and when she got to the stage where her education was gifted with a diploma, she got a job as a reporter in Boston at a CBS station. And now, if you're an immigrant and you get that job, and now people can see you on TV, it's like a symbol that you've made it. And so she's doing this interview, and two business moguls come in to be interviewed. And they obviously saw something in her, because at the end of the interview, they said, "What are you doing? Where do you want to go?" Because we just got a TV station in New Jersey, and we're looking for one person to get it started. And she's thinking, "I'm in Boston at CBS. I'm going to be on TV. I'm going to the big lights, and you're asking me to go to a little station in Newark, New Jersey. That's in a gun-infested area where they're going to need a bodyguard to get her in the door." And one of these moguls said to her, "Are you rich? Do you have a lot of money?" And because we're rich, and we can tell you that if you are employee number one at a company that is going to be maybe a billion-dollar company, you're going to do real well. And much better than if you take this factory cookie cutter reporter job. And she starts thinking about it, and she takes the job. And goes into this little, which she saw as a rinky-ding station, and just starts to manage it. And a few years later, it's making eight million dollars a year. And she's on a roll. She gets opportunities to build a small building in a different town, and she's feeling great. You're thinking, "Okay, this is beautiful. It's like being employee number one in Google. Everything's set up." And then one day, she said, "Worked." And she had been like a mother to this company. And the lawyer comes in and said, "Company just sold. There's a car for you and a little money, and that's going to be it." And she said, "What? After everything I did, the company's just sold." And she's in a ladder. She's in a fury. And she does something that she said, "You're never supposed to do. She just calls the boss and says, "I need to see you right now." And drives over to New York City, goes to the park avenue office of the boss, and is weeping. As she comes through the door, the secretary in the front doesn't even know what to do. Just lets her straight in. And she goes into the office and is saying, "How can you do this? How can you sell my baby? I mean, you didn't even tell me. This is crazy." The guy who owned the company looked at and said, "Young lady, those are my chips. If you think you're some smart, go get your own chips." And she thought, "What an ass! What an ass!" And she leaves. And once she leaves, she takes a couple days to think about it. And she realized he didn't say, "Hey, you did a great job." And, "Oh, I feel bad. But you like us to find you another job." He didn't say that. He said, "Go get your own chips." And then she started thinking, "Maybe he thinks I'm good enough to get my own chips." And so she starts another company. Years later, she becomes the first American female president of Tel Amundo and is a mobile in her own right to this day. It's just an example of even when you think things are going great and right, something can happen that can knock you off balance. And what she told me was that moment was the most important moment of her life, because it mentored her to see a bigger picture and to say, "What can I do with my life?" I think a lot of young people find this out where you start out thinking you're going to do one thing. And then, along comes a moment like that and a connection is made. That man who told her, "Get your own chips." Who is a mentor to her for the rest of her life. And you talk about connection. Everything that she did after that point, and even up to that point at the little station, was because of that connection she made. And it was a human connection. And it was, she had no idea that connection was going to show up the day that she interviewed them. And I'm telling you, this can be the case in all of your lives. There's some human connection that is waiting to happen. The question is, are you going to be aware when it shows up? And there's no different from Kobe talking about being aware of your fear. And so, this is about being aware of this possibility to take this job. It wasn't when I was thinking. And now I'm going into a place where I need a bodyguard to get me in the door, but look where it all took her. It was a human connection. And these human connections are what has fueled us all these years. It gets me a little nervous in the age of AI where people think, "I'll just let AI do it for me." Because it can't do it the same way. At least not right now, it's just not human. These moments are going to happen to you in a human way. We were sharing with Cal, the story of Father Hesberg. It's really fascinating because we really stumbled on this conversation and immediately realized this is essentially the subject that we wanted to discuss. And here was maybe one of the greatest human connectors of all time. Father Ted is extraordinary in a number of ways. In the ways that he served the country and the church, of course. But we were talking a lot about the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. And I think Cal has got some King stories. And I was just recounting Father Ted's involvement in the civil rights movement. Really culminating in his being part of the initiative. Civil Rights Commission that President Eisenhower established in 1957. And the initial composition of that commission was three Southern Democrats to Northern Republicans and one independent father Ted. And he went on to serve on that commission into the early 70s until he locked horns with President Nixon over something. But particularly those first five, six years of the commission really led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There are countless examples of how father Ted brought that group together in order to get these reports to the President and to Congress and ultimately to get these different civil rights acts brought into law. There's of course that now, at least on campus, legendary story of early on, I think it was in 1959, the group was having a lot of trouble as you might expect, coming to some form of general agreement across a number of dimensions. And one of the things that father Ted observed was that while most of the commission disagreed fundamentally on a lot of things, including the politics, most of them were actually avid fishermen. And he decided that it would be useful to get the group together out fishing on boats and actually brought the group up to Landel Akes in Wisconsin, which is a track of land that the university owns. And really it was over the course of those handful of days that the group banged out. The very first, I think it was published in 1960, but the very first Civil Rights Commission report and across, I think, the 11 or 12 different subjects that they were trying to find alignment on. There was only one that they didn't have universal all six agreement. There was one that was a five to one vote. But he was able to build that bridge by finding these human connections and fishing. The mindset was establish these connections, build connections. And really all of that was in the spirit of affecting change. And the change that can come about when you were able to harness human relationships and build friendship, build community, build a sense of common understanding. For those of you who may have never heard of father Ted, while not as well known as he should be today, he was arguably one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. So Father Hesburg was a theologian by trade and a Holy Cross priest. He was president of Notre Dame for something like 35 years, during which he was a social activist, public servant, globally serving essentially all the presidents and popes in office throughout his career. Consider this, he was the first and probably the only Catholic priest ever named to Harvard University's board. He was also on the board of Chase Manhattan Bank, Chairman of the Rockett Fellow Foundation. In terms of some of his government assignments, he served on the National Science Board under Eisenhower. He chaired the Select Committee on Immigration and Refugee Policy under Carter. And he actually has more honorary degrees than anyone who has ever lived on the planet. I think it's more than 150. So definitely somebody worth studying and I'd recommend starting with his autobiography, God Country Notre Dame. Okay, now back to Cal and the classroom. I have a story that really goes to show how there are these connections that are all around us. You don't even know that they're there if you're just seeing things from a distance. But I'll tell a story about the I have a dream speech. There's something that very few people know. I know it because I know the guy who actually has the paper that the speech was written on. And the words I have a dream are not on that paper. And so what happened was Dr. King was speaking at the churches all over and as he would speak, he would talk about this dream. It was part of his talks. And there was a gospel singer named Mahalia Jackson who often went to the same churches and sang while he was speaking. She knew because of this continual connection, his whole repertoire. When this event was built in Washington, it was not really created for a church crowd. It was created for a huge American audience. And so Dr. King actually had somebody who he worked with right the first six paragraphs or so of the talk so that it was aimed at everybody. And then Dr. King wrote through the rest of the speech. And he got up to get the talk and he's giving it. And it's going over, hey, but if you're a Mahalia Jackson, the gospel singer who knows what's possible, you're looking out at the crowd and thinking, oh, this is not going the way she had hoped. The crowd is responding nice and warmly and it's going well. But at about three quarters of a way through. And there's a ring of people behind Dr. King as he's giving this speech. He pauses for a second. And Mahalia Jackson shouts out, tell him about the dream, Martin, tell him about the dream. As soon as she says it, he pushes this speech side and you hear, I have a dream. Now you talk about connection. You talk about leadership. The whole movement was vitalized with those few words that would not have come out that day. If it hadn't been somebody who's seated there, carefully listening to what he was saying, carefully watching the crowd. And remember, she's a gospel singer. She's a performer in a way. She knows what works. And she just stepped up and connected with him so that he could connect with everybody. And it's just an example. These connections are happening for us all the time. If you pay attention to them and obviously Dr. King was, because as soon as she said it, he understood exactly what she wanted to get across. And as soon as he went into I have a dream, everything changed. And not long after that, President Kennedy identified it as I have a dream speech. And the guy who got the speech, this is interesting, he was a student at Villanova, visiting a friend's house. He just talked about connections here. His friend's father said, what are you guys doing over the next few days? And they said, I don't know. And he said, why don't you go up to Washington and listen to Dr. King's speech? So they went up and this guy's name was George Rabbling. And he was a basketball player at Villanova. So he's a big guy. One of the organizers walked over to him and said, you're pretty big. We need some extra security. Do you mind coming on stage when Dr. King is speaking and serving as security? And he said sure. And so now he's on stage. Dr. King gives a speech afterward. He's being congratulated. He walks over to shake his hand. He said, do you mind if I have that speech? And Dr. King just sure handed it to him. Now all this is just connection after connection after connection. But you have to recognize it. The way Mahalia Jackson did or you have to ask for it the way George Rabbling did. And now he is telling people like me the story. So fascinating. And I think for those of us who are wondering how applicable this is to say being an investor or running a business or various other professions, I just reminded so much of Brad Gerstner who was with us of Altimeter Capital. And by the end of it, what essentially he had put together basically this tapestry of fascinating individuals who over the course of 25 years have really gone on to shape the technology landscape. And the connections that he had made at various points of time with many of them had begun very early in his career. And what was so interesting was fast forward 15, 20 years later of building relationships, friendships with these people. One of them is the current CEO of Uber for example. Similar, I think close friendships with CEOs of some of the other largest technology companies, some of the other great technology investors. And then what's possible when you have allowed those human connections to compound over meaningful periods of time. And it just reminds me that again we keep coming back to this silly little compound interest equation. And it's so hard to appreciate initially where compounding can take you. Because as you say, I mean it happens gradually. It's the persistent nature of it though over meaningful amounts of time when you begin to look back whether it's a life of somebody like father Ted or influence of Mejelia, tomorrow Luther King Jr. or a zillion other dynamics or even just the relationship of Richard Williams to his daughters Venus and Serena. Let's assume that the audience, the class, is in agreement. Human connections matter. But you look around today and we're living in a society in a world that for a variety of reasons, building those connections seems a lot more difficult. A lot fewer people open to building real authentic connections. There's a technology component to et cetera. But just curious what you would say to those of us who say yes, I want to get better at building human connections. I have no clue how to start. Here's the thing, the technology is making our lives more efficient. and better every day. And somebody pointed this out to me on my podcast. He was saying, if you look at humans, we're basically just moving along in a horizontal path. We haven't really changed that much. But the technology is at a 45 degree angle going up. And so we're in a place where technology is just starting to move so much faster than us, which gives us time to do more things. But it also messes with us in a lot of ways. And I'm all for AI. Don't get me wrong. But if it's saving you time, that means you have more time to make human connections. And it's the human connections that are going to take you everywhere. So it's really as simple as being able to ask a question to get a conversation started. I'd like to ask you about a couple of individuals that you've spent time with. Beyond even interviewing, I think that some of these folks you've built meaningful friendships and relationships with. With many of these individuals, those that are no longer with us, the connection that you built with them is in a way it's like having boardwalk and park place on the monopoly board game. There's stuff that you've experienced through the connections with some of these people that I think is just truly a treasure. And so if it's okay, I'd love to just ask you about a few folks and what they mean to you or what you learn from them. I wanted to start with Larry King. Sure. He was the ultimate connector. He was the person who helped put CNN on the map. But before then, he started out on radio in Miami. And then a guy had an idea to have one voice on from 11 p.m. at night till five in the morning, all over the country on a mutual radio network. And he chose Larry because he knew how Larry connected with people. And so basically for five or six hours every night, wherever you were, you could turn on the radio and be listening to Larry King either interviewing somebody or telling stories. And for many people who worked at night, he was like a friend because you just keep tuning in night after night after night. And then he got the job to anchor CNN at nine p.m. which meant that you could watch Larry at nine o'clock and then he went off at 10 on CNN, but he would say, "Tune in to me on the mutual network from 11 to the morning." So literally for six to seven hours a day in America, you could be listening to him communicate his work. And he would have meals with people in Washington. It was power lunches. When he went out to L.A., he had breakfast in Beverly Hills. At a place called Nate Niles, old school Delhi. And I went out there to help him write his autobiography in 2008. And he said, "Just come to breakfast. Everybody at the table was 75 or older except me." And breakfast was every day. At this breakfast, anybody who walked into this place and everybody knew Larry was there would come over to the table. So if you would see people in finance like Mike Milken or Rupert Murdoch of Fox, they would just stop in the table, sit down, the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, and he just had this way of connecting everybody. So I had breakfast with him every day that we were both in town for about 12 years. But the interesting thing that I was relating this morning is that my daughter, who was six years old at the time, started to come to breakfast every Saturday and then it became every Saturday and Sunday. And she became a member of the club. It completely changed the way she might have seen the world because if you're six or seven or eight and a young girl and you're suddenly around men that are over 75 you get used to something else. And so when she graduated from college and was going through her job interviews, in many cases the interviewers were older men. And she was completely in a comfort zone because of all those connections that were made and she's able to get a really good job. And there were a lot of reasons, but one of them was she was able to sit in on this king of connection and understand how it just rippled out like throwing a stone in the pond. It lands and then it just goes and goes because every person that fathered Ted made a connection to him, he understood that he was now connected to all their connections which is the most relevant thing for everybody. You make one connection, you have so many more connections. And I know it's easier to think of it in terms of social media where you see numbers on Instagram going up or Twitter, TikTok and how many people you could reach. But these connections are different connections. You're seeing these people. You're looking into their eyes. You know whether to trust them or not. And so having somebody like that where you're with them all the time and you're connected to all their connections, I saw it. People would come to the table and Larry would say, "Oh, let me introduce you to Cal. He helps me write my books. All of a sudden they were my friend. I don't have to do anything. It's just another testament to this. And why anybody would want to give this human connection away is crazy to me. And maybe you don't. It just harkens back. Talk about compounding when I sat down at that breakfast table with Larry King. If it had been a bank account, I would have been a billionaire at that point. I would have all the people that he was connected to. It concerns me that we don't take advantage of it as much as possible. I hope that at some point everybody in their life will look up and realize, you know what, that could be a good connection and just follow all the ripples. Sharp left turn to boxing. You had an unbelievable opportunity to get to know Muhammad Ali the champ. Ali back when he was living actually quite often attended the finals of Vangelbouts and he would come to campus for that. And so there's a special place in Noreem history for the champ. But curious just what you would want to share about your time with him. I got to spend a week with him and it's a really long story. But he had Parkinson's disease at the time. And it was very difficult for him to speak. And yet in the time that we spent together, he as my childhood hero treated me in a way that made me look up to him more just from the way that he treated me. Then when I saw him on a big screen as a kid and was cheering, he understood connection maybe on the same level as Larry King. And they were good friends. At one point lived in New Jersey and people could literally knock on his door. And he would come out and do magic tricks for them. That's how connected he was with people. I mean, I don't think there's anybody out there like this. There was a story of him walking through very quickly, almost running through an airport with somebody to catch a flight. And somebody saw him, the older person, and asked for an autograph. And he stopped to sign it. And the person with him said, "Look, we're going to miss a flight. Why'd you do that?" And he said, "Because that was the only time that person was ever going to have the chance to interact with me." And I wanted it to be a beautiful moment. And I'm not sure if the story ended with a missing flight or not. It'd be better if they missed the flight. But he had that quality of making people feel like they were with him. Even if you never met them. A lot of leaders have that. Well, you don't even have to know them, but you feel a part of their journey. It's just as good you connect with them. And you don't even need the question. You can connect with people in so many ways. You could be walking down the street, walking your dog, your schnauser. And you see somebody coming down the street right at you, and they're walking their dog. And it's a schnauser. What are the odds that you're just going to pass each other without saying a word? It will never happen. We are social animals. We are here to connect. Part of my mission for the rest of my life is just to make sure that this is not taken away by all the social media. We think we're connecting, but we're really not looking somebody in the eye and having a human experience. Because that is where you're going to find the gratitude and joy and the good times. I'm not saying this can't happen through a phone, but there's just something different. When it's human in real time, and it's probably because you can trust it. There's a lot of things on social media that you really can't trust. This in real time, connecting as human is something that you can trust and build on. I love it. Kyle, what a treat to be with you on campus and to have you join us today. Thanks for being with us. You are a bright light man. Keep on shining. Thank you all. Thanks so much for showing up to class today. For more art of investing episodes and to explore all of the resources we mentioned today and more, check out staygrovy.com. That's stay grovy.com. That's it for now, and we'll see you next time.