Name: Blackstone CEO Leadership Lesson: Think Big and Never Give Up
Uploaded: 2019-09-16
Duration: 7 min 20 s
Description: Stephen Schwarzman shares his life lessons in building Blackstone Group into one of the world's most successful investment firms.

[ MUSIC ] Steve your book is filled with so many stories about your successes and struggles in building Blackstone into this powerhouse investment firm that, that it is you call it What It Takes. So what does it take what is the single most important ingredient behind your remarkable success? Well, it takes enormous tenacity and the ability to sustain failures, the ability to learn from failures, the ability to have a big dream Because you only can do one thing at a time and it might as well be consequential. Well actually in your book you have 25 rules for working life and at the top of the list is do something big. Why is that so critical Because if all you're doing is what everybody else is doing, but just doing it a little better. It's harder to be successful because other people already doing it pretty well. If you do something that other people aren't doing, you have to make sure you're not too early. If to make sure you're not too late. But the vision itself is what really drives the success of the outcome. You certainly did something big when you launched Blackstone, but it turned out that raising big sums of money turned out to be a A lot harder for you and your co founder Peterson. You were both very successful Wall Street dealmakers at that time and yet it was very difficult, and you write the rejections were horrible and humbling. What kept you going? Fear of failure and also we announced That we were going to be successful. That's what entrepreneurs do. They don't say well I'm really on the fence. Let's see what happens. And once you make that committment, then you have to see it through. It's not always easy. Sometimes you have to change a bit what you're doing to meet a market. But you never give up Your first look of the business world and what it takes to be an entrepreneur came from being a young boy working your father's linen shop in Philadelphia. What was the most important business lesson that you learned from your father? Well my father always treated customers great They were always the most important thing. Secondly was stocking great merchandise at a reasonable price to keep people coming into the store. And from my grandfather, I learned you always fold something that a customer took and just left in a Mess. So, excellence was important. Well, there is no option in my family in that setting, it had to be right. Looking at your personal story. You were a good student in high school you were track star you went on to Yale University. Harvard Business School. You worked at many of Wall Street's top firms and then you started a Blackstone. There are so many young people who aspire to have a fraction of your success. What would you say is the message that you want young people to take away from your story? I think people should do things. That they're really comfortable doing that they love. And you should find what that is. Maybe it takes one job that doesnt fit that, or two or three. But when you see it, you'll know it, and then it's not work anymore. It's fun, it's play. And that's the way you really find your place in the world. Well you have a specific profile candidate you look for when you're hiring and you call it in your book 10's how do you describe a 10 what are the key characteristics? Well 10 is somebody who can make almost anything work Who can anticipate problems in the future and can see opportunities, go and get them and manage people, attract talent, be pleasant, be team oriented and have enormous energy. So when you want to identify that person, what is the key question you ask in a job interview? There is no key question, you just sit there and let it happen. What I'm looking for is how rapidly can they process something? How sincere are they? Are they expressive? Do they seem to be centered? So that stress doesn't really get to them. And, it can even be a little playful. That's fine. All of us deal with people all day. Who wants them to be boring? You've been very generous in sharing your wealth, well over $ 1 billion in gifts to Yale University, MIT, Oxford New York Public Library of course you created the Schwarzman Scholar's Program in China many many more, many business leaders are not as generous, why is philanthropy so important to you. I saw that my family, my grandfather when I was a very young boy used to box up and ship. Wheelchairs and other things to Israel for an orphanage that he was the patron. And also I like helping people. It's just an impulse. And I do these big things. I also just help individual people I read about in a newspaper or see on TV Just because they have a problem. You write that you dont want to retire. You dont want to slow down. There's so much more you want to accomplish. So what's the next big thing for you? Well I want the firm to keep flourishing. There are so many different things that we can do there. It's really extremely exciting. In the not for profit area It's hard to know what i'm going to do next i've done a bunch of educational things because i really care that everybody in society gets the best opportunity they can get educationally so i'm playing in that sandbox at the moment but i'll eventually go other places. What about politics is there anything big you'd like to do in Washington Absolutely not. That's a very tough place to be now. It's adversarial. It's a contact sport. Everybody becomes a target and if I can help, and I've done that, you know, when George Bush was president. When president Obama was president and now president Trump being president. I'll help any organization any administration to do something that I think is good for society. So Steve, what do you want people to say about your legacy? I don't think about legacies Susie. I don't look in the rear view mirror. I'm always looking forward. I'm always looking to see what can be created, what can be done, what makes things better. And someone else will have to define a legacy for me, not me.

Blackstone CEO Leadership Lesson: Think Big and Never Give Up

Leadership

Stephen Schwarzman shares his life lessons in building Blackstone Group into one of the world's most successful investment firms.