Jamie Dimon 0:00 

A lot of businesses you've seen this, you know, you if you have a second rate execution, you're in trouble. You know, if you have a first rate execution, you can run a pretty good business, whether or not you have a perfect strategy.

David Novak 0:20 

You know, some leaders talk a big game. Others, they just deliver big results. If you want to know what separates the two, keep listening. Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Jamie Dimon. He hardly needs an introduction. But since 2006 Jamie has served as the chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the world. And in this conversation, you're going to get the full Jamie Dimon experience. He's got so much insight into what it takes to cut through the BS and execute big changes in your business. I love that about Jamie. He has a real allergy to anything that's going to gum up the works with too much bureaucracy or over strategizing. The great leaders know, and Jamie knows it for sure that you get results when you get to work. If you want to cultivate a bias towards action. You're in the right place. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Jamie Dimon,

you know, Jamie, you've done a million interviews, okay? And I'd kind of like this one to be a little bit different, maybe even different than anything I've ever done on on this show, but I want, I know you're a master storyteller. Basically, we're going to try to share the stories of your life and the learnings that you had along the way. And you know, I know it's going to be a lot of fun for me, because I've, I've been a part of at least a good deal of your business career. I know your father was a stock broker, and we've talked a little bit about him, but I've never really heard you talk a lot about your mother. Could you tell us a story about your mom and and and a leadership lesson that you you picked up from her? Yeah,

Jamie Dimon 2:17 

I mean, I'll do both a little bit. You know, my parents died in 2016 and if you'd asked me before that about, you know, credit for you did, and how you grew, and stuff like that, I probably didn't talk about a lot. But now I'm looking back and you realize that very fundamental values you have, you know, come from them. And the values were pretty basic, and I call them Greek, but they probably were just values that a lot of you know, folks have one is you do the best you can, and whatever you do, you do the best you can. It wasn't about how you did. It was simply that, did you do? Did you give it your best? The second was, you treat everyone well, like you know, if you mistreated anyone, like a waiter or taxi cab driver, that was unacceptable. And as a codicil to that is you didn't allow other people to be bullies, you know, it sometimes got you in trouble a little bit. And the third was, is do something with your life, you know, but it's about purpose. So my dad was a stock broker, but he was much more interested in philosophy than being a stock broker and and the purpose could be so my older brother became a physicist, a real physicist, or MIT near Chicago, Niels Bohr Institute, my twin brother became an educator, but it was doing something purpose, you know, you know, draw your Picasso and and make the world a better place through that purpose. And you could be art, it could be science. Could be teaching. It could be could be being a parent. It wasn't, you know, anything that just do it well and have a purpose and and they were pretty strict about that, but both of them, you know, my mom, my mom was a Spartan and I said, I really mean that. I mean she was a beautiful woman, but she was pretty tough, like I never I saw her. The only time I saw her cry was when JF Kennedy got killed. I got home that day and she was crying. Other than that, not even when you told us you had pancreatic cancer or, you know, and she said, I've had a great life. And so she was, I would say, kind of stoic she became very early on in women's liver. And she also went back to college. When I went to college, so she hadn't finished college. She'd gone for a year to a Brooklyn College or something like that, and then stopped to be a mother. So she always did things like, Oh yeah, I'll tell you a quick little story about my mother. My mother, we must be 12 or 13 years old, and my parents are having a glass of wine in the living room, and my father said to my mother something about her name was Themis, which means justice in Greek, by the way, I believe the gods of justice. And he used the word you're acting hysterical. And I didn't remember those books about the second Mystique, or the second the second sex. And she said, I told you not to say that Ted. He said, Well, when you're acting hysterical, you're acting hysterical. She said, I told you not to say. That. And she said, he said it one more time, and she walked up to him and took her wine in his face and left the room. And he was in shock. And the three boys, we've never seen anything like that, not in my house. And now, of course, the three of us were like, the revolution has begun. Because he was, he was the boss, like, just you, and it was like, we're gonna overthrow the King. And to his credit, when we all sat down for dinner a little bit later, he came back and said, I just want you all to know your mom was right.

David Novak 5:27 

So that sounds like the Jamie diamond. I noticed the other. The other

Jamie Dimon 5:32 

thing about Mother, you gotta say my mother was a, was a, was a Freudian, so my father kind of was, but my father was much, was more like us. He like, what did they do? But she was like, Why did they do it? So you have these conversations, I don't care why they did it, you know, it's what they did and so, but because of that, I read a lot of Freud before I finished college. I mean, I read almost all before I finished college, just how, you know, how people think. And of course, a lot of Freud was wrong, but it is a real insight into trying to figure out how the mind works.

David Novak 6:04 

Yeah, how much do you think that really helped you as you started working with people, quite

Jamie Dimon 6:10 

a bit. You know, I always try to be, I think both sides, you know, trying to act and do something, but also try to figure out people and their, you know, their motivations. They're all those EQ things you talk about. Are they real or authentic? What motivation? Why? Treating people respectfully? So yeah, I do think it helps in part of your life, you're always thinking how the world works, but also how people work. And both, as you know, both those things can be very complicated, and we still spend most of time trying to figure that stuff

David Novak 6:41 

out. You know, how did the fact that your dad was in finance and, and, you know, was totally indoctrinated in that world, you know, how did that impact, you know, where you headed and, and when you think about your dad, what was the biggest thing you learned from him that you took into the business world. So

Jamie Dimon 7:02 

of the three boys, I was the only one who took an interest in finance. I worked from the Samuel basically, like doing mailings and answering phones and stuff like that when I was 14 or 15. But I was interested. I was always, I always read the papers. I always read the business section. I read the sports section. I read the so he nurtured that, you know, he he didn't make anyone do it. Like I said, my older brother became a physicist, my other brother educator, which my parents enormously respected, but I was interested in that part of the world, and so he'd give me stuff to read. I remember reading a book that Merrill Lynch had done, like how to read, an income statement, a balance sheet. I read Graham and Dodd. There's a big, thick one, but there's a one called the Intelligent Investor. I probably read it when I was 15, and I bought my first document about 14 or 15, and so that my interest was peaked, I wasn't heading to be a stock broker. In fact, my father didn't want me to his his view, you know, a lot of people like the grass is green on the other side. He didn't think it was what I should be doing or stuff like that, but, and I didn't had to be a stock broker, but, yeah, of course, it nurtured my interest. And, you know, I wrote a couple of papers in college about business and stuff like that, so I was interested. And, but the interest was more about building something, building something great. You know, I would read the stories about companies that had really done interesting stuff and built things and bought things and, you know, made, you know, made more employees and stuff like that. So, so, yeah, it nurtured. It gave me stuff to read. I remember a very humbling thing he came home one day a couple of times. Remember young brands to take a business you think you would understand, like a restaurants, you know, and and you can understand what the profits are, and you actually eat there, as opposed to, like, you know, chips, which is hard for a kid, but he would, he would take in the back then annual reports were much shorter, and he would rip out the page and had the price, they say, read this thing and tell me you would pay for it. And for anyone out there, I don't care how smart you are, how good I think you are. You would be humbled by that exercise. And so it really becomes a discipline about what makes you think about things now you think about values and and

David Novak 9:11 

that's so cool, so great. And so you grow up in this rough and double neighborhood. You get the street fights, and here you end up going to Harvard. Okay, I don't really see you as a Harvard guy. I know you could definitely, you know, you know, do well there, but you know, that had to be a different kind of place for you. So

Jamie Dimon 9:31 

I, so I went to Tufts University. I got it was one of those deferred admits. So, you know, you're going to go, but back then you had to work for two years. I worked at a consulting company that doesn't exist anymore. And I, I, you know, I did well at school, and I was, I didn't go in very nervous like that. But my wife tells the story, because I met my wife in the second year there, as you know, that, you know, I was the guy in the class, like wearing the leather jacket, a t shirt and jeans, you know, not prep. You. You know, and I hadn't gone to Harvard undergrad, or Yale or Princeton or a lot of that, but I loved it because the Socratic method, you know, for those who don't know, you're sitting in class with 80 people, you read cases, and then the real world is messy. So this is not like theory anymore. You can really talk about capital markets. It isn't like, you know, supply demand curves. It's like, Why did things trade this way, and why do people do those things? Why do so many business ventures succeed and so many fail and and be learned that in even today, if you and I went there and sat through a good case, as your friend Andy Pearson taught and I went there when he was there, you learn a lot from listening to other people. And that is a great I still do that. You sit around the table, why? What? When you went to other companies or things, and so I liked it. I wasn't, you know, people were afraid of public speaking, had a hard time. People who weren't a little proficient in numbers might have had a hard time. But I kind of, kind of loved it. Made some great friends there. So I still speak to, you know, you know, Steve Burke, yeah, my wife wasn't that happy with it. It made some people kind of nervous. But you know what? You settle in once you see the people. You get to know them and having fun every day. It's pretty good.

David Novak 11:10 

So you meet your wife, Judy, at Harvard. When was that? Aha moment. You knew that she was the one.

Jamie Dimon 11:18 

So she was introduced to us by a friend, Mandel. You may actually have met at one one point along the way. And, you know, I, I've she pointed out to me. And Judy was very pretty, you know, very smart, and I was so I was interested, intrigued. Right off the bat, she had asked to meet me, you know, and she thought I was just, I don't know, kind of cool, or something like that. She talked about wearing sunglasses and T shirts, and I really, really wear sunglasses. I'm not quite sure what she was talking about, but I called up her house. She lived with like six other women. One of them was the President of Finance club. I was a Vice President of Finance club and and I was speaking to her about some event we were doing. And then Judy got in the phone and said, Hey, do you want to play some tennis? I said, Well, sure, we hit it off right away. She says, went to have a molten or shake whatever that day. She says, I made her pay, which I don't think it's true, but and then we she had, she had a boyfriend, by the way, wasn't at Harvard Business School, but we started seeing each other almost every day for dinner after that, and and that that was that story,

David Novak 12:20 

fantastic. And how long you've been married? Now? Married,

Jamie Dimon 12:24 

4342 years. What would you say

David Novak 12:27 

are the biggest learnings you've had on how to make a marriage work for that length of time and have the success you guys have had as partners?

Jamie Dimon 12:35 

I mean, when you give advice in this you know that you you learn a lot. You listen to do it well, like, all the time. And so I'll tell you some of the things I think we did well. First, we were devoted to each other and kids. So we want to have kids. Want to have a family. She had a professional career, but, but for anyone out there, the younger people who listen to this, that's when you have a job and kids, and you're still, like, you know, 28 years old, that's when you're kind of burning the candle at both ends, and now you have a real obligation as to family, your wife, your kids and stuff like that. And I always tell people so the lessons, and I didn't always do these right, is you need to make sure that you take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul, your friends, your family. It doesn't happen automatically. And you and I have seen a lot of people professionally, in any profession, and maybe not in profession, they start to neglect that stuff. And you're, you know, it's bad, it's bad for your health, it's bad for your family. You end up getting divorced. So it takes time, and it takes attention, and that's the most, probably the most important thing. I think we never did this, but I think it's very smart for, you know, I was working so hard that we took family vacations. We my wife and I very, really took a vacation as the two of us, which is now, like a standard thing, you know, people now, like they have the, there's a name for it. I forgot the name for it is my kids do it. I think it's just great, which, you know, and then we also get the grandkids a little bit. But I think people should do that focus, you know, spend time at the end of the day. It's going to be time and quality and so,

David Novak 14:05 

so you know, you meet your your wife at Harvard, you get, you know that that education that everybody craves for, and you loved every bit. Tell us the story of how you how you landed your your first job out of Harvard. When

Jamie Dimon 14:20 

I graduated Harvard, I was, I was going to Wall Street, you know, not necessarily want to be an investment banker, but they pay a lot, and you learn a lot, you know. And I just figured that first couple of jobs just learn as much as you can. And I had offers from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, which are three of the best, but Sandy Weill ran the firm that my father was at, and I knew him a little bit. I met I'd worked there in one summer when I was in college. Now, remember the old days data entry? I basically did data entry for budgets, and I had written a paper on the merger Shearson and sheerson on Hayden stone. My mother sent it to him, and he sent me a letter saying, this is a great paper. Or, you know, would you come? Would you want to come talk to me? So I went to talk to him, and he offered me a job working. He just soldiers and Hayden stone to American stress and get a job in the investment bank. I told him no, because I, you know, Goldman. I mean, Goldman is basically pay me a lot more and I and you, but more important than that is you get a lot more experience. And I thought, why would I give up? You know, great experience, Goldman, higher pay and and then he called me back. I'd become a baker scholar at Harvard physical which was important to him. He likes that kind of stature and status versus, you know, the top three or 4% of the kids at the school. And he then he said, You know what? I just sold a company here to America Express. He was very down to earth back then. I don't remember if you knew him, way back then, and America's press was more of a bureaucratic, you know, company. They said, I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I would, I would love to have you here as my assistant. You'll learn a lot, you'll see a lot, you know, you can always go back to Wall Street. And that really intrigued me, because I'd never been in, I really never seen a big corporation. I never, I thought, you know, he was an interesting he was very different than corporate America fundamentals, like a Jack Welch type at the time. And I did figure out, if it didn't work out, I go back to Wall Street or something so and I could totally my interest was in building something. It wasn't necessarily being an investment banker, and he had built Shearson Hayden stone, and then he had these big dreams about what might happen the American Express and financial services. So I took the crap shoot and joined him for a lot less pay. I mean, a lot less pay. But I didn't really care that much about that. I really cared about the experience.

David Novak 16:37 

Tell us a story about where you think you picked up and gleaned the biggest insight you learn from Sandy, well, and he was iconic. He was very much like a Jack Welch,

Jamie Dimon 16:48 

you know. So, I go to America. He wasn't the president. He became the president shortly after that. So, Sandy, Sandy, he, he was down to earth. He, you know, he didn't. He worked all the time for the company. Me, he'd have breakfast, lunch, dinner, you know, selling, buying, hiring, recruiting, always thinking about mergers, always what we can buy, what we can buy. So, like a lot of the birds we did over the next 20 years were because relationships we had to build up over a long period of time. He hated the bureaucracy at American Express. And, you know, one of the things that we all learn in life is when you like, when you work at certain types of things you don't like, you also learn very good things, what not to do. They were hugely bureaucratic. So they had, they had the board, and they literally everyone prepared for the board meeting, and then they had the pre board prep, and the pre, pre board prep. And it took. It took every month, and you remember Bob lip, who's still doing great, I speak to every now and then. Bob lip hated that stuff. A lot of the big banks had it was just bureaucratic, a lot of politics inside, and people didn't share information, and who's up and who's down and and internally, it was less of a meritocracy, more of a Who do you know and where did you go to school, at least early on. And he just, he just hated all that stuff. In fact, Bob live, of course, you may remember he when we got to travelers, when he joined us at commercial credit, is like, you couldn't make a presentation the board with the PowerPoint. Like he just said, we're not doing it, and you're not prepared. So I've never prepared a presentation for the board, ever, not once. I've done it for big deals we did and stuff like that, and so, so, so Sandy was always hustling that stuff. Always Wanted to Know the facts and the Bs and the bureaucracy, and it was a fanatic about expenses and growing. And we bought Lehman. We were there. He's always out with the salespeople, shaking hands, doing the dinners. You have a lot of CEOs who just wouldn't do that, you know, they just are too busy to actually hang out with their own people. And so you learn all those lessons.

David Novak 18:47 

Do you think leadership has has evolved in terms of what really makes a leader today versus in those days? And and do you see a difference? There is

Jamie Dimon 18:57 

definitely a difference. And I, when you ask questions like that, always think about what change, what is the same and what changed? So let me just do what's the same? Okay? Because I think you gotta be very careful about it, like it's totally different. I think in all these things, you know, like Andy Pearson was, was one of the great CEOs of all time you Jack was, before Jack was but the the mind power, the analytics, the detail, the repeat, the rinse, the go out to the store, the observe what's going on, to listen to people to do it again, branch by branch, product by product, service by service. A lot of companies don't do that, you know, and they've literally, and then even politics inside a company stops, you know, a full undressing of your own performance, like, how are we actually doing why? You know, if you're if you're in Pizza Hut, you know what not why is just Taco Bell maybe doing better? Well, why is McDonald's doing better? This company overseas doing better, and if you don't do that, it's very hard to become a great company. So I don't think that's changed. I think some companies rely too much on outside advisors and all that. Another thing that has. Not changed is, I'm gonna say great administration, meaning, you know, you look at and you've seen it, where some people run companies, they're a hot mess. People don't know what their jobs are. Meetings don't start in time. They don't return their phone calls. They're too busy, you know. And I was used as an example, a military example, but Eisenhower, you know, during uh, Norman D and D Day, 150,000 troops, 7000 ships, hundreds of aircraft, 30,000 paratroopers, food, guns, bullets, timing, planning. And, you know, you got to run stuff. So you may, you may not be the greatest analyst in the world, but you got to run it. And the people have nowhere their jobs are now you're doing it. And the last part's changed a bit, okay, and not for everybody, but, and I think it's the most important part. And you, you know, you were part of this too, but when I started working, there was a lot of the, you know, the pound the table and, you know, the politics and but I think what really makes a great leader is this part, which is heart and curiosity. Now you use recognition. I want to explain to your listeners a little bit how I see recognition, and what I learned from you your heart is you actually give a damn. It makes you authentic. You're not trying to be perfect. You make lots of mistakes, but they see. People know you are or they aren't. How you treat people, what you say, you do what you say, you follow up. And for everyone on the podcast, you've all seen the BS, ers out there, people, they think they're getting away with it. They generally aren't. And, you know, people don't want to work for those people and and you know, you can read all these leaders, whether it's military or history or business. You earn trust and respect. You earn it by by every day showing that you're going to work as hard as they do. You care as much you're trying to do the right thing. You're not trying to be right. You're the first person to say, I made a mistake, you're the first person to share credit. You're not the first person to blame the other person. Hang people high, make an example of someone unless they're doing someone unethical. And curiosity is the same thing, but you're always learning. So, you know, I used to go to some branches, you know, some stores with you every now, and the restaurants, and you're always learning. You go to, I can go to any branch that JPMorgan Chase today and sit down with the tellers. I'm going to learn some about which systems we have, but bank America does better. Why do we do this? Why does it take some as How come we can't do this in the branch and but, but there's a humility to that. There's a humility that being curious and learning, and I still see here, a lot of people don't want to get in the road. They don't want to go they don't go to a call center. They don't because they don't want to hear about the mistakes they're making and what they can do better from someone who, you know is Junior and doesn't have the same pressure they have. But as you know, you know the only reason you have these corporate executive floors. I love what Home Depot does. For those who don't know, in the podcast, Home Depot calls corporate headquarters. They don't call it global headquarters. They don't call it corporate headquarters. They call it store Support Center. That's why they're there, because there's a store, and in that store you have people coming in and and then you know how you treat people, not just the customers, but how the employees are treated, reflects to how the customers can be treated. So it's that whole combination of heart, curiosity, giving a damn, which makes you authentic, which is why people want to work for you, and you have much more of that today and in general, in the workplace, which I think is a very good thing, a little more empathy, a little more thought, something that gets overdone, but and then you you're you always talk about recognition, but you remember me telling you what I learned from you about what recognition really is. Recognition is really telling someone else what they did, acknowledging that you didn't do it, they did it. It's acknowledging to recognize someone else. You have to acknowledge you have to be curious. You have to understand that you're you're constantly trying to figure out what you can do better, and that the boss's job is to do, help everyone do the best they can. And recognition is this whole kind of part. I was never good at it early on in my career, but this whole part about the recognition that thank you, you know, sending a note to an employee whose customer sent a great letter about her. So it's constant learning, constant recognition, and people like it. Early on in my career, when I particularly was on Wall Street, I always thought recognition meant that people would be pounding the table for more compensation. But within the even with investment bankers, it was not true. They actually want to be appreciated for the job they did. It made them feel better as human beings, and they, you're, acknowledging that they did somebody for a client. That was great, you know, it made them feel important. It wasn't going to, you know, feed, may feed their you a little bit, but it wasn't. It's just treating people respect. Remember, he wrote that book? Oh, great one. Yeah, so the guy's trying to learn from everybody, and as he's learning and making mistakes, but that's how you do it, and it's that humility and recognition. I remember one year I decided to ask the senior investment bankers what they should get paid. And, you know, I thought might be a terrible idea, because at the end of the year, you have all these terrible fights about stuff like that. And I said, don't put in a memo. Just sit down with me. Tell me, did you have a good year? What do you think? What do you do? Well, we didn't do well, just verbal conversation. It's amazing that most of them were much more honest that way. They literally said, You. Know, you know, I did this. I think this, and I think my cop should be around a, b and c. And it was when you didn't do that that they came in with high demands, you know. And so I think just showing respect to people goes a hell of a long way, like those who watch TED lasso, yeah, that Ted lasso. The beauty of that story is that Ted lasso. What? He didn't know anything about soccer, but he can get them to football, get them to play as a team. Get rid of the demons each one have. Get them to respect each other more. Get them the fun doing it as

David Novak 25:31 

you were moving up with and taking on, you know, new companies with Sandy while you and lip, you know, travelers, commercial credit, commercial credit. You You were always, you know, buying these companies and then turning them around, you know, you know, what did you learn are the basics of fundamental turnaround. What do you have to do?

Jamie Dimon 25:53 

Yeah, so if you look what we did, we were quite successful, but it was not strategic. It was more opportunistic. So you're right. We bought companies. They had nothing to do with each other sometimes. And all cultures are very different. So the first thing I did was got to literally, would sit down with the management team like dinner, get to know them. What do you read? What do you look at? How do you run your joint? What reports do you have? Like, you know, what do you who would it be? And you could see instantly that a lot of people step up right away and they want to build a great company. They tell you what's wrong. And a lot of people, they defend themselves. They, they're blocked. They, they're they, they won't look at the numbers the right way. They look them in the way that makes them look better, which, of course, is, you know, is a disaster for any business and who's open. But the first thing is walk in their shoes so and go to the belly of the beast. So when I remember travelers the insurance company, I went to go get to know all the actuaries and all the underwriters. You know, when we, when we bought salmon brothers, I put an office on the trading floor, the fixed income train for the belly of the beast. Right there, they were shocked. I started going through all their trades and all their positions and take them to dinner and and then, and then start fixing it. I never we never looking back. We never said we're going to do a transformation. We just sat down with the business heads and said, What do you do? What are you doing? What are we going to build? What are you going to grow? How come not going to Salesforce? How come we're not doing this? How come this company is doing better? Should we should we fix the technology or expenses too high, you know, bureaucracy slowing us down, and then just start working it. Man, just over and over and over and and of course, you know, strategy is important, but execution often is more important. These already existing companies that usually were doing something poorly, and we got to buy them rather cheaply, and we basically fixed them. It doesn't mean we did the best in Australia. Strategy, you know, we tried to do that. But and, and you learn, you learn their cultures are different. You learn you shouldn't. You should never go into another place and just impose the way you do stuff on them, you know, because there's they exist for different reasons. You know, in the different regulations and laws and requirements, and you're hiring different types of people and but one thing that I learned all companies, a lot of companies, have bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is always growing. There's always politicians. They're always making it worse, and they're always waiting to see, are you going to be one of those, or the politicians can own you. So a lot of those companies, the corporate staff, tried to own the bosses on the floor. Oh, we'll take care of that. Don't worry. You're pretty little ahead. There's no reason to go to the sales conference, you know? I remember I got to bank one, you know? I i When I found out they were having some major sales conferences, they didn't even tell me about it. I mean, I was livid. I had to go, you know. And so you learn the cultures are quite different, and then you start working it. And then also, when you build things like, you know, if you if you decide that their systems are terrible in some area, you don't go in and say, your system is terrible. How can you put it stupid? I'm gonna redo this for you and get McKinsey or someone to come and rewrite it. You form a team inside to do it. You bring in some outside people. So by the time it's built for the stores, the restaurants they built it, you just nurtured it, and it came out a way that everyone thought was the best way, and and then you, you and I have learned all the tricks along the way to figure out the politicians and the Bs, ers, it's the meeting after the meeting. You know, it's coming. And presenting numbers in a different way than the company presents the numbers is they're backing out allocated expense when that includes rent or basic stuff. It's the people who, who you can see in the room. No one will disagree with them. It's the people who, when they go on the road, you know, and you start asking the loan officers or salespeople or branch managers. Hey, what can we do better? And they're kind of twisted in their chair. They don't like the fact that branch managers saying, Well, you know, why can't I change that my own hours? Why can't I do this? And why can't I do that? And they get upset. And so you're seeing this all the time. These not good managers. Some are bad, some are political. Some are just rigid. And you. So you learn along the way how to do all those things, how to get the numbers right, you know, report it right, share it with all the management team. So a lot of lessons I got from doing that. I mean, I used to go, you know, literally, sign checks some of these companies. I look at every vendor thing for a month or two to see how they're spending money. And then you'd be shocked. They're buying so they have no idea what they're buying, you know, agreeing they're signing. Okay, okay with me, but they don't even know what it is, and meanwhile, the person responsible for is not getting the bill. You know, I go on and on and on about the things you learned by going through these.

Koula Callahan 30:34 

Hey everyone, it's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app, every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app, and start your day every day with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds. Go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead.

David Novak 31:21 

I've watched you in action, and you know, you clearly have high performance standards, but you have a ton of heart. I mean, you know, and you're right. That's why people basically do want to work with you and stay with you. And you said, you know, as you were building, you know, all these companies with Sandy wild, you said he didn't really mentor you. You learned a lot by watching him and then applying what you saw to how you would go about leading. But you put a lot of heart into into those businesses, and then Sandy ends up, you know, terminating you, you know, you get fired by the guy you know. And that had to be traumatic, especially when you've given so much of your heart to those companies. You know what sticks you with you the most about that experience, that that you've tried to take forward, and the way, how you you lead?

Jamie Dimon 32:15 

So our relationship deteriorated from 1994 to 1998 when we did city, he set up a thing which I vehemently disagreed with, which was, you know, well, they gave me the title president, which I didn't ask for. And he had told John Reed Jamie, he's pushing me back, which I never did. I don't believe in fake titles. I was going to run the global investment bank, and then they changed it to be tri head to the global investment bank. So this is a global, complex business. I was like, try heads. Are you kidding me? So they had Try, try heads and CO heads of almost every division reporting to co head, Sandy and John. So just think of the complexity of that. And I told them, This is going to destroy the company. I said, You guys and John Reed wasn't used to being taught to like this by so and so he liked me, but he thought he was a little too aggressive. I said, this will destroy the company and and the second we announced this, people were digging trenches, stock playing ammunition to see who's going to win these battles. Sandy, John Jamie, this, this one, this, I said, and by the time you joke is figured out, we're going to lose a lot of good people. And I actually was the first casualty. Sandy called me up. We have, I had 100 kids at my house recruiting, you know, for Solomon, Smith Barney and these, you know, we had a management at four. He said, Can you come at 12? I said, No, I'm having a big buffet breakfast for these people. He says, important. So I go up there. I go to a room like this, Sandy and John are there, and they make a bunch of changes, and they listed change a, change B and change C, as we want you to resign church. I said, Okay, so I knew the game. They already talked to the board. They already lined it up. I was actually shocked about A and B. I was not shocked about C and I should have known that, you know, and Sandy, you know, I look you got to ask him the motivation that John Reed wanted to leave, I was gonna be I was the natural success. So that's one of the reasons John wanted to be at the company. Sandy convinced John that, if you know he, it's more important these two guys get along. And I think a lot of people, think a lot of the board members told me, because I knew them all, a lot of was that, you know he, that if you stayed, Sandy would have to go, and he didn't want to go. And obviously I think the board made a mistake, and this is where board should do the right thing and not the thing that makes the boss happy. Lessons Learned. Our relationship gone south a lot before that, I called him up after a year. He didn't call me. I called him up after a year and said, you know, same time he got together, he treated me, true. They treated me terribly in the way out, literally, they threw me on the street like they gave me an office, and then called me up right before Christmas. You got to leave the office. They said, Well, why? They say, Well, we're not going to give presidents of the company offices anymore. I said, Yeah, but you already have 5x Presidents and Vice Chairman of the offices. They said, Well, this moment going forward, not you. They said. Really? They said, Yeah, you have to lead by December 30. Anyway. I saw city a year later, and I walked in and he wanted to do it the four seasons. He was nervous. I was not. I said to him, city, I'm gonna talk just a minute about the past. I don't think you did the right thing for Citibank, but I want you to know that I made a lot of mistakes, and whether it was 6040, or 4060, doesn't really matter. And I listed some of my mistakes, and some of my mistakes were lessons, you know, forever, like I acted some of the things I did, I acted out of anger. I was so angry about some of the stupid things, it just flew out of me sometimes. And you know, as you know, that that almost always backs fires. It doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong. And so, I've got, you know, you learned that some and you've seen this too, where some people it just enough isn't enough. And, and it's not about being proud of the beautiful thing you built. Is being about, you know, what does it mean for you? How's look for you, and, and, and, you know, ultimately, it destroyed the company.

David Novak 35:56 

After you got terminated, I remember you picked up boxing, you know, what'd that do for you?

Jamie Dimon 36:04 

So what happened was, I went, they asked me, Would you want to do press that night? And I said, Yeah, I want to do that from home. Would you want to see the press? I said, Yes, I met the senior team. I wish them all the best that night. Maybe 50 100 people came to my home, you know, and they said, don't tell us any and it was like going your own way. They were toasting me and my net worth, not my self worth that was involved. So I never, I never felt bad. Some people outside treated me like a leper, like, stay away from this guy. And other people like, literally, I'd be running through the park. Yay. Diamond you showed him. Got myself fired and but I immediately kicked me out right away. So all of a sudden, you're working 80 hours a week to zero. So I was like, What the hell am I gonna do? So I made a list of stuff. So I bought, like, literally, I literally went to the bookstore. I bought like, 30 or 40 books, and I read, instead of reading the paper the morning for an hour and 15 minutes, it was two and a half. And then I made a list of those things I want to do, visit my brother in Denmark. I drove cross country by myself. I took my had a friend doing boxing at a hole in the wall gym downtown. And so I did all those things, you know. And the only thing that was on the list, I think I did not do is climb Kilimanjaro. I took my family on a long trip to Europe, you know, luxury leisure type of trip, uh, took them on RV trips and I was thinking about what I wanted to do, you know, I wasn't as, you know, I mean, I was on your board. It was always fun for me.

David Novak 37:27 

Yeah, well, I remember, you know, that that at that time, you agreed to go on the young board. And I remember Andy Pearson, who we've talked about a little bit. He was talking about putting this board together, and he said, you know, you got to get this young whipper snapper, you know, Jamie diamond, to come on the board. You're going to be around for a long time. You and him will be a great team. And boy, was he right. And what'd you learn just serving on the young board? Because I saw such a different business than, than, than the finance world,

Jamie Dimon 37:57 

yeah. Well, so first of all, I think it's great to see how someone else runs it. I love talking CEOs. How do you run your joint? Because lot of CEOs run it differently, and they're all good. Some are terrible, but, like, how do you run it? What do you do? What do you spend your day? How much fun Do you have? You know, like, and it's the same with the board. Like, boards are like juries. Man, they they could be, I've dealt with tons of boards, and they could be bureaucratic, they could be politicized. But Andy, as you know, put together like one of the best boards of all time. You know, Ken Langone was on the board. Bob Paul Rick from Target, who, you know, was a great company. John Weinberg would run Goldman Sachs and Bob Holland and and he ran it. I mean, I Andy, Andy was, I still would say the best to watch of anyone I've ever seen about how he just ran the meeting all your guys would come present and how they're doing here. And he was, and he always had a very good way of saying, that's not exactly the way it works. I forgot how he exactly did it, but it wasn't waste of time. Got right to the point was never rude, tough, but never rude. Always evaluating the people, how they thought about a problem, how they thought about an issue, how they attacked the problem. Now, you guys had tons of problems when we were there, and you know, each one, how you attacked it. You know, you had the GM the GMs problem. Then the distributor went bankrupt. And, you know, all these things, but the real you learn in life, how do people deal with problems? The board was completely open. It was a lot of fun. We went to taste your foods, and you always took us to branches, to restaurants and and you just learn how people think, you know, and even if you don't join another board, I'm not any other board. Now, I tell people it's a really good thing to see how other people do things, because I go to anything. I go to where other CEOs are there, you know, you know, the Business Roundtable or business counselor, stuff that you've done, I'm taking notes, but I hear someone did X. That's a neat idea. Why don't we do matter of fact at my board I still do since we last met. So you did it every board meeting, and I've been doing it every board meeting since bank one. I still do it today. And. And it was your idea, like how you and for those on the podcast, it was telling the board honestly everything important since you last met, good, bad, ugly, it could be the product, the food, the tasting, the profits, the China Business, the an honest assessment from the CEO. Like I said, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly as a great tool. I still type it out, you know, and I still keep it. In fact, I was being say about having some of my people run the businesses do it themselves since we last met, as opposed to a presentation, you know. And so I still learn things from tons of other people how to do things better. And so

David Novak 40:35 

you were on the beach, as they say in finance terms, you didn't have the job. You come to the young board you're working on that, What process did you use, and what'd you learn from it? As you, as you worked your way into the CEO job at Bank One

Jamie Dimon 40:49 

I was very deliberate. Okay, so I was fired in December, but I had to negotiate out it took me to March or April. So I decided I'm going to take the summer off, take the kids around the world and and started kind of really thinking about September, but I did take a lot of phone calls. I gave I took everyone respectfully, somewhere you could call us, almost insulting what they offered me. I made sure the head owners knew I wanted to work, you know, the major folks out there, when I came back in September, I was always polite and responsive to everyone. I had an office. I started seeing people all the time. And I had ideas, I'm gonna start my own merchant bank. I wrote up documents. I spoke to people. I thought about working with people, getting partners, kind of wild in an idea. Didn't love it. I started, I could have just been my own investor. Started talking to people. I went to see Cameron, going about, what is it like? I didn't love it. I went to I thought about just teaching or writing fundamentally, and I realized I was ready. I wasn't done with the big game yet, and I had a lot of offers. Some were CEO. Some was I was offered to run the Global Investment Bank of one of the big European investment banks. I went there to see the people in London, and had dinner there, a bunch of them. And after doing I said, There's no way I'd work for these guys. I mean, Hank Greenberg called me up at AIG, you know. And I said, going from standing wild to Hank Greenberg, you'd have to have your head examined. And Jeff Bezos, who I hit it off with in 1999 looking for president, and he and I hit it off. I still talk to him. He's an outstanding guy. I just, it was just a bridge too far for me. I didn't necessarily fully understand the business. I had to move a cup family to Seattle. I love the idea of never putting a suit on again. You know, getting a house boat somewhere. And there are tons others that people actually spoke to me about, but it came down at the time to Home Depot and bank one and Home Depot. I love those people. I thought Bernie, Marcus, Arthur, blank. I went down running with blank and and Ken Langone did knees bees. But I, when I first met them, I said, just, just. So you guys know. So I want you to know this until you called me, I'd never been in a Home Depot. I said, so it's not, this is not my natural habitat. Merchant and, and they were very much like, we don't care about that. You'll learn we want the guy at the heart and the soul. And, you know, you have the way they think. And I went to stores with them and stuff like that. And I actually shopped houses in Atlanta. I mean, you know, we were taken seriously, looked at school for the kids, and then bank one was there. Bank One, as you know, as you know, is a troubled Midwestern bank, and probably would have surprised people. I went to it, but it was my natural habitat. You know, I when I look at a Trading Book or a loan book, I mean, I'm used to, I wasn't used to all the business they had. Moving to Chicago is going to be hard, but I wasn't done yet. And, you know, they offered me chairman, CEO, and I decided I put half my net worth into at the time I was kind of, I tied my my, my shoes to it. I was gonna go with the ship or not. And very much, like we did with Sandy, wild bag of commercial credit, prime America, build it. Make it where you can build something great. Don't cry over spilled milk, you know. I still, I still deal with a lot of CEOs who they complain about their own companies endlessly, you know. And I always like, you know, you know, put your pants on. I mean, just grow up. The world was never perfect. You were. No one ever said they're gonna hand you, you know, everything in a silver platter. Business is tough. People disappoint you, you know. And so I decided to go for that. They made me chairman, CEO. I put up my money in moved the family. I called you up, got you on the board. I needed some fresh blood on the board.

David Novak 44:31 

That was, that was a lot of fun watching what you did there is graded and and then, you know, you turned around Bank One, a great success story, and JP Morgan Chase decides to to come and acquire bank one. What did you learn? Orchestrating that with with the JP Morgan Chase, CEO at the time, Bill Harrison, how'd you? How'd you bring it all together?

Jamie Dimon 44:59 

Right, yeah. So Bill Harrison had been not my direct banker, but it would. I knew him from way, way back. And as you know, Bill's a real quality guy. And so we did that deal at the end of the summer of of oh four, 2004 but he and I had started talking in oh two or three. I go see him regularly, and I told you guys in the board that that there are two or three very natural merges for us. One was fleet, and one with JP Morgan Chase and and JP Morgan Chase fell by the wayside because he'd gotten too big, and they bought Chase and but because bank one did better and better, and they were having some tough times, it kind of came in that target range again. And so I went to see Bill, Bill, and I kept on talking. He said to me at one point, you know, I can't do a deal now, my shareholder will kill me, but it's so natural. I don't have a successor, really. You know, would you promise me that you will call me if you're ever going to do something? And I told him, Bill, I cannot promise that, but I understand about the industrial logic. And, you know, I started talking about the industrial logic the people now, in reality, it was what it was called. He called it a merge of equals. We got the premium, but we also got the control. If you remember correctly, I was ordained to be the CEO, literally, from day one. So I wasn't the CEO from day one, but the board was gonna be 5050, and are you gonna be the CEO in two years, unless 80, unless 75% of the board said no. So that meant for my directors have to vote against me. And you may remember, the last minute there was a little fight at the board, our board, you guys were at dinner at my house in Chicago,

David Novak 46:36 

and you know, we had, I was a big part of that fight, as a matter of fact, yeah, like,

Jamie Dimon 46:39 

but something like, don't do the deal. You can't trust these New Yorkers.

David Novak 46:43 

If Jamie can't be the CEO, day one, we can't do that. Well, that was a good reason to keep the keep, keep, keep it in Chicago. Yeah, that was, they were coming up with all kinds of reasons, you know. And I said, I said, Look, if Jamie can't work with Bill Harrison for two years, and there's something wrong with Jamie diamond, that's correct. And they said, Well, you remember, I'm not gonna mention his name. He said, But Well, you've never been in a boardroom, you know, like that. You're missing something here. I said, Well, I do have a whole lot of common sense, and, you know, there's a big fight. But anyway, the rest is history.

Jamie Dimon 47:19 

You You're absolutely correct, and you make a judgment call in life. And that we all thought we could, I knew I could trust Bill Harrison and he wanted to leave. They needed a successor, and they needed someone who's going to run it. And so the company, neither bank wanted, just gone from being a terrible company to a mediocre company. You know, Chase. JB word, Chase was part of a lot of deals taking place, but it never completely performed. So in reality, we're putting but the industrial logic was perfect. Two not great credit card companies and credit card North COVID scale put together. We had a great retail system. They didn't, but they had great branches in New York. You know, we both had middle market businesses. They had an investment bank. We didn't, but we could bring those products and services to the clients around the United States. They were global. We were not we just started working it like literally just been. And I remember starting these like you've had the business reviews by business, payment systems ops, by country, by investment banking, middle market banking, consumer banking, credit card. And never said we were transformed, but just went to work at making it a better company, being honest assessment, setting real targets for ourselves about what we should be performing, removing the management there's political and bureaucratic, but Bill and I spoke all the time like I I was running most that stuff, but he was completely supportive. In fact, there was one time that a at a meeting of someone said, you know, Jamie was very rude at this meeting we had. I was criticized them for these insurance deals they thought they were doing to protect the company from auto warranties. And he went on and on that Jamie did this. And Bill said, Excuse me, that did not happen. He said, Well, I You weren't there. He said, I was, I was in the back of the room, and he was asking you a lot of very good and smart and tough questions. And, you know, Bill was a little surprised the how deep I went to all these businesses at one point. Said me, are you gonna do this all the time? As Yeah, I said, pretty much. I leave, you know, you know, very often, you can always agree with this up I was doing me say, it's your company. You know, you're gonna be CEO in a couple months, whatever. But then it came to one guy that I wanted to ask leave, who I thought was a great politician, but a complete self server, took care of his the buddies of this and was kind of a hatchet man for Bill himself. And I went to see Bill, I said he's got to go. And Bill said, Well, I totally disagree with you. He's been key here, blah, blah and and I went home that night, and I came back in the next day and I said, Bill, I am we've done everything together here. I'm really uncomfortably, completely disagree. I would feel much more comfortable if you go ask some of our other senior management. People about what I said, is he trusted, is this, is that? And build his credit. Went out and spoke to four or five people and came back said, You were right, and I should have known. And so we were kind of lockstep every step of the way he did. And even, you know, since, even since he left, which is now, you know, almost 20 years ago, you know, he's been anything you could do to help. And even guys like the guy who ran Dennis Weatherstone, I don't know if you knew him, who had been a former CEO of of JP Morgan itself, you know, called me up in attaboy every quarter, you know. I mean, there's some very sweet guys that John B McCoy, yeah, you know, the older guy who started bank one and start whether they went from one branch to whatever, 1000 branch to whatever 1000 he would come see me every now and then, just to say, You're doing a great job, kid,

David Novak 50:46 

that's great. You know, one of the things that you know, being on the board and watching you in action, you know, you establish gold standards, not within the financial industry, but also other other other categories that might be better at processing. Or you pick whatever measure that you're going after, and you really drove those gold standards home. And you talk about working it, you know, if somebody asks you about strategy in those days, you'd say, I don't really care about that strategy. You know, I'm not. You know, our strategy is always changing. The strategy changes basis what we see. But you've never been one, or maybe you've changed. You know, you were never one back then, to be talking about your five year plan or your tenure, you know, you didn't spend a lot of time on that. You spent a lot of time working the business up against gold standards. Is, how do you how do you think about strategy? Yeah,

Jamie Dimon 51:35 

so the first thing I always do, the first thing we're not, and you've seen this before in some of these big companies they're always talking about. I call it strategic. So instead of like, are you doing a good job running your business? You know, remember Bob loop, you say about strategy, it works. Just do more. Like, don't know. And they had outside consultants. I got rid of all that kind of stuff. And so my first goal is just run the place. Well, consolidate the systems, branch by branch. Then you develop plans. They were strategies. These things work, do more of these branches? Close these things down, take all the products and services. JP, Morgan, you know, like into the middle market. Like the middle market does, 35% of our US, domestic investment banking now. And that was a strategy you already you have the engine and just get more products across. This, you know, this very costly enterprise that got rid of, I got rid of lots of the company that didn't fit, and you maybe, so I sold this, closed it down. But every part of the company fits, and they feed each other. Private Bank and middle market use, the consumer branches, the investment bank is hugely benefited by the private bank and by middle market banking. You know, payment systems are hugely benefited by being in the consumer business and the wholesale business. And so there are these large strategies. But, you know, I didn't let people spend that much time BS in about it like we set the strategy, and now we have a plan. So, you know, even, like we started building the chase wealth this story, and they have to do this any we have a lot of skunk works going on. We always have that. So, like, one, which probably started when you were there was, you know, we had these branches in the wealthiest parts of the world, but we didn't do very much money management, like wealth management. And I had wanted to do a test in White Plains when the wealthiest, zip codes in the country, and we did the test, and it didn't work. And then people here, you got to cash valuation money. I was like, well, let's try again. Did the test didn't work, and sometimes you'll just keep modifying it, like, just keep turning the dials a little bit. That business now manages a trillion dollars. And so once we got the strategy right, but that this was by testing. So sometimes you should kill these hobbies, and sometimes you should, but there's like 10 of those. Like, how we built, we're in all 50 states now. You know, building branches. How we when we bought WAMU, which is all consumed, we put on top of that private banking, middle market, small business. So the cost of the branch system was, all of a sudden fee and lots of the businesses. So there are these big strategies. But I think the problem with strategy, when people overdo it is a they spend a lot of time making excuses for why they're not running a good business. It's sort

David Novak 54:12 

of like you. The way I would describe what you just described, is you work, you keep working on what's working, and then you work on what is it. And they just keep evolving that as you you go forward, yeah,

Jamie Dimon 54:22 

always very question. I see, you know, we have to transform the business, because you are doing that over time. But you, but you're doing it, you have to do it at a very detailed level and a strategic level, yeah, and, but, you know, a lot of businesses you've seen this, you know, you, if you have a second rate execution, you're in trouble. You know, if you have a first rate execution, you can run a pretty good business, whether or not you have a perfect strategy.

David Novak 54:44 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jamie Dimon in just a moment. You know, talking about his college days, Jamie mentioned Steve Burke, who is the chairman, CEO of NBC Universal, in Steve's episode of how leaders lead, he talks about the same idea. Of humility and curiosity that Jamie does, including this concept I love about seeing your team as a symphony. What

Steve Burke 55:07 

we have tried to do is make sure that our executives don't have big egos, and that our executives don't run around saying it's all about me, or I'm indispensable, or, you know, I did this and did that, and we have a philosophy that we call symphony, which is, I don't like the word synergy. I think synergy has become almost a, you know, an MBA, you know, catch phrase. We call our effort of working together symphony. And one of the advantages our company has for someone with a good idea is, if you bring a movie to us, and we think it's a great movie. We will make sure that it gets supported on USA sci fi e entertainment in the Olympics. And when we identify the priorities and we go to our executives, is non negotiable, everybody's going to get behind these big events. And what we found is we have 22% of all television viewing in America when we get behind promoting a new theme park ride or the Olympics or a new movie, it works. And one of the interesting side benefits of the symphony program, it was a message, a cultural message, to everybody in the company, that no individual business is important more important than the company as a whole, and teams do better than individual performers. And I think one of the ways that you you get really creative people to work with you and for you and bring you great ideas is is if they feel like what you're going to be doing is going to be about their idea, not about you. So I'm very much on the watch for people inside our company who get too carried away with themselves and forget the reason why we're here, which is bringing great ideas to America. And people

David Novak 56:50 

go back and listen to my entire conversation with Steve, Episode 18 here on how leaders lead. You know, Jamie, you're famous for a lot of things, but you're, I think, most famous for how you navigated our country and JP Morgan Chase through the Great Recession of 2008 What was your big takeaway from all that took to really get that done? Well, first

Jamie Dimon 57:15 

you got to go before the crisis started. And it goes back to my upbringing. But my dad is I had seen Marcus go up and down. I remember him coming home and, you know, people's incomes went down. I remember in 1974 and 1982 New York City was desperate. You know, so this Great Wall Street, it was desperate. You know, restaurants were closing, stores were closing, apartments were being sold for back maintenance. Literally, people forget that 1982 and so I even way back then, when I was with Sandy wild at Travelers, prime America, etc, I used to do presentations for all the stock brokers about how we have to be able to deal with all these ups and downs. And, you know, part of the name of the game is just continue serve your clients. Do a great job in the downs, not just in the ups and like, don't over celebrate the rising tide, you know, but be prepared for the tide going out. When I got to JP Morgan, I was very tough about capital, liquidity, profitability, because I knew that the shit at the fan early on, we would have had a real problem. So before that, and then get real risk management in place. So if you talk to folks here, they were shocked that the detail I'd go into, every position, every risk, the what ifs, how bad can it get? And I made them do stress tests that that they were like, I'll never happen. I said, I don't care what happens. And by it's like, kind of what happened, by the way. I said, I want to know if it happens that we survive to serve our client, because you can't tell me it's not going to happen. So risk management is much more being prepared for a whole range of outcomes, and what ifs then the shit at the fam. But we were ready. By then. We had more liquidity, more capital, more profitability. And you may remember the risk committee, the board. At one point, I left you guys at the board. I can't even say I had to go to the risk committee. And we were going through literally, client by client and country by country, and loan by loan, and helping people.

David Novak 59:04 

We went. We went and watched that you actually had us come watch you watch the sources get

Jamie Dimon 59:08 

made. But people say, What did you do different? Nothing other than we already had teams. We already we already had an army. You know, we already had things to go. So the risk committee used to meet once a week for a couple hours, and all of a sudden it was meeting, and it was kind of more formalized, you know, reviewing certain things. And all of a sudden it was meeting five times a day, every day for a year, okay? And I mean every day. And I mean, you know, going to 10pm and 5am because you had Asia, we had to be up for that. And we were on calls all the time with regulators and governments and clients and and, but the machine was working. And then the formality, when you were there, the formality went away. It's like, Hey, David, don't come up and make us a presentation about the mortgage problem in Denmark. Bring up whoever you need to describe and tell us what they want to do, you know. And so we were making, you know, Battlefield decisions. Is to help, mostly to help clients, because JP Morgan was actually in quite good shape. And, and then you just learn how people operate under stress and strain. I mean, some people are great and some are some are just children, just just children.

David Novak 1:00:13 

So, all right, and, and so you literally helped take the country out of this crisis. What was the single biggest, darkest moment that you had during that, that period? And how did you you said, you know, some people don't really know how to handle crisis. How did you personally handle it?

Jamie Dimon 1:00:33 

You know, I'm so the first there was Bear Stearns, you know, like, so, the world was Rocky. Subprime was going down. Some hedge funds had problems. Quad funds were having problems. Markets were down. Bear Stearns stock had fallen from, I think it had a market cap of 20 billion to 15 billion to 10 billion, which is a real sign of a problem in a financial company. And then I got the phone call on March 13, Thursday, 2008 I was actually having dinner my parents at a Greek restaurant down the street here, and it was maybe nine o'clock at night. I had to leave the restaurant because I couldn't hear and Alan Schwartz, the CEO of bears, and said, Jamie, I need $30 billion tonight, otherwise we're gonna go bankrupt in Asia in the morning. And even I said, Alan, I don't even know how to get $30 billion but let's, let's, you know, have you spoke to the Secretary of Treasury and he had, I called up, literally, our senior people. I said, you know, get dressed and go to the office. And we had hundreds of people come in that night, start going through the books of Bear Stearns. And I, we told Hank Paulson, look, let's just get them to the weekend. That gives us, you know, 48 hours to figure out if we could save bear terms. And so we had this lifeline, which I won't go through with the Federal Reserve, about how we're going to do that. That was our idea, by the way. And now I had 1000 people, 2000 coming in, you know, doing what you call due diligence, every loan, every asset, every real estate, HR, policies, litigation. Can we handle it? You know, what are the integration what's going to cost? How much would you write down? And we did, you know, probably six months of work in two days. And bought Bear Stearns that night, signed the thing that night. That is that kind of thing is the moment where you're breathless. It was the same way I felt when I signed the document. It's like one signature, merged bank one and JP Morgan, so I sit in my office late at night and I'm signing that piece of paper, I know I'm taking an extraordinary amount of risk, which we think we can handle, and I'm also subjecting my people to a tremendous amount of work, because people forget it's not the deal the press writes about the deal to do the deal, it's the next day. 30 or 40,000 people are working on stuff that is brand new to them. People are going to lose their jobs. People have consolidate stuff. They're worried. They're nervous. It's, you know, you're literally working seven days a week, and then. But the worst moment was Lee So Bear Stearns was bought, and we thought that might be saving the system, but six months later, Lehman didn't make it. Lehman didn't get bought. Lehman disintegrated, and that caused disruption around the world of payments and systems and money and and, and things shouldn't happen that way, which they did fix, by the way. But even after that, AIG, the largest insurance company, Citi, you know, bank America is one after another. But the Fed finally, and, and we did a lot of stuff, but there was really the Fed at one point put in all these problems. Putting all these programs in place, that by March of oh nine, the markets were hitting all time bottoms. But I knew is, we're getting to the end because, because the programs were going to work, and it was going to release stress in the system. Markets stopped going down. People would take a deep breath, clean up the crap from the past, but, you know, go on and so, but that was a lot of stress. And I do, I think I just do it the same way, which I try to, you know, I this is why I find with stress, okay, the only thing that really satisfies me when I have stress from work is to work, like going to work. I mean, I could get depressed and really stressed out on a Saturday, but if I come to the office in a Saturday or Sunday and I start working on the problems, it immediately goes away from me, because I'm doing something, stuff like that and so but then get away from that. It's just to get your sleep, get your exercise, you know, do something that takes your mind off it for a while, with some stupid TV show or something like that, when you have little successes, even the middle of a crisis, get the people together for a little cocktail party and thank them, yeah, like little things like that, to just relieve it.

David Novak 1:04:28 

And you've had so many successes, if you built, you know, JP Morgan Chase into the by far and away, the number one financial institution in the world, and one of the best companies in the world. You know, looking back, what would you say has been your biggest disappointment at JPMorgan Chase, and what did you learn from it?

Jamie Dimon 1:04:49 

You know, people would probably point out the whale. You know, we lost billions of dollars this terrible antidote training thing, and I was, of course, heavily criticized, legitimately and. Then, you know. And of course, at one point, someone asked me on an analyst call, is it just a tempest in a teapot? I said, Yes, but at that moment, I didn't know how bad it was. I had been told something which was not accurate. And I remember coming back late one night, I said, I want to see the actual positions, the actual what ifs the actual stuff, reading the stuff. And my heart stopped, but I realized what we had done, and I immediately got on a call with analysts and said, we've lost $2 billion we're gonna lose more. We made a it was barely managed, a bad strategy, barely reported, barely done. It's my fault, and I'm sorry. Is somebody that gotten away wasn't properly reports. I won't go into but I do remember. But again, I don't consider that my worst moment, just it was just terrible. And I told I actually got all the PR people and communications people together, the manager who said, You know what, they're going to crucify me. They're going to crucify our company. I said, forget that. We're going to lose some money. We've got clients around the world. When we wake up tomorrow, we're going to serve our clients around the world. And I remember driving in the next day. I was very early, like 630 when they called me up. Said, Jamie, all the all the TV cameras out and all the newspapers and go into the basement so after you could avoid them, I was okay. And the closer I'm getting to the building, I'm saying, wait a second, why? I'm not going to do that. So I got out of the car, oh, come right up to me, and they say, What are you going to do? You can lose your job? And I said, you know, we're going to fix this problem. I said. I looked up the building. I said, but I want you to know how proud I am of the 7000 people in this building serving their clients around the world every day and the great job they do. And that's how I felt. It wasn't that was like a stupid problem. It wasn't. But I've learned so many lessons. You know, like any look you've been part of it. You know how to run meetings and how to notice politicians, but, but the biggest mistakes are always the same people. When you put the wrong people in the job. You know, that means that you've it takes a while to figure it out. You know, bullshitters are pretty good at they've been bullshitting for 25 years. The people who reports them are going to be hurt. The company won't do a good job. It takes a while to figure out to replace them. And and that's and you get better at that. You just get better than over time, you see the pattern recognition. Are they respected? Are they treated? Are they honest, as opposed to, are they the best chess pounder and the best salesman and and they work their ass off and things which may be important, but that doesn't mean they're a good leader.

David Novak 1:07:28 

So the whale was what everybody would go to. Would you look at it? What was your biggest disappointment in it? You know, the whale was an event you knew you could get over it. Did you have one bigger than that? Or was this?

Jamie Dimon 1:07:39 

Yeah, there was, I would say there's some people ones. I don't want to mention their names, because I think it's very important you're not shit all over people that I missed. You know, there was one of bank one who you might remember, and I missed it. And I remember my management team coming in, and it was late at night. They said four guys, which I think this is fine, but most people would allow this forum. Said, Jamie, sit down. I said, Okay. They said, We're going to tell you something. Don't say anything. Just listen. I said, Okay. And they proceeded, telling me how this person we had hired ran this part of the business, was a bad guy, a liar, dishonest, you know, did, said things and did things and, and I listened and and I didn't know, and I did, you know, and sometimes you can't tell people. So I said to him, is I hear you where the smoke is fire. Thank you for saying this to me. It's now my problem. And they were right, and and and that. And then there are a couple of ones at the JP Morgan Chase right where I made the decision, I hired that person in bank one or I made the decision, I missed it, or I took too long, you know. And I hate it when I make a change and people say, Thank God you did that. You know, I always say to him, Well, why didn't you let me know earlier? You may be the boss, but, you know, I love reading history, and I love reading some military history. And you see the same thing where there are bad generals,

David Novak 1:08:57 

you know, Ron Daniel, who ran McKinsey, always said, David, you said you're going to learn, and you learned this. It sounds like it's your biggest you know. Disappointment is said, you know, the business will always run. Your results will vary, but the thing that will disappoint you the most are the people that you put your trust in, you know. So I think that's basically what you're saying here, you know. I know many people have asked you to run for president. You know, I I even told you once, I remember we have a dinner at some Greek restaurant. I said, I will quit whatever I'm doing right now. I'll be your campaign manager. I'll do whatever you want, but we need you to run for president. You know, what did you What have you learned about yourself that kept that's kept you from jumping into that Briar Patch.

Jamie Dimon 1:09:43 

I'm not sure I learned a lot about myself. But look, I do think there are skills that people have that in business world that may translate to the political world, but I think it's a mistake to automatically think that's true. So I think working hard, being authentic, having these skills is true. But. There are also these political skills and, and, you know, I, and you've, you've seen a lot of business people run that fail immediately. And, and, you know, you I may be better than them, but I still don't have, doesn't have all those political skills. That's one. The second is, I think, I literally think you should try to have a warm up before you go for President, you know. And warm up, you know, could be Congress or Senate or governor. You've seen people like learn those skills before you go for the big enchilada. You know, I know the world from this position I have, so I think that's important, but I would have had to start earlier. And I also have this unbelievable, unlike some other people, I have this unbelievable job. You know, I think, you know, my country's very right next to my family, is my country, and this this company. I'm just so proud of what it does for 80,000 Americans, 6000 company American companies around the world, our markets, cities, schools, states, hospitals, the community outreach program. I'm damn proud of it. So I think I add a lot here. I'd be giving them that for kind of a wild goose chase. I tell people, how do I run and won when I was walking into that White House, I'd be waving goodbye to my family for four years. They'd be saying, See you, dad. I'm not sure. I'm sure my wife would have gone with me there. And so I just, and it is subjecting your family to some very tough stuff. And you know, some people are prepared for that. I was unprepared for at the time. And so I would never, I would never rule it out. I mean, I don't like, I don't like making progress to be like you probably I'm not making any problems anyone. If I change my mind, change my mind, but I think it's hard. I'm 68 years old, as you know, I've had a health problem or two, so I just, when you put it together, it just didn't seem like the right thing for me to do. And you've

David Novak 1:11:37 

traveled the world, and, you know, JP, Morgan Chase has such global impact as you as you mentioned as you've met global leaders, and you've met the top leaders in the world who, if you had to pick out one person who just impressed you the most, and why

Jamie Dimon 1:11:52 

there are several, are terrible, and I'm not going to give you their names. And these may surprise a little bit. Macron, very smart, very tough, says the same things. Public is privately, very complicated. Politics, you could say, made some rights. This is wrong decisions. Has the right vision for France. You know, getting entrepreneurs business, growing stuff like that. The guy Greece was a basket case. The guy who runs Greece, Mr. Caucus has done an unbelievable job. And he did, and he would tell you, basically, it was, I figured out what policies we needed, and then I did the politics. Whereas most politicians do it their way around. It's all about politics, and they try to fit the policies into what they promised, which, you know, policies barely done. Don't work and so, and then a lot of them from history, you know. I mean, I've been reading a lot about Ike Eisenhower, just the confidence of the man he surrounds. All the great people that he ran, that everyone spoke up. There was no game playing. He got rid of all the policies. Were able to deal with all the complexities. And George Marshall, I mean, so I get a lot of inspiration from people not just existing. You This is Grant. I mean, you know, you know, they write him up as a drunkard. He was extraordinary. But he But as President, you know one point the Ku Klux Klan comes back, and I think it was Mississippi. And he, you see this guy, the principled ethics. He said the black people, they weren't called blacks at the time, are citizens of this country, and they're gonna be treated with all the same rights as everybody else. And he said, I think it was Sherman or Sheridan down with troops to remove the governor. There was no prevaricating, there's no game playing, there's no if it's bad. It was terrible politics for for if you wanted to win the southern states. And so a lot of people, Abe Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, that you just learned from watching what they do and how they handled difficult situations, difficult people as you

David Novak 1:13:41 

think about, you know, the situation that the world faces today. It's very complicated, you know. I mean, it's a, it's a very scary world we live in today. You know, describe the world you see five to 10 years from now. I mean, you know, you think we're going to be in this for a long, long time. Or, you know, the China relationship, you know, I mean, how do you, how do you see the world? And, you know, there was a time when, you know, the global economy was everything, and China needed us, and we needed China. You know, though, everything seems to be on very shifting sand. How do you look at it? And how should we think about it? It's

Jamie Dimon 1:14:23 

it is really complex. And I think the way I look at it, as you create Russia, Ukraine war, it's the aiding abetting of Iran and North Korea, of what's happening in Ukraine is Iran's nuclear program. It's the terrorism in the Middle East against Israel, and then India and then China's part in that kind of a not with it. They're not part of the evil part, but they're aiding and betting it with micro electronics and buying oil and gas and all these various things. It's dangerous. And you're talking about, this is not the economy. I'm worried about. This is the future of freedom and democracy in the world and and you. And the only way to deal with something like this, if you read history, is deal with it. Don't just pray it goes away. It may not go away. You know, when this war started, I told you all day is there. That's almost on three years, you know. And you know, you're talking about Iran being very close to have a nuclear weapon. You know, China is trying to divide the Western world by quite openly, they saying it, you know, well, we don't want the American system to prevail, and we don't want the reserve currency, and we want every country not to be part of the American economic system. And the I think the public should understand that the military alliance we have and the economic alliances are very deeply related, and our national power is based upon our moral power, our economic power in addition to our military power and the moral power is still real, we have the greatest country in the planet, the freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of enterprise. Those freedoms for if you took down our barriers, the immigration 4 billion people move here because they want those freedoms, and then they'd invent companies. And I think Americans underestimate the power of that. Yes, we've had flaws of a country, and we should focus on some of that, but we shouldn't denigrate This is a shining light, a shining city on the hill. And so to conquer these things, you need to make sure America stays strong. So America, when I talk about China, we have all the food, war and energy we need. We have peace in North America and South America. We got the Atlantic in the Pacific, China, our GDP per person is $80,000 theirs is 15. They import 10 million barrels of oil a day. They've got terrible demographics, and their neighborhood is a very complicated area. They're surrounded by people who've been enemies in the past, and they're pissing them all off, not because I think America is done, by the way, but the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Russia. It's a tough part of the world, and they're kind of hemmed in, and so we have the better hand. The question to me, I worry about is we need to play that hand. There's there's no if only American leadership can keep the world free and safe for democracy, only American leadership, and we've got to keep together the military and the Economic Alliance, because the economic Battlefield, and these are directly related, is about national security, like, you know, where do we get our penicillin from, and where do we get our graphite from, and where do we get our rare earths from, and stuff like that. But it's also about unfair economic competition, because that becomes bigger thy neighbor. And you know, you have Europe in the very tough spot now, because they have very high energy costs, we have very low energy costs. So it makes it very hard for the industry. And then China is, you know, can sink their car companies. So, you know, you have a very complex situation. So, you know, my view is, build America. Remind start with our own civics. You know, we owe our country why it's so important what freedom and democracy about, build our economy, and at the economic powers the root all those things, it allows you to do all the other things and then have a very sophisticated role about how we're going to maintain American leadership. But for America, we're not doing it, you know, out of the just the goodness of our hearts. And I also think it needs to be more real power. Be more real politic. You know, we lecture our and I go all around the world, as you did, you know, and we're constantly lecturing people about their labor laws and their climate and their all these things. And I'm not against furthering human rights, but it, but it should be subordinated. So it needs to be subordinated to national security interests and and, you know, real politic is that great quote, When Stalin was telling FDR and Churchill at Yalta, I think, or Potsdam, and he was yelta, that he wanted to do something, and FDR said, Mr. President, the the pope wouldn't agree with that. And Stalin leaned forward and said, exactly, how many divisions does the pope have, you know, and that's the game we're in. And we do these dumbest things in the name of good that actually make us weaker and make our allies weaker. And so we have to be very thoughtful. And you know, I'll be reaching out to the new administration, and that we reached out to the old administration. We've hired national security experts to help us help our clients, and then, you know, a little bit of a mea culpa. We all made a mistake. And this isn't, it should be acknowledged. Isn't something you have to we have to whip ourselves about. We should have, all of us should have been a little more thoughtful about China, going back about 10 years. And, you know, at one point they entered WTO in 2000 but they were starting to abuse it by 2012 you know. And we should have been more thoughtful than they were really thinking it through. And we were just kind of happy, go lucky. We, all of us, you know. And so is the government, you know, so, but now is the time to say, Okay, no, they can't be merchants. They can't, you know, beggar thy neighbor, economically, they can't do certain things they're doing, we have the better hands. I'm not telling Americans, you know, worry about I'm saying just, let's just make sure we build a really strong company. Let's make sure we have unparalleled military strength that is unquestioned, because the best way to avoid a war is to be strong. I can borrow the thing so and so. So I just. We got to fight for that America and remind ourselves and educate our kids and educate people why it's important educate people the interlinks between those things. You

David Novak 1:20:08 

know, it's, you know, we've covered a lot of fronts here, and it's been fun, you know, having this conversation. I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. And are you ready for this? I'm ready three words that best describe you, tenacious,

Jamie Dimon 1:20:22 

relentless, tenacious and relentless, like I love to learn all the time, if

David Novak 1:20:28 

you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? Hey, Blinken, what's your biggest pet peeve, bureaucracy? Who would play you in a movie? Well,

Jamie Dimon 1:20:36 

my wife would want Harrison Ford or George Clooney, but they are obviously better looking than

David Novak 1:20:42 

I am. What's a Greek delicacy everyone should try musaka. The last time you put on boxing gloves and punched someone? Oh god,

Jamie Dimon 1:20:50 

that was 15 years ago.

David Novak 1:20:54 

Your favorite memory from the US Open Tennis Tournament opening

Jamie Dimon 1:20:57 

a business week one day, and seeing Steffi Graf serving in a picture. And then I look really closely what was behind her. I could see my little daughter, who's eight years old, looking at her. That was the best moment for me and my daughters. My granddaughters have been, you know, that big teletrons, whatever they've been on that a couple of times when they're watching the T the you I try to take them every year. What's

David Novak 1:21:20 

the one thing you do just for you, read history, your most prized possession, my family. If I turned the radio onto your car, what would I hear? Just music. You know, just general music. What's something about you? A few people would know I'm actually a pushover, and I'm

Jamie Dimon 1:21:33 

actually quite easy.

David Novak 1:21:36 

I think that might be just a little bit of a

Jamie Dimon 1:21:40 

if you ask all my family members, who's the easiest one when it comes to where you eat, where you travel, what you do when you get up, they would say, Dad, I just wanna do whatever makes me happy.

David Novak 1:21:49 

What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you'd ever miss, reading the papers in the morning? All right, well, we're out of the lightning round, and I just got a few more questions, and we'll wrap this up. Okay, I got to ask you, tell us the story of what it was like when you had your first child.

Jamie Dimon 1:22:04 

Well, that's, you know, I think for everyone, that's like an unforgettable experience. And and I remember my wife had some complication of that, so it was a cesarean. So she came out looking good, but I remember holding her, my little daughter, with a little teeny rib cage. And then she stretched, no and just holding this little stretching baby. And then she yawned and hiccup, which she did quite a bit. And holding a new life in your hands is extraordinary.

David Novak 1:22:33 

You know, you now have this incredible family with three daughters and seven grandchildren, and you've now got a two year old grandson. You have all these daughters, and what was it like when you finally got the grandson? Well,

Jamie Dimon 1:22:48 

first of all, I love I have two wonderful son in laws, and you have a daughter, you probably worried, like I did early, like, what if you don't like the son in laws? Like, what do they get married? And you know, I adore these kids. They're both wonderful fathers and husbands and son in laws, and they're delightful to be with. We all travel together. We like their families, so we're like one happy go lucky when we fly out. There was a boy. I mean, I didn't see hard even to contemplate it for us, because I never had a baby boy and so but he's quite I put them in quite a pampered category, you know, all 60 other kids, you know, pick them up and carry them around and play with them. And I don't think he has any idea he's gonna have to learn to grow up with. I mean, I could imagine all those girls, you know, whenever he brings home a girlfriend, eventually they're gonna all want to vet the girlfriend,

David Novak 1:23:41 

I bet so, you know, you and I both had our health issues, and you've, you've Russ, you've struggled with cancer. And you know, how is that? You know, how much did that really change you or or did it, it

Jamie Dimon 1:23:55 

did, you know, I think it changed me over time. I don't think you realize immediately, but it does, you know. But as you know, when someone says you have cancer, your life changes. And and I tell a lot of people, everyone knows they're going to die, but that when they say that, all of a sudden, it's like in your face, and you have to contemplate dying all the time, until even now you're a survivor, but all the time until they say you're in remission. And of course, you know radiation and chemo is can be absolutely devastating. And I remember I wouldn't go tell my parents. I told my wife, you have to tell them, because I didn't want to tell my parents I may die before them. And so the thing that changed is it does make you live a little more deliberately about how you run your life and what you do and how you spend your time. It wasn't like I was gonna change. I love working. I love my country. It didn't change that, but it did change how you deal with certain people and certain issues and and I think because of that, when I had the second health issue, I was being wheeled into the surgery, and I knew, I knew was maybe not even 5050, I would survive, that I didn't. Have any regrets, because the ones I might have had, I actually fixed the first time around.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:06 

You know, a mutual

David Novak 1:25:07 

friend of ours, you know, it's the late head of Goldman Sachs, John Weinberg. He had this line, which I love. He said, you either grow or you swell. You know, how do you manage not getting the big head. I mean, I just think of what you run and everything you've accomplished, and this

Jamie Dimon 1:25:28 

is my belief, because I've and I always quote him, too, in that, because that when people get the big job, it's shocking, sometimes how they act, and all of us who get the big job is actually more creates more humility, because how little you know about certain things and yet you're responsible for them, but other people. But I think, I think it is, it's how you're grounded, and that grounding comes from your whole life experience it. But it's the insecurity. It's the insecure people who, when they get that big job, they it makes them so insecure that the way they fix it is by controlling the meetings, by having friends of Bill, by having friends of this by everyone knows is what they want. They never want to be embarrassed. They never want to look bad. They're the ones who won't go on the on some of these trips, because they're afraid of, you know, being criticized and and you see these traits, and you see them with you see that doesn't be the CEO of a company. Could be the CEO of a division, and other people. There's none of that, you know, I tell people. And you know how insecure the your your listeners may understand that when you run a company. So make believe. I'm running a trading desk that does mortgages, and if I wanted to do more, I have to call that guy runs that he knows more about than I know or anybody else. I say, hey, what about this? What about that? Why don't we do this? But maybe he gets promoted, and now he's running six divisions, mortgages and credit and equities and stuff like that. Well, all of a sudden he's an expert in one, and he's learning five, and then he gets promoted again. Okay, now he's an expert in six, and he's learning 30. And so the higher you get, the more insecurity it breeds, which is why I think that that people, some people, they turn inward, they get scared, they block it, they they have they cover up their anxiety. And other people, they're more like, they realize they don't know that stuff, and they reach out for help, and they have that curiosity and recognition and all those things about heart and curiosity. But I think it's how you're grounded. I don't think, I don't think it's just it happens.

David Novak 1:27:18 

Yeah, you know. And you know, one of the things about you, Jamie, is you've been in position for a long time at JP, Morgan Chase. And you know, many would call you like the John Wooden of financial expertise, coaching, whatever I mean, you are the John Wooden I mean. And you know, it was very difficult when John Wooden retired to ever replace John Wooden. I mean, how do you, how do you think about replacing your, your yourself, and do you give yourself high marks on your process that you have for that?

Jamie Dimon 1:27:57 

I Yes, I so far, you know, obviously the decision is the most important. But the board is fully engaged that my board knows everybody. They see them freely. They take them out, so there's no blockage of those folks. We have the same list everyone has about, you know, you know, all the skills you need and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, and, you know, I put character and culture as a, you know, that's a sine qua non. Heart curiosity. Work at drive grit. You better have a little bit of grit. Is this basket of things that make up a human being. It's not one thing, and we have people of great skills across the board. And I think the board believes that, and I believe I took the board through successful succession planning, unsuccessful session planning, so what worked and what didn't work. Several people my board have been through it, so they've, you know, told the board how they approached and stuff like that. So we're doing it pretty systemically, and we think we've got people who've got that full broad range of capabilities. I don't like it when someone says, you know, what are you looking for a technologist or a marketing person? No, no, you're looking for that whole set of stuff that they carry the culture, they got the energy they bring people with them. They don't have to be perfect at any one thing, but they have to have that spectrum of stuff where people actually want to work at the company. They get the best out of the other people. And I think we have many people can do that. You know,

David Novak 1:29:16 

last question here, if you could give one piece of advice to any leader, what would it be?

Jamie Dimon 1:29:24 

I would go back to make sure you have heart and curiosity and give a damn and understand that you don't know it all and you're not even the expert anymore. Jamie,

David Novak 1:29:33 

I want to thank you for all this time, and I want to thank you for your friendship. You're always there. You're always there. I mean, you know, we we, you know, we don't get together all the time, but when we do, we pick up from where we last left, each other. And you know, last year, my wife passed away in February, you and Judy were were there, and you're there for people. You. And when they need them most. And I thank you for being that kind of friend for me, you're an amazing guy, and I'm blessed to have you as a friend, David, you've

Jamie Dimon 1:30:10 

always been there for me also, and both you and I love you, and it's great spending some time with you.

David Novak 1:30:17 

Yeah. Thank you very much, buddy. Appreciate it. You.

You know, there's just nobody like Jamie Dimon. He's my friend, and I know I'm biased, but I believe he's one of the best business leaders of our time, and I can tell you, he is the absolute real deal. He doesn't just talk a big game about giving a damn and having heart and grit. I've seen it close up and personal by myself, and he is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and dive into the work, no matter how hard that work may be. And I know you picked up on this, but Jamie has no patience for the BS and bureaucracy that might get in the way of the work. That's a powerful mindset, and one we need to all learn from. So I got a question for you. What's getting in the way of the work that's really going to move your organization forward? Is it too much bureaucracy, internal politics, endless. Strategic this week. Be on the lookout for it and push back against it, because if you want to get results, you've got to get past those distractions and do the real work of running your business. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders get to work. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Harris Barton. He's the founder and managing director of H Barton Asset Management and a three time Super Bowl champion with the 40 Niners playing alongside Grace like Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Steve Young, you

Harris Barton 1:31:46 

don't have all the answers. I promise you don't have all this, but there's somebody out there that has a bunch of the answers, and you should start listening.

David Novak 1:31:53 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be.