Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Bafini, founder of America's largest business coaching company.

Here's a short, classic cut from one of our all-time favorite episodes.

Well, the top of the morning, Tia, and welcome to It's a Good Life.

I'm your host, Brian Bafini, and today I have a very, very special guest for you. His name is David Rubenstein and David's co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, which is one of the largest, most successful private investment firms. So talk to me. How does a boy from Baltimore end up billionaire investor with the Carlyle Group? How did you do it? Luck is the most important word, I guess. What happened was I was interested in government and politics. When I was growing up, there were no billionaires to speak of the United States. There were no private equity firms, hedge funds, tech startups. So if you were, if you were Jewish, you'd say, okay, I'll be a lawyer or doctor. And I didn't think I was

going to go to medical school. I didn't think I could get through the science courses. So I went to law school. I was interested in politics. And ultimately, I wanted to work in the White House. So I went to work in the White House for Jimmy Carter. I was inspired to do that by a man who was Irish in his background, John Kennedy. When I was young, he was a dashing

young President of the United States, and I didn't think I could ever be a candidate, but I thought

I could be an advisor. So I did ultimately get a job working at the White House for President Carter.

After we lost the election in 1980, I had to go back and get a real job, which was working as a

lawyer. I wasn't very good at it. So if you're not good at something, you have to find something else. Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do. You have to love what you're doing. And I didn't like practicing law, and my clients didn't like my practicing law either. They didn't think I was very good. So I started a firm on a whim in 1987 with no money I recruited some people people and told him I was going to get some money, but I didn't really know where I was going to get it. And then we grew up to a firm that's now managed about $400 billion. So it's been successful. No doubt. No doubt. Let me ask you this question, because it's a huge deal to say I'm not good at something, especially, like you say, in Ireland, you're either going to be a pop star or a priest, you know, that was our deal. So here it is, your mom and dad, get a good job, get your degree, you went to law school. It takes an awful lot of guts to say, you know, this isn't the highest and best use of my life. This is not my calling. this is not what I'm gifted at. How did you make that decision? Like, that's a lot of chops.

A lot of chutz by you. highest and best use in my life. This is not my calling. This is not what I'm gifted at. How did you

make that decision? Like, there's a lot of chops, a lot of chutzpah, as you would say. Well, I'm an only child, so my mother was very attentive to what her only child was doing. When I was practicing law after I left the White House, I didn't realize, I realized I wasn't that good at it and I didn't enjoy it. So I told my mother was going to start an investment firm and she got horrified because

she said, you don't know anything about business. So do this. Keep your law license. Make sure you stay a member of the bar. You have something to fall back on. So to honor my mother, I'm still a member of the DC bar. You know, my mother told me, because I did accounting, my mother said, hey, if this Seminar malarkey doesn't work out. Make sure you keep your accounting credentials. Same situation.

God bless them. I did accounting. My mother said, hey, if this seminar malarkey doesn't work out, make sure you

keep your accounting credentials. Same situation. God bless them. God bless them. They meant they meant good stuff. So how did you go about building it? I mean, how did you go about actually getting the people to invest? What I did is this. I said, there's an old saying in Washington, D.C., when you're getting kicked out of town, get out and front and pretend you're leading a parade. What does that

mean? It means take advantage of the situation you find yourself in. You're getting kicked out of town, pretend you're leading a parade. I was living in Washington. I was incredible enough to go to New York and start an investment firm, so I said, I understand companies heavily affected by the federal government better than those guys in New York. Sounded good. I'm not sure it was true. And then ultimately, I began in the beginning to bring in some government people. I bought in former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. So you had relationships? Yes, George Herbert Walker Bush. They were better known. Nobody would want to hear me make a speech at dinner. but if I said Jim Baker is going to make a speech, people would show up. But I did two things that changed the face of private equity with my partners. One is, private equity was a small cottage business, and we basically, you had one fund and you did one fund, four years later you raised another one. I decided to have multiple funds, a buyout fund, a growth capital fund, a real estate fund, and so have an institutionalized business by having

multiple funds, and I could have a four to a back office, a fundraising team, a counting team

that would take care of all the funds. And secondly, I decided to globalize it. So I went around

the world to make a team in Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America,

Japan, Asia, and so forth. So we had a global business and a heavily institutionalized business,

and that's how we grew it. And we also obviously had a good track record. No doubt. And that sounds

a little more than look to me. That's pretty brilliant. That's great strategy, good promotion,

and then building relationships.

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