Transcription
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 a leadership lesson that you picked up from her?
Yeah, let me. 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 what you did and how you grew and stuff like that, I probably didn't talk about it 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, uh, 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 give it your best.
The second was, you treat everyone well. Like, you know, if you mistreated anyone, like a waiter or a taxi cab driver, that was unacceptable. And there's a corollary to that: you didn't allow other people to be bullies, you know, which sometimes got you in trouble a little bit.
And the third was, is do something with your life, you know, but it was about purpose. So my dad was a stock broker, but he was much more interested in philosophy than being a stock broker. And the purpose could be, so my older brother became a physicist, a real physicist, MIT, University of Chicago, Niels Bohr Institute. My twin brother became an educator. But it was doing something with purpose. You know, draw your Picasso and make the world a better place through that purpose. And you could be art, it could be science, it could be teaching, it could be being a parent. It wasn't anything other than just do it well and have a purpose. And, uh, they were pretty strict about that, both of them.
You know, my mom, my mom was a Spartan. And I say that, 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 JFK got killed. And I got home that day, and she was crying. Other than that, not even when they told her she had pancreatic cancer or, you know, and she said, "I've had a great life." And, uh, so she was, I would say, kind of stoic.
She became very early on a woman's lawyer. And she also went back to college when I went to college. So she hadn't finished college. She had gone for a year or two at Brooklyn College or something like that and then stopped to be a mother. Though she always did things like, oh yeah, I'll tell you a quick little story about my mother.
My mother's, we must be 12 or 13 years old, and my parents are having a glass of wine in the living room, and my father says to my mother something about, her name was Themis, which means justice in Greek, by the way. I believe the goddess of justice. And he used the word, "You're acting hysterical." And I don't know if you remember those books about 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." And she said, "I told you not to say that." And he said it one more time. And she walked up to him, took her wine, and threw it 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 the boss. Like, just you and I was like, we're gonna overthrow the king. And, uh, 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." So that sounds like the JB Diamond I know today.
The other, the other thing about mother, you got to understand, my mother was a Freudian. So my father kind of was, but my father's much more like, "What did they do?" But she was like, "Why did they do it?" So I was like, 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 of it before I finished college, just to understand 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.
Yeah. How much do you think that really helped you as you started working with people?
Quite a bit. I, 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, their all those EQ things you talk about. Are they real? Are they authentic? What motivates them? Why treating people respectfully? Uh, so yeah, I do think it helps. In part of life, you're always thinking how the world works, but also how people work. And, and both, as you know, both those things can be very complicated, and we still spend most of our time trying to figure that stuff out.
You know, how did the fact that your dad was in finance and, you know, was totally indoctrinated in that world, you know, how did that impact, you know, where you headed? And when you think about your dad, what was the biggest thing you learned from him that you took into the business world?
So, of the three boys, uh, I was the only one who took an interest in finance. I worked for the CEO basically, like doing mailings and answering phones and stuff like that when I was 14 or 15. Uh, but I was interested. I always read the papers. I always read the business section. I read the sports section. I read the, uh, so he nurtured that, you know, he didn't make anyone do it. Like I said, my older brother became a physicist. My other brother, an 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 and a balance sheet. I read Graham and Dodd. There's a big thick one, but there's one called The Intelligent Investor. I probably read it when I was 15. And I bought my first stocks when I was about 14 or 15. And so that my interest was peaked. I wasn't heading to be a stockbroker. In fact, my father didn't want me to. He, his view, you know, a lot of people like the grass is greener on the other side. He didn't think it was what I should be doing or stuff like that. But, and I didn't have to be a stockbroker, but yeah, of course, it nurtured my interest. And, you know, I wrote a couple papers in college about business and stuff like that. So I was interested. 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, uh, so yeah, it nurtured it. It gave me stuff to read.
I remember a very humbling thing. He came home one day, a couple of times, you know, remember, take a business you think you would understand, like a restaurant, you know, 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, and back then annual reports were much shorter, and he would rip out the page that had the price and say, "Read this thing and tell me what you would pay for it." And for anyone out there, I don't care how smart you are or 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 and how you think about values. And, uh, that's so cool. That's so great.
And so you grew up in this rough and tumble neighborhood, you got into 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 do well there, but you know, that had to be a different kind of place for you.
So I, so I went to Tufts University. I got, I 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, you know, I did well in 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 know. And I hadn't gone to Harvard undergrad or Yale or Princeton or, you know, a lot of that. But I loved it because the Socratic method, you know, for those who don't know, you sit in a classroom with 80 people, you read cases, and then the real world is messy. So this is not like theory anymore. You can talk about capital markets. It isn't like, you know, the supply and demand curves. It's like, why do things trade this way? And why do people do those things? And why do so many business ventures succeed and so many fail? And, but you learn that, and 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, 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 loved it. Made some great friends there who I still speak to. You know, Steve Burke. Uh, my wife wasn't that happy with it. You know, it made some people kind of nervous. But, you know, once you settle in, once you see the people, you get to know them, and having fun every day, it's, it's pretty good.
So, you meet your wife, Judy, at Harvard. When was that aha moment? You knew that she was the one.
So, she was introduced to us by a friend, Mandel, who you may actually have met at one point along the way. Uh, and, you know, I, 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. I, she talked about wearing sunglasses and t-shirts, and I really rarely 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 the finance club. I was the vice president of the finance club. Uh, and I was speaking to her about some event we were doing. And then Judy got on 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 malted shake or whatever that day." She says, "I made her pay," which I don't think is true. But, and then we, she had a boyfriend, by the way, who wasn't at Harvard Business School, but we started seeing each other almost every day for dinner after that. And, and that was that story.
Fantastic. And how long have you been married now?
Been married, uh, 43, 42 years.
What would you say 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?
You know, I mean, when you give advice in this, you know that it's, 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 of all, we were devoted to each other and kids. So, we had, we wanted to have kids. We wanted 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 you now have real obligations 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 I've 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 rarely took a vacation just 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. My kids do it, and I think it's just great, you know. And then we also get the grandkids a little bit. But, uh, 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.