David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…No, but look what he built over the years. The consistency, the curiosity, the heart, the branch-by-branch products. It’s just always doing that, knowing you’re going to make mistakes, but building the culture that just plows through that. You all know I do use sports. Sports is a great analogy. If you have a sport team with a bunch of real jerks on it, are they going to be a great team? Almost never. You look at Tom Brady. Every day at practice he worked hard. If people are not giving their best, how you’re going to have a great team? It’s not that different in business. The difference in business, you can BS about it all the time. You can make up stories. But in sports, you see it on the playing field. Do they have the team? They play together. They don’t even have to be friends. They have to practice, know their teams. So I do think companies have that. It’s like a sauce that works. And you’ve seen it. Lots of different companies, not just J.P. Morgan Chase. So, we’ve got one last question for you. If you look back to 2008, which was a long time ago now, all of the other leaders that were involved in that era have long since retired. I think many folks within J. P. Morgan Chase have long since retired since then. It seems like you’re working as hard as ever, and in it as much as ever. Why are you still here? What keeps you going? I want to thank my wife who was here, too, who suffered through all this, with me all these years, and probably couldn’t have done it without her. Look, I don’t know. But I do believe, my grandparents, all Greek immigrants, who didn’t finish high school, but there’s a Greek ethic. You don’t even realize you’re learning from your parents from the ground up. Judy’s parents, my wife’s parents were the same. Have a purpose. It could be art, it could be science, it could be military, it could be business, it could be just being a great parent, a great teacher. But have a purpose. Then do the best you can. Give it your all. Don’t be one of those people who’s complaining all the time. You give it your best. And then treat everyone properly. Everyone. If there’s a bully beating up on someone, you had to stand up for the someone. You were not allowed to allow a bully to do it, so how you treat people you do. In my hierarchy of life, the most important thing is my family. Still is. The second thing is my country because I think this country is the indispensable nation that brought freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, which we have to teach everywhere we go about how important it is, because I don’t think people fully understand it sometimes. Then my purpose, because my family doesn’t want me home every day, this is my contribution. Through this company, I can help cities, states, schools, companies, employees. I get the biggest kick out of that, so that’s what I do. As long as I have the energy, I’m going to do it. I don’t play golf. One of my daughters said, dad, you need some hobbies. I said, I do. Hanging out with you, family travel, barbecuing, wine. We now like whiskeys. I love history. I think history is the greatest teacher of all time. Hiking. I can’t play tennis anymore because of my back. But those are my hobbies. I don’t buy fancy cars and stuff like that. But this gives me purpose in life beyond family and beyond country. Plus, I think this helps the country. I get to do a lot of things for our country that I just think are quite meaningful from this job. When I’m done with this, I don’t know. I’ll teach and write. I may write a book like Andrew Ross Sorkin did. I’ll do something, but I got to do something, and I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs and smell the flowers.…

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