#6 Sal Naro: The Long Game of Character and Capital

In this episode, I sit down with Sal Naro, Chief Investment Officer of Coherence Credit Strategies, a 5-time award winning fixed income credit fund with a 12-year track record.  This is a fund that has boasted an annualized return of 8% and a sharpe ratio of 1.50 since its inception in 2012.

Sal is an extraordinary leader who has spent over 40 years navigating the highs and lows of Wall Street. From his humble beginnings as a busboy to becoming a world-class trader and investor, he shares invaluable insights on building winning teams and leading with impact through times of uncertainty.

Tune in for an inspiring discussion. Sal’s wisdom is generous, hard won and deeply personal.

Key Takeaways: 

Early, Humble Beginnings Build Long term Character: Diverse work experiences forge leadership principles that last a lifetime. 

Building Winning Teams Through Vulnerability: the art of hiring for resilience, not just results. 

Leading through Uncertainty with Forward Vision: how to master the pivot by focusing ahead, not behind.

Thriving in Transformative Times: Cutting losses fast, letting gains run and spotting coherent patterns in chaos. 

Finding Light in Dark Moments Through Gratitude: crisis clarity comes through pause and appreciation, not anxiety. 

Memorable Quotes:

1. Learn from your losses. 

2. Hard work is a minimum.

3. Be in the business of getting along with people.

4. Every day give the best of you. Leave nothing on the sidelines. 

5. The events you think will never happen, happen all the time.

6. In times of cataclysmic events, adapting isn’t an option.

7. Don’t catch falling knives. Never double down on the things you are losing on. 

8. Reflect through the rear-view mirror but lead through the windshield.

9. As corporate athletes, there's no off-season—sustainable performance means mastering your own rhythm for rest and renewal.

If you want to learn more practical lessons and real-world leadership insights from remarkable founder CEOs, you can ⁠⁠⁠⁠order Georgie's book Stratospheric CEOs out now (U.K. & U.S.).

Show Links

Website - https://www.georgiedickins.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiedickins

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgieDickins-q7x

Transcript

0:00

Hi, I'm Georgie Dickens, host of Stratospic Leaders, the podcast where I get to have inspired conversations with extraordinary leaders from across capital markets. Join me to hear their game-changing strategies, the personal stories and powerful standbites behind their stratospheric success. Every episode packed with wisdom, insight and real-world lessons. The stuff they simply don't teach you in business school. If you want to elevate your game and most importantly, elevate those around you, this podcast is for you. You are in for an absolute treat with this one because I was delighted to welcome Sal Narrow to an episode of Stratospheric Leaders. Sal is Chief Investment Officer of Coherence Credit Strategies, which is a five-time award-winning fixed income credit fund with a 12-year track record. And Sal has been part of Fixed Income Senior Management for a while now. In fact, since 1990, also the year I started my secondary school, where he was the former head of global credit trading at Bear Stands and UBS, where he also served on the board of directors. He was one of the original shareholders and board members of Market Group, a fintech company which is now part of SP Global. So Sal has had a remarkable 40-year career on Wall Street, having started in 1982. And in this time, he has witnessed a tremendous metamorphos. On a personal note, I learned that Sal has a Sicilian heritage with a deep love for Rayo's pasta sauce. And I've never heard of Rayo's pasta sauce, but the way he describes it, I'm certainly going to be trying it soon. As a scholarship athlete, he played running back in his college football. His story begins far from Wall Street because he was born into a family of builders. And when I asked him, what was your first ever job? It involved carrying a hammer and learning the construction trade from his father and grandfather. He later worked as a busboy, and it is here where he got his first taste of workplace culture. It was in the kitchen restaurant being shouted at in Spanish. He learned one of his greatest lessons. People have different styles, different backgrounds, different motivations. Understand that. And that is the key to getting along and getting ahead. In our conversation, we cover many aspects of leadership. One thing that really landed for me is how do you hire the best of the best? So what does he look for when he hires talent? And yes, he values drive, fortitude, being competitive, but this needs to be balanced with empathy. And for him, that's completely non-negotiable. He'll watch how somebody treats the waiting staff because he said that gives you a sign of somebody's real character. And in the interview process, he also wants to hear how do people respond when they get kicked in the teeth? What do they do? Do they get up and do they keep going? At 64, Sal has experienced his fair share of challenging times. He spoke about the impact of 9-11 on him, on the white-collar workers. He personally lost over a hundred friends and attended 60 funerals. It is through these cataclysmic events. He shares you learn how to pick yourself up, persevere, and adapt because you simply don't have a choice. This is a masterclass in human leadership. Sal's wisdom is generous, it's hard-won, and most of all, it's personal. And one of my takeaways, his favorite song, One Moment in Time. A powerful reminder, live fully, leave nothing on the sidelines. And this captures exactly how Sal has lived his. Enjoy this episode. There are many golden nuggets Sal shares. Sal, I am delighted to welcome you to Stratospheric Leaders. And you and I are relatively new friends. It was our mutual friend, the wonderful Lance Ugler, who invited you to my Stratospheric CEO book launch. I remember connecting with you afterwards and thinking that you had the most incredible energy. And I also remember shortly after the book launch event seeing a LinkedIn post where you were buying a friend a gift for holiday season and you bought my book and you'd also did a jumbo order of is it Rayo Speciality Foods for the holiday season? And it actually got me looking at your LinkedIn. And it's it's I really engage with your post because you have pictures of giraffes and cats and the bangle songs and cookies. And I love the phrase about the cookies. Some will go down well, some will cause indigestion. And I'm sure we'll go into uh many of those things today. But I remember thinking, I want to hear more from you. And so today here we are on Stratospheric Leaders. Thank you for being here. And I have my pen and paper to hand because I know I'm gonna be jotting down as many insights uh as those who are listening. It's always, I always like to, I mean, look, we'll go through your track record, and you've got an extraordinary career as a world-class trader, as an investor. I want to hear about who are you when you're not in the seat that you sit in. And I was gonna ask you, actually, just from based on a recent conversation, a favorite song of yours? Because it's it, and and what are the reasons it's a favorite song? Well, I love music, and uh music is uh is a great part of my life. Uh, first of all, thanks by the way for having me uh here. This is fantastic. It's a great opportunity to speak with you and I appreciate it. Uh, I love music, it's it's one of the things that sort of takes me away from the markets. And uh there's been many, many songs that you know that I identify with. But a song that was written for the Olympics and sung by Whitney Houston is is one I think that I identify most with. Um and Dana Winner is the is the lady uh who whose version I like the most, but it's called Um One Moment in Time. And if you get a chance to listen to the song, it's extraordinary. Uh and also the the words itself are tremendous. And and to me, um what it really means in a nutshell is live it live in the present moment and and basically leave nothing on the sidelines, leave everything on the field every single day. And that's very much how I've always lived my life ever since I was uh a very, very young person. And so that song epitomizes. If I had a better voice, I'd sing it for you, but uh maybe not today, maybe over a glass of wine sometime at Rails, as you mentioned before. When you mentioned that song to me before, I did, I did, uh I Googled it afterwards. And to your point, if people have a chance to listen to it, because there was a line that said in there, like every day I live, I want to give the very best of me. Right. And there were there were so many like mic drop lines in there, and I've never really listened to it before. Like I have listened to it, but I've never really heard the words. And I went back to it after you'd mentioned it to me. And there was another line around, I rise and fall, yet through it all, you know, there's one moment in time. So to your point, we only have the present moment. It's really to ground ourselves into that. It is, and and and if you can live that way and leave everything on the field, so to speak, then you really are free. And that's that's what it's all about for me. Um, you know, just just living my life and being true to myself, which which is uh what I aspire, which I really aspire to. The the present moment, I my children used to watch Kung Fu Panda, and there's um a great a great quote, and and I won't, I'll I'll again I without going through the whole quote, but it says uh the present moment is a gift. That is why they call it a present or the present. And yeah, I I will thank you for reminding me of this. There's actually a book, The Precious Present. I have not heard of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I'm putting that on my reading list. Um, and you've had a distinguished career, and and I would love to hear what was your first ever job? So before you started in your your professional capacity uh in finance, but first ever job. So um my family uh were a family of builders, and why I have such a particular affinity for Reyos is the Reyos family are Sicilian, and they all came over from various towns in Sicily. And my father was a builder, my grandfather was a builder, and my first job from the time I could walk was carrying a hammer. So I would be on the job site with my dad, and uh and I learned the construction business hands-on uh from from day one. And so that was really the first job that I ever had. And that was really from the time I was honestly like seven years old, all the way up through college. I've worked, I'd work all the summers, uh, and and I learned how to uh you know, how to work with my hands. Uh, I was never in the white-collar world. I didn't even know what the white-collar world was. And all our family friends were, you know, sort of blue-collar uh folks. The first white-collar job I ever got, I think I was 14, and I got a job at a restaurant, a local restaurant as a busboy. And I started as a bus boy, and then I ended up as a bit of a waiter as I was growing from 14 to 16. And all, you know, we used to cater to all business uh affairs, lunches and dinners, and I see all these fancy people coming in, men and women with jackets and ties and all dressed up nice, and they were sort of very different to me. And at that point in time, I said, boy, I think maybe someday I'm gonna be one of those people having lunch, having dinner, talking at these business uh, you know, these business uh situations, and not the person in the background serving and cleaning and working in the dish as a dishwasher. And that's how I learned my Spanish. I learned, you know, Spanish working in a in a kitchen, believe it or not. So uh that that was really the that was really my first job before I, you know, before I went to the college, and and then I, you know, obviously moved into the financial world. And it's interesting that in is do you call it a bus boy? Because we what's what did you call it? Is it a bus boy? It's different. A bus boy. So you wash the dishes, you're a dishwasher, you you know, you take the garbage out, you you restack the shelves, you, you, you're basically at the absolute very bottom, uh, but you learn a tremendous amount. And um, you know, to me, I love people that work. I don't care what you do. Um, I think people that work are heroes in any job, any capacity. And uh so I admire the people that I worked with. Maybe they weren't the most educated, um, but they were hardworking people, they were family-oriented people, and they were just trying to make a living wage, to pay for their children, to try to give their children a better life than the life that they had. Many of them uh, you know, were new to the country. You talk about hard work. I I speak to my children about hard work as a minimum. Like that is the baseline. It's not a goal, it's not an aspiration, like hard work as is a minimum. And when you talked about that, that that being a bus boy, I imagine um that being that's like an intense environment, you know, high pressure, busy. There's many in like uh foundational lessons that have really that have carried through in your career. Very much so. And and actually, one of the first things you'll learn as a bus boy, since you're getting yelled at in a foreign language that you don't understand, uh, is you you start to pick up uh culture. And people have different cultures. And to you you need to to um to try to understand where people are coming from to get along with them. I'd love to see a lot more of that in today's day and age. Uh, but you but understanding where people are coming from and what's the what's the reason for their actions and what drives them, I think is is super critical in business and and in life with your family, with friends, with everything. And I love that, understanding where people are coming from. I think often we can look at the world through our own lens and actually putting yourself into the shoes of others, you know, whether you're in the classroom, the boardroom, in the kitchen, yeah. So important. It is. It's it's super important. And over the years, you you know, you had a uh a 42, well, I think over a 40-year career on Wall Street. And I imagine, and again, I keep saying I imagine, I don't want to be presumptuous, but you have developed an eye for talent and exceptional team building. In your in your opinion, what what what constitutes a winning team? You know, what are those unique characteristics you look for? Well, very interesting question. Um one of the things that Bear Stearns, that Ace used to always talk about, was a PSD degree. So, you know, most of the the the the brokerage firms were hiring MBAs, they were hiring grads from Ivy League schools, they were hiring, you know, the best of the best from the qualifications of education or family background. And Ace Greenberg at Bear Stearns, he didn't necessarily believe in that. He was looking for really hungry people. And so we had the term, he coined it, and it um it's in the book he wrote called Memos from the Chairman, which I also give out to people on holidays, and I give out to young people when they start the business, and I did when I was when I had big jobs running thousands of people, and I still do it now with my small, with my small uh firm. Uh PSD, poor with a poor, smart with a desire to become rich. And that's that was the modicum of the Bear Stearns attitude. So, really, at the end of the day, what I think builds a great business person is a person that's that's got tremendous desire. Um, he's got uh he or see she has intestinal fortitude. Um and uh they're very competitive, yeah, but they have empathy for other people and they're respectful. So I would, you know, talk about maybe going out to lunch or dinner or a drink with a new candidate or a coffee. And one of the things that I always watch was how that person actually treated the waiter or the waitress or the busboy, the bus boy, right? And if they were rude and disrespectful and felt like they were on a different level uh than the people that were helping them, they weren't my type of people. And the other thing about a team, everybody can't be an alpha dog, everybody can't be an A uh type of attitude. You need people that play roles in a team. And I think if you look at uh some of the great business leaders, you've interviewed a bunch of them already. I read it in your book as well. I know many of the people that you wrote about. They they recognized uh that there were different roles. I don't even want to say different levels, different roles for different skill sets. And they were able to, and I think I've been able to hire the right type of people for the different roles that encompass a team. And a team truly wins by working together and not, you know, not this isn't wrestling, right? This isn't, this isn't a one-on-one, this is not a singular sport. This is a a true team sport, managing money. And I I think actually life is too. I mean, even as a even as a father, I think uh I think you know, you you try to build the team with within your within your own family, with your own children. And you see how your kids kind of move. Some kids move this way, some kids move that way, and you try to bring them all together. I love what you said there about the uh the fortitude, the competitive nature, and also the the empathy. When I look at leaders who ascend, I think it gets to a point where IQ is table stakes. It's that EQ is the difference that makes a difference, how you build rapport, trust, connection, how you communicate. Uh and it it's such, it's such a critical skill. And I was wondering, you know, you said that you'll take people out, you know, in the interview process, you'll take them to a restaurant, see how they treat the busboy, that the waiting staff, because that gives you a sense of character. Are there any key interview questions you typically ask to uncover, I suppose, the truths about an individual? You know, it is uh it's funny because in the olden days you could ask all kinds of personal questions. What does your mother do? What does your father do? You know, do you have any brothers and sisters? You know, are you married? Do you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend? Now you're, you know, you're you're you're so you're so terrified to ask anything personal. But at the end of the day, for me, and the way I run my business, and even when I ran gigantic businesses, it is personal to me. I'm sorry. Um, I'm respectful, uh, give everybody their space, but business is personal to me. So, you know, I do ask about that background, what drives them, how did they learn about the business? Why are they excited about the business? I often want to hear about their defeats and their losses. I'm not as interested to hear about the wins. You know, anybody gets lucky from time to time and does well in something. Um, but what you really want to understand is what do these people do when they get kicked in the teeth? They get knocked down. Can they get up? Do they have, you know, the fortitude and the desire and the persistence to get back up? That's one of the reasons why, you know, I gravitated towards sports my whole life. I was an athlete my whole life. I was a scholarship athlete in uh in college. I played American football. Um, but even before that, I played all sports when I was when I was when I was young. And it was always about um the team and working with the team and finding the role that that you know suited you and trying to bring people together. Um, but it it was also very, very much about losing. And when you lose, you know, what do you do? And how do you learn from your losses? And as a professional investor and as a professional trader, I lose a lot. I mean, if you're investing, you're gonna lose and you're gonna win. I'm happy to say that the math will tell you that over the over the our career, I've you know, probably made money about 80% of the time. That's pretty high. But there's 20% of the time that I didn't make money. And so what do you do in those times? How do you pick yourself up? How do you get back on the field? Uh, and and how do you persevere through those challenging times? And and in my life, you know, uh of 64 years now, there have been many, many challenging times, like tremendously challenging times, you know, not the least of which, of course, was 9-11 and all sorts of things that have gone on that all of us have gone through. I mean, in in my world, in the world of Wall Street, you know, you didn't hear a lot about the 9-11 victims uh that were the white-collar people. You heard about the blue-collar people and the first responders, and my heart goes out to all of them, and I knew many of them, but you heard very little about the white-collar people. Um, and to me, that was like the Vietnam days when you had the draft in the United States, and a whole town would get drafted, and maybe the whole town's kids didn't come back. Right? For us in our world, I mean, I lost personally over a hundred friends. I was on the phone with people, literally on the phone with guys when the plane hit. And uh, so you know, these are events that you need to figure out. How do you pick yourself up after these type of uh cataclysmic events? Events that I never thought that I would have in my lifetime. But here's what here's what I've learned, Georgie. Things you think will never happen happen all the time. They pretty much happen every seven years and maybe, maybe every five years. I was a kid who grew up uh in the 60s, Vietnam War. I have sisters that are 10 years old. I have four sisters, by the way, four sisters, and just me as a boy. So I've got a lot of female energy around me. And uh, but but I grew up with, you know, ringing the alarm and going to sit in the hallway because you were doing the nuclear, you know, in case there's a nuclear strike, you know, you're gonna sit in the hallway and put your head down like this. How silly that was. But that's that's the environment that I grew up with in the 60s. And so, you know, coming through this period, I never thought that some certain events are gonna happen. Never in a million years imagined 9-11. In fact, I'll tell you a funny story. Before 9-11, Robert Wolfe, who was my boss at UBS, who was a tremendous man, tremendous man, uh, at UBS, and I ran Global Credit for him. At UBS, we used to do this gigantic event every year for the Super Bowl. And we were doing the Super Bowl, you know, in in 2000 and one. And uh it was whatever, I think it was February of 01. And I'm sitting in this giant stadium with all these very powerful people, people from Wall Street, names that you would absolutely know. And we're all sitting there, there's probably 30 of us. And at that time, you know, all the all the patriotic music is playing, and it's really cool, and you're so pumped up to be an American. And just before the kickoff, you know, they they shoot, shoot off some fireworks, and all of a sudden the place goes quiet, and you see this gigantic dark shadow fly over the stadium. And we're all going, what the heck is that? It looks like a giant bat. Well, it was the stealth bomber and it flew right over the stadium, but you couldn't hear it. And everybody, just like me, sat back and said, Oh my goodness, this is extraordinary. We are the most powerful nation in the world. Look at us, you know, all this. Look at look look at us. And only a few months later, the most powerful nation in the world was taken to its knees by a well-organized and very smart and crafty terrorist organization, but taken to its knees. So there you go. There's your ultimate high, you're pounding your chest, and there's your ultimate low. You lose. I mean, I think I went to 60 funerals. I mean, it was it was just, you know, obviously horrendous. So what you think's never going to happen can never happen. It happens all the time. It happens on Wall Street, it happens in the markets, and it happens in life. And so you've got to figure out how you're going to adapt from that and move forward. Because you don't have a choice really. No, I it's I'm I'm just so sorry for your loss. It's yeah, it's yeah. And to your point, you know, that what white collars went through during that time. And and I and it was really interesting what you said there. The things that you think may never happen will at some point happen. And so I think it's to expect the unexpected. Um, and and I think we look at the world around us now, and the world is more volatile, complex, ambiguous than ever before. I think we can wake up and and look at the news headlines and be in this perpetual state of fear because we're not always, you know, we can't always plan what we're going to read. And and and you know, through your you know, several 40 years on Wall Street, you know, you've led yourself uh and you've led teams through times of intense volatility. What advice, you know, if you had some uh emerging leaders who are like, you know, how do I lead in times of uncertainty? What's the advice you'd equip them with? Yeah. Um, well, you know, I was thinking about this. In the time I've been on Wall Street since 1982, roughly 27 different firms have actually gone out of business. Wow. Names like A.G. Becker, E.F. Hutton, first Boston, Drexel, Shearson, Kidder, Dean Witter, DLJ, Payne Weber, Wasserstein, it goes on and on. L. F. Rothschild, where I work, Mavon Nugent, where I worked. They're all gone. Um, many of them merged, many of them got bought out, many of them just closed. Um, so there's there's been a tremendous metamorphosis. And so change is absolutely constant. Um, and and as a trader, you know, uh one of the I named my company Coherence, Coherence Capital Partners. And to me, coherence is being able to see the forest through the trees, trying to, and you and I talked about this a little bit, trying to raise your vibration level, trying to be empathetic to those around you, understand where they're coming from, and and really raise, raise your your understanding and and your ability to see. I I was a running back in college playing American football. And what made me, I think, pretty good was that I had great peripheral vision. I could see the field looking at you, but I could see everything to the side of me. And I could anticipate people moving in and out, the block that this person might make, where this defender was going to come. And I've always been able to anticipate. So to me, that's what coherence is. It's it's trying to uh anticipate the behavior and the moods in the market. So when you look at investing, it's it's fundamentals, it's technicals, it's AI now, but it's also behavioral. And and behavioral sciences have a lot to do with with uh the markets and sort of the the madness of crowds. So if you look at um if you look at the environment and and things that I that I think have made me successful over a long period of time, is really never doubling down and tripling down and getting bigger into anything that I'm doing that I'm losing in. So specifically to the portfolio, getting bigger in a losing trade, whether it's a long or short, and and thinking that I'm right and the market's wrong, I don't do that. Some people are really, really good at that, but I don't catch falling knives. And the people that invest with me expect me to not catch falling lives. And where they put me in their portfolio is the consistent return alpha bucket, not you know, the bucket that expects to make giant home runs. There are a lot of folks out there that that can average down and double down. I don't do it. So in everything that I do, and and that has to go with, you know, relationships, friends. You know, you have a friend, you think they're a friend, but you know, you have a couple sort of things that kind of go off the rails a little bit. Do you double down on that friendship? No, maybe. Or maybe you say, hey, maybe we just don't have the synergy. And maybe I want people in my life that are glass half full, not half empty. So so you move on. So that whole thing comes around to me personally, I cut my losses quickly, I let my gains run, and I kind of live my life that way. I love that. Cut my losses right. Cut my losses quickly. Uh and it what you just said there about friends reminded me of a quote that my um one of my coaches shared with me years ago, where he said, friends are there for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Yes. I think I wrongly assumed that friends you kind of take them all with you. And and actually it we don't have, you know, none of us have the capacity to take it. So it's it and it's being okay with that. Sometimes it's a chapter, it's at college, it's a certain job, it's a it's a when your children are a certain age, and that chapter, and that's perfect as it is. One moment in time. One moment in time, I love that one moment in time. And and I I I I I love what you said about change is constant, because I think uh when we were just you know speaking to change, because I think for for that is given the fact it is constant, it is about the ability to adapt, to evolve, to your point, exercise that peripheral vision. For some people, that may be fairly natural that they they can see, you know, they've got that wide aperture. For others, it's really finessing that skill because things are coming at us from many different directions at the moment. And we can't, it's control the controllables because we can't always control what's happening. What does God say? God laughs at the best-laid plans. My my sort of word for all that is pivot. I I made a career, I made a career really literally out of pivoting. Yeah, pivoting in my portfolio, pivoting in my business career. Sometimes you just have to pivot and and get to keep looking forward, right? So you've got a windshield, and it's it's huge, right? And you have a rear view mirror, it's kind of tiny. You don't want to spend a lot of time looking in this little rear view mirror. You want to be looking in that windshield and looking forward. And when you're looking forward, you want to see the field. We know if I don't know if you've ever had a chance to drive a race car. I've had a couple of opportunities to do a couple of these racing, these racing uh schools and things like that, uh, which I loved. And um they teach you when you're driving on the track, you're not looking here, you're looking there. You're looking, it's like when you're playing, when you're playing athletics, you know, you're you're not running to where the ball is, you're running to where the ball is going to be. And in life, yeah, if you can, you want to run to where the ball's going to be. And how often do people do that though? It's it they feel uh and and Isaiah, I listened to you. I think it's really about being intentional about running and and being, I suppose, aware that there's like we've got to be in that present moment to be like, right, where do I need to be? And being intentional about then following that direction. Yeah, the other side of that would be well, someone say, Oh, Sal, you know, you're you're able to say that now because you know you're relatively well off. You know, I'm struggling just to make ends meet. I don't have time to be able to see, you know, the forest through the trees. Well, the truth is that you do. I haven't always been in the seat. I was in the exact same seat. I was the busboy, I was the construction worker, I was the landscaper. Um, all those are all admirable jobs. Um, but I kept pushing myself to do more, see further, read more, pray more, and try to understand that there's a lot more to life. I actually truly believe that what we envision becomes reality. And I, you know, I don't want to mismatch your podcast, but you know, Lance, Lance is a great friend of mine, Lance Hugla, and he was, I think, the first fellow that spoke, and he's one of the strong topics of your book. And I think I told you this. You know, I was an investor in market group at the very beginning. I was on his board of a board in 2002. Him and Kevin Gould came into my office and they convinced me to invest for UBS. And years later, when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do after I closed my hedge fund, Lance took me out and said, I want you to come work for me. And he took out, we're in a restaurant and he took out a napkin. I still have the napkin, and he wrote down exactly what was going to happen to his company in the next 15 years, where the stock price was then and where it was going to be. And I still carry this thing with me wherever I go. He literally laid the whole thing. He envisioned this entire thing before it ever happened. And he created all of it. And there were people who laughed and scoffed and couldn't believe it. And it was all baloney. And no. And I think the other people that you had on your show all have done iterations of that. And I think that's what's happening. I think Elon Musk is a perfect example of that. Just look at what he and his team are doing and where their visions are. So I think we as human beings have a lot more power than we think we do. And I think to a certain level we create our own reality. I I a hundred percent agree with you. I have vision boards all around me, you can't see them, but I have vision boards. And what really that the quote that came up for me, and I hope I'm attributing it correctly, is to Leonardo da Vinci, where he says, I dream my painting, I paint my dream. And that I dream my painting, that's that visualization. What's the unmet future? You know, what that what is that? Uh, you know, what do I want to create? So I dream my painting and then I paint my dream. And yes, it's about then doing the work, having conversations, you know, putting all those seeds in place. But equally, when you're so clear on your vision and you're doing all the work to make it a reality, it's interesting, those serendipitous moments that the universe seems to work out the how. I think that's right. I do. And it's it's I I've when I interviewed the leaders for my CEO book, I I I one of the things that really struck me as the golden thread between them all is that that they know they visualize, you know, that they they manifest their dreams. And whether they would whether they would whether we whether they would uh use the same words, but it is it's it they are they're visualizing, they're thinking all the time, every brushstroke on that painting. They're and and out of interest, did you ever go back to Lance to say, look, you know, this is your 15-year plan, and that this is something you've created. We've talked about it many, many times. He doesn't, you know, he he thinks I'm a bit foo-foo with all this type of stuff, except that he practices it as much as I do. So he may not say he believes in it, but he doesn't need to say it because he actually lives it. Yeah. It's and it's the power, oh well again, the power of what's possible when you believe in it. And uh and I I want to pivot to um, as I said, you know, you've had many decades on Wall Street. What do you think is one thing no one ever warns you about when it comes to leadership? Well, I always believed that if you're a good person and if you're honest, and if you do pretty much everything right, that you will be rewarded. Um and I always believed that if you had proof behind you, proof documents and data and all this type of stuff, that it was and you had irrefutable data and information that you would be rewarded. But as I learned in the bit in business, and as I grew to higher levels of uh of um, you know, good positions, if you will, of power, um, I learned that you know it's not about if you're always right. Uh, because there's someone uh over you, or there's a group over you, and they may have an agenda, and they may not want to know exactly what you're telling them uh because they have a particular agenda. So it was I learned this lesson at one of the very large firms I had, which when uh that I was in that I had a very big job in, and I and I had this situation, and basically I learned the hard way that it doesn't matter always if you're right. And then I learned it a lot with litigation and things like that. Like, you know, attorneys will tell you, and if you're in securities litigation and things like that, you you never want to end up going to court because you just don't know what the opinion is ultimately going to be or how that opinion is gonna come out, how it's gonna be manipulated. So um I think that the biggest thing I learned as I became a high-level executive is there's a lot of give and take. And even if you're right, maybe you're wrong, and and and maybe maybe you just take a half a step back and hear where the other people are coming from, and then move yourself accordingly, because it doesn't always matter if you're exactly right. And that was a tough lesson to learn, I'll be honest with you. And I think sometimes we can be so fixated on winning the argument, but in the process we can lose the relationship or we can it can damage our credibility. Yep. So I suppose it's really taking a pause to be like, what's the end goal here? What do I what do I want to achieve? And recognizing, okay, well, maybe I need to adapt how I present myself or how I present the facts to to try and make it as close to a win-win. You know, when when you're in times of crisis, um, and and I've been in a lot of different crises in my in my life, to be honest, but business-wise and some personal and things like that, um, everything you want everything to speed up. You want to make all these decisions quick. But the reality is what you should be trying to do is slow time down. As a boater, there's a there's a saying, slow is pro. And so when you're coming into a volatile situation, you're coming into an inlet, you have you know, waves and current and all types of things happening, or you have a mechanical problem. Uh, you want to slow down and you want to think, and you want to try to work things out in your head. You know, as a as a young fella, I had this tremendous football coach in high school. I went to Half Hollow Hills High School, and I had a coach by the name of Stanley Kowalski, and he was a he was a tough guy, uh, fast, strong, a bit arrogant, and he really, really pushed us as players. And in our workout room, he had all these signs up. And the sign that he used to drag me over, he grabbed me, put me a narrow, because I was a bit of a hot head when I was younger, you know, kid, drag me over there, you know, in a way you can't do anymore, like by my neck, and stick my face right into a sign. And the sign says, an athlete should keep his head, his feet as long as he can, his head always. And that's something, you know, that was when that happened, I was maybe 15, 16 years old, and I've never forgotten that. So, you know, in life, in in managing money, in the markets, et cetera, take a deep breath, slow down a bit, try to again see the forest through the trees, um, and don't panic, right? And and so I think that is a critical lesson for everybody to learn. And and the world has changed so much because now everything is instantaneous. Instant sat, you know, satisfaction. Push a button and you know, you're you're on Twitter, or you know, you you can you get Amazon, you can get Uber Eats, you can get everything and never never move, right? Everything is instant satisfaction. And I think that's one of the challenges that younger people have now, you know, to not you know, to not really understand what it's like for things to take time. Um, so instant satisfaction in a crisis, unless you're super, you know, super highly well trained, it's time to take a deep breath. And I think that's that comes across that way, every everything that I do. And breathing is always home base, I think, because you know, when we're uh if we're you know we're we're in that anxious mode, then heart rate goes up, breathing rate goes up, blood pressure goes up. And there's a saying when emotion runs high, intellect runs low. So it's it's keeping it's keeping regulated. Fight or flight, right? That's that's how we were, that's how we came up, fight or flight. Yeah. It's it's and there's so much here about controlling, you know, uh it's your emotional regulation. The slowest pro is a new one for me. I hadn't heard that quote, and I love that. It it also reminded me of the quote by the Navy SEAL: slow is steady, steady is fast. Because, and I said this to my son this morning on the way to school because they had a hockey tournament yesterday, they lost in the finals, they were exhausted, but they they were trying to go too fast. They were just tonking the ball, not looking where they're going. And I said, look, this is where slowest is steady, because actually you can still go fast, but by slowing it things down, then you're you've got, you know, you're clear in direction rather than being directionless. And I think it's such a valuable reminder that sometimes slowest is the best way. And it might feel that that's completely counter to what you should be doing, but that's where true power resides in those times. And you said breathing. I mean, breathing is critical. And uh, I don't do it as much as I should. I I really try, I practice, I meditate every day multiple times. I work on my breathing, and and still from time to time I catch myself breathing shallow and not really taking things in. And when I do breathe deeply, uh, I become much, much more conscious of everything around me and and much and and the markets and everything become so much clearer to me as opposed to all hyped up and short breaths and all that. It's it's interesting, isn't it? If we all had a camera that that was that was kind of recording us through the day, we we'd actually, if we could observe our body language when we're, you know, when because I just saw you on screen then when you know when we're stressed, we go rigid. So we're we we're already strict, we're constricting our airways in our lungs, and and then we wonder what sometimes what we don't make the best decisions, or uh so it's that there is so much here within our control, breathing, slow as pro, and and just having sometimes I put post-it notes on my machine just as a because sometimes in the moment when you're triggered, you can't always remember the good things because you're in your own head. So it's having a reminder somewhere, just to be like, no, no, slow is pro. And this is where technology really helps, and it's because I, like many people, wear something that says, hey, dummy, your heart rate's running. Or when's the last time you when's the last time you breathe? Let's let's take a moment. Will you take a moment? By the way, can you stand up? Right. So this the technology is absolutely extraordinary. And it and and I've I've embraced it uh and and it's really helped me tremendously, tremendously. And I think many people in the markets are data oriented, and these devices, whether it's a whoop band, an Apple Watch, they give us data. Sometimes we don't want to see the data because I think it's then it's then holding a mirror up. But when we know better, we can do better. And and you know, what you put your attention on expands. So if we're putting our attention on breathing more, standing up more, you know, reduced heart rate, then if we're tracking it, we can be like, hey, you know, are we are we are we um you know meeting uh our goals or are we falling short? And if we're falling short, what's the reason for that? Yeah, I agree. And and you you mentioned about your your watch there, and I think for anyone, I'm not even just gonna send financial markets, but I think anyone who has a heartbeat uh in today's world, uh it's about having stammer and sustainability because the world, I know you we we mentioned change is constant, but the world seems to be moving faster than ever before, and the change just fills at that unprecedented velocity. How do you, you know, so is as a leader about staying fit for purpose? How how do you create that stammer and sustainability? You mentioned meditation, you mentioned like, but yeah, I'd love you to share more. Um, well, when I turn 40, I so I I never I was never a great sleeper. Uh and I used to lay in bed and I'd be staring at the ceiling. And when I turned 40 years old, I just decided I I'm not going to stare at the ceiling anymore. I'm going to just get up and be productive. So I read or I listen to music and I do things. And then as time has gone on, um, I've I've you know I've changed, uh, I've added to my early morning uh routine. So I've always, for many, many, many years, I run international businesses. And while I was based, I was usually based out of the US, although sometimes I was based out of the US and London. And even in the US, I would normally beat the London people to work because I get up at 2:30, I'm working at 2.30, 3 o'clock. You know, we all know the time differences and stuff. So my day starts super early. Um I may be talking to uh to people in Europe about the markets, and maybe talking to research analysts, talking to the guys we have. Um, and then I go for like a six to eight mile walk every morning. Uh, and and while I'm walking, I'm talking to people, I'm talking about the portfolio, or I'm listening to some extraordinary podcasts like. Yours. I've been listening to your uh your stuff, the few that you have out so far. Uh, and so I've I've been doing that. Um, and so I try to make you know my time really, really productive. Some people really don't need a lot of sleep. I guess, you know, maybe at some point it'll catch up to me, but I just try to keep my mind really, really active. Um, and I and I try to sort of be productive with my time. And and the stronger I feel, the healthier I feel, then I think the better person I am, husband, father, grandfather, portfolio manager. You know, I don't have a boss per se. My my boss in my business is all my investors. I mean, they can fire me tomorrow. And and basically, you know, they're looking at performance. And so I'm in a performance-based business. So you've got to keep yourself really operating at a high level. Uh, and it's it's it's challenging to do that all the time. You know, I always said that the business of Wall Street is a very is very much like being a professional athlete. It's, you know, high notoriety, hopefully high compensation, a lot of press and all that. You know, you get to go places and do things. Um, but the difference is that we never have an off-season. You have to perform every day, particularly as a uh as an active manager, as a as a hedge fund manager or uh or you know, managing an active portfolio. So I'm not, you know, investing for the next 30 years. Uh, you know, I'm not uh I don't have the same approach, let's say, as Warren Buffett did or whatever. You know, we're we're trying to drive return on a consistent basis. And really we're competing every single day. And it's not just me, it's the whole industry. And it's difficult, and you never get an actual off-season. Now, no one's gonna complain and cry, you know, for the Wall Street guys or anybody who's in that profession that lives under that intense, um, that intense spotlight and performance guidelines. But at the end of the day, you've got to figure out a way to keep your performance up. And that's why, you know, a lot of people sort of burn out. I am absolutely not at the end of my career, but I'm certainly, you know, I'm in the later stages, you know, of uh of the Wall Street, if you will. I mean, most of the people that I talk to are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Even a 50-year-old person is young to me, you know, and you just got to keep yourself moving. You have to integrate technology, and the technology that we're seeing now is is just extraordinary from the watch to AI and how you how you're moving that into your process, et cetera. And you just have to stay, uh, you have to stay really uh excited. And I never I never had to motivate myself because I'm just excited all the time about it. I mean, I I think I'm living in the most extraordinary time. I'm incredibly grateful to have been in this world at this time with all the changes that we have going on and the technology. And I'm super excited for you know for the future, for the future of uh of our humanity, to be honest. What really comes up for me, you said the words there, you know, you keep your performance up. And I think there's something there about every that'll be different to everyone. You know, for you, it's going there's a six to eight mile walk, it's listening to your podcast. But it is that our Aristotle quote, you know, knowing thyself as the beginning of all wisdom, really knowing, you know, what are the um the resourcing practices, strategies that you need to put in place so you can stay at your best. And and I really heard you and felt you when you, you know, the excitement you spoke to, you know, it is about also, and it's not always possible, but where possible, you know, find a job that excites you and you and you enjoy because you know, life is the journey, and it you want to enjoy the ride as much as possible. Passion. Yeah. Passion is a term that people need to embrace more. Sounds funny, passion embrace. But uh, you know, I I think being passionate as a father, all I want for my children, for my children is to be happy, to find love and to find passion, be passionate about you know their life, their spouse, their children, their career. You know, to me, that that is the epitome of success, right? Seeing the people that you love uh have a passion for for their life and not view themselves as a victim, right? But always view themselves as a glass sort of half full. And it's sad. I have a lot of friends and I'm involved with a lot of charities uh, you know, that are surrounded and centered by sort of victims. Some of them uh are are folks that you know have things happen to them, and others are just unfortunate circumstances. And I think it it's a it's a challenge to try to have to try to help turn those people's mindset around. It's literally changing the way you think. And it's easier said than done. And believe me, I've all, you know, we've all had our dark moments of the soul, me as me as as much as anybody else. You just have to persevere through that. And in those moments where um, whether it's confidence, you know, you talked about mindset, you know, I think I I you I said about earlier on, you know, if we have a heartbeat, but equally if we have a heartbeat, we'll have experienced moments of self-doubt, uh, confidence crises, um, dark holes of how in those moments, what how do you, I don't know what the question is. It's it's kind of how do you talk to yourself? How do you what do you do in those moments? I don't talk to myself. I actually pray. Okay. I pray. I mean, I'm I'm not a religious person, but I'm a very spiritual person. So I I I express gratitude to God, to you know, you know, the universal mind, whatever you want to call it. I express gratitude to my ancestors who worked so hard and took chances coming from other countries to come to this country to for me to be in a position to be here now. I thank my parents who have passed away. I I pass, I thank my in-laws who gave me this beautiful daughter, uh, you know, who gave me the beautiful daughter as my wife. Um, I I I pray and I I take a deep step back and I say how lucky I actually really am to be here now. And I just try to be grateful for it. And and through that appreciation, I normally can see that there really is light on the other side, even though it felt so dark. It's interesting, isn't it? Because gratitude, if we any of us, any of us pause for a moment and took a moment to be grateful, you know, the fact we woke up this morning, the fact that you've got eyes that see, ears that hear, the fact that you can sit at your desk, there is the there's we we've all got stuff to be grateful for. And I think we can, well, I don't think I it's easy to find ourselves in that constant throughput of life. And gratitude could take, it could be 30 seconds, a minute. It doesn't have to be a big direct debit of time, but can be profoundly, profoundly impactful. Yeah, I think it changes your life if you can, if you can, if you can view it that way. I'm super thankful for my family, for my friends, for meeting you, for people like Lance have been in my life. And you said before, people are in your lives at certain moments in time. It's extraordinary. And you need to also learn, like you said, they're not always going to be there necessarily. You hope so, but that's not really the way it works out. And you have to recognize and appreciate that moment in time, you know, that was a great relationship. And now, for whatever reason, it's passed. And you have to keep moving, you know, keep moving on. And in your in your career, you have you have you had a mentor? You know, who have been the, you know, we've mentioned Lance, but who have been really the instrumental people in helping or having a part in you becoming you? Well, you know, this will surprise you. So I mentioned Robert Wolfe at UBS. Obviously, Lance has been my partner and friend for a long time. Um, I actually uh was first hired in in the business of Wall Street by a woman. I've had actually many women who have been instrumental in my business career. It was a woman uh uh by the name of Irene Pappas, who worked for Dreyfus in 1982. And uh I had been a scholarship athlete in school, and I had hurt myself as a senior, and I didn't know what I was gonna do, and I realized my athletic career was over, and I sort of walked over to the college guidance counselor co-op office, and they were recruiting for Dreyfus Service Corporation. And so I put my two cents in, and the lady that was running uh the co-op area, light took a shining to me, and she said, I'm gonna introduce you to my friend Irene Pappa. She runs this dry for service corporation, and I went and met her, and we hit it off, and she hired me. Uh, and I was actually, I think, probably the youngest person at Dryfest ever hired to get their series six, which is the license that you need to sell mutual funds and stuff. So she hired me. And about seven or eight months later, I, you know, I moved into work in the city. I worked for a legend in an area built for a guy that was a legend by the name of Monty Gordon. I learned a lot at Dryfest, but I realized that the people at Dryfest didn't make a lot of money, and I wanted to make a lot of money. I decided that, you know, if I'm gonna be in this business world, that I that I really want to I want to try to maximize return. So I went to Irene and I said, I'm gonna leave Irene. I'm gonna find a different job. And uh and she said, you know, we really like you here. You should stay, but if you go, you know, don't look back, move forward and and go super hard. Uh and you know, you're the type of person, Sal, that's probably never gonna be satisfied. Someday you're gonna maybe regret, you know, you know, moving on, but you should move on. Ultimately, I went to I had a couple different careers, and then I wounded up uh going to work for a company called Mabon Nugent and another lady, Cynthia Walpool. She she was a partner with this guy, Jim Philippis, who was a Vietnam vet, actually. And they those two people took me under their wing and they taught me everything about the you know trading and understanding fundamentals and credit. And so I was so blessed to have those folks as mentors. And then later, when I became a mentor at Bear Stearns, I actually had uh a tremendous woman that worked for me. Her name was Lisa Shepherd, and she was one of the only female traders on Wall Street. And we're going way back now. I met Lisa in 1984. And so I've been so you know blessed to have uh, you know, this female energy and women around me and work with these people. So, you know, I mean, that's how I actually started my Wall Street. I got the I got a break from you know, from those two women earlier on. And then later on, sort of I, you know, mentors, I I've always just um I've always gravitated towards people who uh were humble, as I said to you, and um who had the uh who had lasted the test of time. So I was, you know, young, I was a flash in the pan. I came up and you know, made a lot of money, and I was this really successful young trader. And I, you know, I met this at the time, 45-year-old trader, and I was sitting down working with him, and um and people say, Oh, Sal, you know, you you look, you know, you're so much better than him, and this and that. And I'm like, you know what? That guy's 45, he's been doing this for 20 odd years. I'll tell you that I'm a really good trader or a great trader if I can last the test of time, all those ups and downs, because you're not winning all the time, and how do you pick yourself up? So I my aspiration was to last the test of time. And uh, and I still think I have a lot of time left, but but I think, you know, I think I've done that. So, yeah, that's that's kind of how I look at it. Taking a chance is something that that really comes up for me there. You know, it's putting yourself out there, you know, believing in yourself, you know, taking that step and also the importance of who we surround ourselves with, because none of us are an island. We know we all need the help, the support, the advocacy, the checks and balances of of other people around us. And and I and I think it it's seeking those people out because, and and also asking for what we need. Asking who. Exactly. I mean, it and the the the key thing is like who? And it's people you trust and people whose expertise that you value. And and I think I'll go back to what I said earlier, you know, sometimes we're so busy in the doing, and actually, it's that slow as pro, slowing things down. Who are the people that I need to connect with? What is my ask of them? Because a single insight can really put you on a completely different pathway. And the ultimate ask is is the big guy upstairs. Like, you know, direct me, guide me. What should I be doing? You know, the idea that we all have plans for our lives is is a little it's a little silly, right? I mean, you can you want to plan, but you know, things happen. So you really have, in my view, you have to trust. Uh, you have to trust in God and trust in what you believe, whether it's God or doing the right thing or whatever term you want to use, but you have to understand that there are many things way beyond yourself that you just cannot control. Going back to my Super Bowl story with the, you know, with the B1 bomber flying over, the stealth bomber flying over, and we're the most powerful. And, you know, a few months later, we're, we're, you know, we're we're not, right? And and and things can change, as you're sharing there, things can change so quickly and in a heartbeat. And that we could speak for such a long time here, and I would love to invite you on a future episode, but and for this episode, where I'd like to kind of conclude it with is you have so much wisdom, insight, stories, experiences. If you could go back to that, say maybe the the the 13-year-old Sal, what would you, what is what is the what is the stuff you'd want him to know? What wisdom would you impart? I I was so blessed in in having you know fantastic parents, and they gave me sort of every opportunity and they they pushed me around uh education and and so you know I I don't I I don't know how much honestly I would change uh from what what I what I was originally taught. I mean, look, I've made some you know sort of dumb mistakes in my life, but really, you know, be true to yourself, which which I've always been. And uh, you know, I get like I said, I the thing I'll leave you with is just leave everything on the field, don't leave it on the sideline. Don't have the excuse. You know, I I can't stand I wulda, coulda, shoulda. It's just, you know, it's just not it's just not a place for me to be. I make mistakes, I recognize them, and I move on. I cut my loss, whatever it is, move forward. Don't dwell on your uh on the things that you're you know that you've made a mistake in or you haven't achieved. Just keep moving forward. And and I I kind of think, honestly, Georgi, that that that I that I've really I've really done that. I don't know what I would have really done differently. Maybe if I had gone to a much better school, then sort of where would I be? I was recruited by Yale, but I didn't go because my girlfriend went to post and I wanted to go to post. And so I don't I don't know. Just I I'd say, I'd say just let it rip in your life. Just do the right thing by people and uh and just try to you know excel in every every moment that you can because it is really precious. It is the precious present. One moment in time. Thank you so much, Sal. It has been an absolute joy and a privilege spending the last hour with you. And I look forward to many more inspired conversations. Very kind of you to have me on. I'm glad we coordinated our clothing. We did, marvelous. Thank you so much. Thanks, Sal.