#173 Gregory Zuckerman – Transcript

Gregory Zuckerman is a Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal, a 20-year veteran of the paper and a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award — the highest honor in business journalism.

On this episode he discusses discovering your unique skills and using them to your advantage, how he’s developed as a writer and what it’s like covering some of the titans of business.

Greg’s latest book “The Man Who Solved the Market, and how James Simons became one of the most successful investors in history” is one of Sean’s favorite books of 2019!

Jim Simons could be the greatest money manager of all time. To put this performance in perspective, $1 invested in the Medallion Fund from 1988-2018 would have grown to over $20,000 (net of fees) while $1 invested in the S&P 500 would have only grown to $20 over the same time period. Even a $1 investment in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway would have only grown to $100 during this time. Enjoy this episode with Best Selling author Gregory Zuckerman!

Sean DeLaney: Gregory, welcome to What Got You There. How are you doing today?

Gregory Zuckerman: Oh, great to be here, thanks. 

Sean: Yeah, very excited. This podcast is all about finding people who are doing those extraordinary things, and what I’m I gonna love about this conversation is, here, you’re this prolific writer but then you get to write about some pretty amazing people at the same time. Do you enjoy that bit of your work?

Gregory: Yeah, so I’m at the Wall Street Journal day-to-day and most stories you spend a few days on maybe a few weeks if you get lucky, a month, but a book you can roll up your sleeves and travel, get to meet people, spend real time with them and sink your teeth into topics that you’re excited about. So yeah, I love it.

Sean: So with its excitement, how did you first get in journalism? 

Gregory: I stumbled into it actually. 

I grew up loving newspapers. We would read a couple each day, two different papers in my hometown in Providence, Rhode Island, they got the New York Times and the local paper. I would walk to the local bank and read the Wall Street Journal, we didn’t read the Journal at home. I would check out other kinds of things, Barons and my camp counselors to bring back to me. 

I used to love finance, and I used to love newspapers. I never thought about doing this as a job. 

I always liked business, and I always love to investing, so I always thought I would go work on Wall Street, and I graduated and I did well, went to a liberal arts school, Brandeis University, graduated and figured I just go work on Wall Street, and I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t even get an interview back then, it was a rough time on Wall Street. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have any experience. I spent most of my summers like working with kids at camp. I didn’t think about actually getting some experience.

It was a downturn at the time, and yeah, people with no experience from liberal art schools, were not what they wanted. So I started some businesses, some worked, some didn’t work, most didn’t work that well. I did things like, I did college tours, I took kids, high school students, on tours of college campuses and charge people for that and it was fun, enjoyable. The kids liked it, the parents liked it, but I didn’t make much money, I didn’t charge enough insurance was expensive etc., and I was just looking around for a career, and I saw an ad in the newspaper for a job, back then they had such things. And it was to be a reporter on a trade publication, a financial trade publication, and I had never worked in my high school newspaper or a college newspaper, so I didn’t have any clips to show them so they gave me a “leaked document” and they said, “Hey, go right about this.” 

And it was like a merger in a… Like City Group, and somebody merging and I was like… And I was taking this test and I was like, “Wait, they’re gonna pay me to write about Wall Street.” I love it, I love Wall Street, I love writing. I never thought about this, I’m… I didn’t even think it didn’t occur to me that this could be a job. I don’t know why I never thought about being a financial reporter then, I was like, “Wow, this is what I should be doing.”

Sean: Yeah, kind of the merger of things you’re really interested in. So with no real writing experience, what were you doing it early just to hone that craft and develop your writing skills?

Gregory: It’s a great question. So I took that test and I remember thinking, I aced this thing, I did a great job and that I got the job and then later they told me that actually my writing wasn’t good at all. I was doing what they do in universities, and as an academic, which is a reverse pyramid. In other words, you give a little theme at the top of your paper, if you remember from back in college. But your conclusion is really good and summary is excellent.

And in the newspaper business, it’s the complete opposite of what you should be doing. No one reads to the end or not, everyone reads to the end of your stories. So hit him up top with the best stuff.

And so, then, I had to completely relearn that stuff, and I did, I basically just read books and articles of people that I admire, at all kinds of publications.

Books like James Stewart from the New York Times, and he was at the Wall Street Journal at one point too. … that kind of stuff, or Variance of the Gate for narratives, and just newspaper articles, Wall Street Journal and others, and turns out I was really good at, and they hired me for this reason, it wasn’t my writing. It turns out I was really gonna getting information from people on the phone and they tested me, they gave me, they said go call a source and tell you information, how to write this story by asking them questions and the source was the person interviewing me, my potential boss and he’s like, “Yeah, your writing wasn’t great, Greg, but you’re really good at talking to people and getting information out of them. It was a talent that I never knew I had, and I’m a big believer that we all have some talent that were better than most others in the world, and I just stumbled into finding mine.

Sean: I love that concept that’s something I believe in too, and I feel like not enough people don’t dig deeper on that. Knowing what their hidden talents are and then capitalizing on that. So when you really discover this through someone else, what are the next steps for you? How do you begin to go further with that talent?

Gregory: Yeah, that was like very eye-opening. I was like an “a-ha” kind a thing where… Yeah, I completely agree. I think everyone’s got some competitive advantage. I tell young people all the time, try to find something that you’re better than, maybe not the rest of the world at, but better than most. I remember I heard a speech once by one of the authors of Freakonomics … And he said that his father was the world’s expert or one of the world’s experts at an intestinal gas or something like that, where no one really else wanted to do it or no one was really good at it and he was the world’s expert. He would fly around the world and speaking gigs and all that kind of stuff. And listen, I’m not necessarily, I’m not sure equivalent to being a doctor or being an expert in gas, but I do what I do, and I think I’m better than most others but I’d probably be worse than most others at many other jobs out there. I just stumbled into it. 

And so it’s easy for me to tell a young person to look for that, but to the extent you can and try to try to find some niche something that you’re just a little better than everybody else or most others at within a sector, it could be an approach to something, a way of doing some industry, some business. So when it came to me and I realized I’m really good at talking to investors, and talking to people on the buy side and getting people to share information that they shouldn’t. 

And I look around the newsroom at the Wall Street right now, Wall Street Journal right now, there are people that are smarter than I am, that are better writers, that maybe work harder. I don’t know, probably not. I work harder than most, but… But there are people who have that advantage over me, but I’m not sure there are people here that enjoy the subject matter as much as I do. I love finance, I love investing, I love talking to investors, and I decided to stick with that in my own career. 

Sean: Yeah, I’ve discovered when I’m truly interested and passionate, similar to your book here, that’s when I have my best interviews.

You said a minute ago, you’re very good at getting people to share what they normally wouldn’t or shouldn’t, anything you do that you’ve articulated just to be able to do that? 

Gregory: Yeah, so I have different approaches for different people, but I mostly, my strategy mostly is to try to find a reason why they should want to talk to me and I do believe that there’s always gonna be a reason. So there’s this book I just wrote, The Man Who Solved the Market, it’s about the most secretive firm on Wall Street. These guys are multi-millionaires, they sign 30-page non-disclosure agreements, they are told you’ll get fired if you talk to somebody like me. So it was the hardest project of my life. But once again, the goal I defined for each of the people that ended up talking to me and confiding in me, there’s gotta be some reason, there’s always some reason. 

Maybe it’s their reputation, maybe it’s just the need to share some experience. They’ve gone through something remarkable. These people have conquered Wall Street and they’re not the people who should have conquered Wall Street. They are not finance people, they’re mathematicians and scientists and they’ve gone through a remarkable experience and yeah, they’re told not to talk, but I’m sure they’re aching. 

And I do believe that many were to share a little snippet of what they went through and they’ve got nobody else. And I’m sort of like this big ear, like eager to hear. I’m very curious person. I think everyone’s got an interesting life. Put me in a barbecue next to a dentist, I’m sure he or she’s gone through something remarkable, right? Some life-changing event, some set back. I love hearing how people have dealt with setbacks. 

On the side, I write some books for young people with my two sons and we talked to sports stars and how they overcame adversity and challenges in their youth and racism and abuse, and all kinds of challenges and adults of all kind, everybody’s overcome something. 

So anyway, I’m a curious person. I, I like to hear people have done in their lives, how they overcome things, and yeah, that’s kind of my approach, and it’s my push for this book, too, to be curious and be generally interested and get people to talk by telling them why it’s in their interest and it always to some extent is so I’m genuine when I make that point.

Sean: Yeah, your new book, The Man Who Solved the Market, that’s what got me really curious in you. I’ve read some of your articles throughout the years. This was the first book of yours I read and I plowed through it, Greg. I think I finished it in two days, and I was just doing my top 2019 books and this was in the top five because I really did enjoy it, so I would love hearing some insights about it. So I just need to know what was even the start of this process, like how do you come across Jim Simons, and Medallion Fund?

Gregory: So I got into this business to some extent because I… I don’t know if I wanna say I admire investors, I think there’s a lot to learn from really smart investors, and it’s been a privilege. I’ve been at the Wall Street Journal for 23 years at this point. And a lot of what I do is talk to smart investors, billionaires and others about how they’ve made a lot of money and what they’ve overcome, the obstacles, etc. And unfortunately, over the years, it’s gotten much harder, become much harder for people to beat the market.

And I, I become a little bit jaded I would say, and even cynical because all mean investors who charge way too much and have pretty pathetic performance. And Jim Simons has been the one exception, so I really wanted to write about him because the guys had crazy return, 66% a year since 1988 and he’s also a pioneer. This approach using mathematical models, computers, to make decisions is something that everybody in Wall Street is trying to do today. 31% of all trading is done by automated computers as opposed to old school, intuition and judgement and gut instinct, but it’s not just… he’s not just a pioneer on Wall Street, which is why I was fascinated by him, he’s a pioneer in society. 

So the whole idea of predictive algorithms, the stuff that Netflix and Facebook and Amazon do today, they were doing in the 80s, late 80s, and early 90s when Mark Zuckerberg was in grade school. So they’re pioneers in that regard, they’re pioneers just in the whole issue of big data and data science. So, in so many ways I found Jim Simons and what his firm was doing fascinating and the fact that they’re the most secretive firm and they didn’t want anybody writing a book. And Simons reached out to me, told me “I’m not working with you Greg.” In some ways, that sort of, I don’t know, added to the allure a little bit, made the challenge a little bit greater, and some sick part of me thought that made me want to do it even more. The fact that they didn’t want to work with me.

Sean: Yeah, when he tells you that adds a little fuel to the fire.

What are the next steps then? So the main source for this book seems like they’re not even going to talk with you. So then what do you do? Anything that you really dig deep on?

Gregory: Yeah, so generally with these kind of issues, circumstances you want to find people who have some experience, some inside knowledge, and that could be people who used to work there. It could be people that were friends with Simons, people that were investors with Simons. He doesn’t have many any more or at least at this key Medallion Fund. He ended up kicking everybody out. 

But for years he did. So a lot of times, and this was a privilege. A lot of time means talking to 75-year-old, 80-year-old even, former colleagues, people that worked with him back in the day, either at the firm or even earlier in his life when he was an academic. And that’s part of the privilege of my job, I get to drive out for my home in suburban New Jersey, out to Princeton and talk to some 80-year-old brilliant mathematician who knew Jim Simons back in the day, they were colleagues and he tells me great stories about him. And you start building off of that. Okay, he tells me a story you gotta verify that, you talk to somebody else who maybe knew about it, he tells you something else, he tells you somebody else you should be speaking to. So all these people sort of around Simons. So I kept circling him, circling him, and talking to more people. And you start adding up the sources and adding up the stories and some you can verify some you can’t, and it’s just basically adding information. And then at some point I convinced him to sit down with me. It still wasn’t clear, he would talk to me for the book.

And basically what I did was, I showed him a picture on my phone. And I’m not sure this is what did it or not, but basically I showed the picture on the phone and asked him, “Hey, do you know what this is?” It was a picture of a home in suburban Boston and he said No, I don’t know what that home is,” and I said, “That’s your childhood home, in Newton, Massachusetts.” And I didn’t pursue it, I didn’t say anything after that, but I tried to plant a seed and basically showing him that picture, I was hoping he would say two things. A. Zuckerman’s not going away. He went all the way up to Boston, to track down my family home? What the heck? And B. That I take it seriously and I’m not just writing some sensational book, but I’m gonna put the work into it, the research, and I’m willing to go, let’s not go crazy, I’m just driving to Boston. I was going to Alaska or anything, but it still… It showed a level of diligence I think on my part, I hope it was, that was the goal that it would send a message to him that I’m not going away, and might as well talk to him because I’m taking it seriously. 

Part of his reluctance I think was he was worried I would write something that wasn’t accurate, he’s a mathematician they hate, hate, hate errors and inaccuracies. And it’s not to say that everything is perfect to my book, but it’s close, I think, ’cause I would have heard from these guys if it wasn’t… So that was the goal to get as much information as they could from people around him, some experience with him, some stories, and then send a message to him and also all those every person I talk to, I knew he was gonna get back to Simons. Every single guy or woman from back in the day, “Oh, Jim, by the way, I just talked to this guy Greg Zuckerman.” Zuckerman again, I’m sure he’s thinking to himself. My God, this guy’s not going away. It’s been six months, over six months. I keep hearing about this guy, he keeps asking about me. Jeez man, maybe I should sit down and talk to him. That was the hope, anyway. 

Sean: Yeah, no, the diligence on your behalf was clearly evident in the book, and I love so many extreme examples and little bits of nuance that you were able to pull out. I’m interested, when you finally get Jim in the room, what’s that moment like for you?

Gregory: It’s funny, you want… You wanna be focused, you have a limited amount of time and you’ve got so many questions. That was the thing I had to do, narrow it down. I had so many things and I want to ask questions that I knew… questions that I knew he would answer ’cause I don’t wanna waste time with questions that he would blow me off on. I only had set amount, I think, an hour that first time. 

So I wanted to ask potentially, the difficult questions and at the same time I wanted to come back again and ask more and I didn’t want this to be the only meeting. So I didn’t want to ask the questions that were too difficult, or offensive, or intrusive, etc. So I tried to have some balance, try to have balance between the two of them.

I was pretty business like. On the one hand, yeah, this my white whale, and I’m finally in front of him. On the other hand, this is sort of what I do, and I deal with these billionaires all day long, and I do think too many people defer to them and I try not to be too differential.

Sean: Yeah, I’d love to get your insights. You’ve been in a lot of rooms with some very powerful people. Are there any things that would just surprise people on the outside looking in?

Gregory: Much more insecure than you would think.

Sean: Yes, that’s it!

Gregory: Not… Not necessarily Simons, I have to say not Simons but most of the billionaires I deal with. You’d be surprised how many… There’s someone I’m thinking of, who is worth billions and billions, is a pretty well-known individual. And he sent me a note, sent me a text after my book came out. I have an index, an appendix at the back of the book where I compare Jim Simons with all the great investors and how Simons is better, his track record is better than all the big ones, Buffet, and I’m looking at it here… Soros, and others, Ray Dalio, etc.

And he was upset, Peter Lynch, etc., he was upset that he wasn’t mentioned in there. And again, the point of this appendix is that Simons is better at these other people. But he wanted me to at least put them put him in that category of people that Simons is better than and… And frankly, I could have, maybe I should have… He’s not as well known as the people I mentioned, but he’s still a superstar. And I could have added them in there, but it just goes to show you. Yeah, they’re much more sensitive. One person always calls up and asks for a different picture. He doesn’t like the photo that we use in the paper when we write about him, and so he’s sensitive about his appearance, I guess. 

A lot of them have… The best tips I get at the Wall Street Journal are from these big name investors about how one of their competitors isn’t doing well.

They all get upset they all say, “Oh yeah, you only write negative stories, Greg.” They all get on me about our attitude at the Wall Street Journal towards the industry. Why do always have to write negative stuff?

Well, partly because you guys are feeding us the negative stories. So that tells you a little something. 

Sean: Yeah, we were talking a minute ago about just the amount of work that goes into this, especially compared to just writing a more local news story with the paper that you’re with. 

What is the process actually like when you’re gonna take on a task of writing a book? 

Gregory: It’s really imposing. It’s intimidating and you put so much work into it. At one point, I was thinking about trying to figure out per hour how much I was making. And you do not want to go down that road.

So for me, I lay out, I’ve got these folders on my floor of my office and it’s a mess, and I basically, I’ll lay out every folder as a theme. It could be sort of early mathematicians in my book, people that work with him. It could be the early period of Simons’ life, it could be the middle period, the later period, and then you break that up. And you have things like tax disputes, you’ve got different themes for every folder. You lay it all out. We’re talking dozens and dozens of folders and then you proceed to kinda go through chronologically and slowly the folders start to clear up and you see some of the floor again as you pick up a folder, and you go through it and you put it into the book, but they’re gonna be holes and you have to fill in the holes and it’s intimidating and it’s daunting.

You wouldn’t pursue it unless you have some passion. I always tell people who are thinking about writing books, you better be into the topic because there are these 3 AMs when everybody’s sleeping upstairs and it’s just you and the topic and you gotta be into it, and thank God I found, so far, I found three, three adult books and two for young people, but I found three that I’m really passionate about and don’t mind spending 3 AMs dealing with the minutia.

There are literally paragraphs in my book, especially the math, there’s a lot of complex math that I had to boil down and understand, and then explain and it literally took me months,  months to get a few paragraphs right. I’m not saying I didn’t work on other things at the same time, but I would write it up, send it to an expert. They sent back all these criticisms. “Greg, who do you think you are writing this? These are mathematicians.”

I would boil down, I don’t hidden markup miles, things like that, I would try to define it and give an example and they would get all upset. And one guy I’m thinking in particular, he really was pretty insulting and then I realized, just don’t let these people, their insults affect you.

Yes, what you’ve sent them is not perfect, that’s why you send it to them because you wanted help improving it and slowly but surely, they’ll give you a couple of ideas in between the insults, so you ignore the insults, so then you take it for what you read it, that which has substance of their criticism and then you improve on it and you send to somebody else. Now, you gotta rethink this and then he’ll tell you his view and then you eventually get to the point where you are pretty much there. And so this was a hard project compared to all mine in the past. They’re all hard in their own ways. But this was a really difficult one. 

Sean: Yeah, the other two books, The Frackers, and then The Greatest Trade Ever. So what keeps you going during those 3 AM nights?

Gregory: The fact that I’ve got a book advance that I’ve probably cashed and I spent it or parts of it so I don’t want to give it back. 

Honestly, for this one, I honestly I had an advance and I literally kept it on my desk for about four months without cashing it because I wanted the ability to give it back to them if I couldn’t pull this thing off because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. It was a hard one. So at one point Penguin got in touch with me and I said, someone in accounting couldn’t figure it out, as like a discrepancy. And ’cause what writer doesn’t cash? We don’t make that much. What writers don’t cash an advance?

So, eventually, I did get more comfortable, a little more confident that I could pull it off, and eventually I did cash it.

What keeps me going? It’s just the challenge and the light in the tunnel and… What I get excited about it and, and really keeps me going is when you find some gem. Some anecdote, some story that Simons did something to someone or someone did something, there was some tension within the firm that no one knows, I’m the only one in the world. 

I remember driving back from places where I heard it, I had a meeting with someone and they told me some story that I’m the only one in the world who knows it and it’s true, at the Journal when someone gives you a tip, but all the more so when you’re frustrated in a book, and that just gets you on the top of the world. Someone has just told you something that you were gonna put in the book. So eventually the whole world would know about at some point. I’ve got the story in my book about Simons, and I don’t know if you remember from the book, but basically Simons is in a meeting with some big name investors who focus on healthcare, their healthcare and they’re a foundation. And basically he’s smoking like a chimney and he’s got no where to put his cigarette out and looks around the room and he buries a cigarette in his cake, in his vanilla cake and it’s sizzling right in front of all these healthcare-related guys, this foundation dedicated to health care. And he puts a cigarette right in front of them, it’s sizzling and smoking and he walks out the room, and it’s just a cool scene. It says a lot. And I remember hearing that scene and I’m like, “Wow, that’s a great story.” People are gonna like that, people are gonna be amused by that. And for now, I’m the only one in the world who knows about it. It’s small in the scheme of things, not everyone loves the scene like I do, but to me, it kept me going. 

Sean: No, I absolutely loved that scene. I thought it was so comical. And the best part is they close the deal anyway, even though he puts the cigarette out in the cake. Tell me…  

Gregory: Exactly, exactly!

Sean: Tell me more about Simons still because what really intrigued me… So he’s got this mathematical background, probably one of the best 100 mathematicians of the last 100 years, but what I thought he did really well is his ability to recruit and then manage the talent he could bring the Medallion Fund. Is that one of the big takeaways for you?

Gregory: Yeah, I agree, that’s what makes him unique. So he can do both sides of the brain. He is a quant, he is one of the greatest mathematicians, at least as a geometer of the last 50-100 years. A lot of his work still has impact in areas in Mathematics and Physics, certainly. He was a teacher. He’s a code breaker. He is a fascinating individual and he’s the original pioneering most successful quant, but he also a people person, in that he could communicate.

You know the joke about mathematicians and an outgoing mathematician is one who looks at down at your shoes as opposed to his shoes or her shoes, but time is not like that, he actually is a funny guy, really witty, he’s enjoyable to be around. 

He always had… It was the same with us, our relationship, he was always a little bit wary when we sat down with it was a frustration on my part. I couldn’t get him that comfortable.He was good, but he wasn’t as comfortable as he could be, but he’s a funny guy, he’s a chain  smoker, as I say, he likes to drink, he’s mischievous, can be a prankster and more importantly, he knows how to deal with people, he recruits really well, he knows what makes people tick. He developed this really internal culture that’s really unique where people share they’ve got open code, they’re encouraged to critique each other but in a positive way.

I think that’s really the secret to success is he’s successful in both worlds. As a result, he’s been able to recruit well but he also creates the right algorithms, he could do both.

Sean: Yeah, I had never come across Simons prior to your book, so I just became endlessly fascinated. Are there anyone else, maybe on Wall Street, that’s under the radar right now, but you think has some of these gems in them like Simons?

Gregory: That’s a good question. No, I would like to know about them, and I could write about it. There people here and there, nobody on this level, nobody close to this level, no.

Sean: So you mentioned even from a young age, you were interested in Wall Street and the investing. So after writing this book, have you changed your mind on anything?

Gregory: Yeah, I think it’s even harder than I expected to beat the market. I knew it was really hard but at least in the short-term, you’re competing with people like Jim Simons. He’s got 100 PhDs working there, and these aren’t just PhDs, these are top of field mathematics, scientists, people ran departments, huge advances in areas like physics and astronomy, all kinds of different areas. 

So I’m much more convinced that people should either be in index funds and not to try to beat the market, low cost in index funds or be more longer term investors, ’cause that’s not what Simons and his colleagues do. They are two days for the most part, their holding period, so you gotta do something that he’s not. Which is, again, be a longer term investor, and it’s just really hard to get an information advantage today. So the old school approach is just harder. There are pockets of the market where you can do it if you’re an individual investor there are industries and companies for sure, that I think you can get an edge on but across the whole market, it’s just really hard.

Sean: Who in your eyes is the best investor of all time?

Gregory: Oh, it’s Simons if you consider him an investor, I don’t know how you define that, I call him a money-maker.

Sean: Yeah.

Gregory: Some people would say two-day holding periods isn’t necessarily and investor. I mean Buffet clearly is although Buffet’s under-performed for the last decade.

Some people critique my book by saying… “Well, Greg, you can’t really, you can’t really say Simons has a better track record than a Buffet because Simons’ key fund that I write about is called the Medallion Fund, it’s 10 billion dollars, it’s capped at 10 billion dollars each year. They give back money so that it doesn’t get bigger than 10 billion and yes, they use borrowed money leverage and at some points it’s over 100 billion in holdings but that’s still much smaller than Berkshire Hathaway which is like 3-400 billion.

But I would counter that by saying no one forced Warren Buffet to manage such a big endeavor. There’s a reason Simons kept it at 10 billion dollars because it’s hard to outperform when the fund gets too big.

So, Buffet will go down as the greatest fundamental investor ever. But he is… Let’s be clear, he’s under-performed the market for over a decade.

Sean: So Greg, another question I’m so interested in if you could have an unprecedented access with anyone, they’d tell you all who would you sit down with? It could be dead or alive. 

Gregory: And they would tell me all?

Sean: Yeah, you could just full-on interview ask anything you wanted, hear any story you want, who would it be? 

Gregory: Michael Jordan about why he really quit basketball.

Sean: I would love to hear that conversation. 

Gregory: I thought about pursuing that book but there’s a lot of downside to that book in a lot of ways. So yeah, but I’d be curious. 

Sean: Yeah, me too. I went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill so I’m a little nervous how that one would end, but… 

Gregory: Yeah. 

Sean: I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show, this is truly been an honor. The book, like I mentioned, it’s one of the best books I’ve come across, it’s already one I’ve started to gift out. Where else do you want listeners staying connected with you?

Gregory: So feel free to email me. I get a lot of my best sources from people who you start off sort of giving me constructive criticism, or just plain criticism.

And then sometimes I make good point smart points. We’re not perfect. People have a negative view of the media often but a lot of us are eager to improve and hear what people have to say, both positive and negative. It’s nice to a positive but sometimes you learn the most from the negative. So email me a gregory.zuckerman@wsj.com, or I’m on Twitter, I’m on LinkedIn, and yeah, feel free to reach out with any comments.

Sean: Fantastic, we’ll have all that linked up along with where you guys can buy the book. So thanks so much for joining us on What Got You There.

Gregory: Oh, great to be here, thanks a lot.