[upbeat music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to "Side By Side".

My guest today grew up during the depression.

And when his father was called to served during World War 11, he even had to live in foster homes, yet somehow, he was able to overcome his circumstances to create a successful career on Wall Street.

We're talking, learning, and earning and serving with one remarkable, Ed Hajim.

- [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side By Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - [Announcer 2] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

[baby laughing] Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Announcer 3] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape and maintenance services.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer 4] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teams.

[bright upbeat music] We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music] [bright upbeat music] - Ed, welcome to "Side By Side".

You wrote a wonderful book, "The Road Less Traveled", and the subtitle is, "An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom".

Tell me more about the orphanage.

- Thank you for having me.

I think it starts probably before the turn of the century in the middle east, but I'm not gonna go back that far.

Life really started for me when I was three years old and my mother and father got divorced.

And mom took me from Los Angeles to St. Louis.

My father, who could not live without me, drove to St. Louis on his visiting day.

And instead of taking me to the movies, took me back to Los Angeles.

- [Nido] He kidnapped you?

- Kidnapped me, essentially.

And he told me within a few weeks, few days or weeks that my mother had died.

Being three years old I didn't quite understand that, but that's what he told me.

- [Nido] It was not true.

- It was not true.

Well, you'll find out in the book.

That's why you should read the book.

- Yes, - It was 57 years till I found out that she was not passed away.

So that's toward the end of the book.

And then dad was drafted in the service during the Second World War.

I ended up in Catholic orphanages.

I mean Catholic foster homes, five of them.

I guess, either I was hard to keep track of, or I was too mischievous or something.

But the report cards read that, "Eddie seemed to always get into trouble".

And then when dad came back after the war, he moved me from Los Angeles to New York.

And again, had trouble finding, you know, land-based work so he went back to sea.

So I ended up in two Jewish orphanages.

So essentially in, 15 or 18 years of my early life, I lived in about 20 different places.

- 20 Different places.

- Different locations.

Yeah.

And you know, it, it sounds horrible, but in a sense these disadvantages became advantages.

I mean, think about the adaptability that I gained.

- [Nido] Wow!

- When you go from one school yard to the next, you learn how to adjust.

- What an attitude there, Ed.

You learn adaptability, you say, through all that pain, through all that adversity?

- Looking back, that's exactly right.

I found that I actually sorta embraced change.

I had so many changes as a child that I got used to it.

In fact, I look forward to the next one.

And in business it's really helped me 'cause when others wouldn't take responsibility for change or we didn't wanna do change, I stepped up and did it.

And whether it was going to Japan to open you know, EF Hutton in Japan or going to China for the first time at Lehman Brothers, I stepped up, 'cause I was used to change and I liked it.

But I didn't realize that all these disadvantages that I had as a youngster, actually served as some advantages to me as I got older.

- Wow!

Wow!

And then you went to the University of Rochester, you got a degree in engineering.

Then you went to Harvard, got an MBA from Harvard and as life would have it, Ed Hajim, you went back to the University of Rochester to become its Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

This kid who grew up in an orphanage and foster homes became the Chairman of the Board of the University of Rochester's Board of Trustees.

And then they named the School of Engineering for you on top of that.

- At the speech that I gave to the School of Engineering a couple of years ago, and I called it, "From the Black Leather Jacket to the Chairman of the Board in all his 60 years."

[laughing] - [Nido] [indistinct] - 'Cause I came to the university with a black leather jacket and too much hair.

I was rejected by all of attorneys the first year.

First year was very difficult from me at university, but I then, I flourished after that.

But I did become the chairman of the board and it really was a 60 year EGERA, from the freshmen arriving at school, without any parents, to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

And they were kind enough to name the Engineering School of Applied Sciences after my name.

I always kid about this, but I was so pleased to have my, having a name school because now 400 kids a year will suffer with the pronunciation of my name is I have through my entire life.

[laughing] - Ed, you know, your life has been the epitome example of an adversity to abundance.

'Cause the truth is you went on to Wall Street, you led a number of significant houses on Wall Street.

You became a tremendous success story in America, you grew in both stature and wealth.

And the University of Rochester has been the grateful receiver of a very large gift from you, not to mention that you have helped raise their capital campaign of a billion dollars or more.

How did you do it?

I wanna find out, this kid who had all these challenges, who went onto the epitome of success.

You remember the Horatio Alger Association for Distinguished Americans.

You have received so many honors.

I have read this book.

It is a remarkable book.

You can't put it down.

It is the story of America.

What can happen to a kid who had all the reasons to fail, all the reasons to become a rebel, all the reasons to give up.

And yet your pictures with presidents of United States and some of the most distinguished dignitaries in the world.

You gotta tell us what your system is.

- It isn't a system.

As a child, you know, you have a certain things that are given to you.

You know, my father did abandoned me many times, actually if you've read the books close to three times.

And in fact, when I was 15, I became a ward of the state.

- How did you feel it?

When you said your father abandoned you?

- I felt abandoned, but I became, you know, remember each one of these negatives have positives.

You become abandoned and you become angry a little bit about it, but you become independent and you become resilient.

It's a very interesting combination of disadvantages becoming advantages.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in a number of his books.

But being abandoned when I was 15 years old, all of a sudden my father disappeared and I became a ward of the state that gave me the second level of what I call independence.

I realized that "Forever Amber", I would be on my own.

So that's one thing that sort of drove me.

But you know, as a child, you pick up heroes if you're careful.

You know, we went to the movies in the forties and fifties, the good guys always did well.

And the Catholic church.

I mean, you, if you did well, you went to heaven.

If you didn't do well, you went to hell.

And that was sort of bred into me as well.

And also as I...

Along the way, I started to pick up mentors who gave me certain kinds of things.

My last foster home was a company, a family called The Robs.

They were truly a wonderful family.

They treated me like their son.

So I collected that as something that I wanted in my life.

The good guys, when John Wayne, you know, was successful, I collected that.

And I've told people who'd ask me, "Who are your mentors?

Who are your heroes?"

And I say, "I don't really have heroes.

I've collected traits of heroes."

Like Winston Churchill, perseverance.

But you want Winston Churchill's perseverance, you don't want his drinking habits.

[laughs] You want Steve Jobs... - [Nido] That's a... - You know, creativity.

You don't want some of his other characteristics.

So that's what I collected as a child and I recommend that to young people.

Where young people go wrong is they don't realize there's just such an enormous opportunity.

And it just, it's a personal drive.

Now, there is some source, you know, there's some DNA, you know, I was a good math student and I love science, but there was a lot of hard work involved in it.

And mentors along the way helped me.

There was a headmaster of the last orphanage was a very wonderful man who basically said, "Ed, you can do it."

I didn't take his advice because by that time in my late teens, I didn't trust anybody.

Having been abandoned by my mother, - [Nido] Yes.

- Went different, all these different places.

- [Nido] Yes.

- But I really felt that I could do it.

And then I discovered that the trick by what I call the success of America, which is, "Education is the solution to everything."

And I convinced myself, my sophomore year of high school, I still remember it.

My ticket out of this was private college.

- Is education, - Private college.

Go to someplace where I get an education.

You know, like some of the things you're doing, I said, "If I'm an engineer, I'll get a job".

And that's why I became a chemical engineer.

Not easy, but I became a chemical engineer.

And you know, that was an experience which taught me an enormous amount.

I mean, I, you skipped one of the most important part of my live, was being a Naval officer.

I think that's one thing we missed today with young people.

22 years old report aboard a ship.

You got 108, captain takes you down a deck, is this is your division.

180 men, ages 18 to 55.

You all of a sudden realize they've got 360 eyes on you, 24 by seven.

You know you have to be a right example and you learn enormously from these people.

The young people, the 18 year old wants to learn from you.

The 55 year old says, "We'll give you six months to see whether you can make it or not".

And you try and make it.

- [Nido] Yes.

Yes.

- So it was a great experience.

- Yes.

Tell me about your first business.

What was it?

How did you get in it?

And then how did you get into Wall Street and - Well, - And lead those companies?

- I was a chemical engineer and I worked before at Dustin Hoffman and Plastics at The Hercules Powder Company.

I was one of the early people in polyethylene and polypropylene, and I went to Wharton at night.

So here again, you know, I was not satisfied working all day.

I drove from Wilmington to Philadelphia three nights a week to go to Wharton at night.

But people at Wharton convinced me and the people at Hercules convinced me that, you know, going to school at night wouldn't work.

So I applied to the Harvard Business School, which changed my life again, as Rochester did.

And I've dedicated my book, both to my family, to the University of Rochester, to Harvard Business School and to the United States of America.

Those are my three dedications.

But Harvard Business Shool changed my life.

They gave me a chance to look at the whole world again.

You know, what were my real interests?

What was my real passion?

Was it math and science?

Was it engineering?

I found what it was, it was business.

It was helping people to do better than they thought they could.

That was my true passion.

And I took my first job with a mutual fund company, illegitimately, 'cause I wanted to buy a business.

And I wanted to go to a firm where I had freedom.

And they convinced me that within 30 days of taking the job, I would be on the road or in the couple months, visiting companies, talking to people running businesses.

And so five of us decided we would go to different companies and we'd get together once a month and find a company to buy.

Well, unfortunately, after 12 months at the mutual fund company, I fell in love with the idea of getting on a plane, going to talk to CEOs, coming back and writing reports about whether the stock was attractive, the company's attractive.

I mean, I couldn't believe that they would pay me to actually do this, to get on a plane and talk to a bright person at San Francisco, come back and write a four or five page paper and figure out what she buy the stock or not.

And I remember that my boss saying, "And in addition, we want you to read the newspaper".

And, you know, being an engineer - [Nido] Yeah.

- For a year where you worked in a white coat and a plastic blasts, and you know, you were working 24 by seven and salesmen were calling you and say, "We need this.

We need that".

And you had to do it.

And you, whether it was 12 o'clock at night or three o'clock in the morning, you had to get that stuff back.

Being a research analyst at the time for a mutual fund was really fun.

That was a fun experience.

- How did you go from there to becoming the CEO of a financial institution?

- Well, a little bit of a long trip.

I made the mistake early and I... At first, my first company, since they, I didn't buy my own business, I got them within two years or three years, which was really wrong, to spin me off into a separate subsidiary.

I still wanted to run my own show.

And I, for three years I was fabulous successful.

It's in the book, but I got accorded a disease called hubris.

I thought I could do everything.

And instead of just running the fund, which I was running, I was managing the people and I was also marketing it.

And in the book, you'll tell you, that's one of the big mistakes.

I failed and early failures, - Why did you fail?

Because you thought you could do it all.

- Doing too many things at the same time.

Also... - [Nido] Yet overconfident?

- Overconfidence, but the company I was working for, I got their agreement, but not their blessing.

And in the middle of the whole position, they changed the deal with me instead of them marketing my fund, which was a whole experience, I had to go and market it.

- [Nido] I see.

- So I took the energy from marketing, - [Nido] I see.

- And I didn't have the energy again to run the businesses as much.

- [Nido] I see.

Okay.

- So it's a very interesting, - [Nido] Yeah.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- I think that young people will understand you've gotta be careful in today's world.

Collaboration is everything.

Having partners to do things that you can't do or don't do as well as they do, is very important.

- How do you mean that when you, I heard you say partners, what do you mean by partners?

You don't mean literally business partners?

You mean, - [Ed] No.

I mean... - Associates, colleagues.

- Associates, people.

I used a partnership.

Find people that could do things, first of all, what do you have to do?

Find people who can do things better than you can do them.

Find people who do things like you, as well as you do, but you don't wanna do so.

So you end up with doing things that you do well, that you wanna to do.

- [Nido] That you wanna do.

Yes - So you surround yourself with those.

And I found that I was only as good and again, in the book, only as good as the people I surrounded myself with.

When I had the right partners, success, when with the wrong partners and no partners, in case I had no partners, failure.

- No man is an island, Ed?

- Today, in my world, you know, in the sixties, you could be a little more of a, you know, one man show, today, collaboration is ultimate.

Because there's so many capabilities required to be successful.

- [Nido] Yes.

- You need to have people.

I mean, in my day, they didn't have HR.

Today HR is absolutely vital.

- [Nido] Yes.

- You know.

HR was sort of, if you're a big enough company, you had it.

There's so many, the technology today.

I mean, nobody in my mind can run a company without a CTO, someone who understands today's technology.

Because everything is changing very, very rapidly.

But in my case, even there, I had a 30, a 6'5' Dartmouth graduate who came to my middle of my career and we spent 35 years together.

And he saved my life once a month.

[laughs] So partners are very important.

- Yes.

- That's the important part - How did you get to the top?

- -~I did i get to the top?

Luck.

- Luck?

Come on!

- I went to... - You don't mean luck.

- I failed with this little company that I started.

The CEO of EF Hutton picked me up.

He said, "Forget that business.

I'll make you that senior vice president."

I worked for him for three years.

Then Lehman Brothers grabbed me.

I spent seven years with Lehman Brothers and I did everything right.

One of the lessons in the book, "Sometimes you'll do everything right, and still fail."

And I failed.

They kicked me out.

I didn't, boss and I didn't get along.

And I got my dream job because I was ready to go to a big firm like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or something like that.

Because I had a talent that people wanted.

But a little firm called me and said, you know, "We want you to be the CEO and chairman."

And so I got to be the CEO and chairman.

I gave up my dining room, which was most fabulous dining room in New York and my dining room at Furman Selz was the little company that I went to, was basically two hot plates in the conference room.

My office at Lehman Brothers... - Was the dining room at the office we're talking about.

- [Ed] Yeah.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- My office at Lehman Brothers looked over the whole Harbor.

My office at my new little company looked at a brick wall.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- But I loved it.

So I became the CEO and I got a chance to run the company for 20 years.

- Is there such a thing as luck?

- Oh, I have a sentence in the book, "You got to put on your wall".

Skill is important, but luck as essential.

- [Nido] Really?

- Oh yes.

- What is luck?

- Well, luck is being born at the right time.

Luck is taking advantage of opportunities when they come available.

It's not all just happen chance.

You gotta sorta work.

People say, "The harder I work, the luckier I am", which is really true.

But you have to take advantage of luck, but in everybody's life, there's certain amount of luck.

I mean, think about the difference of being born in 1900 versus 1936 when I was born.

I mean, the advantages we've had in the last 40 or 50 years, are almost second to none.

Whereas my father was born in 1900.

I mean, you look at the period that, the Spanish flu, the First World War, that depression, the Second World War, you know, even after the war, then the seventies were not terrific.

But from 1983, when I took over as chairman and CEO, until today, we've had a pretty, you know, maybe we've had 9/11.

you've had some difficulties.

No comparison with wars and depressions and so forth.

- What is it that you would tell young business people today, aspiring people in business, you would say, "These are the three things you must master to become a very effective and influential leader."

What are they?

- In my book, I finish up with an epilogue called, "The four Ps".

"Find your passions."

Which is an overused word but you have to understand that.

"Find yourself, find your principles".

Establish those early, the lines you won't cross.

"Find your partners, all through."

My partner, I always call P1 is the most important partner, and that's my spouse.

Without Barbara, I wouldn't be here.

But in every thing you do, you have to find different kinds of partners that could do the job... - Where do you learn.

to do that if you're a young person?

Your life has been a, an amalgamation of incidents and events and trends that made you stronger, independent, to use your word.

You are resilient.

You had grit.

You have faithful courage.

But not everybody has that.

Not everybody has those circumstances in their life.

They graduate from college, they enter into a business.

You're hired a ton of people in your career.

What do you look for?

Maybe that's a better question.

What are the three things you look for in a person that you believe this person will succeed in this organization?

- Well, drive is the most important thing.

- [Nido] Okay.

Initiative.

- Drive and interest.

Drive and interest.

They have to be interested.

When I interview someone, I want him to know more about my company that I do.

I can pick it out.

They will tell me something about my company that I don't know.

Then I know I've got somebody that's really interested, who's done their homework.

You know, I mean, when I got interviewed Capitol Research, this is back in the, you know, in the sixties, I asked the chairman, "If there's a nepotism in the firm."

He was the son of the founder.

And those days you couldn't Google that.

They knew that I was a research person at that time.

- [Nido] Yes.

- 'Cause I had found that out.

- And he still hired you?

- He hired me.

Yeah.

The chairman felt, he was the president.

The chairman almost fell off the chair.

"So hold on, John deserves the job."

You know.

[laughing] No, but to get back to the, and I tell people... - It's the drive.

- Write your plans down.

- Yes.

- I like people, I ask people, "What's their plan?

Have they written the plan down, their life plan?

You know, and do they revise it regularly?"

And I asked them about that.

One point though, when I tried to hire someone, I really want the person to be enthusiastic, interested.

I wanna see drive and I want him to tell me why he's gonna add value to my company.

And if they have, can't do that and coming, I get many kids that come in, "I wanna be in finance".

That's the end of their interview.

"I wanna be the telecom analyst for those companies in Northwestern, China."

He's defining... - [Nido] Specific.

- Exactly.

If he knows that if I need that - Yes.

- [Ed] He's hired.

- I see.

- Yeah.

So that's really... - [Nido] Be prepared, be thoughtful.

- Be prepared, be thoughtful and try to figure out how you're gonna add value to my company or my experience.

- So Ed, I wanna take you back to your emotional state.

You have been...

Your life journey has been amazing.

You began with a very rough time in your life.

- [Ed] Right.

- You ended your career at the top of the mountain, the Zenith, you had all the things that you wanted.

You decided that you will serve, that you will become a steward.

You got on the board of University of Rochester and many other organizations, you gave of your wealth.

You raised your family.

How did your upbringing affect the way you raised your children?

- Well, I made the huge mistake of course, of giving, initially trying to give them everything that I didn't have.

And realize that what I did have, I should give them more often.

Somewhere in their teen years, I started to recognize to really raise children after a certain period of time is quote unquote, "To make them uncomfortable."

Especially when you were in the Greenwich, Connecticut some to find schools and you live in a big house and so on and so forth.

Send them outward bound, make sure every summer they have a job.

Send them NOLs, get them out there by themselves.

My grandchild spent 30 days in the rain in Alaska, on a NOLs trip.

He learned about bonding.

He learned about interplay.

It's not easy.

It's, you know, and I tell the Horatio Alger kids.

I said, "You're very lucky."

And they say, "Wait a minute.

We're not lucky."

I said, "You're lucky, you can live the American dream, my children can't."

So early on in a child, in my children's life, I tried very hard to get them jobs that would teach them, give you one wonderful example.

My daughter at 18 drove an ice cream truck for the summer.

- [Nido] Really?

- There's nothing more interesting or more difficult or more complicated or more learning experience-wise than an ice cream truck.

- But how did you get her to do that?

Why did she agree to do that?

- She wanted it to do something and she went out, which I said, "Find a job in the local area."

So she was, an ice cream truck, you know, you gotta get rid of the inventory every day.

- [Nido] Yes.

- So you bring the truck back, - [Nido] Yes.

- The guy giving you an ice cream says, "You don't fill it..." And so you had to know how to sell it at full price and then by the end they get rid of it in the settlement - [Nido] Yes.

- Or some other place at lesser price.

You had to know how to plug it in.

She came home with it and she said, "Dad, I got to plug it in."

And I said, "220, we don't have 220 in the house".

So we had to go run around and find out how to get, you know, enough power to take care of the ice cream truck.

But each one of my kids worked every summer.

You know, my family's not perfect.

I do have eight grandchildren and seven grandsons, but you know, and this has been very lucky for me but, you have a little change in that respect.

You have to think about it.

And I think converting from a work experience to a home experience is very important.

I'd get my car at night from Lehman Brothers and I'd come home and I'd actually go through an exercise of converting myself from a businessman to a father.

- How does one do that?

- It's very hard.

Because you've just gone through, you lost a deal or you made a good acquisition, you had to fire someone or somebody, you had to change somebody's job, you come home and your six year old says, you know, "I'm really disturbed because my girlfriend just said something to me, which wasn't very nice".

Now that was more important to her than what you did during the day, to you.

This was somebody who destroying her life.

You had to sit down and quietly understand that.

And that's what I talked to people about the four pots of life and it's self, family, business, and then finally community, which is giving back.

And you have to touch all those bases and you're kind of always out of balance.

You always focusing, sometimes more on family, sometimes more on job and sometimes more in community.

You know, at my job at the Rochester, I had to basically close my business, become the chairman.

And I really didn't want to close my business.

But if I was gonna do a good job... - Let me ask you, what, is there anything you regret in your life?

- Anything that I really regret in my life, I would like to have bought closure with my father.

He died suddenly and you know, he, we were estranged because I didn't never really blamed him, but I became independent, very independent of him.

And then he started disagree with everything that I would do.

He disagreed with my leaving the Navy.

When I wanted to leave the Navy, he was very unhappy with that 'cause his most successful part of his life was being in the service.

And then when I left engineering to go to Harvard Business School with no money in my pocket, he said, "That's crazy".

And so he basically -- we disagreed.

And then when I married Barbara, it turns out that she looked like my mother.

I had never seen a picture of my mother.

So he disagreed with me marrying her.

And so this was a real, you know, a breaking point.

He never really accepted her.

He didn't never rejected her, but I would like to put closure with my father.

I would have liked to have basically, made a little bit more money so I could give more money to education.

I really believe, I mean, I don't, I'm very selfish in that.

You know, I get an enormous amount of satisfaction and this young lady at the University of Rochester, who is now an optics engineering major, and she's just got her PhD and she stood up in front of a group of people and said, "If it wasn't for you, Mr. Hajim, I wouldn't be here."

You know, that pays for everything.

- That's worth everything.

Isn't it?

- I would love to have had, you know, be able to do more for education.

- Yeah.

- I'm actually on a big kick now in vocational education.

We now give, at my golf club, we give seven vocational scholarships.

Chefs, carpenters, plumbers, welders.

I think that's really one of the real new drives.

And if I've had more money, I would put more money into that right now.

- That's amazing.

You'd say that because you've already given a lot of money.

I'm quite familiar with what you have done over the years.

You've taken a life of adversity, you turn it into a life of success and then you framed it with an abundant amount of significance.

That's what makes a great American, Ed.

You're a great American.

- [Ed] Thank you.

- I'm delighted to have you with me "Side By Side" and thank you for writing the book for all of us to learn and thank you for all the good you do in our world.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you so much for... And you overstated my case but it's all right.

[laughing] Thank you.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side By Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - [Announcer 2] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

[baby laughing] Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- [Announcer 3] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape and maintenance services.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer 4] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music]