You've got More Than Money, you've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial adviser, and for the next half an hour, you and I are going to share a bit of a journey and we're going to answer some questions.

We're going to get some insights.

But most importantly, most importantly, we're going to explore the American story.

If you are a loyal viewer of More Than Money, and we hope that you are, you know, that we are facing challenging times and we've encouraged you to use some courtesy as you go through your day by day existence, being courteous to people who are under the same challenges that you are, that you show a bit of courage in the face of what we are facing in terms of challenges.

But in this particular episode of More Than Money, I also want you to think of the word perseverance.

I want you to think of pushing through this challenging time.

We have always had challenging times.

These are different.

No question about it.

But we have always had challenging times, both as a world, as a nation and as individuals.

And in our American story tonight, you will hear from an individual who has had challenging times, and yet perseverance has led him to a magnificent American story.

I want to welcome a gentleman who has written a book on the road less traveled.

In my opinion, one of the best new books, not just business books, but one of the best new American stories out there today.

Mr Ed Hajim.

Mr. Hajim.

Welcome, sir.

- Please call me Ed.

- I would appreciate you call me Gene, and we're going to work out very, very well.

Ed, you have had a magnificent career as a financial adviser.

You are truly legendary in our industry.

But I want to start in a slightly different spot, if you'll forgive me.

Could you tell us a little bit about your wife, Barbara?

- Well, you know, in my picking, in my things you have to do in life, I break life down between self, family, work and community, and the most important thing you could find is a good partner for the journey.

And the partner one, as I call her, P1.

She doesn't like that, but I call her P1.

You find someone who will, you can support and will support you, who could share your life with you.

You've got a big leg up on life.

And Barbara, she knew she was going to marry me when she was 13 or 14 years old.

And it's in the book.

It's a it's a very funny story.

It shows how life has a way of turning back and hits you in the face.

But she followed me out to California and we finally got married.

And now it's 55 years with three children and eight grandchildren, seven grandsons.

But without her, I wouldn't be here today because many of the decisions I made were made with her and she collected knowledge about me.

She was able to help me more and more throughout life.

And it's been a great partnership.

There is a, she's a very special lady.

She has her own talents.

I always think we have very little in common except our values.

Then she says, we like to dance, we like to play golf, and we like to talk.

We like to travel with a lot of things in common.

But I was an athlete.

She wasn't, you know, I like the science and math.

She's artistic, but it's been a great experience.

And I credit her with most of our success in many cases, one of the big success we've had in our life and with everybody else is real estate.

And she's been perfect.

After 9/11... We live in Greenwich, and she said we're selling it and going to New York.

And I said, I don't want to go to New York.

I like it here.

But she was brilliant.

We sold the house in Connecticut, real estate in Connecticut went down for the next 15 or 20 years.

And of course, we bought something in New York.

Not a great bargain, but, you know, a nice place at a reasonable price and lived in New York for 15 years.

She's done that sort of thing almost all through our lives, including a little home in Nantucket, which we bought over 40 years ago at the right time.

Partnership is so important to me, as I say in my book, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with.

And I've surrounded myself with a wonderful young lady.

- Well, and if I may say so, every intelligent man aspires to marrying way over their heads.

And I think you succeeded beautifully.

Your book has wonderful pictures and Barbara is a beautiful woman and obviously very, very intelligent as well.

So your current scenario, your current family picture could not be more idyllic, but that's not how your life started.

Give our viewers just a little bit of an insight of those early years for you and how that unfolded.

- It's hard to squash it all to a short period of time, but I'll try and do my best.

Mother and dad didn't get along and it's a very interesting story in the book, how they married.

He was 15 years older.

He was a difficult character.

It was the Depression.

They got divorced.

She took me back from Los Angeles to St. Louis.

He decided that he couldn't live without me, so he came to St. Louis on a visiting day, kidnaped her.

And in the book, I think there's something as profound at that moment in time I think he was feeling and not thinking, and she was thinking and not feeling.

She basically said, you know, he might be better off with his father than he is with me.

Dad and I spent a couple of years together.

He was at sea part of the time.

I spent time with the neighbors.

And then he, when he was drafted or volunteered to go into the Merchant Marines during the Second World War, I didn't see him for four and a half years and I encountered five Catholic foster homes.

I must not have been a great kid because I kept changing every year.

Then he came back on the East Coast.

We lived in a YMCA on 34th Street for the summer then Coney Island.

Then he had to go back to sea and I ended up in two Jewish orphanages.

So I have quite al background.

But as I look at it, and I think this is what I'm passing on to young people, you know, disadvantages that I had became advantages.

Think about the capability of being adaptable.

If you adapt to five different schools in five years, you know, some of your business experiences are not so difficult.

And as I think Gene said, you know, perseverance and what I call resilience, resilience is kind of like a muscle.

You keep using it, it gets stronger and stronger.

And in my trial, I had those, those disadvantages.

There are things that remain disadvantages, such as anger and so forth.

But there are a lot of things in my background became advantages.

But it was it was, it was a very difficult run.

And I credit getting through it.

And people always ask that question.

So I'll answer - by not ever becoming a victim.

I always looked forward to the next thing, whatever it might be, the next school, the next challenge, the next piece of work that had to be done.

And I think people use a lot of energy being victims and not enough energy looking forward.

So I've been talking to young people.

I say to them, whatever happens to you, what's next?

Don't look what's back.

- Ed, one of the things that was next for you is, in many people's minds, almost the unimaginable.

Here's a young man kidnaped by his father, taken across the entire country and back and forth, foster homes, orphanages, barely making it, barely keeping all those pieces together.

And you end up at the University of Rochester.

- That's what changed my life, and that's why I'm dedicated to supporting education and scholarships.

I've started almost 30 years ago giving scholarships and main contributions I made to six or seven different universities or institutions that have been scholarships.

I sat there.

I can still see it.

I can see the scholarship piece of paper from the United States Navy when I was a senior at Roseville High School in Yonkers, New York, better known as Southern Westchester in those days.

But anyway, getting into the University of Rochester was the thing that changed my life.

I must admit, arriving there, my leather jacket, all alone was a unique experience, which, again, I'm helping to communicate to kids that are in similar situations that you've got to get through that first year because kids really flunk out socially, not academically.

Now, my case was very different because I was probably the only kid from an orphanage at that point in time.

Today, there are groups of them and they have support groups.

But for me, it was all alone, I ended up there, was just wonderful.

I wanted to go to Cornell desperately.

But the university scholarship I got only paid for four years.

And when I talked to Cornell, they said, with your Navy requirements, you're gonna have to spend five years here.

So I didn't know Rochester and that was the third one on my list.

You're only allowed to apply to three schools.

And so RPI and both Cornell in five years, Rochester wanted four, little did I know that required six, eight o'clocks for four years and a laboratory every afternoon, got through.

- You and I share more than just a profession, more than just an industry that we have loved, that has been so good to both of us.

But you were a Navy ROTC scholarship recipient.

I was an Air Force ROTC recipient.

I was the first one in my family to go to a four year college.

You were coming out of your situation with your father.

And we will learn about subsequent revelations with your family being, without that opportunity, you and I aren't where we are today.

- Absolutely.

That's why education is the solution to everything.

It really is.

George Eastman said it was a solution to almost everything.

And I took out the almost.

- Fantastic.

In your book you have almost a photographic memory around the people that have been in your life, from the University of Rochester, from the Navy, Harvard University when you went for your MBA, those connections you forged lasted throughout, have continued to last throughout your life.

Sadly, you've lost many of your very good friends along the way who have passed away.

But what was it about you do you think that allowed you to make those connections that were so strong that they could last a lifetime?

- Well, you know, I had great need, I didn't know that I needed help, by the way, that's the one thing that makes, writing the book has done enormous, been very positive for me, because I was, most of my life felt that I didn't need any help.

And of course, when I was a young man, you didn't get help.

Help was considered, you know, sort of unusual if you were getting help or you were getting counseling and so forth.

So I rejected in fact, I was 18, I buried my life for my entire life until I was about 55.

But as I went through the book and went through thinking back over my lifetime, at each step in my life, I basically found people that really helped me, that took good care of me.

They were interested in me.

But as you'll notice, some of them last and some didn't.

But I basically found a great interest in people somewhere in my college life.

I found out that working with people, helping them to do better than they thought they could, helping them to help me do better than I could, became a real mantra for me.

And most of the people that I talk about in my book basically wanted me to do better and I get the feeling of that.

And that became one of my real credos in business, just trying to help people do better than they could.

Because you look back at Mrs Robb, was one of my really fine foster parents.

She really wanted me to do well.

Now, Oscar Minor, my mechanical engineering professor, mechanical drawing professor in my freshman year, without him, I would never have gotten through it.

Going back to what you said about you being in the Air Force and you being the first one to go through college.

One of the great joys of this book, which I never thought I'd get, is people communicating to me about themselves.

And I learned much more about people because of this book.

They tell me things about themselves that I never would have found out otherwise.

So this is really an extra benefit from writing a book.

- And you and I have another connection that may come back to surprise you or may surprise you right off the bat, you were employed, I'm going to use the word, at a camp in Pennsylvania.

And I grew up minutes from there.

- Oh!

- So slightly different time frames.

But your experience there helped you see that impact of having that connection with people.

You went from an engineer at Rochester to an MBA at Harvard.

And that shift is so well documented in your book, that the connection of leveraging the skills that people bring to the table is, in my opinion, despite, and I hope that you'll take this as respectfully as it's intended, your investment results have been staggering.

Your people results I think have been even more impressive.

- I think you're absolutely right.

In fact, I've never really lost...

I never lost interest in the stock market and investing because I think it's a wonderful intellectual game that lasts a lifetime.

Roy Neuberger, I think he was well over 100 and he just talked the game.

And so I've sort of taken him as an example of what I might like to be like.

But on the other hand, I started to recognize that my true passion was people, helping people do better than they thought they could and adding to that, the Reagan comment, you know, you can achieve almost anything if you don't worry about who gets the credit, you combine those two and all the technical knowledge comes after that.

You combine those two, people will work for you.

They will do special things.

They will exceed their own expectations.

And as I said, you surround yourself with hundreds of people exceeding their own expectations, you're going to be a success without question.

- Without question.

- But you're right.

Somewhere between from 47.

My whole financial orientation changed.

Money became less important to me and who I was working with and what I was doing was more important.

Early on, given my background, I really desired financial security, but I had enough of it sort of in my middle 40s.

I actually discussed this with Barbara, we've got enough now.

We have a house, kids in school and so forth, got enough of a stake that it's fine.

And I went on to, and I found that great satisfaction in not focusing so much on income and focusing more on people, as you've been, your insight is terrific because I guess you get that from the book, because I continue to mention people in my acknowledgments, almost too long.

My publisher said you can't always acknowledgment that.

I said, every one of them.

And I've left out quite a few.

- It is impressive indeed.

Yes.

I've rarely seen so many pages of acknowledgments, but reading the book, it made perfect sense that you would need to do that, that you would wish to do that.

Now, for our audience, many folks will not recognize some of the company names that you've been affiliated with during your career, but all of them will recognize where you started.

They may not know the name Capital Research, but they certainly know the name American Funds, one of the premier mutual fund groups, and American funds, in essence, started with you and the work that you did with this Capital Research, a very small firm at the time and grew from there.

A lot of folks would hear that and go, well, of course he was a success.

He started with a great firm and he never looked back.

Your book details some immense challenges, some getting knocked to the pavement and getting back up.

Where did that perseverance really come from?

- Again, most from my childhood.

Writing the book allowed me, and I recommend to people when people say, what are the takeaways?

Focus on your child and see what came out of it, but with the opposite effect also.

I raised my children, you might say incorrectly, all one neighborhood, one school, fine schools and so forth.

They didn't have these challenges.

But my perseverance came from my childhood.

If I kept moving forward, I found that I got satisfaction and I got ahead.

And Capital Research, it was a lucky break.

I was one of two people from the Harvard Business School that went into this thing called mutual funds.

I fell in love with Capital Research.

They gave me my post doctoral degree.

I mean, they taught me the business and I owe them an awful lot, but I was a little too aggressive.

And as you see from the book, you know, I helped them move forward.

But then I wanted to move faster than they did.

And it didn't work out.

And it was a great lesson.

One of my conversations is that early failure is a gift.

And at 34, 35, I caught a disease called hubris because I made a good run both in engineering and in the business of almost not missing.

And so I thought that I could do everything.

And I made the point to so many people, don't ever try to manage money, manage a company and market at the same time because the talents are so different that if you're good at one, you probably won't be good in the other.

And I believe you have a certain amount of energy a day.

If you use it up developing a talent of marketing, you'll have much more difficulty buying and selling securities or in managing people.

And when I went to my dream job, I gave up everything but managing people because it's a full time job.

And if you try to do something else at the same time, it really doesn't do as good a job.

The same thing I did when I took over the chair at the University of Rochester.

I closed my hedge fund, which I still feel uncomfortable about.

Now that's in the book as well.

But if I wanted to do a good job at the chairman, a $4 billion operation of 30,000 employees.

You've got to spend full time.

You've got to focus on and concentrate on it.

- And there's a very popular word today, especially if we watch Shark Tank, one of my favorites, the word is pivot.

We need to make a pivot, something, you start something, it doesn't quite work exactly right.

And you pivot, sometimes it's a small pivot from mutual funds to hedge funds.

Sometimes it's a massive pivot from the financial industry, a hedge fund to the chairman of the board of the University of Rochester Foundation.

Those kinds of pivots are central to your journey through this American professional story.

What guidance would you give a young person when they're looking at these situations where they must pivot?

- Gene, I'm going to take you with me on my next trip.

You hit it right on the head.

I think one of the things I really want to convince people of is that you can pivot.

Remember, the adaptability I got as a child allowed me to not only seek change, but kind of enjoy change and continue to look what's next.

Combine those two things.

And I think that's what people have to sort of do.

And then add the last piece of that puzzle is the context, your history, where are you in history?

You combine those things and then look at what you're doing.

And I believe in what I call once a year go away on a boat or to a beach.

Think about your year.

But every three years, every three years, minimum.

Take a deep dive and say, am I at the right place?

What is my industry doing?

And write it down.

I just gave a talk at of the universities that said, give a senior one piece of advice for what to do with me, because I have lots of ideas.

But I said, write your life plan.

I know man plans and God laughs, but write the plan down.

So at least you knew.

You think you know where you're going.

And in that plan, in that written plan, take into consideration the industry you're in, its future, the big company you're in, what your future in that company is and what you think's going to happen, as you can see each time I changed, I disagreed with the direction of the company.

I created an institutional department.

I knew it shouldn't be married to the banking business at that point in time because our analysts knew more than anybody else, the boss disagreed with that, it was on the forefront of creating, I went there, it was a mistake on a people basis, but they were on the leading edge of institutional, they were building a trading room with 400 seats in a 40,000 square foot trading room.

Hutton wasn't willing to do that.

And of course, the medium sized brokerage firm, you had to keep pivoting or be out of business.

During the 15 years I was there, half the firms our size either merged up or went out of business.

So you had to keep moving.

And I think that today's world, it's even more important.

You've got to constantly, once you get to a certain point, I talk about being on a lily pad.

As soon as you get to a good lily pad, other people are going to jump on it.

You better get off it and get to the next one because you're going to sink.

You really have to keep moving and continue to develop your product and capability.

Also develop your clientele because your clients are going to change.

What Wall Street had a problem with is realizing how large the institutional business would be.

And I contend that that's one of the reasons some out of business, some for different reasons.

And that's in the book.

- Ed, your book is fantastic.

And anyone who's interested either in our profession or starting a business or evolving their life in a direction that will be successful and happy, you talk not just about investments, you're talking about happy a lot, and I'm so very impressed with that direction.

We started a story that did not sound very happy.

We started a story with a father kidnaping a son at two or three years old, taking him across the country, basically, no offense to your father, but basically a series of abandonments and telling you that your mother was dead.

And yet there's a surprise to that story, isn't there?

- There is.

- What happened?

- Well, when my father died, we were estranged to some extent.

I was very sad about that, and writing the book also, I understood his problems better by writing the book, understanding a person.

And you can spend time on that.

Anybody you know who's lost everything, it leaves an indelible mark.

And I spent hours on that.

It left an indelible mark on it.

And I forgave him because of that mark.

29 to 33, he lost everything he had in the world, including his mother dying.

But more importantly, to answer Gene's question, when he died, he left a suitcase and I went into the suitcase, it was all my letters.

So I closed it up right away, took it back to Greenwich, Connecticut, threw it in the closet.

20 some odd years later, 20, I guess, 25 years later, it was a rainy weekend and Barbara, who throws things away regularly, decides we're going to throw the suitcase away if I didn't look at it, so it's raining.

So I opened it up and sure enough, there was a package of letters in there I didn't recognize.

And I found that my mother didn't die.

So I have lived a lie for my 60 years.

I mean, I told everybody she died when I was three.

And we hired a special investigator and found her in St. Louis.

It took us a while to make the decision to assimilate her into our lives.

But I decided to do that.

And I wrote a letter.

You'll see that in the book.

Dear Mrs Hoffman, I think I'm your son.

So we decided to meet, you know, and I went to St Louis and that day on the front page of the St Louis paper was some young lady who was reconnecting with her mother after 25 years.

I was reconnecting with my mother after 57 years.

Being a private person, I wasn't going to make this public, so I didn't go to press.

Press the doorbell.

She answered.

And I said, This is your son, 57 years late.

And it wasn't emotional.

It wasn't an emotional gathering.

I think she was thinking and not feeling, and that's the kind of woman she was, practical.

We got emotional a couple hours into the meeting.

But it turns out, once I took a look at her, I knew she was exactly my mother.

First of all, she spoke fast.

And people in St Louis normally don't talk fast, Gene.

They don't.

And second of all, she had a little lean, I have a little bit of a lean.

I'm always kind of in the ready position.

My wife's trying to straighten me up.

And then she told stories, funny jokes and things that I do.

And then later on, we found out that she rhymes, and I'm a rhymer as well.

So a lot of characteristics were the same and she became integrated into our family.

Barbara had a mother, was about the same age, and an aunt who was a little bit younger.

The 90-year-olds had a good time for ten or 12 years.

And just like when she lived her life, when she decided, when she was 93, and she couldn't drive any more, she just stopped eating.

She was never sick.

A very practical woman, and even a little impractical this way, after a while I used to call her every Sunday, I had to call every Sunday.

And if I didn't, she'd say, long time.

- Ed, I'm going to ask you a rude question.

I hope you'll forgive me in advance.

How old are you, sir?

How old are you?

- You know, when you ask a four-year-old how old he is, he says four and three quarters?

I'm 84 and three quarters.

- Ed, everyone listening today would have said it.

If you had said you were 60, they would have gone, absolutely!

That gentleman is sharp as a tack.

The book is fantastic, On The Road Less Traveled.

If you've heard Scott Peck's title, it's similar because there are similarities.

You've really got to look carefully at it.

And Ed, we're wrapping up here momentarily.

I want to give you a quote from your book.

Ed says, I believe in self direction.

I believe in self discipline.

I believe in hard work and I believe in our country.

I want to thank you so much for your American story and for your belief in our great country.

Thank you, sir.

- Thank you, Gene.

It's been a pleasure.

My pleasure.

- God bless.

And for all of you out there, I hope you took even a fraction of what I've taken.

And if you did, you're going to want to get this book, On The Road Less Traveled.

It is fantastic.

It's going to open up your eyes on so many different levels, not just our industry, but how to live not just successfully, but a happy life.

And our best to Barbara, because we really know behind every good man truly is a tremendous woman.

Folks, if we've given you any ideas at all you'd like more information about, send me an email - gene@askmtm.com You might see your emails on a future show, but I guarantee you your emails will be answered.

We answer every single one.

Thank you for being part of our show this evening.

We'll see you next week right here on More Than Money.