YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Reffkin

lines on the record: 93
first: 2021-07-26
most recent: 2021-07-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When I was in Goldman, I decided I'm going to start a nonprofit. It was called New York Needs You at the time and we focused on students who were first in their families to go to college. and below the poverty line, giving them career development, college support, and two summer internships.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I did have the support of a really, really great mentor, Henry Cornell, who was the person who hired me. And he also gave me the honest advice that most people don't get. What he said in one of my reviews, I come in and he says, Robert, he said, stop trying to make your weaknesses a strength. Just minimize your weaknesses and maximize your strengths. He said, you're really good at the personal stuff. You could be generating deals. You could be bringing in CEOs and making transactions happen. Focus on your strengths. And that was really important for me to hear. My entire career before, I was just banging my head against the wall, trying to make these weaknesses, strengths, and depressed every single night, just depress walking back at home. See, I'm never going to be good enough. I'm never going to be good enough. And then for the first time,”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a really big job. And I thought this was my golden ticket. I thought like I had made it. I remember talking to my mom. And she said, You've networked your entire life to get to this point to get to Goldman. Now stop networking and just work as hard as possible. And that was my approach. I moved in literally one block from Goldman Sachs. And the idea was I was never going to be at home. I was always going to be in the office. And if I'm not in the office, I'm just going to be asleep. And so I just walked one block back and forth. And I gave it everything I possibly could. Unfortunately I just never was great at it.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yahi invited me to Thanksgiving at his house. We would have lunch on a regular basis. He told me to apply to be a White House fellow, which I did right after Lazard. He said, he said all young professionals in the private sector should get exposure to the public sector, even if just for one year because the experiences you gain and the relationships you have will be transferable to any sector you choose.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he was the only black partner at Lazard when I went there, the only black person at Lazard when I went there in the New York office. And he was larger than life, you know, six feet six and really amazing human being on more fortune five hundred boards than any other person is what I had read. Wow. And seeing a black man, dark, tall, black man, walking the halls of those are a hundred plus year institution on Wall Street. It just made me feel like being black wasn't a barrier to your dreams.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the most important thing that happened to me in my career, not just professionally, but psychologically was Vernon Jordan”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I grew up with low expectations and I said this is the way the world is and I just got to work twice as hard and do the best in the way the world is. And so yeah it didn't feel good being the only black person in almost every meeting. But I felt fortunate. I felt lucky. Like how lucky am I to be here? I need to work twice a hard not just for myself but to pave the way for others that come after. If I do well, that's the way to honor the people like the late Vernon Jordan who pave the way for me because if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have had that. I mean it was very clear to me if I was born a couple decades earlier none of those first of all I was born fifty years earlier I wouldn't have been able to even get a scholarship to any of these schools.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember that when I lost the million dollars I made in a stock market and I was like, how am I going to get it back? The idea was I applied to business school, then worked really hard. It was the first time I started taking school seriously because I realized from McKinsey that it actually does matter. And then I ended up applying to a bunch of investment banks and didn't get into most of them, but I didn't need to get into most of them. I got into two, one of which was Lazard, and I ended up working at Lazard.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I learned about something called margin. And I took all of the money I had and I opened up a couple of different online brokerage accounts. And I took out the maximum amount of margin on them and invested it. And I kept opening more and more margin. And it ended up being a million dollars at the top of the bubble until the crash and in like less than a few months it went not only to nothing. I owed the bank money. I had around over $10,000 and I had nothing.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was very unfortunate. So I took the over $100,000 I had from DJing and I combined that with some of the earnings from McKinsey. And this was in the middle of the dot-com boom.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, think Look, I wasn't good enough at writing, I wasn't good enough at synthesizing ideas, I wasn't good enough at anything. Like if it were sports, it would be like you're in the NFL and you're playing at a freshman year college or senior high school level. It was not even close. I had a personality and I worked really hard, but every single night I would go home and say that I'm failing. I mean, every single night.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I stay there for two years and I was not, they did not let me continue on. They don't call it fired, but they say you are not invited to stay on.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I have any of that. And so I made it a point for myself over time to be able to make sure that I could always be relevant in a conversation.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I was exhausted every day Every day I'd walk home and I'd just be like, I'm going to fail. I can't succeed. I can't be as good at them. I didn't have the words. I remember being at this lunch. Everyone was talking about the election and the president election. I didn't say that wasn't my world. I wasn't focused on those things. So for entire lunch, I said not one word. I couldn't relate. I mean, it's one thing to be a DJ and to relate to different people musically. It's a whole different thing to be able to relate to people in dialogue about politics or about travel.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was so excited to start McKinsey. And I go in and I just get my butt kicked. And I learned at McKinsey why I should have focused more at school. These kids were smart.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I knew this was like, this was my shot. Like, if I didn't get this job, I thought everything would fall apart. And so I take two weeks off of school. I go to the library. And in there, they had the wet feet press and the vault guide to case study interviews. And that's how you interview for consulting, case study interviews. And I memorized them. I spent two weeks every morning, every night just learning how to interview as like a business school student would for McKinsey. And then I go into the interview and I basically aced the case. And that's why they had the confidence to give me the offer.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I was getting terrified. I was accrued all this student debt and I was about to graduate a month later with a C average by the way and no job. And so I got really, really nervous. And I had collected hundreds of business cards. Actually had a binder of business cards where you would slot them into baseball cards in a collection. I'd go through and I start emailing people and calling people that I had met and asking them if they would interview me.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My journey to New York is really just the idea of New York. I felt like New York was a city that would accept anybody, where everyone could belong. And then I started seeing what do people do after they graduate college? What are the opportunities? And of course, when you're in New York City, it's all about Wall Street at that time. And so in the fall before I graduated, it was November and I had interviewed at a number of investment banks, anyone that would let me interview, and none of them gave me a job.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People question if I'm a C student a lot. They don't believe it. And I actually think it's of everything that I've accomplished. The thing that I'm almost the most proud of is that I was able to accomplish it all by being a C student. The reason I decided to graduate in two and a half years is I knew I couldn't be good at school. I knew I could never be magna cum lot. And so I felt, hey, I'm paying for school. This costs a lot of money. Let's pay less, get it done faster, and let me hurry up and find the thing that I can be good at.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I earned over $100,000 as a DJ and better than that I was able to employ a number of my friends and help them make money as well. And so it was a very empowering feeling and it was fun.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I cannot tell you how different, like an all-black house party is versus a bar mitzvah of 13-year-old kids versus a private school party, a wedding. These are such different communities that listen to completely different types of music. And he got to give the people what they want.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ended up being one of the most successful DJs in the high school Bay Area system for years in a row. Is mostly school dances. Then there are house parties, a couple bar mitzvahs, did one wedding, and I had something called the Rude Boy Productions Guarantee. It was basically, I gave a list and I said you can fill out any song that you want. And I promise you that I'll play it. And if I don't play it, I will give you all your money back. And I noticed at the time that there are all these DJs who were just playing the music that they wanted to hear. They literally weren't listening to the customer. And I just wanted to be successful. And so I said, I'll pay you whatever you want.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tend to when I go into something I go all in. And so I didn't just get dreadlocks. I didn't just start listening to reggae. I started buying a bunch of licorice root, a bunch of Rasta belts, and started making mixtapes and selling them on the buses and subways. And he had this big reggae backpack that I put all this stuff in. The truth is not many people bought my stuff. But it was fun. It made me feel like that I was controlling my destiny, that I was in the driver's seat. And, you know, whether people bought it or not, it didn't matter. It mattered that I was trying.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I started with the Afro. As a freshman, and I had an Afro for like six months, but it was like big, big. And then I had dreadlocks all the way until college. And it was like this force field that made me feel really confident about who I was”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I met him at school, Jabali Sawiki. You know, I didn't have a father figure, so I searched them and ultimately a number of the people that were my friends became father figures in certain ways, and then I had mentors over time that also became like a father figure. But the reason I bring it up, Reggie in dreads have a special place for black people who don't feel black enough. Almost like a shield of armor. It was like, if you have dreadlocks, no one can question your blackness.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I respect you before, but this is even the fact that you know souls of mischief 93 till infinity, of course. Yeah, I was more into hip-hop and rap. I started listening a lot to reggae. This older friend named Jabali, and he had dreads, and he was mixed. He was the first guy who made me proud to be mixed. He owned it. He's the kind of guy that would break dance along the pier in San Francisco. And he had this radio and he would always play like reggae music.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet the only thing that wasn't happy, yet one of the hard things about being a mixed kid, is that you don't really feel like you belong, like you have no place, you have no community. And that feels lonely. So I do remember being lonely when I was younger. But those feelings are what instilled to me at such a young age, a drive to succeed, a drive to build a better life for the family that I was going to create.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a lovely childhood and look, I don't think any kids care about money. I do remember when I was in first grade, my mom didn't give me underwear. And the sweatpants had holes in it. So people used to tease me in school because they could see my bottom. But in terms of how I felt, I felt supported. My mom loved me. Like in a way, think about what it would have been if I would have had this mean grandfather coming around and just telling us that we're not good enough in whatever way he would do. And if my father was around coming in, out of my life, being abusive and seeing them fight physically, like I think about, I didn't have any of that. All he had was me and my mom. He was happy.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt that I just didn't have a real community. Synagogue, I was the only black person. Around my black friends, I was also Jewish and half white. The private school where I got a scholarship, hey, I was a scholarship kid, and I was commuting two hours to school and two hours back from the East Bay and I went to high school in San Francisco and I was also a C student in a really good private school. That didn't make me feel like I belonged, but it did give me a skill of feeling comfortable being uncomfortable. I think I was forced to feel that way so much when I was younger that when I was older and started working that it didn't drain me. I just it was just part of life, of how I felt. And so I just moved on and I wasn't able it didn't suck that energy out of me.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hated school. I just, it never made any sense why I was learning Western civilization, I don't get it. Calculus, come on. Yeah, who's going to use calculus? And so I couldn't get excited by something that I felt I was just being told to do because other people did it. And so I was never a good student. I was a C student.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can make anything that's bad, good, that any disadvantage can be your advantage. It can give you motivation to succeed and do more.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so she gets there Radvolvo and we go to a diner round Lake Mirro, Oakland, and we're sitting down in this homeless guy comes walking across the street. She runs out and grabs him and then they come in together and she said, Robert, this is your dad. All I remember are two things. One, he gives me this huge slobbery kiss on the lips and says, Hey little man. And then the second is he ordered two different plates of steak and eggs and he was so hungry. But the last time I saw him after that was about a year later and it was at his funeral. My mom always told me that he wasn't around because he didn't want me to be like him. Maybe he was one of the first things early on that taught me that you could change the story and the perspective on anything.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around ten years old, and my mom, she had started to become a little more successful. And she bought this red Volvose who went to Oakland.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have pictures of my dad when I was younger, but I don't remember it, and so the last memory I have was many years later where I saw him on the street and had a”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had no connection to anybody than my mom. It was just me and my mom against the world. The interesting thing I think about at times is I think my grandfather would have loved me. Obviously we have very different views of the world, but I think the success that I built, I think he would have actually been very proud to have known me. It's really sad for me, Asher. It's sad I didn't get to know them, but I never knew what I didn't know, so I actually didn't it wasn't as bad as it may seem from the outside. But for them, they could have had more of a family and more love. I just don't understand how you could disown your”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The day I was born my mom calls her parents and says I just had a kid. And they just ask one question What is he? And she said, he is Jewish and black. And they hung up the phone. A week later they sent a letter in the mail that said that she was disowned. To this day, I never met my grandparents. I never spoke to them. She never spoke to her dad again. He ended up being very successful. I think he and his family owned real estate in Israel. And when he died, he gave twenty six million dollars to her sister, who is, I guess, more obedient to the way that he wanted her to be, and gave a hundred dollars to her just to say, I hate you. To my mom, right? I mean, it's worse than giving nothing.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom loved my dad and I think my dad loved my mom, but he already So I have two other half brothers that I don't know. The other issue was he was a drug addict. There's no other way to say it. And not just the marijuana kind of drugs, but real drugs, like heroin and some really difficult things in needles”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they met at a bar, and my father, African American, good looking guy, jazz player and construction worker. I'm sure he was in great shape. He sits next to her and they start talking, and then he says, hey, what's your birthday? And she says, July 26th. And he says, hey, my birthday is July 26th. And she says, you know, her year, he says, oh, my birthday is the same year. And of course, she doesn't believe him at all. And she says, let me see your license. And they ended up having the exact same birthday. So in a way, that was destined. They dated on and off for a few years. And I was not born on purpose. I was not intentional, but we had me and yeah.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their marriage didn't last long, and their friends to this day Jean Refkin is my godfather, and by the way, I love that my last name is Refkin, and that's neither my mom's maiden name or my father's last name, and it's a reflection that I can create my own future. I can build my own identity.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's interesting. My mom is very entrepreneurial, believes that she can do whatever she wants, and that when people say no, she can say yes, I could figure it out. I think those qualities of a girl at that time from my grandfather's perspective were bad qualities. He wanted her to be the quiet girl that sits in the corner.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a drummer. They both went to NYU together, and all he did was play music. My grandfather wanted Jean to be an accountant, but he didn't do that. And so they ended up moving to Berkeley, California. And on the way to Berkeley, they actually went to Woodstock. And at the time, they were the real hippies, the kind of people that didn't wear shoes when they were walking on the street. There's a place in Berkeley called Telegraph where they would sell beads and necklaces. And so they were really big communes of people. And they were just figuring it out.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She moved to New York when she was seven and raised by very strict parents. She was the kind of person whose parents would not let her leave the block. And she went to a very religious school named Ramaz. She ended up going to NYU and marrying a guy named Jean. He was a drummer.”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way I knew that it wasn't working is I was listening to the customer. You can see there was too much frustration. The most consistent feedback is it was more complex and it took more work on their part than it would have otherwise. So within about a year, just a little less than a year, I go to the team and I say, this isn't going to work. What are we going to do?”
2021-07-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Robert Reffkin: Compass · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT