
Paul Tudor Jones on Failure - Speech to 9th graders - dangoldin
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16588637/Paul-Tudor-Jones-Failure-Speech-June-2009
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ctkrohn
For those of you who don't recognize the name -- Paul Tudor Jones is one of
the most successful hedge fund managers of all time. He made most of his money
trading commodities, but he now manages a massive multi-strategy, multi-asset
class hedge fund.

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tempest67
Hrm. This doesn't ring true to me; in fact, it seems almost more like a guy
bragging about his victories than a helpful message about failure. It isn't
true that every door closing is met with another one opening; nor is it true
that every failure happens "for a reason." Sometimes failure is brutal, nasty,
and not helpful. The real message about failure to remember is Theodore
Roosevelt's: Yes, you might fail (and you will, for "there is no effort
without error"), but the credit and honor is yours nevertheless, because you
didn't hang back -- you got out there and gave it your all.

EDIT: (For anyone who might not know the T.R. quote, it's taken from his
Sorbonne speech (in red on this page): <http://www.theodore-
roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html>)

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kirubakaran
PERFECT FAILURE

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO GRADUATING CLASS OF THE BUCKLEY SCHOOL

June 10, 2009

When I was asked to give the commencement address to a graduating class of 9th
graders, I jumped at the chance. You see, I have four teenagers of my own and
I feel like this is the point in my life when I am supposed to tell them
something profound. So thank you Buckley community for giving me this
opportunity. I tried this speech out on them last night and am happy to report
that none of them fell asleep until I was three quarters done.

When composing this message I searched my memory for my same experience back
in 1969 when I was sitting right where you are. I realized that I could hardly
remember one single speaker from my junior high or high school days. Now that
could be my age. I’m old enough now that some days I can’t remember how old I
am. But it could also have been a sign of the times. Remember, I was part of
the student rebellion, and we did not listen to anything that someone over 30
said because they were just too clueless. Or so we thought.

Anyway, as I sat there considering this speech further, I suddenly had a
flashback of the one speaker who I actually did remember from youthful days.
He was a Shakespearean actor who came to our school to extol the virtues of
Shakespeare. He started out by telling us that Shakespeare was not about
poetry or romance or love, but instead, was all about battle, and fighting and
death and war. Then he pulled out a huge sword which he began waving over the
top of his head as he described various bloody conflicts that were all part
and parcel of Shakespeare’s plays. Now being a 15-year old testosterone laden
student at an all boys school, I thought this was pretty cool. I remember
thinking, “Yea, this guy gets it. Forget about the deep meaning and messages
in the words, let’s talk about who’s getting the blade.”

As you can see, I have a similar sword which I am going to stop waving over my
head now, because A) I think you are permanently scarred, and B) the
headmaster looks like he is about to tackle me and C) some of you, I can tell,
are way too excited about this sword, and you’re scaring me a little.

I’m here with you young men today because your parents wanted me to speak to
you about service—that is, serving others and giving back to the broader
community for the blessings that you have received in your life. But that is a
speech for a later time in your life. Don’t get me wrong, serving others is
really, really important. It truly is the secret to happiness in life. I swear
to God. Money won’t do it. Fame won’t do it. Nor will sex, drugs, homeruns or
high achievement. But now I am getting preachy.

Today, I want to talk to you about the dirtiest word that any of you 9th
graders know. It’s a word that is so terrible that your parents won’t talk
about it; your teachers won’t talk about it; and you certainly don’t ever want
to dwell on it. But this is a preparatory school, and you need to be prepared
to deal with this phenomenon because you will experience it. That is a
guarantee. Every single one of you will experience it not once but multiple
times, and every adult in this room has had to deal with this in its many
forms and manifestations. It’s the “F” word.

FAILURE. Failure that is so mortifying and so devastating that it makes you
try to become invisible. It makes you want to hide your face, your soul, your
being from everyone else because of the shame. Trust me, boys—if you haven’t
already tasted that, you will. I am sure most of you here already have. AND IT
IS HARD. I know this firsthand, but I also know that failure was a key element
to my life’s journey.

My first real failure was in 1966 in the 6th grade. I played on our basketball
team, and I was the smallest and youngest kid on the team. It was the last
game of the season and I was the only player on the squad that had not scored
a point all season. So in the second half the coach directed all the kids to
throw me the ball when I went in, and for me to shoot so that I would score.
The problem was that Coach Clark said it loud enough that every person in the
stands could hear it as well as every member of the opposing team. Going into
the fourth quarter, our team was well ahead, Coach Clark inserted me and thus,
began the worst eight minutes of my life up until that point. Every time I got
the ball, the entire other team would rush towards me, and on top of that,
that afternoon I was the greatest brick layer the world had ever seen. The
game ended. I had missed five shots, and the other team erupted in jubilation
that I had not scored. I ran out of the gym as fast as I could only to bump
into two of the opposing team’s players who proceeded to laugh and tease and
ridicule me. I cried and hid in the bathroom. Well, that passed, and I kept
trying team sports, but I was just too small to really compete. So in the 10th
grade, I took up boxing where suddenly everyone was my size and weight. I
nearly won the Memphis Golden Gloves my senior year in high school and did win
the collegiate championship when I was 19\. Standing in the middle of that
ring and getting that trophy, I still remember looking around for those two
little kids who had run me into that bathroom back in the 6th grade, because I
was going to knock their blocks off. That’s one problem with failure. It can
stay with you for a very long time.

The next time the dragon of failure reared his ugly head was in 1978. I was
working in New Orleans for one of the greatest cotton traders of all time, Eli
Tullis. Now, New Orleans is an unbelievable city. It has the Strawberry
Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras, and just about every
other excuse for a party that you can ever imagine. Heck, in that town, waking
up was an excuse to party. I was still pretty fresh out of college, and my
mentality, unfortunately, was still firmly set on fraternity row. It was a
Friday morning in June, and I had been out literally all night with a bunch of
my friends. My job was to man the phone all day during trading hours and call
cotton prices quotes from New York into Mr. Tullis’ office. Around noon,
things got quiet on the New York floor, and I got overly drowsy. The next
thing I remember was a ruler prying my chin off my chest, and Mr. Tullis
calling to me, “Paul. Paul.” My eyes fluttered opened and as I came to my
senses, he said to me, “Son, you are fired.” I’d never been so shocked or hurt
in my life. I literally thought I was going to die for I had just been sacked
by an iconic figure in my business.

My shame turned into anger. I was not angry at Mr. Tullis for he was right. I
was angry at myself. But I knew I was not a failure, and I swore that I was
going to prove to myself that I could be a success. I called a friend and
secured a job on the floor of the New York Cotton Exchange and moved to the
City. Today, I will put my work ethic up against anybody’s on Wall Street.
Failure will give you a tattoo that will stay with you your whole life, and
sometimes it’s a really good thing. One other side note, to this day, I’ve
never told my parents that I got fired. I told them I just wanted to try
something different. Shame can be a lifetime companion for which you better
prepare yourself.

Now, there are two types of failure you will experience in life. The first
type is what I just described and comes from things you can control. That is
the worst kind. But there is another form of failure that will be equally
devastating to you, and that is the kind beyond your control. This happened to
me in 1982. I had met a very lovely young Harvard student from Connecticut,
dated her for two years then asked her to marry me right after she graduated
from college. We set a date; we sent out the invitations; and all was
fantastic until one month before the wedding when her father called me. He
said, “Paul, my daughter sat me down this afternoon, and she doesn’t know how
to tell you this, but she is really unhappy and thinks it’s time for you two
to take a break.” At first I thought he was joking because he was a very funny
guy. Then he said, “No, she is serious about this.” I thought to myself, “Oh,
my God, I am being dumped at the altar.” I’m from Tennessee. Getting dumped at
the altar was the supreme social embarrassment of that time. It was a big
deal. When all my family and friends found out, they were ready to re-start
the Civil War on the spot. I had to remind them that the last Civil War didn’t
go so well for our side, and I didn’t like our chances in a rematch. The
reality was that I was a 26-year old knucklehead, and since all my friends
were getting married, I kind of felt it was time for me to do the same thing.
And that was the worst reason in the world to get married. I actually think
she understood that and to a certain extent spared me what would have been a
very tough marriage. Instead, I’ve had an incredible marriage for twenty years
to a wonderful wife, and we have four kids that I love more than anything on
Earth. Some things happen to you that at the time will make you feel like the
world is coming to an end, but in actuality, there is a very good reason for
it. You just can’t see it and don’t know it. When one door closes, another
will open, but standing in that hallway can be hell. You just have to
persevere. Quite often that dragon of failure is really chasing you off the
wrong road and on to the right one.

By now you are thinking, how much longer is this loser going to keep on
talking. My kids are all teenagers, and whenever I’m telling them something I
think is important, they often wonder the same thing. But the main point I
want you to take away today is that some of your greatest successes are going
to be the children of failure. This touches upon the original reason I was
invited here today. In 1986, I adopted a class of Bedford Stuyvesant 6th
graders and promised them if they graduated from high school, I would pay for
their college. For those of you who don’t know, Bed-Stuy is one of New York
City’s toughest neighborhoods. Even the rats are scared to go there at night.
Statistically about 8% of the class I adopted would graduate from high school,
so my intervention was designed to get them all into college. For the next six
years, I did everything I could for them. I spent about $5,000 annually per
student taking them on ski trips, taking them to Africa, taking them to my
home in Virginia on the weekends, having report card night, hiring a counselor
to help coordinate afternoon activities and doing my heartfelt best to get
them ready for college. Six years later, a researcher from Harvard contacted
me and asked if he could study my kids as part of an overall assessment of
what then was called the “I Have a Dream” Program. I said sure. He came back
to me a few months later and shared some really disturbing statistics. 86 kids
that I had poured my heart and soul into for six years were statistically no
different than kids from a nearby school that did not have the services our
afterschool program provided. There was no difference in graduation rates,
dropout rates, academic scores, teenage pregnancies, and the list went on. The
only thing that we managed to do was get three times as many of our kids into
college because we were offering scholarships whereas the other schools were
not. But in terms of preparing these kids for college, we completely and
totally failed. Boy, did this open my eyes. That was the first real-time
example for me of how intellectual capital will always trump financial
capital. In other words, I had the money to help these kids, but it was
useless because I didn’t have the brains to help them. I had tried to succeed
with sheer force of will and energy and financial resources. I learned that
this was not enough. What I needed were better defined goals, better metrics,
and most importantly, more efficient technologies that would enable me to
achieve those goals. What that whole experience taught me was that starting
with kids at age 12 was 12 years too late. An afterschool program was actually
putting a band-aid on a much deeper structural issue, and that was that our
public education system was failing us. So in 2000, along with the greatest
educator I knew, a young man named Norman Atkins, we started the Excellence
Charter School in Bedford Stuyvesant for boys. We set the explicit goal of
hiring the best teachers with the greatest set of skills to be the top
performing school in the city. Now that was an ambitious goal but last year in
2008, Excellence ranked #1 out of 543 public schools in New York City for
reading and math proficiency for any third and fourth grade cohort, and our
school was 98% African American boys. We never would have done that had I not
failed almost 15 years earlier.

So here is the point: you are going to meet the dragon of failure in your
life. You may not get into the school you want or you may get kicked out of
the school you are in. You may get your heart broken by the girl of your
dreams or God forbid, get into an accident beyond your control. But the point
is that everything happens for a reason. At the time it may not be clear. And
certainly the pain and the shame are going to be overwhelming and devastating.
But just as sure as the sun comes up, there will come a time on the next day
or the next week or the next year, when you will grab that sword and point it
at that dragon and tell him, “Be gone, dragon. Tarry with me and I will cut
your head off. For I must find the destination God and life hold in store for
me!” Young men of Buckley, good luck on your journey…..

~~~
diN0bot
thank you.

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estacado
I hate scribd.

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charrington
Here's his bio: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tudor_Jones>

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dangoldin
I couldn't find a link to a pdf so if someone can post it in here that would
be great.

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ashot
<http://www.scribd.com/mobile/documents/16588637/download>

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SingAlong
This one really struck me

 _When one door closes, another will open, but standing in that hallway can be
hell_

When one door closes, another door opens. And not immediately. There's most
often a (bad) wait in the hallway waiting for another to open.

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hypermatt
Yeah that struck me the most also, I'm in that right now ;)

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cookiecaper
Overall a nice little diatribe, though I'm sad to see that Jones identifies
the failure with the scholarship in New York as a failure of the school system
instead of a failure of the home. He is right to state that 12 is 12 years too
late; it needs to start immediately, and Mother and Father are crucial to the
production of happy, functional people. Almost all of our serious problems
stem from degradation of the home, and no secular school system can fix that.

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chwahoo
He later describes a charter school he helped fund that had a lot of success.
Doesn't that support the argument that schools can make a big difference?

You are right that the home is probably the biggest influence, but it isn't
easy to "fix" homes through policy or charity. But if you can find ways to
help kids break out of the cycle and go to college or otherwise find success,
then the next generation may enjoy a better start.

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radu_floricica
A bit heavy with religion, but the message was sound: "Failure will come, and
you'd better be prepared to make use of it".

Unfortunately this doesn't apply very well for startups. Failure will come,
but all too often because you're in the wrong market at the wrong time, or
because your appraisal of what will sell is simply not good enough. In other
words, what you learn from one failure doesn't help you very much in the next
attempt.

