David Solomon

But if it had been 2012, if it had been 2015, by the way, if it had been 2022, I mean, it wouldn't have been me either.

So it's you know, these things are a journey of hard work.

There are lots of people at Goldman Sachs that are capable of running the firm.

And then it's a confluence of, you know, luck and timing that goes with the hard work that that allowed me to wind up in the seat.

But I'm I'm very cognizant of the fact that a lot of it is luck and serendipity.

You know, I think the thing you learn as you go through life is that, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

It's never a straight line.

Lots of things you're going to get knocked down and, you know, bumped around.

And at the end of the day, there are certain things that I think are true north.

For me, True North has always been first and foremost, my family, my two daughters, you know, true, true North, always.

It's always been, I can't say that I always got the balance perfectly right, you know, every step of the way, every day, but it's always been True North.

And, you know, after that, my friends, I'm very blessed to have an extraordinary group of friends, many of whom I've been friendly with, you know, for, you know, 25, 35, 45, 50 years or more.

And, you know, keeping those people, you know, in your life, investing in those relationships because life gets busy and you go in different directions.

Um, but you know, keeping the compass pointed at true North, taking a long-term view, understanding that you're going to get knocked down, but you get up, you learn from the experience, you dust yourself off and you know, you just do the best you can do.

And life throws a lot of things at you that are out of your control, but be patient, take a long-term view, keep the compass pointed at your loved ones, your family, your friends, and

And, you know, do the right thing.

If you keep that stuff in balance, there'll be ups and downs.

But, you know, I think there's lots of joy, you know, that comes out of the kind of the success of a job well done is to do it and to do it well and to have the personal satisfaction for raising a family, for building a career, for having success and also.

when you fail from learning from the failing and being able to kind of look ahead and take the learnings and do even better and constantly try to self-improve.

You know, on that question, one of the things I just reflect on that I just think is interesting, when I graduated in 1984, we were worried about affordability.