ESGVUXE3N8RW In the Fall of 1995, I answered an ad in the NYT: Venture capital firm seeking dynamic CEO for specialty medical centers.
On the day of the interview, I was escorted into Lindsay Rosenwald’s office where I sat office for about six hours: talking occasionally, watching him take multiple calls at once, handle an endless round of visitors and calmly direct trades as he observed the market from any one of the four terminals showing market activity. At the end of the day, he told me I was hired, and that I should come back in the morning to discuss details.
That evening, I remember calling my brother, Tom, and telling him about my day. He shouted through the phone: “You met with who?! Do you have any idea who Lindsay Rosenwald is?!!!”
To say it was a meeting that changed my life forever, would at best be an understatement.
Lindsay gave me an opportunity that I would bet no one or at best very few would have given me. I was media-regular, offering nutritional advice with no understanding whatsoever of the public markets. Yet, still, Lindsay Rosenwald took a chance and introduced me to the world of venture capital, merchant banking, public companies and financing. It was a fascinating, hockey-stick learning experience that was intense, exciting, and life-changing.
Although I only stayed at Paramount for about a year, that experience along with a healthy boost of encouragement and three clients from Lindsay enabled me to start my firm The Investor Relations Group.
Today, I am eternally grateful to Lindsay. I consider him both a mentor and friend. In a most informal way, he taught me valuable lessons that I cite regularly;
Pick a direction and stay focused.
Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land.
It is better to own 10% of the goldmine, than 100% of the shaft.
Don’t worry about idle gossip if its about you…it is really idol worship.
Lindsay is smart. He works hard. He is relentless. I admire those traits. But mostly, I will never forget that just as he chose me to join Paramount—in so many ways the least likely candidate for the job—he sees potential in things that most people simply miss. He nurtures that potential. He provides the environment to develop technologies and for people to think, grow, reach, expand, create and try.
Whether he is acknowledged and thanked for it, Lindsay single-handedly launched more successful careers than I can count. We all had talent. But whether we choose to admit it or not, we often come to our own greatness by the unselfish, helping hands of others. To so many, Lindsay has been that helping hand: to me starting an investor relations firm, to those who launched funds, and to the countless public companies that he created which in turn offered both jobs and opportunities.