Jamie Dimon's Top 10 Rules for Success

Jamie Dimon is the longtime CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, widely regarded as one of the most powerful leaders in global banking.

Jamie Dimon is an institution. Since 2005, he's been the head of the world's biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase.

This country is a lot better off because Jamie Dimon has been running JPMorgan.

He started his career as a young finance graduate working under mentor Sandy Weill.

Dimon quickly rose through the ranks of finance right out of Harvard Business School. He became the protégé of his dad's boss, Sandy Weill, a legendary banking dealmaker.

He went on to lead the biggest bank in the United States and become one of the most influential voices in the global financial system.

I could care less what Bitcoin trades for, how it trades, why it trades, who trades it. If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day.

Dimon regularly speaks with prime ministers and presidents around the world, and there's been plenty of speculation he might run for office someday. All this translates into a great deal of power and influence.

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If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, Welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: be risk conscious.

I've always been very risk conscious. And risk conscious does not mean getting rid of risk. It means properly pricing it and understanding the potential outcomes. Uh, uh, and so when I got there, you know, I just started meeting people and going through. I quickly realized that Bank One had more U.S. Corporate credit risk than Citibank did. And they— the way they accounted for it was unbelievably aggressive. And, you know, so they had less capital, less reserves, less this. They, they were calling these things profitable. They were basically losing money. And, you know, loans in a lot of business, you have to be very careful about the credit business. And once I found out that, I kind of panicked a little bit and I went through every single loan in the books. I marked them all down. Put up more reserves, told the board about it, and then wanted to earn more revenues per dollar of risk. So for example, in the middle market business, we had for every loan NII, we had like $0.80 and $0.20 net interest income for net interest income from the loan and $0.20 of other revenue like payments. By the time we merged with JPMorgan, we had 40% NII for the loan and 60% NII, NIR from other type of things like payments. And one, you're being paid for the risk, and one, you're being paid little for the risk. And I always stress tested, and I showed the board that if we have a recession, and we're about to have one, how much money we'd lose in credit. So I hired a woman called Linda Bammen who said, okay, if you're gonna let me do credit, you're gonna let me sell loans? They said yes. Are you gonna let me hedge loans?

Yes.

Can I do $10 billion? I said yes. She said, okay, I'll join. And we probably reduced the balance sheet by $50 billion. Because— and then we did have a recession, but we were kind of okay by then with one big bad one, which is United, which went bankrupt. And we basically owned it for a small period of time.

Well, number 2, do the right thing anyway.

Bank One hadn't opened a branch in 5 years. Chase hadn't opened a branch for 5 years. They never refurbished their branches. But at least Bank One, by the time we did the merger, we're making a million-plus profit a branch a year, 2,300 branches. Chase was making zero. Partially because of the allocation I mentioned, partially because no one seemed to care about them, stuff like that. But we should always analyze these. I mean, these branches have been hugely profitable. And we don't— this goes back to accounting again— we don't give a branch credit for a credit card. So when they create a Sapphire account, that's worth $700— I think they create a million accounts a year in the branches. That's $700 million of value. I'm gonna give a couple of quick examples here. And, you know, we do these NPVs about why we should close the branch, and they're We should do them, we should be disciplined. I think for the most part MPVs might work, but they don't always work, and you just, you gotta use your common sense sometimes. Banksville branch, we're gonna close it, it's kinda small. They show me, and now I'm getting 100 complaints. Literally, there's a campaign. Every small business there, there's 200 or 300 consumers. Banksville is 6 miles, they said it's 6 miles to the closest branch. The biggest competitors were us and other branches in Greenwich. It's a 6-mile drive from the next closest branch.

And I looked at that, and that was making $500,000, $600,000 profit.

I said, if you close that branch, you know what's going to happen? What would happen the day we closed it? Who's going to open in the same spot? Wells Fargo. Yeah, or that good Connecticut bank. And by the way, does a little lady want to drive 6 miles in the winter on those windy roads? And is the branch more profitable than it kind of looks? And to me, that wasn't the NPV, it was the pawn blocking the queen. While we're cutting costs, waste cutting, I also did something, I opened the partners room. And a lot of people told me, this is just how I think about what you do and what you don't do, do the right thing anyway, whether it looks good, Well, it looks bad. The whole operating committee said, don't do it. A partners room is going to cost $1.5 million a year, et cetera, et cetera. And I was, yeah, but we don't know each other. And if we don't do it, it'll be years before we know each other. And I call it, it's a good expense. It's a judgment call. You could argue. I know a lot of you enjoy it. Do the right thing and explain it. Don't do that thing because you think it'll look bad for you or hurt morale a little bit.

Rule number 3: Be 100% in.

You know, if you work at a company and the new CEO comes in, he's from out of town, and you're going to have a lot of shareholders. And I knew, I knew a lot of the shareholders. I was going to know a lot of the shareholders. I wanted to know I was in 100%, lock, stock and barrel. There was no question I would never sell that stock and I'm going to go down with the ship or go up with the ship. And they also knew I was making decisions that I thought were right for long-term health of the company. No, not for a short-term type of thing.

Rule number 4: Know your numbers.

Instead of know your numbers, I'm going to change it to get your numbers right. Understand them, analyze them, work them, test them, and don't be rote about them. You got to have the budget in the thing. You can't always compare yourself to forecast because then you're always very close. Okay? And it's just— you got to show the budget. You got to show the budget.

Okay.

And, and then the other one, which I hate, like really hate, is comparing yourself to peer average. I mean, really?

Really?

Is that, is that what we're going to do? You should always compare yourself to the best. Where are they and where are we?

Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description to go grab it. I'll see you there. Rule number 5, don't chase perfection.

You know, there had been an analyst called Mike Mayo who'd done a report. I remember one of the great lines of the report, even Hercules couldn't fix it. It had been an amalgamation of Bank One, First Chicago, National Bank of Detroit. They'd never put the companies together. So they had multiple statement systems, processing systems, payment systems, you know, SAP systems. They had different brands. You know, service was coming down, we were losing accounts, they were closing branches.

It was a mess.

But, you know, it was all of it, systems, people, ops. But again, I just, you know, I just, I met the management team. It's hard. You know, I walked in, I met 6 of the directors. There were 21 directors. 11 hated the other 10. Yeah, I mean, wait, wait, wait.

There were 21 board members.

21 board members from the merge, multiple acquisitions. They were tribal. They ended up hating each other. I knew that when I went in because I knew one people and I spoke to a lot of people and did research in the bank. But again, in life you get handed these things and it's not perfect. Even today, people want to be handed something perfect. It's not perfect. So I met 6 directors. I walked in. When I got offered the job, I shook all their hands. I told them I'm going to do the best I do. I'm going to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the good, the bad, the ugly. We're not going to bullshit. We're going to try to build a great company. I'm going to need your help. And then they said, They left. So now I'm on the executive floor. I don't even know where to go, you know. And so I kind of knocked on someone's door, the head of HR. I said, I do need an office and I really need an assistant. And they were going to give me the chairman's office in the corner. I said, no, no, I want to be like right in the middle so I can see people. I stick my head out. And then I went to meet the management team. I went to this— they put them all in this conference room, a nice white plush carpets. I walked in with a cup of coffee and they said, Jamie, we don't drink coffee here for obvious reasons. So I looked at them, I looked at the coffee, I looked at them. I said, you do now. And then I just started meeting with them all. And the systems were terrible. The company was losing money. I didn't know all the businesses really well. So the credit card company had collapsed. That's probably the business I knew the least. But again, it didn't, that didn't matter to me. I was gonna try to fix it. It had some good assets and things like that.

Well, number 6, always do better.

Chick-fil-A, there's a great article in the paper how they're trying to, they're using satellites and stuff like that and drones to, and now they got down to 13 seconds of sandwich through the drive-through line. That's what you gotta be thinking. How do you make it better? Better, better all the time. Full and constant assessment, the way you do this stuff, a lot. We've been talking here. Always look, always learn. It's the only way. Look at competition, go to other companies, go to their branches, go to— go on the road trips, take people out, take each other. You know, when you go out, take management teams to dinner. When you see clients, you want to— you know, it's a— when they tell us that we're making a mistake, it's a gift. And by the way, very often they tell you that's a mistake, but it's not your area, and some people just tend to ignore it. No, no, write it down and then send it to the person. Always acknowledge your mistakes. You'll learn a lot having wine at the bar with people. And then it's okay to be a fast follower. Like, we are in our own echo chamber sometimes, and that's not bad. That just happens, you know? And this is the way you get out of the echo chamber. Hit the road, go to the branch, talk to small businesses, constantly assess, constantly engage.

Rule number 7, appreciate feedback.

You've been chief exec for 18 years, and you're obviously in a very powerful position. But even the most powerful people, powerful leaders, need checks and balances. Who keeps you in check?

Well, my wife would probably say I do. And she does. But I think my management team, we're all very open. Everyone, we share everything. I emote to them in ways that you wouldn't hear me do it elsewhere. They emote back. You know, you're wrong. You didn't read it properly. You missed this major point. So it's a very open conversation. I don't think any of those folks are intimidated by me, you know? And there's very little after-the-fact conversation like, okay, I didn't want to mention this in front of everybody. They're brave enough to mention in front of anybody. And you know, I've had people, you know, 3 of them come in and say, Jamie, you're making a mistake. Sit down, we want to explain it to you. Don't say anything. Say, okay, lay it on me. So you try to create a very open environment. And then also, you know, we have regulators auditors, press. So we get, believe me, we get a lot of feedback from a lot of people. Even in the press, I always tell people when sometimes it's wrong and we have a knee-jerk reaction, I always start by saying, are they partially right? Like divide into component pieces. So maybe there's something there that we should fix even though we think the story was too skewed. Separate the two. Don't just have a knee-jerk reaction to every complaint you get.

Number 8, be prepared.

Going way back, I used to do a presentation on financial crises, going back to those blowups in Ginnie Mae's, Penn Central, commercial paper, the '87 crash, the '90 recession, the '74 recession. And if you make a list of all those things, you realize, and I'm not making fun of everyone, they happen all the time. And the best preparation is in our business, capital and liquidity, which Dodd-Frank improved. We already had a lot. Be prepared. You know, you can't be prepared after the fact. You gotta be prepared before the fact. So when I talk about risk management, it's always about the range of outcomes, can we handle them? And beyond that, Talk about geopolitical crises, cyber, you know, I put cyber in high risk. You gotta be prepared for that stuff. And it does happen and it's gonna surprise you one day. Just like, you know, am I surprised of oil? Will I be surprised oil goes to $150? I will not. It could easily happen if a bunch of factors fall a certain way.

So the best thing is be prepared for any business.

Think, when you think about risk, think about things that can go terribly wrong, can you survive them? You know, it could be technology, it could be government regulations, it could be literally the weather if you're a restaurant, you know, that might close you down if, you know, You know, if you lose this week's business, you're out of business, you don't have enough cash.

So you should think all that through.

Rule number 9, never stop learning.

Learning is a lifelong thing. It doesn't end at Harvard Business School. It's your responsibility. I think if you're in any profession at all, you have to do it consistently all the time. I think I spend probably 50 or 60% of my time learning, reading, talking to people, traveling. It's the only way you can keep on top of this global world of ours And it's even tougher now because of the globality of the businesses you're all gonna deal in.

How?

Reading is the most important one, but the second one, which is often forgotten, is talking to other people. You can learn more from speaking to people in 15 minutes than if you spent your life doing something. They can explain it to you, and you can learn from watching people. You also are going to learn by, I'm gonna call it imitation, but by watching other very good people and how they operate in difficult circumstances. I learned a lot of things what not to do and a lot of what to do by watching other people.

And number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip is work smart.

What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

You have to work hard. I mean, that doesn't— but, but work smart. You know, a lot of people don't.

They waste so much time and they don't think carefully.

And there's a great quote. I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one. That's respect to people, you know, you get your thoughts together. Have a process in place for decision-making. Don't allow yourself to become weaponized, like at all, like, you know, and don't have it— to the extent you have a temper, it works against you. You always have to end up apologizing. Have a thought process around things that are complicated and you'll get better over life. You don't have to answer everything all at once, you know. I tell all the people at JPMorgan, everyone should take care on their own, their mind, their body, their spirit, their soul, their friends, their family, their health. They have to do that as part of their life. If you mess that up, you know, it makes everything else particularly hard. So, uh, and I heard a great speech from a woman once who said, you can have it all, you just can't have it all at the same time.

You had a near-death experience about 4 years ago before with your aortic tear, and before that you'd had a big cancer scare. Um, how did those experiences change you?

Cancer scare was cancer. Yeah, I don't know, I probably have a little PTSD from all of them. And I think the— it's hard to say, but you obviously— I'm going to use a word, but I got it from another reporter, Julia Baird, from— I read it, something she wrote in Australia about you live— you try to live life a little more deliberately. So nothing— it's not like I wanted—

I love what I do.

I love my job. I love my family. I love all those things. So nothing really changed that way, but it is a little more deliberate. You know, and what's better for the world and, you know, more things like that. But those things do change a little bit. And I still go into denial, like, and then someone reminds me, I say, oh yeah, I did go through that stuff. So when I was being wheeled in the operating room for the dissection, I knew it was like 50/50 and I didn't have any regrets. So I, you know, 'cause people always said, do you have regrets? I said, no, I love my family. And unfortunately they were all there, but, No, the only thing I would say, I do want to help this country and the world and the free Western world. That is on my mind. Maybe that changed a little bit. Yeah.

And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be.

Believe.

For 10 more amazing rules from Warren Buffett, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe. I will see you there.

You have been talking this philosophy for years.

It's no secret.

It's no secret.

Why doesn't everybody do it? Well, it requires patience, which a lot of people don't have, and people would much rather be, you know, promised that they're going to win a lottery ticket.