Did you miss this special event last year where Rick Rule asked Terry Salman about the source of "legitimate authority" ? Is it better to assign authority to leaders who came from the bottom and earned it from customers or colleagues, or does an investment bank operate better if the leaders imposed it? What a question!
The recent 2024 Capitalism And Morality event continues the trend with a great speech by Rick Rule about social media. I heard his 2024 speech in person and had a vigorous conversation on The Saturday Call about it immediately after it ended. It takes more than a dozen contacts where a newsletter writer gives something of educational value for free to their audience before they trigger the hand-to-wallet reflex? This 2024 speech was very fun, but it's not on YouTube yet. While we wait for that video, I took a look back at content I missed from last year and found this fascinating discussion between Rick Rule and Terry Salman.
If you need convincing to consume this content then just watch 18:45 mark where Terry says, "when I first started this business you could buy stocks and then underwrite them. You could fill your own pockets with Securities and then later on market your company to the Canadian public. That isn't allowed anymore." Imagine what the long arc of "corporate governance" looks like over the decades of the junior mining business! Are there timeless principles for success or failure? What are they?
Read the transcript from the 18 minute mark here:
Terry Salman: "... the Marine Corps is not about you, it's about the Marine Corps. Nobody walks around pounding their chest and saying I'm a United States Marine. People know it. People know for the rest of your life. It's an authority structure that enabled me to work very well. There are many famous Marines. The guy who founded GoDaddy is a Marine. The founder of FedEx is a Marine. All of them proudly talk about how the Marine Corps structure enabled them to succeed in business. At Salman Partners, I had 100 employees. At Nesbitt Thompson, I had 200 employees. Sometimes I had to fire them. The structure that the Marines taught me about business was essential to my life."
Rick Rule: "Given the lessons that you learned in the Marines, where Authority was first imposed on you and then later as you rose in the Marines it was assigned to you, would you say that when you began to apply those lessons at Salman Partners that legitimate Authority came from the bottom? Which is to say that you had to earn it from customers and employees, or would you say that the organization operated better if you imposed it?"
Terry Salman: "Rank in the Marine Corps has huge privileges. The lowest level non-commission officer is a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps. A Corporal sits in a dining room like this and gets served by somebody else. He sits the same table as a non-commissioned officer. It takes a lot to earn that. At Salon Partners -- there are a couple of people here who worked for me once and now runs a successful mining company -- Simon Dyakowski. I don't see him now. We had a structure. He survived in that structure. We worked 12-hour days or 15-hour days. The Authority in the organization filtered down. You had to earn your stripes. It was very instrumental in being able to afford to give them bonuses and all the good things that they needed to raise their family."
Respect to Simon Dyakowski for the mention in this video! I am grateful for the opportunity to have invested in GSP Resources once years ago because I am bullish on every executive who attend Capitalism and Morality events. I encourage Simon to talk to Maxime Lepine about new ideas for community relationships. I didn't expect Terry to mention "the good things that they needed to raise their family" but I recognize how important that is for the people I work with today and want to work with in the future.
