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What does it take to succeed at the highest level? In this episode, Sharran shares the 10 lessons he learned while working at Goldman Sachs. These lessons shaped his approach to success, business, and life.
Sharran breaks down the core principles that helped him excel in one of the most competitive environments in the world and helped him navigate the world of high-stakes finance. These principles, though learned at Goldman Sachs, apply to anyone looking to build a successful career and make a lasting impact.
If you want to learn the key lessons that have shaped some of the wealthiest and most successful people in the world, this episode is packed with insights that will help you achieve your goals.
“If you want to learn how to work hard, put yourself in an environment that forces it. When you choose to compete in a place where everyone is exceptional, where effort is the only advantage left, that’s when you’ll finally learn what you are truly capable of.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:48 – How to make $100,000 out of thin air
03:10 – Long-term greed and relationship-building
05:17 – The power of responsiveness
06:39 – Owning the bad news
08:27 – The importance of hard work paranoia
09:50 – Thinking in frameworks for better understanding
11:41 – The power of brand recognition
12:46 – Finding the right people to champion you
15:20 – The power of a whole firm working as one
17:10 – Setting and respecting the rules of engagement
Resources:
– Everything They Teach You at Goldman Sachs in 17 Minutes
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. And in this episode, I’m doing something special for you. I recently made a video on YouTube that totally took off. It is the 10 lessons that I learned while I was a banker at Goldman Sachs. Now, if you’re not familiar with Goldman, they people have a polarizing reaction to it because it’s a Wall Street Bank.
[00:00:18] However, getting into Goldman is harder than getting into all the Ivy Leagues that are out there. It is probably the hardest quote job, if you will, to get by far, hands down, hardest to do and I had a crazy experience there and I recount the 10 biggest lessons that I learned working with some of the wealthiest people in the biggest companies in the world, and I break it down so that you can utilize that step by step in your life and in your business.
[00:00:45] I break it all down for you, starting right now.
[00:00:54] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how-to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand, and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:16] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa, and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:29] I worked at Goldman Sachs managing over $3 billion and worked with some of the most wealthiest and successful people in the world. And I learned 10 powerful lessons that allowed me to build and exit multiple billion-dollar companies after leaving Goldman. So today, I am sharing what these 10 lessons are.
[00:01:43] And how you can use them to make more money, achieve anything you want, and build your dream life. My first lesson at Goldman Sachs was how to make a hundred thousand dollars out of thin air. So let me tell you the story. In my first week at Goldman Sachs, my managing partner told me that I was not allowed to call on any of our clients, even though that was my job.
[00:02:00] He told me that I had to prove that I was actually good enough to be an advisor. He actually said to me, why would a client trust you with their money if you can’t generate money for yourself? Out of thin air. That was a challenge that I never expected. So I went to every single person that would give me the time and ask them how they would generate a hundred thousand dollars out of thin air.
[00:02:20] One person gave me some form of an answer. They taught me that options trading was the way to do something like that if you didn’t have money to put up. But to be honest, I was not able to make it without any money. I was actually able to turn a hundred thousand dollars into $200,000 using options, and that’s how I made a hundred thousand dollars out of thin air.
[00:02:40] With time, I could have figured it out, but it unlocked something really powerful for me. I learned a skill that I would never, ever go hungry again. So here’s what this means for you. You have to find a way to prove to yourself that you can generate value without leaning on someone else’s capital or reputation.
[00:02:57] Once you have that proof, you’ll approach every client, every opportunity, and every challenge with a completely different level of confidence. That first lesson taught me that I could generate value from nothing. But the second lesson showed me something even more powerful. It showed me how to think long-term when everyone else is focused on the quick win.
[00:03:17] The second lesson was about something Goldman called being long-term greedy. So here’s what happened. I met a trader at Goldman Sachs who told me a story of something that happened on his team. They put together this trade of a structured node, and the trader made an extra $2 million for Goldman. How did this happen?
[00:03:33] The trade was hedged, and everything was going according to plan. But the bid as spread moved in favor of Goldman on a massive structured node. The client got exactly what was promised, but Goldman, in a rare occurrence, ended up making an extra $2 million. The client had not lost anything. They got exactly what was promised.
[00:03:52] Goldman simply ended up with an unintended extra profit when the managing partner found out. He was furious. He asked the trader to call the client and unwind that part of the trade and close it out to net Goldman, nothing extra than what was planned. So, how was this long-term grade? Goldman Sachs extended the timeline of their relationship with their client.
[00:04:13] They delayed the gratification of actually getting that extra deal. They stayed on plan because they believe that the most lucrative opportunities are exponential. In the future, meaning if the client had actually found out, it would’ve eroded massive trust. But instead, they will be a Goldman client for life.
[00:04:31] Not only that, they will be an evangelist. They will tell that story in every locker room, at every dinner table, and every podcast on every private jet. It may have just been the best $2 million marketing campaign for Goldman ever. Every deal is just earning the right to keep playing. You don’t win a client once you earn their trust repeatedly.
[00:04:52] This is not about. Just financial services. It’s about how all of us operate. When you put the relationship about the transaction, when you’re willing to give up short-term win to protect the long-term trust, you set yourself up for an exponential upside. Long-term greed changes how I approach every deal, but it’s useless if you can’t build trust that makes clients.
[00:05:14] Stick around, and that’s where lesson number three comes in. The third lesson I learned is simple but powerful. Always keep your notifications on. Most people nowadays want to have their phones on silent, but that’s exactly how you lose many opportunities. I remember a partner at Goldman Sachs telling a client that if he was not sleeping or showering, he would return the client’s call promptly.
[00:05:35] While that seemed excessive, that was the baseline. The responsiveness was the non-negotiable. I will never forget the story when. I got my first Blackberry, and every time we got an email or a notification, the red light would start flickering. It was not uncommon for me to wake up in the middle of the night and answer that red flickering light.
[00:05:54] It was because of the culture of responsiveness that Goldman had built that still carries through today. It was not about efficiency. It was that responsiveness created so much trust in an advisor. Like Goldman Sachs, this responsiveness has become a core part of my identity. Even today, I even check my email and my notifications faster than my assistant can keep up.
[00:06:13] And for this one thing alone, I have multiple case studies of clients having hired and paid me, honestly, millions of dollars. And people have said that I was the most responsive person that they had dealt with. Now, while you can’t do this for everyone, I believe that you can do this for your best client.
[00:06:28] Responsiveness is a symbol of trust and certainty for your company. It shows that you care more than anything else. Being responsive builds trust when things are going well, but the fourth lesson taught me what to do when things go wrong, and it’s the opposite of what most people do. This fourth lesson saved my career more than once.
[00:06:47] Bad news doesn’t get better with time. Let me tell you a story of what happened right before my eyes. One of my colleagues was trading an account for a client, and while he was working on several trades, he ended up trading a particular stock. Well, that happened to be where that client was an insider, where he was a director, and he’d had a closed trading window.
[00:07:05] Normally, the systems would’ve caught it, and that just slipped through that time. What I saw next gave me such a great lesson in learning about this. He instantly stopped. He roleplayed what he was gonna tell the client. He called the legal counsel and immediately called the client. He didn’t wait for more than three minutes.
[00:07:22] And on that call, I heard him lay out a plan to unwind the trade and manage all communications with the SEC. The critical point is the client never found out from a third party, like the government, their own lawyer, or someone else. They found out from Goldman first. If there was any lesson that we got hammered in over and over, it was that bad news does not get better with time.
[00:07:41] When something goes wrong, your job is no longer to defend the past. Your job is to minimize the damage, move quickly, and prove that you can be trusted when things are at their worst. When you own things immediately, people often trust you more after the failure than they did before, because they’ll know that you never hide the ball.
[00:08:00] So, how do you implement this lesson in your life? When things break, call the person before they call you. Frame the issue with honesty and clarity, and show them the plan that you’ve already set in motion. That will make them trust you, and it will feed that long-term relationship. Owning the bad news, fast, protects relationships, but even with all these skills, none of it matters.
[00:08:22] If you’re not willing to outwork everyone around you, that’s what I learned in lesson number five. The fifth lesson is about what happens when you put the best of the best in one room. You get hard work. Paranoia that Goldman Sachs is the Hunger Games of talent. Everyone was exceptional. And when everyone is exceptional, the only advantage you have left is effort.
[00:08:41] That’s when the hard work paranoia sets in. People are staying late, they’re showing up early, they’re practicing presentations over and over again. They’re roleplaying conversations until midnight. They’re taking calls from clients at all hours. You didn’t want to be the one who was seen slacking.
[00:08:54] You didn’t want to be the one who missed the chance to get better. By the way, hard work has nothing to do with effort. It’s got to do with the environment that brings out the effort in you. If the environment doesn’t demand it, you won’t need the push. You cannot learn. What working hard actually means until you’ve seen the difference between what you thought was effort and what real effort looks like.
[00:09:14] My experience at Goldman, we set my baseline forever. Everything since then has felt a lot easier. Not because it wasn’t hard, but because I had learned how to work my face off and love doing it. So let’s zoom out if you wanna learn how to work hard. Put yourself in an environment that forces it. I know it’s easier said than done, but when you choose to compete in a place where everyone is exceptional, where effort is the only advantage left, that’s when you’ll finally learn what you are truly capable of.
[00:09:42] Hard work and paranoia pushed me to my limits, but Goldman also taught me how to work smarter, not just harder, and that’s where frameworks come in. The sixth lesson changed how I communicate everything. Think in frameworks. One of my billionaire clients at Goldman wanted me to explain investing to his children.
[00:09:58] So I asked a mentor who was a managing partner at Goldman, what I should do, and he shared pieces of a framework, and I codified it for you. And I call it the investment X-ray. Here’s an example. Every investment can be scored across four categories, each with 25 points, totaling a hundred. Number one, capital preservation.
[00:10:14] What’s the probability of an investment going to zero? Number two, tax efficiency. How is this investment taxed? Number three, cash flow or yield. Does this produce income while you hold it? And number four, growth. Will this appreciate in value over time by scoring each part of the investment X-ray, whether it’s uh, Bitcoin or real estate, or Apple stock?
[00:10:35] You very quickly can compare these investments objectively instead of emotionally. When I explained this framework to the billionaire’s child, he immediately got it, and today he runs a large hedge fund and still references that framework that we taught him. Frameworks are not a one-time thing at Goldman.
[00:10:53] Everything was taught in frameworks because that’s how you became not just a banker, but a teacher and a trusted advisor in the process. I’ll give you an example when describing the firm itself; they always use a simple three-part framework. They would say at Goldman Sachs, we care about our people, our process, and our platform.
[00:11:09] It broke down the firm’s value proposition into something that anyone could grasp. Why the people were world-class, why their processes were airtight, and why their platform gave them unique access to different investment opportunities? You could do the same thing if you wanted to explain things clearly.
[00:11:27] Just don’t give them the answer. Build a framework so you can teach the answer. Frameworks help people understand complex things. It actually helps them feel safe. It also helps them recall what you told them, which is often the most important part. Lesson seven taught me the most powerful competitive advantage.
[00:11:45] In business and in life. I cold-called, cold emailed, and cold-prospected a client for six to seven months, and it was a really long sales process. And then I found out that we were competing with other firms. At the end of multiple days of deliberations and board meetings, I’d found out that the board had actually hired us at hired Goldman Sachs.
[00:12:05] So when I was at dinner with my client, I asked him why was it our team? Was it the pitch? Was it the fee structure? And the CEO laughed and said, board told me nobody ever gets blamed. For hiring at Goldman Sachs, I realized that it was not my charisma or my hustle or my amazing pitch, or it was the brand.
[00:12:22] The brand was a shield for these decision makers. Even if something went sideways, we were the gold standard, and that board could say that they hired the best. Here’s why this is so important in your life and in your. I know it’s easier said than done, but that’s what business is all about. If you build a brand in your market that carries that level of trust, you win before the game even starts.
[00:12:43] But building a brand like Goldman takes decades, but there’s a shortcut to success that I learned in lesson number eight, and it’s all about finding the right people to champion you. The eighth lesson is about how you can get that job or promotion despite the competition, and the answer is an internal champion.
[00:12:59] The entire reason why I went to business school was to go to Wall Street, and I realized that it was gonna take a lot of interviews to get a job at Goldman Sachs. I had 39 one-on-one interviews in five different cities to get this job at Goldman, and in one of those interviews, I had a one-minute encounter with a managing partner.
[00:13:16] He walked in frazzled that day. He put his leather binder on the desk, and he asked me, you’re a hotshot. I see hot shots come through here all the time. Here’s my list of prospects. I want you to call them and set me an appointment. I had no idea what to do or what to say. I didn’t want to insult the managing partner.
[00:13:32] So in the moment of. Calm yet panicked. I asked him, Hey, I want to represent you well. Do you have a script that I can use to set up your appointment? Right at that time, he gathered all his stuff. He put it back in his backpack, and he shook my hand, and he said, you’ll do great, kid. And he walked out the door.
[00:13:49] Later that evening, when I saw him at the cocktail party, I asked him why that interview lasted only 45 seconds. And he explained to me that he’d been doing that same charade for the last 15 to 20 years, and every single. High achiever who would come in through that door would wanna showcase their skills to see if they can pick up the phone and try to set an appointment for this managing partner.
[00:14:10] And he said, I was one of the few candidates who actually responded asking for a script. And while that was not the perfect answer, he explained to me that it taught him that I was coachable, which is why he was gonna be a massive internal champion for me. And true to his word, that partner became my internal champion.
[00:14:28] He vouched for me through the process. He vouched for me during my entire time at Goldman because nobody wants to help a know-it-all. Nobody wants to help someone who doesn’t actually need the help. Instead, if you are open and coachable. People in positions of power and influence want to help you rise.
[00:14:44] Yes, you’ll never do it alone. You need people with influence to vouch for you and help you work your way up, and they’ll only do that if you show them that you’re willing to learn. So here’s my big lesson for you. I recommend. To stop acting like you have all the answers to try, and be coachable, not arrogant, because the reality is you need people to vouch for you.
[00:15:03] Here’s the truth that nobody will tell you. Your future depends on the conversations that you are not in on the rooms that you are not in. So you need people who will fight for you in those rooms and in those conversations, and the only way to do that is by showing that you’re willing to learn and willing to be coachable.
[00:15:19] The ninth lesson was about the power of a whole firm working as one. This may be hard to believe, but in a firm of thousands of people, I could reach out to any single person, regardless of seniority, and expect their help. I had trusted estate attorneys, traders, and international colleagues drop what they were doing to help me with client opportunities.
[00:15:39] People will get on planes, fly across the country, show up in person for meetings that weren’t even technically their responsibility. And every time I asked for help, the answer was always yes. This is actually not common on Wall Street. If it was not in a certain banker’s p and l, they wouldn’t even offer the help.
[00:15:55] But Goldman had built this culture of one firm that was truly [00:16:00] unbeatable. This taught me two big lessons. One, it showed me the real power of culture. When an entire organization rallies for clients, it becomes a brand-defining advantage. Clients feel cared for at a level that they cannot get anywhere else.
[00:16:15] They trust you because they know you will mobilize the full force of the firm to serve them. They, they feel like an entire firm is behind them. And number two, it reminded me that relationships inside the firm matter just as much as relationships and networking outside the firm. You could always call on someone for help, but it was 10 times easier if you already built a real relationship with them.
[00:16:36] At Goldman, everyone wanted internal champions. Everyone wanted to be a part of someone else’s network. And that culture rewarded you for building those bridges. So how can this practically apply to you? The best way I have found is to connect your network with each other, introduce your best connections to your best connections.
[00:16:54] This is not about contacts or networking or taking people out to lunches and dinners and baseball games. A single introduction that you make can change someone’s life and trajectory forever, and they will always remember you for it. Working as one firm creates unstoppable momentum, but the final lesson might be the most important one.
[00:17:10] Now, the final lesson is one that surprised me the most. Why no one talk smack about Goldman Sachs? In my Goldman Sachs training program, there were only 33 MBAs in my class. Within a few months, one of my closest friends in the program quit, and the next month, we saw him on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine launching his own company.
[00:17:28] This became a pattern over the years. I saw many people, Lee Goldman, to build. Incredible careers elsewhere. The fascinating thing was when they leave, they don’t trash Goldman. You can search online all day, but compared to other firms, you won’t find people talking smack about Goldman Sachs. I am no exception.
[00:17:46] Here’s why. It’s not because they’re afraid. They’re actually two big reasons. Number one, people know exactly what they signed up for. They knew the culture, they knew the rules of the game, and they knew the standards. And when someone got promoted ahead of you, even if they were younger or less tenured, you knew exactly why.
[00:18:02] The culture of meritocracy rewarded them fairly. That made it impossible to resent the game. You either played harder or you chose to leave. And number two, the best of the best don’t hate. They know how much work it takes to win. So when you see someone else putting in the reps, building and creating, and doing the work.
[00:18:19] Do you respect it? So how can this help you set the rules of engagement for all your relationships? It’s not a matter of friendships or romantic relationships or hiring people. When people know where they stand with you, they respect you. So set the rules, let people know the game, because we teach people how to treat us.
[00:18:36] These are 10 lessons from Goldman Sachs that change how I operate forever, but Goldman is just one place I learned from the top 0.01%. I’ve also spent hundreds of hours with billionaires and amazing entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk. So if you want to see what I learned from them, check out my next video.
[00:19:01] Hey, this is Sharran. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I’ve got a chance to build $2 billion companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you’ll love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It’s on my Substack, called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three-peat and build the next billion. So everything’s free at mynextbillion.com. Please check it out at mynextbillion.com.