Transcript

My interest in finance probably began when I took the courses in the MBA program.  The first year finance course was fun.  I knew nothing about finance, really.  I'd never done anything about finance.  I didn't invest or do anything.  And it turned out that it was fun to diagnose the cases, and I was, again, pretty good at it.  So I liked it.  Then I took, in the second year, I took a course -- I began to wonder what I'd do for a job. I had no thoughts at that time.  There was no plan in anything that I did along the way in this career that I had been lucky at.  But I had no plan.  And I had to get a job. I had a wife and family, so I had to get a job. And I began to focus on banking and consulting because I thought they were the closest things to the school.  That they were episodic, that they were analytical, that they were cases, in effect.  And I thought that would be great fun, and maybe I'd be good at that too.

So I was thinking about interviewing in those two areas.  And I interviewed Arthur D.  Little, and I interviewed some banks.  And I wasn't sure -- I didn't have any plan.  I wasn't driven to anything.  And at the very end of the recruiting period, before I decided anything, Charlie Williams said to me, "Have you ever thought of staying around as a case writer?" And I basically thought, "Oh boy.  Now I don't have to decide anything." So I could postpone the whole decision, and that's what I did, and I felt very comfortable doing that.  .  .

Salaries were pretty close in those days.  I think the numbers were in the five thousand area for Arthur D.  Little.  Almost the same for the Business School, and for banking.

Banking wasn't a hotshot business in those days.  They didn't want MBAs, they didn't pay MBAs.  I had some experience later on with a bank in Maryland.  Charlie Williams sent me down there to take his place.  He didn't want to go be on a panel.  And I went down there, and the fellow asked -- the President of the bank asked us about MBAs and salaries, and I told him, and he said, oh, that wasn't enough -- that was too much.  So I said, "Well, but these are MBAs." He said, "We don't care." So that was a little bit humbling.  Consulting was a little bit better, but not much.

But the incomes weren't that different.  In general, money wasn't that important in those days, as it is today.