David Rubenstein: Dinners at the Vending Machine

"Vending machine food is underrated"

I’ve always believed that work ethic is one of the most important determinants of success – if not THE most important – and there is no better embodiment of hard work than David Rubenstein, the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, bestselling author, and dedicated philanthropist. During our wide-ranging and fun conversation on my podcast In Search of Excellence, we talked about David’s job as the Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in the Carter administration and the amazing work ethic that has defined his career.

One of his childhood friends recalls David saying that he would be remembered as the hardest-working person anyone knew – and David certainly achieved that reputation at The White House. A colleague of David’s said that he was the first person to arrive on the first day of the Carter administration and the last one to leave on the last day. He was rumored to live in his West Wing office and became semi-famous when a magazine described his daily routine, which included eating dinners from the White House vending machine.

David’s response: “The vending machine food is underrated.”

David is widely considered to be brilliant – which I also believe – but during our interview I David humbly and repeatedly said that he didn’t consider himself to be the smartest person as a child, student, or professional. He wanted to compensate for the fact that he wasn’t brilliant by having an unparalleled work ethic – so whenever he took a job, he worked extremely hard and hoped for success.

David had always been fascinated by politics and as a child and had wanted to work at the White House for his entire life. At 27 years old he achieved one of his dreams: he was working in the West Wing of The White House, the President of the United States called from time to time for advice, and he was being flown around on Marine One and Air Force One.  

“What could be greater than that?” David said as he reminisced on his time at The White House. “I couldn’t be happier.” David did not take this opportunity for granted: he worked around the clock from seven in the morning to eleven at night. 

Today, David is 72 years old and still works harder than ever. 

“When you’re 27, you have great potential, you want to work hard, you want to make a name for yourself, and you want to be useful,” he said. “When you’re 72, you realize that something is going to go wrong at some point – part of your body is going to fall apart, your brain is going to slow down, but you still want to sprint to the finish line.”  

Today, David is still involved at Carlyle, runs his family office, chairs several non-profit boards, stars in TV shows, writes books, gives speeches around the world, and has a great podcast where he interviews some of the most successful people in the world. In many ways, David is not working much less than he was at 27 years old.

"If you’re the smartest person in the room then you’re in the wrong room"

I am also a strong believer that hard work is a core pillar of success. And similar to David, I believe work ethic is much more important than intelligence, and I also think if you’re the smartest person in the room then you’re in the wrong room. I pride myself on my work ethic and have adapted the motto of FILO – first in, last out – which has served me well in my education and career. During college I regularly studied at the library until 10 pm at night even when I didn’t have exams and was often the last one to leave. When I was 27 years old and working at SunAmerica, I was also the first person to get to the office and almost always the last person to leave. At 54 years old, I still have the same work ethic – I work on average 70 hours a week, including Saturday and Sunday mornings.  

As David told me, hard work is not a vice – the most successful people in the world are people who worked incredibly hard at their craft and reaped the rewards of their relentless work ethic. Eating dinner at a vending machine is a small price to pay for the tremendous success that awaits us for being the hardest-working person in the room.

This article is based on my interview with David Rubenstein, the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms. He is the author of several books, including The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians (2019), How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers (2020), and The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream (2021). David is also the host of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS. David is an active philanthropist and serves on the board of many organizations, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts, and more. Listen to the full episode here.

You may also enjoy other episodes on In Search of Excellence, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and YouTube.

Randall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and podcaster. He is the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, a venture capital firm that has invested in more than 80 early-to-late-stage technology companies, including Google, Seagate, and Lyft. Randall is a Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies, a publicly-traded technology company that has 8,000 employees around the world and earned $3.8 billion in 2022 revenues. He is also the Founder and CEO of Sandee, the largest provider of information about beaches in the world with over 100 categories of information for more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries.

Randall is the host of In Search of Excellence, a podcast designed to motivate and inspire others to reach their potential and achieve excellence in all aspects of life. Randall’s guests have included Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, David Solomon, Bob Pittman, Sharon Stone, David Rubenstein, Steve Case, Orlando Bravo, Sammy Hagar, Sam Zell, Rachel Zoe, Tim Draper, Kliff Kingsbury, and Eric Garcetti, among many others. Randall is also a dedicated philanthropist – he is the founder of The Justice Ball which has raised more than $8 million for a non-profit legal clinic that aids more than 12,000 poor, sick, elderly, and homeless residents of Los Angeles each year, and is the Co-Founder of The Imagine Ball which has raised millions of dollars and is dedicated to ending the cycle of poverty and homelessness in Los Angeles.

Read Randall's full bio at www.randallkaplan.com.