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{{first_name|Friend}} - here’s a story I think about often.

In 1981, a Frenchman named Bernard moved with his wife and two young kids from Paris to New Rochelle, NY. Bernard was frustrated with France’s Socialist government and wanted to try his hand at American real estate instead. It didn’t go very well, and three years later Bernard decided to move back to France.

He put his New Rochelle house on the market and it was immediately bought by his neighbor down the street, a man named John Kluge. It turned out Mr. Kluge was the richest person in America at the time! When Bernard met him, Kluge was in the middle of a huge leveraged buyout of a large media company, taking it private in order to chop it into pieces and sell off the good parts and earn a profit quickly (in this case, a roughly $5bil profit).

At the house sale closing, Bernard asked Kluge what he was planning to do with his house. Kluge responded that he was going to tear it down so he would have a better view from his house. He did so two days later.¹

“It was just incredible!” Bernard said later. “It was a very nice place, but two days after he bought it, he tore my house down! It’s so very...American: when something has to be done, do it! In France we are full of good ideas, but we rarely put them into practice.”²

Back in his homeland, he read about a large failed conglomerate named Boussac that the (Socialist) government was trying to bail out and transfer to a new owner. Boussac had 20,000 employees, comprised a random bunch of mostly unprofitable businesses, and was deeply in debt. Aha, Bernard thought. I know just what to do.

He bought it and tore it down.

Over the next two years Bernard earned the nickname “The Terminator” in the French press for quickly laying off 9,000 people and shutting down almost all of the business he bought. He kept only two parts: a profitable grocery store (Le Bon Marche, still in business today), and an unprofitable tiny fashion company named Christian Dior.

Bernard used the grocery store profits to reinvest in Dior, and three years later it was profitable too. Then in a string of some of the most audacious moves in the history of capitalism, including multiple leveraged buyouts along with some good old fashioned Machiavellian manipulation, Bernard wrangled control of both Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy and sewed them together to form LVMH.³

LVMH would go on to become the biggest luxury conglomerate in the world. And in December 2019, Bernard Arnault was named the richest person in the world - just like his former neighbor.

Just one person, one encounter, can make a big shift how we see the world. Kluge got a new view and in doing so, gave Bernard a new view.

There has to be something in us ready to receive that shift - if a Zen Buddhist had bought Bernard’s house, it (probably) would not have led to Bernard becoming a lifelong meditation teacher. And if I had met John Kluge I can’t imagine I would walk away feeling fired up about leveraged buyouts...no thank you. But Bernard was hungry for the permission to act on his more aggressive instincts, and that’s what he found.

Has there been a John Kluge moment in your life? Someone who shifted your view from one small interaction?

And might you have been that for someone else?

Thank you Briefing reader Dan Grech for this great response to last week’s post. Dan is also working on a book about stories too!

I really enjoy your emails and was sparked to respond to this one.

You're right that "follow your passion" is self-centered. And "follow your compassion" is better — it puts you in relationship with other people's needs. But I'd push further.

Even better advice: follow your story.

Here's why. Compassion tells you what breaks your heart. But it doesn't tell you why you are the one to fix it. Your story does. The specific experiences that shaped you — the struggles, the people who influenced you, the moments that left a mark — those aren't just backstory. They're the explanation for why a particular problem in the world is yours to solve, and why you'll stick with it when it gets hard.

Passion fades. Compassion can scatter — there's a lot of suffering out there and you can't chase all of it. But when you trace the thread of your own story, you find the place where what you've lived through meets what the world needs. That's not self-centered like passion and it's not diffuse like compassion. It's precise. It's strategic. And it's the one thing nobody else can replicate.

The founders I work with who build businesses they love that last — they're not just passionate or compassionate. They've done the work of understanding why this business, why this way, why these people. The answer is always in their story.

So yes, follow your compassion. But follow your story first. It'll tell you exactly where your compassion belongs.