Raymond Thomas Dalio is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985. In April 2011, Dalio and his wife joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, vowing to donate more than half his fortune to charitable causes within his lifetime. The Dalio Foundation was part of a group of foundations supporting the 2018 launch of TED’s Audacious Project, an initiative to fund social entrepreneurs working to solve global issues.

In March 2019, Dalio was named one of the highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders by Forbes. In 2018, OceanX, an initiative of the Dalio family, and Bloomberg Philanthropies committed $185 million over a period of four years to protect the oceans.

If you listen to him talk, you will notice that he talks so passionately about all the failures he’s had, the arrogance in him, the wrongs from the right. And everytime he does that, there is a sense of quiver in his tone, as if still haunted from those experiences. And he not only talks about the failures, he carefully leads you in a conversation about how every step of the way, he has used those lessons and integrated them in technology for better decision-making and the constant improvements he’s had to integrate to be sure of every step he takes. 

“If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential”

While generational gains are an easy access to being rich, the origin of that flow is always a challenge. Through his conversations, he reminded us of the time that he lost everything and everyone in his entrepreneurial venture and ended up borrowing $4,000 from his dad to pay off his bills. 

If you carefully examine those who have gotten rich / famous / a well-known personality, most of that lot would have, at some point in life, faced a crisis that has helped them to rise extraordinarily.

You start thinking differently, you start self-reflecting, your awareness and perception about the world changes. And if you don’t do the above-mentioned things, it will certainly turn you into one of the rats in the rat-race of any industry. 

One of the great things that Ray talks about in his TEDx speech, is how radical truth and radical transparency engages those around you and brings out the best in them. He is a strong believer of idea meritocracy, whereby, being a leader, you follow the middle ground. You avoid democracy, because not everyone’s ideas / the best liked ideas can be taken into consideration ; you also avoid autocracy, where it is only your idea that makes the cut.

Idea meritocracy is the concept of weighted average for ideas. Where each relevant idea is examined on its merits and demerits and a conscious call is taken to align with the best interests in mind.

He also introduced the dot connector in his meetings that lets everyone rate people involved in the meeting on various parameters. Not only does the dot connector allow you to rate, but also allows you to have a holistic view on your opinion as compared to others.

This fundamentally removes any ego-centric decision making, false biases and unprompted interruptions. Everything about the model is designed to give you value out of a conversation. 

“Reality works like a machine that has cause:effect relationships so by understanding these relationships and knowing how to interact with reality well, you can make better decisions which will give you better outcomes and a better life.”

Becoming rich is easy. And becoming rich is not the only thing one should aspire for. Instead, how you become great is a path in its own. It’s not just money, not just philanthropy, not just talks, it’s how you shape yourself as an individual and help shape those around you. Only when you take that small step in aiding the betterment in the quality of life, not just for humans but for everyone and everything around you, is when things become grateful towards you, that’s when you become great. Everybody chips in a bit of their gratitude to make you great.