Tough Love

My old Wall Street office was beautiful. We had the penthouse overlooking Wall & Water St. Full floor, panoramic views, the whole nine yards. It was the physical manifestation of potential, a monument to what could be.

And it became the site of my first spectacular implosion: a hedge fund that cratered, taking a hefty chunk of my ego and virtually all of my capital with it.

You want to talk about potential? We had it in spades. But I learned a brutal lesson then, one that’s become the bedrock of everything I do now: Talent is meaningless without ruthless execution. I had potential. After a little more hard work (and a lot more luck) I converted that potential into something that actually has value. But it took time, work and lots of failures.

You have potential, too. But let me be blunt: potential is a worthless commodity on its own. It's the cheap, easily acquired currency of dreamers who never wake up. The world is littered with "could have beens" with brilliant ideas that withered on…