Wall Street billionaire turned an hour meeting with Disney’s cofounder into an entire day together—all he did was read a report most analysts ignored

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from—first impressions can shape an entire career. Just ask Henry Kravis. Long before he had $16.5 billion to his name by cofounding KKR, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, Kravis was a college graduate trying to find his footing on Wall Street. In the 1960s, while working a summer trainee job at the Madison Fund, his boss sent him to meet alone with Roy O. Disney, the brother of Walt, and then the CEO of Walt Disney Company. Kravis was intimidated—but he decided the only thing he could control was how prepared he was. “I read everything I could read, believe me,” Kravis recalled to students at Columbia Business School—his MBA alma mater—earlier this month. “I read annual reports, research reports, you name it, footnotes, and filings.” When he arrived for their 9 a.m. meeting, Kravis admitted he was so “scared to death” that he hoped Disney would only spare him 15 minutes. Instead, Disney blocked off an hour—and was impressed enough that, halfway through, he decided Kravis should spend the entire day with him: sitting in on meetings, then capping things off with a studio tour. “Now, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Kravis said. “He never once asked me was I a partner at the Madison Fund or was I a summer trainee… And he never asked me how old I was. Nothing. All he cared about was that I knew a lot about his company.” To Kravis, the lesson was simple: show up prepared, and people stop caring about your resume or age. Disney told him most analysts who visited never even bothered to read his annual report—they just wanted him to hand them the answer. Kravis had come with real questions instead. The lesson has stuck with him throughout his career, and can be used by Gen Z today: “Don’t be afraid to reach out to people older than you. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask questions. There are no dumb questions. You’re going to learn a lot from just questioning people and ask