In case you haven’t gotten around to reading “Principles,” Ray Dalio’s 592-page manifesto on the rules the hedge fund billionaire applies to life and work, the Bridgewater Associates founder has now made them available in streaming video form.
“Principles for Success,” an animated video series released Tuesday morning on YouTube, illustrates several of the main concepts from the original book, including Dalio’s five-step process for achieving goals and his belief in being “radically open-minded.”
Over the course of eight videos and roughly 30 minutes, a cartoon figure dressed in hiking gear goes on a symbolic adventure through mountains and jungle as Dalio narrates, discussing his principles and how he came to develop them.
In one episode, titled “The Abyss,” Dalio tells the story of his biggest mistake: his bet that the U.S. economy would collapse in 1982.
“I was so broke, I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to pay my bills,” he explains, as the video cuts to an illustration of a desk covered in envelopes marked “final notice” and “past due.”
The following episodes go on to explain how Dalio learned from that failure, ultimately developing the “idea meritocracy” to which he attributes his hedge fund firm’s success. Bridgewater, which he founded in 1975, is now the largest hedge fund in the world with approximately $160 billion under management.
[II Deep Dive: The Education of Ray Dalio]
Altogether, the videos are intended to pass along what Dalio has learned about how to be successful, as he explains in the first episode.
“That I should be telling other people what to do sounds kind of presumptuous to me, but I’m going to do it because I believe that the principles that have made me successful could help others achieve their own goals,” he said.
Dalio’s best-selling book, “Principles: Life and Work,” was published in September 2017.
