The Profile: JP Morgan’s CEO running a $4 trillion machine & the master storyteller of the modern era

This edition of The Profile features Taylor Swift, Jamie Dimon, Tiger Woods, Robert Downey Jr, and more.

Good morning, friends!

On Wednesday, I published my interview with Alpine Investors founder and managing partner Graham Weaver. He has built a private equity empire with an emphasis on personal growth, an unusual topic in the world of cutthroat investing.

Graham believes in self-improvement so much that he has built a personal brand at the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and self-help. His TikTok account has amassed nearly 1 million followers featuring videos titled, “7 Questions to Discover Your Life’s Purpose,” 8 Proven Ways to Improve Sleep Quality,” and ‘3 Foolproof Tactics to Form a New Habit.’

In the interview, he told me that time spent working on yourself is the highest returning investment you will ever make. Some of his daily habits include getting eight hours of sleep, doing a cold plunge, doing 20 minutes of the Wim Hof breathing exercise, and sitting down for a meditation session.

His morning routine certainly has many components. For now, mine looks like this: Wake up. Feed newborn. Feed toddler.

But there’s one thing that always puts me in a great state of mind when I do it: morning yoga. Although I’ve got to admit that I’ve been neglecting that ritual over the last few weeks (…months, but who’s counting), it’s one that I’ve decided to start re-prioritizing again.

This leads me to my question for you all: Do you have a daily habit that has completely transformed your life? If so, I’d love to hear about it, and possibly steal for my own morning routine.

Send me your daily habit with a short explanation on how it’s changed your life, and I might compile the best ones in a future edition of the newsletter. (Just email me at polina@readtheprofile.com with the subject line: “Daily Habits.”)

Read the full Graham Weaver article below:

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NYC DINNERS: Since we moved back to New York City, my husband and I have been hosting small dinners every few weeks. The whole point of the dinner is to learn something new. So my ask for you is: Who is the most interesting person you know in NYC? I’d love to connect & invite them to a future dinner. Reply to this email with a few lines on what makes them interesting, and I’ll add them to the invite list.

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The profiles featured below blew me away. This may be one of the best editions of The Profile this year. If you have some time around the holidays, I urge you to read these stories. Each one has a line, quote, or framework that I’ve written down to revisit in the future. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

PROFILES.

— The master storyteller of the modern era [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— JP Morgan’s CEO running a $4 trillion machine
— The school shooter’s sister
— The golf legend trying to save the sport
— The movie star entering his third act
— The pioneering sports journalist that history forgot

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The master storyteller of the modern era: Taylor freaking Swift. I hadn’t seen a great profile on Swift in years, so I didn’t get my hopes up when I saw this one. But this feature is easily the best one I’ve read all year. In it, you see exactly why Swift has been so astronomically successful — not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller. Swift tells the reporter a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero’s journey. “Ultimately I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself,” she says. If you read one thing today, let it be this. (TIME; for more, check out my Profile Dossier on Taylor Swift here)

“I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

JP Morgan’s CEO running a $4 trillion machine: Jamie Dimon made JPMorgan Chase the biggest bank in the world. It made $51 billion over the past year. That profit is bigger than the gross domestic product of Jordan. Its credit cards, loans, and checking and savings accounts are in nearly half of American households. Yet one of the strangest things about Dimon’s career is that the man who now leads the world’s largest bank has never really worked for a bank. JPMorgan, at the moment that Dimon inherited it, had multiple ancestors, cultures, systems, businesses, personalities — and thus no personality. He ended up giving it his own. (New York Magazine)

“As Last Man Standing says about Dimon, ‘A business doesn’t have to be sexy to get him excited; it just needs to be reliable, profitable, and growing.’”

The school shooter’s sister: On May 21, 1988, Kristin Krinkel received a phone call that would change her life. At the time, she was a 21-year-old college student with a scholarship for competitive cheerleading. The call had bad news: Her brother Kip had killed their parents and opened fire at their high school, killing two students and injuring another 25. Krinkel kept thinking, “This can’t be true, there’s no way this is true, this is completely impossible.” Today, she is close with Kip—and still reckoning with his crimes. What a story. (The New Yorker)

“I was not a human being to the media. I was a story that everyone wanted to get.”

The golf legend trying to save the sport: Tiger Woods, the No. 1 golfer in the world, is focused on the future of the PGA Tour and men’s professional golf. For decades, he put his entire focus into becoming the most dominant golfer of all time. That golfer is fading. He is now re-directing his focus into operating as the leading force for change in golf. (The Atlantic)

“I know he doesn’t sleep a lot, but he’s spending most of his waking hours thinking about how to better the PGA Tour for the players.”

The movie star entering his third act: Following an Oscar-worthy turn in Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. is on his third act. Even though he didn’t participate in this profile, the reporter gathered colorful anecdotes from his closest circle of family and friends. His wife Susan says, “He is very conscious of a beginning, middle, and end to telling stories”—including his own. “And he is also very conscious of not wanting to overstay a welcome, knowing when to get out before it’s too late and you regret that you didn’t.” So what does his third act hold? (Vanity Fair)

“All of the stuff that made him wonderful and weird when I met him, and made him someone unlike anyone I’ve ever known, is still who he is today.”

The pioneering sports journalist that history forgot: Virginia Kraft was among the most important sports journalists of her time. A pioneering adventure writer who was deadly with a rifle, she chiseled early cracks into publishing’s male-dominated world. So why hasn’t anyone heard of her? (Long Lead)

“When pretty Virginia Kraft talks about outdoor sports, the men perk up their ears and listen, and when she writes, the men read every word.”

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