Zachary Cefaratti Shares His Insights On Achieving Success

Zachary Cefaratti, a lifelong investor, embarked on his financial journey at a remarkably young age. As a child actor in Southern California, he purchased his first bonds at the age of 7. During his teenage years, he delved into stock trading and interned with Chase Bank at 16, discovering his true passion for financial services. Educated at prestigious institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, Franklin University Switzerland, and the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, Cefaratti funded his education through earnings from his boutique brokerage firm.

Currently based in Dubai, Cefaratti has continued his entrepreneurial endeavors, establishing multiple financial institutions and founding the renowned AIM Summit, the world's leading conference on alternative investments. AIM Summit stands out by prioritizing the quality of presentations over profits. Under Cefaratti's leadership, the summit has attracted over 450 industry leaders as speakers and secured the support of 360 sponsors across its 14 successful editions.

At the London edition of AIM Summit, Cefaratti once again demonstrated his expertise as a moderator, taking on the role with one of AIM Summit's prominent speakers. Conducting an interview with esteemed economist Dr. Larry Summers, he demonstrated meticulous preparation by extensively studying the work of leading economists and cross-referencing their findings with Summers' expertise. Engaging in discussions on current economic trends, unforeseen developments, and pertinent issues, Cefaratti proved his ability to hold his ground alongside one of the world's foremost economists.

Driven by a profound passion for finance, Zachary Cefaratti constantly immerses himself in the study of interest rates, bond prices, inflation, and Federal Reserve papers. He actively engages with influential former central bankers and meticulously researches potential shifts in the monetary landscape.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Zachary Cefaratti, whose journey in the world of finance and entrepreneurship has been defined by his tireless passion for his work and the invaluable lessons he learned through adversity and failure. He shared with us his unique insights into the vital role of embracing failure and nurturing one’s passion on the path to success.

What do you think it is that makes you successful?

I am humbled to be asked what has made me successful. On my journey, success materialized because failure wasn’t an option. It was about persistence - never giving up, not accepting losses, refusing to take no for an answer. Whether acting on behalf of clients, my companies or myself, persistence and dedication eventually pays off. This is why I take inspiration from Winston Churchill who said “Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

My persistence and dedication in investment banking, alternative investments, and the conference business is made easier by my tireless passion and unyielding interest in finance. I consider myself fortunate to have developed a strong passion for finance at a very young age, during my childhood, when I bought my first bonds in my acting portfolio. This enduring passion for finance has remained with me through my adolescent and formative years, allowing me to be extremely dedicated and driven.

I also believe that the biggest contribution to my success has been my failures and how I dealt with them. I was fortunate to experience significant failures early, with the first major losses in my investment portfolio occurring in my early teen years - and learning hard lessons in the world of crypto and digital assets when bitcoin was still less than $100.

While I was at university, I also experienced significant adversity, which allowed me tremendous learning and character-building opportunities. I dropped out of college in 2009, when the financial crisis and dementia had caused my father to be unable to support himself financially and physically. This gave me an opportunity to rise up and led me to focus on growing my own financial and insurance brokerage businesses to support my father and eventually to pay my way through the completion of university.

At the time, failures and adversities were undeniably painful, but they served as formidable challenges, imparting a vital lesson that the world owed me nothing. It became crystal clear that my ability to support both my father and myself hinged solely on my hard work and dedication. I was able to grow those businesses to be successful and went on to found AIM Summit, which has become more successful than I could have imagined at that time.

Why is failure critical for success?

In order to succeed, you must first embrace failure. You need to be willing to fail and to know how to get back up again and learn from your failures. How people deal with failure defines how, and if, they will succeed.

Unfortunately, the education system has taught us to avoid failure. Schools teach kids not to make mistakes - to draw inside the lines. Students are taught to prepare for a test and get a grade based on what they got right, and what they got wrong. They are not taught how to embrace failure and learn from mistakes to improve themselves - even though mistakes and failures are the best learning opportunities that we have in life - especially as entrepreneurs.

To succeed, people need to learn to embrace their failures and mistakes and to use them as opportunities to improve. They also need to be willing to fail to maximize their success. Thomas Edison said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work” and Thomas Watson said in order to “increase your success rate, double your failure rate”.

My experience as a child actor also helped me accept rejection. Being a child actor can be incredibly painful and heartbreaking. Most auditions result in rejection - and most scenes you shoot don’t make the final cut. One successful scene in a movie can be the result of dozens of failed auditions and rejected cuts. The only way to succeed is to persist.

Avoiding failure is the surest way to avoid success. I believe that people are too fearful of failure, rejection and the risk associated. Taking risk, persisting through rejection and overcoming failures are how you succeed. This has been my journey as an entrepreneur and has been the journey of every successful businessperson I know.

Why is passion critical for success?

People say that if you pursue your passion, you’ll never work a day in your life. I believe that this statement is broadly misunderstood to the extent that some business leaders have argued that it is untrue.

It is important to recognize that it doesn't mean that pursuing your passion will always be pleasant and enjoyable. Whether your passion is investment banking and asset management, like it is for me, or your passion is tennis, fishing, architecture, or engineering - you should recognize that in order to achieve fulfillment in your passion, you will need to challenge yourself in ways that are unpleasant and will cause you to fail. The crucial distinction lies in what motivates you to bounce back and what propels you through challenging and unpleasant experiences. If you are not passionate, then pulling yourself back up, rising to challenges, and dealing with failure feel like ‘work.’ It's something you do because you ‘have to’ rather than because you ‘want to.’ When you are truly passionate, you want to rise to challenges and you learn to embrace failure as a critical part of your journey to success.

Consider two passengers boarding a flight on a low-cost carrier. They both encounter the same rudeness in service, face identical unpleasantness at the security counter, and find themselves seated in middle seats at the rear of the plane, with a noisy child nearby. Both of them experience the same unpleasant aspects of their journey, but one of them is on his way to his dream destination for the vacation of a lifetime. At the same time, the other is on his way to a funeral - what is driving them to be on that flight makes a huge difference. Which of them would you rather be? The choice is obvious - and the same goes for the pursuit of your passion. Don’t expect that it won't be unpleasant and hard; don’t expect that it means you will be doing something that you will always enjoy. It is what drives you to rise to challenges that makes all the difference.