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........

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