30: David Senra - The Clarity of Commitment

Summary

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Dialectic, Episode 30: David Senra – The Clarity of Commitment

Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Jackson Dahl
Guest: David Senra

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Episode Overview

This episode features David Senra, host of the acclaimed Founders podcast, in an in-depth and charged discussion with Jackson Dahl. The conversation dives into the clarity that comes from deep commitment, why durable greatness often requires obsession, and the lessons Senra has distilled from reading hundreds of biographies of world-class entrepreneurs. Senra discusses the craft of podcasting, the virtue of simplicity, the necessity of repetition, and why loving your craft is non-negotiable for sustained success. The dialogue is wide-ranging, peppered with stories, quotable moments, and the kind of raw candor that Senra is known for.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Value of Podcasting and Biographical Storytelling (00:00 – 09:00)

• Compression of Wisdom:
  Senra opens by describing his show as compressing the lessons of a 40-year career into 45 minutes. “40 year career, 40 hours of reading you can listen to in 45 minutes. If you want more, read the book. If you want less, listen to less. I don't know what to tell you.” (00:00)
• The Importance of Medium Mastery:
  Senra only listens at 1x speed, drawing a parallel to savoring both great podcasts and other pleasures: “You can rush through sex. That's probably not the point.” (00:27)
• Charisma & Energy Transmission:
  Senra bluntly tells would-be podcasters that podcasting is “straight energy transmission.” If you can’t captivate in person, don’t expect to do it behind a microphone. “You have the charisma of a cardboard box...this is not the medium for you.” (06:41)
• Influence of Dan Carlin:
  Senra cites Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History as the single most influential podcast on his solo approach and laments how some creators lose their edge by making things needlessly complex as they gain experience.

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2. Durability, Repetition, and Simplicity in Creative Work (09:00 – 19:00)

• People Buy Stories:
  Drawing on advertising history (Claude Hopkins and Albert Lasker), Senra highlights that stories drive value and sales. The same production method may be used by everyone, but great stories win because they’re told well.
• The Religion Analogy & Enduring Ideas:
  He likens the persistence of great business ideas to religion: “Repetition is persuasive.” He warns against the modern obsession with novelty and growth at the expense of durability: “Durability is a first rate virtue.” (13:13–15:10)
• Repetition in Success:
  Examples from Buffett, Musk, and others: the greats talk about the same fundamental ideas for decades; determination and repetition are what build enduring success.

“You have to identify a handful of timeless principles and repeat them and work on them for decades. That's how greatness is built.” (15:39, David Senra)

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3. Product, Habit, and Trust (16:11 – 19:35)

• Trust and Habit:
  Senra discusses the staying power of products and media, likening habit formation to Amazon’s strategy: “People are habitual. You know, Amazon got me, and they've had me for 20 years.”
• Brand as a Promise:
  “Buffett says that a brand is a promise. I know what I’m getting with Apple products...the iPhone's good, the MacBook’s probably good too.” (18:20)
• Podcasting as Curated Trust:
  “The unfair advantage I have is, you know [the episodes] are good because they were so good at their job, someone wrote a book about their life.” (19:36)

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4. Creative Process & Relentless Editing (19:40 – 24:14)

• Simplicity Through Ruthless Editing:
  Senra shares the pain of scrapping dozens of hours’ work when a podcast doesn’t meet his bar: “I was taking an hour to tell really 15 minutes of good information. So I fucking threw it out.”
• Continuous Improvement:
  “The best people are addicted to continuous improvement. And you can’t be addicted unless you’re willing to throw out what used to be good.” (21:00)

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5. On Confidence, Commitment, and Obsession (27:08 - 33:45)

• “Tom Ford Syndrome”:
  Senra credits his unshakeable self-confidence to growing up different and knowing he needed to chart a path for his family: “I thought I was fabulous and everyone else was stupid.” (27:21)
• Obsession and Craft:
  He draws parallels between elite entrepreneurs and world-class athletes/artists in the intensity of their obsession—“They are consumed by their craft.”
• Commitment Over Optionality:
  “Most humans are very scared to commit to something. They want to maintain optionality. I'm not interested in optionality...99% will never be great at what they do.” (62:43, David Senra)
• Freedom in Commitment:
  Jackson reflects: “The most freeing thing is commitment. Because when you commit...you're free to run.” (63:10)

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6. Simplification, Editing, and the Art of Storytelling (34:52–41:24)

• Making it Simpler over Time:
  Senra describes a shift in his craft: “Founders has become simpler, not more complex...It’s about ruthless editing, making the product as clear and tight as possible.”
• On Repetition vs. Novelty:
  “People vastly overestimate how much people are paying attention...repetition is persuasive, just like in religion.” (15:27, 41:24)
• The Role of the Biographer:
  He values storytelling that has soul and is unfailingly focused, preferring “anti-business billionaires”—those driven not by financials, but by product excellence.

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7. Why Biographies? The Human Element (42:17–48:37)

• Learning from Biographies vs. Business Books:
  Biographies offer the real texture and emotional context of triumph and failure. “Helps to tie the ideas to the personality. You’ll understand why they came up with the idea, why it was important to them.” (47:49)
• Finding Mentors in History:
  Elon Musk’s method: “I didn't have mentors so I looked for mentors in historical context.” (45:12–46:32)

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8. On Motivation, Fear, and the Relentlessness of the Craft (48:52–54:34)

• Love v. Fear:
  Despite appearing fearless and self-assured, Senra admits to daily fear—of it all ending, of self-sabotage, of complacency.
• No Rearview Mirror:
  Quoting Conor McGregor: “If you go to sleep on a win, you wake up with a loss.” Relentless forward focus is the only path.

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9. Dealing with Success, Focus, and Saying No (60:48–73:58)

• Relentless Focus:
  “Once you make a commitment, you cut away everything else...I don't want to think about anything else.” (61:32)
• Saying No to Opportunity:
  Quoting Jobs: “It’s not saying no to bad ideas. It’s saying no to good ideas.” For Senra, this is not painful; his only regret is less time with people he cares about due to work intensity.
• On Delegation & Maintaining Quality:
  “I think the hard way is the right way. If you apply considerably more effort over a longer period, by default, you will just have less competition.” (73:12, 73:58)
• On Hiring and Exception to “No Delegation”:
  Senra only hired Maxim to edit video clips after seeing Maxim’s obsession and independent excellence—a rare exception made only after first trying and discarding many others.

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10. The Craft of Editing and Distillation (113:19–122:43)

• Editing Before Creation:
  Inspired by Walt Disney’s approach to animation, Senra does most of his editing before recording. His process has evolved to be more ruthless: “ruthless edit before I even record...chopping, chopping, chopping...”

“It takes a lot longer to write a shorter letter than a longer one.” (120:11, David Senra)

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11. Lessons & Wisdom for Founders, Especially in Tech (123:11–126:14)

• Tech as a Historical Continuum:
  Differentiates little between tech and “traditional” businesses; all are about doing things better. “Andrew Carnegie was a tech founder...you can't build upon work you don't know exists. So you should have that base of knowledge.” (123:11–125:23)
• On the Danger of Ignorance to History:
  Young tech founders often don’t study what came before; “The man that doesn’t understand what happened before he lived goes through life like a baby.” (125:24)

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12. On Instinct, Intuition, and Mastery (105:11–109:22)

• Trusting Intuition Over Analysis:
  Cites Cormac McCarthy: “Your subconscious is older than language...my life is entirely based on intuition.”
• Steve Jobs’ Influence:
  “Intuition has been far more important to his career than intellect. As he got older, he learned to trust it more and more.”

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13. Legacy, Passion, and Family (126:14–137:14)

• What to Pass to Children:
  Quoting Steven Rinella, Senra wants his kids to inherit not his interests, but his passion:
  “The most important thing you can demonstrate to your kids is what it’s like to be passionate about something...even if they never hunt, they'll remember someone who was on it.” (Steven Rinella, 128:23)
• Personal Journey:
  Senra shares his background of coming from poverty, working obsessively so his children can witness a life lived with purpose. He draws a sharp distinction between “average” and “mission-driven” people and hopes to set the right example, whatever his children choose in life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You can rush through sex. That’s probably not the point.” (00:27, David Senra)
• “Charisma wins in almost every [field]...” (06:51, Senra)
• “Durability is a first rate virtue.” (13:13, Senra, referencing Charlie Munger)
• “Identify a handful of timeless principles and repeat them...that’s how greatness is built.” (15:39, Senra)
• “Most people are interested in a startup. I’m interested in your last business.” (102:01, Senra)
• “You don't work your entire life to do something you love to not do it.” (72:46, Senra)
• “Never sacrifice quality for speed.” (117:05, advice seen in Raising Cane’s kitchen)
• Steven Rinella on passion as legacy:
  “Even if my kids...never hunt, they will remember someone who was on it...I'm showing them what it’s like to care about something.” (128:23)

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Important Timestamps

• Opening riff on compression value of podcasting: (00:00–01:49)
• Religion, repetition, durability: (13:13–15:39)
• Brand as promise & trust in media and products: (18:20–19:36)
• Ruthless editing and continuous improvement: (19:40–24:14)
• Commitment, obsession, and "Tom Ford Syndrome": (27:08–33:45)
• Simplicity, repetition over novelty: (34:52–41:24)
• Motivation, fear, staying sharp: (48:52–54:34)
• Focus, saying no, deliberate labor: (60:48–73:58)
• Editing and craft process: (113:19–122:43)
• Legacy and what to pass to children: (126:51–137:14)

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Overarching Takeaways

• Commitment is clarifying and freeing; mastery comes from obsession and love of the craft.
• Simplicity, repetition, and story are timeless tools for creators and entrepreneurs.
• The craft involves relentless, sometimes painful editing and never sacrificing quality for scale or speed.
• True greatness—whether in technology, products, or art—always carries an element of magic, conviction, and refusal to compromise the core.
• Your real competitive advantage is the specific, earned, and personal knowledge compounded over decades—not hacks, trends, or optionality.
• Legacy isn’t just in achievements, but in demonstrating to others—especially your children—what it means to care deeply and chase after something with full intensity.

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(End of summary)

Transcript

[David Senra]

The value prop a founder is very easy. 40 year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40 year career. They learned all these lessons. Somebody put it into a book. Probably took them a couple years to write. So 40 year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That's it. And if you want more, go read the book. If you want less, listen to less of the podcast. I don't know what to tell you. And the reason I say 45 minutes is because a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed. I'm a purist. I listen on 1x.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You're 1xer. That's crazy.

[David Senra]

1x. Cause I actually love the medium. I love podcasts. You can rush through sex. That's probably not the point. It's probably your goal when you're going to make love to whoever you're making love to these days is probably not. Let's see if I can get this over in two minutes. People think this is crazy. I think it's crazy that you don't do this. So when my Spotify rap comes out this year, my top podcasts will be founders. I listen to.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

To be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator Spotify wrap. This is the consumer.

[David Senra]

I remember it was like 7am on a Saturday. And I text him like, this whole game is for the taking. Like there's nobody else. Like there's just like the, the work ethic's not there. Like, it's just this is, this is bad news. Like, this is fait accompli. Like, as long as I don't stop, like Blue Ocean. And he texts me back, he's like, first of all, he was like in, I think like Nantucket with his family. What the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But he was just like, out of all the people I know and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do. I thought that was a great like response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that. Elon Musk. They're all like that. It's just like they're not sitting there, want to be like, how do I feel today? What should I do? It's like they, it's like blinders on. Wake up. Go.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Welcome to Dialectic Episode 30 with David Senra. I don't think there's somebody better to commemorate 30 episodes with than David, who's been a huge inspiration to me and help as I get dialectic off the ground. David is one of the most energizing and enthusiastic people I've ever met. And you can get that as he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs on his podcast Founders, where he reads biographies and teaches the rest of us their best lessons. And now you can also get that when he talks to the greatest living entrepreneurs with his new podcast, David Senra. It just launched. The first episode is with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and I really hope you give it a listen. My goal for this episode was to have a conversation that felt like so many of those I've had with him over the last few years, and I think I did that. It's wide ranging. We go to a whole bunch of different places. You get Max David, energy, enthusiasm, and

[David Senra]

you also get so much of the

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

wisdom that David has amalgamated over the course of reading and doing founders. David's work is embodied by the advice he follows from one of his favorite people, Charlie Munger. Take a simple idea and take it seriously. I hope you are inspired to do the same and to commit to something worth your days and your years. With that, here's David Sevnera. Somebody tweeted about this. It's like, coffee's good for, like, at the beginning of the day when you need to, like, work and matcha or green tea is good for, like, being with other people.

[David Senra]

I don't like being with other people.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's our opener.

[David Senra]

I'm not kidding. The guy that sits in a room by himself reads books for decades. What a shock.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. You could have. You could have your green tea day.

[David Senra]

Your actions express your priorities. Like, what's going on there?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Well, my. My dinner with Andre, which I brought up, it's. It looks like it's just a dinner. The whole movie is just these two guys having dinner, waxing philosophical, whatever. But it was directed by this famous French director, and they. It's not done in a restaurant. They built a set, and it's like the most meticulous. So many different frames. They've, like, got the guys in the mirror. So it's. It's a cool inspiration. If you wanted to get inspiration for, like, a really intimate kind of, like, conversational setting on video. It's made in, like, 1980.

[David Senra]

Yeah. Because if you think about, like, the best nights of your life, they're not like, sitting in a studio, light on makeup. It's just like, oh, dinner with friends. You don't know what you're going to talk about before. It's like rambling. You're eating good food. You're probably. And a little tipsy.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, yeah, it's like a four hour dinner and there's bottles of wine.

[David Senra]

I can't have like short dinners. Like, I can't have short conversations like every single time. Especially if they were interested in the same. We're like the same person. We're interested in the same things. You're going to talk for like 3, 4, 5.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Jeremy. The first time we ever met, one of the only times we ever hung out, we literally had a five hour first.

[David Senra]

He told me it was 10 hours.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It was close. But I got the preview of. He went on o' Shaughnessy a month later and I got, I was like, this is the same thing. I already got this.

[David Senra]

I was badgering him for hours today. I was like, do you understand how few people are actually good at podcast? You went on one of the most important shows, one of the biggest shows. It was the most downloaded episode that year. That is a sign that people like the way you think and you're really good. The thing about Jeremy is he's quick witted and quick with it and so he's able to package in brand ideas. Really interesting. So they're like memorable. And so part of what I was telling him today for like an hour is just hounding him about like, you really dropped the ball here. You should find a format that suits you. And it's not a format. Him. He should not be interviewing anybody. Like that's the worst thing.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes, you.

[David Senra]

And you don't want an hour of him. You want like you have this tweet. The idea I gave him was like, okay, I don't like reading Twitter. You have some of my favorite tweets. You stop tweeting. Right. Because now he's got like a real job and everything else. I go just, you're, you know, you probably tweet a hundred times, pick the 10 that resonated the most and just expound on them in two to five to seven minute episodes. And that's the whole thing.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

One of my favorite podcasts to listen. One of the ones I listen to most is Dithering with John Gruber and Ben Thompson.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And it's fine. Like I like John and Ben. It's 15 minutes twice a week and it's exactly 15 minutes. I think that's a huge. I mean TVPNS kind of crack this a little bit, but there's so much room for. You got these guys doing Two and a half hour long conversations. It's a nightmare. Like, you don't even get to the end.

[David Senra]

It's. It's. Those are very valuable, but very few people are actually interesting to have a conversation with or to hear speak for many, many hours. So, like, you know, I. This is going to sound very, like, disrespectful, and I don't mean this way, but, like, a lot of people reach out to me and they're like, hey, I need help with my podcast. And, like, I'll listen to it. And they're like, what do you think? I was like, it sucks. And they're like, well, what should I do? I was like, make it better. Like, all the clips and everything you're trying to do is like, you have to make something good first. And then I just asked them. I go podcast. Podcasting is straight energy transmission. That's all it is. Okay, so the. When I listen to your podcast, it's like, very similar to the conversations and the walks we've had and the dinners we've had.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And.

[David Senra]

And so I'll ask them. I was like, hey, when you have dinner, like, are the people captivated by you? And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, do they desire more of your presence? Are they engaged? Do they have a good time? Do you see them again? And they're like, not really. I was like, Cause you have the charisma of a cardboard box. So, like, you can't podcast to go write or do. There's other mediums, but, like, this is not the one.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Do you have to be charismatic to have a good podcast?

[David Senra]

I think charisma wins in almost every.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Is Dan Carlin amazingly charismatic?

[David Senra]

Yes, for sure.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Okay.

[David Senra]

For sure. I don't know if he's charismatic in person, but on the show, he's a master storyteller. So it's funny you bring him up because I'm always interested in studying, like, who influenced the influencers, right? So, like, it's not enough for me to be like, oh, I like Steve Jobs. Like, no, no. I need to know every single person that he studied. And then every single person that they studied. You just realize These ideas started 200, 300, 500. It just. And they're just repackaging them and using them. And so the reason that I have a solo history podcast is because of Dan Carlin. I think Dan Carlin is the greatest podcaster to ever live. And my own personal view on this is I liked him a lot better when he used to do, like, he does these multiple part series, like Ghost of Diospront, Wrath of the Khans, you know, these are blueprint for Armageddon. These are some of the best podcasts ever created. And they were like five part series, but they were like an hour and a half long as his career progressed. He now does five part series, but they're five hours long. And I get lost in it. I actually think the product was better back then. It's actually an interesting conversation. One of my favorite podcasts that came out, I would say in the last like two or three years is Rick Rubin, who is a phenomenal listener, phenomenal listener. Turns out that's what he did for his job, right? He did this episode with Jimmy Iovine and he talks about, they talk about on that episode, the first time that they met each other, and Jimmy's like 10 years ahead of Rick and everything. They produce the same people, all their accomplishments Jimmy did beforehand, and they talk about that. But Rick plays, Rick's just starting out, plays him the song, and Jimmy's like, man, that's really good. I wish I could do something that simple. And Rick didn't understand as a young man, like, what does that mean? Like, of course you could do that. Something that simple, like, you're better than I am, you have more experience than I. But a lot of people make the mistake is the more experience they have, the more complications they let in. And I think that's what happened with Dan, where it's like, this was perfect. It wasn't. You didn't need. You told the story in an hour and a half. Now you're taking five hours. Like, you're taking more time. It's, it's, it's the old saying where it's like, oh, I would have wrote you, you know, a short letter, but I didn't have enough time, so I wrote you a long one.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Does founders become simpler or more complex?

[David Senra]

Oh, for sure. No way. Simpler. And so this is actually interesting. I think I'm actually going to do an episode because I get so many people ask me, it's like, hey, how do you like, make the show? And they're interested in like the process behind it, which is fascinating. And this is actually, this is a principle I think is really important for entrepreneurs or anybody trying to market or to sell something is people buy stories, right? Money flows as a function of stories. And what if you go back and study like the great advertising agency founders from like the, the heyday area in the 50s and 60s on Madison Avenue, they would all study, like the copywriters from, like, the early 1900s. And what the copywriters would do is, like, there's this guy named Claude Hopkins. He's probably the greatest copywriter of all time. Okay? He was alive in the early 1900s. He worked for this guy named Albert Lasker. Albert Lasker was an advertising agency founder. Okay? He made more money than any single other person in the agency business. And his business was simple. He's like, we write copy that sells product and we don't do anything else. We don't do art, we don't do visuals, we don't do any other shit. We write copy. Those words make the cash register ring. And the basis of his business was the copywriting work of Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising, where it lays out exactly like he learned through experimentation. So history doesn't repeat, human nature does. He would just run these experiments and see, this is. I put, you know, this in front of a thousand people. This is how humans reacted. And then he would just constantly iterate and adjust. So he wrote this and he's like, hey, I have a book here. And Albert's like, yeah, that's like, how I build my business. And he took the book from Claude Hopkins and didn't allow him to publish it. He literally locked it in a safe for 20 years. Wow. And now to this day, you can go and buy Claude Hopkins autobiography, which I think is called My Life in Advertising. It's probably like episode 170 or something like that. It comes with scientific advertising for free. So the reason I bring that up is because one of his clients was like a distiller, like a beer company. I think it was called Schlitz Beer. And they were like, fifth or sixth market share. So anyone doing well, they're like, hey, we need. We need help here. And so Claude is a big believer in research. Spends a lot of time with executives. He tours the distillery, sees the process. He's like, this is magic. Like, I love beer. I had no idea how you made it. Like. And so he's like, I'm gonna. I'm going to describe that. That's what our ads are going to be. The ads are going to be what goes into making the product. The product. And then once you understand, you'll have a better, like, understanding and a love of that product. And. But the distiller's like, yeah, but we're not doing anything special. He's like, yeah, but the difference is no one else is telling them, so you have to educate. And so they wind up educating the public on how they make their beer, which is the same process as other. All the other distillers are making. And it shot them up from, like, fifth to second or first.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Wow. When was this?

[David Senra]

Like, that would be probably 19 somewhere. 1910, 1920, 1930.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And so ahead of the time.

[David Senra]

And so one of the reasons. It's like normal to me, and I'll answer your question how I've simplified it. It's so. It's like normal to me, but abnormal to other people. And so I realized, like, oh, if I just, like, make an episode where I talk for, like, 20 minutes and, like, this is what goes into it. If you. If you get to the end of that episode, you'll have a further appreciation for. You'll like the episodes more. Just like James Dyson rereading his autobiography for the fifth time now. And he's got this great idea where he's like, yeah, you walk in, I make vacuum cleaners. You walk in, you see five different vacuum cleaners. Mine looks different on purpose. Because he thought that was important. But more important than that would help to sell is he would put this little flyer on, like, a piece of string on, like, the handle, and in 200 words, he would say, dyson. This is who Dyson is. It's a person. This is how I make it. This is what makes it different. Really simple. And if you read that, the likelihood that you would choose that one over the one next to it, that's half the price. Was a lot. People buy stories.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Also. There's a thread there, though, that is like the Von Chouinard, like, nonfiction marketing thing, which is. It's not like rocket science. It's not like, clever. It's like, very. There's. There's a broad sort of Internet advice. Now. Sam Hagey's talking about this. Other. Others have too, which is just like, you have specific knowledge that other people don't have. And 90% of people just, like, don't think what they have is special and don't say it. And the people who do have giant followings for the most part. And it's pretty obviously within reason. But I think, like most. We all have things that we actually know disproportionately well. But you're like, oh, how? Like, it's not that novel. It's not that interesting.

[David Senra]

Yeah, it's. And you're. You're afraid to repeat yourself.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

Where it's just like. They're like, no, I need a new idea. Like, you kind of see this with like, like Peter Thiel goes and gives these talks on like the Antichrist and all this other stuff. It's like really what we want from him is just like repeat 0 to 1 over and over and over and over and over again. Because that if you only read one book on startups, it's obviously the book. There's like, there's nothing but this desire. Humans crave novelty, this desire to like no, no. Now like I, I created great ideas or I packaged these great ideas and I have to do something new. It's like no, you have to repeat it over and over again. Actually there's this. I'm obviously fascinated with people that do things for a long period of time, right. I'm not interested in all in the start cell, start scale cell. Those are good, go do that. And like I'll just keep dominating for decades and that's fine. But what I, what I, so I contemplate is like what causes things to last and endure for a long period of time. There's this great line in Poor Charlie Salmanak of that. Charlie's son says that he thought that his dad thought durability was a first rate virtue. And I was like that's a fucking powerful idea. Durability is a first rate virtue where everybody, this modern environment fetishize growth at the expense of durability. Which I think is a massive mistake. Also mentioned by Peter Thiel in Zero to one by the way. And so then I'm like okay, so what lasts like a long time, right? Like we know what like a human life lifetime is typically is how long do companies last, how long do countries last? And I was like well what is the, the things that are created by humans that endure the longest? And my answer to that is like religion. And so then I analyze like I grew up like fundamentalist Christian, right. It's probably like how why founders is the way it is. I didn't even understand this about myself. It's like like jumping up and down, preaching. I'm very familiar with the church, I'm very familiar with religions. And it's like well what do they do first? They have a shared base of knowledge, right. And it's usually in the form of written text that has been around for thousands of years. And then they gather with like minded people, with fellow believers at regular intervals. Right? Just analyze what religions do. Even if they believe different things, they do very similar things.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, it's almost, it's a scaffold, it's like a social scaffolding.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And so then now what happens? We went to church on Wednesdays and Sundays, right. The preacher didn't get up there and be like, okay, today we're gonna talk about Jesus, and Sunday we're gonna talk about some other guy. It's like, no, it's like we're gonna. Repetition is persuasive.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

You repeat, repeat, repeat.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And by the way, if this is important, like one of the central or the central idea there is, like, this is the most important thing we are going to keep. We're gonna talk about Jesus every weekend, forever.

[David Senra]

Yes. And if you actually analyze the people that last a long time, like, if you analyze, like, what has Buffett been talking about for 60 years? What is Michael Dell? Been important to Michael Dell for 40 years? What is Elon Musk? I just did this crazy episode on Elon Musk, right? And you wouldn't expect him. You think he's running seven companies obsessed with technology. He says he repeats the same thing so much that the executives in the meeting can mouth the words before he says it. So why the fuck are you jumping around idea after idea? You have to identify a handful of timeless principles and repeat them and work on them and make the center of your work for decades. That's how greatness is built.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

What makes durable products?

[David Senra]

I don't know. I really don't know. Because if you think like the products that. What. Let me flip that question back on you. What's the product that you've used for the longest time?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

The first thing that comes to mind is like Nike shoes, which I don't super actively wear, but like I've always had.

[David Senra]

Are those Nikes?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

They aren't. I've used an iPhone for a long time. That's not very interesting. IPhone, MacBook, these, these types of utilities.

[David Senra]

So we've been using the iPhone for what, 15 years?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, it came out in 2007.

[David Senra]

Okay.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I haven't had one that long, but something like that. I think, like for most people it's probably like a deodorant or underwear or like T shirt or things like that, like these.

[David Senra]

I think there's actually an interesting principle here. You read Jeff Bezos Shareholder Letters and once he realized he had a winning system, that if you started using Amazon, you kind of stayed in Amazon and then you're going to buy books, but you really buy anything. He said he got this great email one time where he realized, oh, like this, there has no limits to what we can do. Because the guy emailed him, he's like, bought some books. He was happy. He's like, hey, do you sell windshield wipers? Because, like, oh, if this guy wants windshield wipers, he'd buy them from me. They'll buy anything. And one of the most important things I think people skip over in the early Amazon shareholder letters is the fact that he says we. And Bezos repeats this, and he's adamant about this. Like, we're going to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. And why? Because what you just picked up. People are habitual. You know, I don't. I order a ton of books, more books than probably 99.99% of the people on the planet. I don't go shopping for price or, like, something else like Amazon got me, and they just got me, and they've had me, you know, for 20 years.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

People are much more habitual than we take them for. Even in software, people are like, well, I have a. You know, unless it's drastically different, a lot better. They're like, well, I'm a little cheaper. It's like, yeah, but I don't want to switch. It's just like a. It's a headache.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Maybe part of it is trust. Like, trust is the thing that's feeding that habituality. Like, when you think about, I mean, in theory, the reason somebody's still listening to founders in 20 years.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, if we were like, you always talk about this, like, very tangibly. The only conceivable way that makes sense is that you have built enough trust that just says, come, follow me to. As far as I want to go.

[David Senra]

I think the way I think about the best way I've heard this described is Buffett says that a brand is a promise. And I think in three words, it's like, I know what I'm getting with Apple products. Like, I had a iPhone before I had a MacBook, but I was like, oh, the iPhone's good. So if you're making something else, that's probably good, too. And I just met. I think this was yesterday. My life's a blur right now. But they're like, basically what the person that I met that is a fan of the podcast was describing to me is just like, thank you for introducing me to people like, spectacular people I didn't even know exist.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

This is what I'm saying.

[David Senra]

Yes.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So it's like, this is Rogan. Go down the list. Any modern person with influence, they are usually this, which is. I trust you to. I'm going to sit. I get to sit in the seat that, like, Rogan's my avatar.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And I get to Just have the conversation he has. And I trust him. I trust his taste.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So they might come in for, like, jobs or Rockefeller, Bezos, but then they're like, what about this Ferrero guy? What about Del Vecchio? Like, what about Sam Zamuri? Like, overthrew the Nicaraguan government twice. Like, how is that even possible? Like, what did he do? Daniel Ludwig was the richest person in the world. No one even knew who he was. He beat up the guy that tried to take his photograph. His photograph, when he was 80 years old. Like, what is going on here? There's all these crazy stories and the bar for founders. Like, the unfair advantage I have is, like, you know, they're good because they were so good at their job. Somebody wrote a book about their life.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yep.

[David Senra]

How many? Come on.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes. And then if you're doing an episode, it's a. It's a multiplier on that.

[David Senra]

Well, this just happened. And this will probably be in the episode I do on, like, how I make the shows. Like, there. You know, I'm trying to do one a week. I'm. It's always late. And part of that is because I read a lot of books that never make it, and it takes a long time to read. And it got even worse, like, two weeks ago. Two or three weeks ago, I read the book, did the outline, which we'll go back to. Why? It's simplifying. We can go back to that, too. Recorded the episode and then listened to it back. And I'm like, this isn't good enough. This is not good enough. So I fucking threw it out.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That is hardcore.

[David Senra]

And that's like, you're talking about, like, 60 hours at least, maybe a little less. Because it was like, in the edit process where I realized, like, oh, this is not going to happen. And what I realized wasn't good enough is I was taking an hour to tell. Really, 15 minutes of good information.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You were making it more complex.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And it's like I was talking to my friend Justin Maris, and he's just like, just make it 15 minutes then. And so I might go back and, like, edit it down. You know, there's no rule that it has to be an hour, 90 minutes, or anything else. There is good ideas here, but I didn't like how long it was taking me to, like, actually tell.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Do you cling to those rules you make for yourself? This is something that I've run into a lot, is I'm 30 episodes in a tiny, tiny fraction. But there are certain ways I chose to do Something probably arbitrarily. And I'll of times I find myself like, oh, I have to do it this way because this is how it was done.

[David Senra]

No, the best people in the world at what they do are addicted to continuous improvement. And you can't be addicted to continuous improvement unless you're willing to throw out what used to be good. We just met one of, I think her name was Grace out there and she was very complimentary to the Michael Doe episode I did. At the time I put it out, I thought it was one of my best episodes. I listened to it again myself yesterday. So people think this is crazy. I think it's crazy that you don't do this. So when my Spotify Rap comes out this year, my top podcasts will be founders. I listen to.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

To be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator Spotify Rap. This is the consumer.

[David Senra]

Yes. So the reason that is because the reason that is right is first of all, I've done, I've been working on for 10, almost 10 years, nine years. There's like 400 episodes. And I listen to past ones because one, I think of it more as a tool than like a form of media, but also like, I forget a lot of the great ideas. So just like if you go to church, you have to remind yourself repetition

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

doesn't spoil the prayer.

[David Senra]

Exactly. And so then what I also do is it's like, it's like a basketball playing watcher game tape. You think Curry's like, oh, no, sorry, I can't. Look at me shoot at three. No, he knows exactly. And so I have to listen to it. And so when that came out, which was probably, I don't know, six months ago, five months ago, something like that thought, great, I hear it now. I'm like, d, you fucked that up. There was an easier way to say that should have cut that part. What is that? Why did you leave that in? Like, I see all the flaws, which I know if I did it today it would be better.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So to go back to the question and maybe I'll add a piece to it, which it sounds like you're getting simpler and you're getting better. Does that feel linear? Like, are you getting, like, is episode 400 better than episode 390? Certain. Certainly episode 400 is better than 100.

[David Senra]

Yeah, for sure. I don't know about if it's. I don't think it's linear like that because some of these things you don't even understand what you're doing. It's more, much more Experimental. So like let me give you.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I just re listened to the Steve Jobs make something Wonderful you re released. That episode is incredible.

[David Senra]

Like yeah. So okay, this is some of the stuff I shouldn't even say because it's like I repeat it over again, then people don't use it. But it's also an unfair advantage. So one of the main principles is that you're not advertising to standing army, you're advertising to moving parade. Okay, that is Ogilvy quoting Hopkins. So this is like this 100 and now 27 year old idea that I use. And so when I smoked that episode where I was like I spent 60 hours, that means I can't really, I don't have more time in the week to make another episode up to my standards. So I have to republish an old one. So I, I, I think 2 99. I republish as 398 or something like that. I had, when I do that, I usually like put say at the beginning. Hey, this came out re listen to it again because it's timeless. You should. But if not, you need to listen to it right now. Yes, I forgot, I wrote it out. I forgot to add that part. Okay. That episode ripped and then I had people sending me like five paragraph essays about. I've listened to hundreds of a hundred of your episodes. I thought that Steve Jobs one was the best one. It's like they didn't even realize it. You're not advertising disaying or you advertise to being afraid. And maybe I guarantee me and Jeremy just had this conversation on the walk over here. I guarantee you there are people. Right? Because I told him, I was like, you need to tweet more like he's like, why don't I have anything say I go go on advanced Twitter search.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And put that out right now.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

This is willmanidas. Did this recently.

[David Senra]

I do it. No, I do it all time. I do it all the time.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I had a second exact idea. This tweet about coffee. The most engagement I ever got. And I did it again, exact same thing.

[David Senra]

Because people aren't thinking about how much information. So I guarantee you the TikTok mindset, this is what I said to Jeremy Walkover. I guarantee you there's people that listen to that Steve Jobs episode when it came out. Two years have passed. They listened to it again and didn't even realize the same episode. And I'm not trying to be duplicitous. That's what I'm trying to do. I usually and in the show notes I put. Because I forgot to add the intro to it. You know, I originally put publishers, et cetera, whatever. But people vastly overestimate how much people are paying attention and just how much information people are consuming. You think that every single person is paying attention to every single thing you're doing, and nobody is. You're the only person doing that. That is why. So I talked to my friend Ben Wilson, who does the how to Take over the World podcast. And I think Ben is really, really talented. And what I would say is, like, he wasn't doing enough volume. Because I remember we were sitting there one night and he was asking me advice on podcast, and me and Cliff Weitzman were talking to him about it because we were both fans of his podcast. And then like, 20 minutes in, I go, wait a minute, you don't number your episodes, so, like, how many have you done? And he's like, 90. Like, there's nothing to fucking talk about. When I did 90 episodes, nobody was listening. Go do 200 more and then we'll talk about this. So he needs volume. But also, I would say, like, he doesn't know how talented he is. And I think I would rather have more confidence, self belief than less. He sent me this, like, Twitter thread where he was changing something about his podcast where he was, like, adding sound effects, and he's like, I don't know what to do here. Like, the feedback that I'm getting is, like, conflicting. So I go and click on it, and it's like, one person's like, I love the sound effect. The next person's like, I hate it. I was like, ben, why are you even reading this shit? He's like, what do you want to do? What do you think is great? Stephen King said, I'm not just a writer, I'm the first reader. So when I. I'm the first listener, if I listen to that podcast I just told you about and it sucks, you'll never hear it because it didn't make my standards. And then you just keep doing that and you're. Eventually, the Internet's big enough, you'll find people that like the same stuff that you like.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

We can go back to the simplicity thing briefly if you want to.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So my. My thing is, again, I didn't understand this. I just followed, like, my natural drift and my natural star. And, like, this was just like my own obsession, you know, for five and a half years, I was just doing it, and very few people were listening. The people that were listening were really impressive. So that's why I was like, oh, I might be onto something. There's two things I figured, like, one, it was a subscription podcast. And so I saw the email addresses, the people that were listening, which is very rare. Yeah, yeah. And even it was like only a couple thousand people was like, murderers Row.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

So like, oh, this is interesting. And then as I read more biographies, I realized, oh, the greats of every era studied the greats that came before them. And that's an enduring human principle. And if you can just be the best at doing that, you're going to have the best audience in the world. Because I've met. If you just even seen how I've spent the last, like, few weeks spending hours and hours talking to you, like some of the wealthiest.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Were you self confident before that? Before you had that in.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Where does it, where does it.

[David Senra]

I was. I was born with Tom Ford syndrome. I'm not kidding. Do you know what that is? No.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So I have a sense.

[David Senra]

But let me pull up because I want to get the exact, the exact thing. Hold up. Okay. So Tom Ford syndrome. Tom Ford was interviewed by gq and he was asked, didn't you always feel like a freak growing up? And he says, I thought I was fabulous. And everyone, everyone else was stupid. And so I obviously didn't think everyone else was stupid. But I think because I grew up in an undereducated family, didn't have any money, like, and I had, like, I knew I didn't want. I basically just saw a bad example. So I was like, oh, like, that's a good path not to take.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And so to say that I'm going to change the trajectory of like multiple generations on both side of my family, you have to be, I would even say, like, arrogant.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But you did a lot of things prior to this.

[David Senra]

Yeah, but not, not on a world class level. Like, that's.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's precisely what I'm curious about, which is you start doing the podcast, you've done plenty of other things. You've always been self confident. That's not the issue. That's kind of what I mean.

[David Senra]

Fight you fight against. So the conversation we just had out there, where, like, it sounds so almost like cliche and cheesy, but when we were talking about there, like, we were talking about Michael Dell's infectious enthusiasm, 41 years into his business, he's like, giddy to tell you about new products. Like, how many products has a guy made in his life? Doesn't matter. He's still just as enthusiastic about what's in front of Him. He's ever been. And I. I mentioned when we were talking to Grace, this is like. Well, when Kobe Bryant was asked, like, what combined. What is all the people that he knows that are great at what they do, what do they have in common? He goes, oh, it's simple. It's like, what? Love. Like, we have a deep love of what we're doing. And so this is why I, you know, I. I see a lot of bad advice on Twitter, and they're like, oh, don't, you know, people say you should be passionate about. That's bad. Bad idea. You should get like a, you know, just a normal, like, buy, you know, dry cleaner, some shit like that.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Or it's like the David Goggins thing of just like. Like grind yourself.

[David Senra]

No. Yeah, but you'll have superpowers if you love. Love it. And you still have the discipline and grind. I work if my eyes are open. I think I'm thinking about podcasts. It's not an exaggeration.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And your eyes are closed apparently, too.

[David Senra]

Yeah. You dream about it. Well, this is another common thing. I just talked to Todd Graves, and

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I had raising Gaines last night in his honor.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So he's, you know, he. He's been working on his company for 30 years. He owns over 90% of it. He's worth at least $20 billion. The guy's gonna be worth $60 billion. His menu has not changed since day one. And we were talking about this because I was telling him I was having trouble sleeping. Something that I've been doing, like the Jiro Ono episode. The sushi chef is on this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. He was so addicted to his work, he was dreaming about it. Then I'm reading about Michelin brothers. They were selling tires. They're dreaming about tires. The Ferrero chocolate guy was dreaming about chocolate. This is a very common thing, that you're just obsessed with this. So in your subconscious, you start dreaming about it, which, obviously I think about podcasts and books and all kinds of. And other things. But my point being is, like, if you love it, it's so much easier to just give yourself and essentially let yourself be consumed by your craft and the love of what you're doing. I would say that doesn't mean you can't have a family. It doesn't mean you can't have friends, doesn't mean you can't have fun. But the level of detail and obsession is like. There's only one way to describe that. It's like they are consumed by Their craft. So I don't know if I answer your question about the simplicity part though. So to tie that back together, it's like something I accidentally discovered in addition to, like all the greats want to learn from the greats. Every single person. Like when I meet somebody that's, you know, crazy, crazy successful. Michael Dell, Charlie Munger, Sam Zell, Daniel Ek, just list goes on and on and on. It's like they all have like this historic base of knowledge in their head. You go to their houses, you look at their libraries, they're reading biographies, they're obsessed with history. Then you pick up the biography and the person that's the profile in the biography is also reading biographies and history. And so if you wanted a high value audience, which I stumbled upon just because I have a low threshold for fluff, like, you know, think about, like, there's no somebody said founders like sashimi style podcasting. There's no intro music, there's no. It just goes right into it and just kind of rip through ideas that, you know, simplicity, totally 1.5x speed for an hour, an hour and a half. So if you're like a Michael Dell or a Brad Jacobs or any of these, these people that, you know, tweet and, and talk about the fact that they like the podcast and you know that they get a lot of value out of it, it's like, how much information, how much time do you think they have to ingest content a day? Like, I think Brad Jacobs has 148,000 employees. Like, so the shorter the better.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You're probably the. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but at least for some of these people, you're probably the only, like regular media they consume outside of like news and Twitter and things. I wouldn't be shocked at that. Like, like, they're probably not watching Netflix, first of all. And then I would assume they're probably not listening to a lot of other podcasts.

[David Senra]

Yeah, this, this just happened with the Human lab because I'm close with those guys. And so they did something that was really ingenious. And they do the standard like super long, deep dive into one health topic and it might be two or three hours. And they put that on Mondays. They've been doing that for a few years. And then they realized, like, hey, we have this like, kind of timeless content and what we should do is they, they created this new SKU called Essentials they Put on Thursdays. And it's a three hour podcast edited down 30 minutes. You know how many high Value people I've talked to that say that they only listen to essentials because what is an hour of like Michael Dell's time worth? It's not an exaggeration to say, like the. It could have effect a swing of $10 million one direction or another. Like it's whatever the number is, you can argue over. No, that's less, David, it's more. That's fine. The number's giant. And he's giving you an hour of your time and he will continue to do it because you don't waste any of his time. And they're smart enough. Like, it was. Like, they're smart enough if they want the full story, they can read the whole book.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So I'm curious on this. You don't make 15 minute podcasts. We also live in a world where like no one kids can't sit through movies, nobody can read books. Like, we watch three minute or 30 second videos. And so you've, you described this sort of gradual path of simplifying the show, but it's also still 45 minutes to an hour and a half. There's some bar and like, so I'm curious what that, like, what that tension feels like. What is like there's no fluff. But also I'm still gonna, I'm gonna demand a lot of you. I'm actually gonna say that there's an hour worth of content here that no matter how busy you are, like, you could get this much, much shorter in like a, whatever a classic Instagram video that just like gives you the.

[David Senra]

No, I think spending some level, like more time with. It's not necessarily bad. So like.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Right, right.

[David Senra]

I just think about the distillation. The distillation. I don't know how to say that word. I don't know how to pronounce anything. Everybody that listens to the podcast knows this. People like leave me comments like, you mispronounce this. Like, where do you think my vocab came from? Do you think I heard these words or I read them? Like, come on man, pay attention. So the value proppant founders is very easy. 40 year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40 year career. They learned all these lessons. Somebody put it into a book, probably took them a couple years to write. So 40 year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That's it. And if you want more, go read the book. If you want less, listen to less of the podcast. I don't know what to tell you, but I think that's a Pretty like, it's going to be hard to, like, top that kind of value. Prop. And the reason I say 45 minutes is because a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed. I'm a purist. I listen on 1x.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You're 1xer. That's crazy.

[David Senra]

1x. Because I actually love the medium. I love podcasts. I'm not trying to write. You can rush through sex. That's probably not the point. It's probably your goal when you're going to make love to. Whoever you're making love to these days is probably not. Let's see if I can get this over two minutes.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

That's not the point.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Right. One thing I don't think you've ever talked about, that I was really curious is our friend Tammy has this line that a biography says as much about the biographer as the person being profiled.

[David Senra]

She said that on your podcast?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Maybe it was. You've read more biographies than anyone, and you talk extensively about these amazing people that are being profiled for good reason. What makes a good biography and biographer? Maybe especially because you've read. There's a lot of these people, like Steve Jobs, an example. You read a bunch of biographies on them.

[David Senra]

Okay, I'm not dodging the question. Something I didn't understand about myself that I guess I picked, like, my life's work kind of picked me, I guess, is I kept the people like, you read a lot. So they're like, give me a great book recommendation. Right? And so I give them a book recommendation, and they're like, that was the most boring shit I've ever read. And this kept happening over and over again. And then somebody literally tweeted this, like, a couple days ago. They're like, I just finished the book, the Red Bull biography. It was a piece of shit.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yet David's episode was translated from German.

[David Senra]

Yes, but now it's in English. So, like. But David's episode is amazing. And my response was like, but it wasn't a piece of shit to me. And so what I realized, like, oh, I. I have a higher threshold for boredom when it comes to reading than almost anybody else because, like, I read

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

subject matter, the distilled subject matter, somewhere down there is what you really care about.

[David Senra]

No, not even that. It's just, like, it wasn't boring to me. Like, I'm recommending this book. Everybody's like, this sucks. The amount of people that sent me messages, they're like, I'm so glad you did an episode on Elon on the Walter Isaacson book because they didn't like that book. And I'm just like, they're like, did you hate it? I'm like, I didn't hate it. I was just like, look what I made after reading it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But there's like there has to be some of these that you love more than others of them in part more than just the person.

[David Senra]

Yeah, there, there is that. What I find objectionable in all doesn't matter what the product is, if a book or company, it's like a lack of like taste and craft and you can just tell if somebody cares about like what they're doing or not. It's very similar and that's my idea. It's like essentially parroting what Jobs would say about like Microsoft's. He's like, I don't, you know, I don't, I'm glad they're successful but their products have no soul. And you know, it's just like I couldn't, I wouldn't use them. I don't want them in my house, I don't want them in my presence, that kind of thing. So yeah, like it, it. I think very few people in the world should be allowed to write a thousand page biography. I've read several of them. A 900 page biography. There's exactly one person living that I would exclude from that rural and that's Robert Carroll. He's obviously the greatest biographer living by like there's nobody even close to him. I think most of the books shouldn't be 600 pages. It should be 250 pages. But that's the problem. Most people don't actually understand what's important, even think about. So one way I find books, to answer your question, I will read them and they'll be fine. Everybody's read the Rockefeller biography by Ron Chernow. Right. But what I will do is I will go through all the bibliographies of every book that I read and I will find so much great source material. Books are made out of books. And so then I'll order like 15 books from the back of the bibliography. I don't even care. I'll look at the title and just like order, order, order. I'm not like, I'm very promiscuous when it comes to this stuff. And so in the back of there I found this book. It's called John D. The Founding Fathers of the Rockefeller. So when I bought it, it was like six bucks. Then I make an episode on it and then it goes up to like $2,000 because there's only like five copies in the world. It was published in 1970 and it's 250 pages or 224 or something like that instead of 7, 800, whatever Titan is. And it's hyper focused on what I'm actually interested in, which is how he built Standard Oil and the methods and how he thought about his business. There is a section, I think it was in Titan. It might have been a book that I literally. Because sometimes I get so induced into a state of rage. No, this is a Picasso book. I still have not found a good biography of Picasso. And I remember the one that affinity one everyone recommends. It's like three part series. I can picture it. It's at my house. It's like a blue cover with white letters. But I got to the point where there was a bar that he would hang out in. And they were describing in detail where the. How the furniture was made in the bar. And I was like, this is unacceptable. No one is reading this because they give a shit about a chair that. That is in a bar that, like, I'm never going to go to. I literally like threw the book across the room and never read it again. Because that's like a sign of somebody not understanding, like, what. Why people were picking up the book. Maybe this guy had a fetish for terrorists, I don't know. But he's like, I wasn't going to take time to find out where this. This.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

There's probably people who love that book, by the way. I'm almost certain.

[David Senra]

I'm sure. I'm sure there is.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

I also think people, like. I think when they read, like, skip over things. I like, read every page. And I'll know this because, like, I'll talk to people that like, read the book and you don't have to memorize everything, but, like, there's like big chunks of stories and they doesn't like, register on their face. I'm like, you own the book. It's on your bookshelf. I don't know.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

One of the things I've found you talking about this a little bit. I found that if I watch a movie or read a book and it's been two years or more and I've only seen it once, the plot's new.

[David Senra]

We forget that. We forget. I'm rereading. I've read Dyson's autobiography, both of them, but the first one four or five times. I just finished reading it cover to cover again and I'm like, I don't remember that at all. How is that possible? Again, why repetition is so important, why you should stop jumping from idea to idea. And when you just study people that are great at what they do, it's like, Steph Curry's not like, hey, I mastered a three point shot. Let me go work on something else. He's just shooting threes over and over again. Tiger's working his putt over and over again. Elon's repeating the algorithm over and over again. Jeff Bezos, in 23 years of his shareholder talking about obsessing over customers over and over and over again. I just think it's a super important idea that I guess the level of its importance and how frequent you see, repetition is completely off kilter to me. It just doesn't make any sense. Very important. And no one talks about it because it goes against human nature. We're just novel seeking primates.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah. You also talked about the order in which you learn things or study things. We aren't the same. Even if the books staying the same, Even taking the memory part away, whether it might be that you studied somebody else and now you're connecting the dots or even just like you've changed. I find that, like coming back to stuff can be. It's like it's totally new. Even if I remember what the story

[David Senra]

was about, the words don't change, but you. The words on paper don't change, but you do. This happens like when I do podcasts so we can record today. And then I'm just gonna talk about. I mentioned Dyson a bunch of times because I'm reading Dyson right now talking about Steve Jobs, because that just happened a quarter year from now. I'm going to be talking about whoever I'm talking about then.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

That's why it's like so important to go back to these things. And this is why I said it's like, I don't consider it. I'm not. I don't have a media company. I'm not even making media. I think of podcasting as building relationships at scale. And I think of it much as like, I'm building a tool for somebody. You are a super successful person. This is what Todd Graves told me. He's just like, your work is very important. And it becomes more important the bigger my company gets because the effect of the decision. And if I can hear like one little idea, if I can do a 1% improvement on a $20 billion company,

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

that's a huge level.

[David Senra]

Exactly. And so it's like irresponsible. I want to get to the point where it's like, listen, I'm covering so much valuable information in 45 minutes. If you're not listening, it's irresponsible.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You've said the reason to read biographies over business books is the human element. Can you say more about that?

[David Senra]

That's not even my idea. Again, this is what I love. It's like, Hinky always talks about this because he's a very funny person. And I do think. I think he would consider me a close friend. And I consider him a close friend. He's kind of like an older brother. But I think I frustrate the hell out of him. I really do. I think I frustrate everybody that deals with me. This is like. It's very much an acquired taste, for sure.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But Sam, I think Sam kind of likes to be frustrated a little bit. Like, he finds these frustrating people.

[David Senra]

And he just likes. He gave me one of the best mental models in terms of, like, who to. Who to spend time with. He's just like. He's like, I like people that are so interested in what they're like, they're so intensely interested in whatever it could be. It doesn't matter. It could be reading podcasts, investing, but he's like, there's no. He never reaches the end. He does this thing with his hands, like I see him doing. He's like, there's just no bottom to it. Yes. His idea. He's like, the advantage that you have is that you are now, by association, right. You are going to automatically be associated with, like, the Steve Jobs and the John D. Rockefellers and everything else. And then it's even worse because their ideas are coming out of your mouth. So it's like, David's so wise. I'm like, no, I just read a lot.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, it's funny. I was. Many years ago, I somehow found myself sitting next to her across from Naval Ravikant. Yeah. And I told him something that I had heard from Tim Ferriss, and he's like, that's such a great idea. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's your friend Tim's idea. And he's like, well, it's yours now. No, there's something to that.

[David Senra]

So the, The. The biography thing was the way. The first thing I was. I was introduced to that by Charlie Munger is the one that framed it the best for me. But Elon Musk was the one that introduced to me for the first time. So, like, I didn't know anything about tech when I was younger, and I got into introduced to tech by this guy named Kevin Rose, who's founder of Digg. Yeah, it's like web 1.0, 2.0, 2.0, whatever it was called back then. And he had this show that I guess we'd call a podcast segue called Dig Nation where they would drink beer on a couch and go over the top stories on dig.com right.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Bringing it back. Maybe it's already back.

[David Senra]

Yeah, Well, I think that the lightning's. You can't put lightning back in the bottle. But like they had for a moment of time, you know, and this is the dangerous thing about all these people that jump around because Kevin had this super high quality video podcast called Foundation 2012, Best Guest, Best Shot. And he stopped. And this is the thing. It's like most people, this the advice that Michael Dell gave me, it's like you're not going to be taken out by. Most entrepreneurs aren't taken out by competition. They just sabotage themselves. They like either like they get to the point where like they want to go, they don't love the activity for the sake of itself, so they'd rather be at their vacation home and they're rich now, so they don't want to do it. You know, I saw Michael recently and then also last month I had like a five hour dinner with him and I was like, what the hell are you doing in Austin in July? This sucks to be here.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You should be in Italy.

[David Senra]

No, he's got like a crazy house in Hawaii. And his answer is simple. He's like, I just love my business. This is where my business is. It's like very, you know, straightforward and simple. So Kevin Rose though, had the show called foundation and he interviews Elon in on the factory floor of Tesla. And I think this is right when they were starting the Model S production. So Elon looks totally different. You know, this is, I don't know, 15 or 12 years ago, however long. And he's just asking like all these questions. A great like 40 minute interview. It's a short interview. It's. I looked up the other day, I think it only has like a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube. It's remarkable. He was just asking like, how did you like learn? Like you come from Canada, you go from South Africa to Canada, then you wind up in the Bay Area. Like you start companies really young. You know, people had forgotten because of Tesla and SpaceX that, you know, he had Zip2 before PayPal and everything, all the stuff he was doing in his 20s. Like how so Kevin's like, how did you learn, like, how to build a company? Did you read, like, a lot of business books? Did you have a lot of mentors? And he was like, no, I didn't have. I didn't read business books. I read a lot of biographies. I thought they were helpful. And so he says, I didn't have mentors. So I looked for mentors in historical context. I was like, that's a really interesting idea, looking for mentors in historical context. Because if you read enough about a person, you kind of understand how they think.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And then you can kind of, like, have this inner monologue with yourself, like, oh, I'm in this situation. Like, you mentioned Yvon Chouinard earlier in nonfiction marketing. I have a good model in my head because I've read that book two or three times. I read every single other book he wrote. And, like, if I'm faced with a problem and I say, and I would say, hey, what would Yvonne Chouinard tell me to do in this situation? He would tell you to increase quality because his response to any problem in his company was, our quality's not good enough. So increase quality doesn't mean it's the right answer for your specific situation, but you should be able to pull that from your head.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But having that in the context of his story, by the way, is. Is way more textured than, like, some business vice.

[David Senra]

So that's why I started reading biographies. I discover Buffett, and then Buffett keeps talking about this Munger guy. And then I fall in love with Munger. Munger's still the wisest person. If I. If I could learn from one person for the rest of my life, it would be Munger. Just over and over and over again. Just the way he frames ideas, the way he's just very wise. And what was fascinating, because I got to meet him is all the greatest people in the world living came and came to his house. They went to him in that very modest house in LA and sought his counsel. What does that tell you? He wasn't the richest, but all the richest guys were like, he's the one. I want to talk to him. So his thing about this, he understood human nature maybe better than anybody else I've ever come across. He's just like, you need to read biographies because it helps to tie the ideas to the personality, to develop them. And you'll understand why they came up with the idea, why it was important to them.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, they can't be out of context.

[David Senra]

So this is why.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Less useful out of context.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So, like, we were just talking about our mutual friend Jeremy Giffon, who walked over here with me, and I didn't even. He's really good at, like, getting to the essence of things. We should cut this part because I don't want him to feel good about himself. I want him to feel bad about himself. But he kind of, like, nailed this really fast when we started becoming friends, like, I don't know, like four years ago or however long it's been. And he's like, yeah, it's pretty obviously what you're doing. He's like, you're a psychopathically obsessed personality. You didn't have any good mentors, so you just. You're doing that. Like, that's what Founders is. It's like, it's not for. So going back to Ty to Tammy's idea is not for you, it's for me. It's just you needed that kind of personality type to do it. And then the act of sitting down and recording it makes an act of service to the world and to other people that. So they can benefit from this activity you'd be doing even if no one listened.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's based in love.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And fear, probably. Fear of failure. Fear of being a loser. Like, definitely more like. That's a very. I think that's a very common motivator for anybody that has an unusual, like, extreme career.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

If you've. You. We talked about confidence earlier. You have this amazing. Let me see if I can find it. You have this amazing line from Kobe about fear. The greatest fear you have is yourself. It's scary to accept that dream you have. It's scary to say what you want lest you fail. And then you also said Jimmy Iovine's career was built on a tremendous lack of fear of moving forward. On one hand, you have like this radical self confidence and like the love of the thing. Like, do you experience any kind of fear or have you had. Have there been periods of fear with Founders?

[David Senra]

Yeah, I feel fear like every day. So, like, I don't. Like, it's weird for me because this is. Okay, well, I guess to back up. It's also like bizarre. It's like some people get into what they're doing for different reasons. Yeah, right. And one of the things that I started podcasting where it's extremely low status, like, it was like a dorky thing to do, especially to do it by yourself with a hundred dollar microphone in a kitchen. Like, it's just a weird.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Paid only.

[David Senra]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's just A weird, like, what is going on here? It's just like, something I was obsessed with for, like, a very long period of time. And then I become close with a lot of the people at Spotify, and I've spent a lot of time. I've spent travel to Stockholm twice this year alone, just because I think they're geniuses and they're very, like, generous with their insights and time for me. And they were talking about the fact that, like, they. One of their biggest mistakes was, like, when they were signing all these people, they'd start. The beauty of podcasting is, like, you can. It's like Andrew Human says, it's like punk rock. It's like you can start in, like, a garage. Yeah, Right. And you come up with, like, there's no money in equipment. You're just doing it for the love and you get better. Right. Spotify. What they said is, like, we signed, like, celebrities, celebrities that are expensive.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Meghan Markle.

[David Senra]

And then. Yeah. And then we had, like, expensive production. And they're like, we should have partnered with people like you that, like, came up with because of the love.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's the whole story of content on the Internet, broadly. By the way, YouTube took every go download. Yeah.

[David Senra]

And so there's a lot of people that start podcasting because, like, they want, like, fame. Right. And so I don't have guests, so I don't. Like, it's just a solo thing. And, like, it's one of the few podcasts in the world that is made by one person. So, like, I think that's why Daniel Eck, he'll be interviewed, he says, over and over again, like, his favorite show is founders. And he's very generous with his insights and advice to me. And one of the things he does, like, when I'm. When we've been together, like, he'll introduce me and we'll start talking about the podcast. And he goes. He does everything himself. He's like. He just like. He's like. He's like Prince. It's like playing every single instrument. And it's because it's very unusual to, like, read, record, edit. I'm hand updating the transcripts now.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So, like, the amount of time that you're writing them.

[David Senra]

No, after the fact. Because now I had this idea of, like, these beautiful captions I did for, like, the Elon episode. I think it's just better than my face.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Senra]

And, like, there's other ideas. I wanted to talk about that. When you said you still, like, killed you. Hold on to. I used to do it X way. So I have to keep doing X. I'm like, no, I'm gonna do what I feel is best today. The fear, basically, I didn't understand other people's impression of me was different than my impression of me.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And so I think this is the conversation me and Jeremy just had on the walk on the way over here. But, like, I don't think about other people. Like, I am kind of like lost in my own world. And Jeremy's a little bit like the two.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Kind of the fear Kobe was talking about, by the way. It's not actually fear of other people. It's. It's this internalized fear almost.

[David Senra]

It's like you just wasted you. Your. Your life or like. So what I mean by like, I don't think of other people is like, I'm so lost in what I'm doing that I don't like, pop my head out and wonder like the idea that, like, that who I just ran into in this office, like, oh my God, I'm a fan. Or like I got recognized on the street earlier. And then at the airport issue, it's like I asked him, how the fuck do you even know what I look like? It's so weird to me because I didn't even look at numbers.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

I just did this like, giant multi year, like, partnership with Ramp and we had hammered everything out. Like, we had everything in agreement. They're like, hey, what are your numbers, by the way? Right. Because they would they audience quality over everything else. Yeah. And I was a good question. Let me look like you're shocked at how many people listen, because I'm not doing it for that. I honestly didn't want to know. But I didn't want to know because, like, then, then what happens? I put an episode and it's like, oh, I usually get X and now it's like 10% less.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, you're focused on the wrong.

[David Senra]

No, it's just what did.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Or quality puts over input.

[David Senra]

Yeah, it's just quality. It just doesn't matter. I'm making this for me. And so like, the fear that I have is like, I still wake up every day thinking that, like, this could be taken from me. Or in many cases, like, if you go back to the Michael Dell's advice, like how you Sabotage yourself. Conor McGregor, right, has this great line where he's like, if you go to sleep on a win, you wake up with a loss. And so his whole thing, if you look at young Conor, it's like he just. He wakes up Every day. Doesn't think right. He's just like a gozy. He's like a shark. Wake, wake up, go train, Eat, rest, go train again. Eat, rest, train again, do that again, over and over again. Then what happens? He makes hundreds of millions of dollars and he's doing coke, he's on boats, he's doing all this other stuff. He's not training. Goes. Then he goes back into fights. And what happens? He gets knocked the fuck out. And so my fear is that. My fear is that like, like the way to not go, to not rest in your laurels, to not have a rearview mirror, to not go to sleep on a win and wake up with a loss is just my routine, which is also. It's just like you're going to wake up and you're going to read for a few hours every day, and you're going to do that. And then once you finish the book, you're going to sit down and you're going to talk about what you learned. And you just do that over and over and over and over again. It's the same conversation we had out there where it's so perplexing to me when people ask. The example I use is people are like, hey, I love what you do. What's next? This today, tomorrow and forever. That's the only way. And as soon as I stop doing that, everything will go away. So that is the fear.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You brought up Gagosian crazy article. He talks about, they ask him something along the lines of like, something introspective. And he's like, oh, I try to avoid self reflection. That's how you lose your edge.

[David Senra]

That's a great quote, by the way, and 100% true.

[Steven Rinella]

So.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So this is my question. First up, brief excerpt. You did an interview years ago with Frederick Geishen for Compound. And in it you say, whoever you are and whatever is important to you, put that into your company. Don't shy away from the eccentric part of your personality, because your personality is the foundation and the beginning of the culture of your company. And you, you, you also talk about, like, everything. Everybody has something they loved as a kid. They forgot. They forget about. They forget the love. And yet you often say along the lines of Gagosian, like, great entrepreneurs have low to zero introspection.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, can you square that for me? Am I, Am I. Like, to me it sort of sounds like, like you might not. I understand that there's like maybe a spectrum of introspection, but you actually seem to know yourself really well. And so. And frankly, Some of the entrepreneurs you study, maybe some of the more evolved ones or whatever, Some of them at least do. Why do you think, yeah, like, am I. Am I making a false equivalent?

[David Senra]

I don't think they're like, those two things are in conflict. So I think there's a lot of introspection they go through. This is why reading biographies is so good, because, like, you see. You know, them, like, go down. These false starts, they. They make mistakes. They have to backtrack. They have to change their mind about things. They have to direct their energy elsewhere. And. But. So it takes a lot of, like, introspection to figure out, like, what you want to do, but once they find their thing. So Gagosian did a bunch of shit. He was, you know, he worked for Ovitz. I just had dinner with Ovitz. He was talking about Gosi, and he was like, his assistant or something. I forgot. He's, like, selling art in.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

In a parking lot.

[David Senra]

In a parking lot. But then once he found his thing, he's like, oh, there's nothing else. Boom. So our. Our mutual friend Patrick o'. Shaughnessy. Like, I text him. I. I text people crazy sometimes. Again, sometimes I get in trouble because, like, I don't have a filter, and sometimes I think I should have a filter. Like, some dudes, like, like, researching some of the ideas, and he's like, I've been researching you, and here's a list of ideas you've said on other podcasts. And they'll be at the podcast they did, like, years ago. I remember. And some I'm like, I can't. I believe. I don't remember saying that, but that sounds like something I would say, and I should not be sharing that publicly. And then every time. And sometimes I think about, you know, if you think about founders is like, my reaction to what I'm reading. And sometimes I'm like, man, I shouldn't say what I'm about to say. But every time I have that and just say it where it's like, you know, you just like, damn, like, you know, I haven't processed the death of my mom. Or, like, just like some. You would not tell millions of strangers. Every time I do that, you hear from people, like, I'm like, that too. I'm so glad you said that. I had that exact same thought. So that's why I try to, like, just, like, let it rip and, like, not have. I don't. I'm a bad actor. I don't want to act like if people listen to the podcast and then we hang out. There's not like, oh, it's kind of weird here. It's like, oh, it's the same. This freaking guy.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

All the best Bill. I met Bill Simmons years ago. Like, literally exactly the same.

[David Senra]

Yes to it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

All of the best people are like this.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And it just. It makes life easier because, like, listen, you don't have to like it. That's fine. But the people that love you will. Will deeply love you. And so I'm like, you know, I text some random stuff and, like, you know, inner monologue stuff, actually, because me and Patrick work together, and, like, we both are obsessed with podcasts, and, like, we talk about podcasts a lot. And I remember, like, it was like, 7am on a Saturday. And I text him, like, this whole game is for the taking. Like, there's nobody else. Like, there's just, like, the. The work ethic's not there. Like, it's just, this is. This is bad news. Like, this is fait accompli. Like, as long as I don't stop, Like, Blue ocean. And he texts me back. He's like, first of all, he's like, in, I think, like, Nantucket with his family. What the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But he was just like, out of all the people I know, and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do. That was a great, like, response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that. Elon Musk. They're all like that. It's like, they're not sitting there. Want to be like, how do I feel today? What should I do? It's like they. It's like blinders on. Wake up. Go.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes. Yeah. When you know what you're working on, especially if you have momentum, you spend very little time wondering about, like, what else.

[David Senra]

I would be curious your perspective on this, because we've talked for a while, and, like, you were kind of like, in the wind trying to figure it out. And what I would say is, like, I've been in that spot too. Once you find it, the sense of relief, it literally feels like, like, this thing just comes off of you. And then now you can direct your energy. You still have the love and the fear and all. You're human beings. You have these, like, these oscillations of emotions. But the relief that I have that, like, I found something. It's. What is it? What's the ecoj. Yeah. So it's like something you're.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Something the world wants, something that you're good at, something that you love. And there's a force.

[David Senra]

Yeah, like that intersection.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And so if you look at, like, what are my actual interests? Well, I'm interested in, like, four primary things. I'm interested in podcasts, reading, entrepreneurship and history. Yeah, well, that's kind of funny. Like, what sits. And it's also valuable for. Duh. Yeah. So it actually, like. And it's actually beneficial for people where, like, this just happened. We were at a, like, a really fancy wedding this past weekend, and one of my friends, who's an absolute killer, just remarkable, one of the world's best at what he does, and he's just like, man. And we. We spent a lot of time together. He knows. He's like, you have no idea. Like, and maybe because you don't wanna think about it, you have no idea the impact you're having. Like, you are changing people's lives. You are. It's one of the few things that you can put out into the world. It's like, there's no negative externalities. Like, it is good work. And I appreciate that he said that. And then as soon as he says that, you think about it and then you forget it, and then you go back to doing it. Because then the dangerous part is like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I heard another podcaster, super famous, probably top five in the world, and this person mentioned that, like, now these interviews that this person is doing, she is doing, if I give it away, she's like, I can do this in my sleep. I'm like, no, you can't. No, you can't. And if you believe that, you won't be one of the top ones a few years from now.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I have something related, but just to directly kind of respond or answer your question, one of the things I found myself telling people very early on in the podcast was, I'm not totally sure what this is, but it's easy for me to care a lot about it. And that was like, the thread that was like, oh, I have to keep pulling on this thread. There's another quote that I really loved. In your interview with Chris Williamson, he brought up this quote. Somebody he knew, like, works with Tim Cook at Apple. And Tim said, like, when you find the thing, when you're focused on the thing, you're gonna have to work super hard or whatever else, but the tool, your tools will feel light in your hands. And I feel like that so captures what you just said, it's this sort of like when you're on a mission, the other stuff falls away. And that's. That's cool.

[David Senra]

I don't spend a lot of time with VCs, but one of my favorite VCs is a guy named Ho Nam from Altos Ventures. And I went and he invited me to have dinner with him and his whole team in their office in the Bay Area. And the reason we bond is because he's got this great blog post that I think came from good to great or something. It's called Hedgehogs vs Foxes. And their investment thesis is very simple. They back hedgehogs. And so you go to their office and there's a giant picture of a hedgehog right when you walk in. And the hedgehog knows a lot about one thing, and the fox knows very little about a lot of things. And so I'm like a hedgehog guy. Like, Ho says that Founders is a podcast about hedgehogs run by hedgehog and spiky. And the interesting part about this is at the very bottom is there's. He quotes from this book on Vince Lombardi, and it was about commitment. It says something about, like, the Latin, the original, like Latin, wherever commitment is derived from, meant to, like in an incision, to cut. And Ho's point was just like, once you make a commitment, you cut away everything else. Yeah. I think most humans are very scared to commit to something.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

They want to maintain optionality. I'm not interested in optionality. I don't want to think about anything else. Like, you know, how many people are like, you should raise the fund. You should do all this other stuff. No, I will keep podcasting, thank you very much. Like, you're not going to distract me, because I know that 99% of the people on the planet cannot focus on a single thing for a long period of time. That's why 99% or probably larger than that will never be great at what they do. It is very important for me to be really great at what I do, if not the best in the world at what I do.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

There's a Munger idea about learning is changing your behavior. And so I have a. I have a joke that there are a lot of things I know but haven't yet learned. And I think this is one of the things I'm in the process of maybe finally starting to learn is as someone who's very freedom seeking, the most freeing thing is commitment. Because when you commit, it's. It's what you were saying earlier, which is like the other stuff drops away and you're free to run. Like there's open road.

[David Senra]

And I think, like, the most fascinating to me is like, when you commit to something, you, you have a fundamental. Like, my favorite people, my favorite founders to hang out with are like, old. When I mean old, I mean like over seven.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Senra]

And because they've been working on their business for, you know, 30, 40, 50 years and you get the sense of them. It's like they have an understanding. They can't even. There's not language that they can explain it to you. It's just like they, they. It's like this intuition. It's like that's built up over an excessively long period of time. They can tell you certain principles that are important. Like, you know, they're usually micromanagers. They're upset. They were like very close to the customer. They spend all their time with the people actually delivering the service or the product to the customer, none with their executives. Like, you see a lot of the same patterns over and over again. I mentioned Todd Graves. Like, the reason he, he couldn't sleep is because he wanted to wake up to go to one of his stores. His stores are restaurants. He owns 915 of them. That kind of guy will not franchise. He, they're all corporate owned.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Crazy.

[David Senra]

It's just like he's not hanging out at the office. Like he wants to be there, like making bread and handing chicken fingers out the drive through. It's like that's what's important to him. So you see that over and over again. So the reason I think that's important is once you make the commitment, that's where you like true knowledge. Like specific. I think you used the word specific knowledge earlier. That's where like true, specific knowledge comes from. It's like this going down this path and iterating and making a mistake. And it's like, oh, that's a form of education. And then adapting that to your work. Where the reason I think I'm going to make this episode about how I make founders, because I talked to a lot of other podcasters and they're like, you do what? And they're very surprised. I was just at this dinner, they sat me next to Harry Stebbings on purpose, and Harry's been really nice to me and it's the first time I met him in person. But they sat me next to him because they know if I'm sitting next to a podcaster, like, everybody else falls away. And I'm just Gonna fucking be like, how do you do this? Why do you do this? And so 30 minutes in, Harry's like, oh, my God. He's like, you're like an artist. He's like, we do different things. He's like, I'm glad I would, I wouldn't compete with you because I couldn't. Like, I couldn't compete with you.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

Like, we're not doing the same thing, so it doesn't matter. And I highly. I think people overrate, like, the competitiveness in podcasts. I think actually, like, it doesn't. The world's very big out there.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, you're very positive sum for a highly competitive person, I would add.

[David Senra]

I wish it was zero sum, believe me. I wish at the end of the year there was some way to say, I told you motherfuckers that you shouldn't have competed with me.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Might be eventually, but.

[David Senra]

No, but like, because I think the best analogy for, for podcasters is filmmakers. It's like they were all friends, they shared information, they shared techniques, they in some cases helped each other finance their films. And if somebody goes and listened or watched Jaws on Tuesday and Star wars on Wednesday, it doesn't take away from Spielberg. Didn't take away from Lucas.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And it's just a better way to get through life because tide raises. Yeah. It's just like, it's weird because I know some other podcasters, like, fight and like, with each other and it's just like, funny. It's just like to me, because it doesn't, it's not, it's not a competitive thing. It's. It just doesn't. I wish it was. It's just not. Um, and I think it's fascinating how to see people that are doing similar work to you, like, how they approach it. And I think that's my point. It's like if you've thought about it and only thought about that for nine years, of course you're going to come up with like some weird technique that would be impossible to predict from the outside.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes. There's, there's one little thread there I talked about with Tammy, which is the, the people, the, the seven year old entrepreneurs and, and, and clearly, like, I think someone like you is getting this point. You actually have this level of mastery where you go from there's these stages of unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, meaning you don't know what you don't know to, you know, what you don't know to conscious competence, which is most people. And then at that Final level, you actually get to the unconscious competence where like you, you started to say this like they can't even really describe exactly what it is.

[David Senra]

Like.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I, I almost wonder. I, I have to imagine the 70 year old David Sen that's doing this in however many years is like. Or like, it's like Rick Rubin. He's like, what do you mean? I, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just like, it's just, it's simple. The other thing that made me think of that is sort of a selfish question. But I was thinking about like if you were going to do. And maybe this is sacrilegious already, but if you were going to do anything else, the one thing that I could see being a natural extension of Founders, speaking of filmmakers would be making a documentary in many ways that sort of feels what founders is a mini version of. And I'm curious if there's anybody who you would. That would immediately come to mind is like someone big enough or interesting enough or whatever that you would, that that would be exciting.

[David Senra]

It wouldn't come to mind.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

No, no. Is there anybody you like that's.

[David Senra]

So that's work for somebody else. Like they're writing the book. You know how many people? All the publishers. Because I sell a lot of books. Like obviously sell a lot of books.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, well, but there's, there's writing. I think my version of that question would be similar, which would be would you write a biography? Not would you write a book about all the.

[David Senra]

No. I will podcast. If your question is will you do something else in podcasts, the answer has to be no. And so like right now there's this kid that traveled all over the world and he made the founder's book and spent all this money. And then I was hosting this event at Ramp and they're like, dude, this guy won't fucking Wooter. Yes, exactly.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Meeting him next week.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And he's doing crazy research and everything else and like, will you please just take the Ramp events team? You're like, just take two minutes. Yeah. Paid $5,000 to make me a book. Like that's kind of crazy thing to do. And so I wound up talking to him and like, I just like people that like show effort in whatever they're doing, sweeping the floor, making a podcast or building company. Don't care. I just want you to take what you do seriously. And. And then we sat around, it's like me, him, Patrick, and then the two founders of Ramp and given this like young kid from like the Netherlands or something. Like, how much valuable information did he get out of that conversation? Like, you know, and so I was like, listen, if you want to do this, what you have here is not what I want. But if you want to partner with my friend Eric Jorgensen, who I can't like, Eric was one of the first people put me on his podcast. No one knew who the hell I was. Like, I think it was the second podcast I ever went on. He's the one that introduced me to Chris Williamson.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like he does Naval Almanac and some other things, right?

[David Senra]

And he's the CEO of Scribe, which is like a way to self publish. And I was like, Eric's got to be the one that does the book. But if you can build, if you can make some. I'm never gonna sit down and write the book because it's not podcasting.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And all the podcasters I know that write books, they're like, fuck, I shouldn't have done this. I was like, yeah, I told you so. They're in the process of doing that right now. And the deal I made is like, I wanna make sure it's available for free to read. Just like what Naval did. I think it's a great idea. You can read it for free. And if you wanna buy it, then whatever, it's 15, 20 bucks and the money it makes can go to you. I don't need to make money off the book. I will, if it's high quality enough, I will make my audience aware that it exists. And then I would love to give this kid, you know, if it sells enough, the kid probably make a million dollars. And then that's fine. I just want. It has to be good enough. And so far the drafts that they've sent are not good enough. So this book may never come out because I have to like put, you know, say no. This is worth like you spending 20 bucks on the money. Really spending eight hours to read or whatever.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

On this note, if focus is saying no, this is the classic like Steve Jobs idea. It's not saying no to bad ideas. Saying no to good ideas.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Have there been any, either personally or if not that, other examples from founders you studied of like, truly painful things you've had to say no to? Like, it does. That didn't sound painful at all. No, I'm not gonna do it. Like it seems really. You make it sound easy.

[David Senra]

So the Jony I've quote. Yeah, I have. Me personally have never experienced something that was like, truly painful. I think the. The one thing that you could say is a distraction from the podcast is something I always prior. I also prioritize is relationships. And so like I'm in New York right now, right. My schedule is going to be different when I'm in New York than from in my studio, you know, at home. And part of the reasons that's so important is because relationships are really important to me. Like what is the podcast? It's ability for me to build relationships at scale. And then that is another form of education because I'm reading about great people, but now I get access to them.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And then we build relationships. I learn from them. They'll also check you, which is very, very. Like I have two or three people that like I've become close with that I've met through the podcast that will like tell me when I'm fucking up in like a direct way. Like, this isn't good enough. You're making a bad decision here. They're not trying to do it to like belittle me or anything like that. They're just like, no, you don't understand. This is not, this is not quality. This doesn't fit the rest of the stuff that you're doing and it's not a good use of your time. And so the one thing that would say would be painful if there was thing to say no to is like, I don't spend as much time with the people I could spend time with because my work is so labor intensive. I feel like I'm a manufacturer. Like I'm not the guy, I'm not capital. I'm labor. Like I am the labor.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes. No, I, I, I think that point like actually can't be over stated in this case.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And it's, that is the foundational thing that I actually think is like most people are at odds with and they're always like looking for the next, like most people are looking for to automate and like get leverage on a thing so they don't have to do the thing. You know, you're the quite literally the inverse of that.

[David Senra]

Yeah. Like you don't work your entire life to do something. You love to not do it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's the Charlie Brown guy.

[David Senra]

Yes. And so the, the, the, the interesting thing about that is I've literally, you know, I've had dinners with very powerful people in media and entrepreneurship and they're like, I had an idea for you. Have you ever thought about somebody else reading the books for you?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's crazy.

[David Senra]

And I'm like, what?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You do not understand what this is?

[David Senra]

Yeah, it's Like I'm not doing it for that. I think the hard way is the right way. And then if you just think about that, right. It's like if you just. This is not intelligence, this is effort. If you just apply considerably more effort over a longer period of time, by default, by human nature, you will just have less competition. I'm sure there is another me out there. I'm sure there's probably 10. Are there a thousand? Unlikely, unlikely. So if I. There's 10 of them and I have to. If there was a competitive game going

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

on, we'll share the prizes.

[David Senra]

It's 10%. I have a 10%. Like that's a way better. The odds are way better in my favor than, you know, something that is a low hanging fruit. You know, something that is less labor intensive, less time intensive. It's just like man, just.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, the friction is good.

[David Senra]

Yes.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

One question on this Walt Disney idea, if we lose the details, we lose everything. Elon talks about sort of not separating yourself from the pain of your decisions. Like you want to have your hand on the stove. You're very anti delegation automation. I have, I was just thinking about this. We are entering a world now where we have like truly intelligent help or automation and it's only going to get better. You recently hired Maxim. You have somebody actually doing shorts for you. It's like the one thing that isn't the podcast, but it's kind of adjacent to it. And in most people's businesses aren't like podcasts. They have to hire people, they have to delegate. Elon has a line in the recent episode where he talks about if you automate things, you have to make sure you like fully do the whole process first. And so my question is like, maybe not explicitly for you, but maybe even for you. There are like even Mr. Beast has an editor now. He used to not. What is the line for that type of thing or is it actually going to go the other way and like most things are going to become more like podcasting and you'll have one person companies and like, like is. Is there a line on Del, like what. What enables you to actually go hire someone like Maxim? Maybe is even simpler version of the question.

[David Senra]

So that this is the interesting part. So obviously like making videos to promote the podcast is not the podcast. Totally right, Totally. And maybe that's. I could take time away from making the podcast to make. Try to like learn how to video edit. That doesn't make sense. So I went through and I did what every other podcaster does and like you have podcaster friends, and they're like, oh, use this. And they all, like, outsource it, God bless them. But, like, I am like, I don't. They're outsourced to, like, you know, the Philippines or India. And I was like, I'm not trying to make the cheapest thing. I'm trying to make the best thing. I want great.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I don't want great is above scale. Critically, you care about scale, but scale never surpasses.

[David Senra]

I went through so many of these people, and I'd watch what they make, and it's, like, considerably worse than the podcast, where I feel the. The edits that Maxim does are on par, if not better.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And so how did that get that? For years of trial and error of me buying clips that you never saw, because I spent money on shit that no one ever saw. I was like, this is embarrassing. It's just. I won't have clips. I'd rather have nothing than shit. And so. And then Blake Robbins, you know, he hangs on the edge of the Internet, and he's got great taste, and he's just like, there's this kid. Maximum.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I met him on that same trip

[David Senra]

to New York, I think, and. And he's obsessed with one podcast. Would you take time to meet him? And so me, him and Patrick met in New York, and I think Maxim was 23 at the time, and it wasn't for to work together. I saw he's. Blake could send me something. Oh, shit. This. This guy's good. Like, he was making his own. He went from, like, zero to, like, 800, 000 followers.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

He's making a video every edit, every day.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And he did in, like, I don't know, six months, nine months, something like that. And so then we're just talking to the kid. It's, like, obvious. Like, you can tell if somebody's just with it got a brain. Serious. It's a lot easier if they have a body of work to point to.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

And so, like, you realize, like, this is a serious player. I can, like, spend. I'm not wasting my time here. And the whole time, I wasn't convincing him to work. I was like, you need to get your ass to America. I go, how old are you? He's like, 23. Do you have a girlfriend? Nah. Do you have any kids? No. Like, what are you doing? Like, you're super talented. Like, the opportunity here is, like, so much better than. I think he was in England at the time, and now he's in France. But he didn't listen to that. But we just like, I thought he was smart and interesting and so like we would text and it took me like, I don't know, like, I don't know, six months, something like that. Because I know what he wanted to do. Like, what he was like making documentary and then he wants to make. Like he didn't want to just stay in short form. He has like other ambitions and so. And he was going back and forth because he's doing this like insane, like, full length documentary on Steve Jobs. And I remember texting him one day and it was just like, like, how are you paying your bills? Because he stopped uploading. He's not doing any brand deals. He's not doing anything. And he's just like, well, everybody always like asked me, like, how to do my edits. So I made like a course on how to do it. And like, I'm living off that. I go, do you want to do that? He goes, no. And I was like, why don't you do this? Like, why don't you just like exclusively come and make clips for founders? And I'm pretty sure we did this over text the whole thing. And this is a sign of like working with truly talented people. Like, they just make. They're easy to understand. They make things easy. And so I was like, listen, this is what I want. I don't care about numbers. I want great. And so I go, can you do one a day? Or I think one every weekday. Name your price. And then I wake up, I go to bed because we're in different time zones. I wake up and it's like three paragraphs. Lays out exactly what he. How he envisions it. Says the same thing. Like, can we not judge it on views? Which obviously, again, it's audience quality. This is what people don't understand. In business podcasts, if you're chasing numbers, you don't know what you're doing. You chase the. And because you can measure numbers, you can't measure quality. You had.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's way harder to measure this growth in duration.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So. And then he named his price and I think I sent him back, which is six times what other people pay.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Sure.

[David Senra]

And I send back one word, done, and that's it. And so like, I don't give him any direction, doesn't take any of my time. He sends them to me. I don't give any, any access to my social media. You're not fucking posting for me. You're not doing any of that. I watch them. If I would watch that. If I think it's good. I post it. And we've done, I don't know, like, 150. And I think I've only not posted maybe like six.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

So this is. This is getting something really interesting, which is, obviously, he's an exception, but there is something to the notion of, like, I don't delegate at all. And also I allow for exception. You. You have another thing. You have a post it, or at least you used to have a post it note on your computer. 1 of 2 POST IT notes, which is what assets do I have that I'm not currently using?

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And I realize it's not exactly the same thing that's kind of related here, which is like, yes, don't delegate. Focus on the thing. But also, like, that's a really important question. I'm sure someone like you, you're at a level now where you're. You're probably doing a pretty good job of leveraging the assets available to you, but I'm sure you haven't capped out on that. And I think most of us are actually way behind. How does that fit with the focus? Like, or. Or maybe just broadly, like, how has that question enabled you?

[David Senra]

I don't like. You stay in the details. But there's nothing that I'm currently doing that I could delegate. So it's like, I'm going to read because I like to read.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Right.

[David Senra]

That's why the podcast is good, because I enjoy the activity of reading itself.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

I prefer to be alone half my waking hours.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

I think we said earlier something about, like, an event or, like, people being there. I was like, oh, no, I don't want to be around people. Like, this is not. It's not interesting to me. I don't go to group dinners. I don't do any of this shit. I don't go to sports games. Like, I like small, intimate gatherings of really smart people and nothing else.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Y.

[David Senra]

And so the reading is going to say the same. Somebody else going to record the podcast. You want me to outsource that? No, the editing, the biggest thing people say. And Mr. Beast told me this. He tells me this all the time. His favorite podcast is founders.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's like, remember who introduced you?

[David Senra]

Yeah, you and somebody else. You and Blake and somebody else. It was like two or three people. I have the d. That's fine. No, no, that's fine. But I forgot who told him about the podcast, who got him listening, but it doesn't matter. So it might have been you. You definitely put us in a group chat. But yeah, so Anyways, so the biggest thing is like, oh, that person doesn't need to edit. If they just sit next to you, they understand your taste. I just fundamentally disagree. Like, I think the value is in the edit.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But there are assets that you have that you're not currently using. Do you agree with that?

[David Senra]

Oh, for sure. So, like, one example of this is the. I'm. I can't force myself to be interested in investing. I just can't. Like, I'm just not interested in it. I'm interested in making a phenomenal world class product. That's what I think of. Yet I have crazy relationships and access to all these investors in the world, to all these founders and best investors in the world. Right. And so, like, I've done very little angel investing and it's all because, like, basically I've been pulled into it. And the crazy thing I realized is like, there you. No one else could even get in that.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And they're just like, I like, there's this guy named James from. He does this company called Profound. Right. And this was a very interesting way. This might be an interesting story. I spent a lot of time with Kareem, one of the founders of Ramp. And what I like about Kareem is how discontent and dissatisfied he always is. And so he has excessively high bars for products and people and everything else. So I was at his house for dinner and he's just like railing on all this shit he doesn't like. And I was like, all right, dude, what the fuck do you actually like? Like, is there something like, I don't want to hear what you don't like, tell me what you do. Because, like a great signal, the guy that, like, nothing's high enough quality.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

What's above the line.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And so he was talking about this, the, this company and this founder. And I pull up my phone and I searched the guy's name. It turns out he followed me on Twitter. I was like, oh, I'll follow him. Because, like, Kareem says, this kid's smart.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And then immediately I get a dm. He's like such a fan. A huge fucking fan of the podcast. Are you ever in New York City? I'm like, oh, I'll be there in two days. He's like, come by. And so we wind up having this meeting. He tells me this crazy story where he, like, I think he had sold his last company. He didn't know what he'd do. He was in that trough of like, doesn't, like, I don't know what My next thing is lives in New York City, has a big ass dog, would walk like 20,000, 30,000 steps a day just listening to founders for hours. And he's like, you helped me. And now their thing is ripping. They raised from like, Sequoia and all this crazy stuff. And so he goes, hey, I may be over my skis here, but, like, do you angel invest? Like, the round is closed, but do you want to get in? And I was like, I don't know, Like, I guess, like, I. Because I did not.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's exhaust for you. Like, that's really all it is.

[David Senra]

The reason this is important, because a good friend of mine had somehow found out I knew this guy, and he's like, get me in the round. I was like, I saw you text me. He's like, no. So he's like, there's no other room.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, he doesn't have a exception is for you.

[David Senra]

He doesn't have a podcast that I love. And so there's a bunch of different ways to do this where it's like you could take the money that the podcast makes and I could partner with somebody like Jeremy who thinks about it all day long, or you could just literally just be. There's a million other things I could be doing around this. Yes. I will never be taking fucking individual meetings.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes.

[David Senra]

To decide if I want to invest in this is so stupid for me to distract from what I'm doing. But yeah. So that is like one asset. The asset that I have that I'm not utilizing is the relationships that I'm building from the podcast.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

If you were to give advice to David in 2017 to maybe, like, put this in perspective, presumably there's going to be a David in 2029 who could do the same thing. But maybe even just in looking back, what could that David have been doing better? Aside from maybe simplifying what assets was he not using?

[David Senra]

Guess what? Your biggest asset did you have is your differentiated podcast and you put a giant wall in front of it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's the easiest answer ever.

[David Senra]

Maybe don't do that. How about that? Like the, you know, the amount of people so hinky is one of them, right?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

You couldn't even share. Like, think about, like, how many people share it. How many people have shared the Elon episode this week? It's been crazy. Crazy. How many?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Like, such a great episode.

[David Senra]

Yeah, but like, it's crazy. And so, like, like, I've heard from so many people. I think he was spending, like, I think it was charging a hundred dollars a Year, he was like, buying gift subscriptions like it was candy. Because he's like, I can't share your stupid podcast without buying an entire gift subscription, emailing it to them. And then they have to activate the RSS feed. Yeah, it's just like, what were you doing?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's the worst part. It's not even the money. It's like, get it. Yeah. Private RSS feedback.

[David Senra]

So this is the crazy thing. So not only could you see who was listening, you could see if they activated or who subscribed. You can see if they activated. So I was a huge fan of Invest. Like the best. And I saw. I'm not going to repeat the email address because he probably doesn't want a podcast. But I knew. I knew who that email address is. I was like, oh, I'm a fan of that guy's podcast. That's pretty cool.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's cool.

[David Senra]

And then I checked, for some reason, like, a few weeks later, not activated. I was like, oh, brutal. And then eventually he. Because he told. No, he told me the story where he's just like, he heard about it from one person he trusted, then another person. The second time he heard about. Then he bought subscription, then he heard about again, then he heard about it again. And these are like, people have his number and stuff. They God damn it. Now, like, activate the stupid private RSS feed. And then he starts listening to it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Then he tweeted about back to Sam's point. Like, there's a lot of stuff where I'll read one good essay. Or I was probably like, I think I probably heard the. The Steve Jobs one really early on or something. Something. And you listen and you're like, that's great, but there's something in your brain that doesn't fully click of, like, oh, my gosh. All the other. I did this with Patrick. I've told him this. Like, I listened to, like, one or two or three or four interviews with him, and I'm like, man, all of those people are amazing. And I did not process at all. And then finally, on, like, seven of them, I was like, oh, either they're all. They're all amazing, which is kind of true, or Patrick is a really amazing person at drawing them out. And so I do find that, like, I'm sure your show is the extreme version of this, is that, like, sometimes you have to, like, go listen to three in a row, and then you're like, oh, my gosh. Just a treasure trove.

[David Senra]

This is why the advice that Anthony Bourdain got when he was when he released his first book. He met right before his first book came out. He met with another successful author who's way further down the path. And he goes, do you have any advice for me? He goes, yeah, promote, promote, promote, or this all dies. And so somebody.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

What's the moving audience again?

[David Senra]

Yeah, somebody said they have, like, notifications on for when I tweet, which is insane because my phone is on permanent dnd. Like, permanent. You cannot get to me. Like, and they're like, you tweet a lot. And I'm like, how do you know that? It's like, because I have notifications on for your. Yeah, the best way to use Twitter is what was shared on one of your episodes that I sent you. It's like you just tweet all day long and you read none of it. And so all of my. Yeah, exactly. All of my tweets are just me promoting, essentially quotes from past episodes and then linking to the episode. And the amount of people are like, I didn't even know you did an episode on Bob Dylan or xyz. It's like, you have to promote, promote, promote, promote. Like, somebody could listen to 1, 2, 3, but once they listen to 20, 30, 50, they've told so many people, like, you've got to get them further down. That's.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

We talked earlier a lot about it. Obviously, one of the most common, like, recurring themes is storytelling and world building amongst entrepreneurs. I think you referenced the Don Valentine quote. The money flows after the story. There's a idea or a line from Evan Land about the keeper of the language as well. So, like, a language is part of this. Like, what makes for Steve Jobs? Some of these guys. Elon, whatever, somebody. What makes for truly, truly great storytelling? And how does specific language factor into that?

[David Senra]

I think the best storytellers are just probably the clearest thinkers. So, like, you mentioned Steve Jobs. He's probably the clearest thinker that I've ever come across. And so therefore, if you have clear thinking, you probably have clear, super clear communication. There's actually a book I think.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Is clear communication the same as great storytelling, though?

[David Senra]

No, I think great storytelling is clear. It's like. It's, like, simplified. So, like, I think some of the best storytellers, I think it would be hard to argue that the best storytellers in the world aren't, like, musicians. So if you look at, like, Tom Petty's lyrics or even Taylor Swift's lyrics. My daughter's.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

She's an amazing world builder.

[David Senra]

Yeah, it's just like, there Was this song My daughter put me on too. And I just like read. I don't even think it has like a chorus. It's called like L O M L by Taylor Swift. It's like not love of my life, loss of my life or something like that. And you just like read. It's like four minutes long. And I'm reading along in the lyrics. I'm like, wow, she told an entire story here with like how many different words? Or like I did the biography of Dr. Seuss, I forgot his real name. And one of his most successful. You know, the guy was like 50 years old and was a success and he winds up selling like 700 million books. He was at it for so long. But one of his most successful selling books was I think at the Cat in the Hat. And he designed within constraints. He's like, can I tell an entire story with using 50 words? 50 different words or less? So not like 50 words. Literally, you can use reuse the same word over and over again, but it's only these 50.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Senra]

And so that, that like necessity is

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

a mother of all invention.

[David Senra]

Yeah, that, that economy of like, just like beautiful simplicity of I think the best stories again like simple to understand and then therefore like simple to repeat, simple to share. And I think that's my biggest critique of my. Some of my past episodes where it's just like, you're right now I'm under so much fucking stress and I'm working flat out that I'm telling people around me a line from Brad Jacobs book where it's like, resist the urge to flood the channel with non essential information. Like there's certain amount of stuff that I do not want to be aware of right now because I have way too much stuff in my head. So resist the urge to flood the channel of non essential information. Like I think I hear it and I'm like, that's a better story, that it's a better idea. That's a better podcast. It's always taking away. It's never ever, ever adding. So that's why I think what is clarity of thought? It's like, it's the constant refinement. And then you're like, well, how do jobs get like that? Now there is some level of verbal mastery because like there's a. One of the first things I've ever written about him was like Steve Jobs at 22, he was like trying to sell the Apple computer at like a computer convention. And some like random reporters interviewed him. Like one minute you're like, wow, so there's some level of talent, but then you also combine some natural talent, which you mentioned earlier. Like, are you charismatic? Like, are people. Do people want to talk to you? Do you want to have dinner with you? Like, then maybe that's a sign that you should be doing things orally. You know, you should be giving speeches or doing podcasts or whatever. So there is, like, talent. You had some kind of built in talent, and then you worked at it for a long, a long period of time where there's an entire book called the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. I think it's episode 349 of founders. It might be 350. And it's essentially like how he crafted his storytelling. And it is not just right off the tongue. Let it rip. It is repetition over and over again, practicing every single word over and over again. Is there a better way to say it? Can we edit that down? Yeah. So.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Wow. Yeah. And. And it's like a magician almost. It's like on stage, he pulls the ipod nano out of his pocket.

[David Senra]

Like,

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

there's. There's one other piece of this. You say people try to analyze business in a rational way, which is weird because humans are nothing but irrational. And so obviously a huge part of storytelling too, is the emotional part or the feeling part. What. How do. How do great products, founders to the iPhone or whatever, Raising Canes defy rationality.

[David Senra]

So me and Todd just had. Todd Graves from Raising Canes just had this conversation. He's like anti, like theoretical, anti intellectual when it comes to business. Okay? It's like very, very simple. That's why he's also obsessed with, like, his. You can. He's very easy to understand because he. He has a very interesting, simple organizing principle. He believes in doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else. Right. And he believes in limiting the amount of details and then making every detail perfect. So for him, it's just like, there's nothing theoretical about this. Like, is this the best chicken? Is this better? Like, what is the response? Did the sales go up? Like, how. What's the time? Like, he just manages, like, every element of his business. Like, can we make the coleslaw better? Is the bread fine? Like, he just, like, he thinks about this as, like, such, like a granule level. And I think all of the iteration and behind the scenes work that goes into it is why it has, like a cult, like, following. And so, like, I was just visiting my brother and sister. They'd never been to Raising Canes before, and I was like, all right, I'm Going to take you. And they just opened up. Raising caves was in the south for a long time and now it's in Florida. And so we show up and they're like, what the hell is going on here? Because the drive thru is like line down the block and we can't even get a table inside because we have to wait for somebody to get up, right? And Todd purposely puts his restaurants around what people view as his competitors that he does not view as his competitors. And so there's like, you know, like a Chili's or like a Wendy's. And so I remember looking at the Wendy's across the street. There is a single car in the drive through. It's just like all that. So I don't even know if you can put into words you can explain. It's just like all the work he's done and the iterative work of making his product better, first of all, like keeping it saying, this is going to be the product. So all the, all the iteration goes into making that existing product better. Not now, it's this product. And so now we're gonna divide our attention to this product over here. That the result of all that, like knowledge and skill and practice has now compounded for three decades to now. A new person gets this and they're like, what is this? They can't describe the magic. There's a line in Dyson's autobiography that I thought was interesting that I missed the first few times I read it. And he said something like, the magic of a product should never be underestimated. And he just defines the magic as like how it does what it does. Right? It's not like, oh, the vacuum cleaner sucks air out. It's like there's something magical about the experience. When you use like a Dyson vacuum cleaner compared to like a Hoover. It's just, you can't even. I would. I guess it's irrational to back to your original question. It's like, I don't know what's going on here. I just know these two things are not. They're not giving me the same feeling, the same sensation.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

What's. What's interesting though is across all three of those, there's actually this combination of with, with jobs and with canes. There's so much work and effort and precision and detail and almost like rationality at the very least, like, almost like a scientific level intensity to make this thing on the, on the other end when review, like on the other side of the curtain seems like magic.

[David Senra]

This is why I always say, like, Jeff Bezos deserves all the money that he has. It's because, like, he made a magic button. Like, what is that magic button? All the complexity behind it. This is the physical world, man.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And so it's literally insane.

[David Senra]

So it's getting more insane. So a friend of mine. So when I travel, if I don't have a bunch of books with me, I read entire books on my. The Kindle app on my iPhone, which is actually an idea I got from Elon. And the problem is, is you're tempted to, like, jump off the Kindle app and go to, like, something stupid like Tick Tock or Twitter. And so my friend's like, just get a Kindle paperweight. And he showed me his. This is like this past weekend. I was like, oh, this is really cool. Yeah, they're like, you know, like the size of my hand or something like that. But it's only. You can only read on it. It's like, you know, it's. It's. They've been. I had the first Kindle when it first came out. It was huge. It's complicated. Old buttons, they've removed everything. Now it's much more simple. But the point being is like, oh, great, okay, I ordered it right away. It came to my house four hours later.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's. It's.

[David Senra]

It's.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's really one of those things where you're just like. And we're used to this, by the way. One of the. One of the really fascinating things about technology, broadly, is the goal posts. Like, if you showed somebody Google Translate in 1980, they would think you had created, like, AGI.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And now we're just. Now with ChatGPT 5. It's two weeks old, and I'm just kind of like, bored.

[David Senra]

This is. This is also why I'm anti, like, redlining information fast or, like, I'm gonna listen to all your podcasts on 3x speed or whatever case. It's like, that's the point. You need to sit with it longer. I had this thought where I was like, what a miraculous piece of technology a book is, because I'm sitting here with Dyson's paperback book that was published in, like, 2003. It's one of the first editions. It's like that book in my hand is 20 years old. It's marked up, but I'm looking at these squiggly lines written on a piece of paper that somehow put go directly into my brain from another human. And I'm able to learn from his collective experience. And it's light And I could take it with me. And it's good on my eyes. Like, it's perfect. That's why it's lasted. How long have books been around? 5,000 years. It's very hard to improve. In fact, Bezos talked about that when he was building the Kindle. You can't out book a book, so you got to come from a completely different angle than just, like, I'm going to make a slightly better book. But even that, I just thought it was a beautiful experience of just sitting there with this, staring at the page and sitting with the ideas. Not like, okay, I'm on page 25. Let me get to 26. Let me get to 27. I'm done. There's not a test at the end. That's not the point. It's understanding. And then understanding what you said earlier, it's like, it's not then. If you understand, then you'd actually change your behavior.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

One of your favorite lines is from Michael Jordan. They're deceiving themselves about what the game requires. You say, also, entrepreneurship is an internal thing. What are most founders deceiving themselves about?

[David Senra]

The founders that I study on the podcast, almost nothing. Because they're the best. Like, right.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I think I'm more asking about people towards the beginning of their journey or people today.

[David Senra]

Yeah. One thing I would say, is it tied. You said something earlier about, like, having a fundamental, like, understanding of yourself. And I think people don't. I think it's very hard to fight against, like, your innate nature. And sometimes you do it because you want money or you want prestige, you want status, or you're doing all kinds of things. Like, you just. Your best bet is just, like, follow your natural curiosity. And we have a hard time doing that because we're worried about the perceptions of other people. That's what I meant. Yeah, I just, like, I just don't think about what other people. I just don't think about other people. I don't know how to describe this. And I had to, like, zoom out. Like, we were walking through the park on the way here, and, like, I had that moment where I, like, zoom out and realize there's other people around me. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. Like, people. All these people in the park are choosing different ways to live their life. Like, I'm choosing to read books and make podcasts. This guy's dancing with no shirt on. This guy's begging for money. This fat guy's eating an ice cream cone. Like, all this, like, literally the conversation you just had it's like, oh, like we're all choosing. And then I go back into, like, work on founders, read more books, make more podcasts, find more listeners. Like, the stuff that I like, I just naturally think about. But though the answer I would have to your question is something that I believe that I cannot prove. Is that the reason that the best entrepreneurs, almost without a doubt make, have their best work decades into their career, obviously they have more experience, they have more. They have a better network, they have more money, they have more resources. But I also think they just have a fundamental, a much deeper and fundamental understanding of who they are. And they built a business to reflect that. That business is completely natural to them. And so that's, I think, what a lot of the younger founders are missing. And I listen, I don't. Rule number two in the center family household is mind your own business. Okay? So I don't care what other people do, but sometimes I forget that the audience. So a friend of mine runs a fund and his thesis on the fund is backing second time founders. And I don't do many speaking gigs. It has to be like, convenient for me or we have to be a friend or something like that. This one was in Miami, so I could drive to it. I'm friends with them, that's fine. And so, like, I just went up on stage and I just like, talked about how stupid it is to sell your company and that, like when people walk up to me now and they're like, I sold my company, I'm like, yeah, sorry to hear that. Like, and then they're just like, he's like, you know who's in the audience? Like, every single person in the audience.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's the whole premise. The whole premise.

[David Senra]

And I saw one of these guys I was in the audience at this wedding I was at last weekend, and he's like, some. This is funny though. This is like two years, a year and a half has passed. He's like, something you said that day is like, really rattled my mind. And it was this idea. It was just like, I think it was a mistake because now he's got a job and he's really an entrepreneur, right? And so, like, how much would you have to pay to be demoted to employee? Like, there's no money. I'm not working for you for any money. I don't care what the money is. I'm not working for you. And now he can't come up with a better idea. So he. His mistake that he made was that he sold his best idea. I'm not saying you should never sell your company. Yeah. If you should always work on your best idea and if you have a better idea, then sell the one and you can get a big bag of money. Good. I like wealth capitalists as they come, by the way.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

There's a lot of great entrepreneurs who had an early win and it's part of what like the Patrick and John Collison agrees of all of this. Their early win is actually what enabled them. Maybe not. Maybe they could have done it anyway. But like there's a lot of cases where that's actually so. Yeah.

[David Senra]

Yeah. If you're broke as it's gonna be a lot harder. And you know, so my point is like, I think they're, they're interested the mistake like younger founders make or I guess earlier it's like they're interested in a startup. I'm not interested in startup. I'm interested in your last business. Yeah. I want to know, is this your last business? Because then we can have really interesting conversations because I know you're going to be doing it forever. You're going to be investing things at compound. We just, we speak the same language. We're like this like start scale, sell scale. And I know we're doing this in a VC's office, for God's sake. And this is our entire business. And like, good. They can make money and they love it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Who like to invest in businesses.

[David Senra]

Yeah.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And hold it forever to do whatever

[David Senra]

is interesting to you. It's just like that's not interesting to me. And the, and if you really want to be great at what you do, then like, you have to hurt. You have to try to get to your last business as much as fast as possible because the longer you're in it, like, think about what Michael Dell can explain to you. Having 41 years of business, reinventing his business and, and surfing how many different technological waves. You know, like, think about what's in that guy's head. Like, I hung out with his son Zach the night before a few nights ago.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Right?

[David Senra]

Yeah. And he has this thing where, you know, he calls it dad Terminal. And you know, instead of like Bloomberg Terminal, you, you log into Bloomberg Terminal, you type in a question, you get some kind of answer query that you're looking for. He's like, no, I just call my dad. It's like, hey, I'm having a supply chain issue. Do you have any advice? Yeah, I'm pretty sure Michael Dell knows a thing or two about supply chains. And yeah, that's, that's the stuff that's interesting to me. And I think a lot of people, you know, there wasn't anything such thing as an entrepreneurship industry where there is now and there's all these things. So what I would. What I would argue is, like, when you're talking to somebody, you're building a relationship with them, you're seeking their advice. You really have to think about their incentives. What did Charlie Munger say? Incentives rule everything around you. Like he says, I'm in the top five. I've been in the top five percent of my age cohort my entire life. Understanding the power of incentives and that a year goes by that I don't underestimate the power of incentives. And so I think there's just a lot of people, like playing house is what Paul Graham says. It's like they think of founders being glamorous or rich or famous, and they're just doing it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

Because of all the other stuff where I like people that love the activity for the sake of itself. Steve Jobs was going to make. So Steve Jobs was going to make insanely great products. Whether he was rich or not. He was compelled to do that. That's the stuff that's very fascinating to me. So I would just be like, hey, why don't you just do a business based on something that. Around an activity that you love for the sake of itself? It could be building supply chain. You could be obsessed with supply chain management. You could be obsessed with investing. He could be obsessed with reading. I remember telling one of my oldest friends when I started the podcast, I think I'm gonna, like, like, make a living reading books. And they thought it was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard. And then like, six years later, like, I and we. They would, like, name the restaurant we were at and where we were standing when this happened. He's like, I can't believe you did this. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. It's like, because that's. Think about how much effort and time I put into that because I loved the activity. For the sake of itself.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I have a bunch of questions we can take quickly, like a sort of lightning round. They don't have to be instant. But

[David Senra]

you.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I think it's. In the Nolan episode, you talked about, like, how instinct kept coming around, coming up across all these founders. Why do you think instinct and like, intuition is such a common theme?

[David Senra]

I don't know about instinct. I. I think intuition. So my, My. He just died, unfortunately. So I was going to say my. My favorite living novelist was Cormac McCarthy. And he didn't give many interviews throughout his entire life, but he did give a few, and he was remarkably consistent about what he said. So when he writes Blood Meridian, which is a masterpiece, it's gonna be probably read 100 years from now, right? He's like, why? I actually didn't write it. It's, like, just came from my subconscious, and I let that channel open, and then my fingers just were tied directly to my subconscious, and out this story came, right? And the he said something was fascinating. I'd never heard before that, you know, people underestimate or under prioritize, like, their subconscious mind, and that their subconscious is actually older than language. And so, like, it's survived as we evolved for a reason. Like, it's very powerful. We definitely is. Yeah. Wise. We don't understand it. And so my life is entirely based on intuition. When I was growing up, I thought it was like, the value was in, like, being analytical and, like, numbers based. And I was like, oh, that's. I don't want to live that way. It's, like, not interesting to me. And so everything I do is, like, me spending time with you. When somebody just asked me before I came over, I was like, how do you, like, do you say yes to every podcast? That I should be honest? Like, of course not. But, like, I like Jackson. There's just something about, like, why? I don't know. And I also think there's weird things where, like, we keep, like, we almost ran into each other in Japan. We're, like, on this side of the wall. You didn't know it was in New York. We're on the same street. Like, the universe is, like, putting us together without us planning. Yeah. And I was just like, my intuition says, like, I like this guy. And I like. I. I'm a fan of your podcasts. Like, most podcasts suck. They're terrible. And I think you're good at it and you're good early, which is a sign that, like, you know, there's something here. And even, like, when people ask, like, how do you pick what to include in the podcast? Like, what do you underline? It's all intuition. I don't. I don't think there's a line that. That again, I mentioned Steph Curry a few times. I guess he's on my mind for some reason, but it's probably because this clip I keep watching over and over again, they're like, you know, what do you think when you shoot? And he goes, absolutely nothing. Because it's like, just like the practice Over. Over time. And then, you know, to me, it's almost like a form of intuition. It's like there's just, like, the subconscious. It's like, it's not. I'm sitting here. Let me pause, let me think. Oh, where's my elbow? It's like, what I'm doing. It's like, I don't know why I got to this page. There's what, 500 words on a single piece of normal book? I don't know what the number is. Those seven jump out to me, so I'm going to underline them. And then when I read them 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times before I record the podcast, do I still feel that way? Then that should be in there. Like, I don't. There is no other justification than that. And I would just say, like, if you think about Steve Jobs, obviously one of the greatest entrepreneurs, he just says that intuition has been far more important to his career than intellectual. And as he got older, he was able to trust his intuition more and more. And that's really the only thing that guides me. I go off like, it sounds so. Ten years ago, David, like, he would hear me say this. It's like, what's wrong with you? Sounds so willy foo foo. But it's just like I go off intuition vibes. Like, how does this. There's some kind of intelligence that I can't even comprehend that I trust and has guided me to this point. I should keep doing that.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, yeah. You and I think our conversation with Patrick talked about being easy to interface with. How have you gotten better at that? Or have you gotten better at that?

[David Senra]

Yeah. So this is really, again, another. Another idea from Steve Jobs where easy to interface with, easy to understand. I think ideas and products are. If they're easy to understand, they're easy to spread. So that's what's important. That's why he's like, go back to the clear communication. You understand. Like, I tend to think in maxims, and I spent a lot of time, like, distilling all the ideas down to maximums. You know, that Chris Williamson episode, Like, I wrote that outline. It was just, I think, 15 or 17 maxims, and I have, I think 150 in, like, a notebook from that. I learned from, like, just a podcast. And then you just distill them down so you can remember them, and then you carry them with you and then you.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Creating internal memes.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And then you can apply them as these situations come up. And so this is something that Daniel Eric told me. He's again, he's ridiculous. Somehow somebody that, you know, I think the only people that have more paid subscribers than they, they do than Spotify does is Netflix. And so it's, it's crazy. He's built a business. He has and he's still, to me, vastly under it. Underrated.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And is also, I mean, Gustav as well.

[David Senra]

He's a killer.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Oh my gosh, that guy.

[David Senra]

I spent two and a half, two hours, two and a half hours in Stockholm recent, like two months ago talking to him. So there are whole teams like that. Yeah. And so the reason I bring that up is because he's also very wise and he's like just, he's like a sniper. He like completely identifies what you're doing wrong. Or like, he's just like, he inputs ideas into my head probably better than almost anybody else because there's not many of them, but they're very impactful. And he's just very wise for being so young.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Cool.

[David Senra]

You know, we're like similar age and he's just like way wiser than I am. And he said something to me. He's like, you're really easy to understand, so therefore you're easy to help. And I think it's very powerful because he's like you. Just like you, only I know what you care about, so.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Oh my gosh. That is one of the most profoundly important ideas, at least in the modern world, where there's just so much noise.

[David Senra]

Yes.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Oh my gosh, that's powerful.

[David Senra]

And so I think I, I easy to interface with. I don't know if I would even. I'm definitely easy to interface with because, like, I think my intensity is like

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

a lot of fighting or, or infectious.

[David Senra]

Oh, I think it's. Some people don't like, like scary to some people. Like, so like, sure. So like, passion is definitely infectious. Right? Enthusiasm, I'm definitely enthusiastic. But I also like, very stubborn and like very hard to deal with. Like, this is why I say, like, I'm sure hinky loves me but also hates me at the same time. Or he's just like very frustrating to deal with this pig headed mule of a person. You know, the guy that will literally like, I'll have experiences, you'll give me an idea like, this is the stupidest thing ever heard. I'm not doing it. And like, I'm very direct, I don't have a filter. And then six months later, like, I have this great idea and you're like, that was my idea that I told you about six months ago.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

I'm sure that so.

[David Senra]

But the good news is, like, you kind of know where you. Like, I don't want to act. I don't have, like, the social graces. And so, like, there's no, like, hidden motive with me.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And I think so. That's like, that may be easy interface with, but I am difficult to deal with. I don't really. Like, we were just at this wedding and one of my close friends was there. He's like, yeah, David. He said, we're in a group and I forgot what they were deciding what to do or something. And they're like, yeah. But David doesn't roll with the punches very easily. I'm just very rigid in how I want to spend my time and kind of ruthless about that, where it's just like, no, I don't want to go spend six hours on a tour or something. I'd rather read or whatever the case is. But, yeah, I just think distilling down what's important to you in an easy to remember phrase and then repeating that to people will actually, like, be a benefit, because then you'll have something like that where it's like, oh, you're easy to understand, so therefore you're easy to help. And then if you're marketing product, like, if your idea is easy to understand, it's easy to spread.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Is there a biography that you think most founders would benefit from reading in full?

[David Senra]

Yeah. James Dyson's against the odds. He wrote two. Wrote one when he's 45 and one when he's 69. I'm doing. I'm. I've just reread both of them. I'm packaging them in one episode, and that's why the episode's late. Because, like, the outline is. I'm like wrestling an alligator here. It's, like, way too much information. It's like, I'm. I could make an episode today, and it's going to be complicated and annoying to me when I listen to it a year from now. So I'm like, editing, editing, editing. Which we never went back to how they're getting simpler because it's something I learned from Walt Disney that you need to. Animation at that time was so expensive that he said, you're forced to edit before you create. So we can go there in one second. What was the thread that we were just on?

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

James Dyson.

[David Senra]

Oh, so James. So they're both good. The second one is called Invention. A Life of Learning Through Failure. And you have a much wiser version of him. But the reason. The first one is because if you excellence is a capacity, take pain and if you want to be excellent, like, you're going to have to endure through periods of pain. I have a good friend of mine, he's running a massively successful company. He's like, I cannot believe this. Our first, you know, five years, we've had no problems and we just had this conversation, oh, that's not going to stay that way. Like you are going to one day and many times, especially because you want to do this for your rest of your life, you're going to experience a hell of a lot of pain. So, like, there's no such thing as like, oh, it's just we started and everything. This is not going to happen. So the reason that book is so important is because it's 90% of it is just him failing year after year after year and him refusing to give up. He's funny as hell in the book. He has a distinct point of view. He has a very unique. I think that's what I think that what I'm cutting away with the episode is not the story of even the perseverance through struggle, because I think I've covered that on episode 25. Episode 200, 205, 300. Those are the four episodes I've done on Dyson so far. He's got a very unique philosophy on company building that I think is important to put out there. The way I would describe this is anti business billionaires. And maybe it's anti business as usual billionaires, but I think anti business billionaires is better like branding. And it's people that are so obsessed with the quality of the products that they're making and they retain control. So that is all they focus on. And then they make sure that they retain control of their company over the long term. So they build the world's best products and they never relinquish control to other people and they wind up with the money anyways.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, the business and the money are just gas for the engine.

[David Senra]

But it's like if you can make a product, if you can make the iPhone, you're going to be rich. If you can make Patagonia start with climbing equipment and then clothing, you are going to be rich. If you can make the Dyson vacuum cleaner, you are going to rich. It's. That's why they're anti business, because it's like they're not doing them for financial reasons. They're not like, okay, this is what the quarter was. How do we enhance shareholder value by 10% over the year? They don't it's quality over everything. I think that's a very important. Again, I just told you. It's like, I didn't even know for years how many people were listening to the podcast. I just tried to make the best possible thing, and I still do that. Like, I'm very glad that the Elon episode is, you know, it's going to be the most Ellen episode of Founders by far. I don't. Like, I'm happy with that. It's exciting for a day, but it's just like, I'm gonna go back and do it again and again, and now I'm back struggling with the next one that's fucking. Cause that one was, like, five days late.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, you're Sisyphus.

[David Senra]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it was five days late. And, like, I went on tpbn, and I was like, it wasn't sleeping. I looked like shit. And I'm close friends with John and Jordi, and they're like, what is going on? I was like, I can't find this Elon episode. I can't find it. It's here, but I can't.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yes, I can't find it. I know it's here. It's in the marble.

[David Senra]

Yes, I have to.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Marble.

[David Senra]

Yes, I have to find him. And so I'm going through the exact same thing. And I'll go through it again. Again. But the fact that it was painful means it'll most likely be better. So in the back of raising canes in their kitchen that the customers never see, there's a great sign here that there's a great sign that says, never sacrifice quality for speed. And they're fast. He knows. He's like, if you walk up there, it's 2 minutes and 29 seconds. And, like. Like, he has everything dialed in, but he's like, not at the expense of quality. Once we. It's almost like the Elon algorithm where you automate at the end, you add the speed after, but you not first. The quality's gotta be there. And so that's like, you know, it's a handful of words that have really, like, helped me through the last few weeks where it's just like, no one's gonna remember if the episode was five days late. They'll remember if it's good or not.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Walt Disney edit before you make animation.

[David Senra]

So this is how I'm doing. So basically, what I used to do is I go. I go through. I highlight or, excuse me, underline with, like, a ruler. Like, I don't do anything sloppy. So it's like a ruler and a pen. And then I have post it notes and I write down like whatever comes to mind. It's like, oh, like that's like Henry Ford said that, something similar. So like, that's how my brain works. And I. I'll go through the entire book, right? This was my process for a long time. And then I would go through and read it again. So by the time I sit down and record it, I'd be like three or four times. And then I used to just move through the book in chronological order and then I get to the end and I'm done, Right. And that's that. That was the episode.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And so what I started doing is instead taking out. And then the first edit before I did was like sometimes I would be in the middle of an episode and it'd get to a page and I'd read that like, oh, that's actually now with the flow of the conversation and where it's gone and what I've already said, I don't need that, so I'm just gonna skip that. So that was like editing. I don't have to edit that out later. I just edit it. It never even. You never hear it into a microphone. And so what I've been doing now is this is ruthlessly editing where I take all of my notes and highlights, right? I put them into a single document and usually they're like a numbered document, right? So like really great episodes tend to have, you know, maybe like 50 things that I want to talk to you about. Like the Michael Ferrero episode that I'm really proud of. It's on this guy that owns Farrow Chocolate. It's privately held company worth $40 billion owned by a single person. Today. It's probably worth, you know, he died, so it's probably worth, I don't know, $80 billion. Still owned by his son or maybe his two sons. And so that's like. That had 65, because they're numbered. That had 65 things I wanted to talk about. And it was like perfect length. I think it was one of the best thing to give you indication where I am in that Dyson edit. I'm at like 180. And so I'm in big trouble. And so basically what I go now I'm going back and doing is just like, how am I? Like, what. What do I actually want the episode to be about? And so for Elon, it was like, I don't want to talk about his dad. I don't want to talk about politics. I don't want to talk about Twitter. I want to talk about the fact that this guy has the best goddamn company building principles you ever come across.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

By the way, you are not tracing the arc of the biography. Yeah, like, that is not what you're.

[David Senra]

No, I'm not. No, I'm not summarizing. Yes, books that can be summarized are books that are not worth reading. Biographies are worth reading. They nourish your soul. You're an idiot if you're not reading biographies. If all the smartest, most productive people in the world all have doing this activity, what are you going to do? Are you going to go scroll like you're insane for not doing this? And you don't have to read, you know, a ton, but you should find, you might. Maybe it's the same one or a handful that you read over and over again, but you definitely should be doing this. So I think it's one of the highest value activities in the world for sure. Outside of, you know, spending time with your family, taking care of your health, and working on, you know, hopefully something that's making the world like, somebody else's life better. So now essentially what I do is just. It's just. It's just a ruthless edit before I even record. And it's just fucking chopping and chopping and chopping. So like the, the Elon episode, the reading was done. The reading took like four days. The editing of the outline took like five.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

And you had presumably like 180.

[David Senra]

No less than that. But just like you're. You're not only you're cutting and you're cutting entire parts off, then you're cutting individual words in each sentence. You're rephrasing them so that. So it sounds better. So, yeah, so it's not just like, it's not just taking out individual, like, lines or bullet points and it's like rewriting them, then it's like organizing them where they should go together. It's like, oh, wait, I kind of already said that. That's like another way to say the similar idea. So, like, you can just cut that and it's just literally like cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. It's the exact same idea that we talked about earlier. It's like it takes a lot longer to write a shorter letter than it takes a longer one. And then I was just talking to Andrew Human about this because I'm very interested in, like, the process behind, like, how you make it. And he was showing me, like, he even, like, videotapes himself by himself, talking out the ideas out loud. I go, how often do you talk to yourself? He goes, all the time. I go, I do too. Like, I talk out loud constantly. And then so sometimes it's like me hearing the idea, it's like, does that make sense? Do I actually understand what I'm saying? I don't even know if I understand it. And then what I'll do is, like, I will start. Start saying the outline out loud to see how it sounds. Like I don't have to read the whole thing.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yep.

[David Senra]

And you just get to the point where it's like, okay, there's nothing. There's nothing else to cut here. Like, this is it. And then once you sit down, you record it. And then after. After you hear it, you'll edit even more.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Yeah, yeah. You have to feel it. You have to feel it in your hands almost. Or feel it on your tongue. I guess in this case.

[David Senra]

Well, it's funny you use the word feel it because I started hand editing the transcripts at the same time I edit, which is a bad idea. I should do it after I edit.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

But I do it as I edit.

[David Senra]

That's why I describe it so it takes so forever. That's. That's the way I describe it. It's like I can, like, feel it. This is like, literally, like, feel. Because it's a.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It's your hand on the stove. It's Elon's thing. It's the same thing.

[David Senra]

It's like a. It's weird because I would never do, like, another all digital thing again. Like, if I did anything else, I'd have to do something physical. Yeah. Like, I think there's just something magical about that.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

There's a tighter feedback loop.

[David Senra]

It just. Not even the female. It's just, like, more interesting. And there's a magic in the fact that.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Talk about durability.

[David Senra]

Yeah, there's just a magic in the fact that, like, you can talk into a microphone and anybody over the world can hear it. And that's on demand. It's just a miracle to it. But I just. It's so disassociating. It's like, hard. Where, like, I actually. I have no other way to describe it other than, like, I feel. By editing the transcript, I feel it, I touch it. Like, this is. I feel the product that I'm making. In a way. When I wasn't doing this, I just didn't have that, like, sensation.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Most of my listeners are in technology in some way or another. You study a wide range of people. Some of the great technologists but lots of other people, including people make chicken tenders and vacuums. What do you think?

[David Senra]

Vacuums. Technology, though.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's true.

[David Senra]

The world's first dual cyclonic vacuum. You try to do that. Not software that's patented.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Do you think there's anything. And you at least spend enough time around some tech people to have a sense. Do you think there's anything that tech people in particular could learn from the other types of entrepreneurs you study?

[David Senra]

I. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't make a distinction between them. So. But like, you know, Andrew Carnegie, he was a tech company founder, Bessemer Steel. Like, it was a better way to do. Like, what is technology? I think the best definition of technology is in zero to one. It's just a better way to do something. Right. It's like one of the reasons that arbitrary distinction. Yeah. One of the reasons that that book was so well received is because it's easy to understand, easy to spread. Right. So he distilled this down to like. He's like, what is actual technology? It's just a better. There's a great line in the book Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant where, like, all new technology is just new means to do old ends.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Something like that.

[David Senra]

Yeah, something like that. Or new ends to old means or whatever the term is. Andrew Carnegie was a technologist. Johnny Rockefeller, obviously, oil was technology. Did an episode on Charles Goodyear. Vulcanized rubber. That's the technology. Railroads, that was the technology of the day. Telegraphs, ac, electricity. These are all. Now, they're not thought of as technology, but they were technology in their day, and you argued that they still are. So there's just a lot of lessons you can draw from them. So, okay, if you're in tech and you're not studying history, then why did Bezos get so many ideas? Go Listen to the TED talk that Bezos has from 25 years ago, and he says the electricity metaphor for the Internet, this is after. Remember when the Internet was happening, the first boom in the late 90s, they called it an Internet gold rush. And he's like, that's a really shitty metaphor. And he thought of the Internet as a thin, horizontal enabling layer, much more akin to electricity than to a gold rush. And he goes, it's the same thing. So these thin, horizontal enabling layers, once they're invented, they go everywhere. Electricity, once it was invented, it went everywhere. The Internet was invented, it went everywhere. He just gave a talk with Aaron Ross Sorkin at Dealbook Summit. I did an Episode on the interview, because it was so good. I think it's called rare Jeff Bezos interview. I don't know the episode number for that one. And he's like, AI is the same thing. It's a thin, horizontal enabling layer, and it will go everywhere. And he's like, the analogy for AI is fucking electricity. And so the way I would say is like, the one. The one critique I would have is, like, I talked to some young technology founders. They don't know anything that went before them.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That's.

[David Senra]

And so there's a old line from, like, Cicero. It's like, the man that doesn't understand what happened before he lived goes through life like a baby. Do you really want to go through life like a baby? Like, and then you have to ask yourself, like, why does Steve Jobs have historical knowledge? He would do a product launch on the Macintosh and talk about how the Macintosh is similar to the work that Alexander Graham Bell was doing in the 1870s. How did he know that? Why did he know that? Why was Jeff Bezos study setting a Kyo Morita? Why are all these people. The James Dyson books I'm reading out, there's like 17 engineers and designers that he's talking about, from the guy that started Honda, the guy who designed the Mini to design, the guy that built one of the biggest ships in the world in the 1800s. And railroads, they're grading. They use the entire world as their classroom. And if you just study, you can't build upon work that you didn't know exist. So you should have that base of knowledge and then try to build upon it and then let it influence and enhance the work that you're already doing.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

You talk a lot about. You brought it up with Jeremy earlier. You talk a lot about sort of looking for role models and studying a lot of these people. And one thing that you. You brought up plenty is that many of them actually had kind of terrible personal lives. There's a line from Hans Zimmer that you brought up in the Nolan episode. He says, once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore. You look at yourself through their eyes as someone who is as fascinated by and in many ways pursuing greatness as you are. I think you clearly are attuned to this as well. And so I'm curious what, at least today, what you hope your kids someday say about you.

[David Senra]

There should be. I will give you this clip we should like. If you want to insert it, it's up to you. It's probably the Best thing that I've heard all year. So this guy named Steveninella, and he's started out as a writer. Now he's got the biggest, like, outdoor, like, podcast in the world. He does this great, like, series called Meat Eater on Netflix. But he fundamentally, I think, thinks about as, like, writer. He's like a real soulful dude. He's kind of like, you know, and he's one of these people where it's like, we talked about passion and is infectious energy and enthusiasm and infectious. I would say the most interesting people are the most interested. I am not interested in. I don't camp. I don't hunt. I think nature's beautiful, but I'm probably never going to do those things. And yet this is what Steve's dedicating his life to. And he's so passionate about it that I would listen to this guy read the phone book. He's just like, I find him very, very fascinating. And I'm, like, learning about all this stuff that I may never even experience because he's just his. You can feel his love in it. And what. You know, obviously, hunting is like a dying is like, not growing very fast, I don't think. And, like, he grew up. His. His dad's generations did it if you live certain places in America. And his dad taught him how to do it, and now he's trying to do that for his own kids. And he's always asked the question, he's just like, well, well, what if your kids don't like hunting, like, as much as you do? And he's like, well, few people do. And he's just like, I don't. You know, I don't care if they don't hunt, if they never hunt. But what I'm trying to show them is, like, what it means to go through life with, like, a passion and to, like, chase after something.

[Steven Rinella]

Most important things you can demonstrate to your kids is, like, demonstrate to them what it's like to be passionate about something. If all you ever can bring to the table for your kids is just, like, this kind of, like, ambivalence, passivity. Well, I guess we'll go down to the park, because what else are you supposed to do with a kid later on when they're grown up and they're thinking about, like, what is their impression about how you engage with the world? Even if my kids. And they probably won't. I don't know. I remember someone saying, like, what if your kids don't like to hunt and fish as much as you do? I'M like, not many people do, man. Whatever that happens to them if they don't go at all, they will. When they're. When I'm dead and they're sitting around with their spouses and they're, like, goofing on their dad, remembering their dad. They're going to remember someone who was on it. Do you know what I mean? Who was, like, driving hard. And they maybe won't like it, but they'll. Later, they'll laugh about it, and they'll probably begrudgingly. They'll be like, yeah, I learned some from that. And it'll be that, like, what you're gonna do, like, be tenacious to me, like, getting them into the outdoors, it's like, selfish, because that's what I want to do. But it's also. It's also like, well, I'm showing them what it's like to care about something, what it's like to try to excel at, what it's like to try to, like, be in it. What it's like to try to do hard little goals, you know? And it's not just to make them be outdoors people. It's just to have them see that, like, that you can.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

That.

[Steven Rinella]

That it's good to go through life fired up, you know, to be like, this is. We're going, man. You know, it's windy, it's cold. Let's go.

[David Senra]

And he's just like, they're gonna see you after I'm long dead, right? What it means to go through life, you know, chasing after something. And they're going to say, like, I learned a lot from my dad.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Saw it up close.

[David Senra]

Yeah. From his passion, the fact that he didn't. He wasn't apathetic throughout life. This is my issue with, you know, the reason I don't really pay attention to most of the world is because, like, most people don't have a mission. Most people are just average by default. I'm going to do an episode of Nick Saban because he's got all these great quotes on this where he's just like, you know, mediocre people hate higher achievers, and high achievers hate mediocre people. And it's normal to be mediocre. You shouldn't be mad at those people. Like, it's abnormal what you're trying to do. And so what he's trying to show his kids, like, it doesn't matter what you direct this to. You can direct it to whatever you want. He's directing it to hunting and fishing and developing TV and Making podcasts. I'm obviously developing into reading and making podcasts. It's like, I don't care what my kids do, but they're gonna damn sure say, like, my dad chased after something. And so, like, this is our. My daughter's old enough and she's like written me notes and we've seen stuff with this where I'm just really impressed with the person she is. I took her out of school and took her with me to go meet. And I got to keep doing this to some of these founders because I'm like, listen, you get a chance to meet this world famous guy that's worth. It's not even a money thing, but multi deca billionaires that for some reason give me hours and hours of their time and you get to be there. You're going to learn way More from 2 hours this person than all year at school. And one of the things I'm most proud of is like, she's like, you're extremely driven and obviously like, you know what you want to do. And I also did something with her that I thought was really important because you can never really tell what your kids actually understand. Like 13 years old. But I took her to where. So when my dad got out of jail and I was small, we had to live in this, like, really shitty place in Hialeah, which is like the Cuban part of Miami. My dad's a Cuban immigrant. He was born in Cuba. And my dad had a wife and two kids, but no money and no prospects. And we're living behind a really shitty grocery store in a duplex in a two bedroom with my grandmother, his mom, my cousin, who was developmentally disabled because her mom, who's my dad's sister, did a bunch of drugs when she was in the womb. And so she's like, mentally retarded and like, would bang her head on the. On the floor and like, drool and like, that kind of shit. So that her and the grandmother's in one room and then the other room is me, my mom and my older brother, and the house is still there. And like, my daughter goes to private school. She lives in an insane neighborhood. She has tutors, she has everything. And so her understanding that she's like, oh, she again, she doesn't curse, but she understands, like, you as my father are very different from everybody else in your family because she knows she's met everybody else in the family. She saw where, like, stuff I was doing when I was around your age, like, very different experience. And she also sees me getting up Every day. She told my wife the other day, because even like when we travel together, like I'm obviously working all the time and she's, and she's like, oh, daddy doesn't stop. And so I think like that's the most important thing. I don't care what they direct it at. I would just try to pick a mission. And a mission in life should be in service of other people. Money comes naturally as a result of service. So like what I think is the saddest thing is like the, the, the, the progeny of or descendants of like really wealthy people kind of, I'm kind of anti dynasty in most case because this is like they, they dedicate their lives to like drugs and sex and like, think about what Churchill wrote to his son. Like, you're living a perfectly useful, useless existence. I still love you, but I like you less, even more every, like every year, you know, because he's like, you should be getting, getting up and getting after it. And so, yeah, I don't care what they dedicated to. I'm not, I'm not going to try to guide them in any case. Like, oh, you should be a doctor. You should be this, like, I don't know, I, I wouldn't have listened to direction. There's no way anybody could have told me what to do. I will, you know, I, I have resources now. I have a network.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

Find your thing by exposure. Help. Let me help you find.

[David Senra]

Yeah, I will not like give you any knowledge I have. I will, you know, I mean, you have to understand, like, I'm obviously very extreme. Like I would quote Cormac McCarthy's the Road every night. So every night when my daughter and I still do this, I haven't done this in a long time, but I would go around making sure all the doors and all the windows are locked and then take a night tour. And then I'd quote a line from Cormac McCarthy's book the Road, which is supposed to be a novel on like a post apocalyptic thriller. That's not what it is about a relationship between a father and son. That's what it is. And there's a line in there where he tells his son that I was sent by God, I was sent here by God to protect you, and I will kill anybody that harms you. That's what I would say before my daughter goes to bed, for her to understand you were never, can never be in trouble with me. I don't care if you're like, you're drunk at a party or you're in danger. I'm not like you. Just call me because I. You will not understand how much I love you until you have your own kids. You say I love you to me, you don't even know what that means. It's like more than anybody else is like the unconditional love that I have for you. I love you more than you love yourself and I will do that until you die. And so, and I would say also say that to her when I drop her off at school.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

It says a lot that loving her that much. The thing maybe you want most for her outside of safety and health and these things is to find something that she can really pour herself into one too.

[David Senra]

Yeah. And if that fits her personality type too. Because I under, like, Sam Walton had a great line in his biography. He's like, listen, I didn't push my kids too hard because I understood that I was a fairly overactive fellow. That's the line. Well, that's a hell of an understatement. Sam. You built like, if all of his wealth wasn't given away before, it was valuable because he gave the stock in Walmart before it increased in value and it was concentrating. One person, I think combined their net worth right now is like 432 billion came from that guy. So like, if they want to be a normal person with a 9 to 5 and they just want to barbecue on the weekends and, you know, I, I don't. I want them to do whatever they want to do, but I do want them to see an example. It's like there is something that's different, that is, you know, a life of passion and a life that's like, can be painful but unbelievably fulfilling. This is what I love about these stories that they say so well. And James Dyson's biography, the one I mentioned earlier, does the best job of this. It's like, yeah, it's difficult, but it feels so good. It's the best feeling in the world. I was just talking to Patrick and Jeremy before I came over here about like, what is actually what do I think about what's important. And I think for me is like making something that's truly excellent, that makes somebody else's life better. That is a feeling better than anything else I've ever experienced. I love it.

[Patrick O'Shaughnessy]

David Senra, thank you very much.

[David Senra]

Thanks for inviting me.