Greg Isenberg (2:37)

I went to go Visit Boston. And I saw someone wearing a T shirt that says that said I pod, therefore I am. So I said, hey, where did you get that T shirt?

Nathan Latka (2:53)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (2:53)

And they said, at podcamp. And I said, what's podcamp? And they said, have you ever heard of podcasts? And I was like, yeah, I have, because I had been working on the ipod video, actually. So do you remember the ipod video?

Nathan Latka (3:11)

No.

Greg Isenberg (3:14)

The ipod came out. This is not that of an interesting story, but the ipod came out and Steve Jobs had this idea that wouldn't it be cool if you can play videos on your ipod?

Nathan Latka (3:25)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (3:26)

So they built it, but they didn't have any content. And I was working on a website called startcooking.com, which was animations for learning how to cook.

Nathan Latka (3:35)

Yeah, so.

Greg Isenberg (3:36)

So Start Cooking was a partner to the ipod video.

Nathan Latka (3:39)

Oh, wow.

Greg Isenberg (3:39)

Yeah. Anyways, she had a front row seat for. So I was like, bro, I know about podcasts.

Nathan Latka (3:44)

But you weren't listening to them then.

Greg Isenberg (3:46)

I just knew that it is.

Nathan Latka (3:47)

What would you listen to back then? It'd be Dan Carlin.

Greg Isenberg (3:49)

Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Latka (3:51)

One of the early ones I got into too were Bill Burr, the comedian. So he was so early that the way he recorded his podcast is you would call a phone number and you would leave a voicemail and there's a service that changed the voicemail into an MP3 player. They would take that MP3 and then upload it for you. So he would literally. His early podcast, he's just calling a number, he just rambling into a voicemail and that's converted into a podcast. It's incredible.

Greg Isenberg (4:18)

It is incredible.

Nathan Latka (4:19)

I really do feel it's an absolute miracle. And I still feel this to this day where it's like, it doesn't matter what in the world that you're interested in, you can find. We were just talking about before we started recording about, like, what the hell do you do? Like you. I have two kids, like, what is schooling and what is education in the world of ChatGPT? Like, my 12 year old daughter is just using ChatGPT for everything and the school is just acting like this doesn't exist. And the idea is like, what I try to teach her is like, obviously like she's kind of forced to listen to podcasts in the car and audiobooks. And my thing with her is like, I don't care what you're interested in. It's like anything you're interested in, just search the directory. You're going to find some absolute nuts that has dedicated their entire lives to teaching about whatever subject matter you're into. And they've done it in many cases for a decade, half a decade. There's hundreds of hours you can consume all on demand, and you can go as deep as you want. That is a miracle. I remember my mom taking me and dropping me off at the public library when I was a kid because we didn't have any money. I remember going to Barnes and Nobles and sitting there because they would let you read. It's like, you know, hard it was to get information as like some young, you know, smart kid, which, you know, my daughter definitely is. It's like you, you don't even know what you have that's in front of you. And then if you podcast isn't the way you learn, that's fine. Read. Reading is not the way you learn. Watch videos. It's like there's world class education everywhere. It's just. It's just absolutely crazy. So, yeah, I still, to this day don't ever, like, take it for granted. And I still can't believe that anybody, like, no one gave you permission to start this podcast. You're just like, I'm going to start it one day, you're going to upload it, and then people all over the world get to enjoy it. That's fucking crazy.

Greg Isenberg (5:59)

One of the we were talking before about, you know, I started this podcast with Sahil Bloom and it was, I love Sahil.

Nathan Latka (6:06)

He's a friend of mine.

Greg Isenberg (6:06)

Yeah, I see him every time he comes to Miami and he. We named it where it happens. Horrible name, by the way. Horrible name. Because I call it a tofu name.

Nathan Latka (6:17)

Why? What's a tofu name?

Greg Isenberg (6:18)

Tofu name is Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co founders, they're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing, how do you build an audience, how do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas, or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to StartupEmpire Co in the description. Like, tofu doesn't really have a Taste. It takes on the sauce of whatever it is. You know, tofu name is something that isn't memorable in people's brains. Like, it's just. But, you know, when you're talking about your daughter, how, you know, go search for, you know, if she's into design.

Nathan Latka (7:28)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (7:29)

Or she's into animation, she can just go search animation. So I renamed this podcast to the Startup Ideas Podcast. The thesis was that people are searching for startup ideas. Since doing that, the pod has, I think, like 90 days after I renamed it, I think the pod grew like 3x.

Nathan Latka (7:51)

I think I read every single biography I can find on Larry Ellison, and I find him an infinitely fascinating person. In fact, a friend of mine was at dinner with Elon Musk a few months ago in Palm beach right before the election. And everybody at dinner, you can imagine, was just lighting Elon up with questions. And he was asked, like, who's his mentor, who he turns to for advice? And he's like, the person I ask, I admire the most. He used different words. He's like, Larry Ellison. He's just like. He's like, larry Ellison is fucking awesome. I don't know. Did you see the leaked text messages that. Between Larry Ellison and Elon that came out recently?

Greg Isenberg (8:22)

I saw it, but I didn't go.

Nathan Latka (8:24)

Deep in it, so I didn't either. I just saw one that was hilarious where Elon texts him. He's like, hey, are you in for. I'm raising money to buy. To buy Twitter. You in? He's like, yeah, of course. He's like, I'm not gonna hold you to anything, Larry, but, like, do you know the amount? And he's like, I don't know, a billion, whatever you want. And Elon's like, I appreciate it, but, like, I think you should at least do 2 billion. And I think Larry responds, okay, it's exciting, whatever. And then it's like the thumbs up emoji. It's like, I'm just gonna raise 2 billion from a friend of mine through text message.

Greg Isenberg (8:52)

Which, by the way, sorry to interrupt.

Nathan Latka (8:53)

Oh, good.

Greg Isenberg (8:54)

The thumbs up emoji is the official emoji of dads.

Nathan Latka (8:58)

Yeah, I use it all the time.

Greg Isenberg (9:00)

You know, I don't know what it is about dads, but it's like, you can write to your dad, I love you.

Nathan Latka (9:06)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (9:06)

And they'll respond with a thumbs up or like, hey, you know, I think that there's, you know, someone's robbing my house. And it's like, thumbs up, Larry Ellison. Hell, yeah.

Nathan Latka (9:20)

So in one of Larry's biographies. He talks about the fact that he thinks, especially for technology companies, that names are actually really important. And I always think about this. So it was funny, you know, because I knew that the podcast about startup ideas. And so I was talking to a friend on my drive over here. I was like, well, it's. I'm. It's very nice for Greg to invite me on, but, like, my startup idea is like, whatever you're doing, if you love it, just do it until you die. So, like, don't start anything new. Just like, keep doing what you're doing forever. Like, if you think about the people I study, it's like they just find something and they usually do it for four decades. But I do think the startup idea I would have is, like, around podcasts. Like, I think a lot about, like, the open space in podcasting. My friend Eric Gliman, who's the co founder and CEO of Ramp, I just gave him this book that a friend of mine gave me. I gave me extra copies for. It's the guy that. It's the guy that did like, what's the chicken company? It's like Tyson Chicken. I'm going to pull up this. This excerpt because I think it's really important.

Greg Isenberg (10:20)

Jamie, pull up.

Nathan Latka (10:22)

Yeah. Do we have. Do we have a Jamie here? There's a. I'll find out the exact excerpt. And I'm just gonna read this to you because I think it's a good way to find startup ideas. Cause it's like, what do you think about as soon as your eyes open and what are you thinking about before you go to bed? The name of the book is called Tough Man Tender Chicken. Can you tell me the company that he started? Tough Man Tender Chicken is the book. So it's Purdue.

Greg Isenberg (10:55)

Yeah.

Nathan Latka (10:55)

Okay. So there's a great line that my friend Eric tweeted out. I wanna read to you real quick. And they wanted to start a line. They wanna start selling hot dogs. And so he's asked, he's like, frank, how's the chicken hot dog thing going? And he goes, it's too early to tell. The guy goes, what do you mean? He goes, I haven't been able to find my Mr. Hot Dog. And he goes, what do you mean you're Mr. Hot Dog? And this guy that's writing the book, Tough Man Tender Chicken, in response, he. He goes, there's a guy who goes to bed thinking about chicken hot dogs. And then the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up is chicken hot dogs. And so his whole point Is like, you have to find your chicken hot dog, your hot dog guy, right? And so for my version, it's like podcasts. And so when I think of, like, new podcasts to start one, I actually think you should spend a lot of time, based on the story you just said, thinking about the goddamn name. Right? I lucked into founders. I think it's a very good name. I think you're not going to click on founders. Like, I wonder what this is about. You have an idea what it's about, and then the first five words in the description gives you the value proposition, which is learn from history's greatest entrepreneur. The two other names that I heard that I think are even better than that are Ben Wilson's how to Take over the World. Right. The value prop is in the title. And then Patrick o' Shaughnessy's Invest, like the best. And I think naming, like, think about what you. What you want the podcast to be, but also thinking about the name is really, really important because you're just infinitely scrolling. And I think there's like a lot of, like, if you think about how much information that we're all reading or consuming a different, different on a daily basis, like, how much time are you giving into every single tweet or every single video? It's like seconds. And so the name has to, like, jump out at you where it's like, startup ideas. I wonder what that's about. I fucking know what it's about. It's about startup ideas, how to find them, to generate them, to maybe hear another guest sharing one that you could possibly do. So I actually think that's really smart.

Greg Isenberg (12:47)

The way people think is they bucket people, ideas, businesses, Right. So when you just gotta dumb it down, right? So I think naming comes the best names, with respect to podcasting, I think has to dumb it down. I'm a big believer in that right now.

Nathan Latka (13:06)

Yeah. And the ones we were talking about earlier, how I don't think about its media, I think about. It's like, it's a way to be your authentic self. I think it's podcasting is building relationships at scale. And I think there's. There's something to the fact that, you know, most of the biggest podcasts in the world, they don't have a name other than the person's name. Like, that's a lot harder to grow, especially if you're not famous or if you're not known. But once you have that audience, like, they're really attached to you. I remember I had dinner with Daniel Ek the founder of Spotify, who's been like a massive supporter and absolutely love. And we were talking about. It was like over a four hour conversation. He was telling me the history of Spotify. Daniel's fucking brilliant, as you can imagine, super polite, but also you could tell that he's really intense. And he was talking about how one of the most stressful times of building Spotify is when that controversy, they signed Rogan to this massive deal. He's making this huge bet on podcasting and there's this huge cancellation campaign that happens in Rogan's for a few weeks. And Daniel's like, you know, very stressed about this. And he's like. And then his subscriber count over the few weeks went up. He added 2 million new subscribers. And I was like, of course that happened. Because if you listen to Rogan or anybody else and you've heard them taught him talk for a thousand his case, I bet you he's a large percentage of his fans that heard him speak for over a thousand hours. There's nothing that a two minute clip on the mainstream media can tell you about the guy that you've heard talk for a thousand hours. There's no form of education that could take place. You know who he is because you've heard him speak for so long. So I think there's actually this. I don't think it was intentional, but this wisdom of just naming these shows after yourself. Again, accruing that audience is a lot harder, but once you get it, it's like they're there for you, you know, for a very long time, if not forever.

Greg Isenberg (14:57)

What else have you learned from Daniel Ek? Because I feel like he's a legend, no question, but maybe it's in my bubble. I don't see him in the limelight very much.

Nathan Latka (15:09)

I talked about this where it's very bizarre. Like, okay, I almost said Shopify. They always do the joke that Spotify and Shopify and then they kind of look alike. You have a founder and CEO who's been running the company for 18 years, right? It's worth over $100 billion. He's only 41 or something like that. And yet he's still somehow underrated. I just think every single person. So I get to meet a lot of remarkable people as a result of the podcast, and almost all of them. It's not the same personality type, but it's the same kind of archetype over and over again. They're just unbelievably intense and dedicated to their work. And so that said I just left the conversation with just like. I thought I was pretty intense, and I thought I was working a lot, and I'm like, he makes me look like nothing. So it's like I just left there. It's, like, with a lot of motivation. Right before we started recording, you had another guest here that was really big on Tony Robbins and spending a lot of money to spend time with him. And I know some people.

Greg Isenberg (16:15)

$250,000.

Nathan Latka (16:17)

Oh, yeah.

Greg Isenberg (16:17)

Per year.

Nathan Latka (16:18)

Well, like, I know some people could be like, oh, that's bullshit, or whatever the case is. But this idea, I don't think. I think. And the way somebody makes you feel and the energy transfer that occurs between two people is, like, actually underrated. And this isn't some, like, willy foo foo nonsense shit. You go back and read old biographies of Warren Buffett, and way before he was known, there was this thing where, like, there would be, like, small groups that get together every year. And I remember in one of the books was this guy's wife that was, like, bitching at him because he had spent, like, fifteen hundred dollars to travel to, like, Omaha. And this is, you know, probably in the 70s or something, like a long time ago. So even 15 hours, even a lot more money, even back then. And his wife's like, why are you spending all this money? He's like. And his response was great. He goes, because he gives me energy. And again, like, I think that is a very real thing. Our friend, our mutual friend George Mack has this idea of. He calls it sofa friends and treadmill friends. He's like, pay attention to the energy that you get when you're interacting with your friends. Some people are like, oh, my God, go home. You need to, like, lay into the sofa and just, like, recover. And other people, you want to go home, and you want to run on the treadmill. You want to, like, run through walls. And I think being around, like, a Warren Buffet, Tony Robbins, I felt that way when I had dinner with Daniel Ek. I feel that way when I get to meet a lot of these people. It's like, oh, there's, like, levels to this. And I have so much more to learn and so much more room for improvement. And it just fucking excited me.

Greg Isenberg (17:36)

I think the same. The same is true. Sofa versus treadmill. With respect to cities, right? Like, there's some cities, New York City, for example. Treadmill city. Yes, Definition of treadmill city. And some cities that are sofa cities or towns.

Nathan Latka (17:52)

Yeah. I would get out of sofa towns as much as possible. I almost. I mean, I think Miami beach, to some degree, is a. Is a sofa town. Especially because I don't party. Like, it's like, I don't want to go out. Like, I just want to work. I want to spend time. I want to take care of my health, spend time. My family and work. That's all I'm interested in. And I almost left before COVID and then after Covid, we had a huge influx of, like, way more talented people. A lot of them have since returned. They went back to LA or San Francisco or New York. But the people that stayed were good enough. Where the network is like, oh, I'd stay here just for the network alone. But I go to New York every month. I. I spend a lot of time in California. Like, I would. I just talked to. There's this really talented guy. Do you know Blake Robbins? Yeah. He was at Benchmark. He's really good at, like, finding these, like, obscure, like, people on the Internet. And he put me and my friend Patrick onto this guy named Maxim. And I think he found him when he only had like a couple thousand followers or something like that. Maxim now has like a million followers. It's by Maximize on.

Greg Isenberg (18:55)

Yeah, I follow him.

Nathan Latka (18:56)

Yeah, he's the best. I got to spend time with him in New York City because he said the only podcast he listens to is founders. And so if you look at Maximus videos, a lot of them are ideas from the podcast. I was like, dude, can you make some videos for me, please?

Greg Isenberg (19:08)

Seriously?

Nathan Latka (19:09)

He's going to. But he was like, like, it's a me. You can look at his work. And like, this guy's a fucking world class talent. And we wind up spending a few hours together in New York. And he was thinking about, he's like, should I move from England? And I was like, how old are you? He's like 23. You any kids? No. You married? He's like, no. I go, you better get your ass over here immediately. Like, absolutely. To be super talented. 23 years old, no attachments. I even told him like, hey, like, I will guarantee you a contract for two years to cover your living expenses if you just make videos for us and you want to build your own company or whatever the case is, like, don't worry about that. And I don't even think he needs to do that because I think his side business is successful enough that he doesn't need that, but for that, it's like, no brainer.

Greg Isenberg (19:50)

Okay. But, you know, he's world class at what he does, no question.

Nathan Latka (19:54)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (19:55)

For someone who wants to be world Class. Who has the ambition to be someone like that? Should they? And they're 23 years old.

Nathan Latka (20:04)

I would still move. Now, that's different from what I did. I literally just like locked myself in a room. Like, you know the Kanye line where it's like, travel yourself in this three summer, making five beats a day for three summers. Like, that is how you get good at anything. This is so in the background, I'm obviously kind of a psycho. Where in the background during work, I just play the Last Dance, that Michael Jordan documentary, over and over again. So my wife walked. And then sometimes I'll switch it up, it'll be like, Defiant Ones is another really great documentary because you just see the work ethic of a Jimmy iovine, of a Dr. Dre, of a Bruce Springsteen. Anybody that's good at anything, it just takes so much time. And that's why, like I always say, if you want to be world class, anything, like, you really don't have that much competition. Like the very top, you know, half of a percentile, you know, is very competitive. But the average person on the streets is never even going to attempt it. And even if they do attempt, they quit at everything. Where, like, Maxim had, he had his huge growth. He's like, no matter what, I have to make a video a day. And he just made a video about the fact that he made a video a day. And he shows his follower count and all the crazy shit that happened to him when he just committed to the daily practice of getting better at his craft. So even for him, even if before he was good, I would still get around and try to get access to these people. And if you can't access them. So, like I started the very first episode of founders in September 2016 was Ashley Vance's book on Elon Musk. This is the very first one. And part of that was because I was watching this guy named Kevin Rose. You remember Dave? Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (21:44)

He's been on the pod.

Nathan Latka (21:45)

Oh, has he? Okay, so Kevin Rose had like one of this world class video podcast in 2012 called Foundation. Yeah, like, the quality of the shoot was incredible. The guests were fucking incredible. Like, I thought he was really good at it. And he interviews Elon. When they're on the Tesla, they're at Tesla, I think the only Tesla on the market. They stopped making the Roadster. And I think they had just started producing the Model S. I want to.

Greg Isenberg (22:15)

Give a little bit of context. So, yeah, he. It wasn't just exceptional quality. It was exceptional quality, when the quality.

Nathan Latka (22:27)

Was low, was non existent.

Greg Isenberg (22:29)

Non existent. So I remember watching some of those first episodes and being like, this is better. This is the best content I've ever seen.

Nathan Latka (22:39)

It was fucking incredible. Even the website, because I lived on YouTube or I don't even know if he was uploading YouTube. He had to be uploading YouTube. But like the website, it was like Foundation KR or something. It was like. It was like. The website was incredible. I wonder like the alternate reality where he never stopped, kept doing it, you know, like, it's just. He'd have a decade of practice before not realizing how valuable a great podcast can be.

Greg Isenberg (23:05)

You know, it's interesting. Cause now he's back to podcasting.

Nathan Latka (23:07)

Yeah, but he jumped around a lot, which is like podcast compound. You know what I mean? Like, if you look at.

Greg Isenberg (23:13)

Go ahead. No, it just, you know, it goes back to like the bucketing thing. Right? Like people. The new generation doesn't bucket. Kevin Rose as a podcaster.

Nathan Latka (23:23)

Yeah. But if he kept going, they would have. So I think there's another conversation we can have too. About one of the most important ideas I've come across in the books is like the importance of being easy to interface with. Which I think Steve Jobs is world class at. They're all really good at. But he was probably the best there was. But the reason I started with the Ashley Vance biography of Elon, this goes back to Maxim, or any really talented person that's got to figure out what to do is like, if you can't act, if you can't move to a world class city, you don't have any money or you don't have a network. Just like Kevin asked. Fucking Elon. He's just like, you moved from Canada, you didn't know anybody in California. Like, who was your mentor? He's like, I didn't have a mentor. He goes, I read. He's like, did you read business books to learn how to build your fucking first company? He's like, no, I don't read business books. I read biographies. And this is what he says, I read biographies and autobiographies. I think they're helpful. And then he goes on and lists, you know, Ben Franklin, every single person ever built the rocket, Henry Ford, Nicola Tesla, all these other people. And I was like. And he goes, I think that's a way to find mentors in historical context. That's the sentence that Elon said. I was like, oh, that's a really good idea. And I was like, I should read more biographies. And so I started reading biographies. These things are pretty fucking great. They're very useful. You can download. Toby Luque has this great line where he says that biographies, or books in general are the closest thing you'll come to finding a cheat code in real life. Because you can download the entire learnings of somebody's, you know, multi decade long career in a few hours. It's exactly what Elon was doing. And then when you read more biographies, you realize that every person that lived a life so remarkable, somebody wrote a book about them all. Read biographies. It's like this weird ongoing chain of, hey, let's use learning from history as a form of leverage. Find ideas from somebody else's experience I can use in my life to kind of get me to where I want to go. So, yeah, that's what I would do. It's like, if I was a young kid, I'd tell this to my own daughter. My son's too young for this. It's just like, I probably bought her, I don't fucking know, 30, 40 of these little young biographies. It's called Little people, Big Dreams. They're in every single bookstore that I've ever gone into. And it's every single person. Taylor Swift, Coco Chanel, Walt Disney, everybody. And it's a biography that now she's getting a little too old for them. But when she was young, I was just having her read all these biographies. You could do whatever you want to do.

Greg Isenberg (25:34)

Startup idea for you.

Nathan Latka (25:35)

Startup idea. Well, it's funny, we talked about Founders for Kids, so we talked about Sam Poirier before. That's literally like, the reason I knew he would text back fast is cause we're working on a project for Founders for Kids. It's actually gonna be like, more like comic book esque. Because Sam's life was changed because when he was a young boy, his dad would read him like kid versions of biographies about great Frenchmen. He was very specific. They had to be great people.

Greg Isenberg (26:05)

I'm not surprised. Why am I not surpr.

Nathan Latka (26:09)

That were either living in France or living in Montreal, which I thought was funny. He's like. And it inspired him to become an entrepreneur and then led him to deal fellowship and kind of can change the trajectory of a young kid's life. And I was like, I don't know if it's probably a shit business, but it's a great service to the world, which would be really cool. So the first one we're working on, we'll see if it's good, is a kid's version of Rockefeller's biography.

Greg Isenberg (26:34)

I'm surprised it's not a kid's version of Celine Dion, but I'm sure that's coming up soon.

Nathan Latka (26:40)

Yeah, I don't. You got to figure out who else we're going to do. No. No one, Sam. It'd probably be Napoleon.

Greg Isenberg (26:45)

It's true.

Nathan Latka (26:47)

So do you want to talk podcast startup ideas?

Greg Isenberg (26:50)

I actually now I just feel like I'm not reading enough biographies. Like, how many?

Nathan Latka (26:55)

Probably not.

Greg Isenberg (26:56)

How many biographies should I be reading on a yearly basis?

Nathan Latka (27:00)

As many as you can. Like, I don't know what your day to day life is. Do you like audiobooks? How do you like to read?

Greg Isenberg (27:06)

I'm an audiobook guy.

Nathan Latka (27:07)

Yeah. So I feel like there's no reason you can't read. Listen to one audiobook a week.

Greg Isenberg (27:12)

And by the way, I made a controversial tweet that got a lot of people angry. I said, what did I say?

Nathan Latka (27:19)

Audiobooks, not reading.

Greg Isenberg (27:20)

What did I say, Jordan? Do you remember Jamie? I know I said, basically the worst form of reading is ebooks.

Nathan Latka (27:31)

I agree with that.

Greg Isenberg (27:33)

And then in a reply, I was like, for me, the best thing is physical books is the best. Followed by audiobooks followed by ebooks.

Nathan Latka (27:45)

Yeah, I have a rational love affair with physical books. My workflow for the podcast is literally twice as long because I insist on reading physical books. And if I read like, Kindle versions. Also, I read a lot of old books that there are no audio bul. There is nothing besides the physical book. There's no Kindle, there's no audio nothing. But it's the. The way of reading I fell in love with. And like, for me, I actually think there's an important part where, like, I feel we live in a society where it's like, over everything is, like, over optimized and like, way too much prioritization spent on, like, efficiency and, like, speeding things up, where I actually think spending longer with the material makes my output better. Like, instead of I'm not trying to take what's going to take me 40 hours. Usually for every one hour of audio that I produce, it takes about 40 hours of reading. And research people are like, well, you can use summaries. You can do all this other stuff and make it to 20. It's like, yeah, but then it'll be more than half worse because it's the fact I spend so much time with the material that then I can then turn around and teach it or explain it in a useful way to somebody else. So I have this line I stole from Jerry Seinfeld that the hard way is the right way and So I use that for like, you know, I sit there when I. When you look at how I go through these books, looks like I'm doing goddamn arts and crafts. Like I sit down with a pen, a ruler, a post it note, scissors. Like I'm literally doing like an art project into these books. But I think forcing myself to slow down and spend more time with the material and then doing that every day for eight years actually makes that, that, that compounds and doing it, you don't see what you miss out by taking the shorter route and I think actually taking a longer time. But I'm one of these people. It's just like I have I think 600 physical books in my house, but I also have 300 on the Kindle. I'll read whatever, I don't care. Actually, still another idea from Elon where he said that he read entire books because he travels so much on the Kindle app, on the iPhone. I was like, that can't work. And I started using it. I was like, that shit works. Like, especially when you're traveling, it's like so much easier than carrying a book with you or whatever. But I also think that I'm one of the rare people think audio listening audiobook is reading people. Like, it's not reading.

Greg Isenberg (29:51)

It's like it is.

Nathan Latka (29:52)

It's the same thing. It's getting the ideas from the book into your head. I don't care how you do it. But yeah, I mean, if you can't do Biography a week, do one a month. Like it depends on what your schedule is and what, like what you have going on. But think about, it's like the average person, young person, like all the people in the room, you guys probably are exercising five hours a week. Even if it's like walking, running, lifting weights, whatever you're doing. Okay, five hours of audiobook, 20 hours. There's two books a month right there. And then 24 this year, you know, just 48 the next year. Go back. And also I think it's a smart idea to go back and like re listen and reread things. Especially like we forget that we forget. And so like, I'll go and there's some books. James Dyson's autobiography is a great example. I've read it four times. It's episode 25, 200, 205 and 300.

Greg Isenberg (30:39)

And when you say read it, you mean physical book.

Nathan Latka (30:41)

Yes. Yeah, read it. And then every time I'm like, I forgot that part or like something has happened in my life or I learned something else. That then changes the meaning or my interpretation of the words on the page. So I'm a huge proponent of that. But yeah, I think everybody, like, I am an evangelist for reading biographies. I just think it's so fucking smart.

Greg Isenberg (30:59)

And it sounds like physical books are preferred.

Nathan Latka (31:03)

Have you ever seen what my library looks like?

Greg Isenberg (31:05)

No.

Nathan Latka (31:05)

Let me show it to you. Let me show it to you right now. So Patrick tweeted that out. It's in order by episode number, starting in the top left hand corner. So everywhere where my hand is before that I've read for the podcast. Everything after that is yet to be read. But it's not like the unread books are not in order. I don't know what I'm going to read next week until I just pick it up that week.

Greg Isenberg (31:29)

I went for dinner recently, very well known entrepreneur and we were talking about reading books and he was saying, and this is a common, very, very common feedback about reading physical books. I don't have the attention span.

Nathan Latka (31:45)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (31:47)

What advice do you have for people who want to get into physical books, but it's hard for them to focus and they don't have, you know, it sounds like this is you have an innate ability and you just kind of love these books. Like, what advice do you have for people who aren't born with this?

Nathan Latka (32:04)

I don't, I don't know because like, I, I didn't understand that. I just have like a shockingly long attention span. And I think having a long attention span is going to be more valuable in the world because I think, I do think because of the tools we use every day, it's like shrinking. There's a great line that Charlie Munger said where he's just like, I didn't succeed because of intelligence. Seated because I had a long attention span. And I'm working on an episode on Jensen Huang right now. And what's remarkable is this guy's been in love with Nvidia and building Nvidia and running Nvidia for three decades and he's more interested in it today than he's ever been. It's like that's the definition of a long attention span. I get invited sometimes to give these talks at these conferences and most of them especially have to travel because I have no kids, because I have young kids. I was like, no, like, I don't care what the price is. Like, it's like missing one day of my four year old's life right now is like missing like a hundred days, you know, because these early years are so Important. So I'm very, like, hesitant to do that. But I've done a few locally there in Miami. Like, oh, fuck it, I can just like drive over here. I'll do it. I'll do it for free. I don't even care. And one of the funny ones was there. It was a conference run by a friend of mine who I really like, and it's for post exit founders. And essentially my talk was just like, when people walk up to me and they're like, or text me or call me, like, I sold my company. I always say the same thing. Sorry to hear that. Your goal, especially if it's not your life's work, I think your goal in life is to find what you are uniquely created to do. And it should be an active service for other human beings. One of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship comes from Henry Ford where he said, money comes naturally as a result of service.

Greg Isenberg (33:52)

Okay.

Nathan Latka (33:52)

What I can't stand is entrepreneurs that are like, I'll get emails, are like, hey, I want to build like $100 billion company. Or there's like some kind of fucking number attached. And then I'll ask them, like, who are your entrepreneur heroes? And like Steve Jobs or whatever. It's like, you think Steve Jobs started Apple because he thought he's going to build $3 trillion company? It's like you're. Your motivation's wrong for this. And so what I think is happening is like, people have much shorter attention spans. And you're also reflecting that in the fact that there is now such thing as an entrepreneurial industry, which did not exist when we were younger. Right. This is something that's relatively new. Most of it is funded, obviously. Like you look at the incentive structure in all forms of media, most of it's funded from these. Like, if you think about all the media that founders are consuming, it's like created by and funded by VCs. It's really weird. It's fucking weird to me. And so, like, I don't have advice other than if you have a short attention span that probably is a good indicator that you're not. You haven't found what you should be working on. Because I can sit there and read a fascinating. Like I just told you, I finished reading before we started recording. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I was talking about on this phone on the way over. No, I think I said this to you. I just finished reading there's a secret biography written by Michael Moritz of Don Valentine that's passed around in Sequoia And Sequoia founders have it too. I'll tell you what, it's only like, I sat there and read the whole fucking thing. Like, I had to. It was so entertaining. I didn't want to go to sleep. I wasn't like, oh, let me read one page. Let me go scroll Twitter. Let me read one page. Go to scroll TikTok. It's like, this shit is fucking incredible. And I think that a lot of the best founders, I don't think Steve Jobs, when he was working at Apple, was, you know, worried about what else was going on other than what he was working on, an Apple. So I think the anecdote to a short attention span is like, literally find, like, taking some time to yourself and figure out, like, what is authentic to you, what is natural to you, what are you actually interested in and trying to do? Munger's advice is like, what are you intensely interested in? And then do that for money. And at the beginning, you might not make any money, but anything that you're interested in, there's probably millions of people that are interested in that as well. Like, I remember when I first started the podcast, people were like, you can't do an entrepreneurship podcast. This is 2016. First they said, it's too late to do a podcast, which is fucking hilarious. And so I was like, I don't think that's true. They're like, why? I go, there's 750,000 podcasts in the Apple directory right now. 250,000 of them are active. Humans quit at everything all the time. And even you fast forward to now. I'm close to the human lab guys. They just sent me data. Even now, that's, what, eight years later, there's like, only, like, 333,000, 330,000 podcasts that have uploaded a new episode in the last month. That is tiny. But back then, they're like, one, it's too late. You've already missed the boat. Two, entrepreneurship is a niche subject. And I'm like, that just doesn't make any sense to me. I go, how many people own businesses?

Greg Isenberg (36:47)

Right?

Nathan Latka (36:48)

There's a business owner to me, entrepreneur, like, business owners. So my idea was like, how many people own a business, speak English, and are connected to the Internet, and you run the numbers. It's like 140 million people. Like, you grab less than 1% of them, and you have a phenomenally successful business. Like, this is not a niche subject. And now it turns out, like, if you look at what 11 Labs is doing, what Spotify is doing, what YouTube's doing my. My calculation was way off because it's not just English speaking people at the platform level. They're going to. You're gonna be in Brazil, you're gonna love founders. It's gonna know that you speak Portuguese and you're gonna hear me speaking fucking Portuguese. Yeah. So I don't have a good answer other than like, find something where you don't have a short attention span. You ever seen a fucking kid play video games? Do they do it for two minutes and put it down? No, they play forever. They just haven't found something they're actually interested in 100%.

Greg Isenberg (37:42)

It reminds me, the too late piece is a really, really big insight. I remember in 2000, it must have been 2005, 2006, I went to my first, first and last actually ever fish show. The van, dude.

Nathan Latka (38:00)

I thought it was actually like fishing.

Greg Isenberg (38:02)

No.

Nathan Latka (38:03)

Fish is a wildly profitable. There's a fascinating business story too.

Greg Isenberg (38:07)

Fascinating business. But I show up and I get to the campsite because that's how it works. You don't just get a hotel or something. There's a campsite near the events in Burlington, Vermont around there. And I meet this woman, she's like, hey, you're here for the fish show. And she slaps my hand. I said, yeah. She goes, well, it's too late. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, you should have come in. 98 fish is like over. You missed the good years. It's done. And I remember thinking to myself, I actually felt bad. Like, here I am. I traveled the distance, spent all this money. I convinced my friend to come with me and I'm seeing like a diluted version of this band. This sucks. Go to the show. I had an incredible time. My friend had an incredible time. And the next day I run into the same lady. What'd you think of the show? Wasn't it amazing? She's like, ah, no, it was horrible. And fast forward to like today now. I hear stories that like that era of like the early to mid 2000s in fish was like the best possible era. I'm sure that lady today was like, that show was amazing.

Nathan Latka (39:32)

I think there's an interesting. The fish story brought something else to mind where I'm always interested in. Especially for the people that build businesses that are essentially complete opposite of the way that everybody else in their industry does. I think there's a lot of insight there. There's two examples I remember reading. There's this blog that was run by this guy in San Francisco, who actually just started following on Twitter. Turns out he listens to founders. It's called Priceonomics. Do you remember this?

Greg Isenberg (39:58)

Sounds familiar.

Nathan Latka (39:59)

They would publish their blog in a book and one of the blogs they would do is they'd find these like weird, you know, things about economics. And one was the Economics of Fish, where it's like they don't have any top 10 hits. You know, they make almost. I think they gave away a lot of their music for free before people were doing that, yet they were making like 140 million a year in tour revenue at like a decent margin, like unbelievable amount of money. And so I just did an episode last year, maybe a year and a half ago on Jimmy Buffett, and I think it's right after he died. And the reason I had the idea to do that is because if you look, there's like these lists they make of, you know, top wealthiest people in whatever industry. And I remember looking one time at the top wealthiest musicians. And it's everybody you would expect, right? Like, you know, everybody on the list. And then you get down here, it's like number seven. It's like Jimmy Buffett, the fuck is like not like Rihanna has hits, you know, you two or whoever. Like all these people, Bruce Springsteen, like, it makes perfect sense why they're on this list. How the hell did Jimmy Buffett get on the list? So that made it me, like really fascinating. Is very similar situation to Fish, where it's like essentially he started like what I would consider like a traveling cult. And the way he was able to compound his. He made his money on tour, right? So if you're on tour, it doesn't matter where you chart on the Billboard, just matters. Like when you come to Austin, Texas in May every year, can you sell the amount of tickets you want? And then he was doing it so long that his audience would compound. So you'd be going there now and then 10 years from now you're bringing your 10 year old with you and then your 10 year old is bringing, you know, now your 10 year old's 25 and going without you or whatever the case is. And there was also a very fascinating way that he would make money is essentially he made the vast majority of his money through licensing, right? And so as his audience aged and they were, you know, they were just like him. He was in the Keys, he liked to drink all the time, they liked to party, they don't like to work. Except he had a fierce work ethic, right? So everybody else in his audience didn't like to work. He worked all the time. And so he winds up making like 70. I forgot the numbers are in the podcast. It's like you fast forward 15, 20 years again. Don't, you know, find what you're meant to do? And then just time carries most of the weight. Like, do not interrupt the compounding. Time carries most of the weight that's so important. And all these entrepreneurs are jumping around, are just missing all the monies in the future. So you fast forward 15, 20 years. He's making like 75 million a year in his pocket, just from the license agreements, right? Not including the equity value. So when he passed away, he gave his. The equity he had in his company to his wife. I think was like another $1.7 billion. It was 1.7 billion equity, but the guy's been pocketing 50 million plus year after year for a decade and a half. And I just love that idea. It's like he saw what everybody else said. He's like, well, I can't make money like Bono. I can't make money like Bruce Springsteen. I can't make money like Rihanna. I can do it my way. The biggest thing is it's never like what you do, it's how you do it. You can find people that make a ton of money in music, ton of money in podcasting, ton of money in media, ton of money in clothing, ton of whatever it is, ton of money realtors. There's like all these different ways to make money. It's like not what you do, it's how you do it. And I'm fascinated by the people that are just like, find their own weird route in and just again, compound it for decades like he did. It's a fascinating story. And the idea of fish. I read that blog post probably when you went to that fucking show, like 2005, we're talking about 20 years later. Are they still touring?

Greg Isenberg (43:27)

They're still touring.

Nathan Latka (43:27)

Oh, my God.

Greg Isenberg (43:28)

Yeah.

Nathan Latka (43:28)

So, like, how much money have they made since then? They probably been touring for what, 40 years. I just watched the Defiant Ones, which is one of my, arguably my all time favorite documentary, and there's footage in there. I was thinking about this, and I might do an episode of Bruce Springsteen because of that. And they're showing footage when he's 1975, he's doing born to Run, and he has this crazy work ethic that he's still known to this day. And I'm like, wait a minute, 75. Like, I'm bad at math, but that. I think that's like 50 years ago. It's like the guy just sold 80,000 tickets in Italy like a few weeks ago, a few months ago. It's incredible. It's incredible.

Greg Isenberg (44:05)

All these people that you study, you know, all these people you've mentioned, like Elon Musk and Bezos and Bruce Springsteen, all these people, they have one thing in common. I think they have extremely high work ethic. And I'm noticing even on your can says discipline equals freedom, right?

Nathan Latka (44:27)

Yeah.

Greg Isenberg (44:30)

When I meet a lot of these people and I learn about their work ethic, I find that they have very successful businesses but very unsuccessful personal lives. How do you think about the balance between discipline equals freedom and, and work ethic and having a balanced life?

Nathan Latka (44:55)

Yeah, I mean they're not gonna write, they don't write biographies of people that have balanced life. So it's like there is a selection bias here. So I can tell you my stated preference and then if you look at my revealed preference, it's probably different. So I would always said in many cases the people I read about, it's like cautionary tales because. Exactly what you said. They pursue professional achievement to the detriment of every single else. Health, family, spouses, kids, friendships. Like it can get pretty crazy. And there's one guy named Ed thorpe. It's episode 222 of founders. And he's to me, the one that came the closest to like master Life. So. And I think the subtitle of that episode is like my personal blueprint. Because he made, he built like he first of all lived a remarkable life. He's still alive to this day. He's in like 91. He was in phenomenal shape, still super intelligent. He started the first quantitative hedge fund, built the world's first wearable computer with Claude Shannon, you know. You ever played blackjack?

Greg Isenberg (45:52)

Yeah.

Nathan Latka (45:53)

You know how counting cards works?

Greg Isenberg (45:55)

I mean, I don't count cards.

Nathan Latka (45:56)

No, but you've heard of it.

Greg Isenberg (45:57)

I know how it works.

Nathan Latka (45:58)

That system was invented by Ed Thorpe in the 60s. And then he wrote a book about the system called Beat the Dealer. He sold millions of copies. He was the first LP in Citadel. A 19 year old Ken Griffin comes to Ed Thorpe's house after Ed closed his hedge fund, gives him all the files, Is like this is what we were doing. And then at the beginning of Citadel, Ken runs that playbook. Remarkable story. Winds up having dinner with a 37 year old Warren Buffett. They walk outside the car, he tells his wife, hey, I think that guy's going to be the richest person in the World one day winds up starting to acquire Berkshire Hathaway stock at $600 a share or something back then. So phenomenal shape, great father. His kids still love him to this day. His wife passed away from cancer, like, 10 years ago. They were happily married forever. Once he had more money he could spend, he stopped trading money for time. Even though he was really good at making money, he's like, what the hell am I going to do with it anyways? Very rare to have, like, that pullback and that discipline to have it. So if you look at that, it's like he had a balance of work that just filled him. Intellectually stimulating. He enjoyed it. Made his unborn great grandkids rich, Phenomenal husband, phenomenal father, top 1% in physical shape, and also fucking had fun and lived an adventure. In fact, Nassim Taleb wrote the foreword of that book, and they said that his autobiography reads like a thriller, because it does. It's like that guy had an incredible life story. So that is my stated preference. If you look at how I spend my time, it's like almost all on the podcast. Like, my kids were just on winter break, right? And I was like, oh, they're not in school. I'm gonna spend a ton of time with them. And I got to. Last night was the last night of the break, and I was like, oh, I fucked this up. Like, I spent. We went on walks, took her to the park, went out to eat, did all this other stuff, went to the beach, but I did not spend nearly. It's been half the time I thought I was gonna spend with them. So, yeah, I don't. I just think there's a certain personality type that reappears over and over again, and that personality type seems to find they're addicted to what they do. They love what they do, and they have a hard time putting barriers on it. I just mentioned the Defiant Ones. If you watch part four of the Defiant Ones, Jimmy Iovine's wife and Dr. Dre's wife were like, it's really hard to be married to people like this. Jimmy was already divorced by the time the documentary ends. Dr. Is like, oh, you know, we're not. We kind of made it out. And then you find out documentary ends, and they get divorced a few years later. So I. Obviously, there's no solution to this, because every single person I study is smarter, more productive than me, and they didn't figure it out.

Greg Isenberg (48:38)

Dude, how the hell do you remember everything? You know, you're like, I notice you. Your memory is absolutely insane.

Nathan Latka (48:47)

No, it's not though. So, okay, for me, it's maddening repetition.

Greg Isenberg (48:52)

Like, how do I do what you do? That's what I wanna do. I wanna replicate remembering that on episode 222 I said XYZ.

Nathan Latka (49:00)

So here's the thing. I got to go to Charlie Munger's house and have dinner with him before he died for three hours. Okay. Charlie is like I consider the wisest person I've ever come across. And before I met him. And he's also the one that said you should read biographies. He's read hundreds of biographies. He's read more biographies than me. Now I'll be able to catch him. Cause he died, right? So like I will eventually pass him because I started earlier and I just essentially copied him. But this is the scary thing about him because anybody at 99 is going to have some level of cognitive decline. Doesn't matter who the fuck you are, right? We some level of cognitive decline. I sat in his library. So you start the first. The night starts his library for like the first hour and a half. Then we move to his dining room, have dinner. So first of all, I'm sitting there and Charlie was a legit hero of mine. I read every single book about him. I read all the books he told, he said that he read. I watched all the AGM videos on YouTube. And I'm sitting there in his library and I'm looking at him, I'm like, that's fucking Charlie Munger. Like I had an out of body experience. I was like, what is happening? How is this my life? I sat in a room by myself for years, reading books, talking into a microphone by myself. Somehow that got me invited here. This is bizarre. And so my friend who invited me, Andrew Wilkinson, so this is going on, he had met him a bunch. Him and Chris had met him a bunch. And they're talking for like five or 10 minutes. I'm just like, what the fuck is going on? I could not believe this. And then Andrew looks at me, he's like, jump in. Like, what are you doing? You gotta say something. And then I snap out of it and I look behind Charlie's head and I see all these books that he had recommended that I read. So then I just started lighting him up with questions. What? One that kind of freaked me out because Charlie was like partially blind. And so, you know he's paying attention to you because he turns his head towards you and then he has to look through his bifocals. So he goes like this and he's looking down at you. So now you know there's no, like, you're not guessing who he's paying attention to. And so then I'm like, Charlie fucking Munger's looking at me like, what is happening here? So I started lighting him up with questions on all these books, right? Dude, he knew everything. He could name the company, their partners, what their revenue was, what industry they were in. And I even asked him. I was like, dude, did you just reread this? He's like, no, I haven't read the book in 15 years. After we got done talking, I was like, charlie, can I go through, I asked him, I was like, can I go through your library? He's like, yes. Very, very polite. And he was very polite. So I pull books off the shelves. It gets even worse. There's no notes in them. So it's like every once, every like 150 pages, you'll see like some random like name written in pencil. But like, I mark things up, I highlight them, I add them to a giant database. I reread them. Charlie had a remarkable memory. I don't. For me, it's all work. It's like everything I'm telling you about is just like, I go back to the same episodes. I'll like re listen to my old episodes again. I'll reread. I reread highlights. I reread highlights every single day, you know, for years. All like, I get bored and I get frustrated because I can't find any new podcast listen to. So I'll listen to old episodes of mine, like over and over again. Like, oh, I did that four years ago. I forgot about that. I just did this with this guy named Chun Juyoung and I spent like a few hours re editing it. At the time I was, I was recording like a shitty hundred dollar microphone in like my kitchen. I didn't know anything. I did this episode probably five or six years ago. Now you can run it through to script. They use their AI, their studio sound. It sounds fucking perfect, right? And so what I do, I spent like half of my day going back and rereading all my highlights from Chung Jiyoung's autobiography. He's the founder of Hyundai. It's the most inspiring autobiography I've ever read. He grew up so poor he had to eat tree bark to survive. He dies, the richest person in Korea. Fucking remarkable life story. But the reason I would be able to quote that even now is because I just finished rereading it and, and just finished re listening to it. So it's not like, well, you just said you have a good memory. You tell my wife that. She'd be like, she'd laugh at you. She's like, no, he does.

Greg Isenberg (53:03)

She's like, you missed my anniversary last week.

Nathan Latka (53:06)

No, it's just work. And it's another idea I took from Charlie Munger, where he's like, you need to find a simple idea and take it seriously. And he says, you can get outsized business success. He's like, many times in business, we find that the winning system goes ridiculously far in maximizing or minimizing one are a handful of variables. And so my idea was like, once you start reading biographies, from the very first biography I read for the podcast was Elon Musk. It's like, all these guys read biographies. So that's indication, like, Elon Musk, whether you hate him for his politics or anything else, seems like he's pretty fucking smart. And then you read Walt Disney. Walt Disney's reading biographies. Thomas Edison is reading every single biography in the Detroit library. I'm not as smart as Thomas Edison. I'll just fucking copy what this guy does. And so then I was like, oh, so all of history's greatest entrepreneurs studied history's greatest entrepreneurs. What if I just build, literally, the world's best podcast that does that and then do it every single day, seven days a week for eight years, and then just keep doing it and then keep making it better and better and better? I think I told you. I'm doing this episode on Jensen Huang, and one of his things that he told in a video is like, we have to do things that other people cannot do. And so my version of a moat, right, which another idea. I don't have any original ideas. I just, like, copy what I find in the books. So Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said, your company should have a moat. I'm like, okay, the podcast is a podcast, but it's also a business. And my life works. Like, what's my moat? My moat's like, every single episode you listen to today. It's not like the Jensen Wong episode I'm recording this week. It's not just gonna be about Jensen. It's gonna be how Jensen was like Steve Jobs, how he was like Edwin Land, how he's like Alexander Graham Bell, how he was like, at Thorpe, all these other people. So to catch, to be able to compete with me, you have to read 375 books to get to where I am now. But I'm not gonna stop. So in my opinion, it's like, the game's already over. As long as I don't stop. I just, I have to make sure that what I like, what I thought of, and I probably figured this out a few years ago, is like, I'm just gonna, like, I'm gonna have a really, really small but valuable niche. And that's. If you want to learn from his education affairs, then you're going to go to this podcast. Anybody does anything else outside of that, none of my business. You jump in here, I'm going to compete very ferociously with you, and I'm going to beat you to death because I take this very fucking seriously.

Greg Isenberg (55:22)

We talked about kind of like going against the grain and weird ways to make money that goes against what other main people in your category are doing. What's founders doing that's different in terms of monetization and building the business around that.

Nathan Latka (55:38)

So this is another idea that I didn't even. That wasn't even mine, really. So I become friends with Jared Kushner through the podcast and he's a very sharp and fascinating guy. I highly recommend listening to the episode he did with Lex Friedman, the ones he just did with my friend Patrick o'. Shaughnessy. And really his idea was just like, you have one of the world's most valuable audiences. He's like, I know all the elite people in the world, they're all listening to you. You're the best in the world at what you do. He's like, his whole thing that he's constantly reinforcing, he's like, constant refinement of association, constant refinement of association. And he's like, inventory destroys value. So just getting in front of the audience you have is excessively valuable to any company. He's like, so take your time picking partners. And then when you do pick partners, this is what you do. You have two long term partners. You're on two year contracts with them, right? It's finite. It's like, I just did this with Ramp. So I got to know the founders of Ramp. I think they are the best in the category. I spent a ton of time with them. Two of them are in Miami. So I'm with them a couple times a week, and I have been for a long time, way before we consider working together. And I was like, these guys are fucking geniuses. I think they have the best technical talent in their industry by far. And I think the technical talent is just going to win. Like the gap between them and everybody else is just gonna keep expanding because of that. And so, like, you just do large instead of selling. Like most people sell on, like, a CPM basis. We were talking about that right before we got here or right before we started recording. There is no cpm. It's just like, you know who's in the audience. One of the founders. How this deal came about or this partnership came about is because one of the founders was talking to me one day. He's like, I know 10 to 15 billionaires personally that listen to your podcasts. He's like, this is not normal at all. He's like, what's the chance? I know all the billionaires that are in your audience, like, fucking zero. That is just impossible. You know how. What is their hourly. What is the hourly. What is an hour of their time worth? Right. What would people pay to get an hour of their time? And they give it to you for free. Like, that is very unusual. And so basically the idea I had.

Greg Isenberg (57:47)

Is like, they're not even just giving it to you. They're not saying a word and listening to you. Yeah, they're consuming.

Nathan Latka (57:52)

And then you become friends with them, which is even wilder. But the idea was, hey, essentially, you know, most. Let's just main. Let's back up business. Podcasts, it's like bizarre world. It does not. You can't think of it as like a normal podcast. So let me explain how normal podcasts operate. You know, you'll have a ton of ad partners. Hopefully you're vetting them and you're not just, like, taking anybody.

Greg Isenberg (58:19)

Right.

Nathan Latka (58:19)

But even, like, if you're heavily vetted, like human lab guys, they have eight to 10 advertising partners on a yearly basis. They have over 100 on their waiting list. Right. They vet the hell out of them and they'll, like, rotate who's in in the podcast. And usually sold on, like, some kind of CPM basis. Now Huberman's like the male Oprah. So, like, you're going to pay a higher cpm, because he's going to. If he says he uses your product, his people will buy the product. I know how much he. Like, he can move vast amounts of products. That's why he has a huge weighting. I'm not. I don't want one. I work by myself. I don't have an assistant. I don't have a researcher. I don't have anybody. It's just me. And so therefore, like, any time taken for me to do ad sales takes time away from making the podcast. I have to be very careful about taking time away from making the podcast. So Jared's idea Of, hey, just grab. You have dozens of people that want to advertise in your podcast. Pick the two best ones that you feel most comfortable with that makes most sense for your audience. Ramp is a perfect example. It's like, what does ramp do? Ramp should cost control. The idea, the difference between the people I said in the podcast with, like how most entrepreneurs are taught today. It's like every single great entrepreneur is obsessed with controlling costs and they have been for hundreds of years. So it's like perfect partnership there. And so the idea is like you pick, you have like two of those long term partnerships and you can add in a couple other ones to experiment or if you want to do that, and then you just go to them. Month 12, you start developing relationships with other people, you take it real slow, you vet their product, you build relationship with them. Like I have people that want to advertise on podcasts. Like, I don't know the founder. I will never advertise anything where I haven't talked to. I have to build a relationship with the founder. Like the podcast is called founders, for God's sake. And so you start building relationships and you go to your existing partners six months before your contract expires and say, hey, I have xyz. This is what they're interested in. Do you want to continue the partnership? Do you want to modify it, what do you want to do? But essentially just you pick. I think of them much more as brand partnerships, like the way like Nike would be with like Tiger Woods. And I think that's going to be very way more common than even podcast ads on normal podcasts. I talked to a bunch of the biggest podcast advertisers in the world to become friends with the founders of these companies. And so because I want like a God level view of the entire industry and they were even saying like, for a lot of the early days of the podcast, it's like a lot of direct response. And I think one, a lot of the direct response advertisers, they've noticed the efficacy of podcast ads because they're saturating. The whole ecosystem has greatly declined. And a lot of podcasters are, I think you're just gonna see a lot more brand advertising in general. And so that's what I'm much more interested. It's much more like a partnership. We do events together, I advise on marketing, I help them place ads on other podcasts. It's much more of like, you're getting me on the team and everybody in my network is, I will try to help you as much as I can.

Greg Isenberg (61:27)

I love it. Dude. Man, this has been a lot of fun. I just feel I haven't. I gotta read some autobiographies and some biographies.

Nathan Latka (61:36)

What are you interested in?

Greg Isenberg (61:37)

Like, well, you know, whatever.

Nathan Latka (61:41)

The easiest way to get started is, like, who do you most admire? When I say, who do you most admire? Give me list of three or four names that come to mind right away, living or dead.

Greg Isenberg (61:51)

I'm gonna get judged on this, but judge me. You know, you can't give a fuck.

Nathan Latka (61:55)

What anybody else says, so. Or thanks.

Greg Isenberg (61:57)

I mean, I think Mark Zuckerberg. Okay. Just a really fascinating guy that he. What's really impressing me of him lately is how much he's been able to reinvent himself. I love this concept of constantly reinvention. For example, like, right now, he's like, he's an AI guy. He was a metaverse guy. He was a social network guy. He was a mobile guy. He's a web guy. Like, he's just constantly reinventing.

Nathan Latka (62:24)

Undeniably the most impressive young entrepreneur in the world.

Greg Isenberg (62:28)

Yeah. You mentioned Jared Kushner. Yeah, I think he's fascinating. I'm also interested in Josh Kushner.

Nathan Latka (62:37)

Yep.

Greg Isenberg (62:39)

I met. I remember I met Josh when I was he. He's about a year or two older than me, so when I was 22, maybe around there. 21. I remember being. Having coffee with him in Manhattan, which to me was like an exotic place at this fancy hotel. And he was kind of like, picking my brain around, raising his first fund. We were talking about his first fund that he was raising. You know how small his first fund was?

Nathan Latka (63:07)

5 million.

Greg Isenberg (63:08)

It was smaller. Yeah, it was 2 million, if my memory serves me correctly. And it was just so cool of him that he. Obviously, he can raise $2 million, but the fact that he was getting feedback from other people. How do I think about positioning? How do I think about portfolio construction? Not having an ego about it? I think Josh Kushner. If Josh Kushner had a book, I would read it.

Nathan Latka (63:38)

So I just talked to Josh last week, and he listens to founders a lot. He told me he finds it very comforting because he's a very, very, very unbelievably polite. If you do any kind of reference check on him, it's like, it's not an act. It's like he is on. He's, like, old school polite, but he's also a grinder, which I love, and just completely obsessed with every single aspect of his business. And what he said about listening to founders is that it's comforting to realize that he, like, he's not the only one. They're all like this. If you want to be great. Like they're all very similar. What I would say is like, so Zuckerberg right there, I'll give you a book recommendation. When he was, before he started Facebook, he's at Harvard. He goes and watch, watches Bill Gates speak. Cause he looked up to Bill Gates. So read Hard Drive. Have you read Hard Drive? Bill Gates in the Making of the Microsoft Empire. One of the best fucking books. I've read it twice. I have two episodes on it. This is how I know my memory's not that great. I don't remember the episode number on the last one. Just search. And if you search in, founders always listen to the second episode I did on them because I get a lot better with time. But there's the first one. Read Hard Drive. It's one of the best biographies I've ever read. It covers the first 35 years of Bill Gates life up until the IPO of Microsoft and right after. And one of the. There's crazy fucking stats in that book. Like for example, Microsoft's the first software business in history to sell more than a billion dollars of software. Might have been the first pure software company in history. The first 30. This is why I always bitch and yell at my founder friends. Because they hire all these fucking people that are not doing actual work. I go, dude, I just had a walk with a friend of mine in Miami beach. Cause he's like raising all his money. I said, no, no, you sell before you have a product. He goes, what are you talking about? I go, bill Gates sold before he had a product. Steve Jobs sold before he had a product. Larry Ellison sold before he had a product. Do you need three other examples besides that? The first 30 employees of Microsoft, 28 programmers, Bill Gates, secretary and assistant, and Bill Gates. And Bill was doing all the sales. He was all founder led sales. They were unbelievably profitable. That is the biggest bootstrap business of all time. It fucking drives me insane where like, oh, they raised VC the year before they went public, which is maybe 1976. Can you double check to see if I'm right about this? They were doing 140 million a year in revenue and 39 million a year profit. They sold a million shares for $995,000 a couple months before the IPO. That's a fucking venture back. That's not a venture backed company. They wanted the guy's expertise and they wanted to Incentivize him for that 1976 boom. 1986. Yeah, there you go. They started in 1976. Sorry about that. Apple, I think, was founded the same year. So there's your first biography to read. Jared Kushner. Read his fucking book, Breaking History. It's incredible the life experiences that the guy has had. And then he will talk about reading the Art of War. He'll talk about reading Theodore Roosevelt. He'll talk every single book. Books are made out of books, right? They will lead you. You just name three people you're interested in. You probably have fucking 10 more. Read. Pick up one of the books, the biography of them or a book they recommend. And then in that book, they will then recommend other biographies of the person or other people they admire. And so what I'll do is I'll map out every single person. Like, I became interested in Charlie Munger. So I go and read everything on Charlie Munger, but then I also read everything that he read. And then what you do is you go and you go on the bibliography of the books, and then you'll discover, like, there's a Bill Gates biography, right? In that biography, there'll be other biographies of Bill Gates or important people in there. And then you go and get that book, and you just go on and on and on and on. You take it very seriously. You start mapping this out, and you have a very fundamental. You can read five books on a person and maybe another five books on people they admire, and you have a good idea of how they think. And that's really what I'm trying to go after. It's like, in many cases, what would Munger do in my situation? And it's very simple. It's like, what do you intentionally. I've mentioned it multiple times. What are you intentionally interested in? Do that for work. Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Just all kinds of ideas. Minimize or go out of your way to minimize or maximize one or handful of variables.

Greg Isenberg (67:38)

Well, that's the cool part about reading biographies, is it's not just what would Munger think, It's what would Jared Kushner think in this situation? What would.

Nathan Latka (67:50)

This is the other. You mentioned the business model of founders, too. It's like, I didn't know shit about shit when it comes to finance. And so now what do you have? You have a business that has cash flow, right? What are you going to do with the money? And so now I literally get to have access to some of the greatest financial minds. I'm like, what would you do? They become friends. And then so another extension of this weird business is like, they say, hey, you should look at this investment, or you should look at this, or you should do that. It's like, now I have another form of education where it's like, I don't know any of this other than, like. And I've been interested. Like, the episode I just put out on Hetty Green. She was the single biggest individual financier in the world when she was alive. She. She was so rich, she bailed out the city of New York herself. She ran her own money. Like, how did she do that? What did she invest in? What advice did she have? I'm very interested in learning how to do this because it's essentially going to have like a one man Berkshire Hathaway. But it starts with founders, like, okay, then what do you do now? And then you have this unfair advantage. Then you start building relationships with the founders that listen to your podcast. And a lot of them want you involved, where they don't even want your money. They just start giving you stock.

Greg Isenberg (68:56)

What would Charlie Munger, if you asked Charlie Munger, hey, I've got this business. Is that what he would tell you to do?

Nathan Latka (69:02)

No, he would tell you to learn exactly what he would. I think I would do. I'm doing what he did, which is he didn't know anything about investing. He was an attorney. So they set aside a certain amount of his time a day. At that time, I think it was an first hour of every day. He sold back to himself to learn real estate investing and then investing in stock. And then he winds up becoming friends with all the, like, Buffett and all these other people. It wasn't just Buffett, though. I talked to Charlie about this at his house. Cause his whole point was the book I gave him. I was able to give him a book because he has two busts in his house. It's Lee Kuan Yew and Ben Franklin. And if you go to Charlie Munger's library, he's got every single biography of Ben Franklin you could find. And somehow I was able to give him a biography of Franklin he didn't have. And it was this book called Franklin in Washington. He didn't read the book, but he fucking knew everything in the book already. And he was just like, yeah, one of the things that Ben Franklin did was he sought out a young George. This is what the book is about. Ben Franklin's 48 years old. He's the most famous person in the colonies. He reads George Washington is fighting the native Americans with the British. When he's 21 years old, he winds up seeing one of the best British generals get absolutely killed and massacred because he was taking basically the playbook that worked in Europe and try to fight the Native Americans with it, which is not going to work, right. And so a young George Washington writes in a journal about his experience. It winds up being published in all the newspapers throughout America. Ben Franklin reads it. He's like, this guy's fucking smart. He has information I need. I need to get to him. And so they start. He reaches out to him, he starts building relationship that they wind up having up until they weave in and out of each other's lives up until 47, 30 years later, something like that. When. When Franklin dies. And Munger's advice to me was like, exactly what Ben did. He went out of his way to build relationships with other talented people. He's like, that's exactly what we did. And he goes, everybody knows about me and Warren. It wasn't just me and Warren. It was all these guys. We built a seamless web of deserved trust and we did deals together forever. And the sad thing was, most of them, by the time I met Charlie, had already passed on besides him and Warren. But I think that's. He would like, you need to learn stuff. You can't outsource it. He let other people run his money is why Hedy Green was so interesting to me. I love people that. Running their own, like the idea of running our own money is fascinating. And I don't. I'm uniquely unfit to manage institutional money. I don't have that personality. A good friend of mine was mentored by Sam Zell. And I just did another episode on Sam Zell and he's like, come over to my house the night before. I'll tell you all these stories from Sam you can put in your episode. And one of that was just like, Sam was too wild and crazy and would say crazy shit. So he can't. He's like. He said something like, he was constitutionally unfit to run institution, to manage institutional money. Which is a nice way of saying Sam's a fucking crazy guy. But I think Munger's point was like, he only let one other person run one other outsider manage Munger family money. That was a Leeloo. And he said in night. Once in 95 years, he gave money to an extra to an outside person. He said in lilu. And he has a fascinating story with this where he's like, I read Barron's magazine for 40 years. For 50 years, I found one idea I could act on in that 50 years of reading that magazine. I made 40 million. No, I made $80 million on that. Charlie speaking. Charlie's like, I made $80 million on that deal. Then I gave that 80 million. And Li Lu, I gave the 80 million to Li Lu, and Li Lu turned it into 400 million. So he goes, so I made 400 million by reading Barron's magazine for 50 years and giving that money to Lilu. So he's very, very, you know, selective. And he's like, you have to learn yourself.

Greg Isenberg (72:45)

We got to wrap this up. But dude, this has been super special. If you've made it this far, you have to go check out Founders podcast. Absolutely, go check it out. I guess the recommendation is just scroll the list of episodes.

Nathan Latka (73:04)

Yeah, the weird thing about Founders is like, um, if you. Most other podcasts will. They're like, they'll have like a consensus. This is the best episode. There is no consensus. It's like, depends on. There's 375 of them as of today. Actually 391. Cuz I have 16 that are not numbered. I checked that today. So that's not memory. I literally checked it today. 16 bonus episodes that are not numbered. But yeah, I just think like, the obvious thing is finding one. If you already know you're interested in somebody like Bill Gates, what I would do is I would do, I would search Bill Gates and I would listen to that. And in the episodes I'm going to reference other episodes. And so it's like, oh, this is like, you know, Ed Thorpe or this is like Edwin Land or whoever it was. And so in every single episode, it'll be like a pathway to other episodes. And then I think the thing I'm most interested in, Sam Poirier, we referenced a few times. The first time I had dinner with him, he was in town for the Teal Fellowship meetup and he skipped it to have dinner with me, which I thought was very like, nice of him. And he says the product market fit of your podcast is not the Steve Jobs episodes or the Alexander Graham Bell or the Thomas Edison or the Walt Disney. He's like, it's the guys I've never fucking heard of that are remarkable. Like, one of my favorite ones is episode 292. Can you check this for me? Daniel Ludwig, the invisible billionaire, might be wrong in that he was the richest person in the world. I got it right. Okay. 292. Daniel Ludwig, invisible billionaire. He was the richest person in the world. And no one knew his name. He paid a PR agency to keep his name out of the papers. And it's like that book was written. It was published in 1980. 1980 something. It's just like this guy lived a remarkable life. No one knew who he was. I wound up randomly picking up a book, probably a used bookstore, reading about him. And now you get to know that he existed and learn from him. Read the book. It's remarkable.

Greg Isenberg (74:56)

The. Is it Brad Jacobs? Is that his name?

Nathan Latka (74:58)

Yeah, Brad Jacobs. The man.

Greg Isenberg (75:00)

The man. I heard about him. Through what episode?

Nathan Latka (75:04)

No, this was the one that. 331. No, that's wrong.

Greg Isenberg (75:08)

There's. Is there two episodes?

Nathan Latka (75:10)

So Brad was a huge fan of founders. Okay. So he's like my LinkedIn reply guy. It's hilarious. And 3:30. 3, 70. No, no, that's the breakfast of Brad Jacobs. There's another one. Yeah, it's called how to Make a Few Billion Dollars episode number that is. So I can talk about this publicly because Jared said it on the conversation you had with Patrick. He's very fucking nice to say this, and I don't. I don't deserve it. 335. So I was off by 4. He talks about this on Patrick's podcast. He's like, he heard about Brad Jacobs by listening to that episode, goes to meet him. They get. They hit it off. He hears about Brad's idea for his new company, XPO, I think it's called. He winds up investing $150 million to joining the board. So Brad is another person where it's like the amount of information that's in that guy's head is scary.

Greg Isenberg (76:04)

Yeah.

Nathan Latka (76:04)

He's 68 years old, the most energetic person. I just went to his house. 68 years old, the most energetic person I've ever been around, and just relentless note taker, relentless reader, relentless podcaster. In his book how to Make a Few Billion Dollars, you got to read the section on the research he does before he invests. It's fucking incredible. Absolutely incredible. The amount of information he collects.

Greg Isenberg (76:27)

Must. Honestly, must listen to pod. And, dude, this has been amazing.

Nathan Latka (76:33)

Thanks for inviting me. Sorry we didn't do any startup ideas. I don't have any besides pod.

Greg Isenberg (76:38)

Next time.

Nathan Latka (76:39)

All right, cool. It's sipping time, baby.