← The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show
#828: David Senra — How Extreme Winners Think and Win: Lessons from 400+ of History’s Greatest Founders and Investors (Including Buffett, Munger, Rockefeller, Jobs, Ovitz, Zell, and Names You Don’t Know But Should)
02:55:55
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- [00:00]
A
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. My guest today is David Senra. David is the host of the Founders podcast, a cult favorite at this point which explores the life and work of hundreds of history's greatest entrepreneurs. For each episode, he does something that most people will not do. He reads one or more biographies about a single founder and then shares the key lessons. It has become incredibly popular. His new podcast, David Senra is brought to you by the Huberman Lab team. It showcases conversations with the best of the best, best living founders and extreme winners. You can visit davidsenra.com that's S E N R A David senra.com for all things David and to check out the new show. And now, without further ado, please enjoy this very wide ranging conversation with David Senra. Optimal.
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B
Minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat.
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A
Out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now?
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B
What is it? In a perfect time, I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskelet.
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A
Who is Brad Jacobs?
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B
So Brad Jacobs is I think the only person in history to start eight separate billion dollar companies. So a lot of people like on the the west coast, you know, tex scene, they don't really know who he is because he's just been an east coast guy his whole life. But he started his first company when he was like 23. He's 68 years old. He is by far the most energetic person I have ever been around. And he wrote this book called how to make a Few billion dollars.
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A
What are some of his companies?
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He's the roll up king. So he'd roll up logistics companies and trucking companies. And now he's got a massive one he just took public that's doing building supplies. And so early in your career you might roll up a $5 million company or a $20 million company. His first acquisition I think was like $9 billion. So he's like, he just gets progressively like bigger and bigger and bigger. But what I find interesting about him is usually when you study like extreme winners and he's obviously an extreme winner, what motivates them is like kind of dark, like issues with their father, some kind of insecurity that never felt good enough. They grew up poor and they felt they were born in like the wrong place. Brad does it out of love. He's got no negativity. He's just a very special human being. And the fact that I get to text him and call him and go to his house is insane. He's just an amazing human being.
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A
There's another legend who defeated roulette and then went on to beat the market. Ed Thorpe.
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B
Yes.
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A
Probably another exception. Right. Where he.
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B
The exception.
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A
The exception where he did not eviscerate his personal life in the quest for business mastery.
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B
Yeah. I don't think anybody's master life clearly as much as Ed Thorpe did. Your two interviews that you did with him were incredible.
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A
Yeah, thank you. That was. It was such a moment of gratitude to have the chance to interview him, Especially because he is so, so sharp at his age. Can't recall his exact age right now.
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B
He was like, 89 or something like that.
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A
If you want a holistic figure to consider emulating, Ed Thorpe would be on a very, very, very short list.
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B
I can think of three out of 400.
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A
All right, who are the three Ed.
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B
Thorpe's at the top? Sol Price, who's the one that invented, essentially, the warehouse model like Costco. Jim Senegal was. Was mentored by Soul Price when Jim Senegal was, like, 18. So Jim Senegal, founder of Costco, built one of the greatest companies in history. And he has this great line in Soul Price's autobiography. And Soul Price's son wrote his biography. People are like, oh, you must have. When Sol died, he's like, you must have learned a lot from Sol. He goes, no, I didn't learn a lot. I learned everything. Everything that I know, I learned from this guy. So Sol Price, same thing. Good husband, good father. Didn't chase after more money at the expense of other areas of his life after he already had enough money, which is what Ed Thorpe turned down so much. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, he could have collected. Just like I already have more money than I can ever spend. Why would I do that? And then I would say, brunello Cucinelli.
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A
How are those examples different? You should explain for folks. I mean, look, everything I'm wearing, I got for free. So you should explain to people. I did not know the last name you mentioned until a few years ago, because I won't dox them. But Tony, my friend Tony is basically covered in Brunello. Who is this?
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B
So Brunello Cinelli wrote this. I don't even know the name. I've read the book. It's like something about Solomo. Essentially, he sells $5,000 sweaters. He's. He sells sweaters that are more than my first car. But he grew up in, like, very rural Italy. And then everybody at the time there was essentially the hollowing out of his community, everybody had moved to the cities. He is a very soulful dude. So Brunello essentially works. He essentially bounds his life where it's like you work 9 to 5, you're not allowed to, like, send an email to the company. You have to, like, take a break for lunch and have this, like, great Italian food. And then he spends his nights reading and then going on long walks and then sitting in the cafes in this, like, little town that he essentially, like, rebuilt and reinvested in. And he likes having cappuccino and, like, debating philosophy. He's just like a real soulful dude. Now the one criticism people have is like, yeah, that business model works when you have, you know, 70% margins and your sweaters are as much as a Honda Civic, you know. But he was very intense. I don't care what people do. He just very intentional.
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A
So let me come back to this question of clean fuel versus, let's call it dirty fuel. And there's a lot in between. So I don't want to look at it in a totally binary way. But why do you think of the, say, 400 plus that you can only call to mind three or four. Ed Thorpe, Saul Price, Brunello Cucinelli, Brad Jacobs. Why are there so few who seem driven in that particular, let's just call it positive way, or that they can pursue business excellence without having a lot of collateral damage in their personal lives? What do you draw from that? And look, maybe these are just different animals and out of the box, these four are just fundamentally different from the other 396 or so. What is your take on that thin slice of the total?
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B
I would add another one to the list. You've also interviewed him, Michael Dell, recently. I've spent hours and hours with them. We had a five hour dinner and then I just recorded a two and a half hour conversation with him for the new show. He is in love. His is very positive now. He has a big fear of failure, which almost, I think me and you probably share. This is like, I want to speak for you. I want to ask you. Actually, like, I am way more afraid of failure than, like, I love winning.
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A
I mean, that's true for everyone I know.
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B
Yes.
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Who wins a lot. I don't think I can think of a single exception in terms of someone who celebrates the wins as much as they punish themselves for the losses. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying that's pattern matching.
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B
But even now, with all the success that you've Had. Is your inner monologue still negative?
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I mean, there's a lot of negative. I'm working on that. I look at some of the. I don't want to call them maxims, but you've quoted the. I think it was the founder of the Four Seasons.
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Yeah, Excellence is the capacity to take pain.
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Right. And there may be some truth to that, but I feel like it's very risky for me to take something like that and wear it as a marching order for life because I already tilt in that direction, and not all pain is productive. And I think for me, when you are already tilted in that direction, where you believe if there isn't pain, if there isn't some degree of suffering, then you're not trying hard enough, it's very easy to become a hammer looking for nails. And that can have a lot of repercussions for your relationships also, for sure. And if your self talk is negative, at least in my experience and what I've seen in a lot of my friends and peers and founders, very often you end up having a similar type of dialogue with people around you, and that can have huge repercussions. So that doesn't give anyone a neat, tidy silver bullet of an answer. But, yeah, the negative self talk, there's a place for it. But the nuance, to me matters a lot. If it's like you're a piece of shit, you always do X, why don't you do Y? And that has a good outcome. I would still want to refine the process.
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I read this biography of Jensen Huang, which is fascinating because it's like, right after one of the best quarters in Nvidia history, he starts this meeting and he says, I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror and said, why do you suck so much? So he's definitely driven by.
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A
He's hardcore. Oh, he's very hardcore. He's hardcore. He's hardcore. So I guess what I'd also like to ask you is about not necessarily the people you study. And hopefully you take this as a compliment. It's intended, like, the highest compliment. But when people ask me about you and they're like, so what's the story? Like, why do people like his stuff? And I'm like, well, you know, I can only really speculate, but I feel like you are, in a way what Dan Carlin did with hardcore history you do for business. And Hardcore History is my favorite podcast of all time.
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B
I think Dan Carlin's the greatest podcast to ever live. The reason I do a solo history show is because Dan Carlin. I've given away his back catalog. I wish he would change his business model.
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It is a bit janky, but if you want to just listen to the greats, I mean the Wrath of the Khans, Blueprint for Armageddon.
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Wrath of Khans, I think is the best podcast series ever created in my opinion. Blueprint for Armageddon. Like just everything I've listened. He only has like 55 episodes. He was doing it for like 15 years. I fall asleep at night right now. Last night I fell asleep listening to his new one. It's not even new, it's like six months old because he never releases any episodes. Mania for Subjugation Part two, about the relationship between Alexander the Great and King Philip.
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Amazing.
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He just puts me to sleep. He is the greatest.
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The reason that I mention that is I feel like I've learned so much from Dan Carlin. I've learned so much from your episodes. I'm curious though, as I know another person you're a fan of. Derek Sivers, who I've known, I think since 2007. Amazing entrepreneur. People can look him up. I'll give the one liner which he's sort of this philosopher king, programmer entrepreneur who started companies, gave the vast majority to a charitable trust to fund musical education, at one point was the ringleader in a traveling circus, played guitar and sang at like a Pig state fair and has just crafted the most unusual and derrick life for himself and given his family permission to do the same for themselves. Really a true original thinker who also shows it in his actions. And this is where I'm going. So Derek has this line which is along the. I may be paraphrasing it slightly, but the gist is if more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs. So what do you see or surmise about people who make the leap from listening to your podcast about all of these icons and people who have not just once you're lucky, twice you're good. But in some cases they built $8 billion companies. Or in that case, I might come back to the acquisition kind of roll up archetype. So the people who make the leap from ingesting information to actually implementing and those who don't, what's the missing piece in the middle?
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B
The way I think about it, the maximum I've made for myself on this is learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. And so if you didn't change your behavior, this is just all mental gymnastics for you. You're Just wasting your time. And so what I'm trying to do, I didn't even understand what I was doing. I had to have as many happens in many cases, like somebody outside of you seeing what you're doing actually gives you what this whole thing is about. I have a good friend of mine, his name is Jeremy Gaffon, and he's really quick witted and he has a way to, like, condense ideas really well. And we're just walking around, taking a walk in Miami beach one day and he's like, oh, yeah, it's pretty obvious, like what this whole thing is. And I didn't think he was thinking about it, right? I was like, what do you mean? And he's just like, oh, you never had any positive influences. You didn't have any mentors. And so if you, you take somebody like you who's like psychopathically driven and really has an obsessive personality, like, that's what this whole thing is. You're just reading book after book after book to try to find the path, to try to find the answer, to try to find the way out. And I felt like naked when he said this. I'm like, I think he's right. I think he's right. And so for me, like, I'm definitely not just reading. Like, I've been taking all these ideas. The unfair advantage I have is like, I have one sided conversations with history's greatest entrepreneurs, right? So like every week I sit down and read another biography. And then, because I like to talk, this is good, because I have to shut up. I can only listen because this is what I think it is. That's what I think. Reading a biography is like a one sided conversation. And then I take that and I would be doing this even if I didn't record it. But then sitting down once a week and condensing my thoughts, right, and reacting to it turns it to an act of service, right? So then I take the ideas, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. I'll take that and apply it to my business, which is the podcast. And it keeps getting better and better. I was like, oh, these ideas work, so I'll keep doing this. And then now what has happened is the people that are trying to be great have studied great people that came before them throughout human history. Caesar was studying Alexander and like Steve Jobs was studying Edwin Land, and Edwin Land was studying Alexander Graham Bell. And everybody, if you're interested in American entrepreneurship, it all kind of goes back to Benjamin Franklin. Everybody looks backwards like that Guy or that woman was great. How did they do that? And so that is an enduring part of human nature. It'll never change. It's going to happen while we're alive. It's going to happen a thousand years from now. And so what I didn't understand what I was doing is that you put it out into the world. Just like your work is like a tuning fork. It's like, then the people that are really great also do this. And they have a deep love of history. And so if you look at the people that I've been talking to from the new show that's not even released yet, they came because they're fans, they're in the audience, and it's just like the parasocial relationship. People have a podcast. I'm close to the people at Spotify. Spent been in Stockholm twice last six months. And I was talking to the head of business at Spotify. His name's Alex. We were talking for two and a half hours, like, pretty animated. And I was like, I'm not building a media company. I'm building relationships at scale. And he's like, what? He say that again. I go, what a podcast is, is building relationships to scale. This is the first time we've ever met. We should talk about how I found you. I found you on MySpace. I'm going to tell you that.
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A
Oh, my God.
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But like, the reason. And we'll go to, like, the influence that you played on having founders. Like, but I know who you are. Like, we could sit down and talk for eight hours because I know you. There's no possible way I can consume all of your books and I don't know 600 hours of your podcast and not know, Tim, you can't act for that long. And so what I didn't understand is like, oh, this other path of me trying to find good information, valuable information. Like, I came from a family. It was like, oh, I'm the first to graduate college. That's nice. No one even graduated high school in my family. Like, there's no reading, there's no self improvement. The only thing my family read is the Bible. And like, that can be taken to a crazy extreme.
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My mom also didn't go to prison.
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Yeah, exactly, the first. And my grandfather, my. I shouldn't even say this publicly anymore. You have a big podcast. I. I would say stuff on small podcasts and forget that things get bigger later on. So I say crazy stuff I should not be saying. But whatever, we're too late now. But yeah, My grandfather, my father, my brother. Like I remember being in high school and hearing bang and five guys at 5:30 in the morning come and grab my brother and I don't see him for four years. Like that's a fact. So my point being is then I'm like, oh wait, I put this podcast out and then it attracts the same people that are in the books. And then you know, the fact that I could spend five hours with Michael Dell and he tweets about the podcast and he LinkedIn's about it and just giving me phenomenal advice. And then we obviously recorded a conversation, but before that, they just want to help you because they got value from that.
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A
Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Listeners have heard me talk about making before. You manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera. Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, let's just say I'm a writer and entrepreneur. I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today's sponsor is so interesting. It's been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing. And that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it. C R E S S E T Crescent Family Office I was introduced to by one of the top CPG investors in the world. 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And of course all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So do your due diligence. In the last handful of years, I've become very interested in environmental toxins, avoiding microplastics and many other commonly found compounds all over the place. One place I looked is in the kitchen. Many people don't realize just how toxic their cookware is or can be. A lot of nonstick pans, practically all of them, can release harmful forever chemicals, pfas, in other words, spelled P F A s into your food, your home, and then ultimately that ends up in your body. Teflon is a prime example of this. It is still the forever chemical that most companies are using. So our place reached out to me as a potential sponsor and the first thing I did was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one. And that is the Titanium Always Pan Pro. And the claim is that it's the first nonstick pan with zero coating. So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that'll last forever. I was very skeptical, I was very busy. So I said, you know what, I want to test this thing quickly. It's supposed to be nonstick, it's supposed to be durable. I'm going to test it with two things. I'm going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning because eggs are always a disaster in anything that isn't nonstick with the toxic coating. And then I'm going to test it with a steak sear because I want to see how much it retains heat. And it worked perfectly in both cases. And I was frankly astonished how well it worked. The Titanium Always Pan Pro has become my go to pan in the kitchen. It replaces a lot of other things for searing, for eggs, for anything you can imagine. And the design is really clever. It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron and nonstick into one product. And now our place is expanding this first of its kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware sets which are made in limited quantities. So if you're looking for non toxic long lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to fromourplace.com tim and use code TIM for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100 day risk free trial, free shipping and free returns. Check it out fromourplace.com Tim I want to go back to the note taking and then converting that into some type of action. Because you've done that, you're hitting You've had a number of these, but inflection points where now you can sit down with some of these icons and have these extended conversations. Even if you did not have that direct access, maybe your process with the note taking wouldn't change. I'm just curious how you read one biography or multiple biographies on a person and what the actual note taking process looks like. Right. Because I have. I'll volunteer what I do a lot. I use Kindle not for the convenience of the device, although that is convenient. Not because I can listen on audible or actually do it through the Kindle app and then stop and highlight things, which is also why I use it, but the highlighting overall is the reason. And then exporting or using something like Readwise in addition to synthesizing my highlights. And I believe you also use Readwise quite a bit. I'm not sure if you still use it.
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Oh yeah.
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But what does your process look like? And I know for instance, Maria Popova, who's this voluminous, prodigious genius of a writer, used to be brain picking since the marginalien. Now she has a very particular process for synthesizing and putting everything together. How do you do that?
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B
Okay, so I actually think I'm going to sit down and make an episode about how I make these. There's actually an older idea here that I just went through when I reread James Dyson's autobiography. Both of them actually. But the first autobiography I read like five times. The second one, I think this is the second or third time I read it. But one of the genius things that he did, you know, when no one knew he was Dyson, wasn't a thing. Like now it's one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world. You walk into a retail store, he had one product in one market at the time and you see, you know, I want to buy a vacuum cleaner. Five of them kind of look the same. And then you have this like alien looking thing at the end. But then what he said, he's like, hey, what is the advantage I have? I'm going against all these like huge multinational conglomerates and I'm just some bloke that cares about vacuum cleaners in this remote part of England. So he convinced all the retailers to let him write a story on a little leaflet and they would hang it on the handle of the Dyson and it tells a story. It's like two or three hundred words of who made it, why they made it, why they love it so much and why you should buy It People buy stories. So that's what I was saying is, like, that's not the first time I came across that idea. You go back to the early 1900s, and there's this guy named Claude Hopkins. I am always interested. You are? I read Scientific advertising.
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Yes. In the very beginning.
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Okay. I'm always interested. Who influences the influencers. Right, Right. So let me give you an example.
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I haven't thought of that name in so many years. So much on this Claude Hopkins.
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So, like, I became obsessed. We were talking before recording that, we both, well, I won't speak for you. Love and admire. And mine is borderline idolize Charlie Munger. If I can only learn from one person for rest of my life, if I could say, hey, you can only read this guy's words, Pick one person. I'm picking Munger. I just love everything about him. And the idea that I got to meet him is insane. Like, absolutely insane. So when I'm reading about Munger and Buffett, I'm like, man, these guys are really genius. I didn't know anything at this time. It's like 10 years ago. And I'm like, these guys are genius. And then they kept mentioning this guy named Henry Singleton over and over again. And they will tell you, if you admire somebody, what I think is hugely important, they will tell you who influenced them. And then you have to go and read about these people, and then you'll find who influenced them, and you realize that the ideas didn't start with them. They don't start with us. They can't die with us either. You have to push them forward, down the generations. And so I'm like, oh, this guy's interesting. Charlie Munger said that the smartest person he ever met was Henry Singleton. He's best friends with Buffett. Like, Buffett's, obviously. I was, how did he say that? And then Buffett says that it's a crime that business schools don't study Singleton. That's hell of a language. Like, that's strong language. And so then you start reading. I'm like, oh, my God. The ideas that I thought were Buffett and Munger's were Singletons. And so you see this over and over again. I was obsessed. Another guy that Buffett introduced me was David Ogilvy. David Ogilvy, I think, is one of the best writers I've ever come across. And Buffett keeps mentioning me shareholders like this genius named David Ogilvy. Why is Buffett calling this guy a genius?
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A
I read Ogilvy stuff at the same time. That I read Hopkins.
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Because if you read Ogilvy, what does he talk about? He's like, that's the genius. I'm not the genius. I'm just regurgitating Claude Hopkins work. And then he tells the story of Albert Lasker, who made more money. There's like, you know, let's call him a dozen great advertising agency founders, you know, the Mad Men era. And the one that made the most money was this guy named Albert Lasker. And he had the simplest business. No art department, no research department. He had Claude Hopkins writing copy, and his words rang the cash register. And if you can bring more customers to businesses, they will pay you a lot of money. And it turns out that this guy wrote. Claude Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising. He would try to publish it. It was essentially the way he. The Secrets of Lasker. And Lasker hid it in a safe for 20 years. And if you.
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A
Yeah, I'll get that right over to the agent, stick that in the safe.
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And so if you read this, he's like, hey, it may be boring to you. He uses example of Schlitz Beer, right? They were fifth in the market share. And they hire Hopkins, like, we want to sell more beer. And so he's like, okay, well, I'm gonna. He does the same thing. He does. He does a lot of research. And he goes and he tours their distillery. And he's blown away by, like, you know, that we triple distilled the water. And I don't know how beer made. Beer's made. I don't even drink that much. But, like, he explains the entire process. And Claude's like, this is amazing. Why don't you guys talk about this? He goes, because our process isn't different than any other distiller. He goes, yeah, but no one's telling that story. And so he writes these huge, essentially, you know, 1500 word, 2000 words of this is how the beer that you're about to drink is made and goes from fifth to first, because people buy stories. And so to answer your question on, like, I think what I should do is sit down. Maybe I'll just clip this and be like, okay, this is how I make the podcast or how I consume information. So I think me and you share love of the writing of Cormac McCarthy.
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A
Sure. Oh, my God. Yeah. Beautiful and brutal in equal measure. So the Road, Blood Meridian. I mean, there are many other examples.
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B
All the Pretty Horses, the Border trilogy, Just everything. The guy just read everything. He's just incredible. The Road, no Country for Old Men. I Saw the movie. First of all, the book. It's crazy how, like, they barely had to change any words. It's like he wrote a script. So he says, something is fascinating. That subconscious is older than language. They're like, how'd you write blood reading? He goes, I didn't. He's like, I sat there, and it came all from my subconscious. I just, like. I eliminate anything that got in the way of it.
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A
Man, you must have a busy therapist.
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Oh, I couldn't imagine what's in that guy's head to write that book. The judge.
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The judge is the craziest. So dark. So dark. Anyway.
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B
So anyways, so I am all intuition, all feeling. So basically what I do is I sit down with a book, and usually I do this physically. And it's like I'm doing arts and crafts over here. I sit down with a physical book because that's how I fell in love with reading, you know? Like, I don't have memories before I had a love of reading. And I think one of the best things that ever happened to me is the fact that I don't know why. My reading grabbed a hold of me since I was, like, four or five years old. So. My mom was dying of breast cancer. What I said about the only thing they read is the Bible. That you could take that to an extreme because, like, she tried for two years to try to pray her cancer away. And by that time, by the time we convinced her to see an oncologist, the word he used was, the horse is out of the barn. And this is the most grueling way to die when you have. It spreads to your bones. Like, if that happens, I'm calling you to put a pillow over my face. Like, I'm just not going through that. It's just. It was just a terrible thing to see. But one thing she said, she's like, you've just been like this forever. Like, you were a kid and you'd read the back of cereal boxes. I'd walk in every single room. I did this when I come in here and just. You just automatically read everything that's on the walls. So I have no idea where this came from. I didn't choose the passion of reading. It chose me. And all of it is intuition. I sit down with a physical book because that's how I fell in love with reading. I sit down with.
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A
Your mom would bring you to the bookstore.
- [28:09]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [28:10]
A
Because they won't kick you out for reading.
- [28:12]
B
Yeah, exactly. And the library. And then, like, even. And this is. I remember the first time, it's like, this is maybe before I even knew words because I was obsessed with Where's Waldo? So it's like my first memory. So you're not reading anything. You're just like finding the guy with the striped shirt or striped sweater. So basically I sit down, physical book, pen, six inch ruler, post it notes and scissors. And I just read and I don't think. And if something jumps out to me, I highlight it, whatever pops to my mind. And normally as our mutual friends, like Patrick, Chris, Rick, they'll all see this. It's just like I'm not actually listening to what you're saying. There's an idea behind it.
- [28:50]
A
Right. Meaning you're not taking what the author says literally. You're looking at the idea behind.
- [28:56]
B
I'm just looking for the essence.
- [28:57]
A
Yeah.
- [28:57]
B
So like, if me and Rick are talking about like a giant deal that he wants to invest in, I'm thinking about how that's similar to how Fred Smith built FedEx or how Jim Casey built UPS, or how Buffett thought about, you know, buying seas candy.
- [29:10]
A
So what, so what do you do with the post it notes and the scissors and the ruler?
- [29:13]
B
So basically, like I underlined that sentence and then whatever popped my mind and I'm like, oh, this is kind of like James J. Hill when he was building the only profitable, successful American railroad. And like, you just write down whatever comes to mind.
- [29:24]
A
It's on the post it.
- [29:25]
B
On the post it.
- [29:26]
A
And that goes on the page.
- [29:27]
B
It goes on the page. So then I'm writing it down and then like, you know, I might have three sentences, but the post it notes three by five. So I have to cut. It has to be clean, it has to look good. Like there's a beauty to it. Like I am irrational, like crazy when it comes to this stuff. This is why I think I picked up on your work right away. Because I see a fellow nutcase and obsessive where like I hand edit now my transcripts. So everybody's like, you should outsource it to AI. You should outsource it to India. No, I have to touch it, I have to feel it. I have to like, I just love it. I'm not doing it to do it quicker. I like what Jerry Seinfeld says, the hard way is the right way. I like the hard way. This also goes back to obviously have some kind of like dark thing driving me, which we can dive into if you want. But so then you go through the entire book, right? And so then I have to take pictures of it into the Readwise app because you do it the smarter way, Kindle will just automatically go to Readwise.
- [30:18]
A
Well, I still use physical. I'll explain. I'll trade. I'll tell you how I use physical.
- [30:22]
B
Want to do it now or you want me?
- [30:23]
A
Yeah, sure. Well, okay. So don't lose your place. All right. You got the scissors? I want to know about the ruler. Oh, I guess the ruler. Well, I want you to.
- [30:31]
B
Straight lines. It has to be straight.
- [30:32]
A
Okay. It has to be beautiful. So we both have pretty moderate to severe ocd. I remember when I was diagnosed by the psychiatrist who was doing some preliminary formality of taking me through these assessments before I was going to have this experimental brain stimulation, semi experimental, and he had to check the boxes, and he went through these hours and hours of stuff, and he's like, you know, I need to take a seat. If we need to take a break, I understand. And he gave me this OCD diagnosis. I'm like, yeah, what else is new?
- [31:03]
B
I knew this about.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah, I don't need time. So the way I use physical, and I do use physical still quite a bit is I will. This is another question that maybe you can answer when you pick back up, is how a second or third reading differs from the first. Because when I read it the first time, I'm doing something very similar to you. I'm underlining things, or if that's just too much work because the book is actually a gem and it has a lot, then I will just, like, bracket it on the side of the paragraph so that I know what the highlight is. Then I will go through if I read it a second time, and I will put T2 in a circle next to the things that still stuck out on the second reading. Now, sometimes you're just a different person if you read it, like five years later and your lived experience and your position as life is different. But if I'm doing it in somewhat rapid succession, I want to see what sticks on a second or third reading. So you'll see, like, T2, T3, et cetera. Sometimes it's just fun to see how I change over time. With the moral Letters to Lucilius by Seneca, the younger people can find it in all sorts of compendiums. I put out a free PDF called the Tao of Seneca. I like to just see where I am at different points in my life, what resonates. And then typically with any physical book I'm creating, I just did this with a book I finished yesterday called Deep Tech by Pablo Holman. Where I'm creating an index in the front. So whenever there's a page that really, really sticks out, I'll write down like 168, whatever it might be, right? Someone I want to look up. Someone like a Claude Hopkins whose name gets dropped. And I'm like, that seems important. All right. And so I have this index, and then I'll take a photograph of the index just in case I lose the book, which has happened. And that's always painful. I also will have. I'll make a little box on the bottom right hand corner of some of the front matter pages, and I'll put next steps there.
- [32:54]
B
Wait, what's the front matter?
- [32:56]
A
So the front matter would be the copyright page or the title page. The pages that don't really have any content on them. Maybe there's a dedication page like Tama. You know, it's like, okay, that's a blank page that I can use. So on the, like the bottom right hand corner, just two lines that create sort of a box I will write down next steps. So for every book. Not every book, in some cases, if it's just for pleasure and it's fiction, but even then, sometimes ideas will pop into mind. I'm like, okay, what is at least one kind of next step? Maybe it's looking up someone like Claude Hopkins. Maybe it's an action, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's an email. But along the lines of David Allen and getting things done. It's like one physical next action. And so I almost always have that in nonfiction books. I take photos of all that. I used to put it all into Evernote. I still sometimes do that because I've been using it forever and I have thousands of them.
- [33:45]
B
You're the last Evernote standing.
- [33:46]
A
I might be.
- [33:47]
B
Yeah.
- [33:47]
A
I use Scannable to get it into Evernote. But the point is I have a way to then OCR it so I can search it. All right, back to that.
- [33:54]
B
So that's. That's basically what I have to do now, which takes an unbelievable amount, amount of time. But again, then now. So I've already read it one time. Now I have to input it into Readwise. So you take a picture of it, and it's laborious. And now I've read it for the second or maybe a third time, because then you see on the page, and then you have to make sure that it matches up between the page and what's on your screen. And so you're reading it over and over again. So then I get it all into Readwise.
- [34:17]
A
Do you want to take a sidebar just to explain what Readwise is?
- [34:20]
B
Readwise is essentially just a way to keep track of your notes and highlights from everything you read. And now they're expanding out because turns out the total addressable market for people that want to keep highlights and notes. First of all, how many people are reading books now? That number is dwindling, unfortunately. And then of that subset of smaller and dwindling people, how many read as much as you and I do? And then they want to essentially, giant searchable database of everything you've ever read. It's, like, super valuable. And they charge, like, $99 a year for it. So now they have. Basically, they were running this for six years. They have a new, like, web reader app, and they said they made more money in six months from that than they did in readwise for six years. This is like, obviously not a lot of people that want to do this. What the thing that we're describing doing. I used to read the physical book because I actually. Let's back up, and I want to tell you, like, the role that you played. And don't let me forget where I'm at, though.
- [35:03]
A
Yeah, I will.
- [35:04]
B
So I went to, like, a shitty college because I remember, like, when I was in your senior year, but, you know, I went to public high school, and everybody's like, where are you going to school? And I didn't understand what they meant. I'm like, one I can drive to, like, the one I can, like, go to at night because I have to work during the day. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I didn't know. I got kicked in my house when I was 18 and I had to live in student housing.
- [35:24]
A
Why'd you get kicked out?
- [35:26]
B
My mom's side of the family has, like, severe mental illness and just like, some of the worst people you've ever met. And they just had this belief that, like, you kick your kids out when you're 18.
- [35:40]
A
I got it out of the nest.
- [35:42]
B
It's not even that. It's like they pick a fake fight. That was the point of contention between my mom is she had undiagnosed mental illness for sure. Maybe not schizophrenic, definitely bipolar. Her sister is schizophrenic. And listen, man, as you get older, at the time, I had a lot of anger. Super. A lot of anger, because I didn't understand why they're doing what you're doing. And then you get older, and then you have your own kids. So I went through this crazy thing where, like, I think I, like, hated them even more because when my daughter was born, I'm like. I remember seeing her for the first time. I was like, like, you think you love a woman? No. Enzo Ferrari has this great line that it's impossible for a man to love a woman. The only true love he has is for his kids. And I understand what he meant. I think Ryan Reynolds said it best where it's like, I never thought I'd love anybody as much. I love Blake Lively. And then she gave birth to our daughter. And as soon as I looked at the daughter, I knew if we were ever under attack, I would use Blake as a human shield to protect that baby. Like, it's funny, but it's literally when I heard him say that, I go, yes, that's it.
- [36:42]
A
So that makes the memory all the more painful.
- [36:43]
B
Then I was like, how the. How do you do this to your children? Then you have more experience. And then you're like, yeah, but like, imagine you grew up like they did. Like poor white trash. My grandfather raped all his daughters, including my mother. Raped all of his daughters. I didn't know about this till after he died, or else I was. Would have been the one who put him in his grave. Raped his daughters, raped his granddaughters. They lived in this, like, shitty house in Indiana with one bathroom. There was a two bedroom. She had three sisters. The only bathroom is in my grand. I call them grandparents. I hate them with all of my being in their room. And so if you wanted to go in the bedroom at night, he was a monster. They would urinate in cups and pour it out the window.
- [37:30]
A
Wow.
- [37:31]
B
So again, it doesn't excuse the bad decisions they made and the unhappy marriage my parents had and all this other crap. But it's just like, all right, like, imagine that. Imagine that you destroyed your kids. That person was supposed to protect them. I can't even talk about this. But anyways, we would fight a lot. And she'd be alternate depending on the day. Like, she'd be the kindest person in the world or like, like a storm. And so the unfortunate part was when she got diagnosed with cancer, we hadn't spoken six months, so she only survived another, I think, two years. So that means the last two and a half years, I missed what, like, that's 20%, 25% of her life. And somebody's like, what were you guys fighting over? I was like, the sad thing is, I don't remember. I was not one to let you know, I was very hard headed. And so she had some weird fight with me. I don't remember what it was. And then she's like, you're not allowed to live here. Kick me out. And I have anything. And so anyways, I went to. Lived in student housing. And that was the first time they randomly assign you like a roommate. And it was like the son of a rich rancher because our fridge was like, full of like all this meat stuff, which is bad because it was the summer where Florida got hit by like four hurricanes and all the meat went rotting, spoiled. Oh, yeah, it was disgusting. But I didn't know that there were people legitimately. This makes me sound like an absolute moron. But I didn't know that there were people that. That only went to college because my roommate didn't have a job. He just drank and went to. I'm like, what else do you do? Yeah, what? This is crazy. So I don't know where I was going with that.
- [38:58]
A
You were saying you were taking a pause on Readwise and multiple reads, and you're like, I gotta tell you how I found you.
- [39:05]
B
Oh, okay. So again, I'm a crappy school. It's a state school in Orlando. Ucf. I almost said ufc. Like, we're. It's mma. That would have been probably more useful now. So ucf. And this is when Facebook was coming out. But Facebook was only at the fancy schools.
- [39:21]
A
Yeah, right. It was very much at the fancy school.
- [39:23]
B
We didn't have Facebook, you know, we had. We had MySpace. And so remember like, you'd go. And they like music playing on somebody's profile. Well, people would list, like, their favorite movies and favorite books. And I think I was like, looking at a girl's probably profile.
- [39:35]
A
Yeah.
- [39:36]
B
And under favorite books, it said four hour workweek. I'm like, that's a great title. What is that? And I immediately order it on Amazon and then I start reading it. Obviously then that book, you know, inspired I don't know, 25 million people, maybe even more. But now and then I start consuming all your stuff. So, like, I'd buy all your books. I bought your TV show. It's like, sometimes I'll forget because you go on, like, whatever. It's not called itunes anymore. And like, I don't buy anything because everything streams. I'm like, embarrassed. My shit.
- [40:03]
A
I know from the Natural History Museum back in the day.
- [40:07]
B
So I was obsessed with podcasts I discovered in 2010, and before I started my. In 2016, I listened to thousands of them. And you had one that changed my life, which was when you did Jocko.
- [40:17]
A
Yeah.
- [40:17]
B
And that was 2015, if I remember correctly. And you told him to start a podcast, and I think Rogan told him to do it as well. And he's like, well, if I got these two guys, obviously he's smart.
- [40:28]
A
Just take the advice.
- [40:29]
B
And I started listening to his podcast, and he changed format. But in the beginning, it was just him doing. He would read a first person account, so an autobiography of somebody in combat. And I could not believe what I was hearing. And so what I would do is I'd listen maybe like 100 of his episodes and maybe buy a dozen of the books. So you learn. Even on the episodes, you don't read the book. You learn so much and you're inspired. And in the books, he kept introducing me all kinds of crazy stories, and I was like, hey, a couple months later. And then obviously, like, I'd started reading biographies because your friend Kevin Rose did this excellent interview with Elon Musk we can talk about from 2012. And I was like, what if I do like Jocko's format, but I'm interested in, like, four things. I'm interested in reading, history, podcasts, and entrepreneurship. And so if you look at it, it's like, just sits in between those four. And I started doing that, and essentially I was just imitating Jocko and no one gave a shit for five and a half years.
- [41:21]
A
Yeah. Wow. What a wild story. So I want to dive into that. The interview with Jocko I owe special thanks to. I think it was Peter Attia who made the introduction.
- [41:33]
B
He said, just trust me on this.
- [41:35]
A
Yeah.
- [41:35]
B
And then didn't you just show up at your house or something?
- [41:37]
A
Yeah, we hung out in San Francisco. I remember exactly which coffee shop we went to. And I made the mistake. I wasn't even thinking properly. I had a camo shirt on, and I was like, I can't believe I wore a fucking camo shirt to meet someone as legitimate as Jocko Willink. And I was just like, oh, facepalm. But we ended up connecting. That was his first ever public interview, which is wild.
- [42:02]
B
One of the best ones ever done.
- [42:03]
A
Oh. I mean, he really brought the heat.
- [42:07]
B
He's my alarm. Every morning. He's like, get up. I swear to God, I'm not joking. He's been my alarm for, like, half a decade.
- [42:13]
A
Yeah.
- [42:13]
B
He yells at me.
- [42:15]
A
Extreme ownership still highly, highly, highly recommend to everyone. And if you want to hear me and Jaco go toe to toe. Not really toe to toe. We're sort of shoulder to shoulder with a book. We did Musashi episode 100, episode 100, which was like four and a half, five hours long going through this historical novel about the most famous swordsman in Japanese history.
- [42:36]
B
I read that because of the episode.
- [42:37]
A
Oh, so good.
- [42:38]
B
I think I read the audiobook first and it's like 60 hours long or something.
- [42:41]
A
It's really long. And keeping in mind, this was originally published in Japanese in a country of whatever the population is like 120, 150 million. I think it sold 80 to 100 million copies. I mean, something just completely insane as I might be getting that off, but the numbers are just astonishing as a ratio of the total population. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit, and five of the upgraded AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim. So five and a half years. How do you explain no one giving a shit for five and a half years? In other words, was there something that happened? A decision you made, something that changed things around the five and a half year mark? Was it a change in technology? Was it the ecosystem? What happened?
- [44:33]
B
Yeah, literally I was doing nothing different. Changing business model. So you remember podcasting back in there because you're like one of the OGs and like you had this massive audience. Your blog was crazy. Like you were huge and still are. And I was none of those things. I was a weird introvert. I didn't have any social media. I didn't know anything about, like the Internet. I don't know how to describe. Like, I just would like to read and record a podcast in my kitchen on a hundred dollar microphone. And I remember calling around and trying to figure out like what's the business model here? And everybody's like, oh, it's ads. I'm like, oh, that's great. And so at the time there was like these ad networks essentially they just sell ads for you and they're like, we'd love to work with you. You just have to have 50,000 downloads per show. And I go, what? I will never. 50,000, like that. I just, it seemed like such a big number. Like it's just like that will never ever happen in the universe.
- [45:25]
A
Podcast, that's still a big number.
- [45:26]
B
Yes, but now like there's millions, like how many people listen to Tim Ferriss show? And like there's millions, like millions of millions of people, you know, like over the course of a year or whatever. So I was like, oh my God, like that's never going to happen. And so then you say okay, well what can you do? And like back then it'd be like affiliate. So like remember Audible scaled massively. People don't realize how big businesses can get on the back of podcasts. And how many have. Because Audible was, it was on every. It was. Dan Carlin had one ad and it was on Audible.
- [45:54]
A
It was Audible.
- [45:54]
B
Yes.
- [45:55]
A
They were very smart about that.
- [45:56]
B
Yes.
- [45:56]
A
Yeah, they've been able to change a lot of their economics.
- [46:00]
B
Yes.
- [46:00]
A
For the better for Audible and Amazon since capturing more market share. But they did an excellent job of marketing and advertising.
- [46:08]
B
They were on every single podcast. And so I did that. And then there was this company called Blinkist which was kind of like a summary, 10 minute summary app for like business books, nonfiction books. And that blew my mind because you only got paid on sales and they would show you like not the people but like where the country was. And I remember the first time somebody in Japan bought, I'm like, I'm sitting in Miami in my kitchen. Great acoustics by the way, you idiot. On $100 mike with no pop filter. No nothing. Like there was nothing out there. There was no, like editing a podcast now with the script and all the AI tools. It's like magic compared to what we had to do. And I was like, what? Somebody in Japan listened to this thing? This was crazy. So the one idea I had, I actually got the business model from a socialist podcast.
- [46:55]
A
Might have been the beginning of the troubles.
- [47:02]
B
So there was this for a long time. When I opened a browser, my homepage would be this thing called Graphtreon Graftreon is they use the Patreon API and you see people building membership communities. And what was interesting about them is, like, you know, people would sell comic books, they would sell podcasts, they would sell newsletters, videos. And the most popular category was podcasts. I'm like, that's weird. And so at the time, this podcast called Chapo Trap House was the number one, and they had 25,000 people.
- [47:29]
A
This is on Patreon.
- [47:31]
B
Yes. And the only way you see this is because Graphcheon would aggregate the data for you and present it to you. And so at the time, I think they had 20,000 paid subscribers at at least $5 a month. And their business model is simple. Every other podcast you have to pay for, so you can listen to half them for free. If you want more, just pay five bucks a month and you can listen to it in a podcast player. Like anything else, you just have to go through the paywall. And every month I'm watching and the number gets higher and higher and higher. Now, if you pull up graph John, I think the number one is Shane Gillis. I think he's got like 120,000 paid subscribers. So I was like, oh, there's like a business here with like, what if I had a subscription podcast? So it's one thing to pay five bucks a month for a comedy podcast, but my podcast are about business. If there's ideas on this podcast that will make people more money, which is essentially what business education comes down to. Like, you want to be more successful, what you do, some kind of, like, hopefully you see like a better economic outcome for yourself and your family. I was like, what if I could just sell subscriptions? I'm not selling enough Audible subscriptions and Blinkist. Not gonna happen. And my idea was like, I think I was completely in love with podcasting. I still am. It's like the only thing I think about. I work on seven days a week. It's completely taken over my life. And my idea was like, I don't even have to be wealthy. I just have to do this for a living. It has to come out of me. It's like, I have no control over this. And I was like, maybe I can make like dentist money. And so my idea was like, I bet you I can sell 3,000 paid subscriptions at $100 a pop, make 300 grand a year. And then I also have a lot of self confidence. Like, well, if I could sell 3000, I could sell 20,000. And then like, maybe I can sell as many as Chapo can. And Then I'm making too many. Like, this is the idea I had. And so my idea was like. The genius idea I had was like, hey, your most valuable asset you have, which is, like, you know, your podcasts that are easy to share and everything else. Like, let's put a big wall in front of that. Yeah, yeah. And so I put a giant paywall in front of it, and obviously it slows growth, because how are you gonna share the episode? The one benefit I had, which really kept me going, and I don't think I would have quit anyways. I really don't think I had any other option was that, you know, we don't know who's gonna listen to this one. We just see numbers on a screen, but with a subscription, you see the email address. And the emails were, like, the top founders and top VCs. And I had a very small audience. And one of them was our mutual friend Patrick o'. Shaughnessy. And I was a huge fan of Patrick. And I saw. I'm not going to repeat his email address here, but I know what the. I was like, I saw that come across, and there were so few. Like, I saw every single one.
- [50:00]
A
Yeah, sure, because you're getting like, 10 a day.
- [50:03]
B
I don't know, five a day or something like that paid. And I'm like, oh, my God, Patrick, bravo. He didn't know who I was. You know, I was a big fan of his. Didn't know anything. I had no followers. I think I had, like, 7,000 followers across, like, every one of my accounts. And I was, like, trying really hard back then. And he goes, I never find good podcasts to listen to. I think David Sender's founder's podcast is excellent. You should listen to it. And he linked to that one on Essay Lauder. And I could not believe it, because I was like, why do I have these mentions on Twitter? What is a mention? Like, I don't get mentions. Like, what is this new thing? I log into my email because I would. Back then, you would get an email every time you get a new pay subscription. And off of one tweet of an endorsement by people. This is why, like, you and Andrew are kind of like the male Oprah. And I mean that in the most. Like, you know what I've bought because you told me that it's good. Why? Because of the trust. People chase numbers. It's like that. You're not chasing numbers. You're chasing trust and relationships. I love what Warren Buffett said, a brand is a promise. The fact that you guys have such high standards. I've never bought anything like, how was Tim thinking? And so that's what makes you so valuable. So Patrick extended that trust to me where I logged into my email. And you couldn't stop scrolling. Yeah, you couldn't stop scrolling. And so I screenshotted that because Patrick's a good dude.
- [51:17]
A
Very smart too. Invest like the best.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, you. You did an excellent episode with him for when you hit your 10 year anniversary.
- [51:22]
A
Oh, yeah, 10 years.
- [51:23]
B
And then I was a huge NBA fan. And one of the. The person that found me that's been really, really helpful when I had like 1500 listeners, guy named Sam Hinkey, former general manager of the 76ers, very, very intelligent, like intense and kind of reclusive guy. Now it's really hard to get to. And we had talked a bunch and he's just like, I really think you have something here. I think you're like, what you're doing is important. And I've tried to help you as much as I can. And I knew him and Patrick were friends, and I screenshotted Patrick's tweet. I was like, look what your friend Patrick did. Sam didn't say anything. He just put it. And again, Patrick trusts Sam, and Sam's telling Patrick, this guy's worth your time. He put us in group chat. He goes, you two need to know each other. And I was like, patrick, I'm a huge fan. Love to talk to you. And Patrick doesn't have a calendar. He's like, what about right now? And I was like, well, let me look at my calendar. Nothing. Yeah, nothing. Literally nothing. First time we talked was like an hour and a half. And we get to the end, he goes, I thought I was into podcasts. And then, then we become friends. And then I joined his network. And then he just poured gasoline on a. On a promising spark.
- [52:19]
A
Was he the one who convinced you to remove the wall?
- [52:23]
B
No. So a friend of mine, again, this is the sad part about getting more following is so many of my close friends now came from like DMs. And now you can't do that. You can't even look at mentions.
- [52:35]
A
Yeah, I'd be curious. Doesn't work.
- [52:37]
B
Yeah, it's like such a magical thing. And now because.
- [52:40]
A
Yeah, well, once verified could be purchased. It. It destroyed the utility of meeting those people on.
- [52:45]
B
It's like what Charlie Munger said, like, if you have a bunch of raisins and just a few turds, you still got turds. And you could have 99% of people are nice to you. And then these psychos and you're like, I can't read my mentions anymore, can't check my DMs. Like, it's like sad. But one of the, I met a couple friends through them and again I was like grinding out $100 year subscriptions, just like going to the factory every day, trying to like, you know, sell a few more. And one of my friends told me like, what? One of his friends company just paid to advertise on like one of the biggest business podcasts. And the number was like, what, what did you just say? And then Sam and other people like Patrick, you know, they're just like, this is kind of weird thing that you're doing. Like, why don't you just sell ads like everybody else? You know? And I was like, look at China. They, they're 90 subscriptions for podcast. I'm like, yeah, but you're American, you idiot. And so I came up with all these like, crazy, because I'm. I can be very convincing in the opposite direction. Like, it doesn't have to be a good idea. I can talk myself into really bad. I can talk myself into good ideas, but I can talk myself into bad ideas too. And so eventually I was, I called Patrick one day and I was just like, man, I am like fighting with like one hand behind my back. This is really, really difficult. I think I'm gonna make an ad based version of founders. And he immediately is like, yeah, no shit. I've been telling you to do this forever. And then I was like, and I'd like it to be on your network. And he's like, ooh, that's interesting. And again, he's just a good dude. And he's like, yeah, but I own all podcasts on my network. He's like, will you sell me equity? And I don't know why I said this. I was like, no, it was like crazy. But I was. And I had had all these like acquisition investment offers up until that point. Because obviously everybody in the audience likes to do deals.
- [54:28]
A
Yeah.
- [54:28]
B
So they're like trying to allocate capital.
- [54:29]
A
That's their sport.
- [54:30]
B
Yeah. And I was like, no, no, it's like, it wasn't a business thing to me. It's like a special thing. It's like part of my soul. You know, Michael Dell has this great answer when he was like fighting with car icon when, you know, and they're like, why don't you just like start another company? He's like, I like this company. First of all it has my name on it. And he goes, I'm going to care about this company after I'm dead. So that's how I feel. Like it's irrational love that I have for this. And so I was like, I don't want to sell equity. But he's like, what do you want? I was like, I want you to help amplify my audience and connect me with first rate advertisers. Then we could just share ad revenue. And one call, he's like, done. And that completely changed everything. That was four years ago.
- [55:07]
A
Wow. Thank God for Patrick, huh?
- [55:10]
B
Oh, for sure. I talk to him almost every day. We're like brothers. I called him.
- [55:14]
A
He's a great guy. He's a very good guy, actually. I'm going to zoom into your sort of expertise, subject matter for a second and then I want to talk more about podcasting, but just so it doesn't become too much inside Baseball. I do want to come back and talk about podcasting, but you had mentioned, you have mentioned a number of different names kind of at the top of your list, people to learn from. Where does Edwin Land fit into that? And who is Edwin Land?
- [55:42]
B
So Edwin Land is the patron saint of founders. So I want a picture of him in my house, like, you know, the Last Supper. It'd just be like, Edwin Land in the middle, like, Jesus. So again, I'm very interested in who influences the influencers and like, where do these ideas actually come from? And you know, Steve Jobs, if you have a Mount Rushmore of greatest entrepreneurs, like, his face has got to be on it. Undoubtedly he created the most successful product in history. I think he did it for the right reasons. I think he's a very fascinating person. Obviously incredibly flawed as like a human, which he even said, you know, but what's fascinating is if you go back and which I do is like, when I read a biography, somebody, I will make a list going back to, you know, your outline of what I'll do in the front of the books. Which you called what?
- [56:26]
A
Front matter.
- [56:26]
B
Front matter. I didn't even know that term till now. Thank you. Yeah, I will write down all the other founders or all the other people they'll talk about. And so, like, I just did this with James Dyson. He's like obsessed with Buckminster Fuller and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Jeremy Fry and Alex Isaganis and all these people. He just repeats them over and over again. And you just realize, oh, he studied these guys and then took their ideas and said those ideas are good, I'll use them. And then makes $60 billion or whatever his company's worth.
- [56:50]
A
Everyone should read about Buckminster Fuller.
- [56:52]
B
I haven't read the book yet. Yeah, I read his ideas, but not the book that James read when he was in college. It's fascinating to me how it's almost all like. And they usually find it early. I had lunch with Sam Zell.
- [57:04]
A
How did he make his money?
- [57:05]
B
For people who don't know, people consider him an investor. He calls himself an entrepreneur. He called himself an entrepreneur. So what he's most well known for is in 2007 he sold the, I think the biggest real estate company in history for like 38 billion to Blackstone. And he kind of like tipped the very top of the market. But he just likes to essentially buy businesses, try to make them grow. He would sell some. So like, that's why people consider him an investor. But he considered himself an entrepreneur. By the time I met him, he had 61 years of experience as, as an entrepreneur. And my favorite entrepreneurs are. I love talking to these people that have 40, 50. I'm not interested in the startup founder at all. Like this 25 year old kid that thinks he's smart. He doesn't have enough experience yet. Life is going to teach you what you need.
- [57:47]
A
You know people who've ridden like many multiple macroeconomic cycles who have had to contend with different challenges at different points in their lives, not just when they have no responsibilities and no dependence.
- [57:59]
B
Yeah.
- [58:00]
A
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
- [58:01]
B
He says something in his autobiography that you were speaking to earlier. He's like, yeah, and earlier in my life, my career fought my marriages and my career one. And that's why I've been married three times. The reoccurring theme is that you look at life as everything that's not work, as kind of an unpleasant distraction. And you wonder why your relationship's broken because you're not spending any time there. Like, of course it's the outcome. And they all make this mistake over and over again. So what's fascinating about this is. We'll go back to Evan Landon in a minute. Sam Zell in his biography, he's like, dude, I'm in college. This guy was making millions of dollars a year when he was in law school. That's how good of an entrepreneur he was from day one.
- [58:33]
A
Was that real estate he was developing.
- [58:35]
B
I think student housing at the time. I think the student housing. But he was also like doing deals. Like, he's just a very gifted dealmaker and you see this with Rick understanding, like you'll bring something to Rick and you're like, oh, here's like 10 things that are important.
- [58:48]
A
Do you want to explain who Rick is? Briefly.
- [58:50]
B
So his name is Rick Gerson, one of my closest friends. You've known him for what?
- [58:55]
A
Yeah, I don't know, 15, 20 years. A long time.
- [58:58]
B
15, 20 years. He's one of the most generous, thoughtful, and also simultaneously super intense people I know.
- [59:04]
A
He's a master of finance. Came out of this just sort of amazing training environment. We can just call that what it is for now in simplicity, and is one also of the best connected humans I've ever met.
- [59:18]
B
He identifies. There's one thing. He learned that from Sam, and then Sam learned that from this guy named Jay Pritzker. It's very fascinating.
- [59:25]
A
So Chicago royalty.
- [59:27]
B
Yes, 100%. I actually just backed. It's not Kickstarter, but there's no biographies of Jay Pritzker. And so there's a guy named Rockwood Notes that essentially put his hat out. He's like, hey, I want to do this, but I need to make at least I think 40,000 a year to write this book. And he's selling like $800 or thousand dollar year subscriptions. I was like, yeah, I'll obviously sign up for this. I want a Jay Pritzer biography. So Sam Zell in his autobiography, he's like, yeah, I read this book by William Zeckendorf and it changed my life. Because there's one idea in this book. It's what Charlie Munger said. There's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. And there is this thing called Hawaiian Technique. William Zeckendorf was like this real estate developer in New York, and he came from nothing and then made a lot of money, then lost it all, and then made a lot of money, then lost it all again and dies with no money. So you want to avoid that too. But he had this thing called the Hawaiian Technique, which was, hey, if you just parcel out a building and you sell the different parts to whoever values it more, you'll make more money. So, like, the lease is valued higher by these guys and the land is valued higher, and maybe the commercial real estate there or whatever, like he just would break it apart like Legos and sell it independently and make more money. What Sam realized, he started using that real estate and he goes, oh, this works in business too. So he'd buy businesses like, maybe you want the ip, maybe you want the talent, maybe you want the actual physical assets. And he'd do this over and over again. So I remember telling Sam to his face, and Sam had no filter, and he was exactly who you thought he was. If you watch any videos, he's just like this. And I go, yeah, I bought that book that you recommended. He goes, did you read it? I go, no. He goes, read it. Like, he's got the gravelly voice, like, read it. I was like, oh, okay. And I read it as soon as I. I went home and started reading it. Like Sam Zell tells you, read a book. Just read a book. But the reason I bring this up is because you'll see this over and over again. They'll find somebody early. So you can go back and read this Playboy interview just for the. I hope when you. It's just for the interview, it's not for anything else. Of Steve jobs when he's 25, 26, and he's talking about the fact that we have the wrong role models and heroes as a society. We want to be, you know, now he'd say, you want to be YouTubers or something. We want to be athletes. We want to be all these other things. We should want to be Edwin Land. And at the time, Edwin Land was the founder of Polaroid. Edwin land's in his 70s. Jobs meets him and spends time with him a bunch of times. Okay. Edwin Land at that time had the third most patents of any American in history. I think it was Thomas Edison, the second guy, and then Edwin Land, or maybe it's, you know, the first guy and then Thomas Edison, but Edwin Land was up there. And what you would realize is when Jobs goes on stage and says, hey, I wanted to build Apple. I wanted to build a company at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. And he has that. He literally puts the, you know, the street sign up on there. That is literally a direct quote from Edwin Land. Edwin Land wanted to build a company at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. He wanted to make completely vertically integrated consumer products that were magical, that had a magical experience. And Edwin Land's case, he invented the industry that he then comes to dominate. There was no such thing as instant photography. So when we're like, how great is the iPhone compared to one that came before it? The difference was, is vast, but not the same thing as me. If me and you were hanging out before Edmund Land was on this earth, we take a picture at a party, like, how'd it come out? Well, we'll find out two weeks from now when we get back from Kodak, as opposed.
- [62:43]
A
Turns out it was a shot of.
- [62:44]
B
My foot, as opposed to, like, wait a minute. And we're gonna see it right here in the Polaroid. And then, dude, the amount of ideas that Jobs took from him. Go look at the freaking tables that Jobs uses when he gives presentations. The table, actual table. It's the same table that Edwin Land gave when he gave presentations.
- [63:04]
A
So if somebody wants to study Edwin Land, where do they start?
- [63:07]
B
I read this biography of Edwin Land. I thought it was incredible. It's called Insisting on the Impossible. It's the most comprehensive biography of him. People read it, they're like, this book sucks. I think it's riveting. There is a book, I think it's called Land's Polaroid. That's the one I'd read because it's only 250 pages. And it's written by a guy that worked for and with Edwin lam for, like, 20 years. And I love those kind of things because you see him over a decade. But my point being is, like, Jobs was talking about this guy when he was 25. Jobs knows he's dying. When he's working with Isaacson on the biography, he knows he's dying, and he's still talking about Edwin. Lynn appears in Isaacson's biography of Jobs, like, six times. Why is he still talking about this guy? How could you not be interested in understanding why? What is it about this guy that he admired and liked? Yeah, and he has a saying that he has a personal motto that I love and that I try to do. And Edwin Lands, there's two of them. Edwin Land says, my personal motto is very personal. It may not apply to anybody else or anybody else or any other company, but is don't do anything that someone else can do. The importance of differentiation. I'm shocked at how few people understand how important it is. Dyson. Dyson's whole thing is, like, it has to be different. Even if it's worse, it should be different. He's got a very fascinating business philosophy that Dyson's mind's incredible. And then the other thing is, he knows because he dropped out of Harvard twice, he goes, there's something that he'll teach you at Harvard Business School that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
- [64:31]
A
So how do you think about different archetypes? Perhaps that's the best word to use within the pantheon of successful entrepreneurs. The reason I ask that is that I imagine you get questions along the lines of. And I get questions like this. Also. When you look across all of the biographies, what are some of the common patterns? Give me the top five, top six. And then people want to grab that recipe. But it could be like, just to use a sports analogy, it's like, all right, you're taking the stretching routine from LeBron James, the weight training routine from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and this, this, and this. You're grabbing habits from mutants that are in entirely different spheres or have different bodies entirely, then trying to cobble it together. It may not work. That's point number one. Probably won't work. Number two is that within the world of business advice, whether it's autobiographies, biographies, interviews, there's a lot that conflicts. You have one person who says anything that's worth doing is worth overdoing. And then there's. You can tell who the novice is because they do too much. I'm wondering how you think of entrepreneurship for yourself in terms of modeling different people or taking advice because you have two people just to use a metric that's easy for everybody to wrap their head around. Two billionaires, and they give you diametrically opposed advice. How do you personally pick?
- [66:02]
B
There's no formula. One of the things I'm so thrilled with is the fact that I've become friends with Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify. And this is something we're actually trying to work on together. Because he brings us up. He's like, we need alternative founder archetypes, and back up. First of all, Daniel is an alien. There is a specific reason that I wanted him to be the very first guest on the new show is I'm able to build relationships with other people. Daniel's very special in the sense that he's only a few years older than me, but he's so much more wiser than I am. I don't know how I can put this in words and make sense, but because he's. He founded and is still running $120 billion company he's been running for 19 years. But he's. To me, he's still so underrated. And the thing about Daniel is, not only is he wicked smart, but he's given me some of the best advice. And he does it in a very, like, reserved and very precise way. He's got very clear thinking, and I just cannot get over, like, how generous he is with his time and his advice to me. And he told me one of the things that was really important. He said, like, an offhand comment, but he's like, you're really easy to understand, so therefore, you're easy to help. And he's just like, I know what is important to you. And so therefore, like you're easy to help and like you're easy to interface with. And so his point is, like every young founder thinks they have to be an Elon or Steve Jobs. And he's like, but I'm not like an Elon or a Steve Jobs. And the massive success is not only what he's done for Spotify. One of the best apps ever created. I think they have the most. I think there's only one other company in the world that has more paid subscribers than they do in this Netflix, you know, but think about the way you feel when you get done using Spotify. And this is why I like all the top people there too. And they've also been working together for excessively long time. Gustav, Alex, Daniel, all of them is they want you, when you're done using Spotify to feel good. If me and you spend an hour listening to our favorite music on Spotify, you feel great. You spend an hour listening to Tim Ferriss podcast. You inspired, you feel great. An audiobook. Now you feel great. I spent an hour on TikTok or Reels. I feel like shit. Like Twitter. Oh, I can't like it just.
- [68:06]
A
I feel like the anti therapy.
- [68:08]
B
But they're trying to put something if.
- [68:10]
A
You want to send yourself backwards.
- [68:12]
B
So I like what they're doing.
- [68:13]
A
Is there any other advice that has stuck from Daniel to you? And then I will forget the archetype. Yeah, I won't lose track of that.
- [68:22]
B
So the archetype I think is really important. I think you'll really vibe with what his opinion on or his perspective on this is. Yeah, Daniel will tell you advice in like a. Where he's like a wise old man. I don't know how to describe it. So one thing is. Is implied and never explicitly stated is he just doesn't feel he has any. Like there's no ceiling on what he can achieve or what he can learn the effect he can have in the world. And when you spend time with him, that is transferred to you and it's like one of the most important things. And I don't even know if I told him this. I have tears in my eyes thinking about it. I remember hanging out with him in Stockholm and he's done phenomenal stuff with Spotify. One of the best apps ever created, best businesses. And he's wildly successful as an investor too. And so I remember asking him, this is the funniest thing I ever heard. And I go, were you always interested in investing? Because I knew his story. We talked A lot about this. And he goes, no, I didn't even know anything about it. I started learning. I go, when did you start learning? He's like, 2018. I go, how'd you start learning? He goes, patrick's podcast. And so he would just listen to people. He's like, I like that idea. I'll take that idea. Oh, I don't like that idea. I don't like that at all. I'll avoid that. And the way Patrick describes it is, like, out of anybody you know, Daniel has the ability to apply what he's learning faster than anybody else and at a grander scale.
- [69:40]
A
He's also a very, very, very good systems thinker. So he's not at a risk of cobbling together this sort of camel that is a horse designed by committee that has a bunch of inherent problems and conflicts within it. Right. He'll be able to figure out how to put pieces together from first principles that function well as a whole.
- [70:02]
B
Let me tell one other piece of advice that he gave me. And he tells it in a story form. This is why he's the wise old man and essentially was. Remember why people love you. You sit in a room and you read all the time. And then you make this thing on the other side that educates and inspires us and gives us energy. And as soon as you stop doing that and you start saying yes to all these distractions, and I don't even know if, like, I think we might have talked about this in the episode we did, that comes out in a few weeks, but he tells it in a story and he tells a story from another person. So he's not telling you, david, go do this. He's like, let me tell you about this little genius. Or not little genius. This guy's really impressive. Look at what he's accomplished and everything else. And then the story will hit you like, hours later. And he's like, oh, yeah, you know, we've invited him to the conference. Over time, I've invited him to visit and I keep hearing no. And I'm like, oh. He's like telling me you're saying yes. Too many things. The magic that you have is because you say no. And once you start saying yes and you're at every conference, you're traveling around, you're doing all sorts of stuff, the magic disappears.
- [71:00]
A
I'm curious what you think are some of the different archetypes, Because I think of the 100 plus startups that I've invested in since 2008, and there's a lot of Variability. You've got the engineer, let's call it the engineer founder, right? Somebody like Toby of Shopify or Luis Von Ahn of Duolingo. Then you've got sort of like genius operator, negotiator, warrior, like a Travis Kalanick, right? Very different personalities, very different superpowers. And you just go down the list and you see some people come from a finance, numbers, kind of spreadsheet, God perspective. And they just have an analytical advantage. It's very comparable to investing in some ways. Looking at the investing world, they have this analytical advantage, let's just call it. And I was trying to pick out what, if anything, might be commonalities because you also have the crazy artist who then figures out how to harness some of their superpower. And it strikes me that there are at least two that immediately jump to mind. One is longer term time horizon.
- [72:15]
B
Those are the people.
- [72:15]
A
I'm obsessed with the Jeff Bezos type of mindset where it's like if you have the exact same toolkit, the exact same competency out of the box genetically, you're built exactly the same as someone else, but you are able to think and plan longer term, it can be a huge advantage. Second is something that you mentioned where Daniel was saying to you, this is the magic. So just remember this is the magic when other opportunities, other shiny objects show up, because they will, even in very early stages. And if you deviate, it's incredibly easy to sort of self immolate if you lose track of that. You see that a lot when CEOs get replaced. Sometimes founder CEOs, sometimes they need to be replaced. But what else would you add to that or how would you expand on any of it?
- [73:09]
B
Just look at the founders of some of the biggest companies in the world. Now, they would go to war against each other. So think about Oracle, Microsoft. You can't think of two different founder archetypes than Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison's like, I'm a sprinter. I have intense, very intense periods of work. Weeks at a time, once at a time. And then I need to go on my boat with a bunch of Italian models, right? This is what, how I have to live my life. Bill Gates is, you know, we'd be walking into this room right here and his feet would be underneath his desk. He's sleeping for three hours. He's getting back up and he's going back on the. He's a grinder. And then you have. I've been trying to name some of these and I haven't done this yet, but the problem is I never write anything. This is all like improv, you know, One of them is like the anti Business billionaire. And so in that category, it's like these people are so obsessed about one thing and that's the quality of the product they're making. They make non financial decisions like Steve Jobs making sure that the inside of the Mac looks beautiful even though you can't open it up and it costs more money. He doesn't care. He wants the best product. James Dyson's like this. He's an anti business billionaire. Yvonne Chouinard FOUNDER OF Patagonia Anti Business BILLIONAIRE these guys, they're obsessed with two things, quality of the product that they're making and retaining control of their company over long term. And the funny part about that, the reason I call them Anti Business billionaire is because if you make the world's best product, right? And you retain control over your company, you wind up with the money anyways.
- [74:31]
A
Yeah, I can think of a few people, I mean within my portfolio who retained a lot of their equity at least, and that's it. Which is kind of preserving the magic, right, in terms of the best product.
- [74:40]
B
Well, look at, everybody's like, look at what happened with Larry Ellison right now. It's like, yeah, I could be wrong, but I think Oracle raised 32 million of equity in their IPO and no more after that. And then the guy would refuse. Even when they were almost going out of business 1990, he still wouldn't sell. They're like, sell your equity. Like, no. He's like, it might be worth nothing. He just wouldn't sell it. And then buying back stock. So he owns, I think 40. I think he went down to 24. Now he's back with like 41 of Oracle. The company's 50 years old, like 45 years old. I think it was like 30 something when he founded the company. He's just an anomaly. And then you have people like Elon where it's just like, I'm going to run. I wouldn't even think that's possible. How the hell do you run seven.
- [75:15]
A
Companies at the same time, can barely manage three employees. I don't know.
- [75:19]
B
Yeah, exactly. So that is the point. I do think Daniel hit on something that no one else has put in front of me. It's like the people are going to dominate. Obviously Elon's the most famous entrepreneur in the world, but even like Bezos is very different. And then you have these people that some of the people just like to make money. That is their scoreboard. This is another thing I learned from Michael Dell. There's two things. One thing you just said, protecting the magic. The advice that Dell gave me when I had dinner with him. And he does this in story form, too, because that guy's been running his business for 41 years. 41 years. It's insane. And his whole thing is just like, you're not going to be taken out by competition. You're going to sabotage yourself. Entrepreneurs sabotage themselves. And the amount of people that were doing the same thing I was doing, they were ahead of me. This is Dell talking. They were ahead of me, but then they got the 500 million year revenue. And they're like, I have a house on Lake Austin now. They're in the same city. They're doing the same thing as him in the same city, and they're smoking them. They're ahead of them by, like, a few hundred million, right? And they're like, oh, I can chill now. No, you can't, because you got Michael Dell right across the river, and he's not going to chill. That guy has no chill. I heard he's got this wonderful house in Hawaii. His son was telling me about this, and I was like, we were in Austin in July. You know, it's like, what are you doing here? And Michael's answer is simple. He goes, I love my business, and my business is here. He wasn't being mean to me. He was like, that's a stupid question, David. Like, I'm working. I love what I do. This is what I'm doing. So one thing from his autobiography, though, is that I used to say, you, it only works if you build a business that's authentic to you. And this is why I asked you about your inner monologue earlier, because I really feel the reason people do their best work, usually later in life, in business, is obviously more experience, network finances, everything else. But I think they. Because they know themselves better. I think me and you, if we would have met 10 years ago, we'd be different people. And we also wouldn't know each other, like, know ourselves as much as we do now. Where, like, I think I've built a business, and you have to, based on what I know about you, completely authentic to you. And that's the only way it's going to work over long term. And I used to say authentic. And then Michael does autobiography, which he narrates, by the way. The audible is excellent. I listened to it three times before I read it to do the episode on it. And there's a guy, he named I Think Lee Walker, who Michael brought him When Michael was 21, he was in his 40s and it was like an older, wiser man and he had to quit after four years. He's like basically running the company with Michael and he's like, we're taking on IBM with a thousand dollars of working capital just from shitty office in like the industrial part in like Austin, right? IBM's the biggest company in the world. It's the first. I didn't know this, it was the first company hit a hundred billion dollar market cap. And like my back hurts, I'm losing hair, I can't sleep, I got digestive issues. Like Lee's dead after four years. And he goes, and Michael's excited, it's invigorated him and that he gave me the line. He goes, because he built a business that was natural to him. I'm dying and he's thriving because it's natural to him and it's not natural to me. And I think that's the key, man. People are like, oh, I'm going to imitate X, Y and Z. It's like, no, no, no, you should be copying the how, not the what. You don't copy what they did, you copy how they did. And then you just take the little ideas that make sense to you. So you asked like, how am I applying this for my work? I am either completely apathetic and ignore something or completely obsessed. It's zero or a hundred and nothing in the middle. So the reason I love Munger, because Munger gave me really like Munger and your friend Naval had a big role in this too. Gave me the kind of the blueprint where he's just like, hey, we found that oftentimes Munger has this line that oftentimes the winning system in business goes ridiculously far, maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables. And he used Costco like the example. And then he has another line. Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Sharing lessons from biographies of great people is a very, very simple idea. Doing it for nine years, you know, working 70 hours a week at it, building systems for it, redoing it over and over again is not. That's the serious part. His other quote that I've already shared earlier, there's ideas worth billions and a 30 hour history book, that's another idea. That's maybe why the work would be valuable and attract the audience, that it could attract another idea from him. You want to maneuver yourself into an area that you're intensely interested in. Like Just being a fanatic like a Sam Walton or like a Jim Senegal or like a Sole Price is just Jeff Bezos. Very helpful. These are fanatics. They are intensely interested in what they're doing. That is worth a lot of money. And I've become friends with Michael Vitz, who's also one of the first guests on my new show. And his whole thing is like, you cannot fight against your job. That's one of the best pieces of ice. He's like, people fight against their job all the time, and they lose. You have to find something that you're intensely drawn to it.
- [79:55]
A
So I have a couple of bullets. You should explain who Michael Ovitz is. Why don't you do that first? And then I'll just hop to two questions related to Michael Ovitz specifically.
- [80:04]
B
Michael Ovitz is a shark. He's one of the most intense people. I think he's 80 by now. So Rick and I live very close to each other in Miami. Okay. And we always have breakfast at the same spot. That I'm not going to say publicly.
- [80:16]
A
Yeah, good idea.
- [80:18]
B
And so we're hanging out.
- [80:20]
A
Disinformation campaign.
- [80:21]
B
Sure.
- [80:21]
A
Yeah. The. It's always a Denny's. Moon's over Miami. And so his phone's on the table.
- [80:30]
B
And it rings and it says, Michael Oitz. And I gasp. I'm like. Because I read Michael Ovitz was the most powerful man in Hollywood at one time. He had, like, 75% market share, 90% market share. He was the most powerful agent. He's the founder of caa, which still exists to this day. And I'm like, oh, God, I know who that is. I've done episodes on this guy. And so he picks up, and they've been friends for, like, 20 years, 25 years or something like that. And he goes, hey, I'm sitting here with somebody you might know. Have you ever heard of David Senra and the Founders podcast? And Michael pauses. He goes, I listened to four of them yesterday. He was on his boat in Saint Bars.
- [81:08]
A
Incredible.
- [81:09]
B
No, but this is how. Why? He's a shark and a killer. He's on his boat in Saint Barts. He's, like, studying Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He's like, quoting stuff from the episode. And so we wind up having dinner.
- [81:19]
A
Rockefeller, one of the biggest sharks to ever live.
- [81:21]
B
Oh, a hundred percent. And so we wind up having dinner. And this is one of the things I asked him, you know, because his whole thing is like, you're going to run through, you know, you're going to meet thousands of people in your life. He's going to definitely meet way more people than I will because I'm an introvert. And he used to, like call 300 people a day because he was like, kind of running Hollywood. But his Ovitz's advice to me was just like, you know, you're going to meet thousands of people in your life, and what I would recommend is just spend all the time with the handful that really matter. And he's like, for me, Rick is one of those people. And I go, why? And obviously, you know, he's like, oh, he's intelligent and basically. But he's like, because he tells me the truth.
- [81:55]
A
That's one thing you can rely on Rick for. I'm not sure he can help himself, but not sure. It's a conscious decision.
- [82:01]
B
But no, but in general, his whole point is, like, when you get to be as famous and as well known as wealthy as Ovitz, everybody's going to kiss your ass. Everybody wants something from you. They want to either want to tell you how great you are, or they want money from you, or they want you to sell, like, buy something. And he's just like, there's so few people that you know that like, truly love you for you and don't want anything from you. They just want to be friends and they will tell you the truth. And this is the very dangerous thing that really successful people do. They surround themselves with people that don't tell them the truth. This is an idea I got from Jim Casey, the founder of ups. He realized that there's this weird, like, capture if you only talk to your top executives. So let's say you have 10 top executives and then they distribute everything else for the company. They work themselves as a position where they have the ear of the king and you hear nothing good. So he's like, I don't want to talk to them at all. He would stop and talk to every single. He'd make his driver stop every single time you see a brown truck. And he would talk to the people doing the actual service because he wouldn't get the badness. They would tell them what actually is going on, what is actually happening. And the crazy impressive founders that I've been able to spend a lot of time with, most of them are 60, 70, 80 years old. Those are my favorite. I love them. They're not in their office. They're in their warehouses. They're on the factory line, they're in their stores. They're constant contact with the customer and the person delivering the service to the customer. They're not looking at a whiteboard with their executives. They're very practical, non theoretical people. I think it's like, really important. So, yeah, I think in my own thing, it's just like, I like to be obsessed and focus on one thing. I don't like to multitask. So therefore, you know every single publisher, it's like, write a book, you should do this. I'm like, everybody says, hey, I like X, so do Y. And I'm like, but then if I do Y, I don't do X. And so my whole thing is just like, very simple. I just want to do one thing relentlessly.
- [83:51]
A
So related to Michael Ovitz, there are a few notes here that I think relate to the new show and the interview you did with him. And I want to ask about two of them. So the first is the benefits of low introspection. And the second, so you can tackle these in either order, is this can't be my life in quotation marks is a powerful motivator. Can you expand on those?
- [84:16]
B
So this can't be my life is a very powerful motivator. You see it over and over again, I think the sense of drive, like the way you grew up on Long Island. The way I grew up, I was like, I'm not going out like this. I don't care what I have to do.
- [84:26]
A
Not going to replay this movie.
- [84:27]
B
No way. I think in many cases, seeing examples of what you don't want your life to be is more powerful than seeing what you want it to be. I think maybe that one comes first and then you start to see, oh, I actually, this is the path I want to go down.
- [84:39]
A
There's an expression in Japanese which is hammen kyoshi. Hammen is like opposite side. Kyoshi is teacher. And it's someone who teaches you by showing you what not to do.
- [84:49]
B
Yeah, I would say my family, definitely.
- [84:51]
A
A lot of those.
- [84:52]
B
Yeah. Like, you just see this over and over again. And so with him, like, he could literally. He grew up in the valley, he could see where he wanted to be. He could see the mansions of Beverly Hills. He saw the contrast between. This is what I'm worried about with social media. It's like before we grew up, what do you see? You basically see like, oh, like that's the nice neighborhood over there. That's kind of a bad neighborhood. Now you see like the richest people in the world every day and the poorest people in the world. Like, you're exposed to nothing but extremes, which is like We've never, in human history, we've never been exposed to that. And like, what is the long term effects of that? I have a teenage daughter now, and I think there's like a lot of negativity of this. Like, you only see the most beautiful people. If you were just in a town like where we grew up, you might see a really beautiful woman. You're not seeing them all day long. Like these. It's just like this unfair.
- [85:38]
A
Barraged.
- [85:39]
B
Yeah. Barrage of like, you know, unattainable standards. So with him, he was like fiercely driven to succeed. And one of my favorite parts of his book, you know, the guy now wildly successful. But even before that, like when he. He left, I think it was William Morris Agency starts ca. They start to have a little success. He winds up buying a house in Brentwood. And it was like $650,000, right. Which is fantastic. But nothing compared to what's going to happen over the next decades in his life. But he just woke up every morning, he's like, I can't believe I live in Brentwood. I can't believe this. I did this. And then once you start seeing results, the grind becomes very addictive. And he. If you add what's archetype grinder? Like, I'm going to throw sheer hours and energy. He's also an amazing. One of the best salespeople alive. Very charismatic. He's got a lot of superpowers. Actually met Mark Andreessen. I asked him this because Mark Andreessen's on record saying that when he started a 16Z, they essentially copied CAA.
- [86:38]
A
I think they brought Michael Ovitz in.
- [86:40]
B
They did. It's in the. They both talk about this. And I. So I asked him, I go, what do you think Michael's superpower? He's like, he's the world's greatest agent and therefore the greatest salesperson. World's greatest salesperson. And so that's like one example from his book is just like, this can't be my life. I don't want to be like this. I'm going to direct all my energy and do something different. Now. The low introspection thing is I'm not a controversial person. I'm just sharing lessons from history that I read in a book. You don't have to listen, you don't have to pay attention. Doesn't matter. But when I bring up the fact that a lot of these people have low or zero introspection, meaning that when they find what they want to do in life, they wake up and they know exactly what they're doing. That day, Sam Walton was not waking up, saying, what are my feelings like today? What should I do? Should I think about the meaning of life? He's like, no, I found Walmart. I made one Walmart. I'm going to make another one and another one and another one. I'm going to make every Walmart better and better and better. And I think having low introspection after you found your mission in life, and this is the sad thing, I think most people never find their mission. I know I found my mission. I don't think about what should I do.
- [87:40]
A
Today we're going to talk, obviously about the new show, and we've been alluding to it and mentioning some of the guests, but before we get there. So you're about to meet Michael, and he had been ostensibly on vacation, but he's listening to.
- [87:56]
B
Yeah.
- [87:57]
A
Your episodes on Rockefeller and others.
- [87:59]
B
Yeah.
- [88:00]
A
Do you recall any of the other episodes?
- [88:02]
B
The Vanderbilt one stuck up in my mind. I mean, we text about them. I don't remember the Vanderbilt's, the one that really. The Rockefeller and the Vanderbilt, but the Vanderbilt especially, because Vanderbilt's like. What I say is like, I'm kind of telling the same story over and over again. I think it's more like church than it is like, just like I went to church. I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian. Like, we met together with like believers on regular intervals on Wednesday and Sunday. And it's not like the preacher got up there and said, hey, we talked about that Jesus guy enough. We're going to move on to somebody else. It's like we literally just go to the same book over and over again. And so I always say there's like always a historical equivalent to anybody we're dealing with today or in the past. But Vanderbilt to me is not. There's not like an entrepreneurial historical equivalent. He's like Putin or something. When he died, he controlled 5% of the money supply. One out of $20.
- [88:53]
A
So I guess the reason I was asking about the episodes and I don't know Michael, so this is not a judgment or criticism of Michael at all. But I suppose if you believe that there is a value to low introspection for the purposes of building a business, which I would agree is there not a risk. And I have not listened to those particular episodes on Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, But I've read a bit of the history. These are not necessarily people you automatically want to model everything on.
- [89:20]
B
All of them. No, I think Ovitz would. This is.
- [89:22]
A
I Suppose my question, is there a risk of ending up amoral, immoral or sociopathic? One of the things you optimize for is low introspection or maybe that's just hardwiring, frankly, and you're just not inclined to do it.
- [89:40]
B
That's a great question.
- [89:41]
A
Because this archetype does exist. Just like the rape, pillage, destroy, archetype is an archetype.
- [89:47]
B
They're overrepresented in entrepreneurship. Why? Because if entrepreneurship done correctly yield the greatest material rewards in human history. So of course it's going to be full of psychopaths and sociopaths. Like, I don't know if you know the numbers on this, what they assume 5% of the population sociopathic or something like that is that you know something.
- [90:05]
A
I don't know the number, so let's.
- [90:07]
B
Just make it up. It's 5% of the general population. It's probably, you know, five times that of entrepreneurs and investors and people like this or anybody. Political power, power in general. This is why I think the work of Robert Caro is so interesting. And I always make the argument that like there should be a law. The only one law that I would foist upon society is that there's only one person allowed to write a thousand page biography. I have no problem reading. Almost none of the books that I've read are a thousand pages. Needed to be a thousand pages. You just, they just didn't know what to put in there. Robert Caro is the only one that should be able to write long biographies because everything that he has in there should be in there. I think he's a master of his craft. He's the best to ever do it. But he's saying, I'm not writing biographies. I'm writing about how humans accumulate and then wield power. And I did it first on a local level in New York with Robert Moses. And now I'm showing what happens on a national level. And guess what? LBJ would sacrifice everything to get what he wanted. Personal ethics, his relationships, everything.
- [91:00]
A
Stealing elections.
- [91:02]
B
Yeah, this is the wonderful thing about studying history. History doesn't repeat. Human nature does. So if you just read me and you both love Will and Ariel Durant, read their history of human civilization. Read their 100 page book lessons of history. The same stuff repeats over and over again. So when it comes out and you see it's on the news like, oh, of course no one stole the election. It's like in all different countries, stealing elections is an American pastime. Just read Robert Carl's and it could Be like a little, you know, Senate election in Texas.
- [91:28]
A
Exactly. If you don't think that the missing ballot box.
- [91:31]
B
Yeah, it's just like, it's. The line I have about this is from Will Durant, where he's just like, in every age, humans are dishonest and governments are corrupt. It's one of my favorite quotes from Lessons of History. In every age, nothing that we're doing is new. We're just. We're telling the same stories over and over and over again. You see the same people over and over again. So, yeah, I'm sure there's a ton of people that read these biographies and that listen to my podcasts that are absolute psychopaths. I don't think Ovitz is a psychopath. He's an extreme winner. He wants to win.
- [91:59]
A
The line may be pretty thin.
- [92:01]
B
Yeah, of course, of course.
- [92:02]
A
I'm not saying he is, by the way, sociopath. It's just that, just like you were mentioning, you can convince yourself of a bad idea very compellingly, just as you can a good idea. It's like when you start to get into the gray waters of morality as winning compounds upon winning, oftentimes the person who cares less about other people wins if they can discard that consideration 100%.
- [92:26]
B
That's been true. And the past true today will be true. That's the point that. This is why it's so interesting. I look at this as almost. I think something I didn't even understand is I have the ability to step outside of myself, and I'm kind of like a casual observer of human nature.
- [92:40]
A
I want to ask you, and then I'm going to hop to questions about podcasting in the new show about how you think about assessing leaders, entrepreneurs, reading biographies or autobiographies and figuring out what people claim as things that help them succeed to succeed, actually help them versus hindering them. In other words, what are the because of versus the in spite of? So, for instance, if high disagreeability or low agreeability is common across a lot of founders, to what extent can you point to that as one of the causal factors for their success, as opposed to just an emergency brake they had on causing all sorts of problems that they managed to overcome? So they succeeded despite. How do you think about separating those two things?
- [93:32]
B
One of the things I love about James Dyson, who is a hero of mine, it's a person on the planet that I want to meet that I haven't met. The number one is him. And what I love about him is how stubborn he is because I see myself in that. And it turns out his stubbornness worked out for him because he had the right idea. But this is where it goes back to. Like, you can't blindly copy. There's no formula. Like, there's no formula, there's no track. So it's like he's stubborn on an idea that was a great idea. It just needed more time. You could be stubborn on an idea that's terrible and going nowhere, and then you did the exact same thing for the exact same amount of time. And on the other side of that, he has one of the most valuable private companies world and you have a miserable life. There's no answer to that. There's nobody coming to save you. None of this shit works if you can't trust your own judgment and figure things out. That's why when people are like, oh, more people should be entrepreneurs, I don't know about that. I want to like encourage the people that think they can do it to do it. But I think in many cases, most people should work like, they should choose a different path because it's very, very risky. You know, like Todd Graves, the raising cane's guy I told you about, right? His whole thing is entrepreneurs should have higher risk tolerance. James Dyson, multiple times, risked every single possession he had to chase his dream. He signed over his house multiple times. If he failed, they could have been homeless. It worked out for him. Todd Graves had this crazy way to finance the first 28 raising canes where essentially he goes to an angel investor. He goes to Tim Ferriss and says, hey, you going to give me $200,000 loan? Okay. It's going to be subjugated loan to the bank. I'm going to guarantee you a 15% return on the $200,000 for X amount of time. You say, oh, that sounds great. You're paying me 15% on my 200 grand, but you don't get any equity. I take that 200,000 equity that I have from this document from Tim, I go to a bank and say, this is as collateral, loan me the other 600 grand or whatever the number is to get this up and running. And he did that for 28 times. He's like, oh, I'm rolling, rolling, rolling leverage up to his eyeballs. What's the problem? I open up every time I open a new raising cane, there's a line out the door from day one. Well, then a little thing called Hurricane Katrina comes. And guess where 28 of his restaurants are? All in Louisiana. And he almost died. And he says, like, if I didn't come out of that, there would be no story. It'd be gone. And then I guess the second part of. I don't know why this popped in my mind. But you know when you're reading history, right? We're reading about stories that happened 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 50 years ago. Some of them are from that person's own mouth. Like, imagine if you tell your own life story. Here's the good part. You're gonna, like, you're gonna hide the bad. You're human. And so people are like, well, how do you know if what you're reading is true? The line is like, if you think the news is fake, wait till you read history.
- [96:07]
A
It's like, it's just old news.
- [96:11]
B
I don't know. My idea is like, we're not taking a test at the end of this. I'm not saying, like, did this actually happen in 1912? It's like, is the idea behind what he's doing a good idea for me? And so, like, the example of Rockefeller, right. That you see that Elon used, where, like, Rockefeller tells the story. I don't know if it actually happened, but he tells the story where they would have to solder closed the barrels that they transport oil in. And he goes up one day and he says, how many do you drops of solder do you use? He's like, I use 40. It's like, have you ever tried 38? He's like, no, we've never tried 38. Can you try 38? They tried 38. It leaks. Okay, try 39. They tried 39. Doesn't leak that one drop of solder at the time of the business saved him, you know, 25 a year. Business grows and compounds for the next three decades. And now he's saving, like, you know, hundreds of thousands from that. Did that actually happen? I don't know. But that's a good idea to find the limit to actually, hey, maybe I should control my costs a little bit more. Maybe I need to actually see if I can do this in a more efficient way. I don't know if it happened. I just want the idea behind it.
- [97:11]
A
Yeah. Just to reiterate what you're saying, it's tough to separate the fact from fiction. Right. And then sometimes this is actually why I just read fiction, because I'm like, there still are truths to extract. There are principles that you can extract from. This is now cliched because it's been made into a popular movie. But Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land you can actually pull a lot from just straight up fiction. And then when it comes to the business side, because I've read so many. Not as many as you, but tons of business books. Still have my early copies and my notes from those books with losing my virginity. Richard Branson, early Yvon Chouinard. I think it's let my people go surfing, et cetera. Still have all those books. And when you look at. Part of the reason also that I like early biographies. So let's just say hard drive on Bill Gates versus a later. I don't want to say sanitized, but let's say sanitized version where I'm going.
- [98:12]
B
Through this right now. Right.
- [98:13]
A
Or it's like, look, Warren Buffett. Love the guy. He's turned himself into, like, the awestucks grandpa neighbor who takes this garbage out in a robe. He's a killer. And I remember reading, I think it was the Making of an American Capitalist.
- [98:26]
B
Yes.
- [98:26]
A
Way back in the day. And the story that stuck out. And I hope I'm not inventing this, I don't see why I would. But his routine was to go home, walk upstairs and read.
- [98:37]
B
Step over his children.
- [98:39]
A
Exactly. So his son, who's fallen down the stairs, is, like, sprawled out like a chalk outline at a crime scene, steps over his injured son to go upstairs to do more reading of S1 filings or whatever he was doing.
- [98:54]
B
You bring up something interesting. This is why I don't believe them when they say they have regrets at the end of their life. So if I read Making American Capitalist. Right. Excellent book. I think that's actually the best biography you read. Snowball after his wife leaves him. Right. And he says, the biggest mistake, If I could go back and live life again, the biggest mistake I would do, I would change whatever I need. So I think her name was Susie. Didn't leave me. No.
- [99:17]
A
Yeah.
- [99:17]
B
I don't believe you.
- [99:18]
A
I don't buy it.
- [99:19]
B
No. None of them. When they all say, like, Leonardo de Vecchio, the guy that started Luxottica. Yeah. I think I had to, like, translate it from Italian. Like, some of these biographies are in different languages. And so, like, again, go back to differentiation. What can I do that no one else is doing? We've translated the Red Bull book from Germany.
- [99:35]
A
Awesome. By the way, I listen to that.
- [99:37]
B
I appreciate that. But he gets the end of his life. You know, he's orphan, dad dies, company again. Luxottica. So they monopolize glasses, everything. So Zuck, Mark Zuckerberg just invested, I think, three and a half billion dollars for like 3% of the company. Wow. And so for essentially 60 years, he just a slow, methodical, Rockefeller esque march through the entire industry till he controls every single component of eyeglasses, sunglasses, everything. It's like completely dominant. And he gets the end of his life. He's like, oh yeah, like the one we're gonna have is like he was married multiple times. I think there's like a 50 year gap between like his oldest son and his youngest son. So it's like he's like a wild boy. But he's like one regret I have is like I didn't spend more time with kids. No, that's not. You wouldn't change a thing.
- [100:22]
A
It's not true.
- [100:23]
B
It's not true. You could. I don't think they could to. That's what you just said. It's like maybe they didn't have a choice. Maybe it's just hardwired. And so I'm going through that really right now because this week I read Source Code, which is Bill Gates autobiography about the first 20 years of his life. His version I reread Hard Drive Overdrive, which is also written by the same guys that wrote Hard Drive. And then I pulled all my highlights and notes for Paul Allen's description of Bill Gates and Paul Allen's autobiography. There is a vast difference between what's in Source code and what is in hard drive. And it's obviously, Hard Drive is more accurate. It's written right after it happened. Bill is not the 70 year old man he is now. And you know, he's in a different world. But watch his interviews, watch the documentary on Netflix about him. He's like, I was hardcore. That was my advantage. He was killer. Yeah.
- [101:14]
A
And also these questions, a lot of the questions that I ask myself when I'm reading any nonfiction, I shouldn't say any nonfiction, but let's say biographies, where I'm hoping to model something one is like is. Or an autobiography like. Okay, what's the bias here? Are there any particular biases I should be aware of? Okay, is anyone in reputation rehab mode before they die? Okay, let's keep that sure. What type of survivorship bias might there be who tried the same? Do we have 99 out of 100 who tried something similar and failed? Let's take a look at the tape. Okay. Luck is luck. Luck's everywhere, right? So the fact that Bill Gates ended up with a computer, winding up with.
- [101:50]
B
A computer is just like timing. I think timing.
- [101:55]
A
Timing is a huge piece of. By the Way these are not all reasons to discount anything, but I just want to mention a couple of that I try to think of. The other I try to think of because I might try to mimic someone in sports if I'm trying to learn something new or language learning or whatever it might be. What is trainable and what is not trainable? Because I've heard these stories from people who know Bill Gates and they're like, well, we were going to go on this short vacation in Fill in the blank, I can't remember Costa Rica. And they're going to go on a birding trip in the morning. It's just like a two, three hour thing with a world class burning guide. And they do the trip and the night before, Bill has stayed up and read five books on birding, memorized them seemingly without trying, and is basically having a peer to peer discussion with the birding expert as they're going through the rainforest. That's not normal. That's like, I'm going to do calf raises to make my body look like Michael Phelps. No, you're not. That's not going to work. So it's like when I'm looking for people to model, I'm trying to find people who have hopefully a comparable composition of strengths that I can amplify in myself or that are coachable. And so the question after all that is, does anyone stand out to you of the biographies or people you've met where you're like, in terms of someone doing the most with the hand they've been dealt? So maybe they're not a freak of nature. They're not a freak of nature necessarily because there are freaks of nature among the people that you study, the people I study. But it's like, all right, these people might have a few strengths, but they're not complete freaks. They're not the Usain Bolts of Fill in the Blank. And man, oh man, did they play their hand well. They're just so good at playing the hands that they are dealt that person. Does anybody stick out?
- [103:44]
B
Sam Walton. Sam Walton's one of my favorite entrepreneurs if you really think about it. He had this crazy thing, it's a crazy idea, I don't think. He obviously didn't know what Walmart was going to turn into, but one of the ways they avoided all the inheritance tax is if you give away the equity before it's valuable. So if you look at the last time I checked, if you look at all of the Walmart equity owned by the family, that means the wealth that came from his idea would be like 432 billion today if it was consolidated in one person. Right? And when you study Sam, he's like obviously smart, but he would just like he didn't really know what he was going to do. Then he had this idea, he's like, well, maybe I can be good at retailing. And then he starts out in Newport, Arkansas with one store. And this is what drives me insane about the modern day entrepreneurship industry is like everybody, they start out with like weird goals, like I'm going to build a trillion dollar company or I'm going to be the fastest person to 100 million ARR. And it's just like, okay. But none of these people talk like that. Like you're doing it for the wrong reason. So probably won't get there if that's just the case. Like what Jerry Seinfeld says, like if you're just doing it for the money, you only get so far. And with him, he was just like fascinated by stores and trying to make it a little bit better.
- [104:54]
A
Every day he's on vacation, right? He would, didn't matter where he was. He would go into retail store.
- [104:59]
B
His kids told the story. It's just like vacation was essentially driving to different towns and checking out different retailers. And so. But the reason, the most important thing about his story, one of the most important things is this idea to go slow now so you can go faster later. And so you're like, okay, the beginning of his career, he's like in one tiny store, I think they start doing like 25,000 a year, 25,000 a year in revenue. I think he gets up to like 250 grand. Took him five years. But for five years he just had one story. It was like experimenting, understanding, trying to figure out what the different parts of retail are. Because there's no such thing as discounting and wholesale and all the other stuff that he was doing that he's going to do later on. And then what's fascinating is later in his career, after Walmart, he then takes that idea, he goes, and it's Sol Price who we mentioned earlier, he takes that idea, he's like, oh, this is a great idea, I'm gonna do this. He does Sam's Club and in that same five year period, so you have the first five years, one store separated by maybe 40 years in the career. That second five years when he's starting something else. In that five year period, he doesn't have one store. He winds up doing I think a hundred stores and like 7 billion in revenue from this New category, because you see him learning. And so, like, yes, I think he was brilliant. He's not memorizing five books overnight and doing that. His is a very. This is like mine. One of the reasons that I do what I do is because Munger became a hero. And he talks over and over again about being a biography nut that he read more biographies anywhere else. I got to spend three hours inside of his house, right, talking to him right before he died. I don't care how many biographies I read, how many books I read for my life. I cannot have a brain like him. I will never have a brain like him. Anybody at 99 is going to have some level of cognitive decline. You know what One of my first thoughts was about an hour and a half in the conversation with him was, this guy had to be terrifying when he was 60. Terrifying. Like, terrifying. Think about this. Everybody that I know, I always. When I get to meet fancy people, I always ask them, like, who's the smartest person? You know, what's the best business? You know? And it can't be, like, Apple, like, these interesting, weird things. And every single person that says, if they have no Buffet and they don't tell you it's Buffett, they're wrong. And Buffett chose this guy to let him mold and shape his thinking. What does that tell you about his intelligence? And I remember because this is what I do. I'm, like, laying bricks every day. I don't think I'm a brilliant person. I just, like, show up every day and don't quit. And so once I find Munger, I read literally not well. I read some of the books. I read every single book on Monger. Then I reread my highlights, which, like, over and over again. So my days, I wake up, work out, read for a few hours, have lunch, then reread past highlights. In the afternoon, all my social media posts are just me rereading highlights. And so I read every single book on Munger. Then I reread all the highlights, but then I read all the books he tells me to read, because he'll tell you, read Le Schwab. He'll tell you all these things. He'll tell you Henry Kaiser. I was like, who the hell is Henry Kaiser? Henry Kaiser started 100 companies. He built a Hoover Dam. He built liberty ships. I go, what?
- [107:47]
A
By the way, just the fact that pretty much everyone listening to this podcast will have no idea of who that person is just underscores, I think, how ridiculous it is to get overly fixated on legacy as an excuse for all sorts of behaviors.
- [108:00]
B
Yes.
- [108:00]
A
Nobody's going to run me.
- [108:01]
B
I'm anti legacy, and I'm anti family dynasty. I think, like, bequeathing your kids a bunch of wealth is. That's another story for another day.
- [108:09]
A
But okay, 100 companies, right? Hoover Dam, which, by the way, was made in what, like eight years or 12 years or so. I mean, some crazy timespan.
- [108:17]
B
And so then, first of all, I'm freaked out. I'm there. It's me. Two other young entrepreneurs in their 30s, and they had both met Charlie before. And then, like, I'm like, 10 minutes in, and I'm just like, I just couldn't believe what's happening to me. I'm like, that's Charlie Munger over there. And, like. And then, you know, he's looking at you because he's, like, blind. And so, like, he'll. If he's looking at you like this, he's not looking at you. He's got to go like this and list, because then he's got to look through his glasses. So, you know when he's looking at you and then my friend looks at me, he's like, get in here. Like, do something. I literally sat there and me not speaking for 10 minutes, it's really hard for me to do. There's a reason I do monologue podcasts. So then I see we're in his library. So then I'm like, oh, this is my savior, because I've read all those books behind him because he told me to read them. And so this is why I said it doesn't matter what I do. And this will answer your question a long way. I start asking questions about Henry Kaiser and all these books, and he knows the revenue, he knows the partner, he knows how the business ended, he knows the mistakes they made. And then I go, charlie, like, when's the last time you read these books? And he's like, 15 years ago, when we're shifting from the library to dinner. I was like, charlie, can I go through your library? He's like, of course. And he's just sitting in his chair, and I'm going through the books and I open them. No notes.
- [109:31]
A
Different stock. Yeah, different stock. Oh, my God. So, all right, we are going to get to the things I promised. But I have to ask you, so in addition to smartest person, best business, what are some of your other go to questions when you meet the fancy folks?
- [109:47]
B
So who's the smartest person? You know, what's the best business? You know, I actually got to Spend some time with Eddie Lampert. And Eddie Lampert at one time was thought to be like, the next Buffet. And he was mentored by Richard Rainwater. And I find Richard Rainwater really fascinating because Richard Rainwater has a great name, too. Oh, excellent, Richard. First of all, there's no biographies on him. He died rather young. He probably created more billionaire investors in America than any other person. And direct mentorship. And Eddie broke the record, I think, in like the 80s or 90s for like, the most taxable income made by an American. And he was like, super young. And so Eddie lives in Miami. And I was at his house.
- [110:27]
A
He was like, never again, I'm moving to Miami.
- [110:29]
B
No. Well, so. No, no. So that might be one of the best investments because he probably paid $12 million for his house, and his house will probably sell for 150 million today because it's on the island that Bezos lives on. And the house is beautiful.
- [110:41]
A
I'm sure he won't even notice it on his.
- [110:43]
B
Yeah.
- [110:43]
A
On his balance sheet or in his life.
- [110:45]
B
He's like, much more, like out of the spotlight now, but again, he's like one of these older guys, just like, very, very wise and, like, very quiet. He's like me. He's like, introverted. Just like, you go to houses, there's books everywhere. He's got this insane yacht that I went on called the Fountainhead. I'll let people Google it. It is insane.
- [111:02]
A
I mean, great name too.
- [111:03]
B
Yeah, but same thing. You go on the boat, dude, and it's like, full of books.
- [111:07]
A
Ran out of room at his house, said, for the books.
- [111:11]
B
It's the weirdest unintended hack ever to build a world class network of just like, read a bunch of history and they'll come get you. I've never sent a cold DM in my life, ever. I've never sent a cold email in my life.
- [111:23]
A
So what do you. Why did Lambert come out? You're asking him?
- [111:25]
B
No. So I'm. I'm asking these questions, right? Basically. And they're not mean to me. So he's like, yeah, but there's like, better questions you can ask. I was like, okay, like, tell me what they are. And so what? His answers are, like, the smartest person. He's like, well, I spent a bunch of time with Buffett. And I go, okay. And he goes, it's obviously Buffett, so. And he goes, there's actually a more interesting. And then like, who's the best investor? You know, that was another question I asked. And he goes, there's actually a more interesting question that you're not asking. And I go, what's that? He goes, who's the best deal maker? And I go, I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know anything about investing. Like the question I've asked Rick and Patrick, they probably think I'm like, I don't know. You can, you can edit that question out if you. But like, they're just like, what is wrong with this.
- [112:09]
A
Yeah. Guy we didn't even get to. I mean, I would say Brad Jacobs would fit in sort of the deal maker.
- [112:13]
B
Yeah, but he. Yeah, but his is like a different. This is very fascinating what Eddie said. So again, Eddie, you can go back and like read profiles of him. Like he was like a boy wonder kid. Rick told me a funny story. They used to all be at the same golf club in New Jersey. And Richard Rainwater walked in and Rick's like a young kid and Rainwater's legend. And he's like making conversation with him. He goes, we just wait. The best investor in the America is gonna walk through that door. And Rick goes, Buffett. And it was Eddie. So anyways, Eddie's like, there's a better question that you're not asking. I was like, all right, well, you're way smarter than I am. Like, tell me. And he goes, who's the best deal maker? I don't know what that means. And he goes, well, an investor is judged on ROIC return on invested capital. He goes, the two best deal makers I ever knew were Richard Rainwater and David Geffen. So the thing about David Geffen is super underrated. He's another person I'd like to spend time with if I could. Is it's one thing to have a bunch of money, it's another thing to have a bunch of money and be liquid. There is a line in this profile, Larry Gosian, that I read that says anytime there's a downturn, Larry goes into one of the, maybe the most successful art dealer in the world. There's all these like, you know, art soars during great economic times and kind of doesn't do so well in other times. Anytime there was a, like a dip and they needed to make money, they'd call David because they said, David is as liquid as the day is long. David gave like a 26 year old Eddie Lampert like 200 million of his own money to run. So David's just like liquid staked him. And so he goes, david is a crazy dealmaker.
- [113:42]
A
He didn't stake him he was an lp.
- [113:44]
B
I don't think it was a fun structure. I think it was, here's 200. Make it bigger.
- [113:47]
A
Make it bigger.
- [113:48]
B
Like, I don't think he's like, you make money if I make money. It wasn't. I don't think it was a permanent structure, which is interesting. Sam Zell never had a permanent structure. There's actually a lot of. I find those more interesting. But anyways, I was like, okay, so why is Richard Rainwater one of the best dealmakers? And he's like, because with Richard, it was all returns, no capital. And I was like, what? And he goes, richard maneuvered himself into such a influential position in the American economy because of who he knew. And him being involved in your deal immediately made more valuable that people just gave him the equity. All returns, no capital. I was like, that was like, one of my favorite ideas that I've, like, ever heard. Yeah. And he would just tell amazing stories. Like, he told me a story where, like, Richard, when he mentors you, he, like, he recruited Eddie. Eddie was living in New York, working in Goldman Sachs, if I remember correctly. He convinced him to move to Fort Worth, Texas. Have you ever been to Fort Worth?
- [114:41]
A
I have.
- [114:41]
B
Okay. I've been there too. Yeah, there's nothing there. And in the 80s, there was less than nothing there. And this kid moves there. They would travel together, and Eddie said Richard would want to, like, summer somewhere in, like, Massachusetts. And it was like this. This, like, 20 room hotel that was the Members Only. Okay. So it's like, not open to a random public. And he insisted that Eddie be put in the room next to him. And one day a bunch of guys knock on Eddie's door while he's in the room. So she's, like, working and, like, researching, and they come in with a bunch of tools. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, richard wants us to put a hole in this wall. And Richard didn't want to go in the hallway and walk around to Eddie's room. So he made them knock a hall and then install a door so he could just go. He direct access to Eddie just with the door that didn't exist.
- [115:32]
A
That's incredible.
- [115:32]
B
He just had all kinds of crazy stories.
- [115:35]
A
All right, so not Buffett. Nutmonger.
- [115:39]
B
Smartest person that I met.
- [115:41]
A
Yeah, smartest person. Let's revise that and just say if you could pick one person you've met to be like your coach Yoda.
- [115:49]
B
Oh, Daniel Ek.
- [115:50]
A
Daniel Ek.
- [115:51]
B
Easily.
- [115:52]
A
All right. That was fast.
- [115:53]
B
Brad Jacobs gives me great advice Michael Dell would give me great advice. Todd Graves. But this guy is around my age.
- [116:00]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [116:00]
B
It's like the gap between us is so obvious when you solve for that. And again, I just think of the stuff he does, his clarity of thought. I greatly admire the product. I like products. I guess we should back up, like what is actually important to you. I don't actually give a how much money you have. I know a lot of people and I love these. We're in New York right now. Some of my favorite people. I like the PE guys way more and I like the VC guys because they're just more honest. They're like, you know, the PE guys are like, the VC gets. They have great lines about this. They go, VC gets all the attention. PE gets all the money. And then they're like, the VCs are lying because they say the founders are the customers. No, the LPs are our customers. The founders didn't give you any money. Then the PE guys are just honest. Why do you wake up every day? To maximize the value of my LP dollars. I don't want to play that game. I don't want to play it at all. But I respect their. Their honesty is refreshing. You know, their scoreboard is, I have $6 billion and I'll be better if I have eight. I am obsessed with product. The fact that I work on my podcasts are seven days a week. The fact that I hand edit the transcript like Mr. Beast drives me. He's like, you're stupid. Basically you need an editor, you need all these other things. And like I just an obsessed. It's like you don't work all your life to do what you love, to not do it. I don't want to outsource stuff. I like the craft of making the product. I'm very proud. Some people might consider this embarrassing when Spotify, my Spotify Rap comes out this year. The number one podcast on that is going to be my own. I go back and listen to it 1. I think of it as a tool. I was on a treadmill in Malibu a few weeks ago listening to episode 221, which I think is a biography of Charlie Munger. I study Charlie Munger all the time. We forget how much we forget. I listened to this hour long podcast like, oh God, he's got a lot of great ideas. I forgot I'm not doing it for like. Cause I like to hear the sound of my own voice. I also do it because you think Kobe watched game tape. Like, how am I going to get better If I don't, I just went. And when I interviewed Michael Dell, really more of a conversation interview, but I listened to the Michael Dell episode that I just did a few months ago, and all I hear is the floss. All I hear is like, you stupid idiot. You use three sentences that could have been one sentence that is not even interesting. Cut that next time. And it's like, that's how I get better. I go back and listen to it. So I am obsessed with product. The people that I admire the most are like, great products. It could be Jiro Sushi, it could be the Spotify app, It could be, it doesn't matter. Shoes that I like. You know, I just love when people take what they do very seriously. And I like the craft of it. And I want to dedicate my life to making a product that makes somebody else's life better. That is what drives me. I understand. And I have a bunch of friends that like the money or like building the systems. If you want to go back to archetypes or just like having a big empire. I don't have any employees, you know, you have three, I guess I have two technical, like subcontractors, you know, doing clips for me and thumbnails and stuff like that. But yeah, I don't have any desire for a giant empire. I'm like a little craftsman in my little shed over here.
- [118:52]
A
So why do the new podcast? David Senra. Yes, why do it? And we can use any number of different entry points here. So number one, why do it? You don't have to answer that as number one. I'm also curious where you see the podcast ecosystem. Is it early, is it late, is it oversaturated, is it undersaturated, et cetera. And then how do you diversify an interview based podcast?
- [119:23]
B
Okay, so let's take the number one, the why to do it. I was resistant on doing it for years because I like to do one thing and I don't like to not focus a huge thing. If you could summarize nine years, 400 biographies onto one word, what I've learned is focus. These people, whether they're psychos, nice people, different industries, they're remarkably focused compared, like, they're a different species than the current level of, you know, lack of attention spans that we have now that I think are getting worse. So focus is excessively important. If you look at how I spend my time though, right? We just talked about the importance of building a business that's natural to you. Half my waking time, I would like to be Completely alone. Like, not in the. Even the house with somebody else. Like, alone, just reading, thinking. Like, I like solitude a lot to a scary degree. So that makes sense. Founders reading books all day. That's. That's what you do. Like, that makes perfect sense. When I'm not doing that, though, if you look at what else I'm doing, essentially do this data dump where I'm in silence half the day, and then I go out every night that I'm not with my family. I usually have dinner with another founder, usually that I met through the podcast. And we talk for three, two, three. There's no. Like, some people, like, oh, really impressive. People will send me, like, I'd love to talk to you. And they, like, send me a counter, right, for 30 minutes. I go, that's. I don't do third, like, we're not even going to start. We haven't even started. Like, if that's what you think this is, like, I don't care that you're a billionaire. Like, we're just never going to meet, ever. And it's always super long. The. From the very first time. First time I can mention all these people. We talked for a long time. So I'm doing this anyways. And for years, people like Patrick were like, you stupid idiot, you should be recording these. Like, this is crazy. And so there's two things, to answer your question that happened. One is the first time me and Patrick grab dinner in New York with Daniel Ek. Okay, we talk for four hours and we get in the car because we're leaving the city, going back to Patrick's house because I'm going to spend the night there before I go back home. And the first thing Patrick says, and again, this is why it's important to the piece of advice that Charlie Munger gave us when we were at his house. He's like, your job at your age is to build a seamless web, deserve trust with other people. Are like you. He's like, everybody knows that. Me and Buffett, I met Buffett when I was 35. He was 28. But they didn't understand there's a bunch of other guys around our age that we built the same level of trust with and we did life with and did deals with forever. Most of them were dead by the time I met Charlie. And so relationships are very important. And Munger has a line that trust is one of the greatest economic factors in the world, which is. I've never heard anybody say that. That's a truly unique idea.
- [121:52]
A
I agree with that.
- [121:53]
B
And so like, there's a level of trust that I am very standoffish. People call me a turtle. Like, I get my shell right. And so once you've penetrated that, like, I have a level of trust that you want what's right for me. Like, there's no weird competitive vibes here. We're not, like, secret adversaries. Like, we just. I want to see you win. And we get in the car, and he's just like, God damn it, you need to record these. And he's like, I've known Daniel for four years. You got more out of him in four hours than I did in four years. He's like, I spoke 2% of time. You spoke 49%. He spoke the other 49%. And he's just like, there's no way that could speak to the soul of the Founder in the world that you can. And it's because he says something, and it's not what he's saying. It's what Henry Ford did here and Henry Kreiser did there, and Jim Casey did it over here. That's how my brain actually works. So I was like, okay, that was interesting. And then part of the conversation was, you know, Daniel saying to take. I wasn't doing video 375 episodes. I'm not doing for Fame. I'm introverted. And Daniel just saying in a very nice way, what are you doing? Like, stop riding the fence. This is the game that you chose. And I have the data. Video, obviously, is important in podcasts. Like, you're lying to yourself again. You know, the importance of somebody telling the truth. I want people around me to check me. I don't want sycophants, you know? And I'll tell you the second person that influenced me, that check that calls me and checks me all the time. That got in my mind for a while and was like, okay, that's interesting. And I get sad when I don't podcast. I would like to podcast every day, and I can't because I had to read an entire book before I sit down to make an episode. I cannot make more than 52 episodes a year. I just can't. People like you must read fast. No, I read slow. 25 pages an hour at most. And I have to do all the other shit I just told you I had to do, like the highlighting and, like, you know how long this takes taking photographs.
- [123:39]
A
Yeah, Right.
- [123:40]
B
And so then something that's else that's important to me is it's like, I'm not a political person at all. I don't even read the news. I will find out the important stuff. If there's a pandemic, I'll hear about it. If there's a war, I'll hear about it. Other stuff. No idea what's going on. I have no idea what's going on. I'm purposely aloof. But one thing that I am passionate about is that, like, entrepreneurship is good for the world as long as you're spending your time building, because all businesses. You mentioned losing your virginity by Richard Branson. He has the best description I've ever heard of a business. All of businesses is an idea that makes somebody else's life better. And therefore there's always opportunity, because there's infinite ways to make other people's lives better. And so that's what I'm trying to do. And so another person that become close with is Jared Kushner. We live in Miami together, and we went and met for dinner, and Jared's, like, a really smart and, like, buttoned up guy. And again, I don't pay attention to politics. So, like, the way I met him is actually he reached out to Rick and, like, I'm a huge founders fan. Can you see if David would speak at my company off site? A lot of companies asked me to speak at their company off site, and I didn't know anything about Jared. All I know is that people on the Internet like to argue about him because of the Trump stuff, you know, But I judge people on how they are with me. This had to happen to you where you, like, that person's great, and you deal with like, oh, that guy's terrible, or vice versa.
- [124:56]
A
I've had both.
- [124:57]
B
Yeah, exactly. So it's like, I'm gonna go into this. I have no idea about all this stuff. I'm just gonna see how this is gonna go. And then we hit it off right away, and he was like, try to pay me. I was like, no, no. Like, it's in Miami. I can drive over there. I could talk about this all the time. I like talking about this. So, like, and then we just built a relationship and a friendship from that. We have similar interests. And so we meet for dinner one day, and it's right after, basically, he went and spoke at this conference in Miami, and he thought he was going to go talk about his new fund, and he thought he was friends with the guy, and the guy's, like, selling tickets and making money off his name being there. And, like, it's not like you're paying the speakers, and the guy, like, essentially ambushed him. And starts asking questions like, how can you do business with Saudi Arabia? They chop up Chisogi and all this other stuff. And then before the talk was even done, his social media team was like, clipping it and, like sending it out and like, press releases.
- [125:48]
A
What a mess.
- [125:49]
B
So I show up at this dinner and Jared's always buttoned up and, you know, always got his shit together. And he's just like, what the hell is going on here? By the time the dinner ends, it's everywhere. And again, I'm like, this is weird that the business and tech press in America, they hate business and tech. They, like, cover things. I'm an enthusiast. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a critic. I read books all the time where I hate the person or something. You'll never see me do a podcast about it. I want to talk about stuff I like, not things I hate. It's a weird thing to go through. Imagine waking up every day and your job is to, like, cover people that you secretly like, wish you were. Like, there's just weird stuff that around this, right? And so we had this idea at dinner. I was like, there should be a place where I'm not talking about sycophant. I'm saying, like, Todd Graves. People make fun of him because he says that God made him good at chicken fingers and that he. He's living a chicken finger dream and he thinks it's a mission. But I'll tell you what, he believes it. He's been offered billions. He owns over 90% of company. He will never sell that company. He's not doing it for money. He's doing it because he wants to make money. And he does a lot of great things in the community. And I think people should know this. This guy exists and his ideas should be spread. That's a good for the world. So those two things happened and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I have this weird base of knowledge. So the way Jared describes it is like he's like talking to you is like talking to 50 of history's greatest entrepreneurs at the same time. Because, like, we'll talk about something and same thing you see, I do. And then Daniel's way of saying that he's like, you're like a LLM trained on history's greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned up because you're crazy. And so it makes it entertaining.
- [127:22]
A
I mean, I think that's no small contributor to why you have a die hard fan base. It's the pulpit preacher kind of fervor that you bring to it.
- [127:33]
B
But I didn't understand that until I thought about my childhood. When people say they go to church, that's not the kind of churches I went to. This is like. This is. Really gets me sad where I was almost crying earlier. It's like my mom deserved a better life. She didn't deserve to grow up with the monster of her father and the. Frankly, the. That her mom was like. The one thing that I remember about my mom's mom that she said to me was that I was a. That is literally the only memory I have is her. She was mentally ill. You'd go to her house, you know, National Enquirer and like all those things that there's National Enquirers, like the sun and all this other stuff that you get. Like, right when you go to the grocery store. She was like a hoarder. So she would. You'd go in the bathroom and like stacks all the way up to the. She wouldn't throw them out, but she read them like we read the Wall Street Journal. Like, you assume the stock is what the stock they said the stock price is. She'd read it like, this is true. Like Bigfoot is true. President. This is. I was a kid. This is the memory. I was the age when President Clinton. When Clinton was in the White House. And she was convinced because that Clinton was gay and his wife was lesbian. And so she saw like conspiracy everywhere. And she would direct that her grandchildren, which is like monstrous. And so like, she deserved. My mom deserved better. And then the problem was my mom didn't have an education and she was a very naive person. And so she turned to the church. But the church she turned to was like, you know, Benny Hennes.
- [128:57]
A
I do know the name. Yeah.
- [128:58]
B
Okay. So that's like you come up there and he blows on you and you don't have leprosy anymore.
- [129:03]
A
Yeah.
- [129:04]
B
Or he hit you in the face, like, does this thing and you can walk now. And all this stuff was acting. They caught these people over and over again. And like, I remember my mom didn't have a bunch of money and her putting like a couple crumpled up dollars and giving it to them because she thought this is like what she's going to get in her life. It's sickening to me now that that happened to her and that, you know, she fell prey to that and that these people did this and they have private jets name all kind of crazy. I'm sure there's some people that do that and they believe it. That's different thing if they really believe it. I know that guy didn't believe, like he. Come on, you didn't believe that. But then I didn't understand that. Oh, my God. That influenced the way I make my podcast because it is like preacher. I feel I shouldn't be sitting at a desk. I should be sitting at a pulpit. Somebody bought the domain church for founders.com and it points to my podcast.
- [129:57]
A
That's amazing.
- [129:58]
B
So that's why I'm doing it. And then the other thing was like, I just like podcasting and I can have a conversation every day. So we're going to start out like every other week and then move up to every week. And then I want to be having multiple conversations a week. That's what I want to do because I'm doing it anyways. Let's just put a microphone there. And it's not an interview. Yeah, there's some questions I have for them, but it's like a conversation. The idea that I'm going to do a business show interview and compete with Patrick, I think he's the best interviewer by far. He's so concise and perfect and he's just really good at it. And I like to talk. I want to talk 49% of the time.
- [130:33]
A
How will you balance the two shows? Because it seems like Founders Podcast takes a lot as it is.
- [130:41]
B
Yes.
- [130:42]
A
One of the benefits of that format is, is now, this might put a cap on growth to some extent, but if you're not playing the video game, it removes a lot of complexity.
- [130:53]
B
Right.
- [130:54]
A
You don't necessarily need to travel. You just read, you enjoy your solitude. You do some long form audio. You can have notes in front of you. You can be picking your nose as you take a deep breath. There's a lot of flexibility there. How are you going to balance the two without sacrificing founders?
- [131:12]
B
Right.
- [131:13]
A
Like snuffing out the magic X when you're working on Y.
- [131:18]
B
That's a great question. And it's something I was like, very concerned with. And that's why I said no for so many years. And so then you think like, if you said yes, then how would you do it instead of just blankly saying no? And there's a secret of dealing with me that everybody that knows me for a long time realizes. It's like water on a rock. Okay, so like you're going to come up to, like, this is literally going to happen multiple times. So let's say like Patrick or Sam Hinkey would be like, I have this idea and immediately, like, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. I'll be like, really, like, aggressive and angry. It's like, stupid idea, terrible idea. Then they mention it, like, two weeks later. Now it's just dumb idea. Mention it again like, a few weeks later. Silence. Then a few weeks later, I'm like, hey, guys, I have a great idea.
- [131:56]
A
It's that idea.
- [131:57]
B
It's their idea.
- [131:58]
A
So a slow bake.
- [132:01]
B
They're just like. They know. They're just like, okay, I just gonna. It's just water on a rock. I'll get to them. It's just gonna take a while. So the problem is, now I've said that they know that. And then you have other people that have to deal with me that, like, I'm very difficult to deal with. Obviously you are too. And, like, I think, like, that's one thing we can bond over. You're not trying to be mean. Just like, it's just a part of our personalities. And so the answer to your question is Founders is a one person. So, like, I read, I read research, I record, I set my own mics, I do all the editing. I hand do the transcripts. I do everything. The only thing I outsource is that I think have the clip. Guy I have is a little genius young kid living in Paris. His name's Maxim. He's incredible. And then I have somebody now because I have to play the YouTube game, which I hate and I refuse to do, and all this other, you know, the YouTube thing. Like, yeah, yeah.
- [132:46]
A
I haven't exactly sort of cauterized myself on that.
- [132:49]
B
Yeah. So, like, I won't do that kind of shit. I'd rather not get views. I have to see something and say. I would click on that myself. I'm not doing things for numbers. I didn't even know how many people were listening to Founders till, like, recent to, like, first, like, six years, I never looked. And then I started doing these big sponsorship deals and they're like, oh, I should look. And they're like, oh, this is great. But I don't like thinking about numbers. I don't want it to influence anything that I do. And so founders basically take seven days. Usually I'm late on the episode.
- [133:15]
A
I could see something in common with Dan Carlin.
- [133:18]
B
Yeah, no, I'm like, five days late. He's five months late. God, man.
- [133:25]
A
Love you, Dan. You know that.
- [133:26]
B
Yeah. He's literally the best podcast ever lived. Yeah. So what I realized is if I was going to do this, I would need a team, and I Don't like working with other people because I am difficult. I can be mean. I just am. And I don't want to be mean. You know, I really don't. Like you mentioned earlier, like, not getting some of the bad personality traits from them, you know, And I was worried. Like, I've asked friends, like, do you think I'm, like, sociopathic? Am I this? Like, no, you have empathy. Like, you're like. You have a hard outer shell, but you're really soft in the middle. Patrick would tell you that he's just like turtle. Yeah, exactly. When I was in Japan, they. We went to some. What's the ones where you have, like, 20 course meals?
- [134:05]
A
Oh, omakase.
- [134:06]
B
Yeah. And they try to.
- [134:07]
A
Literally means basically, I'll leave it to you. Omakase is like, leave it to you. So you can use it that way too. Ah, makase Rio.
- [134:12]
B
Well, why do they call it omakase? And it's like multiple.
- [134:15]
A
What does it have to do with omakase is you. You don't pick anything a la carte. You let the chef. You sit down, and they just give you what they want to give you.
- [134:22]
B
Yes. And then they come in there, and.
- [134:23]
A
You'Re leaving it up to them, but.
- [134:24]
B
Then they come in after everything, and they like, like want to talk to you about it.
- [134:27]
A
Oh, that's very un. Japanese.
- [134:29]
B
Okay.
- [134:29]
A
That's probably for foreigners.
- [134:30]
B
Okay. So. So they tried to give me.
- [134:33]
A
I mean, they might be like, this is this. And then they stop. Well, but this guy was giving you a little me mini.
- [134:37]
B
He tried to give me. No, he tried to give me the essence of Turtle. It was baby Turtle. I was like, I'm not eating Turtle.
- [134:43]
A
Doesn't sound great. Not. I'm not excited about the face you just made. Should be the. I mean, I feel like if David center doesn't work as a podcast name, you could have Essence of Turtle.
- [134:55]
B
So what I realize is I need a team. So what I could see is eventually going down. Like, right now, I'm making a new founders episode, like, every, like, 10 to 14 days, which is not good. And I try to do every week. The cadence probably should be every two weeks, because how me and Rick were talking about this this morning in regards to you the same way. It's like, what's that old apocryphal saying that Wrote a virtual short letter, but I didn't have time, so I wrote your long one.
- [135:19]
A
Yeah.
- [135:19]
B
He says, me and you share that thing where it's like, the reading's not taking longer. The Recording's not taking longer. It's the editing. Before I do anything. It's this wieldy 15,000 word thing. I'm trying to get down to 5,000 words. Takes so long to do. So answer your question. Could see a future where I'm never gonna subject founders, where I have to reduce. It can't be, you know, 52 a year. Second and biggest thing is I took an idea from one of Rockefeller's biographies. So one of the things that I do that I also think is important is you read all the famous biographies, but you got to go through the bibliographies. Books are made out of books everybody has read. Titan by Ron Trenow. In the bibliography of that, there's a better. The best Rockefeller biography I've ever read. And I have like eight at the house I haven't read yet. I collect like, obscure Rockefeller biographies that I'll eventually get to.
- [136:08]
A
What's your favorite one?
- [136:09]
B
It's called John D. The Founding Fathers of Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawkins.
- [136:14]
A
Better writer than a titler.
- [136:15]
B
Yes. 250 page instead of 800. But all about what you really want to know. You don't want to know about it where his grandfather was born. You want to know how he built Sandra oil. And there's this idea in there that I've used called secret allies. This is going to answer your other question about podcasting, where he's at the beginning of the oil industry. It's the very beginning. And he's there.
- [136:34]
A
Rough and tumble time.
- [136:35]
B
Yeah. No one knows shit about oil refining. So what does he do? He goes and builds a network of secret allies with other oil refiners and then eventually do something that's even more nefarious. They start something called like the Oil Refiners association of America or something. And then he gets himself elected president to that. And then what happens is like, it's like if we had a podcast reunion. I'm president of the podcast reunion. And then I go to you and like, Tim, what's your downloads this month? Okay. And how much are you charging for ads? And then who's your next guest? And he's getting all this data. So then he sees that's a joker. I don't have to. That guy's already out of business. He doesn't even know.
- [137:06]
A
We don't have to worry about that guy.
- [137:08]
B
Yeah, that guy's a killer. I need to buy his company and make him a partner. And so this idea of secret allies. So I'm obsessive podcasting and so what I would go do, I'd go around and I would talk to any podcaster would talk to me. And we talk about everything. Downloads, ads, who you're selling to, how you're selling, who are you using for editing?
- [137:25]
A
Maybe that's the better sense I got.
- [137:27]
B
No, no, because I give. Yeah, I give. I know.
- [137:33]
A
I'm kidding.
- [137:33]
B
There's. There's people literally, like, they'll even tell you. Like, there's podcasters that literally, like, I took an idea from one podcast and gave it to another podcast, because that's the whole thing. We don't. I don't collect it and hold it. We spread it around. And they've made millions and millions of dollars from these.
- [137:47]
A
A friend named Kevin Kelly. Kevin Rose does that, too. Yeah, Just gives away. Derek Sivers does it, too. Gives away as many as possible. And if he can't get rid of one that keeps him up at night, he's like, all right, we share.
- [137:56]
B
So if you're talking about podcast data, who's the mad scientist? Podcast data, Chris Hutchinson. And you talk to him. We both talk to him, and we. Like, he has good shit, because you tell. He tells you stuff, and he tells me stuff, you know, like, that I didn't know. And he's like this weird mad scientist, but he's in, like, this weird part of podcasting.
- [138:12]
A
I don't even think about all the hacks. People check him out.
- [138:14]
B
He's been on your podcast twice.
- [138:15]
A
Yeah, and once because he wanted to have this long conversation with me about a bunch of stuff I was doing, and I was like, if we're going to do that, make it good with your questions, and we'll just record it and then I can share it, because I don't want to answer all these questions over and over again. It was about podcast.
- [138:29]
B
It's a. It's a great idea. And so basically, I took that idea. So anyways, I was able to build a lot of relationships with a lot of great podcasters. We're friends, we share information. But then you also see, like, oh, wait, there's, like, a lot of disparity between, like, podcast teams and stuff. And so Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman tried to recruit me years ago because they have a podcast network called Psychom that they really don't do much with. Okay. Because it's really hard to, like, launch another health podcast when they're kind of dominating that vertical. Like, is there another human in that vertical that's not discovered? Unlikely. And everything. Power laws were everything around us. And so I got this crazy DM and then a phone call with Rob, and he's just like, dude, who are you? And this is when I had. No, again, 5,000 listeners. And he's like, I've never come across anything like this. And then we went up talking, I think, every single time. We talked this on the phone for over two hours every time. And it's all about podcasting. They're like, we're looking for other humans. And you're like this giant nerd that, like, loves reading obscure and breaking it down in, like, an entertaining manner, just like Andrew does. And he's like, would you be interested in joining us on Cyclom? And I was like, you are two weeks too late, because it's not announced yet, but I have a verbal agreement with this guy named Patrick, and I'm joining Colossus. But we still became friends and everything else. And so basically, me and Rob, like, we'd spend a lot of time. I spend my summers in Malibu, so I see them all the time. That's where they're. They. And I've talked to Andrew and like, they're just killers.
- [139:57]
A
Yeah, they're very good at what they do.
- [139:58]
B
They're just operationally excellent. And they have a small but mighty team. And every single person in that team, they're very focused. So, like, they're photographers. One of the best photographers. They're editors. One of the best editors. They're video people. Are some of the best video people. They're Internet guys. One of the best Internet. Like, it's just like, just everything. And so their whole point was just I was like, listen, founders is never going anywhere. It's staying on Colossus. Like, staying exactly what it is. But if I do something new, I'll let you know. So when I went to them, it was just like, here's the thing. I am going to pick the guess. I'm highly disagreeable. I will never take direction from anybody. I want to pick the guess and I want to have the conversations. And then everything else has to be a plus team around me. And that means from visuals to editing to clips to every single thing. And that's. They're operationally excellent. I have not met better. Just spend time with them.
- [140:51]
A
Very well architected.
- [140:52]
B
And then the way they built their business is genius.
- [140:55]
A
So what does success look like for you two years from now? Three, Five? Pick your timeframe.
- [141:00]
B
Success looks the same now and forever. That I'm proud of what I made. That's it. Like, I don't care what the numbers Are I love the climb.
- [141:07]
A
Let's say this show does really well.
- [141:09]
B
Oh, it is going to.
- [141:10]
A
So David Senna does really well.
- [141:13]
B
Yeah.
- [141:14]
A
And then not saying Rob would do this, but it's like, you know, what we would really love to do is a third show. And it's incredibly compelling. Maybe it's slightly different angle or a totally different angle. Who knows, right? It's like, who the hell knows? Interviewing spouses of all these famous people, which I think would actually be an amazing podcast. I'm sure someone's doing it. But besides the quality of the product and being proud of the product, like there is such a thing as too many different products. Oh, there is such a thing as simply burning the candle at both ends. So you're at a battery capacity that compromises the product. Maybe long term or your life. You've got more considerations than just business. So how do you think about those other factors when you telescope out a few years?
- [142:11]
B
I'm not a long term planner, so I would say I'm basically non analytical at all. I go straight off intuition. Steve Jobs has this great line where he's just like, he thinks intuition is more important than intelligence. And the intuition played a larger role in like his success than anything else. Intuition and perseverance. And so like I used to think I was like more analytical and like, I have a five year plan, a ten year plan. All a great life is is a string of great days. And so the furthest I plan out is like 24 hours. I actually have this weird. I don't even know if I should say this publicly. I don't think people like humans actually understand time at all. And like when you say a decade, like, yeah, we know decades, like 10 years. But like, do we actually understand what that means? Like, I think we understand. We maybe understand a week, a month. We definitely understand a day because that's how we live. We live 24 hours at a time. And so all I try to do is like, can I design a day that I really enjoyed? Not like hedonistic. I'm not like laying around doing nothing. Like I have to work. I feel guilt and shame when I'm not being productive. And that's probably a bad thing. There's all reasons that you can psychoanalyze why that is the case, but I just know how I am. I like to work, I like to get up and get after it. I don't like taking vacations. I don't like doing. The stuff I get invited to is crazy. It's just like I Like, to work. I like podcasting. I'm obsessed with it. Everybody's like, why don't you. We talked about this multiple times. Like, why don't you do something else? I like doing this. I will keep doing this. So to answer a question, I just try to make a great day. And the way I make a great day is like, I want to wake up, I want to take care of my health, I want to read, I want to make a product I'm really proud of, and I want to spend time with people that I love and admire. And I'm going to do that the next day and the next day and the next day. And I think if I have a great day today and a great day tomorrow and shitty day a month from now, and then a better day the next day, and I get to my life and it's just a string of great days, that will be a great life. And so two years from now, I don't know. Because if you asked me two years ago, I said there's no way I'm gonna do another podcast. But I would say, like, my answer is that simple. The maximum I like about this is like, I love the climb. I don't care where the summit is. I just like the activity for the sake of itself. And so therefore, I'm going to do it. And I hope it's well received. But I couldn't have predicted that Founders was going to turn out the way it was. So I don't know. I'm just going to do great work that I'm completely fascinated by and it gives me energy. And on the other side of that, like this what Stephen King said, I'm not just the writer, I'm the first reader. I listen to every single episode of Founders before anybody else, and I just threw out one. So the book is great. Bill Walsh's the Score takes care of itself. I read it the first time five, six years ago. I read it again. Love the book. I made a podcast on it. It's like hour and 15 minutes long. I finished editing it, I listened to it. Not good enough. Threw it away. That's it. Can I make something I'm proud of?
- [144:56]
A
So I believe all of that and I want to push on a little bit because the great days make great lives. I agree with. But now your circle of interaction is expanding with a show that involves other people with very busy schedules. So to what extent are you going to be traveling to all these people versus having people travel to you? I mean, that type of decision has longer term implications Right. So I'm curious how you think about that.
- [145:23]
B
So the way I think about this is this goes to the other side of me. That's probably not healthy. That, like, I have a ruthless competitive drive that I think would terrify most people. I have a very negative inner monologue that I never think I'm doing enough. I have, like, entire, like, multiple people depending on me financially, way above and beyond just your wife and kids, like, other people that I have to make sure that I can take care of. So I have a lot of pressure on me. I want the pressure. So the answer question is, like, I'll do whatever it takes to win. And so if that means I got to get on a plane or I get little sleep, then, like, that's what's going to happen. But I also think, like, you're also smart and you can think about these things. Like, okay, you want to talk to extreme winners in business is essentially, like, not really startup founders. I want people that have, like, decades of experience. You know, every single person. If you look at the first, like the people we've been recording with so long, like, I'm just more interested in talking to people that have done things for a long time that are smarter and more productive and better than I am. And so setting up here where we are in New York, probably a good idea because everybody comes through New York now. We've recorded several in la. Here's also thing to consider. Most of the people I'm talking to have plans. Rick pulls me to the side and says this all the time. Multiple people have told me this. You don't understand the impact that you're having on people. Because I don't think about it. I'm by myself all the time. I don't look at numbers. And so people have literally gotten their jets and flown across the country because I was like, hey, can you do it? On this day in la, are the teams there? It's, like, more convenient. And they do it because they think I've done something for them, but I'm just like, no, no, no, I haven't done anything for you. I just. Thank you for listening. The fact that you listen to my podcast means I get to do this for a living. This is where Munger has really heavily, basically influenced my thinking. He's just like, the reciprocation tendency in humans is so pronounced and it's evolved. Yes. And it's never going away. And what I didn't understand, and I still don't understand because I don't like talking about. I Don't like thinking about this shit. I think about, like, as if I'm talking to one person. Right. Is the fact that so many people have gotten value. Like, every single person's recorded an episode with us for the new show so far, has listened to a ton of shows of mine. And their point was, it's important work. Todd Graves actually told me this two weeks ago. He's like, it's important work. And it's more important the bigger company gets. Because if I can hear a single idea or either avoid a mistake or get a good idea, and it makes a 1% difference on my business. That's. I can't do math. I can't do public math. A billion dollars, whatever the number is, $2 billion. Like, it's a huge 10. So it makes a 10 difference in his business. It's a huge swing. And so, so far. And again, you have a private jet. Like, where do you actually live? Wherever you have.
- [148:08]
A
Your carrying costs for that jet are pretty high.
- [148:10]
B
Yeah. So I.
- [148:10]
A
A little bit of pressure just to utilize the damn thing.
- [148:13]
B
You want to hear something funny? I go back to why I think New York and LA is going to be where I'm recording most of these. And we're willing to travel. We will if we have to. Dyson says, come do it. I'm coming to England. I don't give a shit. Sam Zell told me. He's like, I told you that that lunch I had with him changed my life. He's like, don't make the same mistake. He's like, I know all the rich guys. He says, first of all, they're all guys. So what he told me, he goes to. You'd be surprised how many of them are miserable. And they, like, do stuff they don't like for more money that they can't spend. And then they make the same mistake where they buy slight. This is his words, not mine. He go, they buy slightly nicer versions of the same shit. He goes, the difference between a $10 million house and a $30 million house is negligible. And he's like, I own my place in Chicago and my compound in Malibu. That's where he used compound. And he goes, I rent everything else. The things that you own start to own you. And he said every year after, I think, Thanksgiving and in between Christmas, you take his entire family, extended family, to this little village in France. And he said, he. Zoe was a talker, and he said funny things. He goes, I could buy the whole village. He goes, I don't. I rent It. And then I don't think about it until I go back. It's somebody else's problem. And he goes, there's only one true luxury in life. He goes, private jet. Try to get to private jet money. And he's like, I use my jet three hours a day on average. He uses jet three hours a day. He was in South Florida because he's like, I woke up Chicago this morning, got on my jet, I went across the street, gave a talk to a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs because that's what he wanted to spend his last days doing. He knew he was dying. He didn't tell me though. I didn't know that. We were scheduled to have another dinner and it got canceled and they said he was sick. I was like, oh, he got Covid. He died three weeks later. So I never got to see him again. The way he was spending his last days at his own expense, traveling all over the world on his beautiful giant plane, spending a lot of money, is passing on the knowledge that he learned through 61 years to other investors and younger entrepreneurs. And so he goes, I did that this morning, came over here, had lunch. I'm going to get in my car and go back to Chicago. He used it three hours a day. So so far people have been willing to fly. They come to us. I'll come to some people if they're super busy schedules. And then I think just setting up in like a place where they all will come through would make a lot of sense.
- [150:19]
A
Anyone on your wish list who you haven't been able to track down?
- [150:22]
B
No. Surprisingly, again, I don't like thinking about this where like, I don't understand that today, right now, if I do an episode on somebody living, it's going to get to them. They might not be a listener. This just happened with Jimmy Iovine. So people are always surprised. They think, you know, who's on your list. Like, obviously I look like Respect Bezos, Respect Elon, like all them, you know. But I would say like Todd Graves, I'm like, what the hell's wrong with you? And James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy. They're like, they're just like, I'm weirdly obsessed with these people. And so one of the people I'm obsessed with, Jimmy Iovine and Jimmy Iovine. Defiant ones.
- [150:56]
A
Such a good series.
- [150:57]
B
I watch it.
- [150:58]
A
Oh my God, it is well done. If anyone hasn't seen fine ones, go watch it. It's head spinning like that with the.
- [151:06]
B
Description of the four part documentary is, oh, it's a relationship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy. Yeah, it's really a documentary about entrepreneurship. It's about chasing a path. There's no path in front of you. There was no path for Dre to get out of Compton. There's no path from Jimmy to get. From the son of a longshoreman in Brooklyn to go, what happened to him? He's fascinating. And then this is my point about, like, what do you actually value in life? Jimmy's a billionaire. You know, I don't know. He's got a billion, $2 billion. Whatever the case is, I'd be more interested in that than if he had a hundred billion dollars. Like, if you asked me, whose life would you want, Buffett or Munger? Buffett was a hundred times richer. I'm taking Munger every day. What I like about Jimmy is that he lived an interesting life. The episode you see it on Defy Once, crazy stories in there. But Rick Rubin, who you mentioned, if podcasting is saturated, which we can get to, Rick Rubin's really good because he's a world class listener. He took a skill set. What was his skill for the work that he did? Why are these musicians hiring him? To listen, to hear something they don't hear, and to suggest something they might not hear, might not understand. And the episode he did with Jimmy Iovine, I think came out 2023. I think it was like the single best podcast I listened to all year. And it's just Jimmy I telling insane story after insane story about the music business, because the music business is a wild business. And what I like about my business is that it's like a unique experience generator. It creates opportunities and experiences you can't buy. And the amount of people I get to meet and talk to. My memoirs are going to be wild because of, like, the weird dinners I've been to and the planes I've been on and the boats have been on. And it started because I was a giant nerd with a giant head sitting in a room by himself for five years, just mainlining biography after biography after biography. Jimmy's really interesting to me. And then what happened is part of this. I can't tell you how I got connected. He agreed to do the show, and one of the previous guests is the one that connected me, which, again, like, I just don't feel I deserve how nice these people have been to me and what they're willing to do. And I don't even like asking them for this, but it got to say, true, the worst possible.
- [153:14]
A
You put a lot of work into.
- [153:14]
B
Your it doesn't matter, though. The worst possible thing.
- [153:18]
A
Do you feel like you don't deserve it? I feel like that's an important question.
- [153:20]
B
I said question a minute. Buffett has a line. It's like the people that win are the ones that. Their eyes are on the field, not the scoreboard. I don't. I was going for a walk last night, and, like, you know, this happens to your time. I'm way earlier. You're like an og, man. You've been famous. Like, way. Like, when people stop me on the street, which happens, I'm like, how do you know what I look like?
- [153:42]
A
That's gonna happen more and more.
- [153:43]
B
Yeah, exactly. So, like, I've read all your blog posts about this, too. I've been like. I was on the phone, Morgan Housel this morning, who's a big fan of yours. Obviously you guys. He's been. Yeah. And we were talking about that, like, the security around this and all this other stuff. And then we were talking about you. Morgan's just the peach of a human. He's the opposite of me.
- [153:59]
A
Psychology of money. Great book.
- [154:01]
B
Won't stop selling. Stop selling.
- [154:03]
A
I know, man got lightning in a bottle on that one.
- [154:07]
B
So.
- [154:07]
A
Yeah. Earned it. Earned it, too.
- [154:08]
B
Oh, 100 and the nicest guy. If you think you want to find my directional opposite. And we'll go back to the question you think is important. Morgan genuinely believes that his ceiling. That he should be an insurance salesman somewhere in the Midwest making a hundred thousand a year. And the fact that this guy got really, really wealthy.
- [154:26]
A
Astronomical numbers.
- [154:27]
B
Really, really wealthy. And just wakes up every day, can't believe his life. I wake up every day like, why am I not a billionaire? It's like. It's like he's happy in a way I will never be. And this is why I think Daniel X Adv advice about chasing. Daniel does not believe. This is one of the first things I asked him on the the show was he was the one that put this idea out there that his life is not about happiness. It's about impact. He is not chasing happiness. He's chasing impact. And he's the one that actually convinced Dara. The founder of Uber tells the story. They were having drinks.
- [154:57]
A
CEO.
- [154:58]
B
Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Good distinction. I met Travis, too.
- [155:01]
A
Yeah.
- [155:01]
B
Most intense person I've ever been in. In contact with.
- [155:04]
A
He's. He is one hell of a builder, man.
- [155:06]
B
Oh, for sure.
- [155:07]
A
And different batteries.
- [155:08]
B
Most intense. And I've been around a lot of 10.
- [155:10]
A
Yeah.
- [155:11]
B
He's very fascinating.
- [155:12]
A
He has different gears than most.
- [155:13]
B
Oh, and the storytelling and the racking. He's a phenomenal storyteller, phenomenal communicator. So anyways, when Dar was going back and forth about becoming CEO of Uber, he said, eventually he's gonna say no because, like, he was pretty happy with his life. And Daniel, in a very direct way, is like, since when's life about happiness? It's about impact. It's like one of the most important companies in the world, and you can have an impact on it. You can have an impact on the way cities are changed. You absolutely have to do this. And I think that's, like, really interesting idea. So I am trying to have impact. So to answer your question, do I think I deserve it? I obviously, like, know that I put a lot of work into it and I believe that the product is good, and I think I found what I've put on the planet to do. But I don't like thinking about it. I don't like thinking about its impact on other people. I like it because I. I like it. Like, I make it. I'm like, I would listen to this podcast. I think it's valuable. I think you start doing shit for the wrong reasons. I talked to a lot of the head people at Spotify, and they said one of the biggest mistakes they made. It's like, the great thing about podcasting is like, the people that come up like we did through, like, the garage. I listened to your first episode. Like, I remember Tim. Tim Talk.
- [156:19]
A
Tim Talk.
- [156:20]
B
Yeah.
- [156:20]
A
Like, I remember from my kitchen table with a friend.
- [156:22]
B
And why did you do. I think you had a couple glass of wine, right?
- [156:25]
A
Yeah.
- [156:25]
B
And with a friend, because you're like.
- [156:26]
A
I don't figured out pretty quickly after listening to episode one that the second episode was going to be sober.
- [156:31]
B
Yeah. Oh, man.
- [156:32]
A
Josh Waitzkin number two.
- [156:34]
B
But you come up with like, you did it because you were curious. You only talked to people you really want to talk to. You had no production costs. And so Spotify said they flipped it. They're like, we took something that was low production costs done by enthusiasts and people in the garage. Huberman's analogy. This is like, it's punk rock. Punk rock is great because it started with people that just wanted to play in the garage, and then they got good and then they played for stadiums. And so Spotify is like, oh, what we did was like, we took a low production cost, made a high production cost because we had these big ass contracts and then we hired celebrities and no one listened. And the people that did listen, they stopped because the Celebrities were just doing it for money. They didn't do it because they love it. And I think that's the key. It's like, I truly love this. I did it for five and a half years when no one was listening. That tells you that I love it. But I think one of the worst things you could do is I'm going to do it. Because status is the funny thing. Podcasting is dorky. It's low status. In 2016, you think that was high status?
- [157:28]
A
No, no.
- [157:28]
B
It was like, you dorky nerd with.
- [157:30]
A
A clear, I'm not asking if you're seeking status. It was more if you feel that you're unworthy of people flying to you. And doing these things is a very. Those are two very different.
- [157:42]
B
I meant, like, I think you see this now that podcasting is obviously very influential and can be. There's so many people jumping into it that clearly don't love it. They like it because the CPMs are high or, like, whatever, or they want to be famous. I had no video for eight years. Do you think I want to be famous? Do you think I want to be recognized? Like, no, I obviously don't. I had to have the most powerful person podcasting berate me at dinner in a nice way, saying, you idiot, you have to do video. That's the only reason I did video, because Daniel told me to. And if. How smart am I if I don't listen to him? Like, then I'm an idiot. Like, I have to do it. I don't like doing it. Like, I don't know, man. I don't know. I think at some point, like, the platform gets big enough. Like, I flew here for this. Why? Because you have a massive platform and you're willing to extend it to me. And, like, I travel wherever you say, which is Iceland. I'm coming to Iceland, brother. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, you want to go to. I know you like Argentina. Let's go down there.
- [158:29]
A
Yeah.
- [158:29]
B
Like, we'll do an Argentina. So, yeah, I think eventually, when they see it's big enough that, yeah, people would come to you. Also try to make it easier. And, you know, I'm not doing it in Columbia, Missouri. I'm doing it in New York or la, you're going to be there anyways.
- [158:42]
A
You know, and also with the particular cohort that you're interviewing with jets, if they're like, sure, I'll fly to New York. And then they can also set up five other meetings with friends or business associates or fill in the blank.
- [158:55]
B
Right. Make it easy. But I think, really, man, this is the turtle in me. I don't like asking the turtle. You can ask all the people that we have a bunch of mutual, close friends. I don't like asking for help. And I think one of the weird ways that I think I built true friendships with some of these people is because all day long, it's gimme, gimme, gimme.
- [159:15]
A
Yeah.
- [159:16]
B
I have never asked Rick for anything. I think one time to crash at his house. That's it. All I want is to be homies, to be friends. I don't want anything from this. And I think I didn't understand, because I didn't come from this background, that when you're high profile and you're building these empires, these are all empire builders. All day long, they're just surrounded by people that want something from them. And I'm just like, here, I have this podcast that might be value for you. You want it like, I don't want anything from you. And when they tell me, ask me for stuff, I still don't like doing it. So I don't like doing, like, really hurt me to, like, would you be on my show? Yeah, Well, I was like, all right, I'm gonna ask for something. I'll do this. And not a single person I've asked, I said no.
- [159:57]
A
Yeah, well, you love what you do. I mean, that is essential to producing the quality that you produce. It's essential for the endurance to outperform and outlast. Because podcasting as a whole is just an elephant graveyard of three to ten episode shows.
- [160:18]
B
Yes.
- [160:20]
A
So if you choose something you really like, that you would make because you intrinsically enjoy it, if it's an outgrowth of reading the biographies, taking the notes, and you're like, well, this is really sort of in terms of additional work for me on top of something I might already be doing, actually. Not the majority of the pie. And you have the fuel of that obsession. You're going to do well, even if it's just for yourself, but certainly with the longevity, you have the competitive advantage of durability.
- [160:55]
B
That means a lot coming from you and everything you've accomplished. And I think you actually hit to the essence of it, where it's like, I can't sleep after these things. I had to get up the next day when I was in Austin. I think I had a 7:00am flight, and I slept maybe three hours because, like, gem after gem after gem from Michael Dell. Or like, you'll see this in the Todd Graves Episode, dude, we were like, the same person. We're the same person. And so, like, we're like spontaneously high fiving this. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of, like, this guy's a dork. Like, hey, give me another high five. Funny. Like, we just like, geeking out about, like, minute details of just being obsessed with his whole thing is like, do one thing and doing it better. Anybody else? I remember going from the airport, it's in Baton Rouge. And I immediately called Sam Hinkey, who's the closest thing I have to our mentor, and I was like, I'm in trouble. And he's like, why? I go, I'm addicted to doing these things already. Like, I can't stop. Like, this was crazy.
- [161:50]
A
It's a good sign. Crazy. I mean, that's how I pick my projects largely. It's how I pick some of my startups, too, that I get involved with if I have what I would call sort of good insomnia for at least a few nights in a given week. And then I try to quell. It doesn't matter how much Trazodone I take or anything else. I just am so excited by something that my mind is whirring and I can't go to sleep. I'm like, okay, there's probably something. Something there also, because it seems to be such an energetic unlock. I'm like, even if that one thing doesn't do very well, if I can kind of create this nuclear power from that, it's not compartmentalized. It can apply to other things. So I get it. I get it. And I was listening to. I don't know how I found it, actually. I was going on. I think it's Tom Papa's show. Comedian, great interviewer. And I was going on his show, this is a while ago, and I was doing some homework on my own. Listened to an interview he did where he interviewed Joe Rogan. And I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, but Rogan effectively said. He's like, yeah, I don't really think much about discipline or willpower. He said, what I do have, though, is obsession. And when I find something that I'm obsessed with, when I deep dive, it's like, I don't need to worry about discipline. I don't need to worry about willpower. So it's like finding that thing that you are obsessed by. And so I think you've done that, you've done that. So you found your lane. Like, a lot of people don't find it. They don't find that thing. It's like you wonder, if Kobe Bryant were born somewhere and didn't have the chance to pick up basketball, would it have been something else? Maybe. If you're a Michael Jordan, okay, it's baseball or this or that, but it's like you found your thing. It's kind of amazing.
- [163:39]
B
No, I appreciate it. And the way I think about it is, like, it took me 32 years to find my path and five and a half years, years of struggle before I could even pay my bills. It was like, a long time. Kobe found it. Like, imagine finding it at 12 like he did, and knowing I read the 600 page biography on him by Roland Lazy and the middle school guidance counselors, like, he wrote down, what are you gonna do? He's like, I'm gonna play in the NBA. He's like, you need to pick something else. That's a one in a million shot. He goes, I'm gonna be that one in a million to be like that. So sure. At 12 years old. And this is what goes back to the lack of introspection. Like, I had a lot of, like, angst and, like, what is the meaning of life? Or, like, what am I doing here? And then once you find your thing, like, there's like a. Definitely not resting on laurels, but there is, like, almost like a relief. Like, because it's not just like, finding something you love to do. It's like, what is that? You're like a Japanese encyclopedia guy. What is it?
- [164:32]
A
Guy?
- [164:32]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It's like the intersection of, like, what you love to do, what you're good at, and what's good for the world.
- [164:38]
A
Something like that.
- [164:39]
B
Yeah.
- [164:39]
A
Gets used in a bunch of different ways. Japan's always good for these pithy conceptual words.
- [164:46]
B
I think this is gonna be blasphemous for you, but, like, I think travel is generally overrated after you do it.
- [164:52]
A
I am not jumping in after you.
- [164:53]
B
Do it for a while. Because the problem is, like, we keep going to all the nice places, and, like, all the nice places are all the same to each other. One thing that Japan blew my mind. And why, like, it's the top of my list now of everywhere I've been and where I would want to go again is because it's one of the few truly distinct cultures in the world.
- [165:10]
A
Yeah, it's a wild one. They also. They're kind of a chameleon because they pull so much from other cultures. So when it was in isolation, it was certainly kind of an alien environment. And Then you look at everything they've incorporated and in some cases, in the case of say, like the Toyota way. Right?
- [165:29]
B
Yeah.
- [165:29]
A
You have, I guess it was, I want to say Deming.
- [165:31]
B
Yep.
- [165:32]
A
Right. Who is basically not ignored but certainly not embraced in his country of birth, gets adopted by the Japanese and you see them do this over and over and over again. So, yes, it's a fascinating place and I would agree with you that especially people who travel in the lap of. It doesn't need to be luxury, it could just be comfort. Rich person travel is the most boring shit in the world. Same stores, it's just like, okay, you're going to the Four Seasons in 12 different places, getting on the wifi, doing whatever it is you would have been doing at home, and then going to the most expensive meals. It's just not interesting. So I think if anybody wants a great book on the art of long term world travel, if that's of interest. Vagabonding, My Rolf pots.
- [166:20]
B
I read that because of you. The amount of books in my library because of you. It did the same thing with you that I did with all these other people. It's like, oh, Tim says read it. I read it.
- [166:28]
A
Yeah. And a lot of these books, they're underneath it all, at least in the case of Rolf Potts book Vagabonding. They're really kind of like philosophical operating systems. And it's a hat you can try on. You don't have to wear it forever. But it's like, okay, if you only have one jacket to wear, which is like sixth gear workaholic, neglecting Family Guy, just expand your wardrobe. You can always put that jacket back on. You just hang it up for a moment. And similarly, I like these books and they certainly can be business books. Whether it's Branson who is in some ways, I mean, he took risks, but he's kind of the opposite, at least in a lot of capacities. To a Dyson. Right. He risk mitigates the hell out of his ventures and caps the downside in so many creative ways.
- [167:18]
B
Like his airline.
- [167:19]
A
Exactly. So like the artistry of deal making for minimizing or capping downside is one of Branson's superpowers. Even though the stuff on the magazine covers back in the day was like the madman who's doing X, Y and Z and has the models. And he's phenomenal marketer and he's kiteboarding with a naked model on his back picture. I have in my mind, oh, my God.
- [167:41]
B
So that looks fun.
- [167:42]
A
I mean, he is also can Be a wild man. But I digress. I was just going to say that these are hats that you can put on to test them out as philosophical operating systems, which is how I pick a lot of the books. Books, books, books. I mean, I was very similar to you when I was a kid and also all throughout, just living in books. Living and living in books.
- [168:04]
B
It's very common, though, in these stories. Rockefeller, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Edwin Land, Winston Churchill. The way I say this is like, they don't just read, they devour entire shelves. There's multiple examples of Thomas Edison read every single book in the Detroit library. Edwin Land read every single book on light in Harvard, then dropped out because he didn't think he had anything else to learn. Moves to New York City. I think one of the most beautiful buildings is the one we passed on the way here. New York City Public Library. Read every single book on light in there. And then it's like, okay, I learned enough. Now I can do my experiments. They just. Our entire shelves.
- [168:38]
A
Monster. David center, what have we not talked about? People will be able to find, of course, the show davidcenter.com.
- [168:46]
B
Yep.
- [168:46]
A
Is that the best website?
- [168:48]
B
David center on all social channels, Instagram.
- [168:51]
A
Social channels, podcast app, Founders podcast, of course, founders podcast.com.
- [168:55]
B
I appreciate you. Like, you've included me in your newsletter in the past.
- [168:58]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [168:59]
B
On your blog. Like, I read all your shit and I'm like, and I didn't even know. Like, it's shocking to me. Like, when I. I'm like, oh. Because it's not like you told me. I was like, what the hell?
- [169:07]
A
Yeah, you put out. I mean, the obsession and attention to detail doesn't surprise me at all. When you told me about going through your transcripts by hand, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. And I really have my fingers crossed for you. I don't think you need any luck, but that David center is as durable as Founders Podcast. If anybody can do it, you can do it.
- [169:33]
B
I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you, man.
- [169:35]
A
Yeah. Congratulations.
- [169:36]
B
You've had a huge influence on me.
- [169:37]
A
Oh, thanks, man.
- [169:38]
B
It's long overdue. Like I said, I ran in the hallway and grabbed you. I was like, it's been too long coming.
- [169:43]
A
Very, very long overdue. So everybody listening? Check out David Senra. I'm excited to check it out and also know the team at Huberman Lab, Andrew Rob, Those guys are all top tier. So what's coming is going to be absolutely top notch. So I'm excited to see it. And as always, Everybody. We will put links to anything that came up in this conversation in the show notes Tim Blog Podcast Just search Senra S E N R A or Essence of Turtle and you'll be able to find everything. And until next time, just be a bit kinder than is necessary. To others, yes, but also to yourself. Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange SOT things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday, type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. In the last handful of years years, I've become very interested in environmental toxins, avoiding microplastics, and many other commonly found compounds all over the place. One place I looked is in the kitchen. Many people don't realize just how toxic their cookware is or can be. A lot of nonstick pans, practically all of them, can release harmful forever chemicals. Pfas, in other words, spelled PFAS into your food, your home, and then ultimately that ends up in your body. Teflon is a prime example of this. It is still the forever chemical that most companies are using. So our place reached out to me as a potential sponsor and the first thing I did was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one. And that is the Titanium Always Pan Pro. And the claim is that it's the first nonstick pan with zero copy coating. So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that'll last forever. I was very skeptical, I was very busy. So I said, you know what I want to test this thing quickly. It's supposed to be non stick, it's supposed to be durable. I'm going to test it with two things. I'm going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning because eggs are always a disaster in anything that isn't non stick with the toxic coating and then I'm going to test it with a steak sear because I want to see see how much it retains heat and it worked perfectly in both cases and I was frankly astonished how well it worked. The Titanium Always Pan Pro has become my go to pan in the kitchen. It replaces a lot of other things for searing for eggs, for anything you can imagine and the design is really clever. It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron and non stick in into one product. And now our place is expanding this first of its kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware sets which are made in limited quantities. So if you're looking for non toxic long lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to fromourplace.com tim and use code TIM for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100 day risk free trial, free shipping, shipping and free returns. Check it out fromourplace.com Tim Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, etc. Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, let's just say I'm a writer and entrepreneur. I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today's sponsor is so interesting. It's been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing and that is where Crescent Family Family Office comes in. You spell it C R E S S E T Crescent Family Office. 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- [175:34]
B
To.
- [175:34]
A
See how Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's crescentcapital.com Tim and disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So do your due diligence.