#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)

0:00:04 Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.
0:00:10 My guest today is David Senra. David is the host of the Founders Podcast, a cult favorite
0:00:15 at this point, which explores the life and work of hundreds of history’s greatest entrepreneurs.
0:00:19 For each episode, he does something that most people will not do. He reads one or more
0:00:24 biographies about a single founder and then shares the key lessons. It has become incredibly
0:00:29 popular. His new podcast, David Senra, is brought to you by the Huberman Lab team. It
0:00:34 showcases conversations with the best of the best, living founders, and extreme winners.
0:00:39 You can visit davidsenra.com. That’s S-E-N-R-A, davidsenra.com, for all things David and to check
0:00:44 out the new show. And now, without further ado, please enjoy this very wide-ranging conversation
0:00:46 with David Senra.
0:01:12 Who is Brad Jacobs?
0:01:19 So, Brad Jacobs is, I think, the only person in history to start eight separate billion-dollar
0:01:23 companies. So, a lot of people like on the West Coast, you know, texting, they don’t really
0:01:26 know who he is because he’s just been an East Coast guy his whole life. But he started his
0:01:31 first company when he was like 23. He’s 68 years old. He is by far the most energetic
0:01:36 person I have ever been around. And he wrote this book called How to Make a Few Billion
0:01:36 Dollars.
0:01:38 What are some of his companies?
0:01:42 He’s like the roll-up king. So, like, he’d roll up, like, logistics companies and trucking
0:01:47 companies. And now he’s got a massive one that he just took public that’s doing, like, building
0:01:51 supplies. And so, like, early in your career, you might roll up, like, a $5 million company
0:01:54 or a $20 million company. His first acquisition, I think, was, like, $9 billion. So, he’s like,
0:01:59 he just gets progressively, like, bigger and bigger and bigger. But what I find interesting
0:02:03 about him is usually when you study, like, extreme winners, and he’s obviously an extreme
0:02:10 winner, what motivates them is, like, kind of dark. Like, issues with their father, some kind
0:02:14 of insecurity that never felt good enough. They grew up poor and they felt they were born
0:02:20 in, like, the wrong place. Brad does it out of love. He’s got no negativity. He’s just
0:02:23 a very special human being. And the fact that I get to text him and call him and go to his
0:02:26 house is insane. He’s just an amazing human being.
0:02:31 There’s another legend who defeated Roulette and then went on to beat the market, Ed Thorpe.
0:02:32 Yes.
0:02:34 Probably another exception, right?
0:02:35 The exception.
0:02:44 The exception, where he did not eviscerate his personal life in the quest for business mastery.
0:02:48 Yeah, I don’t think anybody’s mastered life, clearly, as much as Ed Thorpe did. Your interview,
0:02:50 your two interviews that you did with him were incredible.
0:02:55 Yeah, thank you. That was such a moment of gratitude to have the chance to interview him.
0:03:01 Especially because he is so, so sharp at his age. I can’t recall his exact age right now.
0:03:03 He was, like, 89 or something like that.
0:03:09 Yeah, that’s the, if you want a holistic figure to consider emulating, Ed Thorpe would be on a
0:03:11 very, very, very short list.
0:03:12 I can think of three out of 400.
0:03:14 All right. Who are the three?
0:03:18 Ed Thorpe’s at the top. Soul Price, who’s the one that invented essentially, like, the
0:03:22 warehouse model, like Costco. Like, Jim Senegal was mentored by Soul Price when Jim Senegal
0:03:26 was, like, 18. So Jim Senegal, founder of Costco, built one of the greatest companies in history,
0:03:30 and he has this great line in Soul Price’s autobiography, and Soul Price’s son wrote his
0:03:34 biography. People are like, oh, you must have, when Soul died, he’s like, you must have learned
0:03:38 a lot from Soul. He goes, no, I didn’t learn a lot. I learned everything. Everything that
0:03:44 I know I learned from this guy. So Soul Price, same thing. Good husband, good father. Didn’t chase
0:03:48 after more money at the expense of other areas of his life after he already had enough money,
0:03:54 which is what Ed Thorpe turned down so much. Hundreds of millions, if not billions. He could
0:03:56 have, like, collected. He’s just like, I already have more money than I can ever spend. Like,
0:03:58 why would I do that? And then I would say Brunello Cuccinelli.
0:04:04 How are those examples different? You should explain for folks, I mean, look, everything I’m
0:04:09 wearing, I got for free. So you should explain to people, I did not know the last name you mentioned
0:04:15 until a few years ago. Yeah. Because I won’t dox them, but Tony, my friend Tony is basically covered
0:04:21 in Brunello. Who is this? So Brunello Cuccinelli wrote this, I don’t even know the name. I read the
0:04:27 book. It’s like something about Salomeo. Essentially, he sells $5,000 sweaters. He sells sweaters that
0:04:33 were more than my first car, but he grew up in like very rural Italy. And then everybody at the
0:04:36 time, there was essentially the hollowing out of his community. Everybody had moved to the cities.
0:04:43 He is a very soulful dude. So Brunello essentially works. He essentially bounds his life where it’s
0:04:47 like, you work nine to five. You’re not allowed to like send an email to the company after five.
0:04:51 You have to like take a break for lunch and have this like great Italian food. And then he spends his
0:04:56 nights reading and then going on long walks and then sitting in the cafes in this like little town that
0:05:00 he essentially like rebuilt and reinvested in. And he likes having cappuccino and like debating
0:05:04 philosophy. He’s just like a real soulful dude. Now the one criticism people have is like, yeah,
0:05:10 that business model works when you have, you know, 70% margins and your sweaters are as much as a Honda
0:05:15 Civic, you know, but he was very intent. I don’t care what people do. He’s just very intentional.
0:05:22 So let me come back to this question of clean fuel versus let’s call it dirty fuel. And there’s a lot
0:05:27 in between. So I don’t want to look at it in a totally binary way, but why do you think of the
0:05:34 say 400 plus that you can only call to mind three or four at Thorpe, Saul price, Brunello Cuccinelli,
0:05:42 Brad Jacobs? Why are there so few who seem driven in that particular, let’s just call it positive way,
0:05:48 or that they can pursue business excellence without having a lot of collateral damage in their personal
0:05:54 lives. What do you draw from that? And look, maybe these are just different animals and out of the
0:06:02 box, these four are just fundamentally different from the other 396 or so. What is your take on that
0:06:04 thin slice of the total?
0:06:08 I would add another one to the list. You’ve also interviewed him, Michael Dell. Recently I’ve spent
0:06:12 like hours and hours with him. We had like a five hour dinner and then I just recorded a two and a half
0:06:20 hour conversation with him for the new show. He is in love. His is very positive. Now he has a big
0:06:24 fear of failure, which almost, I think me and you probably share this as like, well, I won’t speak
0:06:29 for you. I want to ask you actually, like I am way more afraid of failure than like, I love winning.
0:06:36 I mean, that’s true for everyone. I know who wins a lot. I don’t think I can think of a single
0:06:43 exception in terms of someone who celebrates the wins as much as they punish themselves for the
0:06:47 losses. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I’m just saying that’s pattern matching.
0:06:51 But even now with all the success that you’ve had, like is your inner monologue still negative?
0:06:59 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
0:07:03 them maxims, but you’ve quoted the, I think it was the founder of the Four Seasons.
0:07:05 Yeah. Excellence is the capacity to take pain.
0:07:15 Right. And there may be some truth to that, but I feel like it’s very risky for me to take something
0:07:22 like that and wear it as a marching order for life because I already tilt in that direction and
0:07:33 not all pain is productive. And I think for me, when you are already tilted in that direction where
0:07:37 you believe if there isn’t pain, if there isn’t some degree of suffering and you’re not trying hard
0:07:44 enough, it’s very easy to become a hammer looking for nails. And that can have a lot of repercussions
0:07:46 for your relationships also.
0:07:47 For sure.
0:07:53 And if your self-talk is negative, at least in my experience, when I’ve seen in a lot of my
0:08:01 friends and peers and founders, very often you end up having a similar type of dialogue with people
0:08:08 around you and that can have huge repercussions. So that doesn’t give anyone a neat, tidy, silver
0:08:09 bullet of an answer.
0:08:09 Yeah.
0:08:16 But yeah, the negative self-talk, there’s a place for it, but like the nuance to me matters a lot. If it’s
0:08:22 like, you’re a piece of shit, you always do X, why don’t you do Y? And that has a good outcome,
0:08:25 I would still want to refine the process.
0:08:30 I read this biography of Jensen Wong, which is fascinating because it’s like right after one of
0:08:35 the best quarters in NVIDIA history, he starts this meeting and he says, I woke up this morning,
0:08:40 looked in the mirror and said, why do you suck so much? So he’s definitely driven by it.
0:08:40 He’s hardcore.
0:08:42 Oh, he’s very hardcore.
0:08:49 He’s hardcore. He’s hardcore. So I guess what I’d also like to ask you is about not necessarily the
0:08:53 people you study. And hopefully you take this as a compliment. It’s intended like the highest
0:08:57 compliment. But when people ask me about you, they’re like, so what’s the story? Like, why do
0:09:02 people like his stuff? And I’m like, well, you know, I can only really speculate, but I feel like
0:09:11 you are in a way like what Dan Carlin did with hardcore history, like you do for business and
0:09:13 hardcore history is my favorite podcast.
0:09:19 I think Dan Carlin is the greatest podcast server live. The reason I do a solo history show is because
0:09:23 Dan Carlin, I’ve given away his back catalog. I wish he would change his business model.
0:09:30 It is a bit janky, but like, if you want to just listen to like the greats, I mean, the
0:09:36 wrath of the cons blueprint for Armageddon wrath of cons, I think is the best podcast series ever
0:09:41 created. In my opinion, blueprint for Armageddon, like just everything I’ve listened to. He only
0:09:46 has like 55 episodes. He was doing it for like 15 years. I fell asleep at night right now. Last
0:09:50 night I fell asleep listening to his new one. It’s not even new. It’s like six months old. Cause
0:09:54 he did not release any episodes. Mania for subjugation part two about the relationship
0:09:58 between Alexander the great and King Philip. Amazing. He just puts me to sleep. He is the
0:10:03 greatest. So the, you know, the reason that I mentioned that is like, I feel like I’ve learned
0:10:11 so much from Dan Carlin. I’ve learned so much from your episodes. I’m curious though, as I know
0:10:16 another person you’re a fan of Derek Sivers, who I’ve known, I think since 2007, amazing entrepreneur.
0:10:20 People can look him up. I’ll give the one liner, which is sort of this like philosopher
0:10:26 for King programmer entrepreneur who started companies, gave the vast majority to a charitable
0:10:33 trust to fund musical education. At one point was the ringleader in a traveling circus, played
0:10:42 guitar and sang at like a pig state fair and has just crafted the most unusual and Derek life
0:10:48 for himself and given his family permission to do the same for themselves. Really a true original
0:10:54 thinker who also shows it in his actions. And this is where I’m going. So Derek has this line,
0:11:00 which is along the, I may be paraphrasing it slightly, but the gist is, you know, if more
0:11:08 information were the answer, we’d all be billionaires with six pack abs. So what do you see or surmise
0:11:14 about people who make the leap from listening to your podcast about all of these icons and people who have
0:11:19 not just, you know, once you’re lucky twice, you’re good, but in some cases they built, you know, eight
0:11:24 billion dollar companies or in that case, I might come back to the acquisition kind of roll-up
0:11:31 archetype. So the people who make the leap from ingesting information to actually implementing and
0:11:34 those who don’t, what’s the missing piece in the middle?
0:11:38 The way I think about it, the maximum I’ve made for myself on this is like learning is not memorizing
0:11:42 information. Learning is changing your behavior. And so if you didn’t change your behavior, this is
0:11:46 just all mental gymnastics for you. You’re just wasting your time. And so what I’m trying to do,
0:11:52 I didn’t even understand what I was doing. I had to have as many happens in many cases, like somebody
0:11:58 outside of you seeing what you’re doing actually gives you what this whole thing is about. I have a good
0:12:03 friend of mine, his name is Jeremy Gaffan and he’s really quick witted and he has a way to like
0:12:08 condense ideas really well. And we’re just walking around, taking a walk in Miami beach one day. And
0:12:12 he’s like, Oh yeah, it’s pretty obvious. Like what this whole thing is. And I didn’t even think he was
0:12:16 thinking about it. Right. I was like, what do you mean? And he’s just like, Oh, you never had any
0:12:21 positive influences. You didn’t have any mentors. And so if you, you take somebody like you, who’s like
0:12:25 psychopathically driven and really has an obsessive personality, like that’s what this whole thing is.
0:12:29 You’re just reading book after book after book to try to find the path, to try to find the answer,
0:12:35 to try to find the way out. And I felt like naked when he said this, I’m like, I think he’s right.
0:12:40 I think he’s right. And so for me, like, I’m definitely not just reading. Like I’ve been
0:12:44 taking all these ideas. The unfair advantage I have is like, I have one-sided conversations with
0:12:47 history’s greatest entrepreneurs. Right. So like every week I sit down and read another biography
0:12:53 and then because I like to talk, this is good because I have to shut up. I can only listen
0:12:57 because this is what I think it is. That’s why I think reading a biography is like a one-sided
0:13:02 conversation. And then I take that and I would be doing this even if I didn’t record it, but then
0:13:07 sitting down once a week and condensing my thoughts, right. And reacting to it turns into an act of
0:13:11 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
0:13:14 my business, which is the podcast. And it keeps getting better and better. I was like, Oh, these ideas
0:13:19 work. So I’ll keep doing this. And then now what has happened is the people that are trying to be
0:13:24 great, have studied great people that came before them throughout human history. Caesar was studying
0:13:29 Alexander and like Steve Jobs was studying Edwin Land and Edwin Land was studying Alexander Graham
0:13:33 Bell and everybody, if you’re interested in American entrepreneurship, it all kind of goes back to
0:13:38 Benjamin Franklin. Everybody looks backwards like that guy or that woman was great. How did they do
0:13:42 that? And so that is an enduring part of human nature. It’ll never change. It’s going to happen while
0:13:46 we’re alive. It’s going to happen a thousand years from now. And so what I didn’t understand what I was
0:13:49 doing is that you put it out into the world, just like your work is like a tuning fork.
0:13:55 It’s like, then the people that are really great also do this and they have a deep love of history.
0:14:00 And so if you look at the people that I’ve been talking to from the new show, that’s not even
0:14:07 released yet, they came because they’re fans. They’re in the audience. And it’s just like the
0:14:11 parasocial relationship people have a podcast. I’m close to the people at Spotify. I spent been to
0:14:15 Stockholm twice the last six months. And I was talking to the head of business at Spotify.
0:14:20 His name’s Alex. We were talking for two and a half hours, like pretty animated. And I was like,
0:14:24 I’m not building a media company. I’m building relationships at scale. And he’s like, what?
0:14:28 You say that again? I go, what a podcast is, is building relationships at scale. This is the
0:14:31 first time we’ve ever met. We should talk about how I found you. I found you on MySpace. I’m going to
0:14:35 tell you that. But like the reason we, and we’ll go to like the influence that you played on having
0:14:40 founders. Just like, but I know who you are. Like we could sit down and talk for eight hours because
0:14:45 I know you. There’s no possible way I can consume all of your books and I don’t know, 600 hours of
0:14:51 your podcast and not know Tim. You can’t act for that long. And so what I didn’t understand is like,
0:14:57 oh, this other path of me trying to find good information, valuable information. Like I came from a
0:15:01 family. It was like, oh, I’m the first to graduate college. That’s nice. No one even graduated high
0:15:05 school in my family. Like there’s no reading. There’s no self-improvement. The only thing my
0:15:09 family read is the Bible. And like that can be taken to a crazy extreme. My mom-
0:15:10 You also didn’t go to prison.
0:15:15 Yeah, exactly. The first, and my grandfather, my, I shouldn’t even say this publicly anymore. You have
0:15:19 a big podcast. I, I would say stuff on small podcasts and forget that things get bigger later
0:15:23 on. So I say crazy stuff that I should not be saying, but whatever, we’re too late now. But yeah,
0:15:30 my grandfather, my father, my brother, like I remember being in high school and hearing bang and five guys at
0:15:34 five 30 in the morning, come and grab my brother. And I don’t see him for four years. Like that’s a
0:15:39 fact. So my point being is then I’m like, oh wait, I put this podcast out and then it attracts the
0:15:44 same people that are in the books. And then, you know, the fact that I can spend five hours with Michael
0:15:49 Dell and he tweets about the podcast and LinkedIn’s about it and just giving me phenomenal advice.
0:15:53 And then we obviously we recorded a conversation, but before that, they just want to help you
0:15:55 because they got value from that.
0:16:01 Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
0:16:07 Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that
0:16:11 when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative,
0:16:18 creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera. Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive
0:16:24 stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur.
0:16:31 I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that
0:16:38 are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today’s sponsor is so interesting.
0:16:45 It’s been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find
0:16:51 people who are great at managing. And that is where Cresset Family Office comes in. You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T.
0:16:57 Cresset Family Office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Cresset is a
0:17:03 prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial
0:17:10 planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other
0:17:15 parts of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from
0:17:20 doing what I love most, making things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about.
0:17:26 And over many years, I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week, and I’ve
0:17:32 completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of
0:17:38 a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today at CressetCapital.com slash Tim. That’s
0:17:44 spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T. CressetCapital.com slash Tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial
0:17:52 plans and grow your wealth. That’s CressetCapital.com slash Tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Cresset.
0:17:57 There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves
0:18:03 risk including loss of principle. So do your due diligence. In the last handful of years, I’ve
0:18:10 become very interested in environmental toxins, avoiding microplastics, and many other commonly
0:18:16 found compounds all over the place. One place I looked is in the kitchen. Many people don’t realize
0:18:22 just how toxic their cookware is or can be. A lot of nonstick pans, practically all of them,
0:18:28 can release harmful forever chemicals, PFAS, in other words, spelled P-F-A-S, into your food,
0:18:34 your home, and then ultimately that ends up in your body. Teflon is a prime example of this. It is
0:18:40 still the forever chemical that most companies are using. So our place reached out to me as a potential
0:18:47 sponsor. And the first thing I did was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one.
0:18:53 And that is the Titanium Always Pan Pro. And the claim is that it’s the first nonstick pan with
0:18:59 zero coating. So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that’ll last forever. I was very
0:19:04 skeptical. I was very busy. So I said, you know what? I want to test this thing quickly. It’s supposed to
0:19:08 be nonstick. It’s supposed to be durable. I’m going to test it with two things. I’m going to test it with
0:19:15 scrambled eggs in the morning because eggs are always a disaster in anything that isn’t nonstick with
0:19:20 the toxic coating. And then I’m going to test it with a steak sear because I want to see how much
0:19:29 it retains heat. And it worked perfectly in both cases. And I was frankly astonished how well it
0:19:35 worked. The Titanium Always Pan Pro has become my go-to pan in the kitchen. It replaces a lot of other
0:19:41 things for searing, for eggs, for anything you can imagine. And the design is really clever. It does
0:19:46 combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron, and nonstick into one product.
0:19:52 And now Our Place is expanding this first-of-its-kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware
0:19:58 sets, which are made in limited quantities. So if you’re looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and
0:20:05 pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to fromourplace.com slash Tim and use code
0:20:12 Tim for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns.
0:20:15 Check it out fromourplace.com slash Tim.
0:20:24 I want to go back to the note-taking and then converting that into some type of action.
0:20:25 Yes.
0:20:30 You’ve done that. You’re hitting, and you’ve had a number of these, but inflection points where
0:20:36 now you can sit down with some of these icons and have these extended conversations.
0:20:41 Even if you did not have that direct access, maybe your process with the note-taking wouldn’t
0:20:49 change. I’m just curious how you read one biography or multiple biographies on a person and what the
0:20:56 actual note-taking process looks like, right? Because I’ll volunteer what I do a lot. I use Kindle not
0:21:02 for the convenience of the device, although that is convenient. Not because I can listen on Audible or
0:21:06 actually do it through the Kindle app and then stop and highlight things, which is also why I use it.
0:21:12 But the highlighting overall is the reason. And then exporting or using something like Readwise in
0:21:19 addition to synthesizing my highlights. And I believe you also use Readwise quite a bit. I’m not sure if
0:21:20 you still use it.
0:21:20 Oh, yeah.
0:21:24 But what does your process look like? And I know, for instance, like Maria Popova, who’s this like
0:21:31 voluminous, prodigious genius of a writer. He used to be brain-picking, since the marginalian now.
0:21:37 She has a very particular process for synthesizing and putting everything together. How do you do
0:21:37 that?
0:21:41 Okay, so I actually think I’m going to sit down and make an episode about how I make these.
0:21:46 There’s actually an older idea here that I just went through when I reread James Dyson’s
0:21:49 autobiography, both of them actually. But the first autobiography I’ve read like five times.
0:21:53 The second one, I think this is the second or third time I read it. But one of the genius things
0:21:57 that he did, you know, when no one knew who he was, Dyson wasn’t a thing. Like now it’s one of the
0:22:02 most valuable private health companies in the world. You walk into a retail store. He had one
0:22:06 product in one market at the time. And you see, you know, I’m going to buy a vacuum cleaner. Five
0:22:09 of them kind of look the same. And then you have this like alien looking thing at the end. But then
0:22:13 what he said, he’s like, hey, what is the advantage I have? I’m going against all these like huge
0:22:18 multinational conglomerates. And I’m just some bloke that cares about vacuum cleaners in this remote
0:22:24 part of England. So he convinced all the retailers to let him write a story on a little leaflet and
0:22:29 they would hang it on the handle of the Dyson. And it tells a story. It’s like two or 300 words of who
0:22:34 made it, why they made it, why they love it so much and why you should buy it. People buy stories.
0:22:38 So that’s what I was saying is like, that’s not the first time I came across that idea.
0:22:44 You go back to the early 1900s and there’s this guy named Claude Hopkins. I am always interested.
0:22:50 You are, I read scientific advertising. Yes. In the very beginning. Okay. I’m always interested
0:22:55 who influences the influencers, right? So let me give you an example. I haven’t thought of that name
0:23:00 in so many years. So much shit on this. Claude Hopkins. So like I became obsessed. We were talking
0:23:06 before we recorded that we both, well, I won’t speak for you. Love and admire. And mine is borderline
0:23:11 idolize Charlie Munger. If I can only learn from one person for the rest of my life, if I could say,
0:23:16 hey, you can only read this guy’s words, pick one person. I’m picking Munger. I just love everything
0:23:21 about him. And the idea that I got to meet him is insane. Like absolutely insane. So when I’m reading
0:23:24 about Munger and Buffett, I’m like, man, these guys are really genius. I didn’t know anything at this
0:23:29 time. It’s like 10 years ago. And I’m like, these guys are genius. And then they kept mentioning this
0:23:33 guy named Henry Singleton over and over again. And they will tell you, if you admire somebody,
0:23:38 what I think is hugely important, they will tell you who influenced them. And then you have to go
0:23:42 and read about these people and then you’ll find who influenced them. And you realize that the ideas
0:23:46 didn’t start with them. They don’t start with us. They can’t die with us either. You have to push
0:23:51 them forward down the generations. And so I’m like, oh, this guy’s interesting. Charlie Munger said that
0:23:55 the smartest person he ever met was Henry Singleton. He’s best friends with Buffett. Like Buffett’s
0:24:00 obviously, I was, how did he say that? And then Buffett says that it’s a crime that business schools
0:24:05 don’t study Singleton. That’s hell of language. Like that’s very strong language. And so then you
0:24:10 start reading, I’m like, oh my God, the ideas that I thought were Buffett and Munger’s were
0:24:14 Singletons. And so you see this over and over again. I was obsessed. Another guy that Buffett
0:24:18 introduced me was David Ogilvie. David Ogilvie, I think is one of the best writers I’ve ever come
0:24:23 across. And Buffett keeps mentioning his shareholders. He’s like, this genius named David Ogilvie.
0:24:25 Why is Buffett calling this guy a genius?
0:24:27 I read Ogilvie’s stuff at the same time that I read Hopkins.
0:24:31 Because if you read Ogilvie, what does he talk about? He’s like, that’s the genius. I’m not the
0:24:36 genius. I’m just regurgitating Claude Hopkins’ work. And then he tells the story of Albert Lasker
0:24:42 who made more money. There’s like, you know, let’s call them a dozen great advertising agency
0:24:46 founders, you know, the madman era. And the one that made the most money was this guy named Albert
0:24:51 Lasker. And he had the simplest business, no art department, no research department. He had Claude
0:24:56 Hopkins writing copy and his words rang the cash register. And if you can bring more customers to
0:25:01 businesses, they will pay you a lot of money. And it turns out that this guy wrote, Claude
0:25:05 Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising. He would try to publish it. It was
0:25:12 essentially the way he, it’s the secrets of Lasker and Lasker hit it in a safe for 20 years.
0:25:13 And if you-
0:25:15 Yeah, I’ll get that right over to the agent.
0:25:16 Stick that in the safe.
0:25:22 And so if you read this, he’s like, hey, it may be boring to you. He uses example of Schlitzbeer,
0:25:27 right? They were fifth in the market chair and they hire Hopkins. They’re like, we want
0:25:29 to sell more beer. And so he’s like, okay, well, I’m going to, he does the same thing he
0:25:33 does. He does a lot of research and he goes and he tours their distillery and he’s blown
0:25:37 away by like, you know, that we triple distill the water and I don’t know how beer is made.
0:25:40 I don’t even drink that much. But like he explains the entire process and Claude’s like, this is
0:25:44 amazing. Why don’t you guys talk about this? He goes, because our process isn’t different
0:25:48 than any other distiller. He goes, yeah, but no one’s telling that story. And so he writes
0:25:53 these huge, essentially, you know, 1500 words, 2000 words of this is how the beer that you’re
0:25:58 about to drink is made and goes from fifth to first because people buy stories. And so
0:26:04 to answer your question on like, I think what I should do is sit down. Maybe I’ll just clip
0:26:07 this and be like, okay, this is how I make the podcast or how I consume information. So
0:26:11 I think me and you share a love of the writing of Cormac McCarthy.
0:26:19 Sure. Oh my God. Yeah. Beautiful and brutal in equal measure. So the road, blood meridian.
0:26:23 I mean, there are many other examples, all the pretty horses, the border trilogy, just
0:26:28 everything. The guy just read everything. He’s just incredible. The road, no country for
0:26:32 old men. I saw the movie before I saw the book. It’s crazy house. Like they barely had to change
0:26:38 any words. It’s like he wrote a script. So he says something that’s fascinating that subconscious
0:26:42 is older than language. They’re like, how’d you write blood meridian? He goes, I didn’t.
0:26:47 He’s like, I sat there and it came all from my subconscious. I just like, I eliminate anything
0:26:50 that got in the way of it. Man, you must have a busy therapist.
0:26:54 Oh, I couldn’t imagine what’s in that guy’s head to write that book. The judge, the judge
0:27:01 is the craziest. So dark, so dark anyway. So anyways, so I am all intuition, all feeling. So
0:27:08 basically what I do is I sit down with a book and usually I do this physically and it’s like
0:27:10 I’m doing arts and crafts over here. I sit down with a physical book because that’s how
0:27:14 I fell in love with reading. You know, like I don’t have memories before I had a love of
0:27:18 reading. And I think one of the best things that ever happened to me is the fact that I
0:27:21 don’t know why my reading grabbed ahold of me since I was like four or five years old.
0:27:25 So my mom was dying of breast cancer. What I said about the only thing they read is the
0:27:28 Bible that you could take that to an extreme because like she tried for two years, she tried
0:27:34 to pray her cancer away. And by that time, by the time we convinced her to see an
0:27:38 oncologist, the word he used was the horse is out of the barn. And there’s just the most
0:27:43 grueling way to die when you have, it spreads to your bones. Like if that happens, I’m calling
0:27:47 you to put a pillow over my face. Like I’m just not going through that. It’s just, it was
0:27:51 just a terrible thing to see. But one thing she said, she’s like, you’ve just been like
0:27:53 this forever. Like when you were a kid and you’d read the back of cereal boxes, I’d walk
0:27:56 in every single room. I did this when I come in here and just, you just automatically read
0:28:00 everything that’s on the walls. So I have no idea where this came from. I didn’t choose
0:28:04 the passion of reading. It chose me and all of it is intuition. I sit down with a physical
0:28:07 book because that’s how I fell in love with reading. I sit down with a pen.
0:28:08 And your mom would bring you to the bookstore, right?
0:28:09 Yes. Yeah.
0:28:11 Because they won’t kick you out for reading.
0:28:15 Yeah, exactly. And the library and then like, even, and this is, I remember the first time
0:28:19 it’s like, this is maybe before I even knew words because I was obsessed with Where’s Waldo.
0:28:23 So it was like my first memory. So you’re not reading anything. You’re just like finding
0:28:29 the guy with a striped shirt or striped sweater. So basically I sit down, physical book, pen,
0:28:36 six inch ruler, post-it notes, and scissors. And I just read and I don’t think. And if something
0:28:41 jumps out to me, I highlight it, whatever pops to my mind. And normally as our mutual friends,
0:28:46 like Patrick, Chris, Rick, they’ll all see this. It’s just like, I’m not actually listening to what
0:28:49 you’re saying. There’s an idea behind it.
0:28:55 Meaning you’re not taking what the author says literally. You’re looking at the idea behind.
0:29:01 I’m just looking for the essence. So like if me and Rick are talking about like a giant deal that
0:29:05 he wants to invest in, I’m thinking about how that’s similar to how Fred Smith built FedEx or how Jim
0:29:09 Casey built UPS or how Buffett thought about, you know, buying seized candy.
0:29:12 So what, so what do you do with the post-it notes and the scissors and the ruler?
0:29:17 So basically like I underlined that sentence and then whatever popped my mind and I’m like,
0:29:20 oh, this is kind of like James J. Hill when he was building the only profitable,
0:29:24 successful American railroad. And like, you just write down whatever comes to mind.
0:29:25 It’s on the post-it.
0:29:25 On the post-it.
0:29:26 And that goes on the page.
0:29:30 It goes on the page. So then I’m writing it down and then like, you know, I might have three
0:29:33 sentences, but the post-it notes three by five. So I have to cut it. It has to be clean. It has to
0:29:38 look good. Like there’s a beauty to it. Like I am irrational, like crazy when it comes to this
0:29:42 stuff. This is why I think I picked up on your work right away. Cause I see a fellow nutcase and
0:29:48 obsessive where like I hand edit now my transcripts. So everybody’s like, you should
0:29:52 outsource it to AI. You should outsource it to India. No, I have to touch it. I have to feel it.
0:29:57 I have to like, I just love it. I’m not doing it to do it quicker. I like what Jerry Seinfeld says.
0:30:03 The hard way is the right way. I like the hard way. This also goes back to obviously have some kind of
0:30:08 like dark thing driving me, which we can dive into if you want. But so then you go through the entire
0:30:14 book, right? And so then I have to take pictures of it into the Readwise app because you do the
0:30:19 smarter way. Kindle would just automatically go to Readwise. Well, I still use physical. I’ll explain.
0:30:23 I’ll trade. I’ll tell you how I use physical. Want to go do it now? Or you want me? Yeah, sure. Well,
0:30:27 okay. So don’t lose your place. I won’t. All right. You got the scissors. I want to, I want to know
0:30:31 about the ruler. Oh, I guess the ruler. Well, I want you to explain. Straight lines. It has to be
0:30:39 straight. Okay. So we both have pretty moderate to severe OCD. I remember when I was diagnosed by
0:30:45 the psychiatrist who was doing some like preliminary formality of taking me through these assessments
0:30:51 before I was going to have this experimental brain stimulation, semi-experimental. And he had to check
0:30:56 the boxes and he went through these hours and hours of stuff. And he’s like, you know, if I need to take a
0:31:01 seat, if we need to take a break, I understand. And he gave me this OCD diagnosis. I’m like, yeah,
0:31:06 what else is new? I knew this about it. Yeah. I don’t need time. So the way I use physical and I do
0:31:13 use physical still quite a bit is I will, this is another question that maybe you can answer when you
0:31:18 pick back up is how a second or third reading differs from the first. Because when I read it the
0:31:22 first time, I’m doing something very similar to you. I’m underlining things, or if that’s just too much
0:31:28 work because the book is actually a gem and has a lot, then I will just like bracket it on the side
0:31:35 of the paragraph so that I know what the highlight is. Then I will go through, if I read it a second
0:31:42 time, and I will put T2 in a circle next to the things that still stuck out on a second reading.
0:31:46 Now, sometimes you’re just a different person. If you read it like five years later and your lived
0:31:52 experience and your position as life is different. But if I’m doing it in somewhat rapid,
0:31:58 succession, I want to see what sticks on a second or third reading. So you’ll see like two T2,
0:32:04 T3, et cetera. Sometimes it’s just fun to see how I change over time with like the moral letters to
0:32:08 Lucilius by Seneca the Younger. People can find it in all sorts of compendiums. I put out a free PDF
0:32:13 called the Tao of Seneca. I like to just see where I am at different points in my life, what resonates.
0:32:20 And then typically with any physical book I’m creating, I just did this with a book I finished
0:32:25 yesterday called Deep Tech by Pablo’s Holman, where I’m creating an index in the front.
0:32:31 So whenever there’s a page that really, really sticks out, I’ll write down like 168, whatever it
0:32:36 might be, right? Someone I want to look up, someone like a Claude Hopkins whose name gets dropped. And I’m
0:32:41 like, that seems important. All right. And so I have this index and then I’ll take a photograph of the
0:32:44 index just in case I lose the book, which has happened. And that’s always painful.
0:32:50 I also will have, I’ll make a little box on the bottom right-hand corner of some of the front
0:32:56 matter pages and I’ll put next steps there. Wait, what’s the front matter? So the front matter would
0:33:02 be the copyright page, the title page, the pages that don’t really have any content on them. Maybe
0:33:07 there’s a dedication page. It’s like, to ma, you know, it’s like, okay, that’s a blank page that I can
0:33:12 use. So on the, like the bottom right-hand corner, just two lines that create sort of a box.
0:33:17 I will write down next steps. So for every book, not every book, in some cases, it was just for
0:33:22 pleasure and it’s fiction, but even then sometimes ideas will pop into mind. I’m like, okay, what is
0:33:27 at least one kind of next step? Maybe it’s looking up someone like Claude Hopkins. Maybe it’s an action.
0:33:31 Maybe it’s a phone call. Maybe it’s an email, but like along the lines of David Allen and getting
0:33:37 anything’s done. It’s like one physical next action. And so I almost always have that in
0:33:42 nonfiction books. I take photos of all that. I used to put it all into Evernote. I still sometimes do
0:33:46 that because I’ve been using it forever and I have thousands of them. You’re the last Evernote standing.
0:33:51 I might be. Yeah. I use scannable to get it into Evernote, but the point is I have a way to then OCR
0:33:55 it so I can search it. All right. So that’s, that’s basically what I have to do now, which takes an
0:34:00 unbelievable amount of time. But again, then now, so I’ve already read it one time. Now I have to input
0:34:06 it into Readwise. And so you take a picture of it and it’s laborious. And now I’ve read it for the
0:34:10 second or maybe a third time. Cause then you take, you see on the page and then you have to make sure
0:34:13 that it matches up between the page and what’s on your screen. And so you’re reading it over and over
0:34:18 again. So then I get it all into Readwise. You want to take a sidebar just to explain what
0:34:22 Readwise is? Readwise is essentially just a way to keep track of your notes and highlights from
0:34:27 everything you read. And now they’re expanding out because it turns out the total adjustable market for
0:34:30 people that want to keep highlights and notes. First of all, how many people are reading books
0:34:35 now? That number is dwindling, unfortunately. And then of that subset of smaller and dwindling people,
0:34:39 how many are read as much as you and I do? And then they want to essentially giant searchable
0:34:43 database of everything you’ve ever read. It’s like super valuable. And they charge like $99 a year for
0:34:47 it. So now they have, basically they were running this for six years. They have a new like web reader
0:34:50 app. And they said they made more money in six months from that, that it didn’t Readwise for six
0:34:55 years. This is like, obviously not a lot of people that want to do this, what the thing that we’re
0:35:00 describing doing. I used to read the physical book because I actually, let’s back up. And I want to
0:35:05 tell you like the role that you played and don’t let me forget where I’m at though. Yeah. So I went
0:35:10 to like a shitty college because I remember like when I was in your senior year, you know, I went to public
0:35:13 high school and everybody’s like, where are you going to school? And I didn’t understand what they
0:35:18 meant. I’m like one I can drive to like the one I can like go to at night. Cause I have to work during
0:35:22 the day. Like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Like I didn’t know I got kicked in my house
0:35:27 when I was 18 and I had to live in student housing. Why’d you get kicked out? My mom’s
0:35:32 side of the family has like severe mental illness and just like some of the worst people you’ve ever
0:35:41 met. And they just had this belief that like you kick your kids out when you’re 18. I got out of
0:35:46 the nest. It is not even that. It’s like they pick a fake fight. That was the point of contention
0:35:51 between my mom is she had undiagnosed mental illness for sure. Maybe not schizophrenic,
0:35:56 definitely bipolar. Her sister is schizophrenic. And listen, man, as you get older at the time,
0:36:02 I had a lot of anger, super, a lot of anger. Cause I didn’t understand why they’re doing what
0:36:06 you’re doing. And then you get older and then you have your own kids. So I went through this crazy
0:36:11 thing where like, I think I like hated them even more. Cause when my daughter was born, I’m like,
0:36:15 I remember seeing her for the first time. I was like, like, you think you love a woman?
0:36:21 No. Enzo Ferrari has this great line that it’s impossible for a man to love a woman. The only
0:36:25 true love he has is for his kids. And I understand what he meant. I think Ryan Reynolds said it best
0:36:30 where it’s like, I never thought I’d love anybody as much. I love Blake Lively. And then she gave birth
0:36:32 to our daughter. And as soon as I looked at the daughter, I knew if we were ever under attack,
0:36:39 I would use Blake as a human shield to protect that baby. Like it’s funny, but it’s literally when I
0:36:43 heard him say that, I go, yes, that’s it. So that means the memory all the more painful.
0:36:48 Then I was like, how the, how did you do this to your children? Then you get more experience.
0:36:55 And then you’re like, yeah, but like, imagine you grew up like they did like poor white trash.
0:37:01 My grandfather raped all his daughters, including my mother raped all of his daughters. I didn’t know
0:37:04 about this until after he died or else I was, would have been in the one who put them in his grave,
0:37:10 raped his daughters, raped his granddaughters. They lived in this like shitty house in Indiana
0:37:17 with one bathroom. There was a two bedroom. She had three sisters. The only bathroom is in my
0:37:23 grand, I call them grandparents. I hate them with all of my being in their room. And so if you wanted
0:37:29 to go in the bedroom at night, he was a monster, they would urinate in cups and pour it out the
0:37:34 window. Wow. So again, it doesn’t excuse the bad decisions they made and the unhappy marriage my
0:37:40 parents had and all this other crap, but it’s just like, all right, like imagine that, imagine that
0:37:46 you destroyed your kids. That person was supposed to protect them. We, I can’t even talk about this,
0:37:52 but anyways, we would fight a lot and she’d be alternate depending on the day. Like she’d be
0:37:57 the kindest person in the world or like, like a storm. And so the unfortunate part was when she
0:38:04 got diagnosed with cancer, we hadn’t spoken six months. So she only survived another, I think two
0:38:09 years. So that means the last two and a half years, I miss what, like that’s 20%, 25% of her life.
0:38:12 And somebody was like, what were you guys fighting over? I was like, the sad thing is I
0:38:18 don’t remember. I was not one to let, you know, I was very hardheaded. And so she had some weird
0:38:20 fight with me. I don’t remember what it was. And then she’s like, you’re not allowed to live here.
0:38:24 Kick me out. And I didn’t have anything. And so anyways, I went to live in student housing
0:38:31 and that was the first time they randomly assign you like a roommate. And it was like the son of a
0:38:35 rich rancher because our fridge was like full of like all this meat stuff, which is bad because it was
0:38:39 the summer where Florida got hit by like four hurricanes and all the meat went rotting.
0:38:43 Oh yeah. It was disgusting. But I didn’t know that there were people legitimately,
0:38:48 this makes me sound like an absolute moron, but I didn’t know that there were people that
0:38:52 that only went to college. Cause like my roommate didn’t have a job. He just like drank and like
0:38:57 went to, I’m like, what else do you do? Yeah. What? This is crazy. So I don’t know where I was
0:39:03 going with that. You were saying you’re taking a pause on read wise and multiple reads and you’re
0:39:08 like, I got to tell you how I found you. Oh, okay. So I, again, I’m a crappy school. It’s a state
0:39:14 school in Orlando. You UCF. I almost said UFC. Like we’re it’s MMA. That would have been probably
0:39:20 more useful now. So UCF. And this is when Facebook was coming out, but Facebook was only at the fancy
0:39:24 schools. Yeah. Right. It was very much at the fancy schools. We didn’t have Facebook. You know,
0:39:28 we had, we had my space. And so remember like you’d go and they were like music playing on somebody’s
0:39:33 profile. Well, people would list like their favorite movies and favorite books. And I think I was like
0:39:38 looking at a girl’s probably profile and under favorite books. I said four hour work week. I’m
0:39:43 like, that’s a great title. What is that? And I immediately ordered it on Amazon and then I started
0:39:49 reading it. Obviously then that book, you know, inspired, I don’t know, 25 million people, maybe
0:39:54 even more, but now, and then I start consuming all your stuff. So like I’d buy all your books. I bought
0:39:58 your TV show. I appreciate that. It’s like, sometimes I’ll forget. Cause you go on like
0:40:01 whatever. It’s not called iTunes anymore. And like, I don’t buy anything cause everything streams. I’m
0:40:07 like Tim Ferriss right here. I know from the natural history museum back in the day. So I was obsessed
0:40:11 with podcasts. I discovered in 2010 and before I started mine in 2016, I listened to thousands of
0:40:18 them and you had one that changed my life, which was when you did Jocko. Yeah. And that was 2015,
0:40:23 if I remember correctly. And you told him to start a podcast. And I think Rogan told him to do it as
0:40:28 well. And he’s like, well, if I got these two guys, obviously he’s smart. Just take the advice.
0:40:33 And I started listening to his podcast and he changed format. But in the beginning it was just
0:40:38 him doing, he would read a first person account. So an autobiography of somebody in combat.
0:40:43 And I could not believe what I was hearing. And so what I would do is I’d listen, maybe like a hundred
0:40:48 of his episodes and maybe buy a dozen of the books. So you learn, even on the episodes, you don’t read
0:40:52 the book, you learn so much and you’re inspired. And in the books, he kept introducing me all kinds of
0:40:58 crazy stories. And I was like, Hey, a couple months later, and then obviously like I’d started
0:41:01 reading biographies because your friend, Kevin Rose did this excellent interview, Elon Musk,
0:41:07 we can talk about from 2012. And I was like, what if I do like Jocko’s format, but I’m interested in
0:41:11 like four things. I’m interested in reading history, podcasts, and entrepreneurship. And so if you look
0:41:17 at it, it’s like, it just sits in between those four. And I started doing that. And essentially I was
0:41:21 just imitating Jocko and no one gave a shit for five and a half years.
0:41:29 Yeah. Wow. What a wild story. So I want to dive into that. The interview with Jocko, I owe special
0:41:31 thanks to, I think it was Peter Tia who made the introduction.
0:41:34 He said, just trust me on this.
0:41:34 Yeah.
0:41:36 And then didn’t you just show up at your house or something?
0:41:41 Yeah. We, we hung out in San Francisco. I remember exactly which coffee shop we went
0:41:46 to and I made the mistake. I wasn’t even thinking properly. I had a camo shirt on and I was like,
0:41:53 I can’t believe I wore a fucking camo shirt to meet someone as legitimate as Jocko Willink.
0:41:59 And I was just like, Oh, face palm. But we ended up connecting. That was his first ever public
0:42:02 interview, which is wild. And one of the best ones ever done.
0:42:06 Oh, I mean, he really brought the heat.
0:42:11 He’s my alarm every morning. He’s like, get up. I swear to God, I’m not joking. He’s been my alarm
0:42:14 for like half a decade. Yeah. He yells at me and just, I’m like, you’re right.
0:42:19 Yeah. Extreme ownership still highly, highly, highly recommend to everyone. And if you want
0:42:24 to hear me and Jocko go toe to toe, not really toe to toe, we’re sort of shoulder to shoulder
0:42:26 with a book, we did Musashi.
0:42:31 I think it was episode 100, which was like four and a half, five hours long going through this
0:42:35 historical novel about the most famous swordsman in Japanese history.
0:42:36 I read that because of the episode.
0:42:37 Oh, so good.
0:42:40 I think I read the audio book first and it’s like 60 hours long or something.
0:42:45 It’s really long. And in keeping in mind, this was originally published in Japanese in a country
0:42:50 of whatever the population is, like 120, 150 million. I think it sold like 80 to 100 million
0:42:55 copies. I mean, something just completely insane as I might be getting that off, but the numbers
0:42:57 are just astonishing as a ratio of the total population.
0:43:04 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
0:43:10 Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft,
0:43:16 refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same
0:43:22 focus on improving one thing over the span of years is found in today’s sponsor, AG1. They’re now
0:43:29 unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more
0:43:34 vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive
0:43:41 and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality
0:43:46 and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try
0:43:55 the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome kit, and five of the
0:44:01 upgraded AG1 travel packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1’s Next Gen and
0:44:10 experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That’s drinkag1.com slash Tim.
0:44:21 So five and a half years. Yeah. How do you explain no one giving a shit for five and a half years? In
0:44:26 other words, was there something that happened, a decision you made, something that changed things
0:44:32 around the five and a half year mark? Was it a change in technology? Was it the ecosystem? What
0:44:36 happened? Yeah. Literally, I was doing nothing different, change in business model. So you remember
0:44:41 podcasting back in there because you’re like one of the OGs. And like you had this massive audience,
0:44:47 your blog was crazy. Like you were huge and still are. And I was none of those things. I was a weird
0:44:51 introvert. I didn’t have any social media. I didn’t know anything about like the internet. I don’t know
0:44:57 how to describe, like, I just would like to read and record a podcast in my kitchen on a hundred dollar
0:45:02 microphone. And I remember calling around and trying to figure out like, what’s the business model here?
0:45:06 And everybody’s like, oh, it’s ads. I’m like, oh, that’s great. And so at the time there was like
0:45:10 these ad networks, essentially they just sell ads for you. And they’re like, we’d love to work with you.
0:45:19 You just have to have 50,000 downloads per show. And I go, what? I will never 50,000 like that.
0:45:23 I just, it seemed like such a big number. Like it’s just like, that will never, ever happen.
0:45:25 In the universe of podcasts, it’s still a big number.
0:45:29 Yes. But now like there’s a million, like how many people listen to Tim Ferriss show and found
0:45:33 like there’s millions, like millions and millions of people, you know, like over the course of a year
0:45:37 or whatever. So I was like, oh my God, like that’s never going to happen. And so
0:45:41 then you’d say, okay, well, what can you do? And like back then it’d be like affiliate. So like
0:45:47 remember audible scaled massively. People don’t realize how big businesses can get on the back of
0:45:53 podcasts and how many have. Cause like audible was, it was on every, it was Dan Carlin had one ad and
0:45:57 it was an audible. It was audible. Yes. They were very smart about that. Yes. Yeah. They’ve been able to
0:46:04 change a lot of their economics for the better for audible and Amazon since capturing more market share,
0:46:07 but they did an excellent job of marketing and advertising.
0:46:12 They were on every single podcast. And so I did that. And then there was this a company called
0:46:16 Blinkist, which was kind of like a summary, 10 minute summary app for like business books,
0:46:22 nonfiction books. And that blew my mind because you only got paid on sales and they would show you
0:46:27 like, not the people, but like where the country was. And I remember the first time somebody in Japan
0:46:33 bought, I’m like, I’m sitting in Miami in my kitchen. Great acoustics, by the way, you idiot
0:46:38 on a hundred dollar mic with no pop filter, no nothing. Like there was nothing out there. There’s
0:46:43 no like editing a podcast now with the script and all the AI tools. It’s just, it’s like magic compared
0:46:49 to what we had to do. And I was like, what? Somebody in Japan listened to this thing. This was crazy.
0:46:56 So the one idea I had, I actually got the business model from a socialist podcast might’ve been the
0:46:57 beginning of the troubles.
0:47:06 So there was this for a long time when I opened a browser, my homepage would be this thing called
0:47:12 graph tree on graph tree on is they use the patron API and you see people building membership
0:47:16 communities. And what was interesting about them is like, you know, people tell comic books,
0:47:20 they would sell podcasts. They would sell newsletters, videos. And the most popular
0:47:25 category was podcasts. I’m like, that’s weird. And so at the time, there’s podcasts called Chapo
0:47:32 trap house was the number one. And they had 25,000 people. This is on Patreon. Yes. And the only way
0:47:37 you see this is because graph John would aggregate the data for you and present it to you. And so at the
0:47:42 time, I think they had 20,000 paid subscribers at at least $5 a month. And their business model is
0:47:46 simple. Every other podcast you have to pay for. So you can listen to half them for
0:47:50 free. If you want more, just pay five bucks a month and you can listen to it in a podcast player,
0:47:56 like anything else. You just have to go through the paywall. And every month I’m watching and the
0:48:00 number gets higher and higher and higher. Now, if you pull up graph John, I think the number one is
0:48:04 Shane Gillis. I think he’s got like 120,000 paid subscribers. So I was like, Oh, there’s like a
0:48:10 business here with like, what if I had a subscription podcast? So it’s one thing to pay five bucks a month
0:48:16 for a comedy podcast, but my podcasts are about business. If there’s ideas on this podcast that will make
0:48:20 people more money, which is essentially what business education comes down to. Like you want
0:48:24 to be more successful to do some kind of like, hopefully you see like a better economic outcome
0:48:31 for yourself and your family. I was like, what if I could just sell subscriptions? I’m not selling
0:48:37 enough audible subscriptions and blink. It’s not going to happen. And my idea was like, I think I was
0:48:40 completely in love with podcasting. I still am. It’s like the only thing I think about, I work on
0:48:45 seven days a week. It’s completely taken over my life. And my idea was like, I don’t even have to be
0:48:48 wealthy. I just have to do this for a living. It has to come out of me. It’s like, I have no control
0:48:52 over this. And I was like, maybe I can make like dentist money. And so my idea was like, I bet you
0:48:59 I can sell 3,000 paid subscriptions at a hundred dollars a pop, make 300 grand a year. And then I
0:49:04 also have a lot of self-confidence. Like, well, if I could sell 3,000, I could sell 20,000. And then
0:49:08 like, maybe I can sell as many as Chapo can. And then I’m making 2 million. Like, this is the idea I
0:49:12 had. And so my idea was like, the genius idea I had was like, Hey, your most valuable asset you have,
0:49:16 which is like, you know, your podcasts that are easy to share and everything else. Like,
0:49:20 let’s put a big wall in front of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so I put a giant paywall in front of it.
0:49:26 And obviously it slows growth because how are you going to share the episode? The one benefit I had,
0:49:30 which really kept me going, and I don’t think I would have quit anyways. I really don’t think I had
0:49:34 any other option was that, you know, we don’t know who’s going to listen to this one. We just see
0:49:40 numbers on a screen, but with a subscription, you see the email address and the emails were like the top
0:49:47 founders and top VCs. And I had a very small audience. And one of them was our mutual friend,
0:49:54 Patrick O’Shaughnessy. And I was a huge fan of Patrick. And I saw, I’m not going to repeat his
0:49:58 email address here, but I know what the, I was like, I saw that come across and there were so few.
0:50:02 Like I saw every single one. Yeah, sure. Because you’re getting like 10 a day, I don’t know,
0:50:08 five a day or something like that paid. And I’m like, Oh my God, Patrick Brawam. He didn’t know who
0:50:12 I was. He didn’t know I was a big fan of his, didn’t know anything. I had no followers. I think
0:50:16 I had like 7,000 followers across like every one of my accounts. And I was like trying really hard
0:50:21 back then. And he goes, I never find good podcasts to listen to. I think David Sender’s
0:50:25 Founder’s Podcast is excellent. You should listen to it. And he linked to that one on S.A. Lauder.
0:50:31 And I could not believe it because I was like, why do I have these mentions on Twitter? What is a
0:50:36 mention? Like I don’t get mentions. Like what is this new thing? I log into my email because I would,
0:50:41 back then you would get an email every time you get a new page subscription. And off of one tweet
0:50:46 of an endorsement by people, this is why like you and Andrew are kind of like the male Oprah. And I mean
0:50:50 then like, you know how much shit I’ve bought because you told me that it’s good. Why? Because
0:50:55 of the trust. People chase numbers. It’s like that. You’re not chasing numbers. You’re chasing trust and
0:51:00 relationships. I love what Warren Buffett said. A brand is a promise. The fact that you guys have
0:51:05 such high standards. I’ve never bought anything like the hell was Tim thinking? And so that’s what
0:51:10 makes you so valuable. So Patrick extended that trust to me where I logged into my email and you
0:51:15 couldn’t stop scrolling. Yeah, that’s cool. You couldn’t stop scrolling. And so I screenshotted that
0:51:19 because Patrick’s a good dude. Very smart too. And best like the best. Yeah. You did an excellent
0:51:24 episode with him for when you hit your 10 year anniversary. Oh yeah. 10 years. And then I was a
0:51:28 huge NBA fan. And one of the, the person that found me that’s been really, really helpful when I had
0:51:33 like 1500 listeners, this guy named Sam Hinckley, former general manager of the 76ers. Very, very
0:51:38 intelligent, like intense and kind of reclusive guy now. It’s really hard to get to. And we had talked a
0:51:42 bunch and he’s just like, I really think you have something here. I think you’re like, what you’re doing is
0:51:45 important. And I’ve tried to help you as much as I can. And I knew him and Patrick were friends.
0:51:49 And I screenshotted Patrick’s tweet. I was like, look what your friend Patrick did. Sam didn’t say
0:51:54 anything. He just put it. And again, Patrick trusts Sam and Sam’s telling Patrick, this guy’s worth your
0:51:58 time. He put us in a group chat. He goes, you two need to know each other. And I was like, Patrick,
0:52:02 I’m a huge fan. Love to talk to you. And Patrick doesn’t have a calendar. He’s like, what about right
0:52:07 now? And I was like, well, let me look at my calendar. Nothing, nothing, literally nothing.
0:52:11 First time we talked was like an hour and a half and we get to the end. He goes, I thought I was
0:52:16 listening to podcasts. And then, uh, then we become friends and then I joined his network and
0:52:21 then he just poured gasoline on a, on a promising spark. Was he the one who convinced you to remove
0:52:30 the wall? No. So a friend of mine, again, this is the sad part about getting more following is so many
0:52:35 of my close friends now came from like DMS and now you can’t do that. You can’t even look at mentions.
0:52:39 Yeah. I’d be curious. It doesn’t work. Yeah. It’s like such a magical thing. And now because
0:52:45 yeah, well, once verified could be purchased, it, it destroyed the utility of meeting those people on.
0:52:48 It’s like what Charlie Wenger said. Like if you have a bunch of raisins and just a few turds,
0:52:53 you still got turds and you could have 99% of people are nice to you. And then it’s these psychos
0:52:56 and you’re like, I can’t read my mentions anymore. I can’t check my DMS. Like, it’s like sad.
0:53:03 But one of the, I met a couple of friends through them. And again, I was like grinding out a hundred
0:53:07 dollar subscriptions, just like going to the factory every day, trying to like, you know, sell a few
0:53:15 more. And one of my friends told me like what one of his friends company just paid to advertise on like
0:53:23 one of the biggest business podcasts. And the number was like, what, what did you say? And then Sam and
0:53:28 other people like Patrick, you know, they’re just like, this is kind of weird thing that you’re
0:53:31 doing. Like, why don’t you just sell ads like everybody else? You know? And I was like, look
0:53:36 at China. They, they’re 90% subscription to your podcast. I’m like, yeah, but you’re American.
0:53:40 You idiot. And so I came up with all these like crazy, cause I’m, I can be very convincing
0:53:45 in the opposite direction. Like it doesn’t have to be a good idea. I can talk myself into really,
0:53:50 I can talk myself into good ideas, but I can talk myself into bad ideas too. And so eventually I was,
0:53:55 just, I called Patrick one day and I was just like, man, I am like fighting with like one hand
0:53:59 behind my back. This is really, really difficult. I think I’m going to make an ad based version of
0:54:06 founders. And he made, he’s like, yeah, no shit. I’ve been telling you to do this forever. And then
0:54:11 I was like, and I’d like it to be on your network. And he’s like, Ooh, that’s interesting. And again,
0:54:15 he’s just a good dude. And he’s like, yeah, but I own all podcasts on my network. He’s like,
0:54:21 will you sell me equity? And I don’t know why I said this. I was like, no, it was like crazy.
0:54:25 But I was, and I’d had all these like acquisition investment offers up until that point. Cause
0:54:29 obviously everybody in the audience likes to do deals. So they’re like trying to allocate capital
0:54:32 that’s their sport. Yeah. And I was like, no, no, no. It’s like, it wasn’t a business thing to me.
0:54:37 It’s like a special thing. It’s like part of my soul. You know, Michael Dell has this great answer
0:54:40 when he was like fighting with car icon when, you know, and they’re like, why don’t you just like
0:54:44 start another company? And he’s like, I like this company. First of all, it has my name on it. And
0:54:48 he goes, I’m going to care about this company after I’m dead. So that’s how I feel like it’s a
0:54:54 rational love that I have for this. And so, um, I was like, uh, I don’t want to sell equity, but he’s
0:54:58 like, what do you want? I was like, I want you to help amplify my audience and connect me with first
0:55:04 rate advertisers. And then we can just share ad revenue and one call he’s like done. And that like
0:55:10 completely changed everything. That was four years ago. Wow. Thank God for Patrick, huh? Oh, for sure.
0:55:15 I talked to him almost every day. We’re like brothers. I call him. He’s a great guy. He’s a
0:55:22 very, very good guy. Let’s just actually, I’m going to zoom into your sort of expertise subject matter
0:55:27 for a second. And then I want to talk more about podcasting, but just so it doesn’t become too much
0:55:33 inside baseball, I do want to come back and talk about podcasting, but you had mentioned, you have
0:55:38 mentioned a number of different names kind of at the top of your list, people to learn from where does
0:55:44 Edwin land fit into that? Oh, and who is Edwin land? So Edwin land is the patron saint of founders.
0:55:50 So I want a picture of him in my house. Like, you know, the last supper would just be like Edwin
0:55:54 land in the middle, like Jesus. So again, I’m very interested in who influences the influencers
0:56:00 and like, where do these ideas actually come from? And you know, Steve jobs, if you have a Mount
0:56:04 Rushmore of greatest entrepreneurs, like his face has got to be on it. Undoubtedly. He created the most
0:56:09 successful product in history. I think he did it for the right reasons. I think he’s a very
0:56:14 fascinating person, obviously incredibly flawed as like a human, which he even said, you know,
0:56:19 but what was fascinating is if you go back in, in which I do is like, when I read a biography,
0:56:24 somebody, I will make a list going back to, you know, your outline of what I’ll do in the front of
0:56:27 the books, which you called what front matter, front matter. I didn’t even know that term till now.
0:56:31 Thank you. Yeah. I will write down all the other founders or all the other people they’ll talk
0:56:35 about. And so like, I just did this with James Dyson. He’s like obsessed with Buckminster Fuller
0:56:41 and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Jeremy Fry and Alex Isiganis and all these people. He just repeats
0:56:44 them over and over again. And you just realize, oh, he studied these guys and then took their ideas and
0:56:48 said, those ideas are good. I’ll use them. And then it makes $60 billion or whatever his company’s
0:56:54 worth. Everyone should read about Buckminster Fuller. I haven’t read the book yet. Yeah. I’ve read
0:57:00 his ideas, but not the book that James read when he was in college. It’s fascinating to me how it’s
0:57:03 almost all, like in the, you should find it early. I had lunch with Sam Zell.
0:57:05 How did he make his money for people that don’t know?
0:57:09 People consider him an investor. He calls himself an entrepreneur. He called himself an entrepreneur.
0:57:14 So what he’s most well known for is in 2007, he sold the, I think the biggest real estate company
0:57:19 in history for like 38 billion to Blackstone. And it kind of like tipped the very top of the market,
0:57:25 but he just likes to essentially buy businesses, try to make them grow. He would sell some.
0:57:30 That’s why people consider him an investor, but he considered himself an entrepreneur. By the time I
0:57:35 met him, he had 61 years of experience as an entrepreneur. And my favorite entrepreneurs are,
0:57:39 I love talking to these people that have 40, 50. I’m not interested in the startup founder at all.
0:57:44 Like this 25-year-old kid that thinks he’s smart. He doesn’t have enough experience yet.
0:57:49 Life is going to teach you what you didn’t, you know, people who’ve written like many multiple
0:57:55 macroeconomic cycles who have had to contend with different challenges at different points in their
0:58:00 lives, not just when they have no responsibilities and no dependence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
0:58:03 Well, he says something in his autobiography that you were speaking to earlier. He’s like, yeah,
0:58:08 earlier in my life, my career fought my marriages and my career won. And that’s why I’ve been married
0:58:13 three times. The very recurring theme is that you look at life as everything that’s not work as kind of an
0:58:16 unpleasant distraction. And you wonder why your relationship’s broken because you’re not spending
0:58:20 any time there. Like, of course, it’s the outcome. And they all make this mistake over and over again.
0:58:25 So what’s fascinating about this is we’ll go back to Edwin Landon in a minute. Sam Zell in his
0:58:30 biography, he’s like, dude, I’m in college. This guy was making millions of dollars a year when he was
0:58:33 in law school. That’s how good of an entrepreneur he was from day one. Was that real estate?
0:58:38 He was developing, I think, student housing at the time. I think the student housing,
0:58:43 but he was also like doing deals. Like he’s just a very gifted dealmaker. And you see this with
0:58:47 Rick understanding, like you’ll bring something to Rick and you’re like, oh, here’s like 10 things
0:58:49 that are important. Do you want to explain who Rick is briefly?
0:58:55 So his name is Rick Gerson. He’s one of my closest friends. You’ve known him for what?
0:58:57 Yeah, I don’t know. 15, 20 years, a long time.
0:59:02 15, 20 years. He’s one of the most generous, thoughtful, and also simultaneously super intense
0:59:09 people I know. He was a master of finance, came out of this just sort of amazing training
0:59:12 environment. We can just call that what it is for now in simplicity.
0:59:18 And is one also of the best connected humans I’ve ever met.
0:59:22 He identifies, you know, there’s like one thing. He learned that from Sam. And then Sam learned
0:59:25 that from this guy named Jay Prisker. It’s very fascinating. So.
0:59:26 Chicago royalty.
0:59:31 Yes. A hundred percent. I actually just backed, it’s not a Kickstarter, but there’s no biographies
0:59:35 of Jay Prisker. And so there’s a guy named Rockwood Notes that essentially put his hat out.
0:59:39 He’s like, hey, I want to do this, but I need to make at least, I think 40,000 a year
0:59:43 to write this book and he’s selling like $800 or $1,000 a year subscriptions. I was like,
0:59:47 yeah, I’ll obviously sign up for this. Like I want a Jay Prisker biography. So Sam’s hell
0:59:51 in his autobiography. He’s like, yeah, I read this book by William Zeckendorf and it changed
0:59:54 my life because there’s one idea in this book. It’s what Charlie Munger said. There’s ideas
0:59:59 worth billions in a $30 history book. And there was this thing called Hawaiian technique.
1:00:03 William Zeckendorf was like this real estate developer in New York and he came from nothing
1:00:06 and then made a lot of money, then lost it all. And then made a lot of money, then lost
1:00:10 it all again and dies with no money. So you want to avoid that too. But he had this thing
1:00:16 called the Hawaiian technique, which was, hey, if you just parcel out a building and you sell
1:00:20 the different parts to whoever values it more, you’ll make more money. So like the lease is
1:00:25 valued higher by these guys and the land is valued higher. And maybe the commercial real estate
1:00:28 there or whatever, like he just would break it apart like Legos and sell it independently
1:00:32 and make a lot of money. What Sam realized, he started using that real estate and he goes,
1:00:35 oh, this works in business too. So he’d buy businesses and like, maybe you want the IP,
1:00:39 maybe you want the talent, maybe you want the actual physical assets. And he’d do this over
1:00:46 and over again. So I remember telling Sam to his face and Sam had no filter and he was exactly
1:00:50 who you thought he was. If you watch any videos, he’s just like this. And I go, yeah, I bought
1:00:53 that book that you recommended. He goes, did you read it? I go, no. He goes, read it.
1:00:58 Like he’s got the gravelly voice, like read it. I was like, oh shit. Okay. And I read it as soon
1:01:01 as I, I went home and started reading it. Like Sam Zell tells you to read a book, just read a book.
1:01:05 But the reason I bring this up is because you’ll see this over and over again. They’ll find somebody
1:01:13 early. So you can go back and read this Playboy interview just for the, I hope when you, it’s just
1:01:20 for the interview. It’s not for anything else of Steve Jobs when he’s 25, 26. And he’s talking about
1:01:27 the fact that we have the wrong role models and heroes as a society. We want to be, you know,
1:01:31 now he’d say you want to be YouTube or something. We want to be athletes. We want to be all these
1:01:35 other things. We should want to be Edwin Land. And at the time, Edwin Land was the founder of Polaroid.
1:01:40 Edwin Land’s in his seventies. Jobs meets him and spends time with him a bunch of times. Okay.
1:01:47 Edwin Land at that time had the third most patents of any American in history. I think it was
1:01:51 Thomas Edison, the second guy, and then Edwin Land, or maybe it’s, you know, the first guy and
1:01:58 then Thomas Edison, but Edwin Land was up there. And what you would realize is when Jobs goes on stage
1:02:03 and says, Hey, I wanted to build Apple. I want to build a company at the intersection of liberal arts
1:02:08 and technology. And he has that. He literally puts the, the, you know, the, the street sign up on
1:02:13 there. That is literally a direct quote from Edwin Land. Edwin Land wanted to build a company at the
1:02:18 intersection of liberal arts and technology. He wanted to make completely vertically integrated
1:02:23 consumer products that were magical, that had a magical experience. And, and Edwin Land’s case,
1:02:28 he invented the industry that he then comes to dominate. There was no such thing as instant
1:02:32 photography. So when we’re like, how great is the iPhone compared to one that came before it?
1:02:37 The difference is vast, but not the same thing as me. If you, me and you were hanging out before
1:02:40 Edwin Land was on this earth, we take a picture at a party. Like how did it come out? Well,
1:02:44 we’ll find out two weeks from now when we get back from Kodak. As opposed to, turns out it was a shot
1:02:48 of my foot. As opposed to like, wait a minute. And we’re, we’re going to see it right here in the
1:02:56 Polaroid. And then dude, the amount of ideas that Jobs took from him, go look at the freaking tables
1:03:02 that Jobs uses when he gives presentations, the actual table. It’s the same table that Edwin Land
1:03:06 gave when he gave presentations. So if somebody wants to study Edwin Land, where do they start?
1:03:10 I read this biography of Edwin Land. I thought it was incredible. It’s called Insisting on the
1:03:14 Impossible. It’s the most comprehensive biography of him. People read it. They’re like, this book
1:03:20 sucks. I think it’s riveting. There is a book, I think it’s called Land’s Polaroid. That’s the one
1:03:26 I’d read because it’s only 250 pages. And it’s written by a guy that worked for and with Edwin Land for
1:03:30 like 20 years. And I love those kinds of things because you see him over a decade. But my point being
1:03:35 is like Jobs is talking about this guy when he was 25. Jobs knows he’s dying when he’s working
1:03:40 with Isakson on the biography. He knows he’s dying. And he’s still talking about Edwin Land appears in
1:03:46 Isakson’s biography of Jobs like six times. Why is he still talking about this guy? How could you not
1:03:51 be interested in understanding why? What is it about this guy that he admired and liked? Yeah. And he has
1:03:57 a saying that he has a personal motto that I love and that I try to do. And Edwin Land, there’s two of
1:04:02 them. Edwin Land says, my personal motto is very personal. It may not apply to anybody else or
1:04:06 anybody else or any other company, but is don’t do anything that someone else can do. The importance
1:04:12 of differentiation. I’m shocked at how few people understand how important it is. Dyson. Dyson’s
1:04:15 whole thing is like, it has to be different. Even if it’s worse, it should be different.
1:04:15 That’s interesting.
1:04:20 It demands difference. He’s got a very fascinating business philosophy. Dyson’s mind’s incredible.
1:04:24 And then the other thing is he knows because he dropped out of Harvard twice. He goes,
1:04:28 something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School, that anything worth doing is worth doing to
1:04:36 excess. So how do you think about different archetypes? Perhaps that’s the best word to use
1:04:44 within the pantheon of successful entrepreneurs. The reason I ask that is that I imagine you get
1:04:50 questions along the lines of, and I get questions like this also. When you look across all of the
1:04:56 biographies, what are some of the common patterns? Give me the top five, top six, and then people want
1:05:02 to grab that recipe. But it could be like, just to use a sports analogy, it’s like, all right, you’re
1:05:06 taking the stretching routine from LeBron James, the weight training routine from Arnold Schwarzenegger,
1:05:13 and this, this, and this. You’re grabbing habits from mutants that are in entirely different spheres
1:05:18 of different bodies entirely, and then trying to cobble it together. It may not work, right?
1:05:25 That’s point number one. Probably won’t work. Number two is that within the world of business
1:05:30 advice, whether it’s autobiographies, biographies, interviews, there’s a lot that conflicts, right?
1:05:35 So you have one person who says, you know, anything that’s worth doing is worth overdoing. And then
1:05:38 there is, like, you can tell who the novice is because they do too much.
1:05:47 Right. And I’m wondering how you think of entrepreneurship for yourself in terms of
1:05:54 modeling different people or taking advice. Because you have two people, just to use a metric that’s
1:05:58 easy for everybody to wrap their head around, like two billionaires, and they give you diametrically
1:06:00 opposed advice. How do you personally pick?
1:06:05 There’s no formula. One of the things I’m, like, so thrilled with is the fact that, like,
1:06:09 I’ve become friends with Daniel Act, the founder of Spotify. And this is something we’re actually
1:06:14 trying to work on together. Because he brings this up. He’s like, we need alternative founder
1:06:19 archetypes. And I back up. First of all, like, Daniel is an alien. There is a specific reason
1:06:27 that I wanted him to be the very first guest on the new show is I’m able to, like, build
1:06:31 relationships with other people. Daniel’s very special in the sense that, like, he’s only a few
1:06:36 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
1:06:41 and make sense, but, like, because he’s, he founded and is still running $120 billion company.
1:06:47 He’s been running for 19 years. But he’s, to me, he’s still so underrated. And the thing about
1:06:52 Daniel is, not only is he wicked smart, but he’s given me some of the best advice. And he does it
1:06:59 in a very, like, reserved and very precise way. He’s got very clear thinking. And I just cannot get
1:07:04 over, like, how generous he is with his time and his advice to me. And he told me one of the things
1:07:08 that was really important. And he said, like, an offhand comment, but he’s like, you’re really easy
1:07:13 to understand. So therefore, you’re easy to help. And he’s just like, I know what is important to you.
1:07:17 And so therefore, like, you’re easy to help. And like, you’re easy to interface with.
1:07:22 And so his point is like, every young founder thinks they have to be an Elon or Steve Jobs.
1:07:28 And he’s like, but I’m not like an Elon or Steve Jobs. And the massive success is not only what he’s
1:07:32 done for Spotify, one of the best apps ever created. I think they have the most, I think there’s only one
1:07:34 other company in the world that has more paid subscribers than they do, and that’s Netflix,
1:07:39 you know? But think about the way you feel when you get done using Spotify. And this is why I like
1:07:43 all the top people there too. And they’ve also been working together for excessively a long time,
1:07:48 Gustav, Alex, Daniel, all of them, is they want you when you’re done using Spotify to feel good.
1:07:53 If me and you spend an hour listening to our favorite music on Spotify, you feel great. You spend an hour
1:07:57 listening to Tim Ferriss’ podcast, you inspire, you feel great. An audio book now, you feel great.
1:08:06 I spend an hour on TikTok or Reels, I feel like shit. Like Twitter, whoa, I can’t.
1:08:09 Like it just, I feel like the anti-therapy. But they’re trying to put something.
1:08:13 If you want to send yourself backwards. So I like what they’re doing.
1:08:20 Is there any other advice that has stuck from Daniel to you? And then I will not lose track.
1:08:23 I will, yeah, I won’t lose track of that. So the archetype is, I think is really important. I
1:08:28 think you’ll really vibe with what his opinion on or his perspective on this is. Yeah. Daniel will tell
1:08:34 you advice in like a, he’s like a wise old man. I don’t know how to describe it. So one thing is,
1:08:40 is implied and never explicitly stated is he just doesn’t feel he has any, like there’s no ceiling
1:08:44 on what he can achieve or what he can learn, the effect he can have in the world. And when you spend
1:08:48 time with him, that is transferred to you. And it’s like one of the most important things. And I don’t
1:08:52 even know if I told him this. I had like tears in my eyes thinking about it. I remember like hanging out
1:08:58 with him in Stockholm and you know, he’s done phenomenal stuff with Spotify. One of the best apps
1:09:04 ever created at best businesses. And he said wildly successful as an investor too. And so I remember
1:09:09 asking him, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. And I go, were you always interested in
1:09:14 investing? Cause I knew his story. Like we talked a lot about this and he goes, no, I didn’t even know
1:09:19 anything about it. I started learning. I go, when did you start learning? He’s like 2018. I go,
1:09:24 how’d you start learning? He goes, Patrick’s podcast. And so he would just listen to people.
1:09:27 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
1:09:34 all. I’ll avoid that. And the way Patrick describes it, it’s like out of anybody, you know, Daniel has the
1:09:38 ability to apply what he’s learning faster than anybody else. And at a grander scale.
1:09:45 He’s also a very, very, very good systems thinker. So he’s not at a risk of cobbling together
1:09:51 this sort of camel that is a horse designed by committee that has a bunch of inherent
1:09:57 problems and conflicts within it. Right. Like he’ll, he’ll be able to figure out how to put pieces
1:10:03 together from first principles that function well as a whole. Let me tell one other piece of advice
1:10:08 that he gave me and he tells it in a story form. This is why he’s like the wise old man. And essentially
1:10:14 was remember why people love you. You sit in a room and you read all the time and then you make this
1:10:20 thing on the other side that educates and inspires us and gives us energy. And as soon as you stop
1:10:24 doing that and you start saying yes to all these distractions, and I don’t even know if like, I think
1:10:29 we might’ve talked about this in the episode we did that comes out in a few weeks, but he tells it in a
1:10:35 story and he tells a story from another person. So he’s not telling you, David, go do this. He’s like,
1:10:39 let me tell you about this little genius or not little genius. This guy’s really impressive. Look at what
1:10:44 he’s accomplished and everything else. And then the story will hit you like hours later. And he’s
1:10:47 like, oh yeah, you know, we’ve invited him to the conference all over time. I’ve invited him to
1:10:52 visit and I keep hearing no. And I’m like, oh, he’s like telling me you’re saying yes to too many
1:10:56 things. The magic that you have is because you say no. And once you start saying yes, and you’re at
1:10:59 every conference, you’re traveling around, you’re doing all sorts of stuff, the magic disappears.
1:11:04 I’m curious what you think are some of the different archetypes, because I think of the
1:11:12 hundred plus startups that I’ve invested in since 2008. And there’s a lot of variability. You’ve got the
1:11:20 engineer, let’s call it the engineer founder, right? Somebody like Toby of Shopify or Luis Vannan of
1:11:29 Duolingo. Then you’ve got the sort of like genius operator, negotiator warrior, like a Travis Kalanick,
1:11:39 right? Very different personalities, very different superpowers. And you just go down the list and you
1:11:44 see some people come from like a finance numbers, kind of like spreadsheet God perspective. And like,
1:11:49 they just have an analytical advantage, right? It’s very comparable to investing in some ways,
1:11:53 looking at the investing world, they have this analytical advantage, let’s just call it.
1:12:00 And I was trying to pick out what, if anything might be commonalities, because you also have like
1:12:08 the crazy artist who then figures out how to harness some of their superpower. And it strikes me that there
1:12:14 are at least two that immediately jumped to mind. One is longer term time horizon.
1:12:15 Those are the people I’m obsessed with.
1:12:22 Like the Jeff Bezos type of mindset, where it’s like, if you have the exact same toolkit, the exact
1:12:26 same competency out of the box, genetically, you’re built exactly the same as someone else,
1:12:33 but you are able to think and plan longer term. It’s just, it can be a huge advantage.
1:12:39 Second is something that you mentioned where Daniel was saying to you, like, this is the magic.
1:12:47 So just remember, this is the magic when other opportunities, other shiny objects show up,
1:12:55 because they will, even in very early stages. And if you deviate, it’s incredibly easy to sort of
1:13:01 self emulate. If you lose track of that. I mean, you see that a lot when CEOs get replaced, sometimes
1:13:07 founder CEOs, sometimes they need to be replaced, but what else would you add to that? Or how would
1:13:09 you expand on any of it?
1:13:13 Just look at the founders of some of like the biggest companies in the world. Now they would go to war
1:13:17 against each other. So think about like Oracle, Microsoft, you can’t think of two different
1:13:23 founder archetypes than Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison’s like, I’m a sprinter.
1:13:29 I have intense, very intense periods of work, weeks at a time, months at a time. And then I need to go on
1:13:33 my boat with a bunch of Italian models, right? This is what I have to live my life. Bill Gates is,
1:13:37 you know, we’d be walking into this room right here and his feet would be underneath his desk. He’s
1:13:40 sleeping for three hours. He’s getting back up and he’s going back on the, he’s a grinder.
1:13:45 And then you have, I’ve been trying to name some of these and I haven’t done this yet,
1:13:50 but the problem is I never write anything. This is all like improv, you know? One of them is like
1:13:54 the anti-business billionaire. And so in that category, it’s like, these people are so obsessed
1:13:59 about one thing and that’s the quality of the product they’re making. They make non-financial
1:14:05 decisions. Like Steve Jobs, making sure that the inside of the Mac looks beautiful, even though you
1:14:09 can’t open it up and it costs more money. He doesn’t care. He wants the best product. James Dyson’s like
1:14:15 this. He’s an anti-business billionaire. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, anti-business
1:14:18 billionaire. These guys, they’re obsessed with two things, quality of the product that they’re
1:14:22 making and retaining control of their company over the long term. And the funny part about that,
1:14:25 the reason I call them anti-business billionaire is because if you make the world’s best product,
1:14:30 right? And you retain control over your company, you wind up with the money anyways.
1:14:35 Yeah. I can think of a few people, I mean, within my portfolio who retained a lot of their equity,
1:14:39 at least. And that’s it, which is kind of preserving the magic, right? In terms of the best product.
1:14:42 Well, look at, everybody’s like, look at what having Larry Ellison right now. It’s like, yeah,
1:14:47 I could be wrong, but I think Oracle raised 32 million of equity in our IPO and no more after
1:14:52 that. And then the guy would refuse, even when they were almost going out of business in 1990,
1:14:54 he still wouldn’t sell. They’re like, sell your equity. Like, no, it’s like, it might be worth
1:14:58 nothing. He just wouldn’t sell it. And then he’s buying back stock. So he owns, I think 40,
1:15:02 I think he went down to 24%. Now he’s back to like 41% of Oracle. The company’s 50 years old,
1:15:08 like 45 years old. I think it was like 30 something when he founded the company. He’s just an anomaly.
1:15:13 And then you have people like Elon, where it’s just like, I’m going to run. I wouldn’t even think
1:15:16 that’s possible. How the hell do you run seven companies at the same time?
1:15:19 You can barely manage three employees. I don’t know.
1:15:24 Yeah, exactly. So that is the point. I do think Daniel hit on something that no one else has put in
1:15:28 front of me. It’s like the people are going to dominate. Obviously, Elon’s the most famous
1:15:33 entrepreneur in the world, but even like Bezos is very different. And then you have these people that
1:15:39 some of the people just like to make money. That is their scoreboard. This is another thing I learned
1:15:45 from Michael Dell. There’s two things. One thing you just said, protecting the magic. The advice that
1:15:49 Dell gave me when I had dinner with him, and he does this in story form too, because that guy’s been
1:15:54 running his business for 41 years, 41 years. It’s insane. And his whole thing is just like,
1:15:57 you’re not going to be taken out by competition. You’re going to sabotage yourself.
1:16:01 Entrepreneurs sabotage themselves. And the amount of people that were doing the same thing I was doing,
1:16:05 and they were ahead of me. This is Dell talking. They were ahead of me, but then they got the 500
1:16:09 million a year in revenue. And they’re like, I have a house on Lake Austin. Now they’re in the same city.
1:16:13 They’re doing the same thing as him in the same city. And they’re smoking them. They’re ahead of
1:16:17 them by like a few hundred million. Right. And they’re like, Oh, I can chill now. No, you can’t.
1:16:22 Cause you got Michael Dell right across the river and he’s not going to chill. That guy has no chill.
1:16:26 I heard he’s got this wonderful house in Hawaii. His son was telling me about this.
1:16:32 And I was like, we were in Austin in July, you know, it’s like, what are you doing here?
1:16:37 And Michael’s answer is simple. He goes, I love my business and my business is here. He wasn’t being
1:16:41 mean to me. He was like, that’s a stupid question, David. Like I’m working. I love what I do. This is
1:16:46 what I’m doing. So one thing from his autobiography though, is that I used to say it only works if you
1:16:49 build a business that’s authentic to you. And this is why I asked you about your inner monologue
1:16:55 earlier because I really feel the reason people do their best work usually later in life in business
1:17:00 is obviously more experience network finances, everything else. But I think they, because they
1:17:04 know themselves better. I think me and you, if we would have met 10 years ago, we’d be different
1:17:09 people. And we also wouldn’t know each other, like know ourselves as much as we do now. We’re like,
1:17:13 I think I’ve built a business and you have to, based on what I know about you, completely authentic
1:17:17 authentic to you. And that’s the only way it’s going to work over long-term. And I used to say
1:17:22 authentic. And then Michael does autobiography, which he narrates, by the way, the audible is
1:17:27 excellent. I listened to it three times before I read it to do the episode on it. And there is a guy
1:17:32 named, I think Lee Walker, who Michael brought in when Michael was 21, he was in his forties and he was
1:17:36 like an older, wiser man. And he had to quit after four years. He’s like basically running the company with
1:17:43 Michael. And he’s like, we’re taking on IBM with a thousand dollars of working capital from a shitty
1:17:48 office in like the industrial part in like Austin, right? IBM is the biggest company in the world.
1:17:51 It’s the first, I didn’t know this. It was the first company hit a hundred billion dollar market cap.
1:17:59 And like my back hurts, I’m losing hair. I can’t sleep. I got digestive issues. Like Lee’s dead after
1:18:04 four years. And he goes, and Michael’s excited. It’s invigorated him. And that he gave me the line.
1:18:10 Because he built a business that was natural to him. I’m dying and he’s thriving because it’s natural
1:18:14 to him. And it’s not natural to me. And I think that’s the key, man. People are like, oh, I’m going
1:18:17 to imitate X, Y, and Z. It’s like, no, no, no. You should be copying the how, not the what. You don’t
1:18:22 copy what they did. You copy how they did. And then you just take the little ideas that make sense to you.
1:18:29 So you asked like, how am I applying this for my homework? I am either completely apathetic and ignore
1:18:34 something or completely obsessed. It’s zero or a hundred and nothing in the middle. So the reason I
1:18:39 love Munger because Munger gave me really like Munger and your friend of all, I had a big role in this
1:18:45 too, gave me the kind of the blueprint where he’s just like, hey, we found that oftentimes Munger has
1:18:51 this line that oftentimes the winning system in business goes ridiculously far, maximizing and
1:18:55 are minimizing one or a few variables. And he used Costco, like the example. And then he has another
1:19:00 line, find a simple idea and take it seriously. Sharing lessons from biographies of great people is a
1:19:06 very, very simple idea. Doing it for nine years, working 70 hours a week at it, building systems
1:19:11 for it, redoing it over and over again is not, that’s the serious part. His other quote that I’ve
1:19:16 already shared earlier, there’s ideas worth billions and a $30 history book. That’s another idea. That’s
1:19:20 maybe why the work would be valuable and attract the audience that it could attract.
1:19:25 Another idea from him. You want to maneuver yourself into an area that you’re intensely
1:19:31 interested in. That just being a fanatic, like a Sam Walton or like a Jim Sinigal or like a sole price
1:19:37 is just Jeff Bezos, very helpful. These are fanatics. They’re intensely interested in what
1:19:42 they’re doing. That is worth a lot of money. And I’ve become friends with Michael Ovitz, who’s also
1:19:47 one of the first guests on my new show. And his whole thing is like, you cannot fight against your job.
1:19:50 That’s one of the best pieces of advice. He’s like, people fight against their job all the time
1:19:54 and they lose. You have to find something that you’re intensely drawn to it.
1:19:59 So I have a couple of bullets. You should explain who Michael Ovitz is. Why don’t you do that first?
1:20:03 And then I’ll, I’ll just hop to two questions related to Michael Ovitz specifically.
1:20:09 Michael Ovitz is a shark. He’s one of the most intense people. He, I think he’s 80 by now.
1:20:14 So Rick and I live very close to each other in Miami. Okay. And we always have breakfast at
1:20:19 the same spot that I’m not going to say publicly. Yeah. Good idea. And so we’re hanging out.
1:20:24 To a disinformation campaign. Sure. Yeah. It’s always at Denny’s. Moon’s over Miami.
1:20:35 And so his phone’s on the table and it rings and it says Michael Ovitz. And I gasped. I’m like,
1:20:40 oh, cause I read Michael Ovitz was the most powerful man in Hollywood at one time. He had like 75%
1:20:43 market share, 90% market share. He was the most powerful agent. He’s the founder of CAA,
1:20:50 which still exists to this day. And I’m like, oh God, I know who that is. I’ve done episodes on this
1:20:54 guy. And so he picks up and they’ve been friends for like 20 years, 25 years, something like that.
1:21:00 And he goes, Hey, I’m sitting here with somebody you might know. Have you ever heard of David Senra
1:21:04 and the founders podcast? And Michael pauses. He goes, I listened to four of them yesterday.
1:21:08 He was on his boat in St. Bart’s. That’s incredible.
1:21:13 No, but this is how, why he’s a shark and a killer. He’s on his boat in St. Bart’s. He’s like
1:21:18 studying Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He’s like quoting stuff from the episode. And so we wind up
1:21:21 having dinner. Rockefeller, one of the biggest sharks to ever live.
1:21:24 Oh, a hundred percent. And so we wind up having dinner. And this is one of the things I asked him,
1:21:27 you know, because his whole thing is like, you’re going to run through, you know,
1:21:30 you’re going to meet thousands of people in your life. He’s going to definitely meet way more
1:21:33 people than I will. Cause I’m an introvert. And he used to like call 300 people a day.
1:21:37 Cause he was like kind of running Hollywood, but his, oh, it’s his advice to me. It was just like,
1:21:42 you know, you’re going to meet thousands of people in your life. And what I would recommend is just
1:21:47 spend all the time with the handful that really matter. And he’s like, for me, Rick is one of
1:21:52 those people. And I go, why? And obviously, you know, he’s like, well, he’s intelligent. And
1:21:54 basically, but he’s like, cause he tells me the truth.
1:22:00 That’s one thing you can rely on Rick for. I’m not sure he can help himself, but it’s a conscious
1:22:00 decision.
1:22:05 But no, but in general, his whole point is like, when you get to be as famous and as well-known,
1:22:09 as wealthy as Ovid, everybody’s going to kiss your ass. Everybody wants something from you.
1:22:12 They want to either want to tell you how great you are, or they want money from you, or they want
1:22:17 you to sell, like buy something. And he’s just like, there’s so few people that, you know,
1:22:21 that like truly love you for you and don’t want anything from you. They just want to be
1:22:25 friends and they will tell you the truth. And this is the very dangerous thing that
1:22:29 really successful people do. They surround themselves with people that don’t tell them
1:22:33 the truth. This is an idea I got from Jim Casey, the founder of UPS. He realized that there’s
1:22:39 this weird like capture if you only talk to your top executives. So let’s say you have 10 top
1:22:43 executives and then they distribute everything else for the company. They work themselves as a
1:22:47 position where they have the ear of the king and you hear nothing good. So he’s like, I don’t
1:22:51 want to talk to them at all. He would stop and talk to every single, he’d make his
1:22:56 driver stop every single time they see a brown truck. And he would talk to the people doing
1:22:56 the actual service.
1:22:58 Because he wouldn’t get the bad news.
1:23:04 They would tell them what actually is going on, what is actually happening. And the crazy
1:23:08 impressive founders that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with, most of them are 60, 70,
1:23:12 80 years old. Those are my favorite. I love them. They’re not in their office. They’re in their
1:23:17 warehouses. They’re on the factory line. They’re in their stores. They’re constant contact with
1:23:22 the customer and the person delivering the service to the customer. They’re not looking at a whiteboard
1:23:27 with their executives. They’re very practical, non-theoretical people. I think it’s like really
1:23:32 important. So yeah, I think in my own thing, it’s just like, I like to be obsessed and focused on one
1:23:37 thing. I don’t like to multitask. So therefore, you know, every single publisher, it’s like,
1:23:44 write a book. You should do this. I’m like, everybody says, Hey, I like X. So do Y. And I’m
1:23:49 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
1:23:50 to do one thing relentlessly.
1:23:59 So related to Michael Ovitz, there are a few notes here that I think relate to the new show and the
1:24:03 interview you did with him. And I want to ask about two of them. So the first is the benefits of low
1:24:10 introspection. And the second, so you can tackle these in either order is this can’t be my life
1:24:15 in quotation marks is a powerful motivator. Can you expand on those?
1:24:18 So this can’t be my life is a very powerful motivator. You see it over and over again.
1:24:22 I think the sense of drive, like the way you grew up on Long Island, the way I grew up, I was like,
1:24:25 I’m not going out like this. I don’t care what I have to do.
1:24:26 I’m not going to replay this movie.
1:24:31 No way. I think in many cases, seeing examples of what you don’t want your life to be
1:24:35 is more powerful than seeing what you want it to be. I think maybe that one comes first. And then
1:24:38 you start to see, oh, I actually, this is the path I want to go down.
1:24:44 There’s an expression in Japanese, which is hanmen kyoshi. Hanmen is like opposite side. Kyoshi is
1:24:48 teacher. And it’s someone who teaches you by showing you what not to do.
1:24:51 Yeah. I would say my family, definitely.
1:24:51 A lot of those.
1:24:57 Yeah. Like you just see this over and over again. And so with him, like he could literally,
1:25:01 he grew up in the Valley. He could see where he wanted to be. He could see the mansions of Beverly
1:25:06 Hills. He saw the contrast between, this is what I’m worried about with social media. It’s like
1:25:11 before we grew up, what do you see? You basically see like, oh, like that’s the nice neighborhood over
1:25:16 there. That’s kind of a bad neighborhood. Now you see like the richest people in the world every day
1:25:19 and the poorest people in the world. Like you’re exposed to nothing but extremes, which is like,
1:25:23 we’ve never in human history, we’ve never been exposed to that. And like, what is the long-term
1:25:28 effects of that? I have a teenage daughter now. And I think there’s like a lot of negativity of
1:25:32 this. Like you only see the most beautiful people. If you were just in a town, like where we grew up,
1:25:36 you might see a really beautiful woman. You’re not seeing them all day long. Like these,
1:25:44 it’s just like this unfair barrage of like, you know, unattainable standards. So with him,
1:25:50 he was like fiercely driven to succeed. And one of my favorite parts of his book, you know, the guy now
1:25:55 wildly successful. But even before that, like when he, so he left, I think it was William Morris
1:25:59 agency, start CIA, they started to have a little success. He winds up buying a house in Brentwood
1:26:06 and it was like $650,000, right? Which is fantastic, but nothing compared to what’s going to happen over
1:26:11 the next decades in his life. But he just woke up every morning. He’s like, I can’t believe I live in
1:26:16 Brentwood. I can’t believe this. I did this. And then once you start seeing results, the grind becomes
1:26:22 very addictive. And he, if you add what’s the sarcotype grinder, like I’m going to throw sheer
1:26:29 hours and energy. He’s also an amazing, one of the best salespeople alive, very charismatic.
1:26:33 He’s got a lot of superpowers. I actually met Mark Andreessen. I asked him this because Mark
1:26:37 Andreessen is on record saying that when he started A16Z, they essentially copied CAA.
1:26:39 I think they brought Michael Lovitz in.
1:26:43 They did. It’s in the, they both talk about this. And I said, I asked him, I go, what do you think
1:26:47 Michael’s superpower? He’s like, he’s the world’s greatest agent and therefore the greatest sales
1:26:52 person, world’s greatest sales person. And so that’s like one example from his book is just like,
1:26:56 this can’t be my life. I don’t want to be like this. I’m going to do direct all my energy and do
1:27:00 something different. Now, the low introspection thing is I’m not a controversial person. I’m just
1:27:04 sharing lessons from history that I read in a book. You don’t have to listen. You don’t have to pay
1:27:10 attention. It doesn’t matter. But when I bring up the fact that a lot of these people have low or
1:27:17 zero introspection, meaning that when they find what they want to do in life, they wake up and they know
1:27:21 exactly what they’re doing that day. Sam Walton was not waking up saying, what are my feelings like
1:27:24 today? What should I do? Should I think about the meaning of life? He’s like, no, I found Walmart.
1:27:28 I made one Walmart. I’m going to make another one and another one and another one. I’m going to make
1:27:33 every Walmart better and better and better. And I think having low introspection after you found your
1:27:36 mission in life. And this is a sad thing. I think most people never find their mission.
1:27:39 I know I found my mission. I don’t think about what should I do today?
1:27:44 We’re going to talk obviously about the new show. We’ve been alluding to it and mentioning some of
1:27:52 the guests, but before we get there, so you’re about to meet Michael and he had been
1:28:00 ostensibly on vacation, but he’s listening to your episodes on Rockefeller and others. Do you recall any
1:28:06 of the other episodes? The Vanderbilt one stuck up in my mind. I mean, we text about them. I don’t
1:28:10 remember. The Vanderbilt’s the one that really, the Rockefeller and the Vanderbilt, but the Vanderbilt
1:28:15 especially, because Vanderbilt’s like, what I say is like, I’m kind of telling the same story over and
1:28:19 over again. I think it’s more like church than it is like, just like I went to church. I grew up as a
1:28:25 fundamentalist Christian. Like we met together with like believers on regular intervals on Wednesday
1:28:28 and Sunday. And it’s not like the preacher got up there and was like, Hey, we talked about that Jesus
1:28:33 guy enough. We’re going to move on to somebody else. Like we literally just go to the same book over and
1:28:37 over again. And so I always say there’s like always a historical equivalent to anybody we’re dealing
1:28:42 with today or in the past. But Vanderbilt to me is not, there’s not like an entrepreneurial
1:28:49 historical equipment. He’s like Putin or something. When he died, he controlled 5% of the money supply.
1:28:55 One out of $20. So I guess the reason I was asking about the episodes, and I don’t know Michael,
1:29:04 so this is not a judgment or criticism of Michael at all. But I suppose if you believe that there is a
1:29:08 value to low introspection for the purposes of building a business, which I would agree, right?
1:29:13 Is there not a risk? And I have not listened to those particular episodes on Rockefeller and
1:29:17 Vanderbilt, but I’ve read a bit of the history. Like these are not necessarily people you
1:29:20 automatically want to model everything in office.
1:29:21 No, I think Obitz would.
1:29:29 This is, I suppose, my question is like, is there a risk of ending up sort of amoral, immoral, or like
1:29:36 sociopathic if you, one of the things you optimize for is low introspection because, or maybe that’s
1:29:38 just hardwiring, frankly, and you’re just not inclined to do it.
1:29:40 That’s a great question.
1:29:46 Because this archetype does exist. It’s just like the rape, pillage, destroy archetype is an archetype.
1:29:51 They’re overrepresented in entrepreneurship. Why? Because if entrepreneurship done correctly,
1:29:56 yield the greatest material rewards in human history. So of course, it’s going to be full
1:30:01 of psychopaths and sociopaths. Like, I don’t know if you know the numbers on this, but they assume
1:30:05 5% of the population is sociopathic or something like that. Is that, you know,
1:30:05 I don’t know the numbers.
1:30:09 So let’s just make it up. It’s 5% of the general population. It’s probably, you know,
1:30:14 five times that of entrepreneurs and investors and people like this or anybody, political power,
1:30:18 power in general. This is why I think the work of Robert Caro is so interesting. And I always make
1:30:22 the argument that like, there should be a law. The only one law that I would foist upon society is
1:30:27 that there’s only one person allowed to write a thousand page biography. I have no problem reading.
1:30:30 Almost none of the books that I’ve read that are a thousand pages needed to be a thousand pages.
1:30:34 You just, they just didn’t know what to put in there. Robert Caro is the only one that should
1:30:37 be able to write long biographies because everything that he has in there should be in there. I think
1:30:41 he’s a master of his craft. He’s the best to ever do it, but he’s saying, I’m not writing biographies.
1:30:48 I’m writing about how humans accumulate and then wield power. And I did it first on a local level in New
1:30:53 York with Robert Moses. And now I’m showing what happens on a national level. And guess what? LBJ
1:31:00 would sacrifice everything to get what he wanted. Personal ethics, his relationships, everything.
1:31:01 Stealing elections?
1:31:06 Yeah. This is the wonderful thing about studying history. History doesn’t repeat. Human nature does.
1:31:11 So if you just read, me and you both love Will and Ariel Durant, read their history of human
1:31:14 civilization, read their a hundred page book, lessons of history. The same stuff repeats over and
1:31:18 over again. So when it comes out and you see this on the news, like, oh, of course no one stole the
1:31:23 election. It’s like in all different countries. Stealing elections is an American pastime. Just read
1:31:27 Robert Caro’s and it could be like a little, you know, Senate election in Texas.
1:31:32 Exactly. If you don’t think that missing ballot box. Yeah. It’s just like, it’s the line I have
1:31:38 about this is from Will Durant, where he’s just like in every age humans are dishonest and governments
1:31:43 are corrupt. It’s one of my favorite quotes from lessons of history and every age, nothing that we’re
1:31:47 doing is new. We’re just, we’re telling the same stories over and over and over again. You see the
1:31:52 same people over and over again. So yeah, I’m sure there’s a ton of people that read these biographies
1:31:56 and that listen to my podcast that are absolute psychopaths. I don’t think Ovitz is a psychopath.
1:31:58 He’s an extreme winner. He wants to win.
1:32:00 The line may be pretty thin.
1:32:02 Yeah, of course. Of course.
1:32:06 I’m not saying he is, by the way, a sociopath is just that, just like you were mentioning,
1:32:12 you can convince yourself of a bad idea very compellingly, just as you can a good idea.
1:32:18 It’s like when you start to get into the gray waters of morality and like as winning compounds
1:32:24 upon winning, oftentimes the person who cares less about other people wins. If they can discard
1:32:29 that consideration, a hundred percent, that’s been true in the past, true today will be true. That’s
1:32:34 the point that this is why it’s so interesting. I look at this as almost, I think something I didn’t
1:32:38 even understand is I have the ability to like step outside of myself and I’m kind of like a casual
1:32:39 observer of human nature.
1:32:44 I want to ask you, and then I’m going to hop to questions about podcasting and the new show
1:32:55 about how you think about assessing leaders, entrepreneurs, reading biographies or autobiographies
1:33:04 topics and figuring out what people claim as things that help them succeed to succeed, actually help
1:33:09 them versus hindering them. In other words, like what are the because of versus the in spite of? So for
1:33:17 instance, if high disagreeability or low agreeability is common across a lot of founders, you know, to what
1:33:23 extent can you point to that as one of the causal factors for their success as opposed to just an
1:33:28 emergency break they had on causing all sorts of problems that they managed to overcome. So they succeeded
1:33:32 despite. How do you think about separating those two things?
1:33:36 One of the things I love about James Dyson, who I, you know, is a hero of mine. It’s the person that on the
1:33:41 planet that I want to meet that I haven’t met. The number one is him. And what I love about him is like how stubborn
1:33:46 he is because I see myself in that. And it turns out his stubbornness worked out for him because he had the
1:33:51 right idea. But this is where it goes back to like, you can’t blindly copy. There’s no formula. Like there’s
1:33:56 no formula. There’s no track. So it’s like he’s stubborn on an idea that was a great idea. It just
1:34:01 needed more time. You could be stubborn on an idea that’s terrible and going nowhere. And then you did
1:34:04 the exact same thing for the exact same amount of time. And on the other side of that, he has one of
1:34:08 the most valuable private health companies world and you have a miserable life. There’s no answer to that.
1:34:13 There’s nobody coming to save you. None of this shit works if you can’t trust your own judgment and
1:34:18 figure things out. That’s why when people are like, oh, more people should be entrepreneurs. I don’t know about
1:34:23 that. I want to like encourage the people that think they can do it to do it. But I think in many
1:34:28 cases, most people should work like they should choose a different path because it’s very, very
1:34:32 risky. You know, like Todd Graves, the Raising Cane’s guy I told you about, right? His whole thing
1:34:39 is entrepreneurs should have higher risk tolerance. James Dyson multiple times risked every single
1:34:45 possession he had to chase his dream. He signed over his house multiple times. If he failed,
1:34:50 they could have been homeless. It worked out for him. Todd Graves had this crazy way to finance the
1:34:55 first 28 Raising Cane’s where essentially he goes to an angel investor. He goes to Tim Ferriss and says,
1:35:00 hey, you going to give me $200,000 loan. Okay. It’s going to be subjugated loan to the bank.
1:35:06 I’m going to guarantee you a 15% return on the $200,000 for X amount of time. You say, oh, that
1:35:11 sounds great. You’re paying me 15% on my 200 grand, but you don’t get any equity. I take that 200,000
1:35:17 equity that I have from this document from Tim. I go to a bank and say, this is as collateral loan me the
1:35:21 other 600 grand or whatever the number is to get this up and running. And he did that for 28 times.
1:35:25 And he’s like, oh, I’m rolling, rolling, rolling. Leverage up to his eyeballs. What’s the problem?
1:35:29 I open up every time I open a new Raising Cane’s, there’s a line at the door from day one. Well,
1:35:34 then a little thing called Hurricane Katrina comes and guess where 28 of his restaurants are all in
1:35:40 Louisiana. And he almost died. And he says, like, if I didn’t come out of that, there would be no story.
1:35:44 It’d be gone. And then I guess the second part of, I don’t know why this popped in my mind,
1:35:49 but you know, when you’re reading history, right? We’re reading about stories that happened a hundred
1:35:55 years ago, 200 years ago, 50 years ago. Some of them are from that person’s own mouth. Like imagine if
1:36:00 you tell your own life story, here’s the good part. You’re going to like, you’re going to hide the bad.
1:36:03 You’re human. And so people are like, well, how do you know if what you’re reading is true?
1:36:07 The line is, it’s like, if you think the news is fake, wait till you read history.
1:36:13 It’s like, it’s just old news. I don’t know. My idea is like, we’re not taking a test at the end
1:36:19 of this. I’m not saying like, did this actually happen in 1912? It’s like, is the idea behind what
1:36:25 he’s doing a good idea for me? And so like the example of Rockefeller, right? That you see that
1:36:29 Elon used where like Rockefeller tells a story. I don’t know if it actually happened, but he tells a
1:36:36 story where they would have to solder closed the barrels that they transport oil in. And he goes
1:36:41 up one day and he says, how many do you drops of solder to use? He’s like, I use 40. It’s like,
1:36:46 have you ever tried 38? He’s like, no, we’ve never tried 38. Can you try 38? They tried 38. It leaks.
1:36:52 Okay. Try 39. They tried 39. It doesn’t leak. That one drop of solder at the time of the business saved
1:36:56 him, you know, $25 a year business grows and compounds for the next three decades. And now he’s
1:37:00 saving like, you know, hundreds of thousands from that. Did that actually happen? I don’t know,
1:37:05 but that’s a good idea to find the limit to actually, Hey, maybe I should control my costs a little bit
1:37:09 more. Maybe I should, I need to actually see if I can do this in a more efficient way. I don’t know
1:37:13 if it happened. I just want the idea behind it. Yeah. Just to reiterate what you’re saying,
1:37:18 it’s tough to separate the fact from fiction, right? And then sometimes this is actually why I just read
1:37:25 fiction. Cause I’m like, there still are truths to extract. There are principles that you can extract
1:37:31 from this is now cliched because it’s been made into a popular movie, but Dune or stranger in a
1:37:36 strange land. Like you can actually pull a lot from just straight up fiction. And then when it comes to
1:37:41 the business side, you know, cause I’ve read so many, not as many as you, but tons of business books
1:37:48 still have my early copies and my notes from those books with losing my virginity, Richard Branson,
1:37:50 early Yvon Chouinard. Yeah.
1:37:57 I think it’s let my people go surfing, et cetera. Still have all those books. And when you look at
1:38:02 part of the reason also that I like early biographies, so let’s just say like hard drive
1:38:10 verse on Bill Gates versus like a later, I don’t want to say sanitized, but let’s say sanitized
1:38:14 version where I’m going through this right now. Right. Or, or it’s like, look, Warren Buffett,
1:38:20 loved the guy. He’s turned himself into like the aw shucks grandpa neighbor who takes his garbage out
1:38:24 killer of robe. He’s a killer. And I remember reading, I think it was the making of an American
1:38:30 capitalist way back in the day. And the story that stuck out, and I hope I’m not inventing this. I
1:38:36 don’t see why I would, but his routine was to go home, walk upstairs and read.
1:38:43 Step over his children. Exactly. So his, I was his son who had fallen down the stairs is like
1:38:51 sprawled out like a chalk outline and a crime scene steps over his injured son to go upstairs to do more
1:38:56 reading of S1 filings or whatever he was doing. You bring up something interesting. This is why
1:38:59 I don’t believe them when they say they have regrets at the end of their life.
1:39:04 So if I read making American capitalist, right? Excellent book. I think that’s actually the best
1:39:09 biography. It’s so good. You read Snowball after his wife leaves him, right? And he says the biggest
1:39:14 mistake, if I could go back and live life again, the biggest mistake I would do, I would change
1:39:18 whatever I need. So I think her name was Susie didn’t leave me. No, I don’t believe you. I don’t
1:39:23 buy it. No, none of them. When they all say like Leonardo DiVecchio, the guy that started Luxottica.
1:39:28 Yeah. I think I did like translate it from Italian. Like some of these biographies are in different
1:39:32 languages. And so like, again, go back to differentiation. What can I do that no one else is doing?
1:39:36 We’ve translated the Red Bull book from German. Which was awesome by the way. I listened to that.
1:39:40 I appreciate that. But he gets to the end of his life. You know, he was an orphan. Dad dies young.
1:39:46 What was the company again? Luxottica. So they essentially monopolize glasses, everything. So
1:39:51 Mark Zuckerberg just invested, I think, three and a half billion dollars for like 3% of the company.
1:39:51 Wow.
1:39:58 And so for essentially 60 years, he does this slow, methodical Rockefeller-esque march through the
1:40:03 entire industry until he controls every single component of eyeglasses, sunglasses, everything.
1:40:07 It’s like completely dominant. And he gets to the end of his life. He’s just like, oh yeah,
1:40:12 like the one regret I have is like, he was married multiple times. I think there’s like a 50 year gap
1:40:17 between like his oldest son and his youngest son. So it’s like, he’s like a wild boy, but he’s like,
1:40:22 one regret I have is like, I didn’t spend more time with kids. No, that’s not, you wouldn’t change a
1:40:26 thing. It’s not true. It’s not true. You could, I don’t think they could to, that’s what, what you
1:40:30 just said. It’s like, maybe they didn’t have a choice. Maybe it’s just hardwired. And so I’m going
1:40:37 through that really right now because this week I read Source Code, which is Bill Gates’ autobiography
1:40:44 about the first 20 years of his life. His version, I reread Hard Drive, Overdrive, which is also written
1:40:49 by the same guys that wrote Hard Drive. And then I pulled all my highlights and notes for Paul Allen’s
1:40:54 description of Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s autobiography. There is a vast difference between
1:40:58 what’s in Source Code and what is in Hard Drive. And it’s obviously, Hard Drive is more accurate.
1:41:05 It’s written right after it happened. Bill is not the 70 year old man he is now. And you know,
1:41:09 it’s just, he’s, he’s in a different world, but watch his interviews, watch the documentary on Netflix
1:41:13 about him. He’s like, I was hardcore. That was my advantage. He was.
1:41:13 Killer.
1:41:13 Yeah.
1:41:17 And also, you know, these, these questions, right? A lot of the questions that I ask myself
1:41:22 when I’m reading any nonfiction, I shouldn’t say any nonfiction, let’s say biographies where
1:41:26 I’m hoping to model something. One is like, is, or an autobiography, like, okay, what’s the
1:41:32 bias here? Are there any particular biases I should be aware of? Okay. Is anyone in like reputation
1:41:38 rehab mode before they die? Okay. Let’s keep that sure. What type of survivorship bias might
1:41:42 there be? Who tried the same? Do we have 99 out of a hundred who tried something similar
1:41:47 and failed? Let’s take a look at the tape. Okay. Luck is luck. Luck’s everywhere, right?
1:41:50 So the fact that Bill Gates ended up with a computer, when he ended up with a computer is
1:41:56 just like, you know, timing, I think timing, timing is a huge piece. By the way, these are
1:42:00 not all reasons to discount anything, but I just want to mention a couple of that I try to
1:42:05 think of. The other I try to think of, because I might try to mimic someone in sports, right?
1:42:09 If I’m trying to learn something new or language learning or whatever it might be, what is trainable
1:42:14 and what is not trainable? Because I’ve heard these stories from people who know Bill Gates
1:42:18 and they’re like, well, we were going to go on this like short vacation in fill in the
1:42:22 blank. I can’t remember Costa Rica, right? And they’re going to go on a birding trip in the
1:42:27 morning. It’s just like a two, three hour thing with a world-class birding guide. And they
1:42:34 do the trip and the night before Bill has stayed up and read five books on birding, memorized
1:42:41 them seemingly without trying. And it’s basically having like a peer to peer discussion with the
1:42:47 birding expert as they’re going through the rainforest. That’s not normal, right? That’s
1:42:51 like, I’m going to do calf raises to make my body look like Michael Phelps. Like, no, you’re
1:42:54 not, that’s not going to work. So it’s like, when I’m looking for people to model, I’m trying
1:43:01 to find people who have hopefully a comparable composition of strengths that I can amplify
1:43:07 in myself or that are coachable, right? And the question after all of that is, does anyone
1:43:13 stand out to you of the biographies or people you’ve met where you’re like, in terms of someone
1:43:18 doing the most with the hand they’ve been dealt, right? So maybe they’re not a freak of nature.
1:43:23 Like they’re not a freak of nature necessarily because there are freaks of nature among the
1:43:27 people that you study, the people I study, but it’s like, all right, these people might
1:43:33 have a few strengths, but they’re not complete freaks. They’re not the Usain Bolt of fill in
1:43:40 the blank. And man, oh man, did they play their hand well. They’re just so good at playing the
1:43:43 hands that they are dealt. That person. Does anybody stick out?
1:43:47 Sam Walton. Sam Walton’s one of my favorite entrepreneurs. If you really think about it,
1:43:50 like he had this crazy thing, it’s a crazy idea. I don’t even think, he obviously didn’t know
1:43:56 what Walmart was going to turn into, but one of the ways they avoided all the inheritance tax is if you
1:44:02 give away the equity before it’s valuable. So if you look at the last time I checked, if you look at
1:44:09 all of the Walmart equity owned by the family, that means the wealth that came from his idea would be
1:44:15 like 432 billion today. If it was consolidated in one person. Right. And when you study Sam,
1:44:18 he’s like, obviously smart, but he would just like, he didn’t really know what he was going to do.
1:44:24 Then he had this idea is like, well, maybe I can be good at retailing. And then he starts out in
1:44:30 Newport, Arkansas with one store. And this is what drives me insane about the modern day entrepreneurship
1:44:33 industry. He’s like, everybody’s, they start out with like weird goals. Like I’m going to build a
1:44:37 trillion dollar company or I’m going to be the fastest person to a hundred million ARR. And it’s just like,
1:44:42 okay, but none of these people talk like that. Like you, you, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.
1:44:45 So you probably won’t get there if that’s just the case. Like what Jerry Seinfeld says,
1:44:49 like, if you’re just doing it for the money, you only get so far. And with him, he was just like
1:44:54 fascinated by stores and trying to make it a little bit better every day.
1:44:58 Well, it’s not vacation, right? He would, didn’t matter where he was, he would go into retail store.
1:45:04 His kids told the story. It’s just like vacation was essentially driving to different towns and
1:45:08 checking out different retailers. And so, but the reason, the most important thing about his
1:45:13 story, one of the most important things is this idea to go slow now so you can go faster later.
1:45:17 And so you’re like, okay, the beginning of his career, he’s like in one tiny store. I think they
1:45:23 start doing like 25,000 a year, 25,000 a year in revenue. I think he gets up to like 250 grand.
1:45:27 It took him five years, but for five years, you just had one story. It was like experimenting,
1:45:32 understanding, trying to figure out what the different parts of retail are. Cause there’s no such thing
1:45:34 is discounting and wholesale and all the other stuff that he was doing that he’s going to do
1:45:39 later on. And then what’s fascinating is later in his career, after Walmart, he then takes that idea.
1:45:42 He goes and fits the sole price who we mentioned earlier. He takes that idea. He’s like, oh,
1:45:46 this is a great idea. I’m going to do this. He does Sam’s Club. And then that same five-year period.
1:45:52 So you have the first five years, one store separated by maybe 40 years in the career. That second five
1:45:56 years when he’s starting something else in that five-year period, he doesn’t have one store. He winds up
1:46:03 doing, I think a hundred stores and like 7 billion in revenue from this new category because you see
1:46:08 him learning. And so like, yes, I think he was brilliant. He’s not memorizing five books overnight
1:46:13 and doing that. His is a very, this is like mine. One of the reasons that I do what I do is because
1:46:18 Munger became a hero and he talks over and over again about being a biography nut that he read more
1:46:22 biographies than anybody else. I got to spend three hours inside of his house, right? Talking to him
1:46:28 right before he died. I don’t care how many biographies I read, how many books I read for
1:46:34 the rest of my life. I cannot have a brain like him. I will never have a brain like him. Anybody at
1:46:39 99 is going to have some level of cognitive decline. You know what? One of my first thoughts was about an
1:46:43 hour and a half in the conversation with him was this guy had to be terrifying when he was 60.
1:46:49 Terrifying, like terrifying. Think about this. Everybody that I know, I always, when I get to meet
1:46:52 fancy people, I always ask him like, who’s the smartest person you know? What’s the best business
1:46:56 you know? And it can’t be like Apple, like these interesting weird things. And every single person
1:47:02 that says if they have no Buffett and they don’t tell you as Buffett, they’re wrong. And Buffett chose
1:47:08 this guy to let him mold and shape his thinking. What does that tell you about his intelligence?
1:47:13 And I remember, because this is what I do. I’m like laying bricks every day. I don’t think I’m a
1:47:17 brilliant person. I just like show up every day and don’t quit. And so once I find Munger,
1:47:21 I read literally not. Well, I read some of the books. I read every single book on Munger.
1:47:26 Then I reread my highlights, which like over and over again. So my days, I wake up, work out,
1:47:31 read for a few hours, have lunch, then reread past highlights in the afternoon. All my social media
1:47:35 posts are just me rereading highlights. And so I read every single book on Munger. Then I reread all
1:47:38 the highlights. But then I read all the books he tells me to read. Because he’ll tell you,
1:47:41 read Les Schwab. He’ll tell you all these things. He’ll tell you Henry Kaiser. I was like,
1:47:45 who the hell is Henry Kaiser? Henry Kaiser started a hundred companies. He built a Hoover
1:47:49 Dam. He built Liberty Ships. I go, what? By the way, just the fact that pretty much
1:47:52 everyone listening to this podcast will have no idea of who that person is. Yeah.
1:47:58 Just underscores, I think, how ridiculous it is to get overly fixated on legacy as an excuse for all
1:48:03 sorts of behaviors. Yes. Nobody’s going to run me. I’m anti-legacy and I’m anti-family dynasty. I think
1:48:09 like bequeathing your kids a bunch of wealth is, well, that’s another story for another day.
1:48:13 But okay, a hundred companies. Right. Hoover Dam, which by the way, was made in what? Like
1:48:16 eight years or 12 years or something? I mean, some insane time span.
1:48:22 And so then, first of all, I’m freaked out. I’m there. It’s me, two other young entrepreneurs in
1:48:26 their thirties. And they had both met Charlie before. And then like, I’m like 10 minutes in
1:48:31 and I’m just like, oh, I just couldn’t believe what’s happening to me. I’m like, that’s fucking
1:48:35 Charlie Munger over there. And like, and then you know, he’s looking at you because he’s like blind.
1:48:39 And so like, if he’s looking at you like this, he’s not looking at you. He’s got to go like this
1:48:43 and this. Cause then he’s got to look through his glasses. So, you know, when he’s looking at you.
1:48:48 And then my friend looks at me, he’s like, get in here, like do something. I literally sat there and
1:48:52 me not speaking for 10 minutes, it’s really hard for me to do. There’s a reason I do monologue
1:48:57 podcasts. So then I see we’re in his library. So then I’m like, oh, this is my savior. Cause I’ve
1:49:02 read all those books behind him because he told me to read them. And so this is why I said,
1:49:06 it doesn’t matter what I do. And this will answer your question a long way. I start asking
1:49:12 questions about Henry Kaiser and all these books and he knows the revenue. He knows the partner. He
1:49:16 knows how the business ended. He knows the mistakes they made. And then I go, Charlie, like when’s the
1:49:20 last time you read these books? And he’s like 15 years ago when we were shifting from the library to
1:49:24 dinner. I was like, Charlie, can I go through your library? He’s like, of course. And he’s just sitting
1:49:28 in his chair and I’m going through the books and I opened them. No notes.
1:49:38 Different stock. Yeah. Different stock. Oh my God. So, all right, we are going to get to the things I
1:49:43 promised, but I have to ask you. So in addition to smartest person, best business, what are some of
1:49:46 your other go-to questions when you meet the fancy folks?
1:49:51 So who’s the smartest person you know? What’s the best business you know? I actually got to spend
1:49:56 some time with Eddie Lampert and Eddie Lampert at one time was thought to be like the next Buffett
1:50:02 and he was mentored by Richard Rainwater. And I find Richard Rainwater really fascinating because
1:50:02 Richard Rainwater has probably-
1:50:03 Great name too.
1:50:09 Oh, excellent. Richard, first of all, no biographies on him. He died rather young. He probably created more
1:50:15 billionaire investors in America than any other person and direct mentorship. And Eddie
1:50:19 broke the record, I think in like the eighties or nineties for like the most
1:50:26 taxable income made by an American. And he was like super young. And so Eddie lives in Miami and I was
1:50:32 at his house. He was like, never again, I’m moving to Miami. No, so no, no. So that might be one of the
1:50:35 best investments because he probably paid $12 million for his house and his house will probably sell for
1:50:40 150 million today because it’s on the Island that Bezos lives on. And the house is beautiful.
1:50:44 I’m sure he won’t even notice it on his, on his balance sheet or in his life.
1:50:48 He’s like much more like out of the spotlight now. But again, he’s like one of these older guys,
1:50:54 just like very, very wise and like very quiet. He’s like me. He’s like introverted. Just like you
1:50:58 go to his house, there’s just books everywhere. He’s got this insane yacht that I went on called
1:51:01 the Fountainhead. I’ll let people Google it. It is insane.
1:51:03 I mean, great name too.
1:51:06 Yeah. But same thing. You go on the boat, dude, and it’s like full of books.
1:51:09 Ran out a room at his house and buy a super yacht for the books.
1:51:15 It’s the weirdest unintended hack ever to build a world-class network of just like read a bunch of
1:51:20 history and they’ll come get you. I’ve never sent a cold DM in my life ever. I’ve never sent a cold
1:51:21 email in my life.
1:51:25 So what do you, why did, why did Lambert come out? You’re asking him questions.
1:51:31 No. So I’m asking these questions, right? Basically. And they’re not mean to me. He’s like, yeah, but
1:51:35 there’s like better questions you can ask. I was like, okay, like tell me what they are. And so what his
1:51:39 answers are like the smartest person. He’s like, well, I spent a bunch of time with Buffett. And I go,
1:51:45 okay. And he goes, it’s obviously Buffett. And he goes, there’s actually a more interesting. And then
1:51:49 like, who’s the best investor, you know, that was another question I asked. And he goes, there’s actually
1:51:53 a more interesting question that you’re not asking. And I go, what’s that? He goes, who’s the best deal
1:51:58 maker? And I go, I don’t know what that means. Like, I don’t know anything about investing. Like the question
1:52:04 I’ve asked Rick and Patrick, they probably think I’m retarded. Like, I don’t know. You can, you can edit
1:52:08 that question out if you edit that word out. But like, they’re just like, what is wrong with this
1:52:12 guy? We didn’t even get to, I mean, I would say Brad Jacobs would fit in sort of the deal maker.
1:52:18 Yeah, but he, yeah, but his is like a different, this is very fascinating what Eddie said. So again,
1:52:22 Eddie, you can go back and like read profiles of him. Like he was like a boy wonder kid.
1:52:28 Rick told me a funny story. They used to all be at the same golf club in New Jersey and Richard
1:52:33 Rainwater walked in and Rick’s like a young kid and Rainwater’s a legend. And he’s like making
1:52:38 conversation with him. He goes, we just wait, the best investor in America is going to walk through
1:52:44 that door. And Rick goes, Buffett? And it was Eddie. So anyways, Eddie’s like, there’s a better
1:52:47 question that you’re not asking. I was like, all right, well, you’re way smarter than I am. Like,
1:52:51 tell me. And he goes, who’s the best deal maker? I don’t know what that means. And he goes, well,
1:52:58 an investor is judged on ROIC, return on invested capital. He goes, the two best deal makers I ever knew
1:53:03 were Richard Rainwater and David Geffen. So the thing about David Geffen is super underrated.
1:53:08 He’s another person I’d like to spend time with if I could is it’s one thing to have a bunch of
1:53:12 money. It’s another thing to have a bunch of money and be liquid. There is a line in this
1:53:17 profile in Larry Gossian that I read that says, anytime there’s a downturn, Larry Gossian is one
1:53:20 of the, maybe the most successful art dealer in the world. There’s all these like, you know,
1:53:26 art soars during great economic times and kind of doesn’t do so well in other times. Anytime there was
1:53:31 like a dip and they needed to make money, they’d call David because they said, David is as liquid
1:53:36 as a day is long. David gave like a 26 year old Eddie Lambert, like 200 million of his own money to
1:53:41 run. So David’s just like liquid. Staked him. And so he goes, David is a crazy deal maker.
1:53:45 I guess he didn’t stake him. He was an LP. I don’t think it was a fun structure. I think it was,
1:53:47 here’s 200, make it bigger. Make it bigger.
1:53:52 I don’t think you’d be like, you make money if I make money. It wasn’t, I don’t think it was a
1:53:55 permanent structure, which is interesting. Sam Zell never had a permanent structure. There’s actually
1:54:00 a lot of, I find those more, more interesting, but anyways, I was like, okay, so why is Richard
1:54:05 Rainwater one of the best deal makers? And he’s like, because with Richard, it was all returns,
1:54:12 no capital. And I was like, what? And he goes, Richard maneuvered himself into such a influential
1:54:17 position in the American economy because of who he knew and him being involved in your deal
1:54:23 immediately made more valuable that people just gave him the equity, all returns, no capital.
1:54:28 I was like, that was like one of my favorite ideas that I’ve like ever heard. Yeah. And he
1:54:32 would just tell amazing stories. Like he told me a story where like Richard, when he mentors you,
1:54:36 he like, he recruited Eddie. Eddie was living in New York working at Goldman Sachs, if I remember
1:54:40 correctly. He convinced him to move to Fort Worth, Texas. Have you ever been to Fort Worth?
1:54:41 I have.
1:54:42 Okay. I’ve been there too.
1:54:47 There’s nothing there. And in the eighties, there was less than nothing there. And this
1:54:53 kid moves there, they would travel together. And Eddie said, Richard would want to like summer
1:54:59 somewhere in like Massachusetts. And it was like this, this like 20 room hotel that was the
1:55:06 members only. Okay. So it’s like not open to a random public. And he insisted that Eddie be put in
1:55:11 the room next to him. And one day a bunch of guys are knock on Eddie’s door while he’s in the room,
1:55:14 especially like working and like researching. And they come in with a bunch of tools. He’s like,
1:55:19 what are you doing? He’s like, Richard wants us to put a hole in this wall. And Richard didn’t want
1:55:24 to go in the hallway and walk around to Eddie’s room. So he made them knock a hall and then install
1:55:31 the door so he could just go. He could have direct access to Eddie just with a door that didn’t exist.
1:55:32 That’s incredible.
1:55:34 He just had all kinds of crazy stories.
1:55:39 All right. So not Buffett, not Munger, smartest person.
1:55:40 That I met?
1:55:45 Yeah. Smartest person. Let’s revise that and just say, if you could pick one person you’ve met
1:55:49 to be like your coach slash Yoda.
1:55:50 Oh, Daniel Ek.
1:55:50 Daniel Ek.
1:55:51 Easily.
1:55:52 All right. That was fast.
1:55:57 Brad Jacobs gives me great advice. Michael Dell would give me great advice. Todd Graves. But like
1:55:59 this guy is around my age.
1:55:59 Yeah.
1:56:06 It’s like the gap between us is like so obvious when you solve for that. And again, I just think of like
1:56:12 the stuff he does, his clarity of thought. I greatly admire the product. I like products. I guess we
1:56:16 should back up like what is actually important to you. I don’t actually give a shit how much money
1:56:20 you have. I know a lot of people and I love these. We’re in New York right now. Some of my favorite
1:56:24 people. I like the PE guys way more than I like the VC guys because they’re just more honest.
1:56:29 They’re like, you know, the PE guys are like the VC gets, they have great lines about this. They go VC
1:56:33 gets all the attention. PE gets all the money. And then they’re like, the VCs are lying because they
1:56:38 say the founders are the customers. No, the LPs are our customers. The founders didn’t give you any
1:56:44 money. Then the PE guys are just honest. Why do you wake up every day to maximize the value of my LP
1:56:48 dollars? I don’t want to play that game. I don’t want to play it at all, but I respect their, their
1:56:54 honesty is refreshing. You know, their scoreboard is I have $6 billion and I’ll be better if I have eight.
1:57:00 I am obsessed with product. The fact that I work on my podcast for seven days a week, the fact that I
1:57:06 hand edit the transcript, like Mr. Beast drives me. He’s like, you’re stupid. Basically you need an editor.
1:57:11 You need all these other things. And like, I just am obsessed. It’s like, you don’t work all your life
1:57:16 to do what you love to not do it. I don’t want to outsource stuff. I like the craft of making the
1:57:21 product. I’m very proud. Some people might consider it’s embarrassing. When Spotify, my Spotify rap comes
1:57:27 out this year, the number one podcast on that is going to be my own. I go back and listen to it.
1:57:32 One, I think of it as a tool. I was on a treadmill in Malibu a few weeks ago, listening to episode 221,
1:57:36 which I think is a biography of Charlie Munger. I said Charlie Munger all the time. We forget how much
1:57:40 we forget. I listened to this hour-long podcast. I’m like, oh God, he’s got a lot of great ideas
1:57:44 that I forgot. I’m not doing it for like, because I like to hear the sound of my own voice. I also do
1:57:50 it because you think Kobe watched game tape? Like, how am I going to get better if I don’t? I just went
1:57:55 and when I interviewed Michael Dell, really more of a conversation than interview, but I listened to the
1:58:01 Michael Dell episode that I just did a few months ago. And all I hear is the flaws. All I hear is
1:58:05 like, you stupid idiot. You should use three sentences. That could have been one sentence.
1:58:09 That is not even interesting. Cut that next time. And it’s just like, that’s how I get better. I go
1:58:13 back and listen to it. So I am obsessed with product. The people that I admire the most are like
1:58:19 great products. It could be Jiro’s sushi. It could be the Spotify app. It could be, it doesn’t matter.
1:58:23 Shoes that I like, you know, I just love when people take what they do very seriously. And I
1:58:28 like the craft of it. And I want to dedicate my life to making a product that makes somebody else’s
1:58:32 life better. That is what drives me. I understand. And I have a bunch of friends that like the money
1:58:37 or like building the systems. If you want to go back to archetypes or just like having a big empire.
1:58:42 I don’t have any employees. You know, you have three, I guess I have two technical like
1:58:47 subcontractors, you know, doing clips for me and thumbnails and stuff like that. But yeah,
1:58:50 I don’t, I don’t have any desire for like a giant empire. I’m like a little craftsman in
1:58:51 my local shed over here.
1:58:55 So why do the new podcast? David Senra?
1:58:55 Yes.
1:59:03 Why do it? And we can use any number of different entry points here. So number one, why do it?
1:59:10 You don’t have to answer that as number one. I’m also curious where you see the podcast ecosystem.
1:59:15 Is it early? Is it late? Is it oversaturated? Is it undersaturated, et cetera?
1:59:22 And then how do you diversify an interview based podcast?
1:59:28 Okay. So let’s take the number one, the why to do it. I was resistant on doing it for years because
1:59:34 I like to do one thing and I don’t like to not focus a huge thing. If you could summarize nine years,
1:59:39 400 biographies under one word of what I’ve learned is focus. These people, whether they’re psychos,
1:59:43 nice people, different industries, they’re remarkably focused compared to like,
1:59:48 there are a different species than the current level of, you know, lack of attention spans that
1:59:53 we have now that I think are getting worse. So focus is excessively important. If you look at how
1:59:56 I spend my time though, right? We just talked about the importance of building a business is natural to
2:00:03 you. Half my waking time, I would like to be completely alone. Like not in the, even the house
2:00:09 with somebody else, like alone, just reading, thinking like I like solitude a lot to a scary
2:00:14 degree. So that makes sense. Founders reading books all day. That’s, that’s what you do. Like that makes
2:00:18 perfect sense. When I’m not doing that though, if you look at what else I’m doing, I essentially do
2:00:23 this data dump where I’m in silence half the day. And then I go out every night that I’m not with my
2:00:28 family. I usually have dinner with another founder, usually that I met through the podcast. And we
2:00:33 talk for three, two, three, four. And there’s no, like some people like, Oh, really impressive. People
2:00:36 will send me like, I would love to talk to you. And they like send me a calendar right for 30 minutes.
2:00:40 I go to that. I don’t do that. Like we’re not even going to start. We haven’t even started. Like,
2:00:43 if that’s what you think this is, like, I don’t care that you’re a billionaire. Like we’re just never
2:00:50 going to meet ever. And it’s always super long. The very first time, first time I can mention all
2:00:55 these people we talked for a long time. So I’m doing this anyways. And for years, people like Patrick
2:01:01 were like, you stupid idiot. You should be recording these. Like this is crazy. And so there’s two things
2:01:08 to answer your question that happened. One is the first time me and Patrick grab dinner in New York
2:01:15 with Daniel. Okay. We talk for four hours and we get in the car. Cause we’re going, we’re leaving
2:01:17 the city and going back to Patrick’s house. Cause I’m going to spend the night there before I go back
2:01:22 home. And the first thing Patrick says, and again, this is why it’s important to like the piece of
2:01:25 advice that Charlie Munger gave us when we were at his house. He’s like, your job at your age is to
2:01:30 build a seamless web of deserve trust with other people who are like you. He’s like, everybody knows
2:01:34 that me and Buffett, I met Buffett when I was 35, he was 28, but they didn’t understand. There’s a bunch of
2:01:38 other guys around our age that we built the same level of trust with. And we did life with and did
2:01:44 deals with forever. Most of them were dead by the time I met Charlie. And so relationships are very
2:01:48 important. And Munger has a line that trust is one of the greatest economic factors in the world,
2:01:52 which is, I’ve never heard anybody say that. That’s a truly unique idea. I agree with that.
2:01:58 And so like, there’s a level of trust that I am very standoffish. People call me a turtle. Like I get my
2:02:04 shell. Right. And so once you’ve penetrated that, like I have a level of trust that you want what’s
2:02:09 right for me, like there’s no weird competitive vibes here. We’re not like secret adversaries.
2:02:15 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
2:02:20 to record these. And he’s like, I’ve known Daniel for four years. You got more out of him in four hours
2:02:27 than I did in four years. He’s like, I spoke 2% of the time. You spoke 49%. He spoke the other 49%.
2:02:30 And he’s just like, there’s no way that can speak to the soul of the founder in the world
2:02:35 that you can. And it’s because he says something and it’s not what he’s saying. It’s what Henry Ford
2:02:40 did here. And Henry Kaiser did there. And Jim Casey did over here. That’s how my brain actually works.
2:02:44 So I was like, okay, that was interesting. And then part of the conversation was, you know,
2:02:50 Daniel saying to take, I wasn’t doing video 375 episodes. I’m not doing for fame. I’m introverted.
2:02:55 And Daniel just saying in a very nice way, what are you doing? Like you’d stop riding the fence.
2:03:02 This is the game that you chose. And I have the data video obviously is important in podcasts. Like
2:03:06 you’re lying to yourself again. You know, the importance of somebody telling the truth. I want
2:03:10 people around me to check me. I don’t want sick fans, you know, and I’ll tell you the second person
2:03:14 that influenced me that check that calls me and checks me all the time that got in my mind for a
2:03:19 while. I was like, okay, that’s interesting. And I get sad when I don’t podcast. I would like to
2:03:24 podcast every day. And I can’t because I had to read an entire book before I sit down to make an
2:03:28 episode. I cannot make more than 52 episodes a year. I just can’t. People are like, you must read
2:03:33 fast. No, I read slow. 25 pages an hour at most. And I have to do all the other shit I just told you
2:03:37 I had to do. Like the highlighting and like, you know, long mistakes. It’s like taking photographs,
2:03:39 putting it in to read wise.
2:03:44 And so then, um, something that’s else that’s important to me is it’s like, I’m not a political
2:03:48 person at all. I don’t even read the news. I will find out the important stuff. If there’s a
2:03:52 pandemic, I’ll hear about it. If there’s a war, I’ll hear about it. Other stuff, no idea what’s
2:03:58 going on. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m purposely aloof. But one thing that I am passionate
2:04:02 about is that like entrepreneurship is good for the world. As long as you’re spending your time
2:04:06 building, because all businesses, you mentioned losing your virginity by Richard Branson. He has
2:04:10 the best description I’ve ever heard of a business. All of businesses is an idea that makes somebody
2:04:14 else’s life better. And therefore there’s always opportunity because there’s infinite ways to make
2:04:19 other people’s lives better. And so that’s what I’m trying to do. And so another person that we’ve
2:04:25 come close with is Jared Kushner. We live in Miami together and we went and met for dinner. And Jared’s
2:04:30 like a really smart and like buttoned up guy. And again, I don’t pay attention to politics. So like
2:04:36 the way I met him is actually, he reached out to Rick and it’s like, I’m a huge founders fan. Can you
2:04:39 see if David would speak at my company offsite? A lot of companies asked me to speak at their company
2:04:44 offsite. And I didn’t know anything about Jared. All I know is that people on the internet like to
2:04:50 argue about him because of the Trump stuff, you know, but I judge people on how they are with me.
2:04:54 This had to happen to you where you were like, that person’s great. And you deal with him like,
2:04:57 oh, that guy’s terrible or vice versa. I’ve had both. Yeah, exactly. So it’s just like,
2:05:02 I’m going to go into this. I have no idea about all this stuff. I’m just going to see how this is
2:05:06 going to go. And then we hit it off right away. And he was like, try to pay me. I was like,
2:05:09 no, no, no. Like it’s in Miami. I can drive over there. I could talk about this shit all the time.
2:05:13 I like talking about this. So like, and then, uh, we just built a relationship and a friendship from
2:05:19 that. We have similar issues. And so we meet for dinner one day and it’s right after basically he
2:05:24 went and spoke at this conference in Miami and he thought he was going to go talk about his new fund.
2:05:29 And he thought he was friends with the guy and the guy’s like selling tickets and making money off his
2:05:33 name being there. And like, it’s not like you’re paying the speakers. And the guy like essentially
2:05:39 ambushed him and starts asking questions like, how can you do business with Saudi Arabia?
2:05:44 They chop up Chisogi and all this other stuff. And then before the talk was even done, his social
2:05:49 media team was like clipping it and like sending it out and like press releases. So I show up at
2:05:54 this dinner and Jared’s always buttoned up and you know, always got his shit together. And he’s just
2:06:00 like, what the hell is going on here? By the time the dinner ends, it’s everywhere. And again,
2:06:06 I’m like, this is weird that the business and tech press in America, they hate business
2:06:12 and tech. They like cover things. I’m an enthusiast. I’m not a journalist. I’m not a critic. I read books
2:06:16 all the time where I hate the person or something. You’ll never see me do a podcast about it. I want
2:06:20 to talk about stuff. I like not things I hate. It’s a weird thing to go through. Imagine waking up
2:06:24 every day and your job is to like cover people that you secretly like wish you were like, there’s just
2:06:30 weird stuff that around this. Right. And so we had this idea at dinner. I was like, there should be a
2:06:35 place where I’m not talking about sycophant. I’m saying like Todd Graves, people make fun of him
2:06:39 because he says that God made him good at chicken fingers and that he’s living a chicken finger dream
2:06:43 and he thinks is a mission. But I’ll tell you what, he believes it. He’s been offered billions. He owns
2:06:48 over 90% of the company. He will never sell that company. He’s not doing it for money. He’s doing it
2:06:52 because he wants to make money and he does a lot of great things in the community. And I think people
2:06:57 should know that this guy exists and his ideas should be spread. That’s a good for the world.
2:07:03 So those two things happened. And I’m like, oh, this is interesting. I have this weird base of
2:07:07 knowledge. So the way Jared describes it is like, he’s like talking to you is like talking to 50 of
2:07:10 history’s greatest entrepreneurs at the same time. Cause like, we’ll talk about something and same thing
2:07:16 you see I do. And then Daniel’s way of saying that he’s like, you’re like a LLM trained on history’s
2:07:18 greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned up. Cause you’re crazy.
2:07:26 And so it makes it like entertaining. I mean, I think that’s no small contributor to why you have
2:07:33 a diehard fan base. Like it’s the pulpit preacher kind of fervor that you bring to it.
2:07:38 But I didn’t understand that until I thought about my childhood. When people say they go to church,
2:07:42 that’s not the kind of churches I went to. This is like, this is really gets me sad and where I was
2:07:47 almost crying earlier. It’s like my mom deserved a better life. She didn’t deserve to grow up with the
2:07:54 monster of her father. And frankly, the bitch that her mom was like the one thing that I remember
2:08:02 about my mom’s mom that she said to me was that I was a faggot. That is literally the only memory I
2:08:07 have is her. She was mentally ill. You’d go to her house, you know, national choir and like all those
2:08:11 things that, uh, there’s national choir is like the sun and all this other stuff that you, you get
2:08:14 like right when you go to the grocery store, she was like a hoarder. So she would, you’d go in the
2:08:19 bathroom and like stacks all the way up to the, she wouldn’t throw them out. But she read them.
2:08:24 Like we read the Wall Street Journal. Like you assume the stock is what the stock, they said the
2:08:29 stock price is. She’d read it. Like this is true. Like Bigfoot is true. President, this is, I was a kid.
2:08:33 This is the memory. I was the age when president Clinton, when Clinton was in the white house and
2:08:39 she was convinced because that Clinton was gay and his wife was lesbian. And so she saw like conspiracy
2:08:46 everywhere. And she directed at her grandchildren, which is like monstrous. And so like she deserved,
2:08:50 my mom deserved better. And then the problem was my mom didn’t have an education and she was a very
2:08:55 naive person. And so she turned to the church, but the church she turned to was like, you know,
2:08:56 Benny Hinnis.
2:08:57 I do know the name. Yeah.
2:09:02 Okay. So that’s like, you come up there and he blows on you and you don’t have leprosy
2:09:08 anymore. Or he hits you in the face, like does this thing and you can walk now. And all this stuff
2:09:12 was acting. They caught these people over and over again. And like, I remember my mom didn’t have a
2:09:16 bunch of money and her putting like a couple of crumpled up dollars and giving it to them because
2:09:22 she thought this is like what she’s going to get in her life. It’s sickening to me now that that
2:09:26 happened to her and that, you know, she fell prey to that. And then these people did this and they
2:09:30 have private jets and they have all, it’s kind of crazy. I’m sure there’s some people that do that
2:09:34 and they believe it. That’s a different thing. If they really believe it. I know that guy didn’t
2:09:39 believe it. Like the heat, come on. You didn’t believe that. And so, but then I didn’t understand
2:09:45 that. Oh my God, that influenced the way I make my podcast because it is like preacher. I feel I
2:09:51 shouldn’t be sitting at a desk. I should be sitting at a pulpit. Somebody bought the domain
2:09:58 churchforfounders.com and it points to my podcast. That’s amazing. So that’s why I’m doing it.
2:10:04 And then the other thing was like, I just like podcasting and I can have a conversation every
2:10:08 day. So we’re going to start out like every other week and then move up to every week. And then I
2:10:11 want to be having multiple conversations a week. That’s what I want to do because I’m doing it
2:10:15 anyways. Let’s just put a microphone there and it’s not an interview. Yeah. There’s some questions I
2:10:20 have for them, but it’s like a conversation. The idea that I’m going to do a business show
2:10:25 interview and compete with Patrick is, I think he’s the best interviewer by far. He’s so concise
2:10:32 and perfect. And like, he’s just really good at it. And I like to talk. I want to talk 49% of the time.
2:10:40 How will you balance the two shows? So it seems like founders podcasts takes a lot as it is.
2:10:49 One of the benefits of that format is now this might put a cap on growth to some extent, but if
2:10:54 you’re not playing the video game, it removes a lot of complexity, right? You don’t necessarily need
2:11:01 to travel. You just read, you enjoy your solitude. You do some long form audio. You can have notes in
2:11:06 front of you. You can be picking your nose. I can, as you take a deep breath, there’s a lot of
2:11:12 flexibility there. How are you going to balance the two without sacrificing founders, right?
2:11:16 Like snuffing out the magic X when you’re working on Y?
2:11:20 That’s a great question. And it’s something I was like very concerned with. And that’s why I said no
2:11:25 for so many years. And so then you think like, if you said yes, then how would you do it? Instead of
2:11:29 just blankly saying no. And there’s a secret of dealing with me that everybody that knows me for
2:11:34 a long time realizes it’s like water on a rock. Okay. So like, you’re going to come up to like,
2:11:37 this is literally going to happen multiple times. So let’s say like Patrick or Sam Hinkie would be
2:11:41 like, I have this idea. And immediately like, that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. I’ll
2:11:46 be like really like aggressive and angry. It’s like stupid idea, terrible idea. Then they mention it
2:11:52 like two weeks later. Now it’s just dumb idea. Mention it again, like a few weeks later, silence.
2:11:55 Then a few weeks later, like, Hey guys, I have a great idea.
2:11:57 It’s that idea. It’s the right idea.
2:12:03 So the slow bake, they’re just like, they know they’re just like, okay, I just going to,
2:12:07 it’s just a water on a rock. I’ll get to it. We’re just going to take a while. So the problem is now
2:12:11 I’ve said that they know that. And then you have other people that have to deal with me that like,
2:12:15 I’m very difficult to deal with. Obviously you are too. And like, I think like, that’s the one
2:12:18 thing we can bond over. You’re not trying to be mean. Just like, it’s just a part of our
2:12:25 personalities. And so the answer to your question is founders is a one person. So like I read, I read
2:12:30 research, I record, I set my own mics. I do all the editing. I hand do the transcripts. I do everything.
2:12:34 The only thing I outsource is that I think I have the clip guy I have is a little genius,
2:12:39 the young kid living in Paris. His name is Maxim. He’s incredible. And then I have somebody now because
2:12:44 I have to play the YouTube game, which I hate and I refuse to do. And all this other, you know,
2:12:46 the YouTube thing, like, yeah, I hate it. I haven’t.
2:12:49 Exactly. I’ve sort of cauterized myself on that.
2:12:54 Yeah. So like, I won’t do that kind of shit. I’d rather not get views. I have to see something
2:12:58 and say, I would click on that myself. I’m not doing things for numbers. I didn’t even know how
2:13:01 many people were listening to founders till like recent, till like first, like six years. I never
2:13:04 looked. And then I started doing these big sponsorship deals and they’re like, oh, I should
2:13:07 look. And they’re like, oh, this is great. But I don’t like thinking about numbers. I don’t want
2:13:13 it to influence anything that I do. And so founders basically take seven days. Usually I’m late on the
2:13:22 episode. I could see something in common with Dan Carlin. Yeah. I’m like five days late. He’s five
2:13:24 months late. God, man.
2:13:26 Love you, Dan. You know that.
2:13:33 Yeah. He’s literally the best podcaster I’ve ever lived. So what I realized is if I was going to do
2:13:39 this, I would need a team. And I don’t like working with other people because I am difficult. I can be
2:13:44 mean. I just am. And I don’t want to be mean. You know, I really don’t. Like you mentioned earlier,
2:13:50 like not getting some of the bad personality traits from them, you know? And I was worried. Like I’ve
2:13:54 asked friends, like, do you think I’m like sociopathic? Am I listening? Like, no, you have
2:13:57 empathy. Like you’re like, you have a hard outer shell, but you’re really soft in the middle.
2:14:00 Patrick would tell you that. He’s just like turtle. Yeah, exactly. When I was in Japan,
2:14:05 we went to some, what’s the ones where you have like 20 course meals? Oh, omakase.
2:14:09 Yeah. And they try to. Literally means basically I’ll leave it to you. Omakase-ru is like,
2:14:14 leave it to you. So you can use it that way too. Ah, omakase-ru. But why do they call it omakase
2:14:18 and it’s like multiple, what does it have to do with? Omakase is you, you don’t pick anything a la
2:14:22 carte. You let the chef sit down and they just give you what they want to give you. Yes. And then
2:14:25 they come in there and make sure. So you’re leaving it up to them. But then they come in after
2:14:29 everything and they like, like want to talk to you about it. Oh, that’s very on Japanese. Okay.
2:14:33 That’s probably for foreigners. Okay. So they try to give me. I mean, they might be like,
2:14:37 this is this. And then they stop. Well, but this guy was giving you a little mini TED talks. He tried
2:14:42 to give me, no, he tried to give me the Essence of Turtle. It was baby turtle. I was like, I’m not
2:14:47 eating turtle. Doesn’t sound great. I’m not, I’m not excited about Essence of Turtle. Hey, the face you
2:14:51 just made should be the thumbnail for this. I mean, I feel like if David Center doesn’t work as a podcast
2:14:58 name, you could have Essence of Turtle. So what I realized is I need a team. So
2:15:02 what I could see is eventually going down. Like right now I’m making a new Founders episode,
2:15:08 like every like 10 to 14 days, which is not good. And I try to do every week. The cadence probably
2:15:11 should be every two weeks because how me and Rick were talking about this this morning in regards to
2:15:16 you the same way. It’s like, what’s that old apocryphal saying that wrote about your short
2:15:21 letter, but I didn’t have time. So I wrote your long one. He says, me and you share that thing where
2:15:25 it’s like the reading is not taking longer. The recording is taking longer. It’s the editing before I do
2:15:32 anything. It’s this will be 15,000 word thing. I’m trying to get down to 5,000 words takes so long to
2:15:38 do. So answer your question could see a future where I’m never gonna stop doing Founders where I have to
2:15:45 reduce. It can’t be, you know, 52 a year. Second and biggest thing is I took an idea from one of
2:15:52 Rockefeller’s biographies. So one of the things that I do that I also think is important is you read all the
2:15:55 famous biographies, but you got to go through the bibliographies. Books are made out of books.
2:16:01 Everybody has read Titan by Ron Chernow. In the bibliography of that, there’s a better, the best
2:16:04 Rockefeller biography I’ve ever read. And I have like eight at the house I haven’t read yet. I collect like
2:16:10 obscure Rockefeller biographies that I’ll eventually get to. What’s your favorite one? It’s called John D.
2:16:13 The Founding Fathers of Rockefeller’s by David Freeman Hawk.
2:16:15 Better writer than a titler.
2:16:20 Yes. 250 pages instead of 800, but all about what you really want to know. You don’t want to know about
2:16:25 where his grandfather was born. You want to know how he built standard oil. And there’s this idea in there
2:16:29 that I’ve used called secret allies. This is going to answer your other question about podcasting,
2:16:33 where he’s at the beginning of the oil industry. It’s the very beginning and he’s there.
2:16:34 Rough and tumble time.
2:16:39 Yeah. No one knows shit about oil refining. So what does he do? He goes and builds a network
2:16:44 of secret allies with other oil refiners. And then eventually do something that’s even more nefarious.
2:16:49 They start something called like the Oil Refiners Association of America or something. And then he
2:16:53 gets himself elected president for that. And then what happens is like, it’s like if we had a podcaster
2:16:56 union, I’m president of the podcaster union. And then I go to you and like, Tim, what’s your downloads
2:17:01 this month? Okay. And how much are you charging for ads? And then who’s your next guest? And he’s
2:17:05 getting all this data. So then he sees that’s a joker. I don’t have to, that guy’s already out of
2:17:08 business. He doesn’t even know. We don’t have to worry about that guy. Yeah. That guy’s a killer.
2:17:13 I need to buy his company and make him a partner. And so this idea of secret allies. So I’m obsessed
2:17:18 with podcasting. And so what I would go do, I’d go around and I would talk to any podcaster would talk
2:17:24 to me. And we talk about everything, downloads, ads, who are you selling to, how are you selling,
2:17:26 who are you using for editing? Maybe that’s the better sense I got.
2:17:32 No, cause I give, I give. I know. I’m kidding.
2:17:38 There’s, there’s people literally like, they’ll even tell you like there’s podcasters that literally
2:17:42 like I took an idea from one podcast and gave it to another podcast. Cause that’s the whole thing.
2:17:45 We don’t, I don’t collect it and hold it. We spread it around and they’ve made millions
2:17:47 and millions of dollars from these ideas.
2:17:49 A friend named Kevin Kelly. Kevin Rose does that too.
2:17:49 Yeah.
2:17:53 Just gives away. Derek Sivers does it too. Gives away as many as possible. And if he can’t
2:17:55 get rid of one that keeps him up at night, he’s like, all right.
2:18:00 We share. So if you’re talking about podcast data, who’s the mad scientist podcast data,
2:18:04 Chris Hutchins. And you talked to him. We both talked to him and we, you like, he has good
2:18:08 shit. Cause you tell, he tells you stuff and he tells me stuff, you know, like that I didn’t
2:18:12 know. And he’s like this weird mad scientist, but he’s in like this weird part of podcasting.
2:18:13 I don’t even think about all the hacks.
2:18:14 People can check him out.
2:18:15 He’s been on your podcast twice.
2:18:19 Yeah. And, um, once because he wanted to have this long conversation with me about a bunch
2:18:23 of stuff I was doing. And I was like, if we’re going to do that, make it good with your questions
2:18:25 and we’ll just record it. And then I can share it because I don’t want to answer all these
2:18:28 questions over and over again. It was about podcasting.
2:18:33 It’s a, it’s a great idea. And so basically I took that idea. So anyways, I was able to build
2:18:36 a lot of relationships with a lot of great podcasters. We’re friends, we share information,
2:18:41 but then you also see like, Oh wait, there’s like a lot of disparity between like podcast
2:18:47 teams and stuff. And so Rob Moore and Andrew human tried to recruit me years ago because
2:18:51 they have a podcast network called psychom that they really don’t do much with. Okay. Cause
2:18:56 it’s really hard to like launch another health podcast when they’re kind of dominating that
2:19:00 vertical. Like, is there another human in that vertical? That’s not discovered unlikely
2:19:06 and everything parallels or everything around us. And so I got this crazy DM and then a phone
2:19:10 call with Rob and he’s just like, dude, who are you? And this is when I had no,
2:19:16 again, 5,000 listeners. And he’s like, I’ve never come across anything like this. And then
2:19:19 we went up talking. I think every single time we talked about this on the phone for over two
2:19:23 hours every time. And it’s all about podcasting. They’re like, we’re looking for other humans
2:19:30 and you’re like this giant nerd that like loves reading obscure shit and breaking it down in like
2:19:34 an entertaining manner, just like Andrew does. And he’s like, would you be interested in joining
2:19:40 us on psychom? And I was like, you are two weeks too late because it’s not announced yet, but I have a
2:19:45 verbal agreement with this guy named Patrick and I’m joining Colossus, but we still became friends and
2:19:52 everything else. And so basically me and Rob, like we’d spend a lot of time. I spend my summers in Malibu.
2:19:55 So I see them all the time. That’s where they’re, and I’ve talked to Andrew and like,
2:19:57 they’re just killers.
2:19:58 Yeah. They’re very good at what they do.
2:20:03 They’re just operationally excellent. And they have a small but mighty team and every single person
2:20:07 on that team, they’re very focused. So like they’re photographers, one of the best photographers,
2:20:10 they’re editors, one of the best editors, they’re video people are some of the best video people,
2:20:14 they’re internet guys, one of the best internet guys. Like it’s just like just everything.
2:20:18 And so their whole point was just, I was like, listen, founders is never going anywhere.
2:20:25 It’s staying on Colossus, like staying exactly what it is. But if I do something new, I’ll let you know.
2:20:31 So when I went to them, it was just like, here’s the thing. I am going to pick the guests. I’m highly
2:20:35 disagreeable. I will never take direction from anybody. I want to pick the guests and I want to
2:20:41 have the conversations. And then everything else has to be a plus team around me. And that means from
2:20:49 visuals to editing to clips to every single thing. And that’s they’re operationally excellent. I have
2:20:53 not met a better, like just spend time with them. Very well architected. And then the way they built
2:20:59 their business is genius. So what does success look like for you two years from now, three, five,
2:21:03 pick your timeframe. Success looks the same now and forever that I’m proud of what I made.
2:21:07 That’s it. Like, I don’t care what the numbers are. I love the client. Let’s say this show does
2:21:15 really well. Oh, it is going to. So David Sena. Yeah. Does really well. Yeah. And then that’s
2:21:21 saying Rob would do this, but it’s like, you know what we would really love to do is a third
2:21:29 show. And it’s incredibly compelling. Maybe it’s slightly different angle or a totally different
2:21:35 angle. Who knows? Right. It’s like, who the hell knows? Interviewing spouses of all these
2:21:38 famous people, which I think would actually be an amazing podcast. I’m sure someone’s doing it,
2:21:47 but besides the quality of the product and being proud of the product, like there is such a thing
2:21:53 as too many different products. Oh, for sure. There is such a thing as simply burning the candle at
2:22:00 both ends. So you’re at a battery capacity that compromises the product maybe long-term or your life,
2:22:03 right? You’ve got more considerations than just business. Yep.
2:22:10 So how do you think about those other factors when you telescope out a few years?
2:22:16 I’m not a long-term planner. So like, I would say like, I’m basically non-analytical at all.
2:22:20 I go straight off intuition. Steve Jobs does this great line where he’s just like,
2:22:24 he thinks intuition is more important than intelligence. And the intuition played a larger
2:22:29 role in like his success, anything else, intuition and perseverance. And so like, I used to think I was
2:22:34 more analytical and like, I have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan. All a great life is, is a string of
2:22:40 great days. And so the furthest I plan out is like 24 hours. I actually have this weird, I don’t even
2:22:45 know if I should say this publicly. I don’t think people like humans actually understand time at all.
2:22:48 And like, when you say a decade, like, yeah, we know decades, like 10 years, but like, do we actually
2:22:53 understand what that means? Like, I think we understand, we maybe understand a week, a month. We
2:22:58 definitely understand a day because that’s how we live. We live 24 hours at a time. And so all I try
2:23:04 to do is like, can I design a day that I really enjoyed? Not like hedonistic. I’m not like laying
2:23:08 around doing nothing. Like I have to work. I feel guilt and shame when I’m not being productive. And
2:23:12 that’s probably a bad thing. There’s all reasons that you can psychoanalyze why that is the case,
2:23:16 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
2:23:21 vacations. I don’t like doing the stuff I get invited to is crazy. It’s just like, I like to work.
2:23:25 I like podcasting. I’m obsessed with it. Everybody’s like, why don’t you, we talked
2:23:28 about this most of us. Like, why don’t you do something else? I like doing this. I will keep
2:23:32 doing this. So here’s your question. I just try to make a great day. And the way I make a great day
2:23:37 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
2:23:41 I’m really proud of. And I want to spend time with people that I love and admire. And I’m going to do
2:23:45 that the next day and the next day and the next day. And I think if I have a great day today and a
2:23:49 great day tomorrow and a shitty day a month from now, and then a better day the next day,
2:23:53 and I get to my life and it’s just a string of great days, that will be a great life.
2:23:58 And so two years from now, I don’t know, because if you asked me two years ago, I said, there’s no
2:24:03 way I’m going to do another podcast. But I would say like, my answer is that simple. The maxim I like
2:24:09 about this is like, I love the climb. I don’t care what the summit is. I just like the activity for the
2:24:14 sake of itself. And so therefore I’m going to do it. And I hope it’s well-received, but I couldn’t
2:24:18 have predicted that founders is going to turn out the way it was. So I don’t know. I’m just going to
2:24:26 do great work that I’m completely fascinated by. And it gives me energy. And on the other side of
2:24:31 that, like this, what Stephen King said, I’m not just the writer. I’m the first reader. I listened
2:24:38 to every single episode of founders before anybody else. And I just threw out one. So the book is great.
2:24:42 It’s Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care of Itself. I read it the first time five, six years ago.
2:24:47 I read it again. Love the book. I made a podcast on it. It’s like hour and 15 minutes long.
2:24:54 I finished editing it. I listened to it. Not good enough. Threw it away. That’s it. Can I make
2:24:59 something that I’m proud of? So I believe all of that. And I want to push on it a little bit because
2:25:06 the great days make great lives. I agree with, but now your sort of circle of interaction is expanding
2:25:12 with a show that involves other people with very busy schedules. So to what extent are you going to
2:25:18 be traveling to all these people versus having people travel to you? I mean, that type of decision
2:25:22 has longer term implications, right? So I’m curious how you think about that.
2:25:27 So the way I think about this is this goes to the other side of me. That’s probably not healthy
2:25:31 that like I have a ruthless competitive drive that I think would terrify most people.
2:25:38 I have a very negative inner monologue that I never think I’m doing enough. I have like
2:25:44 entire, like multiple people depending on me financially, way above and beyond just your
2:25:48 wife and kids, like other people that I have to make sure that I can take care of. So I have
2:25:52 a lot of pressure on me. I want the pressure. So to answer your question, it’s like, I’ll do
2:25:56 whatever it takes to win. And so if that means I got to get on a plane or I get a little less
2:26:01 sleep, then like, that’s what’s going to happen. But I also think like you’re also smart and you can
2:26:06 think about these things like, okay, you want to talk to extreme winners in business is essentially
2:26:10 like not really startup founders. I want people that have like decades of experience, you know,
2:26:14 every single person, if you look at the first few, like the people that we’ve been recording with so
2:26:18 long, like I’m just more interested in talking to people that have done things for a long time
2:26:25 that are smarter and more productive and better than I am. And so setting up here where we are in
2:26:30 New York, probably a good idea because everybody comes through New York. Now we’ve recorded several
2:26:37 in LA. Here’s also thing to consider. Most of the people I’m talking to have planes. Rick pulls me
2:26:41 aside and says this all the time. Multiple people have told me this. You don’t understand the impact
2:26:45 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
2:26:50 numbers. And so people have literally gotten their jets and flown across the country because I was
2:26:55 like, Hey, can you do it on this day in LA or the teams there? It’s like more convenient. And they do
2:27:00 it because they think I’ve done something for them, but I’m just like, no, no, no. I haven’t done anything
2:27:04 for you. I just thank you for listening. The fact that you listened to my podcast means I get to do this
2:27:09 for a living. This is where Munger has really heavily basically influenced my thinking. He’s just like
2:27:15 the reciprocation tendency in humans is so pronounced and it’s evolved. Yes. And it’s never
2:27:19 going away. And what I didn’t understand, and I still don’t understand, cause I don’t like talking
2:27:22 about, I don’t like thinking about this shit. I think about like, as if I’m talking to one person,
2:27:29 right? Is the fact that so many people have gotten value, like every single person’s recorded an
2:27:34 episode with us for the new show so far has listened to a ton of shows of mine. And their point
2:27:39 was it’s important work. Todd Graves has actually told me this two weeks ago. He’s like, it’s
2:27:44 important work and it’s more important the bigger company gets, because if I can hear a single idea
2:27:49 or either avoid a mistake or get a good idea and it makes a 1% difference on my business, that’s,
2:27:53 I don’t, I can’t do math. I can’t do public math. A billion dollars, whatever the number is,
2:27:58 $2 billion. Like it’s a huge, I don’t know that’d be 10%. So it makes a 10% difference in his business.
2:28:04 It’s a huge swing. And so, so far, and again, you have a private jet, like where do you actually
2:28:09 live? We’re, we’re, wherever you happen to be. Also your carrying costs for that jet are pretty
2:28:13 high. Yeah. So there’s a little bit of pressure just to utilize the damn thing. You want to hear
2:28:17 something funny? I’ll go back to why I think New York and LA is going to be where I’m recording most
2:28:21 of these. And we’re willing to travel. We will, if we have to. Dyson says, come do it. I’m coming to
2:28:26 England. I don’t give a shit. Sam Zell told me, he’s like, I told you that that lunch I had
2:28:31 with him changed my life. He’s like, don’t make the same mistake. He’s like, I know all
2:28:36 the rich guys. He says, first of all, they’re all guys. So what he told me, he goes to, you’d
2:28:39 be surprised how many of them are miserable and they like do stuff they don’t like for more
2:28:44 money that they can’t spend. And then they make the same mistake where they buy slight, this
2:28:49 is his words, not mine. He goes, they buy slightly nicer versions of the same shit. He goes, the
2:28:52 difference between a $10 million house and a $30 million house is negligible. And he’s
2:28:58 like, I own my place in Chicago and my compound in Malibu. That’s where he used compound. And he
2:29:03 goes, I rent everything else. The things that you own start to own you. And he said every
2:29:07 year after I think Thanksgiving and in between Christmas, you take his entire family, extended
2:29:12 family to this little village in France. And he said, Zell was a shit talker. And he said
2:29:17 funny things. He goes, I could buy the whole village. He goes, I don’t, I rent it. And then
2:29:20 I don’t think about it until I go back. It’s somebody else’s problem. And he goes, there’s
2:29:24 only one true luxury in life. He goes, private jet, try to get to private jet money.
2:29:31 And he’s like, I use my jet three hours a day. On average, he uses jet three hours a day. He
2:29:35 was in South Florida because he’s like, I woke up Chicago this morning, got on my jet. I went
2:29:39 across the street, gave a talk to a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs because that’s
2:29:42 what he wanted to spend his last days doing. He knew he was dying. He didn’t tell me though.
2:29:45 I didn’t know that. We were scheduled to have another dinner and it got canceled and they
2:29:48 said he was sick. I was like, oh, he got COVID. He died three weeks later. So I never
2:29:53 got to see him again. The way he was spending his last days at his own expense, traveling all over
2:29:58 the world on his beautiful giant plane, spending a lot of money is passing on the knowledge that he
2:30:02 learned through 61 years to other investors and younger entrepreneurs. And so he goes, I did that
2:30:07 this morning, came over here, had lunch. I’m going to get in my car and go back to Chicago. He used it
2:30:12 three hours a day. So, so far people have been willing to fly. They come to us. I’ll come to some
2:30:17 people if they’re super busy schedules. And then I think just setting up in like a place where they all
2:30:21 will come through would make a lot of sense. Anyone on your wishlist you haven’t been able to track
2:30:27 down? No, surprisingly. Again, I don’t like thinking about this where like, I don’t understand
2:30:32 that today, right now, if I do an episode on somebody living, it’s going to get to them.
2:30:38 They might not be a listener. This just happened with Jamie Iveen. So people are always surprised.
2:30:42 They think, you know, who’s on your list? Like, obviously I look like respect Bezos, respect Elon,
2:30:46 like all of them, you know, but I would say like Todd Graves. I’m like, what the hell’s wrong
2:30:50 James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy? And they’re like, they’re just like, I’m weirdly obsessed with
2:30:54 these people. And so one of the people I’m obsessed with is Jimmy Iveen. And Jimmy Iveen, Defiant
2:31:02 Ones. Such a good series. I watch it. Oh my God. It is so well done. If anyone hasn’t seen
2:31:07 Defiant Ones, go watch it. It’s head spinning. With the description of the four-part documentaries,
2:31:11 oh, it’s a relationship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iveen. Yeah. It’s really a documentary about
2:31:15 entrepreneurship. It’s about chasing a path. There’s no path in front of you. There was no path for
2:31:20 Dre to get out of Compton. There’s no path from Jimmy to get from the son of a longshoreman in
2:31:24 Brooklyn to go. What happened to him? He’s fascinating. And then this is my point about
2:31:29 like, what do you actually value in life? Jimmy’s a billionaire. You know, I don’t know. He’s got a
2:31:34 billion, $2 billion worth of cases. I’d be more interested in that than if he had a hundred
2:31:37 billion dollars. Like if you asked me whose life would you want, Buffett or Munger? Buffett was a hundred
2:31:44 times richer. I’m taking Munger every day. What I like about Jimmy is that he lived an interesting
2:31:52 life. The episode, you see it on Defiant Ones, crazy stories in there, but Rick Rubin, who you
2:31:58 mentioned if podcasting is saturated, we can get to. Rick Rubin’s really good because he’s a world-class
2:32:05 listener. He took a skillset. What was his skill for the work that he did? Why are these musicians
2:32:11 something they don’t hear? And to suggest something they might not hear, might not understand.
2:32:17 And the episode he did with Jimmy Iovine, I think came out in 2023. I think it was like the single
2:32:21 best podcast I listened to all year. And it’s just Jimmy Iovine telling insane story after insane story
2:32:28 about the music business. Because the music business is a wild business. And what I like about my business
2:32:34 is that it’s like a unique experience generator. It creates opportunities and experiences you can’t buy.
2:32:40 And the amount of people I get to meet and talk to, my memoirs are going to be wild because of like the
2:32:45 weird dinners I’ve been to and the planes I’ve been on and the boats I’ve been on. And it started because
2:32:51 I was a giant nerd with a giant head sitting in a room by himself for five years, just mainlining
2:32:57 biography after biography after biography. Jimmy’s really interesting to me. And then what happened is
2:33:02 part of this, I can’t tell you how I got connected. He agreed to do the show. And one of the previous guests
2:33:07 is the one that connected me, which again, I just don’t feel I deserve how nice these people have
2:33:11 been to me and what they’re willing to do. And I don’t even like asking them for this, but it got
2:33:15 to Jimmy. Is that true? The worst possible- You put a lot of work into your podcast. It doesn’t matter
2:33:19 though. The worst possible thing- Do you feel like you don’t deserve it? I feel like that’s an important
2:33:23 question. I’ll answer that question in a minute. Buffett has a line. It’s like the people that win
2:33:28 are the ones that their eyes are on the field, not the scoreboard. I don’t, I was going for a walk last
2:33:34 night and like, you know, this happens to your time. I’m way earlier. You’re like an OG, man.
2:33:39 You’ve been famous, like way. Like when people stop me on the street, which happens, I’m like,
2:33:42 how do you know what I look like? That’s going to happen more and more.
2:33:45 Yeah, exactly. So like, I’ve read all your blog posts about this too. I’ve been like,
2:33:48 I was on the phone with Morgan Housel this morning, who’s a big fan of yours. Obviously you
2:33:53 guys are fans. He’s been, yeah. And we were talking about that, like the security around this
2:33:57 and all this other stuff. And then we were talking about you. Morgan’s just the peach of a
2:34:00 human. He’s the opposite of me. Psychology of money. Great book.
2:34:03 Okay. Won’t stop selling. Yeah. Stop selling.
2:34:06 I know, man. Got lightning in a bottle on that one. So.
2:34:10 Yeah. Earned it. Earned it too. Oh, a hundred percent. And the nicest guy,
2:34:13 if you think you want to find my directional opposite, and we’ll go back to the question
2:34:18 you think is important. Morgan genuinely believes that his ceiling, that he should be an insurance
2:34:23 salesman somewhere in the Midwest, making a hundred thousand a year. And the fact that this guy
2:34:30 got really, really wealthy, astronomical numbers, really, really wealthy and just wakes up every
2:34:34 day. Can’t believe his life. I wake up every day. Like, why am I not a billionaire? It’s like,
2:34:38 it’s like, he’s happy in a way I will never be. And this is why I think Daniel X advice about chasing
2:34:45 Daniel does not believe. This is one of the first things I asked him on the show was he was the one
2:34:50 that put this idea out there that his life is not about happiness. It’s about impact. He is not chasing
2:34:55 happiness. He’s chasing impact. And he’s the one that actually convinced Dara, the founder of Uber
2:34:59 tells the story. They were having drinks. Dara CEO. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Good. Good distinction.
2:35:05 I met Travis too. Yeah. Most intense person I’ve ever been in contact with. He’s, he is one hell of a
2:35:09 builder, man. Oh, for sure. And different batteries. Most intense. And I’ve been around a lot of tense.
2:35:13 He is. Yeah. He’s. Yeah. Very fascinating. He has different gears than most people. Oh,
2:35:17 and the storytelling and the raconteur. He’s a phenomenal storyteller, phenomenal communicator.
2:35:22 So anyways, when Dara was going back and forth about becoming CEO of Uber, he said,
2:35:26 he was just going to say no, because like he was pretty happy with his life. And Daniel in a very
2:35:29 direct way is like, since when’s life about happiness, it’s about impact. It’s like one of
2:35:32 the most important companies in the world and you can have an impact on it. You can have an impact on
2:35:36 the way cities have changed. You absolutely have to do this. And I think that’s like a really interesting
2:35:42 idea. So I am trying to have impact. So to answer your question, do I think I deserve it? I obviously
2:35:47 like know that I put a lot of work into it and I believe that the product is good. And I think I
2:35:55 found what I’ve put on the planet to do, but I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t like thinking
2:36:03 about its impact on other people. I like it because I like it. Like I make it. I’m like,
2:36:07 I would listen to this podcast. I think it’s valuable. I think you start doing shit for the
2:36:10 wrong reasons. I talked to a lot of the head people at Spotify and they said one of the biggest
2:36:14 mistakes they made is like, the great thing about podcasting is like the people that come up like we
2:36:19 did through like the garage. I listened to your first episode. Like I remember Tim, Tim, talk, talk,
2:36:23 Tim, Tim, talk. Yeah. Like I remember my kitchen table with a friend. And why did you do it? I think
2:36:26 you had a couple of glasses of wine, right? And with a friend, because you’re like, I don’t figure it out
2:36:30 pretty quickly after listening to episode one, that the second episode is going to be sober.
2:36:33 Yeah. Oh man. Josh Waitzkin. Number two.
2:36:37 But you come up with like, you did it because you were curious. You, you only talk to people you
2:36:41 really want to talk to you. You had no production costs. And so Spotify said they flipped it. They’re
2:36:45 like, we took something that was low production costs done by enthusiasts and people in the garage.
2:36:49 Huberman’s analogy of this is like, it’s punk rock. Punk rock is great because it started with people
2:36:53 that just wanted to play in the garage and then they got good. And then they played for stadiums.
2:36:58 And so Spotify is like, Oh, what we did was like, we took a low production cost,
2:37:03 made a high production cost because we had these big ass contracts. And then we hired celebrities
2:37:07 celebrities and no one listened. And the people that did listen, they stopped because the
2:37:10 celebrities were just doing it for money. They didn’t do it because they love it. And I think
2:37:15 that’s the key. It’s like, I truly love this. I did it for five and a half years when no one was
2:37:19 listening. That tells you that I like, love it. But I think one of the worst things you could do is
2:37:24 like, I’m going to do it because status is the funny thing. Podcasting is dorky. It’s low status.
2:37:30 In 2016, you think that was fucking high status? No, no. It was like you dorky nerd with a podcast.
2:37:35 I’m not asking if you’re seeking status. It was more if you feel that you’re unworthy
2:37:41 of people flying to you and doing these things is a very, those are two very different questions.
2:37:45 I meant like, I think you see this now that podcasting is obviously very influential and
2:37:49 can be, there’s so many people jumping into it that clearly don’t love it. They like it because
2:37:54 the CPMs are high or like whatever, or they want to be famous. I had no video for eight years. Do you
2:37:58 think I want to be famous? Do you think I want to be recognized? Like, no, I obviously don’t. I had
2:38:03 to fucking, I had the most powerful person podcasting berate me at dinner in a nice way saying, you idiot,
2:38:07 you have to do video. That’s the only reason to do video. Cause Daniel told me to. And if, how smart
2:38:11 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.
2:38:16 Like, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I think at some point, like the platform gets big enough.
2:38:21 Like I flew here for this. Why? Because you have a massive platform and you’re willing to extend it
2:38:25 to me. And like, I’d travel wherever you say, which is Iceland. I’m coming to Iceland, brother.
2:38:28 Like, I don’t know what to tell you. Like you want to go to, I knew you’re like Argentina. Let’s go down
2:38:33 there. Like we’ll do in Argentina. So yeah, I think eventually when they see it’s big enough that yeah,
2:38:38 people would come to you also try to make it easier. And you know, I’m not doing it in Columbia,
2:38:42 Missouri. I’m doing it in New York or LA. You’re going to be there anyways, you know?
2:38:49 And also with the particular cohort that you’re interviewing with jets, if they’re like,
2:38:53 sure, I’ll fly to New York. And then they can also set up like five other meetings with friends
2:38:55 or business associates or fill in the blank. Right.
2:39:01 Make it easy. But I think really, man, like this is the turtle in me. I don’t like asking the turtle.
2:39:06 You can ask all the people that we have a bunch of mutual close friends. I don’t like asking for
2:39:11 help. And I think one of the weird ways that I think I built true friendships with some of these
2:39:18 people is because all day long, it’s gimme, gimme, gimme. Yeah. I have never asked Rick for anything.
2:39:25 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
2:39:30 want anything from this. And I think I didn’t understand because I didn’t come from this background
2:39:34 background that when you’re high profile and you’re building these empires, these are all empire
2:39:38 builders all day long. They’re just surrounded by people that want something from them. And I’m just
2:39:42 like, here, I have this podcast that might be value for you. I don’t want anything from you. And when
2:39:48 they tell me, ask me for stuff, I still don’t like doing it. I don’t like doing it. It like really hurt
2:39:54 me to like, would you be on my show? Yeah. But I was like, all right, I’m going to ask for something.
2:39:58 I’ll do this. And not a single person I’ve asked, I said, no. Yeah. Well, you love what you do. I mean,
2:40:07 that is essential to producing the quality that you produce. It’s essential for the endurance
2:40:15 to sort of outperform and outlast because podcasting as a whole is just an elephant
2:40:21 graveyard of three to 10 episode shows. Yes. Yeah. So if you choose something you really like
2:40:28 that you would make because you intrinsically enjoy it, right, if it’s an outgrowth of reading
2:40:33 the biographies, taking the notes, and you’re like, well, this is really sort of in terms of
2:40:39 additional work for me on top of something I might already be doing, actually not like the majority of
2:40:50 the pie. And you have the fuel of that obsession. You’re going to do well, even if it’s just for
2:40:54 yourself, but certainly with the longevity, you have the competitive advantage of durability.
2:40:59 That means a lot coming from you and everything that you’ve accomplished. And I think you actually
2:41:05 hit to the essence of it where it’s like, I can’t sleep after these things. I had to get up the next
2:41:11 day when I was in Austin. I think I had a 7 a.m. flight and I slept maybe three hours because like
2:41:15 gem after gem after gem from Michael Dell or like, you’ll see this in the Todd Graves episode.
2:41:20 Dude, we were like the same person. We’re the same person. And so we’re like, we’re like spontaneously
2:41:24 high-fiving this. I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of like, this guy’s a dork. Like, hey, give me
2:41:29 another high-five, buddy. Like, we were just like geeking out about like minute details of just being
2:41:33 obsessed with his whole thing is like, do one thing and doing it better than anybody else. I remember
2:41:39 going from the airport, it’s in Baton Rouge, and I immediately called Sam Hinckley, who’s the closest
2:41:44 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
2:41:51 doing these things already. Like, I, I can’t stop. Like, this was crazy. Yeah, it’s a good sign. Crazy.
2:41:57 I mean, that’s how I pick my projects largely. It’s how I pick some of my startups too that I get
2:42:08 involved with. If I have what I would call sort of good insomnia for at least a few nights in a given
2:42:13 week, and then I try to quell it, doesn’t matter how much trazodone I take or anything else.
2:42:19 Like, I just am so excited by something that my mind is worrying and I can’t go to sleep. I’m like,
2:42:25 okay, there’s probably something there. Also, because it seems to be such an energetic unlock.
2:42:33 I’m like, even if that one thing doesn’t do very well, if I can kind of create this like nuclear power
2:42:38 from that, it’s not compartmentalized. It can apply to other things. So I get it. I get it. And I was
2:42:43 listening to, I don’t know how I found it. Actually, I was, I was going on, I think it’s Tom
2:42:49 Papa’s show. It’s a comedian, great interviewer. And I was going on his show. This is a while ago.
2:42:54 And I was doing some homework on my own, listened to an interview he did where he interviewed Joe
2:43:01 Rogan. And I’m paraphrasing here, obviously, but Rogan effectively said, he’s like, yeah, I don’t really
2:43:07 think much about like discipline or willpower. He said, what I do have though is obsession.
2:43:13 And when I find something that I’m obsessed with, when I deep dive, it’s like, I don’t need to worry
2:43:18 about discipline. I don’t need to worry about willpower. So it’s like finding that thing that
2:43:24 you are obsessed by. And so I think you’ve done that. You’ve done that. So you found your lane.
2:43:29 Like a lot of people don’t find it. They don’t find that thing. It’s like, you wonder if Kobe Bryant
2:43:32 were born somewhere and didn’t have the chance to pick up basketball, would it have been something
2:43:37 else? Like maybe if you’re a Michael Jordan, okay, it’s baseball or this or that, but it’s like you
2:43:41 found your thing. That’s kind of amazing. No, I appreciate it. And the way I think about it,
2:43:46 it’s like, it took me 32 years to find my path and five and a half years of struggle before it could
2:43:51 even pay my bills. It was like a long time. Kobe found it. Like imagine finding it at 12 like he did
2:43:57 and knowing I read the 600 page biography on him by Roland Lazaby and the middle school guidance
2:44:00 counselors. Like he wrote down, what are you going to do? He’s like, I’m going to play an NBA. He’s
2:44:04 like, you need to pick something else. That’s a one in a million shot. He goes, I’m going to be that
2:44:10 one in a million to be like that. So sure at 12 years old. And this is what goes back to the lack
2:44:15 of introspection. Like I had a lot of like angst and like, what is the meaning of life? Or like,
2:44:20 what am I doing here? And then once you find your thing, like there’s like a definitely not resting on
2:44:25 laurels, but there is like almost like a relief, like, cause it’s not just like finding something you love
2:44:32 to do. It’s like, what is that? You’re like a Japanese encyclopedia. Ikigai? Yeah. It’s like
2:44:37 the intersection of like what you love to do, what you’re good at and what’s good for the world.
2:44:42 Something like that. Yeah. Ikigai gets used in a bunch of different ways. Yeah. Japan’s always good
2:44:48 for these pithy conceptual words. I think I’m just going to be blasphemous for you, but like,
2:44:53 I think travel is generally overrated after you do it. I am not jumping in. After you do it for a
2:44:58 while, because the problem is like, we keep going to all the nice places and like all the nice places
2:45:03 are all the same to each other. One thing that Japan blew my mind and why like it’s the top of my list
2:45:06 now of everywhere I’ve been and where I’d want to go again is because it’s the, it’s one of the few
2:45:12 truly distinct cultures in the world. Yeah. It’s a wild one. They also, they’re kind of a
2:45:20 chameleon because they pull so much from other cultures. So it’s when it was in isolation, it was
2:45:25 certainly kind of an alien environment. And then you look at everything they’ve incorporated. And in some
2:45:30 cases, in the case of say like the Toyota way, right? Yeah. You have, I guess it was, I want to say
2:45:36 Deming. Yep. Right. Who was basically not ignored, but certainly not embraced in this country of
2:45:43 birth gets adopted by the Japanese and you see them do this over and over and over again. So yes,
2:45:50 it’s a fascinating place. And I would agree with you that especially people who travel in the lap of,
2:45:54 it doesn’t need to be luxury. It could just be comfort. Like rich person travels, the most
2:45:59 boring shit in the world. Same stores, same restaurants. It’s just like, okay, you’re going to
2:46:05 the Four Seasons in 12 different places, getting on the wifi, doing whatever it is you would have been
2:46:13 doing at home and then going to the most expensive meals. It’s just not interesting. So I think if
2:46:18 anybody wants a great book on the art of long-term world travel, if that’s of interest, Vagabonding
2:46:22 by Rolf Potts. I read that because of you. Yeah. The amount of books in my library because of you.
2:46:26 It did the same thing with you that I did with all these other people. It’s like, oh, Tim said to read it,
2:46:32 I read it. Yeah. And a lot of these books, they’re underneath it all, at least in the case of
2:46:40 Rolf Potts’ book, Vagabonding. They’re really kind of like philosophical operating systems. And it’s a
2:46:44 hat you can try on. You don’t have to wear it forever, but it’s like, okay, if you only have
2:46:51 one jacket to wear, which is like six-year workaholic, neglecting family guy, just expand your wardrobe.
2:46:56 You can always put that jacket back on. You just hang it up for a moment. And similarly, I like these
2:47:03 books and they certainly can be business books, whether it’s Branson, who is in some ways, I mean,
2:47:10 he took risks, but he’s kind of the opposite, at least in a lot of capacities to like a Dyson,
2:47:17 right? Like he risk mitigates the hell out of his ventures and caps the downside in so many creative
2:47:24 ways. Like his airline. Exactly. So like the artistry of deal-making for minimizing or capping
2:47:29 downside is one of Branson’s superpowers. Even though the stuff on the magazine covers back in
2:47:33 the day, it was like the madman who’s doing X, Y, and Z and has the models and he’s phenomenal
2:47:39 marketer. And he’s doing like the kiteboarding with a naked model on his back. Remember that picture I
2:47:45 have in my mind? Oh my God. So that looks fun. I mean, he is also can be a wild man, but I digress.
2:47:50 I was just going to say that these are hats that you can put on to test them out as like
2:47:56 philosophical operating systems, which is how I pick a lot of the books, books, books, books. I mean,
2:48:01 I was very similar to you when I was a kid. And also, I mean, all throughout just living in books,
2:48:07 living and living in books. It’s very common though, in these stories, Rockefeller, Abraham Lincoln,
2:48:13 Thomas Edison, Edwin Land, Winston Churchill. The way I say this is like, they don’t just read,
2:48:18 they devour entire shelves. There’s multiple examples of like Thomas Edison read every single
2:48:23 book in the Detroit library. Edwin Land read every single book on light in Harvard, then dropped out
2:48:27 because he didn’t think he had anything else to learn. Moves to New York City. I think one of the
2:48:31 most beautiful buildings is the one we passed on the way here, New York City Public Library. Read
2:48:35 every single book on light in there. And then it’s like, okay, I learned enough. Now I can do my
2:48:42 experiments. It’s just our entire shelves. Monster. David Center, what have we not talked about? People
2:48:47 will be able to find, of course, the show, davidscenter.com. Yep. Is that the best website?
2:48:53 David Center on all social channels, Instagram X, podcast app. Founders podcast, of course,
2:48:57 founderspodcast.com. I appreciate you. Like you’ve included me in your newsletter in the past.
2:49:01 Oh yeah. On your blog. Like I read all your shit and I’m like, and I didn’t even know,
2:49:05 like it’s shocking to me. Like when I said, I’m like, oh, I didn’t, cause it’s not like you told me.
2:49:12 I was like, what the hell? Yeah. You put out, I mean, the, the obsession and attention to detail
2:49:17 doesn’t surprise me at all. Like when you told me about going through your transcripts by hand,
2:49:23 I’m like, yeah, that makes sense. And I really have my fingers crossed for you. I don’t think
2:49:31 you need any luck, but that David Center is as durable as founders podcast. If anybody can do it,
2:49:35 you can do it. So I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you, man. Yeah. Congratulations.
2:49:39 You’ve had a huge influence on me. Oh, thanks man. It’s a long overdue. Like I said, I ran in the
2:49:45 hallway and grabbed you. I was like, it’s been too long. Very, very, very long overdue. So everybody
2:49:53 listening, check out David Center. I’m excited to check it out. And I also know the team at Human Lab,
2:50:03 Andrew, Rob, those guys are all top tier. So what’s coming is going to be absolutely top notch.
2:50:09 So I’m excited to see it. And as always, everybody, we will put links to anything that
2:50:15 came up in this conversation in the show notes, Tim.blog slash podcast, just search Senra S-E-N-R-A
2:50:22 or essence of turtle, and you’ll be able to find everything. And until next time, just be a bit
2:50:29 kinder than is necessary to others. Yes, but also to your self. Thanks for tuning in.
2:50:35 Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet
2:50:40 Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
2:50:45 before the weekend? Between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter,
2:50:51 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is
2:50:57 basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered
2:51:01 or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like my diary of cool things. It often
2:51:08 includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech
2:51:14 tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange
2:51:21 esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds
2:51:26 fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend,
2:51:31 something to think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into
2:51:38 your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for
2:51:44 listening. In the last handful of years, I’ve become very interested in environmental toxins,
2:51:51 avoiding microplastics and many other commonly found compounds all over the place. One place I
2:51:58 looked is in the kitchen. Many people don’t realize just how toxic their cookware is or can be. A lot of
2:52:04 nonstick pans, practically all of them, can release harmful forever chemicals, PFAS, in other words,
2:52:09 spelled PFAS, into your food, your home, and then ultimately that ends up in your body. Teflon is a
2:52:15 prime example of this. It is still the forever chemical that most companies are using. So our
2:52:21 place reached out to me as a potential sponsor. And the first thing I did was look at the reviews of
2:52:29 their products and said, send me one. And that is the titanium always pan pro. And the claim is that
2:52:34 it’s the first nonstick pan with zero coating. So that means zero forever chemicals and durability
2:52:40 that’ll last forever. I was very skeptical. I was very busy. So I said, you know what? I want to test
2:52:44 this thing quickly. It’s supposed to be nonstick. It’s supposed to be durable. I’m going to test it with
2:52:49 two things. I’m going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning because eggs are always a disaster
2:52:56 in anything that isn’t nonstick with the toxic coating. And then I’m going to test it with a steak sear
2:53:04 because I want to see how much it retains heat. And it worked perfectly in both cases. And I was
2:53:10 frankly astonished how well it worked. The titanium always pan pro has become my go-to pan in the
2:53:15 kitchen. It replaces a lot of other things for searing, for eggs, for anything you can imagine.
2:53:22 And the design is really clever. It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron,
2:53:28 nonstick into one product. And now our place is expanding this first of its kind technology to
2:53:33 their titanium pro cookware sets, which are made in limited quantities. So if you’re looking for
2:53:38 non-toxic long lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to
2:53:47 fromourplace.com slash Tim and use code Tim for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100 day risk-free
2:53:52 trial, free shipping, and free returns. Check it out fromourplace.com slash Tim.
2:53:58 Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that
2:54:03 when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative,
2:54:09 creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera, before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive
2:54:16 stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur.
2:54:22 I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that
2:54:29 are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today’s sponsor is so interesting.
2:54:35 It’s been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go.
2:54:40 I need to find people who are great at managing. And that is where Crescent Family Office comes in.
2:54:46 You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T. Crescent Family Office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG
2:54:52 investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs.
2:54:58 They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning,
2:55:04 bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management, just financial management that
2:55:09 would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making things, mastering skills,
2:55:15 spending time with the people I care about. And over many years, I was getting pulled away from that
2:55:21 stuff at least a few days a week, and I’ve completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of
2:55:26 focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call
2:55:34 today at CrescentCapital.com/Tim. That’s spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T. CrescentCapital.com/Tim to see how
2:55:41 Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That’s CrescentCapital.com/Tim.
2:55:45 And disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid
2:55:51 testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So, do your due diligence.