0:00:01 They’re like, would you be interested in selling your company?
0:00:03 The response was, fuck you.
0:00:05 This is a family heirloom.
0:00:22 Okay, so what we’re talking about today is, basically, I don’t listen to any business
0:00:24 podcasts other than Founders.
0:00:26 It’s the only business podcast I listen to.
0:00:30 I listen to Founders, and I listen to MMA and True Crime.
0:00:31 That’s pretty much it.
0:00:35 And so I view you as my friend, but I also am a fan of yours.
0:00:39 And you tweeted out this amazing thing.
0:00:43 It was about the anti-business person, the anti-businessman billionaire.
0:00:48 So the first tenet of these anti-business billionaires is they have high levels of disagreeableness.
0:00:55 This is very important because everybody around you, I just used a reference of Michael Dell.
0:00:56 Michael Dell could be on this list, too.
0:00:59 I’m reading his autobiography, like I said earlier, and I got to the point where they’re
0:01:04 like, he’s taking the company private, and it’s so difficult what he’s trying to do.
0:01:06 And everybody’s just like, why don’t you just give up, Michael?
0:01:07 You’re already rich.
0:01:08 You can start another company.
0:01:10 He’s like, I don’t want to start another company.
0:01:11 I want this.
0:01:13 This is my first and last company.
0:01:15 In his case, that’s very rare to have your first company or your last company.
0:01:16 This is my last company.
0:01:17 But then he has a line.
0:01:20 He goes, I’m going to care about this company after I’m dead.
0:01:22 I was like, oh, that’s a different level.
0:01:26 So the disagreeableness, like if we use the three people in the clip, which is like Steve
0:01:32 Jobs, James Dyson, and Yvonne Chouinart, it’s just like they are hell-bent on making the world.
0:01:33 They don’t bend to the world, right?
0:01:34 They make the world bend to them.
0:01:39 And they refuse to compromise on the product quality, even when it seems absurd.
0:01:42 And like James Dyson, I got to tell you a crazy story about James Dyson.
0:01:46 Because, you know, everybody’s like, oh, yeah, Dyson, the guy that like I wash my hands and
0:01:48 like dries my, it’s a hand dryer in the bathroom everywhere.
0:01:50 And it’s that cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
0:01:53 It’s like, no, the guy has built one of the most successful companies of all time.
0:01:56 I think it’s one of the largest privately owned companies in the world.
0:01:57 You want to hear some crazy?
0:01:59 So there’s always rumors, right?
0:02:00 And again, privately held, so you don’t have to tell.
0:02:04 And everybody’s like, oh, yeah, you know, he’s probably worth like 10 or 20 billion.
0:02:06 I was like, you’re off by like a lot.
0:02:10 So a friend of mine happens to know somebody that works for it.
0:02:14 And usually you can find, you can find hints, you know, if you look at their family
0:02:15 office, right?
0:02:18 And a friend of mine knows somebody at the family office.
0:02:19 So they’re just like, man, we have a big problem.
0:02:23 Like they have to deploy like four to five billion dollars every year.
0:02:24 Right.
0:02:24 OK.
0:02:28 And so they’re like, they you look and he’s like, James Dyson now is like the largest
0:02:29 producer of green peas in Europe.
0:02:32 He owns the most sheep in the entire world.
0:02:33 Like you see all these crazy.
0:02:34 So like, why?
0:02:35 Where’s the four or five billion dollars coming from?
0:02:40 It’s like the rumor is that he’s been taking out, you know, four or five, six, seven
0:02:43 billion dollars a year in dividends, retaining the enterprise value, obviously, because he
0:02:45 never saw a company still is 100 percent of it.
0:02:49 So I was just this like super fancy private investor only conference.
0:02:49 Right.
0:02:50 There’s only a handful of people there.
0:02:56 One guy controls a ton of capital and he listens to the podcast who we were talking and he has
0:03:02 a problem where like the more assets and management have the bigger you have to talk about this
0:03:05 over and over again, like to move the needle, the opportunity has to be just so large.
0:03:09 And so they were buying like smaller family companies, maybe in like the billion to two billion
0:03:09 range.
0:03:12 And so now he’s like, I have too much, too many assets or management.
0:03:14 I have to like, I have to swing bigger.
0:03:17 So they go to approach Dyson.
0:03:21 OK, I’m going to paraphrase the response back from Dyson is going to answer your question about
0:03:22 high levels of disagreeableness.
0:03:23 Right.
0:03:25 They’re like, would you be interested in selling your company?
0:03:27 The response was, fuck you.
0:03:29 This is a family heirloom.
0:03:35 So it’s like, again, he’s not doing it for money.
0:03:36 He’s run out of the money he will ever spend.
0:03:38 He’s doing it because he loves it.
0:03:41 He wants you just talked about maybe if your kids want to work in the business, you see that
0:03:41 a lot.
0:03:43 They they’re doing it because they want to pass it on to the next generation.
0:03:46 They want to die still owning this thing.
0:03:47 There is not.
0:03:48 You can’t go to him and be like, I’ll give you two trillion.
0:03:49 It doesn’t matter.
0:03:54 It’s just there’s no amount of money that you give James Dyson to stop working on Dyson, just
0:03:56 like there would have been no amount of money you could have gave Steve Jobs to stop.
0:04:00 If you go to Steve Jobs, imagine going to Steve Jobs and like, hey, this iPhone, you
0:04:03 great. You created the most successful consumer product of all time.
0:04:07 How much could I would I have to pay you to not do this?
0:04:11 There’s just no could you there’s no number that you could have spit out that he’d be like,
0:04:12 OK, yeah, I’ll retire.
0:04:14 It’s like, I just this is what I like to do.
0:04:17 Who’s the most disagreeable person you’ve ever studied?
0:04:20 Oh, that’s a good question.
0:04:25 I mean, James Dyson’s got to be up there because if you see the bookshelf that’s in back of me,
0:04:28 it’s an order by episode number starting in the upper left hand corner.
0:04:29 So it goes all the way down.
0:04:34 And so I’m I’m going to hit like 400 biographies read of history of good entrepreneurs this
0:04:38 year. And my number one recommendation is still his first autobiography.
0:04:41 He wrote an autobiography when he was 45 and he wrote another autobiography when he was 75.
0:04:43 They’re both great. But the first one’s really great.
0:04:48 The reason I recommend that one is because it’s all struggle.
0:04:52 The 90 percent of the book is just him failing over and over and over again and him refusing
0:04:53 to give up.
0:04:55 And what’s he obsessed with?
0:04:57 Like because obsessing over vacuums is strange.
0:05:03 So he would describe himself as an inventor and an engineer, definitely as an inventor.
0:05:08 And so I think what I would say is what he’s obsessed with is is making the world bend
0:05:09 to what he wants to happen.
0:05:13 And so in many cases, if you look at his early career, he was inventing a bunch of other successful
0:05:17 inventions and they were like taken from him because he didn’t keep control of the company.
0:05:21 There’s like all these little things are happening to him that cause him a lot of emotional pain
0:05:24 that then he fixes in the new company.
0:05:29 And so for him, it’s just like he spent 14 years before he had the ideas like he’s kind
0:05:32 of similar to Steve Jobs and Evon Gennard.
0:05:36 They’re offended at the mediocrity of most of everything around us.
0:05:39 They always talk about like, why is every product we use suck?
0:05:40 They talk about over and over and over again.
0:05:42 And so his idea is like, I bought a vacuum cleaner from Hoover.
0:05:48 It gets clogged after the first time I use it because it has a bag.
0:05:49 This is stupid.
0:05:50 Why do all vacuum cleaners have bags?
0:05:55 And those then from that thought, it’s 14 years, 5,127 prototypes.
0:06:00 So he has a, the world’s first cyclonic vacuum up to his incredibly difficult standards that
0:06:01 he owns a hundred percent of.
0:06:05 When does having that trait of high disagreeableness go too far?
0:06:06 Well, that’s a good question.
0:06:07 I don’t know.
0:06:09 Does his family love him?
0:06:12 Like, do they, like, does he have a good relationship with his children?
0:06:14 It’s like Steve Jobs did, did not.
0:06:19 And so can you be highly disagreeable and still loved by your children?
0:06:22 Can you be highly disagreeable and still be proud of how you treat one another?
0:06:28 So there, there is a devastating, um, line in Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson,
0:06:31 because Walter was collaborating with him as Steve was dying.
0:06:36 And he told Walter, one of the reasons he wanted to do this biography is because he wanted
0:06:40 his kid, he sacrificed so much of his time at Apple that he wanted his kids to know the
0:06:42 kind of person he was and what was important to him.
0:06:43 That’s devastating line.
0:06:47 Dyson, from what I understand, uh, has great relationships with, he’s still married to
0:06:49 the same wife, has great relationships with his kids.
0:06:51 Some of them work inside the company.
0:06:51 Some don’t.
0:06:55 Um, but yeah, again, I spent a lot of the, as you know, because you listen to the podcast,
0:06:57 I spent a lot of time talking about their childhood, their relationship with their father.
0:07:01 Dyson’s dad passed away when Dyson was like nine.
0:07:07 And he said, you know, he’s writing a biography when he’s 75 and he still cries and gets sad that
0:07:10 his dad, he didn’t get to know his dad as an adult.
0:07:14 His dad didn’t get to see him grow up, see his success, meet his grandchildren.
0:07:18 And so I think having that experience was just like, man, I want to make sure my kids don’t
0:07:21 have that massive hole that I had in my life.
0:07:22 Not in any fault of his own.
0:07:24 His dad died of cancer from at a young age.
0:07:27 No, so I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, but yeah, you, you, you definitely see a lot
0:07:31 of these highly disagreeable people like James Cameron is probably the best podcast I’ve ever
0:07:34 done in terms of like what I like craft.
0:07:35 And I’m really proud of that episode.
0:07:39 I did like two or three years ago and I start the episode kind of, you know, giving you a
0:07:43 hint of the highly disagreeable personality where I’m like reading from this GQ article.
0:07:48 And it’s like, James Cameron has moved to New Zealand with his fifth wife.
0:07:53 And it’s like, nobody could have a fifth wife without, that’s that, that should tell you
0:07:55 if you’re reading between your lines, that’s a difficult person to deal.
0:07:58 All right, everybody.
0:08:03 I know when you think to yourself, what is the best video series you think of us?
0:08:08 When you think of who is the best creator you think of us and the Webby awards are happening
0:08:09 right now.
0:08:10 It’s like an online awards thing.
0:08:15 And we are nominated for best video series and best creator, but it’s stiff competition.
0:08:16 Sam, who are we going up against?
0:08:16 Okay.
0:08:22 So we are up against, I shade my vag for this, which is sort of interesting.
0:08:24 I’ve listened to a few episodes, but honestly.
0:08:25 A few.
0:08:26 A few.
0:08:32 We’re up against Club Shea Shea, which frankly, if you’re listening to this, I think you should
0:08:34 just, you should just vote for Club Shea Shea.
0:08:35 I agree.
0:08:39 So please go vote for the Webby, but don’t vote for us.
0:08:40 Vote for Club Shea Shea.
0:08:42 All right, back to the pod.
0:08:44 All right.
0:08:49 Number two, they have extreme self-confidence and they do what works for them.
0:08:52 So what’s an example of that?
0:08:56 So that line that they do what works for them, there’s this guy named Tim Grover, who was
0:08:58 the trainer of both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
0:09:00 And he wrote a book all about comparing and contrasting them.
0:09:01 It was really fascinating.
0:09:06 And he says what they had in common was that they do what works for them regardless of what
0:09:06 other people do.
0:09:07 Like they were indifferent.
0:09:11 There’s another great line in that book that I think is a lot of people that you and I are
0:09:14 going to talk about have in common, where it’s like everyone wanted to be like Mike.
0:09:16 Mike didn’t want to be like anybody else.
0:09:21 And so in situations like that, which like they are, I would say there’s this line in
0:09:26 and Dyson’s book where he calls his method of invention, his method of company building.
0:09:29 He calls it the Edisonian principle of design.
0:09:32 He is not a big, hey, I have a master plan.
0:09:37 He’s like, I’m going to just do an experiment, get immediate feedback and do a constant set of
0:09:37 iterations.
0:09:40 There’s this great book that I’ve read three times.
0:09:42 I think every single entrepreneur on the planet should read it.
0:09:44 It’s called Creative Selection.
0:09:46 It is written by Ken Kosienda.
0:09:51 He was a programmer who demoed jobs and in that book is the most detail he helped.
0:09:57 He was the one that programmed the initial Safari browser and then he created Safari browser
0:09:59 and then the keyboard for the first iPhone.
0:10:03 What he shows in there is like, it was just all the great products that came out of Apple
0:10:08 were just a series of iterative demos to Steve and Steve applying his personal taste.
0:10:12 This is why I think when you talk to a lot of investors and to me, when I talk to him like,
0:10:16 man, you think about business way too academically, you know, like as if you could sit at a
0:10:19 whiteboard and like plan and master plan everything out, it’s like, I don’t see that in the books
0:10:20 I read.
0:10:24 It’s like these little, a series of just small decisions every day, getting a bunch of feedback
0:10:28 and then essentially just changing course slightly every single day.
0:10:31 And then doing that over a long period of time and constantly proven, you get to amazing products
0:10:32 and amazing businesses.
0:10:37 Are the people who have extreme self-confidence, were they self-confident at a young age or did
0:10:41 something happen like, I guess, born versus becoming that?
0:10:42 All three of those.
0:10:47 So if we’re, if Yvonne Chouinard, Steve Jobs, and James Dyson, excessively self-confident
0:10:48 at a young age.
0:10:52 And I think part of this has to do, and I’m speaking from my own personal experience, it’s
0:10:59 like you grow up with almost like you’re seeking revenge for the circumstances in which you’ve
0:10:59 been born in.
0:11:00 You know, Steve Jobs was adopted.
0:11:04 Yvonne Chouinard had no, his family didn’t have any money.
0:11:06 James Dyson doesn’t have a dad.
0:11:09 And you just like, everybody’s around you is like, oh, you’re not good enough.
0:11:11 And you’re like, no, I’m pretty sure I’m better than you are.
0:11:16 And I will show you and I’m willing to work and make sure to prove what I believe.
0:11:17 I always say belief comes before ability.
0:11:19 And, you know, I, I see this over and over again.
0:11:21 People are like, you shouldn’t be confident.
0:11:23 You should generate evidence first.
0:11:25 I’m like, no, you have that completely backwards.
0:11:30 They believe that they can do great things way before the, like, there’s any proof in the
0:11:30 physical world.
0:11:31 Let me give an example.
0:11:36 Uh, in the Michael Dell book, he hits the fortune 500 when he’s like 26 years old.
0:11:43 And basically for the listener, Michael Dell, I believe at the age of 16, 17, 18 in college
0:11:47 in a college dorm, he was selling computer parts to help people assemble computers.
0:11:48 Right.
0:11:53 He was, he started Dell in as a, really the prehistory of Dell really happened when he’s like
0:11:53 16, 17.
0:11:57 He officially started as a freshman in his freshman dorm at university of Texas.
0:12:02 But the fortune 500 thing is important because it’s like, yeah, he goes, could the kid that
0:12:08 grew up reading fortune magazine possibly predict that I’d start a company that broke into the
0:12:08 fortune 500?
0:12:11 He goes, yeah, I always thought big.
0:12:12 He doesn’t try to hide.
0:12:13 He’s like, yeah, I had a lot of confidence.
0:12:14 Like I knew I could do this.
0:12:16 I believed I could do this.
0:12:17 Now he, did he think he’d hit a 26?
0:12:19 Probably not, but he got there even faster.
0:12:20 That’s the point.
0:12:23 He had the belief first and then he demonstrated the ability.
0:12:27 You also say that the, so the third principle is they’re obsessed with product quality.
0:12:34 And I hear people say this a lot, but I’ve, because I’ve never had a job, I’ve never been
0:12:40 able to like, uh, uh, intern or apprentice at one of these folks who are obsessed with product.
0:12:43 I’ve never been able to see firsthand what they’re like on a day-to-day basis.
0:12:53 Can you give me an example of what they do each day in order to actually be product obsessed?
0:12:56 You know, I love that you frame that question like that.
0:12:56 What do they do each day?
0:12:58 I was thinking about this this morning.
0:13:00 Um, I was thinking about the conversation we’re gonna have today.
0:13:07 And I think what all the, the, the entrepreneurs I admire have in common is how they want to spend
0:13:09 their time is working on their company.
0:13:11 So like I get invited to a lot of things.
0:13:15 I say no to most of them because like everything that’s not working on the podcast is a giant
0:13:15 distraction.
0:13:19 And so if you go and actually look, Tim Cook said this after Steve jobs died.
0:13:23 He’s like, if you took an inventory of how Steve spent his time, he was at Apple.
0:13:26 And then when he was an Apple, he was at home with his family.
0:13:27 He wasn’t going to conferences.
0:13:29 He wasn’t trying to be on the scene.
0:13:30 Yvon Chouinard, what is he doing?
0:13:32 He’s working on product and he’s testing the product.
0:13:34 James Dyson, 75.
0:13:36 The guy’s probably worth a hundred billion dollars if we’re being honest.
0:13:37 And where’s he at?
0:13:40 He’s on the front, he’s on literally the factory floor.
0:13:42 And then he’s with the design team.
0:13:45 The important thing, and you see this, this is the problem with modern day entrepreneurship
0:13:51 industry is they like, like everything except actual what their company actually does.
0:13:54 So if you can find love, right?
0:13:56 In the activity itself, you’re able to do it for a long time.
0:13:58 I got to have, this is the main thing.
0:14:00 I had lunch with Sam Zell, who we could talk about too.
0:14:02 That two hour lunch changed my life, right?
0:14:08 And his main advice to me was never relinquish the freedom on what you work on.
0:14:13 He goes, the more successful you become, people are going to try to constantly dangle opportunities
0:14:15 that are distractions in front of you.
0:14:16 And they’re going to do that for two reasons.
0:14:18 They’re going to try to offer you more money and more status.
0:14:20 He’s like, retain your freedom.
0:14:21 And he said something that’s fucking brilliant.
0:14:23 He goes, go for freedom.
0:14:27 If you have freedom, you can control what you work on.
0:14:30 If you control what you work on, you can choose to work on what you love.
0:14:32 If you love it, you’ll do it all the time.
0:14:34 If you do it all the time, you’ll get good at it.
0:14:36 And money will come as a result of that.
0:14:40 And so all of the people that I admire, it’s like, they don’t want to go, you know, they’re
0:14:41 not trying to go out fundraising.
0:14:44 They’re not trying to like go party all the time.
0:14:47 They’re literally like just obsessed with what they’re doing.
0:14:52 And so everything that like, if you take the inventory of their time, it’s like the time
0:14:53 is just spent on the company.
0:14:53 Cause I like that.
0:14:55 Let me give you my example for me, right?
0:14:57 You know this because you have a podcast.
0:15:01 We can log into our podcast host right now and change, you can charge, you could change
0:15:03 the name of my first million, right?
0:15:05 To Sam’s club, right?
0:15:05 You can change it, whatever you want.
0:15:07 I can change founders, whatever I want.
0:15:12 The thing you cannot change is the RSS, the URL slug that for the, for the first time you
0:15:14 set up your RSS feed, right?
0:15:17 And that URL slug will have the first name of your podcast.
0:15:18 My podcast went through multiple names.
0:15:20 The first one was autotelic.
0:15:25 The definition of autotelic is an activity done for the sake of itself.
0:15:26 I was telling you right from the rip.
0:15:29 I don’t care if no one listens, I’m going to do this.
0:15:32 I, it is in inside of me and I have to get it out.
0:15:33 I’m going to do this.
0:15:37 I would be reading these books and talking about history and entrepreneurship and founders
0:15:39 and crazy psychotic people.
0:15:40 Cause that’s what I love to do.
0:15:42 I’d be doing it if no one listened.
0:15:45 I love hearing you talk about this.
0:15:49 Do you think that you’ve gotten more crazy and more obsessed reading about these people?
0:15:50 For sure.
0:15:50 For sure.
0:15:55 So first of all, you know this, cause we’ve talked about podcasting a bunch and, and a
0:15:56 lot of people like try to like part-time it.
0:15:58 And I think literally like podcasting is a miracle.
0:16:01 The idea that anything you want to learn, right?
0:16:02 Me and you grew up similarly.
0:16:03 We didn’t have access to a lot of money.
0:16:04 We didn’t, I don’t think you went to an Ivy league school.
0:16:07 Like I couldn’t go to an Ivy league school at all, right?
0:16:08 My wife went to an Ivy league school.
0:16:12 And when I met her and she told me first, I, she said she went to Penn and I was like,
0:16:15 is that where that football rapist coach guy goes?
0:16:19 And she’s like, no, it’s like, it’s, she’s like, it’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a big
0:16:20 school.
0:16:20 It’s like a big shot.
0:16:22 Like we’re like, we were part of the Ivy league.
0:16:24 I was like, what the fuck is Ivy league?
0:16:25 Is that Hogwarts?
0:16:26 I don’t know what that means.
0:16:29 Dude, I have a rather embarrassing story.
0:16:32 Like, first of all, not only did my parents never grade, graduated college, they never
0:16:33 graduated high school.
0:16:37 So the entire time I was growing up, they never mentioned the word college to me one time.
0:16:40 And so I remember being in high school and they’re like, what colleges are you applying
0:16:40 to?
0:16:44 I’m like, what the one I can drive to, cause I got to go to school night.
0:16:45 Cause I got to work full-time during the day.
0:16:46 Like, what are you talking about?
0:16:50 I, I moved in, I went to student housing and I, uh, my roommate was from like Colorado somewhere.
0:16:52 That was the first time I ever knew.
0:16:56 And this is really embarrassing that people didn’t work and go to school.
0:16:58 Like he just went to classes.
0:16:59 That’s all he did.
0:17:00 Like he had nothing else.
0:17:01 I couldn’t even fathom that.
0:17:06 So the reason I’m so obsessed with podcasting and everything else is like, you have all any subject
0:17:06 you want to learn about.
0:17:11 You have somebody that is usually to spend five, 10, you know, 10 plus years studying
0:17:12 that.
0:17:14 And you can learn from them for free on demand.
0:17:18 Anytime you want to, how could you not be absolutely obsessed with that?
0:17:19 So here’s your question.
0:17:22 The reason I started reading this, and I didn’t even understand this.
0:17:24 A friend of mine is the one that told me this.
0:17:28 He, he visited me in Miami and he’s like, it’s pretty, this is like two years ago.
0:17:29 And he’s like, it’s pretty obvious what you’re doing.
0:17:30 I go, what?
0:17:33 He goes, you didn’t have any mentors or any good, good examples.
0:17:37 So if you’re like how you are, which is kind of like psychopathically obsessed, he’s like,
0:17:41 so you just started reading and trying to find like good examples for yourself.
0:17:45 And so there’s a line, there’s a guy named Larry Gagosian who built this like multi-billion
0:17:48 dollar art business that he controls a hundred percent of.
0:17:55 And on the profile that I read to make the episode, there’s a line about him.
0:18:00 It says he got so good at selling art to the masters of the universe that he became one.
0:18:05 He starts out literally selling art in a parking lot and he got so successful.
0:18:06 He’s now a peer.
0:18:10 So the reason I’m doing this is like, I’m trying to build the best product for the best people
0:18:10 in the world.
0:18:14 And so, yeah, like it is, you know, I take a lot of the ideas from the podcast and just
0:18:18 apply it to my own business, which just happens to be the podcast where I derive the insights
0:18:19 from to begin with.
0:18:23 The next one is retention of total control.
0:18:30 What are the trade-offs of owning everything and being maniacal about the details versus
0:18:31 delegation?
0:18:37 Because oftentimes, for example, my favorite author, business author is Felix Dennis.
0:18:39 He wrote the book, How to Get Rich.
0:18:42 He’s not nearly as serious as these other guys.
0:18:47 He’s like kind of like a Mick Jagger and Richard Branson combined.
0:18:50 He’s like a rock and roll partier, but he became a billionaire.
0:18:56 He says that delegation is the reason why he’s anything is he’s like I’m a master delegator,
0:19:01 which I imagine a Richard Branson type of person would say a similar type of thing.
0:19:09 Whereas you have Elon Musk or maybe Coco Chanel or a couple other folks where they are good
0:19:15 examples of being in total control and maniacal about the details.
0:19:19 I think Estee Lauder, I believe she was a pretty nutty.
0:19:23 What are the pros and cons and trade-offs and which do you prefer?
0:19:29 I love that you asked this question because this is the great thing about entrepreneurship.
0:19:31 It’s like you get to decide what’s best for you.
0:19:33 Like there is not one way.
0:19:35 There’s not one right way.
0:19:38 I could give you examples of people I covered that delegated everything and people that delegated
0:19:39 nothing.
0:19:40 I just did Todd Graves.
0:19:41 Have you ever eaten a Raising Cane juice?
0:19:42 You used to live in Austin.
0:19:44 You’re a fellow fat boy.
0:19:50 Well, I was a former fellow fat boy, but I saw him talk.
0:19:52 I think I’m Theo Vaughn or something like that.
0:19:54 And I was like, wow, you’re amazing.
0:19:59 And so I went to Raising Cane’s and started eating it just because he was maniacal.
0:20:04 Like you don’t think of a fast food restaurant as being focused on the product, but there is
0:20:05 a need for it for sure.
0:20:08 But he was like, we only do these types of fries.
0:20:09 We only do chicken.
0:20:13 We only, and like, it’s the simplest thing where I’m like, how hard could this possibly
0:20:15 be that you need 30 years to master this?
0:20:16 Let’s go figure it out.
0:20:19 So I just did an episode on him, which I think is going to be one of the most popular
0:20:20 episodes ever.
0:20:23 Just because I, when people would ask me like, who’s, you study dead entrepreneurs.
0:20:25 Like, what about the living ones that you like?
0:20:27 And I’d bring up Todd Graves and like the chicken finger guy.
0:20:31 I’m like, no, no, he’s got a, he’s got a really relatable demeanor.
0:20:32 Yeah.
0:20:33 You want to hang out with him.
0:20:38 But also I’m, even if I was, even if he was a jerk, the way he built his business, you
0:20:41 know, he owns over 90% of a business that’s worth at least $10 billion.
0:20:43 It’s growing 30% year over year.
0:20:46 And he’s been doing the same thing, you know, for 30 years and I just love everything.
0:20:47 I’m obsessed with simplicity.
0:20:48 I just love everything about him.
0:20:52 But the funny thing is in one of the interviews I found with him, he literally says, you know,
0:20:55 people told him when he was younger, you’re, you’re, you’re a micromanager.
0:20:56 You have to delegate.
0:20:59 You can’t possibly do the stuff you’re doing now.
0:21:00 And he has a great line.
0:21:01 He goes, delegate.
0:21:02 What kind of word is that?
0:21:05 Like, he’s just like, that, that doesn’t even make sense to me.
0:21:08 And he goes, and all the people, the experts that gave me that advice, I’m bigger than they
0:21:09 are now.
0:21:12 And so he’s literally given this interview and they interrupt the interview because.
0:21:17 They had some event and his social media team was showing them the reel of the video
0:21:19 reel that was about to come out.
0:21:20 This guy’s, you know, running a business.
0:21:27 He has a 50,000 employees, 800 stores, you know, unbelievable amount of responsibility.
0:21:29 And he’s like, it doesn’t go out until I approve it.
0:21:32 He’s approving every single Steve Jobs did the exact same thing.
0:21:35 He wouldn’t let Apple guys go out without approving it.
0:21:37 He, there’s a, there’s another thing.
0:21:40 Um, every single location, I approve every single new location.
0:21:43 Uh, you mentioned Elon Musk, early days of SpaceX.
0:21:47 He personally, Elon personally interviewed the first 3000 employees of SpaceX.
0:21:50 Sam Walton, go back even further.
0:21:54 He approved, he picked out, I think the first few thousand Walmarts.
0:21:57 So a lot of them are, I would consider micromanagers.
0:22:00 There are some that, you know, delegate, delegate widely.
0:22:03 What’s more important than that though, is like, it depends on your personality type.
0:22:05 Like for me, I am a complete micromanager.
0:22:10 I’m one of the only podcasters still like still making podcasts that actually edits his
0:22:11 own podcast.
0:22:14 Every, every, every, every other podcaster tells me you’re a fucking idiot.
0:22:15 Why are you doing that?
0:22:17 And it’s just like, I’m completely obsessed with it.
0:22:20 And I hate it, but I love it at the same time.
0:22:24 I, it’s the, the part about podcasting I like the least, but it’s so important for me to
0:22:27 completely control the final product.
0:22:30 Um, so again, I, I, I don’t think there’s one right way here.
0:22:33 It’s just like, really, you have to think about like, how do you want to run your business?
0:22:39 Another thing that you said, uh, was that they, uh, refused to make me too products.
0:22:47 Is there a story that you have where standing out by having a different product was key to them
0:22:50 winning or also nearly ruin them?
0:22:52 Let’s, I don’t know about anybody ruin them.
0:22:56 Um, let’s use the, the, the, the pre prehistory of Patagonia, right?
0:22:59 Which is worth a couple of billion dollars, privately held company, you know?
0:23:04 And as you know, cause it’s in the book in the episode, it’s like, he didn’t, he was kind
0:23:05 of like a communist.
0:23:06 He didn’t even want to start a business.
0:23:08 He was a, he calls himself a dirt bag.
0:23:10 He was like, I was a dirt bag climber.
0:23:11 I lived in a van.
0:23:14 I traveled around just trying to climb mountains.
0:23:15 And, you know.
0:23:17 Which by the way, that is, there’s a.
0:23:17 Dichotomy there.
0:23:21 If you weren’t, if you’re a communist, why do you fully own your company versus giving
0:23:22 out equity?
0:23:24 Cause he’s obsessed with, exactly.
0:23:26 There’s a, it’s almost like a paradox, right?
0:23:28 Uh, the, uh, yeah.
0:23:29 Cause he’s obsessed with control.
0:23:31 So that, that go all ties back to control.
0:23:33 Now, sometimes you can maintain control.
0:23:33 Public company.
0:23:35 Mark Zuckerberg has complete control of Facebook.
0:23:36 Public company.
0:23:38 Steve Jobs had complete control of Apple.
0:23:39 Public company.
0:23:40 Dyson, obviously private.
0:23:41 Bloomberg, private.
0:23:42 You know, uh, Patagonia, private.
0:23:47 But if you start there, it’s like his, his whole thing was just like, Hey, I’m, my life
0:23:53 is literally hangs in the balance of these clips that people use for mountain climbing.
0:23:54 He’s like, these clips are plastic.
0:23:55 They suck.
0:23:55 They break.
0:23:56 This is not good.
0:23:59 And they, they, they would optimize for, for cost.
0:24:00 Cause most dirtbag climbers have no money.
0:24:02 And so it would be like 75 cents each.
0:24:03 And what did he do?
0:24:05 You, you, you ask him what his profession is.
0:24:06 He said, I’m a blacksmith.
0:24:08 Cause that was his, his trade is craft.
0:24:10 He’s like, Hey, I could do a better job than this.
0:24:11 He starts using higher end steel.
0:24:14 And now he sells what it used to cost 75 cents.
0:24:18 Cause it was differentiated for $4 more than four X.
0:24:20 What, what the market is used to paying.
0:24:25 And he wound up sealing up like 80 to 90% market share because his was so much better.
0:24:29 So they, if they feel that the, they’re not starting companies just to start companies,
0:24:31 they’re starting companies to make products.
0:24:33 And so therefore they’re not going to make a product.
0:24:34 If somebody else is already doing that.
0:24:36 No one made the products that Steve Jobs made.
0:24:38 No one made the products that James Dyson made.
0:24:40 No one made the products that Yvonne Chouinard made.
0:24:43 And I talked to founders all the time and even podcasters.
0:24:46 And I’m like, man, why are it, especially in, in, in our trade.
0:24:48 It’s like, why aren’t podcasters thinking more about differentiation?
0:24:51 When I started my podcast in 2016, one, I thought it was too late.
0:24:51 Right.
0:24:53 It was like, Oh my God, I missed the boat.
0:24:55 But then I looked around and I was like, what is everybody doing?
0:24:56 Everybody’s doing the same thing.
0:24:58 It’s like two people, one person interviewing another.
0:25:01 This is why my first million first came on my radar.
0:25:04 When I came on your podcast two years ago, I mentioned that I listened to over a hundred
0:25:05 hours of it because it was truly differentiated.
0:25:08 It’s like two guys have great chemistry.
0:25:08 They’re funny.
0:25:09 They’re both entrepreneurs.
0:25:13 And sometimes they’re going to just shoot the shit and talk about ideas and brainstorm.
0:25:14 Sometimes they’ll bring people in.
0:25:16 Like it was a very unique format.
0:25:18 You’ve seen since then, obviously, because the success of the show, like what happens?
0:25:22 Like you have a bunch of people trying to do it and then none of them achieve the same
0:25:25 success because they’re not, first of all, they’re, they’re not, they’re the copiers.
0:25:28 They’re not the ones that actually came up with the format and came up with the idea.
0:25:34 So one thing I would just say is it’s like, if the product already exists, I would only make
0:25:37 it if you see that there’s a giant hole and a way to like make it better.
0:25:39 In the case of James Dyson, there’s everybody had vacuum cleaner.
0:25:41 They were all crappy compared to his.
0:25:45 I paid, listen, you can go on Amazon right now and buy a vacuum cleaner for 40 bucks.
0:25:46 I have a Dyson, it was $600.
0:25:48 It’s literally the best.
0:25:49 It’s the best.
0:25:55 Do you think that there’s a common theme amongst, so everyone, most, most of the people you’ve
0:26:01 named and maybe most of the people you cover on Founders, they’re creating higher end products
0:26:04 where the margins are probably a bit higher.
0:26:14 So I have a $600 Dyson, I have, you know, Patagonia now is more mid-tier maybe, but you’ve covered
0:26:19 a lot of, you know, luxury brands and I think that a lot of like LVMH, like luxury brands
0:26:22 tend to be the biggest and best businesses, it appears.
0:26:22 Yeah.
0:26:28 Is there a commonality of you being different and thus being able to charge more and profit
0:26:28 more?
0:26:34 I don’t, like the one person, if you ask like my own personal Mount Rushmore of like
0:26:37 history’s greatest entrepreneurs is they actually had like, uh, some of them obviously have big
0:26:38 margins like Apple, right?
0:26:42 But then like, think of Sam Walton, like Sam Walton had the tiniest margins.
0:26:43 Why?
0:26:47 Because like his idea was like, Hey, I’m going to be totally committed to this one simple
0:26:48 idea, which is like everyday low price.
0:26:50 And so the margins are small.
0:26:52 Raising Cane is one of my favorite entrepreneurs.
0:26:54 His margins like less than 10%.
0:27:00 So yeah, I don’t, I think these ideas can work for, it really just depends on the industry
0:27:00 and the business.
0:27:03 But like you see them appear over and over again, whether it’s a high margin business, a
0:27:08 low margin business, if it’s physical goods, if it’s luxury goods, if it’s software, it’s
0:27:10 just like kind of the same personality type over and over again.
0:27:16 I’m going to combine the last two, which is this, the, the first of the two was they wouldn’t
0:27:17 sell at any price.
0:27:23 And this is the second one, their exit strategy is death, which I love.
0:27:25 I absolutely love.
0:27:28 Is this particularly with AI?
0:27:31 I don’t know if you’ve seen, I know you’re not like with it when it cut, because you’re
0:27:32 so focused.
0:27:35 Like you, I think you’ve said, you don’t pay attention to the news.
0:27:36 You don’t pay attention to social media too much.
0:27:39 There’s this thing called the vibe coding.
0:27:40 Have you seen vibe coding?
0:27:41 I’ve seen that.
0:27:41 Yes.
0:27:41 Yeah.
0:27:47 So it’s like young kids of which we’ve had a few of them on who in a matter of six months
0:27:53 can go from zero to a million a month in revenue because it’s so fast and easy to make apps.
0:27:54 Yeah.
0:28:00 New York City founders, if you’ve listened to my first million before, you know, I’ve got
0:28:04 this company called Hampton and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
0:28:08 A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people
0:28:10 who I met in Hampton.
0:28:12 We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it’s amazing.
0:28:17 But the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for
0:28:18 your life and for your business.
0:28:19 And it’s life changing.
0:28:26 Now to the folks in New York City, I’m building a in real life core group in New York City.
0:28:30 And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does 3 million in revenue
0:28:35 or you’ve raised 3 million in funding, or you’ve started and sold a company for at least
0:28:37 $10 million, then you are eligible to apply.
0:28:40 So go to joinhampton.com and apply.
0:28:43 I’m going to be reviewing all of the applications myself.
0:28:45 So put that you heard about this on MFM.
0:28:47 So I know to give you a little extra love.
0:28:48 Now back to the show.
0:28:56 Do you think that people today are thinking shorter term than before or has there always
0:29:01 been a gap of a very few amount of people are willing to think long term versus short term?
0:29:02 I think both.
0:29:06 I think, yeah, undoubtedly more larger percentage of humanity is thinking short term and that
0:29:08 we’ve always as a species been wired to be short term.
0:29:12 Jeff Bezos has a great idea of this is why he would be constantly willing to have a longer
0:29:13 term view.
0:29:17 His point was that like, if you’re planning on a year, if you’re investing in a product
0:29:21 that may not, you know, reap any benefits over a year, you have a lot of competition.
0:29:23 Five years, less competition.
0:29:24 Ten years, no competition.
0:29:27 Like just nobody is thinking that long term.
0:29:29 So if we have a long, I think he calls it long term orientation.
0:29:32 If we have a long term orientation, then I want to do that because we just have by default,
0:29:33 by sheer numbers.
0:29:35 I have less amount of competitors.
0:29:36 Now I need to back up.
0:29:40 I am only interested in people that do things for a long term and I’m interested in your
0:29:40 last business.
0:29:45 I am not interested in your, you know, your startup, your first business.
0:29:49 In many cases, what I’m interested in is like, what is the thing that is going to like the
0:29:53 reason I become so close with the founders of ramp is because we have this deep partnership.
0:29:55 It’s like one of the things I love is I talked to Kareem.
0:29:56 I’m actually seeing him tonight.
0:30:00 Who’s the co-founder and CTO of ramp and one of the most brilliant technical minds that I
0:30:04 know, and one of the things way before we became friends, way before we became partners,
0:30:08 he’s just like ramps the last, my last business.
0:30:13 Like, like this is, I have all, you know, 98, 99% of my net worth into it.
0:30:15 I spent all my days.
0:30:16 I’m not thinking about anything else.
0:30:17 Like, that’s what I’m very interested in.
0:30:21 And many cases to get to that last business, you usually have to start.
0:30:23 Kareem had already started, start and sold a company.
0:30:25 Like usually you have to go through a ton.
0:30:29 It’s very weird for like the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Michael Dells, you know, even Steve Jobs,
0:30:32 like just to be your, for your first company, to be your last company.
0:30:34 Which is what I had, I think.
0:30:40 And I did it because I saw a theme that a lot of the people who had, who I had admired had
0:30:44 a hit in their twenties or thirties that allowed them to think longer term.
0:30:46 That is key, right?
0:30:50 One, I think it’s a mistake if you ever sell your best idea, whether you have money or not.
0:30:51 So never sell your best idea.
0:30:56 But in, in the case you’re describing, it’s like, if you can relieve, you know, financial
0:30:58 pressure, me and you grew up with financial pressure.
0:30:59 It feels.
0:31:00 And it’s real.
0:31:02 Like it’s, it destroys you.
0:31:03 You can’t sleep.
0:31:07 There are people who can overcome and just go all in at a young age.
0:31:13 In general, it seems it’s easier when you have a wealthy parent or when you have some
0:31:16 type of, you don’t need to worry about rent for three or four years.
0:31:19 That, that is, it is easier that way.
0:31:23 So, so to get that, like, Hey, I’m not going to have to worry about feeding, taking care of
0:31:27 my wife, my kids, feeding myself and give yourself a room to breathe.
0:31:30 And then you’re able to step back and be like, here’s the thing.
0:31:31 A lot of this is just self-exploration.
0:31:36 Like, dude, I know myself so much better now than I did think about when you’re like,
0:31:38 you’re supposed to be picking your career when you’re in high school.
0:31:40 Cause then you got to figure out what you’re going to major.
0:31:41 And it’s like the stupidest thing ever.
0:31:44 Like nobody, if you’re the same person, you’re at 18, that’s very bizarre.
0:31:50 And so like, I just think part of picking a successful company and a successful career
0:31:53 you can do for a long period of time is like, you have to go through this exploration of who
0:31:54 you are as a person and what your true interests are.
0:31:56 The problem is with humans.
0:31:58 Like we think, Oh, like vibe coding is really cool.
0:32:02 I like these kids are making money, but eventually through all these
0:32:06 experiments, they might discover what they actually, you know, truly want to dedicate
0:32:07 their lives to.
0:32:09 So I think it’s like an overall good thing.
0:32:14 But yeah, I think the advantage that if you, as an entrepreneur, as a podcaster, as a writer,
0:32:17 as an athlete, whatever the case is, like, if you can think a lot, you just have a massive
0:32:18 advantage.
0:32:20 If you could just have a longer term perspective than other people.
0:32:24 And this is the important thing is like, when I’m able to choose what I work on, I’m not
0:32:28 worried about what like my downloads today or like my audience size today.
0:32:31 It’s just like, as long as I do this forever, right?
0:32:34 And I keep focusing on adding value to other people’s lives because money comes out of digital
0:32:34 service.
0:32:39 Then I’ll get, as long as I wake up every day, read a biography of history’s greatest entrepreneurs
0:32:41 and sit down once a week and talk about what I learned and do that forever.
0:32:43 I’ll let the score take of itself.
0:32:44 The chips will fall where it is.
0:32:46 Like I don’t want to deserve.
0:32:52 I don’t want the listener to think long term means it’s, it’s okay if I don’t kick ass
0:32:52 today.
0:32:58 And a lot of people will justify this and say, well, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
0:33:06 And to them, I say, yeah, but have you ever ran like a hundred meters at the world record
0:33:06 marathon pace?
0:33:08 It’s going to feel like a sprint to you.
0:33:13 Like you have to be able to run fast for a long period of time.
0:33:20 And what I, and what, and what I mean by that is that doesn’t excuse day to day, um, lack
0:33:20 of urgency.
0:33:26 You still need to be, uh, impatient on a daily level, but patient on an annual level.
0:33:33 Additionally, can you tell me the people who thought long term, they were still, maybe you
0:33:38 can give me examples, but that doesn’t mean that they were broke five or 10 years into starting
0:33:42 their company or that they didn’t have traction or did they, am I wrong?
0:33:47 So the, the, to like close the loop on what you just said, I agree completely.
0:33:50 If you think of like, there’s not very many entrepreneurs that had a longer term perspective
0:33:54 than Jeff Bezos and his line about this was like, yeah, we have longterm, but like, we’re
0:33:57 going to take step-by-step ferociously was his motto.
0:34:00 Step-by-step ferociously, not like, oh, we’re going to lollygag.
0:34:03 It’s like, no, no, no, I’m fine being, you know, you know, we’re going to be the
0:34:07 company we want 10, 15 years from now, but every day for the next 10 to 15 years, like
0:34:09 we’re pushing the pace and we’re doing as much as we can.
0:34:14 Um, people that were broke five or 10 years in, uh, James Dyson, for sure.
0:34:20 He was literally going to sleep covered in dirt because he’s trying to build a vacuum cleaner
0:34:25 for the entire time going, going, going inside, crying himself to sleep as his kids are small.
0:34:27 And then his kids are completely grown up.
0:34:28 He was in massive amounts of debt.
0:34:30 He couldn’t find no one.
0:34:33 The reason he owns a hundred percent of his companies, cause no one would, uh, would actually,
0:34:36 want the equity, which is hilarious considering how valuable it is now.
0:34:39 But also he was like, uh, he had second loans out on his, on his, his second mortgage on his
0:34:40 home.
0:34:41 He was crying himself to sleep.
0:34:43 So he was, he was nearly bankrupt.
0:34:44 He was, oh yeah, yeah.
0:34:48 For, for, and if it’s not the full 14 years, it was a good chunk because then he started licensing
0:34:49 it.
0:34:52 He had, he had some small wins where he could actually pay his bills, but he was not like
0:34:53 a wealthy man.
0:34:58 Steve Jobs, rich from the get-go, you know, app, he builds the first app on his garage.
0:35:02 Four years later, he’s worth a hundred million dollars and the company’s public.
0:35:03 It looked like it was pretty crazy.
0:35:06 Von Chouinard broke for an excessively long period of time.
0:35:10 Like there isn’t like a, you know, it just, it’s a case by case basis.
0:35:12 Jeff Bezos already wealthy.
0:35:14 He worked for this hedge fund in New York called D.E.
0:35:14 Shaw.
0:35:19 And he quit that and gave up a huge bonus to move, uh, to Seattle.
0:35:21 But he was already, you know, able to live in Manhattan.
0:35:22 He was working for a billionaire.
0:35:24 Sam Walton.
0:35:25 Now here’s another idea.
0:35:29 By the way, I think Amazon had like a hundred million in sales, like four years in or something.
0:35:31 Super fast, super fast.
0:35:34 He was like, by the time he was 30, so he starts the company at 30.
0:35:35 I think by 35, he’s a billionaire.
0:35:41 I tracked him on this when I like had my, uh, I had this sheet where I tracked probably 300
0:35:46 people and I had timelines for each of them of when they were born, when they started the
0:35:50 thing that allowed them to be a little bit financially free when that period ended.
0:35:56 And then when they started the thing that made them huge and he, uh, started Amazon at 32
0:36:01 and between the ages of like 24 or whenever you graduate college to 32, presumably he was
0:36:06 making some amount of money, like the equivalent of 250 to $500,000 a year today.
0:36:07 For sure.
0:36:07 For sure.
0:36:13 Sam Walton had his first, this is an interesting thing because there is an idea, uh, a principle
0:36:16 I’ve noticed is like go slow now so you can go faster later.
0:36:22 And what I mean by that is like Sam Walton, greatest retailer of all time, undoubtedly he
0:36:24 had one store for five years.
0:36:29 And so he was obsessively learning everything he possibly could about retail, doing all these
0:36:29 experiments.
0:36:33 And so then you fast forward, you know, one store for five years, then you fast forward,
0:36:35 let’s say 25 years into his career.
0:36:37 He has the idea.
0:36:39 He’s already has Walmart, but he’s like, Hey, he meets this guy named Sol Price.
0:36:40 So I’ve done episodes.
0:36:41 How many years?
0:36:42 Do you say 25?
0:36:44 Well, let’s say 25 years into his career, right?
0:36:48 So the first five years of his career, it’s one store, 25 years in, let’s say around
0:36:53 there, he’s got Walmart, but then he has this idea for Sam’s Club, which he got, he took from
0:36:53 other people.
0:36:57 He took from this guy named Sol Price, who’s, uh, he came up with the warehouse club idea.
0:37:02 Uh, the founder of Costco was Sol Price’s mentee when he was like, uh, Jim Senegal was like
0:37:04 18 working for a Sol Price.
0:37:05 That’s where he got the idea for Costco.
0:37:06 Sam Walton sees that.
0:37:07 He’s like, Oh, this is a great idea.
0:37:07 I’m going to do it immediately.
0:37:12 So 25 years into his career, he didn’t have to stick with one store for five years.
0:37:16 So when he launched Sam’s Club within the first five years, he gets to like 105 stores and
0:37:18 like $7 billion in revenue.
0:37:19 Same period.
0:37:25 When he started out, he can only master one tiny little store in Arkansas, but your skillset
0:37:27 and your resources and everything compounds.
0:37:28 That’s the point.
0:37:34 Todd Graves talks about, you know, I think he, by the time he gets like, he’s 10, the raising
0:37:34 Cain’s guy.
0:37:36 He, I think he’s 10 to 12 years into his career.
0:37:38 He’s got 28 stores.
0:37:39 Sounds like a lot, right?
0:37:44 He opens like 150 stores a year right now, or a hundred between a hundred and 150 stores
0:37:45 a year.
0:37:47 Go slow at the beginning to go faster later.
0:37:49 He’s learning and he’s going to apply that.
0:37:53 This is the important thing about not jumping from business to business to business, because
0:37:56 if you jump from business to business, all you’re doing is interrupting and compounding.
0:38:02 Was it clear a lot of these, you know, the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, was it clear
0:38:06 that their TAM was big enough to achieve their ambition?
0:38:08 No, absolutely not.
0:38:08 No.
0:38:13 Like, for example, you’d be like, look, this chicken finger thing, that’s maybe silly, but
0:38:14 I guess McDonald’s is huge.
0:38:16 I guess you could be kind of like McDonald’s.
0:38:19 I think he’s, if he did think of anything, he thought of In-N-Out.
0:38:21 In-N-Out was found in 1948.
0:38:26 If you look at In-N-Out’s menu, it looks like Todd Graves.
0:38:30 There’s other people before him, but it’s like, to me, Todd Graves is just Harry Snyder,
0:38:34 reincarnated, who was the founder of In-N-Out, but instead of doing burgers, he does chicken
0:38:34 fingers.
0:38:38 But no, like, I just went over this because I’m going through the Michael Dell episode
0:38:38 right now.
0:38:40 Like, there’s just like, no way.
0:38:44 Like, you knew computers were, like, most people hadn’t even seen a computer.
0:38:45 And like, he was just completely obsessed with it.
0:38:48 So there’s no way he could have predicted the financial success he was going to have and
0:38:50 how big the market could actually get.
0:38:52 You know, he started with Dell with $1,000?
0:38:53 No.
0:38:54 No venture capital, $1,000.
0:38:59 And his main competitor was Compaq, who started with, like, $25 million of venture capital.
0:39:01 And Michael Dell is super competitive, but nice.
0:39:03 The book’s called Play Nice and Win.
0:39:04 Play Nice, But Win.
0:39:06 But he’s like, he’s constantly contrasting.
0:39:07 He’s like, I started with $1,000.
0:39:08 They started with $25 million.
0:39:09 I’m kicking their ass.
0:39:10 It’s really funny.
0:39:16 And Dell would tell you that having the constraints of limited capital was really good at the
0:39:20 beginning because it forced him to innovate in a way that you wouldn’t if you had money.
0:39:21 And I was like, oh, wow, that’s interesting.
0:39:23 So I go and pull my highlights from Sam Walton.
0:39:24 Sam Walton said the same thing.
0:39:26 Kmart existed before Walmart.
0:39:28 Kmart was dominating the big cities.
0:39:29 Because if you’re going to start retail, where are you going to go?
0:39:30 You’re going to go to Chicago.
0:39:30 You’re going to New York.
0:39:31 You’re going to go to all those other places.
0:39:32 So he’s like, well, I can’t go there.
0:39:33 I don’t have any money.
0:39:36 So he starts going in these little towns in rural Arkansas.
0:39:38 And what he learned, he goes, oh, constraints are your friend.
0:39:43 Because if we were better capitalized, I would have never went out into these tiny little
0:39:44 communities.
0:39:48 And what I discovered is in these tiny little communities, there’s far, far more business
0:39:50 than we could have ever predicted.
0:39:53 Perfect example to your question.
0:39:55 You’re the man, David.
0:39:57 I appreciate you doing this.
0:40:01 I could just like, I think the listener will notice this is probably the podcast that I’ve
0:40:05 spoken the least amount of all 700.
0:40:11 I’ve listened to hundreds of your episodes.
0:40:12 I think you’re at like, what, 400?
0:40:14 I think I’ve listened to half of them now.
0:40:15 I appreciate that.
0:40:16 I appreciate you.
0:40:17 That’s it.
0:40:17 That’s the pod.
0:40:20 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:40:22 I know I could be what I want to.
0:40:25 I put my all in it like no days off.
0:40:28 On the road, let’s travel, never looking back.