David Senra - In Service of Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.343]

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0:25 Operate smarter and stay ahead of the curve. See what Ridgeline can unlock for your firm. Schedule a demo at ridgeline.ai. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest like the best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts, and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning at joincolosis.com.

1:00 Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of Positive Sum and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. My guest today is David Senra. I hope David is familiar to many of you by now. His life's work is in service of founders. Every week for the past seven years, he has shared the lessons of history's greatest entrepreneurs on his podcast called Founders.

1:46 This time last year, David joined Colossus and we recorded an episode called Passion and Pain, which has become one of our most popular episodes ever. Today we look back at what he's learned from the past fifty or so founders he studied over the last twelve months. From Christopher Nolan to Enzo Ferrari to Napoleon. As ever, I hope David inspires you to pursue your life's work with as much energy as he has. I also want to mention that David and I will be doing our first and probably only live show together in New York City on October 19th during Tech Week at Webster Hall.

2:18 Tickets are selling pretty fast, so if you're interested in joining us, you can check out the link in the show notes. Please enjoy this great conversation with David Senra. Um All right, David, we're exactly one year to the day. Just realized just now. From the first time we released an episode together.

2:35 which we called Passion and Pain was one of the biggest, most popular episodes we ever did. In the one year a lot's happen. I can't believe it's only been one year. I'd love you to begin by just describing what happened in that one year, Korean post, and then the experience during the last Twelve months.

2:51 Just a Bring everyone in on the story. It's been such a cool thing to watch from the bleachers for me, and I'm sure it's been incredibly fun for you. I hope it has. Been the best year of my life. I think the thing that sticks out the most is how wrong I was about The good idea I had was like, Okay, let me lock myself in a room.

3:06 Let me read compulsively. Let me follow my natural interests. Let me read biographies of some of the people that achieved the greatest things in the world. And then once a week sit down and record what I learned, what I was most interested about. The bad thing was putting a giant paywall in front of it. And severely limiting the actual reach for all these like lessons of stories.

3:25 And then coming on to Colossus. And you helping me in a year. The audience is like fifty times As large as it was. doing the same amount of work, maybe even more,'cause I'm still working seven days a week. I'm still completely obsessed with it.

3:38 But just this idea of like okay. I knew the information was good, but now it's out in the public. And then you get to actually see how what you're making influences Some of the most successful people in the world. And then it opens up, I would say the beauty of podcasts. And you know this firsthand.

3:52 is that they're unique experience generators. And so like I go from toiling in relative obscurity for six years. completely passionate about.

4:01 And then greatly amplifying. And then I find myself in Charlie Munger's dining room, in Charlie Munger's library. I find myself sitting across eye to eye having a two hour lunch with Sam Zell. These are things that I didn't ask for, I didn't try to even make happen. They came to me. And so that has been really the In addition to reading another now sixty books.

4:19 rereading some of the books that I have read previously. I think this idea of like that I've been hitting on is treating the world as an entire classroom. Conversations I have, the books I read, the podcast I listen to. every single experience that I have.

4:31 treating that as there's a lesson that can be applied to My work. Because now There's just I'm learning at such an accelerated rate.

4:39 I thought I was learning a lot and I was in six years, right? In isolation. But then you actually get out and there's so many other ways to learn. And then I'm learning from people in real time. And then going back to the books. Oh, these things feed on one another. So I do feel like in the last year, the reason I say it's the best year, my life is one

4:55 I found my life's work for sure. Like I'm gonna do this till I die. Um And two It just feels good to know that people get value out of something that you put a lot of your life energy into.

5:04 What has been most surprising on both sides of the ledger, so the most positive surprise and the most negative surprise about Now having such a Huge number of people that are listening. This obsession of yours every week. I can't think of anything negative.

5:18 Nothing. You don't feel distracted in a way you didn't before, in some ways like a competition for your focus or anything like that. I think I have an unfair advantage over most people is'cause I spent Half the day. Complete isolation. Not talking to any way.

5:31 Just literally having one sided conversations every day. With some official greatest entrepreneurs. And the biggest I think juxtaposition or the biggest contrast between how I spend half my time and then pop up into the world. Is

5:41 All the people I read about, they have insane levels of focus. And then I pop up and I look around what everybody else is doing and no one can focus on anything. And so it would be a colossal waste of my time. 'Cause I believe that learning's not memorizing information, learning is changing behavior. Right. And so it's this idea with I'm becoming friends with the immense dead.

5:56 Spend so much time studying them. I can literally have a conversation in my mind like what would Steve Jobs do if he was in my position? What would Charlie Munger do? What would Sam Zell do? What would Edwin Land do? What would S Lauder do? And they tell me to focus on like you already know what your path is. We had this conversation last night where you're like The person I know that wakes up and knows exactly what they want to do. And all I wanna do is Read books.

6:14 Make podcasts and then talk to founders. That's it. There's nothing else. I mean, I obviously spend time with my family, take care of my health. But there is nothing else than that. I don't really feel distracted. Because I get the work done first.

6:24 I'm not gonna wake up and be like, hey, let's just hang out. Let's like fritter away. No, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna make podcasts. I was talking to Matt, the CEO of Colossus, and he has the show on Colossus called Making Media, which is hilarious. I was listening to one of his episodes. And he was talking about there's all kinds of stuff when you run a media company, a podcast network. Recordings are good enough. Guests fall out, whatever the case is. And he goes, And of course, Senra just shows up and it just shows up in the field. Cause everything I want out of life. That is the key to everything. As long as I Wake up every day.

6:50 Read for a few hours, which again I thought everybody was doing. because I was so isolated, because I don't really pay attention to what other people are doing, I try not to. I swear to God, I thought people just read as much as I did. I didn't know that so few people do. Oh, this is so simple. I wake up every day, I read for a few hours and I sit down once a week and tell people what I learned, I will get everything I want out of life if I just do that for an excessively long time. And you're seeing this now with the audience goes. Last month was the biggest month ever. Right. Next month will be bigger than that. It just compounds and compounds and compounds. It's like I don't even have to look at analytics, I have to look at anything. I just wake up, read, and keep doing it.

7:21 There's no distraction for you around Wanting to expand founders into being more than it is. Another thing I didn't understand by myself, right?

7:33 I may be the most bullish and optimistic person on podcasts in the world. I truly believe We were talking about this yesterday, like you're remarkably consistent on this because I really believe it. I think podcasting is a giant technological revolution. I think it's printing press for the spoken word. I was invited to teach class at Notre Dame last week. Which was recorded and should appear as a podcast soon.

7:52 And when I told them they're twenty two years old, I was like, Do you understand when I was your age? There's no such thing as a podcast. And right now you guys have such an unfair advantage. You just use an example. I go. You could right now, there's nobody stopping you, right?

8:05 You can listen to every single episode of Invest Like the Best. You can read Every single transcript of Best Like the Best you can s read All the books the people that go on Patrick's show. They'll tell you the books they read, the documentaries. You can do all that. And if you truly do that, there's no other fucking education in the world.

8:20 That is superior to that. The two guys teaching the class are both MBA students and they listen to both the best like the best and founders. And I asked them'cause I'm not an MBA, right? I was like, tell me what you had to do to get your MBA. And they explained it's year and a half this and year and that. I go, How much did you read? All the case studies, all the books.

8:35 And they told me I was like I've Found. I far surpassed that. It's not one MBA, it's like fucking ten of them. And that's the unfair advantage. If you are a driven intellectually curious person, type A personality. These are the people listen to your shows, the people listen to mine. We meet them, we know who they are. We're not making content for the average Joe. The average show is off doing some other shit. They're watching Mr. Beast videos or whatever the case is, right? No, but like that's the shit they're into. I don't spend any time doing that. It kills my wife because she's like, Watch the show with me. I was like, No.

9:00 I was like, I want to read books, I wanna listen to podcasts, I wanna do something else, or I'll re watch Game of Thrones because there's actually lessons I can seriously, there's actually lessons I can get in there. And so I really do believe I'm not bullshitting. I believe podcasting is a miracle. The education I just described for a young person interested in investing, right? It's free. You don't charge for anybody in all over the world.

9:20 Can do this. Not just people and I told them, I was like, It's hilarious that I'm actually teaching a class in Notre Dame. I couldn't even got into Notre Dame. They would have looked at my GPA, my everything else, like, what is this? I was working full time in high school. I was like, no, it could not have been a priority. I had to make money. If Podcast existed then, I don't think I would have went to college. Because the amount of learning that I've done

9:39 On my own. Even in the last seven years, I can't think of a better education To answer your question, let me go back to why you can't really tempt me. I don't peek my head up. And look at anything else.

9:49 Nothing on social media, very few other podcasts where Yeah, that shit is better than the stuff I'm reading about. These people live lives so remarkable. Somebody wrote a book about them and you're saying, Hey, read this Twitter thread by this twenty six year old who raised a bunch of money and his company's gonna be out of business in two years. No, I'll go reread Henry Ford's biography. I'll go read the tenth book. I've read over 10 books on Steve Jobs. The idea that everybody knows his name, everybody's using his products, and they're still not understanding lessons. that he imparted one of the most lessons this is tied into focus too. I was thinking about this'cause I just reread Ed Campbell's book, Creativity. The difference is the order in which you learn things has an effect. So I think the first time I read Ed Campbell's book, maybe like the thirtieth book on founders I read. I think it's episode like three eighteen now. So I read three hundred books in the interim. And what was fascinating is something I've been thinking about a lot that leads to exactly what I think the opportunities that you have, the opportunities that come to me as well.

10:37 Is Steve Jobs made it really easy to interface with him. And so when you're saying, Hey, what do you want to do? It's like well

10:44 I want to help people learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. That's the tagline of founders. Were you stumbling founders? In your podcast player. What's the first one? Learn from History Space Entrepreneurs. You know what's gonna happen when you press play. And what was fascinating is Ed Campbell tells the story of the first time he met Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs like twenty nine years old. He's still at Apple.

11:00 'Cause he wanted to buy Graphics Group, which was what turned into Pixar. Graphics Group was owned by George Lucas at the time. Ed Campbell's working for George Lucas. George Lucas goes to a divorce. I don't have to tell the whole story. That divorce And Steve getting kicked out of Apple. Right, led Steve to buying Pixar. And in fact it was interesting, the agreement was he was gonna give George Lucas five million and agree to reinvest five million.

11:21 Right. He went to putting fifty four million of his own money into it. And Steve Jobs became a billionaire off Pixar before he did it off Apple, which is a fascinating story. But Ed Campbell said something that was so fascinating to me that I really tried to do my own life. And I think opens up opportunities not just for me, but I think can be widely applicable to other people.

11:37 And he just says, Yeah, you get in a room with Steve. He's like he's so easy to interface with. He doesn't use other words, but that's my interpretation, because he tells you what's important to him. Make insanely great products. Four words. Do you want to make seen the great products and come with me. Not great products, not good products, not Products that are sell. The best in the fucking world.

11:52 You wanna do that? Then come with me. Easy to interface with me. The reason that I have unfair advantage and you know, you played a huge role in this. It's like I went from being completely anonymous to a world class network. In twelve months.

12:04 It's because I'm easy to interface with. Why would Sam Zo Ask me. He would listen to the podcast. And he's like, I want to meet David. Why? Because I'm easy to interface with. This guy's read three hundred biographies of entrepreneurs. The idea that I'm gonna spend two hours of my time with him.

12:19 And not learn in being not interesting to talk to The probability of that is zero. And so I really think about this is like I think this is important inside companies too because as you know, as you're building the two companies you have, you're telling your stories and you're constantly having Two.

12:33 reinforce what you believe. And that's why the people that do this to Steve Jobs, to Edwin Lands, the Jeff Bezos's They all do this. They repeat they have certain like handful of principles that they just repeat over and over and over again. They're making it easy for you to interface with them. When Jeff Bezos says, I love when Ravi Gupta was on your show, he's like, Amazon doesn't have 14 principles they have one obsessed over customers. And so when Jeff Bezos says every single person Amazon, are you obsessing over your customer or not? You're so easy to interface with. And so I think that's the biggest change is like just made myself easier to interface with. And turns out there's a million people just like me and you that are fascinated by this stuff and want to be around.

13:07 Are there ambitious A players. One of the things we were talking about last night is a very adjacent topic is the role of storytelling in Everything that you've studied. Obviously you're literally reading life stories. But the use of stories by these entrepreneurs. is related to this notion, which I love, of make yourself easy to interface with. I just think that's an incredibly powerful

13:27 Simple lesson. Say a bit more about the role of storytelling as you see it in entrepreneurship and even in the people you studied the athletes, the inventors, the filmmakers. I wanna go through all these categories separately, but storytelling large first is something I think you've spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about. Because there's a lot of investors listening, I also think that one of my favorite quotes on this comes from the founder Sequoia Don Valentine.

13:52 when he nailed it right away. He's like listen, the art of storytelling is critically important for entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs that come to us cannot tell a story. You have to have the ability because Money flow as a result of stories. There's a line in Coco Chanel's

14:07 Explicitly. A lot of people do this implicitly. Like Steve Jobs, excellent storyteller. He's the one that gave me one of my favorite quotes. He says the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. Go watch his presentations. He's masterful at this. Right? He's not building a product. what they're doing is they're building an entire world and they want you to become a part of it.

14:22 And so in Coco Chanel's biography, she says When my customers come to me They like to cross the threshold of some magic place. They feel a satisfaction in That is perhaps a trace vulgar.

14:32 But that delights them. They are privileged characters. They don't call'em customers. Balenciaga called his customers patrons. They actually create their own language, which is fascinating, which I think the best entrepreneurs and investors do in their companies. So he says they feel satisfaction as perhaps they chase vulgar, but that delights them. They are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them, this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit.

14:55 So I was fascinated because there's always a blueprint, right? People always ask me, like, Oh, what book are you gonna pick or who do you wanna study? It's just like I follow my own interests because if I am interest, right? The most interesting people in the world are the most interested.

15:08 So if I just go to a bookshelf of all these unred books, right, and it's like who am I most excited to spend a week going deep and learning about to tell other people about? One way I keep building on founders like a four hundred hour conversation about entrepreneurship right now, right? And hopefully it's forty thousand hours if I can get there. is I'm always wanna know The people that I respect and admire, who do they respect and admire?

15:28 And I was obsessed. I knew nothing about Enzo Fury. Nothing. And yet the single longest book that I've read For the podcast was a thousand page biography of Enzo Ferrari, and in that book. He's talking about this gentleman.

15:41 Name Bugatti. And I was like, Oh, I know what a Bugatti is. I woke up in a new Bugatti like that you know? I love hip hop. I didn't know their their car is five million dollars or whatever the case was. But he was talking about everything he had learned from him. And I was like, Oh, there's always a blueprint.

15:55 And so I had just discovered a book Through a listener. that was published in like nineteen sixty two. Written by his daughter. only available in French and just was recently translated. There's only like a handful of copies. Impossible to find.

16:07 you study Bugatti, you study all these people. He built his own world. He told a story. You're not just buying a car. You're buying a piece of art, a handcrafted piece of art. How he sold his products is like he set up in this little sliver of France and he built his entire world. So he had his family French estate there, where his kids grew up. He had

16:24 his factory, which to call it a factory is they're handmade cars, so it's not like much every machinery. He had his gardens. They called him a feudal baron. because a lot of the early Bugatti customers were also early aviators. So they'd fly in their own he had a meadow. Next to his factory. The landing strip.

16:40 A Linux but when you say like your plane, it's like a right flyer. You and I would not get in this thing. Like I can't believe this happened. But he would invite you into this story. It's not just like here, here's the car. Enzo Furi did the same thing. Enzo Furi set up in Marinello. And he would tour the factory personally. Right, you would spend time with Bugatti, you would spend time with Ferrari, you'd walk around, he'd tell you about why he's doing this, where's the materials coming from?

17:01 No discussion on the price and then at the end it's like, Oh, I want one. Okay. You're gonna have to wait a couple of years. And then There's a great story in the Ferrari book where one of his employees hears him saying that he goes But Enzo, we have all these unsold inventory

17:12 Behind the factory. He's like, a Ferrari has to be desired. Storytelling. It's all storytelling over and over again. I'd love to talk a little bit more about these entrepreneurs that build these literal worlds, like Molsheim, where Bugatti is based. And Brunella Cucinelli and Solomon comes to mind, books right behind me. It is

17:29 Fascinating to me that you've studied all these people that built literal places that are worlds that they control down to the Two by four, it seems. What is going on with these people that do this slowly over time? What are they literally doing? What do you think that impulse is of this like subcategory of entrepreneur that builds a town or a place that you can go? Luxury seems to come up over and over again in this category. I'm fascinated by these literal world builders. I'm glad you used the word impulse. I don't think it's rare. I think it's all the extension of the same things.

18:00 The reason I'm obsessed with reading some of my favorite genre of biographies are filmmakers. Because I consider all entrepreneurs just world builders. To me. all the businesses I talked about this last time where it's like all the businesses is an idea that makes somebody else's life better, right? The first step is what service do I want to do to other people? I think we all want to achieve greatness and greatness is just at a fundamental level, service of other people in a way that they enjoy and then hopefully you scale it up and you can be of service to more people. That's how I think of what I'm doing is if I keep going out there and doing the best job possible at the podcast, and then tell as many people about it as possible and then encourage them to tell other people.

18:31 I would love millions of people 'Cause I truly believe I've already heard thousands of messages, thousands of emails, DMs. These stories will make your life better. They'll make your personal life better, your work life better. On a fundamental level, I think every single entrepreneur, whether they're doing this consciously or not, is a world builder, right? Now what's fascinating

18:47 Is The world building I'm doing. is very ephemeral. So you normally feel it. I don't ever look at analytics, so the only way I know that

18:55 It's expanding is one, you can see the influx of inbound messages, and then I see my podcast host spills. And I'm just like, oh shit. That's a good problem to have though. But what I love is they're realized they want a physical location. That is something that I haven't solved that me and you have talked about for a long time. This is something I've been struggling for years. What is going to be my version of that'cause I'm definitely going to copy that idea. you're already starting to copy that idea. You're playing Monopoly over here in the real world. For the benefit of the listener, we've built a building dedicated to what we like to do. The concept of life's work and podcasting and investing.

19:27 And I'm trying to convince David to come up and join us. the amount of talent that is being pulled into this physical location. I've been here for a few days. And then the energy that you have. Like I couldn't sleep last night. I knew we were gonna record today and so I try to get well rested, woke up at four in the morning, then I sit in the dark, I do this a lot, this is gonna be weird. But I sit in the dark and no input and I just stink. Right.

19:46 I've never been able to successfully meditate into anything'cause I actually got this idea from Jim Simons. I read his book. And when he had a problem, they'd find him like laying in the dark on a couch in his office. Anyway, is he sleeping? It's like no, he's thinking. awake and so I feel like no sound, no visual, and like I do just let my mind go crazy. And so I've already recorded this podcast. Hours and hours and hours'cause I was thinking about all the different weird things.

20:07 barely wrote anything down, so I don't even know if we'll touch him. But I think the compulsion here is just your company is a world that you're building, that has a physical structure and like, yeah, it could be an office and then maybe it expands to multiple locations and then it becomes global or whatever. But this complete integration, this is what Jeff Bezos realized in one of the genius things that he said. He's like, I don't believe in work life balance, I believe in work life harmony. And so if you study Ugati or Ferrari or George Lucas or any of these people that have built Skywalker Ranch, me and you were talking about this forty seven hundred acres. He built his own world. Let me back up one step. What I love is where they get the proceeds of building their own world is betting on themselves first.

20:39 He bet on himself with American graffiti and then The first Star Wars made so much money. No, I'll I'll make this work. And it's like oh now I get the line share those little profits and then I'll what you're doing, reinvesting your profits into a physical location that can then feed on your work. And just makes everything you're doing better.

20:54 I think it's the same impulse. It's like okay. My company's a world, but I have other parts of me. The funny thing is you go visit Bugatti in Molsheim. And you'd stay at the inn that he owns. Do you have an appointment? And then all of a sudden, like you're walking across the field and you see him take off on his horses.

21:09 Because he said When he had a problem to solve. Some people go for a walk, some people go work out, some people lay in the dark, whatever the case is. He rode horses. He's like, This is where all my great ideas come and then He'd solve the unsolved problem and then he'd take his horse right to the factory. So I just think they realize that everything feeds on it.

21:24 You mentioned Cucinelli. Here's the crazy thing about This world If you're talking about the world's greatest investors, which you do on your podcast, I talk about the world's greatest Founders on mine, right? They are more alike.

21:35 To each other. than they are to the average person. So I read Cucinelli's book. put it out into the world, I thought it was fascinating. Absolutely loved everything about him. He built the world. He understood. He's like I want to have a mission bigger than just

21:46 selling cashmere. Yeah. invigorate this area that I think there should be money into here and then I can provide high paying jobs and then we have cafes and we have the whole world. I would do an episode on his book. Put it out there. He sends me a handwritten

22:00 No, thanking me for doing that book. And then does the most Italian shit ever and sends me his own version of olive oil. It's just like the most disorienting thing ever. And then why? Like you study him and Oh, they all do the same thing. They're voracious readers. They're unbelievably curious. They treat the world as their classroom every single conversation he has on philosophy in a cafe or a book he reads, he applies he finds a way to apply those ideas, use them as metaphors. And Strengthen his business.

22:24 I don't ever fear this. I say this in jest, but like I'm Almost scared. people are establishing their founders when they realize I'm just telling It's the same personality in a different body. I think that's why it resonates, right? Same thing with the work that you do. We had this conversation with a guest and

22:38 He's like that may be an episode on Rockefeller. But that's just how I feel the exact same way. Then maybe to go back to your original question, like what's the biggest positive? Is how many shockingly successful people, I find listening to your podcast comforting. Because I'm that Two.

22:53 If these stories are all the same and it's just people in different clothings, whatever phrase you want to use. What is that story? Who is that person? Describe I have Da Vinci's famous illustration of perfect man or something like that. What is the through line. That unites

23:09 all these people and these stories we use the term life's work. I think there's lots of ways you can Talk about it. How do you think about who that universal Story is the universal person is. I've been actually thinking a lot about this. I think it's related to that question. There's like this myth that

23:25 The best entrepreneurs are like super young. And then I go and look, I'm like, Well, I've read three hundred and seventeen of these books. When do they do their best work? Nobody does their best work when they're twenty. or twenty five. They may start it or whatever the case is, but many of the entrepreneurs I most admire got started relatively late in life. There's a great Line in Everland's biography. He says at thirty years old he achieved everything he wanted in life except success. There's one of the best entrepreneurs to ever do it.

23:45 If he was alive today, he'd be kicking all these entrepreneurs' ass up and down the court, without a doubt. There's very few people that have ever lived like M S Lauder got started later. Michael Bloomberg. Got fired. And he's still at it. There's all these examples. I think the through line is I always say wake up with a burning desire to achieve mission success.

24:01 You have to pick some kind of mission, something to dedicate your life to, and that is always in the service of others because that's what a product does. A product makes somebody else's life better. The iPhone that Steve Jobs created made billions of people's life better. I was asked this question at Notre Dame last week. They're like, Well, what do you say to people? They need motivation to get going. I was like, entrepreneurship's an internal thing. You say nothing to that person, you move on. There's this great line actually somebody said. And I wanna make sure I don't get off track to answer your question though,'cause th it brings so many things to mind. Where

24:28 Somebody gets it exactly. They're like, hey, I don't want advice. I want stories, reflections, and notes from your life and work. I will naturally extract the advice. And tips most relevant to me. By reading your stories.

24:40 And somebody responded, That's Founders Podcast. There's no prescription here because you're smart enough. I've never met an entrepreneur or an investor that says tell me what to do. So no no. What Christopher Nolan says me and you were talking about that episode and his insane perspective on life. was fascinating, where

24:54 goes back to this use the world as a classroom. He's like all these experiences he's like I can go to a museum and look at a piece of art. I can watch a film. I can listen to a piece of music. I can read a book. I can have a conversation. All of that. is ingredients from our work and it doesn't work unless you have a foundation which to put it on.

25:10 So the foundation he has is he knows he's gonna make films. So now every single thing. Me and you know we're gonna make podcasts. So everything I experienced in life, the conversations with the crazy event we went to last night, the conversations we had yesterday, the phone calls we'll have, all the such happens that's just fuel for my work. And that's internal. No one told you to do what you started. No one had to tell me what to do, right? And so the way I think about it is like okay. You know you want to do something. You probably don't know what it is. In all cases, you're probably gonna have to start multiple businesses. Right. And so the reason I think

25:39 the most interesting part about this and why I think see the entire arc of a person's life in a biography is so important. Because you see some of the most smartest, most productive people struggle. and they don't know what they want to do. And in many cases they try something like Oh I think I wanna do that and I don't want to do that. The way I think about the same personality type.

25:55 Is And I have no way to prove this. This is just instinct or intuition based I sincerely believe But

26:03 The reason that people tend to do their greatest work later in life. Is yes, the obvious one is have a lot more experience. They're a lot smarter. Don Valentine has this great quote where he's like, I love second time entrepreneurs because they failed the first time. Now they know what they didn't know and now they they can kick the shit. I think he says kick the shit out of the person that hasn't learned yet, right? He says something like that. He said it better be a great language. And I actually think

26:24 This is something that directly that I've learned the last year. No, I actually think the important ingredient is they took more time to know themselves. And I think the people that get to the top of their professions, their work is a reflection of that person.

26:36 The line I always say on the podcast is that Apple Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives. And I think Steve knew himself more at forty. Much more.

26:45 at forty, forty five, then he did it at twenty one, then he did it at thirty, then he did thirty five. He's the greatest example because like who the hell? Mike Moritz has that great book. Return to a little kingdom, the updated version. He's like, There is no other story like his. He's like when did a founder get kicked out of a company that he created, comes back and then goes on the greatest run ever, and then he says essentially he calls it the second founding, the re founding, and he goes, And the second time he did it, he was alone. So that's my answer. I think What ties them all together is they do the work necessary to get to know who they are and therefore can trust their own judgment. And then Christopher Nolan, his products are his taste.

27:17 He's telling you like this is what I think is good. And if I think it's good, I can make other people obsessed with it as well. I realized that of the founders episodes obviously there's so much of it that I haven't listened to every single one. I've listened to a lot, but my highest percentage category is filmmakers. I've listened to every single filmmaker episode that you've done. And in the last year you did Nolan and James Cameron. You've mentioned Nolan a few times. I'd love to pick apart those two a little bit more. And maybe you could talk about Inception, the movie that Nolan made and how long it took him to make it, and just like James Cameron's whole life is just completely

27:48 Fascinating. really because of what they were able to accomplish. But maybe also for like their personality types. Love to hear what you've learned from those two guys in particular. I am Very envious of

27:59 Filmmakers are the people, maybe outside of athletes, I think they probably share this with athletes, but something that I think me and you are trying to help other people do is this is like as much as we can. If we can tell these stories, we can bring these conversations to light. It's like Everybody's really searching for their life's work. And the bizarre thought filmmakers is you go back and read Spielberg, Coppola. Cameron. Nolan, George Lucas, every single one I've read so far. And it's like they knew they wanted to be a filmmaker when they were like a kid kid.

28:25 Like seven. Eight. Twelve. I didn't know I wanted to be a podcaster back that because the podcast didn't exist. But even if it did exist, there's no way in hell. There's just something remarkable about the fact that you knew you wanted to do it. And then your entire life is like Oh yeah.

28:41 That's a job? Okay, how do I get to that? And so everything in their life one of the most impressive things about Nolan to bring up to him is People are like, Oh yeah, this is what I mean is I'm very skeptical that anything external helps an entrepreneur. People do what they want to do. We're not what we believe, we are what we do.

28:56 It's not what we say, it's not what we believe, it's you're just your actions and people can read that very clearly. What's Christopher Nolan's actions? Well Wanted to be a filmmaker, didn't have any money. No one would fund it. So he gets a job and he does his first film records on the weekends. Every weekend for a year. That's how long it took.

29:10 Now, if he could do it full time if somebody gave him the money, then maybe he does in three months, where the case is, he's like, I don't give a shit. This will happen. Did it without permits. figure out oh you got a dog over there, I'll use that dog as a prop. Well, can I sneak in here? Like they're relentlessly resourceful. And you see that with James Cameron. The James Cameron episode is insane because this also talks about this is the most surprising thing is, right?

29:29 Where When you do something, right? You don't know what the response is going to be and I was obsessed with the James Cameron episode when I was making it. I spent an unbelievable amount of time.

29:40 I was done with the research and normally I record right away. I spent multiple days. I'm like, No, there's just something weird here that I want to spend more time with it. I don't know what I wasn't reading anything new. I was re reading what I already read and just spending time thinking about it. I put that episode out, by far the most critically acclaimed episode I have ever done in my entire life. The amount of messages And these are super impressive people saying like this is the best episode. This is the one that I was obsessed with. What I loved about James Cameron is

30:06 high agency, relentlessly resourceful people I've ever come across. He knew when he was growing up Canada. Okay, I want to be a filmmaker. He watched Ridley Scott's Two Thousand One Space Odyssey, which is also the film that inspired Christopher Nolan to become a filmmaker, which is interesting that they shared that they had the same reaction even though they didn't know each other. He's living in Canada. His dad gets transferred to Orange County, California.

30:26 I think he's like fourteen years old at the time. What kid that's in high school wants to move high schools, right? And he's like, Oh okay, cool. Can we go tomorrow? And his dad's like, Why? He's like,'cause that's closer to Hollywood. And then he goes there and he's like, Well shit, I don't have money for film school. What do I do? US C is the greatest film school. Everybody knew it. That's where it attracted attracted Lucas, tracked Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Scorsese, all these people around that area at the time. And he's like, Okay, what do I do? He's like, Well, I'm driving a truck. I'm a fucking truck driver.

30:52 Okay, so I can't go to film school, I'm going to some bullshit community college. But I go to the library. They'll let anybody in the library. And then he goes and scopes out the library. And he's like all these graduate level like film course dissertations on special effects that are very like these esoteric things are very hard to understand. They're on the shelves. I can't take them, but I have a hundred bucks to photocopy. He says he's like I gave myself a graduate level degree in filmmaking for two hundred dollars in Xerox copies. He would copy that on the weekends and then at night and on break when he's driving the truck, he'd read them and he taught himself.

31:22 That kind of person's undeniable. It didn't matter. He just happened to choose film. And then ocean exploration, but whatever that personality type. Whatever that guy wants to do, he's gonna get to the top of his profession. It's the same thing over and over again. What's the dark side? Uh

31:34 With these two guys in particular, maybe Cameron in particular, of this way of living. There's a excellent GQ article, a long form GQ article that Camera did when Avatar Two was coming out. And I said this on the episode, but I literally went to sleep every night listening to that over and over again. And that's another thing that I think

31:51 people. I'm gonna come back to that real quick. It just made me think of something that comes up. 'Cause this is widely applicable to whatever you do for work. You really need to tell people what goes into what you do. because people see the finished result. They don't see what goes into it. And so for every hour of recorded content that I make, there's at least forty to fifty hours of research and reading into it. And so

32:10 The fascinating thing about the Cameron thing. And that's the benefit of biographies'cause you see just decade after decade of practice and everything else. advertisers like David Og V, Albert Lasker, Claude Hopkins, the people that built the modern advertising AC, that's their principle. I'm just literally stealing it from them. And they would use it over and over again. Just people don't know what goes into the product. And the more you tell them, the more value. it becomes more valuable in their eyes because they know what goes into it.

32:31 So The GQ article is fascinating though because I didn't know anything about Cameron other than watching his movies. And you have to read between the lines. And so his fifth wife pause? Pardon me?

32:41 And then you learn more about'em and I'm like, oh, that personality type. Of course. He is high agency Highly disagreeable. adamant about getting his way.

32:50 These are usually Bad husbands, bad spouses. there's actually something interesting that just happened very recently. I find Arnold Schwarzenegger so Fascinating because I can't find another parallel for his life story. You moved to another country, got famous for working out.

33:02 became the highest paid movie star, married into their royalty and then You became governor of a state you can't even pronounce. What what just happened here? How did that even happen? And what's fasting, so I read every single thing That

33:14 I found about him that he wrote'cause he has two autobiographies that he wrote. Then I'm watching the new documentary on Netflix about them. And then I see There's this book called Arnold and Me, written by his live in girlfriend when he was from like twenty to twenty six.

33:27 And you know this'cause I've told you this any book I can find I love biographies. There's a bunch of biographies. I'm reading one right now about Winston Churchill that ends when Churchill's like twenty six. I've read Theodore Roosevelt. ends at twenty eight. There's a biography of Steve Jobs ends at thirty. There's a biography of Arnold Schwier ends at thirty. This is very fast because you see who they were before the rise.

33:46 And what was hilarious to me was because I am so engrossed into this this kind of behavior is normal to me. I was like, oh, I gotta order that book. Read that book. The book is three hundred pages of her being I don't get it. Why can't I change Arnold to who he is? And I was like I could tell you from looking at that guy. There is no changing him. So the the main message from that episode is that insanely driven people, Mike and Arnold like a lot of people you have on your podcast, like everybody I study on my podcast. You either have a supportive spouse or you don't have a spouse.

34:11 And you see that with Cameron, where it's just like uh I'm not gonna compromise. Maybe this fifth I think he's been with his fifth wife quite a while. Looks maybe maybe Part mellowed. It's in his sixties now. But yeah, that's the dark side. That They're so intent. What they're going after that they will

34:25 Do anything to get it. You mentioned Arnold. I'm curious about Athletes, our definition of life's work is a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. You've touched on a lot of these ideas already. Athletes are a really interesting case. In the last year, you've done episodes on Jordan, on Tiger, on Arnold. I think there's one on Mike Tyson coming out. So you've really done pretty deep dives on some of the iconic all time great athletes.

34:48 What have you learned from them? I don't know that those four, let's say, exactly fit. my definition all that well. But it makes me actually question my definition, not the other way around, because it seems as though these guys fall in the same category. We saw Venus Williams play last night. There's lots of athlete examples that seem like there's a lot to learn from them, but they're very different than entrepreneurs or even from filmmakers.

35:11 where the film is sort of like a business of production. So what have you learned from all the athletes that you've studied in the last year? Why do you feel consistently drawn back to some of these personality types? What's different about them? I just did an episode on Paul Graham's essay, which I think is one of the best essays I've ever read. It's called How to Do Great Work. He picked up'cause he's read a ton of biographies. He's seen a bunch of thousands of entrepreneurs up close. They all use what they learn as like metaphors. for their work. So I actually think the Athlete. as a metaphor is the clearest way to describe the part of an entrepreneur. If you get to the end of Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dogs like, Oh, this is all the same dream.

35:44 He's like entrepreneur. Artist. musician, athlete, it's the same personality type, just directed at something else. Now I would argue that The people you mentioned, like Michael Jordan. And Tiger Woods especially

35:54 I don't consider Mike Tyson an athlete'cause I think combat sports, the only sport I really pay attention to is MMA. And That is straight up. Instinctual. combat. There's no higher stakes other than war. You're literally going out to do it as much damage as possible. But what they all share is

36:08 Their calling is competitiveness. There's a great line. And to some degree would I think scare other people. That's why I'm glad that so far you asked if like what's the negative about founders. I don't think you could be like a normal person I think it's gonna self select, right? It's like this one weird guy with this giant head sitting in a room by himself, just a stream of consciousness.

36:27 For an hour. If somebody said I take a deep breath and I just Spit off fire for like an hour. And I think it's not the easiest thing to listen to because a lot of these stories Like the Tiger Woods things where he's just like, I've never found a better feeling. than beating everybody else. We're the last person standing.

36:43 The reason this is so important is because It comes from you can't understand a person unless you understand what was their early life like. What were their parents like? Why are they the way they are? And so the one thing that I received, there's one line that I say over and over again. that I learned from Francis Four Copo's biography.

36:58 that I get the most messages by far about. And it says you can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. That's in every single biography. It's what people resonate the most. It's what I get the most messages about. In the case of Tiger Woods, and I'm gonna use Michael Jordan too. Tiger Woods' dad engages psychological military warfare with them. And so everybody focuses on his dad. Which yes, that's a large part of that biography. What was Mom?

37:22 Being you have kids around Tiger was eleven, right? We both have kids around this age, right? Could you imagine driving your son? to a competition. You're playing Golf.

37:32 This is not like high stake shit. And saying hey, no matter what. You keep your foot on their neck. You never let up. It's not just his dad, his mom was like that too.

37:41 His mom after his dad cheated on his mom a bunch, read the book or watch the Tiger documentary on HBO, and they talked about this a lot. And his mom would tell his son It's like oh yeah, your dad is soft. He's like He forgives. I never forgive. The craziest thing I learned in a biography

37:55 Is that Tiger's parents never got divorced. They stay married, they separated. So when Tires.

38:02 dad dies, it's up to his mom, she had the right to decide the bureau. One of the most famous people on the planet and one of the most famous athletes to ever live. His dad is buried in an unmarked grave. That was his mom's decision. What kind of environment was he raised in?

38:17 And so same with Michael Jordan. Super competitive. His calling is just being ultra competitive. winning, playing zero sum games, and I have to be there. There's twenty nine losers. And one winner, and I'm going to do everything to make sure I'm that one winner, right?

38:30 And comes from his dad saying Oh, go in the house with the women. You're not one of the boys, you're not one of the men. It's like The story of the fathers embedded in the son. I think the ending to my Jordan podcast,'cause I do re listen to my old episodes. I think that's one of the best endings I've ever done because it's like that's the way the book ends. His dad is dead. Highly likely that Michael Jordan is better at his job than anybody else has ever been

38:50 At theirs. Right. And at the end it's like, Am I good enough now, Dad? Still. in like the dark recesses of his mind. It's like this I'm gonna prove to my dad I don't have to go in the house with the women.

39:02 I am good enough. And so you can't understand that. You can watch documentaries about this, you can do all this you have to understand what the hell took place in their early life. The idea that I'm gonna get Distracted. Fumble this opportunity.

39:16 You can look up and down my family tree. No one is even remotely close. to the opportunity that founders can provide for my kids to make sure my kids will go through what I went through or anybody else in my family tree. It's like I'm not doing this for me.

39:28 One of the things I love. Is the the Bugatti biography was like this. So Price, who's the most influential retailer of all time, I did an episode on him. One of the things that I think drives me is yes, I'm super competitive. I want to be the best in the world at this very little niche. The narrow niche is like I want to make the best podcast in the world.

39:44 On history Squaders. I don't give a fuck about anything else. I don't care about business podcasts in general. Investing podcasts is like this little niche is all I care about. So I'm going after. And one of the things that drives me is I want my kids to be proud of me. The idea that Bugatti's daughter writes that biography about her father She was so impressed with the man he was and the work he did.

40:05 That's the open of the book. We want to tell his story. He was a remarkable man. Sole price. Most influential retailer of our time, most people don't know who he is.

40:13 You know who knows who he is? Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco, knows who he is because that was his mentor. Jeff Bezos knows who he is. Sam Walton says he stole more ideas from soap price than anybody else. I do an episode of Silver Price. It is written by Robert Price, which is his son, right? And this is the miracle of podcasting, why I'm never gonna get distracted. And I put that episode out. That is the second time I read the book.

40:32 And Souls Sun. Who wrote the book send me an email. Said you honored our family. That's fucking incredible.

40:39 So this is what I'm after. The way he ends the book on his father. Let me read this extra, if you don't mind. Again, his grown son His grown son writing about his father after he passed away. So was the poster child for the American dream.

40:50 His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. So was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropists. He celebrated seven years of marriage, was a good father who instilled high values in his sons. And he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn't get much better than that. It doesn't. He's a hundred percent right. If you get to the end of your life

41:12 And your kids write that about you you won. And I don't give a fuck if you have Fift billion dollars. Your kids, the people know you the best, that know the real you. People can fake all kinds of shit.

41:22 Your kids know who you are. And They don't want anything to do with you? You're a failure. I don't give a fuck how rich you are. The examples you've given of

41:30 The story of the Son and the father Oftentimes they're quite dark, and the person that we're talking about who's got a book written about them, The Jordans and the Tigers of the World. had extremely Tough relationships.

41:42 Are there examples? of the opposite where the relationship is more like the one you just described with Sol Price or the one that you're seeking to achieve with your kids. That led to the same sort of excellence. That these very tough

41:55 Environments led to? I don't think anyone listening wants to like do what Tiger Woods Dad did to Tiger. And yet it produced Tiger. And lots of people want to be tiger or someone like him. There's a great line I heard recently from a friend and mentor of mine, which is around the notion of envy. And his beautiful little idea was you are allowed to envy somebody if you envy the entire life. You're not allowed to envy pieces of it.

42:17 And I think if you read that Tiger Biography, very few people would walk away and say Actually, yeah, I I want that whole package. They want the glory But if you read what he went through, I don't think anyone would up trade places. At least certainly I wouldn't. So what about the opposite of the virtuous

42:32 influence of great parentage or early life circumstances that led to kind of greatness that you've studied that I think a lot of people want to achieve that are listening. Sad to say, can't think of a single example. I'm sure there is. Nothing comes to mind right away. I have to go through all my episodes to really think about it, but it comes from like this desire to either prove your father wrong

42:51 Or in the case I'm reading a biography of Churchill. His dad, he was like an aristocrat. Churchill didn't have to do the life he wanted to, but he had that desire. He's like, I'm not just the son of a successful man or a famous man or a powerful man. I can achieve even higher than him. I haven't finished the book, so I'm not entirely sure if it even gets into his actual views, but from the very beginning, it's like, Oh, clearly there's this father son dynamic here that is pushing him along. Almost like delusions of grandeur. He talks about knowing he was destined for greatness when he was like a teenager. The way he talks actually motivating for me in a weird way. Unfortunately. I just think in general negative drives. Like fear of failure, I think is a way more intense drive than

43:28 Love of success. We say we're chasing after success, but and that's what we think we're doing'cause it's a positive spin. But I think a lot of people are actually just like terrify I'm terrified to be a failure. Biggest fear I have is that I'm not gonna live up to my potential. people would say, Oh yeah, he was a failure. That's way more important than anything else to me.

43:44 Just to push on maybe the most extreme category related to some of these ideas is the category that I would call conquerors, in the craziest sense you might think of like Genghis Khan or something, but you studied Napoleon. There's business versions of this, probably like someone like Vanderbilt would come to my mind. Who have you studied in the category that I'll call conquerors? And what have you learned about

44:04 This group of people in the same vein that I asked about athletes. So Alexander the Great Napoleon. I've done a bunch of episodes I think on both of them. Those are the ones that come to mind. Uh first conquerors. In a business sense, yeah, I would consider Vanderbilt is up there. I think the robber barons in general.

44:19 We're just more extreme. than what we see today, or at least the people operating today are probably better hiding it. And with time may tell like some of the stuff that they did are likely as extreme. The conquering thing is a weird thing to me, where I don't even know if like I should admit this publicly. So I read this book Called the Mind of Napoleon.

44:36 And Mm. Was published in like nineteen fifties. It is just a collection of three hundred pages of Direct quotes from Napoleon talking directly to you. There's two reasons I study Napoleon and Churchill.

44:47 Is I always want to know who influenced them. And if you study the history of entrepreneurship Pre World War Two. All of them.

44:54 Or inspired by Napoleon. The longest speech on record that Rockefeller ever gave was about Napoleon and if Napoleon was a businessman, he'd be the greatest businessman that ever lived. And then after World War Two, everybody's inspired by they're still inspired by Napoleon, but Churchill just appears over and over and over again. Right. So I was like, all right, I have to understand them. To really understand these people.

45:11 R minus Napoleon. Also'cause I thought it was interesting because What may be a very important technology and company is Sam Altman's company, right? And Sam Altman said In two thousand eighteen. when he was starting to build open air or whatever, the most important book he read was The Mind of Napoleon.

45:25 So same thing. It's like I'm not trying to pay attention to any new company now because I'm focused on my own. But that's interesting. Why did he say that? Is there something in that book Are these things related? And the thing that Napoleon did for me It's even

45:38 Embarrassing to admit. He says if you die and your name is not known, then your life was useless. Now I I think his was glory for himself,'cause he said, I had the opportunity to overrule the world. Like who wouldn't? Me, I don't want to roll the roll. I don't want that kind of life. But that personality type, the Alexander Grape, they don't give a shit if they lived to thirty, to forty, to fifty.

45:55 it is more important that they have a chance to be the very top of everything they're doing. Their trade is different. In business, what I love about entrepreneurship is for a vast majority of human history is just like the way you built quote unquote wealth is you killed people for it. You stole their land, their women, their cattle, and that's it. There was no market economy. Now it's all positive sum.

46:13 Me and you. We make podcast products, whatever is like make people's lives better. There's a benefit to us. I'm not taking anything from anybody else. I'm adding to it. Napoleon really made me realize don't hold yourself back because there is a weird hesitation with me. And so I am learning if you think about founders, all founders, this is my personal curriculum, but it's externalized to the world. I just make it public. I'd be reading these books even if I didn't have a podcast. I just said, hey, Let me do this extra step and then hopefully you can benefit from'cause I'm gonna be obsessively learning and trying to get better because

46:42 I think you just had our mutual friend Jeremy Giffin on the podcast, which is one of the best episodes of I's like the best I ever heard. And I spent time with Jeremy and I think the weird thing is how everybody says he's so smart and it's kind of annoying that it is. In a great way,'cause I do like Jerry. But like one of the first times I hang out with him he's like I think you're uh he called me a deranged college professor, which was hilarious. Good line.

47:03 He has that biting wit that I think people love him for. We're sitting there and he goes. I'm pretty sure that this whole founders podcast thing is you didn't have any mentors growing up, so you have this insane search. For like somebody that could show you the way. And it's like

47:16 God damn it, he understood me better than I understood me. And so the Napoleon thing Part of me is obviously introvert. I sit in a room by myself and I talk. I don't have any guests. Clearly that dude's an introvert. I want to spend half my waking hours alone. I desire solitude. But part of it is like well, this is the craft that I've chosen.

47:33 I realize there's an inconsistency in me that I didn't understand and Napoleon told me about. And his whole thing was just you really want glory. Now I hope that the glory is Not glory of David Sanera, but glory of the work that I do because I legitimately think the podcast I'm making is changing people's lives. Right. And I want to do that. And that's why I said. All the messages I get. Give message every day if the people are nice to you.

47:54 Thank you for what you're doing. That kinda thing. And it amps you up. Gets me out of bed in the morning. But also it was like I was being hypocritical and saying, Well Yeah, I wanna do this, but I I still wanna preserve my privacy or I don't want to put my face on video. All this other stuff. And Napoleon's like Fuck that.

48:09 You have a gift? See where that gift takes you. But do not Hide it under like a bushel or Sabotage yourself all in. You're either in the game or not in the game. And these are not even explicit things that are said. Again, most of the lessons I'm pulling off are not explicit do X, do Y. It's like,

48:25 Oh shit. That line made me think of something else. I am sabotaging myself. And so That book has really pushed me to I'm willing if this is my goal Then I'm willing to do everything in sacrifice of that goal other than sacrifice my health or sacrifice my family.

48:40 I know that's a good idea and an interesting lesson because I think you see it everywhere. You see self sabotage. Amongst Talented people. all the time. There's that interesting idea of the upper limit problem. I can't remember the author who wrote about this right now, but this idea that we all create this fictional ceiling for ourselves. And if we approach it, we self-sabotage to like bring ourselves down. I certainly see that in myself and it's fascinating that Napoleon is the person that helped you out of it.

49:06 We were having this conversation Where You even told me. Yeah, there's this great the very fun party dinner table conversation that I first got from Charlie Songhurst, which is one of the most popular episodes that we ever did. But

49:18 The very first thing we talk about in the episode is That he likes to have people stack rank, money, power, and fame. as their motivators or the things that they would choose they could stack rank which was most desirable to them. And I find this to be one of the most interesting and revealing questions you can ask somebody because most people don't answer it accurately. you ask a couple follow up questions, you can get people that change their rankings pretty quickly. And I've gotten pretty good at it.

49:42 It happened because I was surprised at my own ranking and so anyway, that's the Set up for you. I think it is actually helpful and Again. People that know you well.

49:51 And actually observe it so much easier to see flaws in other people than it is in ourselves. And so my ranking was Money. Fame, power. Right,'cause power to me is

50:01 Now I understand a better definition of power is like okay. What you want to happen happens. Right. But I always think of power in history is always like fucked up things. I don't want people to tell me what to do and I don't want to tell other people what to do, right? But the ability to make changes in the world. So if you frame it like that, yes, I do want to make changes in the world. I am not ashamed to say The reason I've seen with podcasting.

50:19 Is because I think I have a role to play in the formation of a brand new industry. I think I can be a good example. I think I can influence the trajectory.

50:28 study the history of entrepreneurship, let's say I have a major, right, in the history of entrepreneurship. Well then the minor is in new industry creation. because a lot of these stories happen in the they're just at the right place, right time, with the right set of skills. And that's where I feel I'm at. I was like, oh, podcasting's gonna be a giant industry. It's underpriced. It's way more influential on people I even understand. I'm completely addicted to it. I'm compulsively to have to do it anyway, so Maybe I believe this because of my compulsion, maybe I'm wrong, right?

50:49 But the way When I read these stories, is don't hide that you feel that way. It's not from an arrogant standpoint. I'm not saying I'm special. It's just I am obsessed with this. I think about it a lot more and It's comforting. Same example as I guess. Oh well lean into the things that make you extreme. Now

51:05 I think this ties to why I do try to put barriers on myself where I say, Hey, I'd rather be like an Ed Thorp or Sol Price or Brunella Cucinelli, the people that had amazing professional success and didn't destroy everything around them. But I also know that my personality type, what I have to be careful with is I see I think why this resonates. People see themselves in these other people. It's why it's called founders and not companies. People identify with people and don't identify with organizations.

51:28 And I know my personality enough, you have to be very careful here. because you could be so obsessed with your goal that you destroy things that you actually love and that you know that people when they get to their life regret doing.

51:40 It's arrogant for me to think that These people that are, in my opinion, smarter and more accomplished than I am. made mistakes that I'm not prone to make. Let me tie this back to what we were talking about. Well, you're like, No, it's not money, fame, power. You're like no for you it's

51:53 Fame. Money power. And the reason I said money at the top is because when you grow up with an absence of it You realize how powerful money is. When I say money, it's not money to buy Ferraris, none of that shit. It's to make sure I have control over my environment, I get to spend time who I want, and then my kids are in a safe environment, they're not harmed. That's the main goal. But your point was

52:12 Well fame not because you want to make yourself famous, but because you want to win. And your game is podcasting. And because you have such an insane desire to win, that fame has to be at the top. It's interesting you do this exercise. My favorite follow up question is Okay, so you get the thing you want. What are you going to do with it?

52:30 The question, what do you want, is the most powerful, interesting question. And then you have to square that with people's behavior. Is their behavior Does it show or prove the thing they say they want or not? And very often it's not the case. People's revealed preference or behavior is different than their stated preference or behavior. Anyway, I encourage people to think about this question for themselves and their friends. It's really interesting. I'm curious if you think the people you've studied would have consistent rankings of these three, or if they'd be all over the map. The answer question is I don't know.

52:58 I'd have to think about it on individual basis. It's definitely not money. The thing I know for sure. Which I think a lot of people misunderstand. Is

53:07 They think because done at the highest levels entrepreneurship creates the greatest financial rewards in the world. The richest people have built companies. They're the wealthiest, right? There's no way you're gonna read like James Dyson's biography and be like, Oh yeah, he's doing this for money. Really? Vacuum cleaners for fourteen years, five thousand one hundred twenty seven prototypes for money? No, this is not for money.

53:25 The only people I'm really interested in. I talked about this. Everything comes down to me is products. And the reason everything comes down to products is because products is the way that you express the service you do for other people. And so that's why it's well, you're gonna get distracted. No, because I love the product that I'm making. All I'm thinking about is when I'm spending forty hours for one hour of recorded audio. I have to make sure every single minute or every single section of the podcast is this valuable to other people. So I would definitely say money is not going to be the top for them at large.

53:50 Um, maybe power is probably ahead of fame, though, because power is changing the world. I had this conversation last time last time I was up here. Was What I wanted to think about is I

54:01 Love the fact that so many people listen to my podcast, so many people listen to your podcast. I'm kind of envious of the people who make physical products. Imagine if Steve Jobs was still alive. And everywhere you go. Every single way you go The thing that was first took place in your mind. is in these people's hands and you see it everywhere.

54:19 So it's gotta be power. 'Cause he literally changed and they're thinking about the most influential entrepreneur. I put Steve Jobs up there right now. Or in the last like twenty years or whatever. Go back a hundred years, it's gotta be Henry Ford.

54:30 His product literally changed the geography of the world that we live in. There's suburbs because of that. There's highways. Everything because of this mass production of cars that he figured out before anybody else. What is that like? That's power. To cut at the premise a little bit. I think people when you hear these three they have this like very selfish

54:46 Undertone to them. And obviously the healthiest drive and motivation would be something different. And so I just want to offer maybe an antidote to this exercise. There's this guy that I spent a bunch of time study, his name is Dr. Govinda Venkataswamy, who was an eye doctor who started this hospital called Aerind, I believe, in India when he was quite old. He had sort of like had a full career. And then he spent decades building this hospital that's cured millions of people in India of cataracts.

55:13 And he has this amazing quote towards the end of his life. He said intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful. When we grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify ourselves with all that is in the world, and there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping, it is ourselves that we are healing. I love that articulation of it. To me That's what I'm searching for when I listen to some of your episodes. I hear these stories of Tiger or others

55:39 I think of my son or my daughter. I don't want that story for them. I want a great story for them that comes from a place like Govinda. Yeah. That's why I say to build something for others is the middle part of that definition. You can cut through these three motivators, which sound very selfish. And get to a higher place.

55:56 But what's fascinating to me you're the world expert on this is that there just are not a lot of Govindav and Kataswamis in history. There definitely are some. You could argue that the world's great religious figures. I'd love you to go. Study Muhammad, study Jesus, study Buddha. I would love you to read their stories and do your thing on them because I do wonder

56:16 Is that the natural next iteration of some of these stories that could be maybe a bit more aspirational than Some of the scary life stories you've studied. That lead to greatness nonetheless. So it's funny you said that because one of my favorite authors is again Paul Johnson. What I think people more often should do is he writes his two hundred page biographies. So good. The Churchill one is so good.

56:34 Yeah, they're excellent. The Churchill episode I did on Paul Johnson's book is one of my favorite episodes I've done and one of my favorite books. And it's hilarious that you said that because I just Downloaded and started reading. His biography on Jesus. So I don't know if I'm the right person. You're a right person.

56:50 This is gonna go on an interesting conversation. goes back to the influences of the best thing about to the life stories of the people that develop them. applies to obviously myself where it's

57:01 I think I'd be biased because I grew up in the church in mind my own business. I don't care what people believe and what they don't believe. Unfortunately, like my mom was a fundamentalist Christian where like she got cancer. And The kind of churches she was involved in and expose us to. She didn't seek medical advice, she tried to just Pray about it.

57:18 It's changed me as a person. So Watch the person that gave birth to you slowly whittle away and refuse help. And then die in one of the most grievous Ways possible.

57:28 I started reading it and I stopped'cause I'm like, I don't know if I can actually do this. Maybe I will I think reading these multiple times actually thinking about and there's a bunch of books that I read and never turn into podcasts, but I wonder if I can actually do that because I do think it's interesting because talking about founder, founder of religion. That's fascinating. I don't care if I just like founders. That could be a founder of a company, a founder of an idea, a founder of religion, a founder of an organization, a founder of nonprofit. I just like people who start things from scratch. I think that's very fascinating. But I do want to go back to this idea of service because This is something I also think that entrepreneurs

57:56 Instinctively no. I think outsiders don't. Maybe my favorite maximum from the history of entrepreneurship is Money comes naturally as a result of service. And

58:03 Yeah but They get so rich or whatever the case is. A lot of people think they're doing it just for money or whatever. I have a different perception, like if they're doing it for money, they would have stopped a long time ago. They work for decades after they already have more money than they'll spend. And then I've also experienced this in my own life.

58:18 And it's obvious in the books. There is some kind of future generations benefit from this human impulse that's clearly reoccurring. A lot of these people wait to the end of their career, they know they're dying, and yet they try to document every single thing that they know for the benefit of future generations. So obviously Sam Walton, right, knows he's dying. He's got cancer all of his body. He knows he's dying when he's writing that book. Who picks up that book and influences them? Jeff Bezos, along other people, right? Steve Jobs talked about that. Like he knew he was dying. He's working with Walter Isaacson to do that. Ingbar Camper, the founder of Ikea.

58:46 Everybody try to get him to write a biography, he wouldn't do it. Then his co writer says, Hey But you should look at this as like service to future generations of entrepreneurs. And so then he does it. He had a seven decade long career. This happened in my own life, right? Which I didn't know at the time it was happening. And it was a direct result of what's taken place in my life in the last year. Where I had lunch with Sam Zell before I had dinner with Charlie Munger.

59:07 I did the Charlie Monger episode. First. Sam Zell listened to that episode. Right. I'd already spent two hours. One on one. It was me, him, my friend Rick.

59:18 Conversation just like the one we're having here, right? And then he listened to he's like, I wanna do that. He's like, I will fly down to Miami. Let's have dinner. We'll spend a few hours with David, give him more content and then he can make I had Dinner with Sam Zell episode.

59:31 That dinner was scheduled. Right. The day before the dinner It was canceled he wasn't traveling'cause he was sick. Three weeks later he was dead.

59:39 And I didn't know he was sick. He obviously knew he was sick. And the reason he was doing it is not'cause of me. He loved entrepreneurs and he knew a bunch of entrepreneurs listen to my podcast. Do he travel all over the fucking world doing this? He just loved doing that. He wasn't making money on it. The guy had to send billions and billions of dollars.

59:54 But he loved entrepreneurs. And he benefited From other mentors. There is always a blueprint. There's always a mentor. There's always a helper. And I think that's the biggest thing where it's like I made you laugh yesterday. the way I think about the partnership that we developed, I relate everything to either hip hop or sports or game of throne or something like that.

1:00:09 the the analogy between me and you is like Doctor Dre signing M and M. That's what happened because Dr. Dre on his own path had developed impressive body work. earn the respect of people and if he says, Hey, this guy's good, you should pay attention to him.

1:00:24 that holds weight. And so he put the thumb on the scale. and launched M and then what happens? Eminem goes fucking crazy and he's still doing it. We're still working nine to five, still making music twenty five, thirty years later, which is hopefully my path. I get this message all the time. I hope you never stop podcasting. The only way I ever stop podcasting is if some way I learn how to rap.

1:00:41 'Cause then you have to worry about it.'Cause that's the only other job where I'm like, that seems pretty cool. And then I would do exactly what I would have did. He's not doing it for money. He's got more money he could spend. He does it because he loves to, and people enjoy the results of his labors. I love this notion of all these stories of people deciding that they can give back and sort of pass the torch through lessons and stories or whatever to the next generation of founders. I used to have this motto, I guess I still do, which is simple learn, build, share, repeat. Like if you just follow that loop, it works really well for you. We started to think about our favorite episodes being what we call the only episodes, meaning it's somebody that's really hard to convince to come do this, but we get them to and we're the only one that they've done. And the reason is that exact same idea. These are people that have learned really valuable lessons.

1:01:26 And this notion of service and passing it on is lovely. Dr. Bankata Swami that I mentioned before News journals, someone found his journals. And there's all these little scribbles in it. And I love these little scribbles. There's some of them that are funny, like How do we make Erevin more like McDonald's? He was obsessed with McDonald's because it was so efficient and everywhere in the world it was like the same process. And he wanted to do that for eye surgeries. But the line that I think about all the time, it sort of haunts me. Is

1:01:50 How do I become a more perfect instrument? And he thought about it that way, that he was an instrument. Nothing more. for this thing that he was building. And

1:02:02 I would love to hear about history's founders and what you've learned in the last year about this notion of Personal growth is too lame of a title for it. But I like this. How do I become a more perfect instrument if I'm devoted to something greater than myself, which I think you and I agree that people should be. Then the question is, okay, how do I become a more perfect instrument for that thing?

1:02:24 Who comes to mind when You hear that phrase somebody that honed themselves as an instrument in devotion to something, creating something greater than themselves for others. I mentioned Henry Ford. I think he's the greatest example because

1:02:37 What's remarkable, I've read I don't know, five books on'em. I'm gonna read every single book I can find. And I'm talking about his professional life. His personality is a weirdo. He had one idea. This is something I I've been reading about Don Valentine a lot lately and he's what we teach entrepreneurs they only have to do a few things well. People are surprised. Like if you just do a few things well and do it over a long time and keep getting better at it, that's how you build a fantastic company, right? What I think about him is he literally had one idea. When he was a young man, he's in his twenties when he's trying to do this, then he's when his thirties when he started his company, he's just like I wanna make a car for the everyman.

1:03:04 It's kinda weird that we're building six thousand dollar cars. When the average person makes less than three dollars a day. Who's buying these cars? Five hundred people in the entire country. You can't say he did it for money, even though he's one of the richest people on the planet. By nineteen nineteen own hundred percent a Ford Motor Company. His whole thing was just it goes back to experience he had in his early life. He hated the toiling of manual labor

1:03:23 Started on the farm. And he combined his distaste for the toiling of a typical rural American lifestyle at the time, right? With his innate love of mechanics of all things. He would take things apart and he's just like, Well, can I build machines that We're leave.

1:03:37 Human toil. Think about if me and you wanted to travel and there's no car. What do we do? We're walking? You're on a horse. This is a crazy thing also where I think of the reason I try to isolate myself

1:03:47 'Cause I know everybody's gonna be influenced. By the Things they take in, right? Which is why I'm so paranoid about the quality of what I put into my podcast'cause the mind is a powerful place and what you feed it, affects you in a powerful way. Right. I want to affect people in a powerful way with good things, good ideas, good stories, anything that can help, especially their day to day work. What's fascinating is

1:04:04 You'd be shocked what people can get used to. I've read about all the early Car manufacturers. If you were living in New York City in like 1895, your job could have been you wake up every morning, say bye to your wife and kids. You you spend the day cleaning up horse shit. And urine all day long. It was like tons and tons.

1:04:20 of horse crap on the streets of Manhattan every year and people are like T. What do you need this car for? And they were just used to it. This is also where

1:04:29 I know it's frustrating. Dealing with me, my wife tells me the same thing that you tell me and that other people around me tell me you're like, God damn, I can't get an idea into this guy's head. Takes months and months for him to actually six months to be precise. I do think there's a benefit. Here's it gonna be an extreme comment that entrepreneurs and investors will understand, but normal people won't. I was like I truly believe

1:04:48 that you should believe that your opinion is more important than any opinion around you. Because I've seen this example over and over again. Henry Ford, stop working. You don't need a car. Design a faster horse or a better horse carriage or whatever. Every single time somebody creates something new, you have the vast majority, 99% of the people around them saying you shouldn't do that thing. What are you doing? Give up. What's wrong with the status quo?

1:05:10 This is part of the brainwashing I'm doing to myself where it's like, Yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. If you adapt that belief, everybody's like, Sometimes you're right when everybody else is wrong, and sometimes you're wrong when everybody else is right. But that's the life you choose. This is what I want to do. And so I do think that's actually a good idea. So he was the first one that comes to mind because he was so wealthy and he didn't retire didn't do anything. He's just like I have this one idea and I want to see this idea come into fruition, but I'm sure there's a million examples. When you think of high Agency.

1:05:34 Founders. It's a term that describes probably most of the people that you read, but it's a sliding scale. One of the things we keep talking about is within everywhere there's power laws within even the books that you've read, the three hundred people, the top couple people versus the bottom couple is like a mass disparity. And the bottom couple had books written about them. So there's just always these spectrums that I find really interesting. And so I'm curious when it comes to agency How you think about that term and who comes to mind?

1:06:00 And what's the role of agency like? My friend George Mack gave me the definition of what a high H person is. When you're told no. What's your next response? For these people, it's like no is just the first step. And then move on to the next. One of the greatest examples of this, I didn't know. There's an excellent book. Everybody's read. So what I try to do is I don't want to just read all the books that everybody read. Yeah, the Steve Jobs Isaac book, I'll read Titan, Rockefeller I'll read, I'll read Shoe Dog. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think my advantage and edge is like I find these weird books no one's read. Many people think they're boring and I think they're fucking riveting.

1:06:28 And so I found this book. I went through I re read Titan'cause I was obsessed with Rockefeller, right? And then what I do is I go in the bibliography. And in the bibliography, I'm like What is this other book published forty years ago? What is this? And I find like this other copy. And it goes into way more detail. In my opinion, it is the best

1:06:45 Biography of Rockefeller. Because also there's nothing wrong with Titan. But this one is two hundred and fifty pages. And it really focuses On

1:06:54 early days of his career. It's episode two fifty four Founders. I think it's called John D, the founding father of Rockefeller is the book. It's really hard to find. And what was fascinating to me is I forgot how much borrowed money. I could stand it oil. Charlie Munger made this point. Where's like if you go back and look at the businesses that Robert Barons built.

1:07:10 There's only one that survived. Rockefeller. Rockefeller's clearly built the best organization out of anybody. And you go and you read that book and it's focuses On How did he start? Stand or printed money, right? But at the beginning it was built on borrowed money.

1:07:24 And so he has a line in that book where he's just like oh I had to go to every single bank. I raise money as much as I could constantly. And if somebody said no I didn't care. All I knew was now I just go to the next bag.

1:07:35 I was one step closer to getting what I want. He took a rejection. That's a high agency person. Took a no as, Oh, it's great. One step closer. Now I'm one step closer to the yes. But by far the highest agency founder that I've ever come across is Samuel Zamurie. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read, because his life story is incredible. There's only one biography that I know of him, but also the writing. I think the guy's name is Rich Cohen. This book is well known. The Fish They Ate the Well.

1:07:58 I think the life and times of America's Banana King Samurray I think is the subtitle or whatever. And That's a perfect example. Guys are Russiant, penniless, uneducated Russian immigrant.

1:08:08 I think he starts in Alabama and then eventually ported New Orleans. He's like nineteen years old. Right, working job after job. At one time he was taking care of pig shit. That's what he had to do. He had to support himself and his family that were coming over, right? They were escaping religious persecution.

1:08:22 And What I love about him is not only high agency, but something that I try to share as well is I love these people that see opportunities where other people see nothing. Yeah, I've told the story before where it's like, man I told one of my oldest friends, you try to build a business that is a perfect representation of you, it's completely authentic to yours.

1:08:37 I don't have any memories before I was a compulsive reader. I wonder if I could build a business around reading books. And my friend's like This is the dumbest thing I ever heard. And then he called me like a year ago. He's like, I can't believe you did this shit. It's incredible. He's at the docs.

1:08:49 One of the first multinational companies was actually fruit companies because they're in America, but all the stuff is taking place in Central America, South America, and everything else, right? And Quick sorry, I'm not gonna regurgitate the entire book. But the bananas that are rotting in two or three days, they can't move fast enough because it's this giant organization. So they just throw them away. He's like, Give'em to me. I can be fast where you're slow. And then he builds a business on that. And then he just one step to another.

1:09:11 There's two interesting things about him that make him high agency and I think relate to this. It's something your friend Graham Duncan. He's got that excellent episode on Tim Ferris' podcast. And he's talking about when investors are looking for new analysts. gets a lot of feedback. Why did you choose this person? Like why are you working with them? One of the best feedbacks he ever got, or one of the best like heuristics for this, one guy told me he's like, I'm looking for somebody that scares me.

1:09:32 And then Tim laughs. It's the laugh that Tim has on that is excellent. Explain why. Is it like you found the game they want to play and they go with such an obsession? They're inevitable. You just caught'em at the early time Look for people that I'm afraid that they'll replace me. That's how you know they're good because you should be trying to find people that are better than you, right? And so

1:09:48 Andrew Preston is one of the co founders of the United Fruit Company. And He sees another him. He's probably like I don't know, let's say forty years old, fifty years old. He sees a twenty year old Samur, he's like, What's this? That's me.

1:10:00 You don't build a big company with a small eco. Now you're smart enough to hide the ego, but they're yes, they're egocentric, they're type A, they're all the same people. But they're also really in very valuable ways, humble. Humble enough to say, I'm not that special. There's gonna be another me. There were versions of me before me. Of course there's versions of me after me. So it means there's versions of me now. I don't want to compete with another me. I want a partner.

1:10:22 with another me and so he winds up buying a part of Sam Zamur's business. So I think that's fascinating. And it's also fascinating when Andrew Preston dies. The founders are gone and so now you have the managers take it over, and you respect it. Sam.

1:10:34 The other guys that didn't build the fucking company didn't. They're like, what's this uneducated? They called him a jobber, fruit jobber. Reason the book's called The Fish Day. The world's get a smaller fruit company and he did the machinations and overthrew the larger one. The fish ate the fucking whale. That's why it's called that. But the reason I say he's the highest agency person too is because that was him at nineteen. Now we fast forward he's about thirty two years old. And

1:10:54 Where's his fruit being grown? It's in Central America, Guatemala, Honduras. These governments are not really governments, they're like bought and paid for. history of world history is bigger countries taking advantage of smaller countries and that's just how it's always been. And so he's been overthrowing governments, essentially saying, Hey I want

1:11:10 favorable conditions for my company and I'm willing to do whatever. I'll pay you if you want to take the money. If you don't want to take the money, then I'll Find an army and overthrow your government. And so Secretary of State Knox, if I'm remembering it was correctly, calls Thirty two old Samsung Murray to Washington. For a meeting with him and GP Morgan.

1:11:26 JP Morgan's at the apex of his powers at this point. That's like me being called to a meeting with like Jeff Bezos or something. And then Jeff saying, Hey, cut this out and maybe like Oh, cut it out? How about I overthrow the fucking government? And so that's what he does. JP Morgan and Secretary Knox like hey

1:11:39 We have very important business here. This is a US government business, stay the hell out of it. And Sam Zamury's high agency response is. Okay. Not like Okay, thank you guys, I'll just go back to New Orleans and do it. He's like no.

1:11:50 They funded it military. Now obviously not encouraging people to overthrow governments, but that was his response. And so he's just the highest agency person. Ever. Wonderful story. It's such an incredible book too, one of the ten great books or something.

1:12:03 What is the lesson that you've clearly seen. Across these stories. That you're most scared to talk about. Publicly.

1:12:12 I hate to answer this with that's a good question, but that is a really good question. I don't know if I'm scared to talk about it anymore. I mean you've listened to the podcast. I do some outlandish shit on the podcast. My whole thing goes back to like why I think podcasting is so special, where Matt Russell, who's the CO of Colossus, Wants me to go on his show making media.

1:12:31 making a media company. And it's just like, Yeah, I guess people consider me making a media company. That's not what I look at it at all. I think podcasting It's authenticity scaled. It allows me to be me. To have a one on one conversation.

1:12:43 With hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously. And so Therefore I don't have a fucking script. I break the fourth wall, I talk directly to the person.

1:12:51 I have a reaction. Just like you see a great movie. A great piece of art. A great song, a great book. This is not like boring shit to me. I don't make podcasts about books that bore me. I do embarrassing shit on my podcasts. You've heard me fucking cry because it reminded me of something that happened, right? Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I throw things and I curse'cause I can't believe what's going on. So I really try not to like hide my true

1:13:11 If I wanna do this for my entire life, which I clearly do The only thing I can know I could do forever is be me. I can't put on a show. I probably could put on like an act for a few years, but you can't do it for like I wanna do this forever. somebody asked me the question, is there anybody in podcasting

1:13:26 'Cause podcasting is a small industry, like you have a met that you'd want to meet. The answer is really no, other than The obvious answer being Joe Rogan, just because one, it's the biggest podcast in the world, but also because it's not a show. It is him. He's got two thousand episodes or like three hours long. Like if you listen to him

1:13:41 Anytime something ca they try to attack him he like just survives. Because if somebody came to you and said things about me, dude, I've talked to David for a thousand hours, I know how he is. You're not gonna tell me anything I don't already know. That's why I think it makes it so powerful is that it is the actual person. It's like I'm not putting on a show. This is who I am. So the answer to your question would be like There's a dark side.

1:14:01 to all of humans, you're a big fan of Will and Ariel Durant, just like I am. And like what's the lessons of history is one of the book that we share that we both love. And They studied maybe more human behavior than Anyone? Yeah, right. And they're like In all ages men were dishonest and governments are corrupt is one of the greatest lines from Lustes of History.

1:14:19 the fact that they say it's like war is just a constant, like the humans are virtuosos of violence. They engage in this and so There is Always a dark side. to People, even good people.

1:14:30 The best example of this is Dan Carlin, hardcore history, who I feel is the greatest podcaster of all time. Do I have a single Person. solo history podcast because of him.

1:14:42 And he has this great series on the war in Asia between Japanese and China, everyone. And there's something that I think is gonna relate to the question you just asked. Where he starts this episode. Right. And if they're in the Philippines, it's like the nineteen seventies or something. And There's a former Japanese soldier hiding in the jungles shooting at

1:15:01 Filipino citizens. And you're like, what is taking place here? And What happened was This guy was indoctrinated that hey, the Japanese

1:15:09 Imperial army will never retreat. It's death. Or nothing, right? So for twenty years after the war was over, he is still engaging because he's cut off from his superiors. He has no communication. He's like, Oh, the war must be keep going on. To get him to stop. Right. They were throwing in like newspapers to show, hey, like this is the war he thought it was propaganda. He thought it's all bullshit.

1:15:27 To get him to stop, they had to bring in His Commanding officer. He's like, I will only listen to my commanding officer, right? The commanding officer, if you know anything I mean, that war especially with like what the Japanese and the Chinese did to each other.

1:15:40 They mutilated all the bodies. You see this if you've ever seen it. the series and HBO the Pacific. But the crazy thing is the same people that were literally fight to the death, kill their enemies and then mutilate the bodies, right? They go bring in the commanding officer who is in charge of all this group who obviously Killed tons of people.

1:15:56 He finally said, Okay, no, we surrendered, it's over. That's how he did. What was the most fascinating part of that story is What was that guy Doing. Thirty years later after mutilating bodies and killing everybody.

1:16:06 You're selling books. You go in the books, there's a bookstore down the street. Me and you were in yesterday. Imagine us going in there, we see an older elderly seventy year old. He's like, Hey, how can I help you? And not knowing what he did, there's a dark side to all of humans. So that is the scary part. I want to focus on being a good person. I try to be a good person.

1:16:24 I wanna focus on Trying to serve other people. But self interest rules the world. And the dark side is That you can be so preoccupied.

1:16:32 with what you're trying to achieve. that you light everything around you on fire. What is your favorite line from Game of Thrones that relates back to Founders. So

1:16:43 It's unfair that you made me choose one of them. I really Okay, so this is gonna be real fucking dirty. Okay. So actually this ties into something else I wanted to talk to you about that we haven't touched on that I've been thinking about a lot lately. You're really great at naming things like maniacs on a mission, life's work, live players, casuals. And then casual designation.

1:17:01 Do you have a quick definition? What's the definition of a casual? To me it's the opposite of serious. I'll relate this back to my point earlier, how do I become a more perfect instrument? Someone who's

1:17:11 Serious in the way that I like. Like dealing with serious people that are going after something aggressively, with interest, with passion. With a lust for it. And A casual to me is the opposite of that, that sort of dabbles

1:17:25 This is the person who wants to get rich with minimal effort. Or that wants anything with minimal effort. There's a sort of laziness. to it, which I recoil from. Personally. Try not to cast judgments, but everyone can live however they'd like. I don't wanna impose my view on anyone, but that's what I mean by casual. It's sort of the opposite of Doctor V.

1:17:45 Okay, so I come across this all the time. Once you put it in my mind, I see it everywhere. It's like what Coco Chanel said. Coco Chanel, one of her famous quotes was like it's immoral to play at one's living. She was dead serious about what she was doing. One term I think about this is permanently superficial. So David Ogie talks about he was building a firm, but he's also building the young men inside the firm. And that was really important to them, which is also form of service that you see in a lot of entrepreneurs. Yeah, they're building a company, but they're also building the young people around them. And he talks about the fact that listen, getting ahead is gonna you don't have to be the smartest person. Just collect more information. This is the famous Bill Gurley

1:18:13 talk that I always reference on the podcast, which is running down a dream. the playbook I'm running to do founders. Like I don't have to be the smartest person. I just have to collect more information about history screen founders than anybody else. And I think I'm already doing that. I don't think anybody's gonna catch me. ties into the Graham Dunker thing,'cause I just do it so much more than anybody else has gotta do. He's like, listen, if I sign you account to advertising account to show oil company was one of their largest accounts at the time.

1:18:33 He's like, This is what I want you to do. This is what I would do if I was you. I would read textbooks on oil geology. I would visit your clients factories. I would Study up on

1:18:43 all the petroleum products. On Saturday mornings, I want you to go down to the gas station and ask the customers questions. And he just lays out all of this is not genius level stuff. This is just effort. And He goes, Most people are far too lazy to do this, so they will remain permanently superficial and I Wanna vomit.

1:19:00 If anybody ever described me I'm trying to be the opposite of that and then so why the hell, David, you bring up Og V and Coco Chanel and casuals when Patrick asked you a question about Game of Thrones. This is how I am about everything. So I'll just re watch Game of Thrones. So I told Patrick Yoshid, I re watch Game of Thrones and I take notes about lines I want to remember because I think there's a lot of

1:19:21 Insight into human nature and fiction. And so what I mean about that is not only do you watch the show, you watch it over and over again. You read all the books. And then you read the encyclopedias. And then I study the family trees. And then I read the prequels, and then I read the novellas.

1:19:34 You immerse yourself into this world. It sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but it's like how you do one thing is how you do everything. And There's so many lessons for entrepreneurs. in Game of Thrones. So

1:19:45 The three people identify with the most. And I'll explain why. You don't have to know Game of Thrones lore to understand this. Time and Lannister. Right? He was like the founder of a family. That's the way you think about it. Oh, Lena Tyrell?

1:19:55 And Bron. And so what I would say is Braun is the one I most personally identify with. If you've watched Game of Thrones, you know who he has Watch it again and just pay attention to what Bron does the whole time. And to me, he might be the smartest player in the entire fucking game.

1:20:09 And I've never heard anybody else talk about this before. They say the obvious one Tywin's obviously smart, Terry and all these other people are smart, the Starks, whatever. But Braun starts out, and I'm gonna answer your question. 'Cause he's the one that says the line I think if I had to pick one, it's definitely this one. So Bron starts out in Flea Bottom. Flea Bottom is You're poor as hell. There is.

1:20:25 Literally Feces in the street. You have no education, you don't have any opportunities, you have no network, right? Over the series, like he starts out with flea bottom and then he ends at the very end. And he owns High Garden. So the example of the modern day equivalent of that is like let's say you start out with nothing and somehow you took over the third best company in the world. That's the equivalent. I was like

1:20:44 What just happened there? We were talking about intelligence last night. It's also just not reading a bunch of books. I'm not smarter because I read more books. The best definition I've ever heard is just First of all, are you smart enough to know where you want to get out of life?

1:20:55 And two, the only definition of intelligence matters, did you get it? Were you smart enough to navigate life? Braun was smart enough to navigate life. And so what happens is he comes in as an ally to this very powerful family called the Lannisters, right? That's where most of his work and opportunity comes from. At the end, there's a civil war between the Lannisters. And the sister in the Lannisters hires him to kill the brothers, even though he used to work for the brothers.

1:21:15 And so he shows up in one of the last episodes. and he comes across the two brothers, so he comes in with a crossbow. And they're like, Hey, Braun, like one of our friends coming in this door right now. I'm like, why do you have that gun? If I could do anything with the gun? We're friends. And he's explaining, he goes, Listen, you told me that if anybody ever tried to get me to like go against you

1:21:32 Whatever their price is, I'll pay more. And so he goes, That's what I'm here for. And He's like, Well what's higher than that? And Bron goes high guarded.

1:21:40 So if you don't want me to be on your sister's side, I want High Garden. Right. Which is Probably let's say second. Might be the richest actually. And

1:21:48 One of the brothers says High Garden will never belong to a cutthroat. Why? Lannisters come from multiple generations. They owned all the gold. Grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather. There's nothing changing in this time period. And so it's like, what are you talking about? We

1:22:03 Come from a rich family. The term for everybody else in the world is Lannister shit gold. So that's their reputation. They come from multiple generations of we're the greatest, we're the smartest, we're the best, we are the most powerful. You're cut to you're from Flea Bottom. And what he said is something that I see on the podcast all the time. So they say to Bron, High Garden will never belong to a cutthroat.

1:22:21 And then he goes, No. Who were your ancestors? The ones that made your family rich. Fancy lads in silk. They were fucking cutthroats.

1:22:29 That's how all the great fortunes started. Isn't it? With a hard bastard. That is Inevitably.

1:22:35 The Rockefeller family fortune. I just did an episode in the Dynasties. I did Rockefellers, the Morgans. The Toyotas. And the rush outs. it all was traced back to What he just said.

1:22:46 Cutthroats. Somebody has started from nothing. I call them generational inflection points. Our mutual friend Sam Hinke calls them founders of families. It's the same idea. It's so arrogant for an entrepreneur to say This is what I love about it.

1:22:58 Oh. I have an idea that doesn't exist in the world. And I'm gonna marshal all my resources to make it real. Fundamentally saying I notice an opportunity and nobody else does. It's a very arrogant thing to say, and yet

1:23:09 The ones that do that change everything. I said to you yesterday something to the effect of like I don't know anybody that is as clear minded about what they're here to do as you. So I love spending time with you and learning from you. Thanks what you've done for seven years now, something like that. Maybe we'll make this an annual tradition, since you're covering sixty new books every year. There's a wealth of new materials. So fun to do. Round two with you. Thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you.

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