#331 Christian Dior

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/284beff4a53239f4

Back in two thousand nineteen, one of the co founders of My Favorite App, the best app I pay for.
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I got a DM from Tristan.
Uh, in two thousand nineteen, and he was the one that made me aware of ReadWise. It's it was perfect.
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A sensation was caused by an unknown designer named Christian Dior.
He was producing long, full dresses, using prodigious quantities of precious materials and thumbing his nose at wartime austerity.
His new collection Electrified Richard
Fashion conscious ladies in all nations.
But who is Christian Dior?
And where did he come from?
His father was a successful businessman who ran a fertilizer factory specializing in liquid manure. The foundation of the Dior Empire was shit in the literal sense.
Fifth from now, Dior would be the beginning.
Of Bernardo Knoll's L VMH Empire, which I s talked about on episode two ninety six, if you haven't listened to the episode.
Already. It's one of my favorite episodes I've ever made.
The profits of liquid manure allow the Dior family to maintain a house in Paris.
And a young Christian Dior took full advantage of it.
He would love to draw
Love dressing up.
With the help of his adoring mother, and he enjoyed designing dresses for his sisters.
He's a kid when he's doing this. That's another example of something you and I talk about all the time, that true interest.

Early.
But he did not start out working in the fashion. One of his first jobs, he actually became a partner in an art business. His father putting up the money on behalf of the son. This is the prehistory of Dior's
fashion business. Then troubles came.
His brother was locked up in an insane asylum.
His mother died.
And then in nineteen thirty one, during the Great Depression, his father went
Bankrupt.
Virtually all of the art galleries, including Dior's, failed.
Without this financial disaster.
Dior would probably have spent his life.
As a middle ranking art dealer.
And died unknown.
That's another example of one of my favorite ideas that comes up in these biographies over and over again, that opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss at this time. This is the best thing.
Him failing.
as an art dealer is one of the be is the best thing that ever happened to him. He just didn't certainly didn't feel so at the time.
And so after this, Christian Dior actually gets a job working for the designer Lucian Le Long.
And he actually spends about ten years working for him before he gets his break.
And they describe this as hovering
on the fringes of the fashion industry.
Then came a unique stroke of fortune that transformed his life.
Something that would allow a frustrated would-be creator to fulfill his destiny.
Dior certainly believed in luck.
And that is even an understatement. Christian Dior believed in fortune tellers. He believed what they told him when they forecast his destiny to be true.
A wise woman, as he called him, that is a fortune teller, had told him that women will be very lucky for you.
You will earn much money from them and travel widely.
As of july nineteen forty six, however, this is one of the
craziest sentences when you think about the life of Christian Dior.
As of july nineteen forty six, however.
Dior was a nobody in his forties.
with nothing in his designed career to suggest genius.
Then that month.
He met Marcel Busak. So I'm gonna pause right there.
One of my favorite
paragraphs I've ever read and anything I've read for the podcast so far came from this excellent es essay by Paul Graham. I covered it all the way back on episode
Three fourteen.
The essay's called How to Do Great Work. This is what Paul Graham
uh notice'cause he's read a bunch of biographies and I notice the same way as I read a bunch of biographies. When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it is remarkable
How much luck is involved.
They discover what to work on as a result of chance meeting or by reading a book they happen to pick up.
So you need to make yourself a big target for luck.
And the way to do that is to be curious. Christian Dior is going to meet Marcel Busac because of the relationships that he developed.
in the previous decade working in the Paris fashion industry.
So it says that that month he met Marcel Busac, a textile magnet who was called King Cotton.
Busak wanted to own a big Paris fashion house to give prestige
To his booming but humdrum business. Someone told him that DR might be able to produce ideas.
Hence their meeting. So they went up meeting, and this is Dior did something that was genius, and then as you understand his personality so far outside of his normal personality. He was
When you read his autobiography, most of the people you and I talk about th they have a lot of self confidence.
Christian Jure is the opposite. He is constantly plagued by imposter syndromes.
And doubt
And uncertainty.
And so looking back at his life, the fact that he said this to Busak, what I'm about to reach to you, is a a a miracle.
So Christian Dior takes a tour of Busak's factory's like I don't want to run this at all.
And so he says, I am not interested in managing a clothing factory. What you need
And what I would like to run is a craftsman workshop.
In which we would recruit the very best people in the trade.
To reestablish in Paris a salon
For the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship.
It will cost a great deal of money.
And entail much risk.
Busak liked the idea and offered to set up Dior.
With an investment of ten million francs, this was later increased to a hundred million francs for the investment that Busak is going to make.
in Christian Dior and then it's gonna pay off handsomely.
At the last minute, this is what I meant about him constantly struggling with imposter syndrome.
He
Had never started a business before.
His first experiment as an entrepreneur is going to be the Christian Dior brand that still exists to this day.
At the last minute, Dior was frightened and almost turned down the offer.
But he was persuaded into it by his fortune teller.
D'or double the risk of opening a new fashion house with his revolutionary new look.
A deliberate and defiant return to the most extravagant use of material. He spat.
In the face of post war.
Egalitarian democraці in said
I want to make the rich feel rich again.
His first collection.
Turned out to be
The most successful in fashion history.
Christian D'Or recruited and continued to employ the best people to be found in France, men and women who would rather die.
Then turn out a piece of clothing which was in the tiniest degree below the best in the world when I first read this.
The note I left myself was this is the Pixar of fashion houses.
When Steve Jobs
He said the first four hundred employees at Pixar was the only company he ever came across in his entire life that was an entire company of A players. When he went back
to Apple.
In ninety seven, I think he said they had around three thousand employees, and he's like, Of course, you can't have a collection of three thousand A players, but Pixar proved to Steve Jobs that it's possible to have four hundred A players inside of one company.
The success of the fashion house was immediate and prolonged.
And the volume of business continued to grow steadily in the ten years up to Dior's death.
In nineteen fifty seven.
By which time the House of Dior employed a thousand of the finest experts ever gathered together under one roof.
During this decade, Dior sold over hundred thousand dresses.
Made from sixteen thousand design sketches.
And using a thousand miles of fabric.
Okay, so that was an excerpt, not from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today. That was actually this book called Creators is written by one of my favorite authors, this guy named Paul Johnson.
It is like a fifteen, I think it has fifteen chapters on some of history's greatest creators. So people like Picasso, Walt Disney, Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Shakespeare, Mark Twain. It is an excellent little book. I highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself, but the reason I wanted to start there is because
I had previously attempted
to read.
Christian Dior's autobiography, which came out almost eighty years ago. And Dior is very much an eclectic, a very he's an odd duck.
The way I described this book before
was that
Christian Dior writes like Willie Wonka speaks.
Even the structure of the book is bizarre. He puts his
The last chapter is on his
His childhood, like his early life.
But reading Paul Johnson's overview of the life and career of Christian Dior inspired me to pick up his autobiography.
And reread it.
And I'm glad I did because
Christian Door is maybe one of the most unique people.
He he just stands out.
Think about it, like you and I study uncommon people, and even Christian Dior is uncommon amongst uncommon people, because how many people
Do we study that.
had no entrepreneurial leanings at all.
That other people would describe
Wh by the time they're in their forties.
That they had they were nobody's and they had nothing
To suggest any kind of genius. There's a lot of people that become successful.
and achieve their greatest work later in life.
But y you'll hear from people when they were younger that they showed signs of talent or obsessiveness or drive that was unusual compared to the people around them.
No one describes Christian Jure like that.
He doesn't even describe himself like that.
So I wanna go through his autobiography and I wanna see if you and I together
can figure out the mystery that is Christian Dior.
I have to start with something that was very fascinating.
Because again, like I
pretty sure you don't believe in fortune tellers just like I don't believe in fortune tellers.
But the important thing is like that Dior believed
In them.
And that sometimes it's helpful to have something outside of yourself that pushes you, even though you're right
You're filled with
With doubt.
Dior was rife.
with insecurities and uncertainties.
Certainly before he was successful, but even after he was successful and I d I he does credit
The multiple visits to his fortune tellers.
with helping him move forward in times of doubt.
And this is so important to him that the very first chapter, the very first chapter, very first paragraph.
This is what he says, I must acknowledge my debt to the fortune tellers who have predicted it.
And there's several examples in the book where he quotes what they tell him. This is way before he had any success. And this is what one of them said you will suffer poverty.
But women are lucky for you.
And through them you will achieve success. You will make a great deal of money out of them and you will travel widely.
Do you wanna know when that happened to him?
That happened to him in nineteen nineteen. He was fourteen.
He was fourteen years old when she's reading his palm.
And she gave him that prediction for his future success.
And so it's obvious from a young age that he was rife with
Insecurities and doubts.
about himself and his talents. He was also, uh as he as he ages and he goes to his career,
He's also packed full of hypocrisies, and you'll see this because he says, Listen, I had spent ten happy years
As a designer at Lucien Le Long.
And it was a delightful existence. Why?'Cause he just had a job.
І did not want to be an entrepreneur, he did not want the stress.
That comes from leading your own fashion house. He says I had none of the responsibilities of putting my designs into practice, nor the burden of an executive job.
But yet ten years in, he's like, Well maybe I'm just making another man rich.
The good the interesting thing about
uh the Paris fashion at this point in history. It's like a lot of the other
There's this this idea of seniors that
The these
A the like the highest quality people tend to cluster together in very important times. So if you are a young, mechanically inclined, talented person interested in automobiles and nineteen hundred, you're living in Detroit. If you love making hand built
cars to race in the nineteen forties and fifties, you're living in Italy. If you're interested in computers and software is in the last fifty years, you're probably in Silicon Valley. In this part, if you're interested in fashion and you're alive in the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, you are in Paris.
And so he sees other people working inside of his same company leaving. So one of these guys
Uh I I'm not a fashion, so I can't never pronounce any of these names, but this these a lot of these brands are still around.
Obviously Christian Dior, Esa Lauron, Balenciaga.
But there's a guy named Pierre Balmont.
And so he leaves and he decides to start a new house under his own name. This company still it's seventy eight years old and it's still in existence to this day.
And so this is why I'm telling you all this, because this is what's going on inside the mind of a young Christian Dior.
This had the effect of making me think seriously about my own future. For the first time, I wondered whether I was really devoid of any personal ambition. Up until this point, he didn't think he was ambitious.
I was working all the time to achieve the financial success of another man.
I was toiling in the bonds of his creative inspiration. And so there's a friend of his
that is saying, Hey, everybody knew who Marcel Busak was. It's like, you know
He's like one of the most famous entrepreneurs and financiers.
At this point.
And they're like they're looking for this, uh somebody to
To make a fashion house.
And meekly and with great reservation, Christian Dior offers himself up and he says
Would I do
And that took a lot for him to do because this is how he describes what happens.
These harmless words were scarcely out of my mouth when I was overcome with horror.
I suddenly foresaw the dreadful consequences
Of my rashness.
This is not a self confident man. This is not a risk taker. He is terrified of risk.
He just saw his entire family fortune, which goes back to
To his great great grandfather. His great great grandfather was one of the first people
In
France to ever import uh bat guano?
Which is just bat shit.
He's his great great grandfather, I think, in eighteen thirty two
is im was the first person in France to import bat shit from Chile.
And use it as fertilizer in
Europe.
That was the beginning of the Dior family empire, which had just collapsed a hundred years later in the Great Depression.
So it makes sense that he was terrified of being an entrepreneur or taking any kind of risk because he saw his family fortune that lasted a hundred years disappear in one decade.
And so what Christian Dewar has at his core is imposter syndrome.
And the way he got around this is he literally invented
A character.
An alter ego. This is very similar if you ever heard Kobe Bryant talk about when he plays bat when he played basketball. It's like
Cob there's Kobe Bryant is only off the court.
When I'm on the court, I'm the black mamba.
And so throughout this book, Christian Dier talks about this and there's Christian Dior the person.
And then there's Christian Dior.
the designer, the courtier, that the fashion house. That is
over time at the very end of the book, which is published, he's writing right before he dies. He doesn't know he's gonna die because he dies relatively young. He dies at fifty two from a from a heart attack.
But
He's like over time they merged together, but at the beginning he saw them as completely separate entities, having entered very late into this profession, where others spent a lifetime learning, and having had no training to guide me except my own instincts, I had always been afraid of betraying my ignorance of it. He does not think he has talent.
Perhaps it was this very fear of remaining the perpetual amateur.
That spurred me on to brush aside my doubts at last.
And invent the character.
of Christian Dior.
And so this is his description of going to meet
Marcel Busac.
And at this point he was trying to restore
Uh this brand called Gaston to its former glory.
And
Christian Degart thinks, Oh, this might be a good opportunity. Then he takes a tour and he's he's depressed. He's like, I don't want to do this. And this is what he says, my heart sank at the thought of the hazards involved.
The cobwebs.
Which would have to be swept away. The difficulties of coping with a staff which had been set in its ways for so many years.
and would certainly resent changes. So essentially saying, I don't wanna come in and fix
This
decaying company. I wanna start from scratch and wanna do it my way is what he's what he's uh
Saying in short, it's the impossibility, the impossibility of making something new out of something old.
In a trade where novelty is all important, I decided
That I was not meant by nature to raise corpses from the dead. I was not meant by nature to raise corpses from the dead.
My answer to him was no, as I sat down facing him.
I suddenly realized what my true ambition was. Here was a famous
Financier.
Who is at the same time a man of wide and cultivated intellects.
I suddenly heard myself telling him.
That what I really wanted to do was not resurrect Gaston.
But create a new court.
Cordier House, I don't know how to pronounce any French words, I'm sorry.
But create a new fashion house under my own name.
I wanted a house in which every single thing would be new.
I describe to him the house of my dreams.
I envisioned my house as a craftsman's workshop.
Rather than the clothing factory.
And so that's when he lays out this hugely ambitious
project completely different with uh Marcel Bussac had in mind. And Mar Marcel Busac being obviously a very formidable individual, very
He was he's an entrepreneur through and through, took a lot of risk.
He's like, Okay, let's do this.
And here's the unexpected problem.
That's not what Christian Dior wanted him to say.
When he hears that Busak is definitely interested in his project.
He spends several days in what he calls a tortured state of doubt.
He is terrified of taking a risk.
He says on my side.
Uh this was not intransigent intransigence from conceit.
It was from a secret, unacknowledged desire to escape from the whole thing.
This feeling of panic eventually led me to send a telegram breaking off negotiations completely.
Now this is why it's so important.
It was at this juncture.
That I went to see my fortune teller. Now this is
Again.
The mind is a powerful place, what you feed it affects you in a powerful way.
He believed this to be true.
It doesn't matter.
That other people
You and I from this vantage point, it's like obviously f probably don't believe in fortune tellers. That's irrelevant.
Dior believed it to be true.
This conversation with the fortune teller actually convinces him regardless of your self doubt.
How terrified you are, you must do this. She ordered me sternly.
To accept
the Busak offer at once. You must create the house of Christian Dior.
Whatever the conditions, nothing anyone will offer you later will compare with the chance.
Which is open to you now.
I therefore resign myself to the inevitable. Listen to that advice. You must
Create the house of Christian Dior.
Whatever the conditions, nothing anyone will offer you
Later.
Well compare with the chance
Which is open to you now.
So once he decided to go ahead, this is when he starts to the way I think about this, he starts building like the peck, the Pixar of fashion houses.
He's building a team of fanatics and Christian Dor is definitely a fanatic.
And so he's he talks a little bit about his thinking behind this. I knew that if I were to emerge victorious
I had to be equipped with a first class staff.
So he's she's just gonna go over a few of the
The first people that he hires.
So Raymond
Was to become my second self.
She is my exact compliment. She plays reason to my fantasy, order to my imagination,
Discipline to my freedom.
Foresight to my recklessness.
She has supplied me with all the qualities which I have never had time to acquire for myself.
Another early hire is Bricard. Bricard
is one of those people increasingly rare.
who make elegance their sole reason for being.
She is superbly indifferent.
To such mundane considerations as politics, finance, or social change. All she cares about is fashion and elegance.
And this is one of the most important sentences uh in her in him describing her.
Her high standards are inflexible.
He finds and hires yet another fanatic. This is how he describes Marguerite.
Marguerite is so much in love with her work.
That our partnership has had the character of a grand passion.
If the world came to an end.
While she was pouring over a dress, I really do not believe that she would notice.
Nothing.
Is ever beautiful enough or perfect enough for her?
She will stitch.
Unstitch, cut.
Cut again a hundred times.
And she still will not be satisfied.
She was exactly the sort of person I needed, someone whose love of clothes equal my own.
And so in addition to hiring only the most talented people he could find
He also, of course, studied
uh the history of the industry that he's operating in.
He's got a he t he talks about Balenciaga. He calls Balenciaga the master of us all.
I go into more detail about that on episode three fifteen, the episode I did on Balenciaga because
It's hard to believe that they consider him the greatest of all the Paris
Fashion designers.
Given the state of the brand today.
But
Yeah I just want to pull out one thing.
He's talking about Coco Chanel and I love what he said about her here.
Outstanding among them all was Coco Chanel, who dominated all the rest.
In her personality as well as in her taste.
She had style, elegance, and authority.
I've done two episodes of Coco Chanel. The one I'd recommend listening to, though, if you haven't listened to it already, is episode one ninety nine.
Coco Chenault is very different from Christian Dior in the sense that
There's all these people that run into a very young Coco Chanel even before she was rich and famous.
And
just saw an unbelievable amount of talent and drive.
Where
obviously that's not true for people to interact with Christian Dor early in his life. In fact one of my favorite things
Uh one of my favorite like
historical anecdotes about Coco Chanel was the fact that
I think she's dating uh the Duke of Windsor at the time and Duke of Windsor was
uh friends with Winston Churchill. This is way before World War Two. This happened in nineteen twenty seven.
And we have copies of Churchill's the letters writing to his wife.
And he talks about meeting Coco Chanel for the first time.
And he says this in nineteen twenty seven about her.
And he said that Coco Chanel was fit to rule a man or an empire.
I just love that idea of Churchill writing about uh young Coco Chanel.
So he goes back to hey, this is I'm going after
Uh I he's designing it for the rich. He wants to people to feel rich again. He wants to fight against this post war post war two austerity.
So he says I aimed at a fairly restricted clientele. There's a great line.
about Dior and Balenciaga, that Dior was for the rich and that Balenciaga was for the wealthy.
But he's talking about his relationship with Busack. Busak realized that he was dealing
With a conscientious craftsman and not a meglo maniac.
Craftsmanship.
The important of being a craftsman is something that Dor
Repeats over and over again.
A few pages later he repeats this.
Far from wanting to revolutionize fashion, I was chiefly concerned with producing a high standard of workmanship.
I aimed at being being considered a good
Craftsman uses that word again.
That idea of craftsmanship.
Something you and I talk about over and over again. Steve Jobs talked about it a bunch.
My my favorite description of this actually came from this biography of George Lucas. I read
I think it's episode thirty five of Hounders. I read it years ago. I need to reread it'cause it's such an excellent book.
Uh, it's called George Lucas Alife, and it's written by this author who does he's a great biographer. His name's
Brian J. Jones.
But in that book, this is what George Lucas said. My thing about art is that I don't like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit.
And I equate those two directly.
I don't think of myself as an artist.
I'm a craftsman.
I don't make a work of art, I make a movie.
I just did Christopher Nolan's biography. I think it was episode maybe three seventeen.
He said the same thing.
I feel
More of a craftsman than an artist.
Genuinely.
With people that get excessively good at what they do. We see that theme over and over again.
Same thing, Brunello Cucinelli in his autobiography. My goal is to produce high quality items
Manufactured with Italian craftsmanship and manual skills.
This is not a new idea. Socrates would go around Athens.
constantly asking people. He loved to question people.
About
how they did their work. And there's a there's a great line in his biography. It says craftsmanship fascinated him.
And something Christian DR talks about is the amount of work and time and effort that goes into building something that you can be proud of.
Steve Jobs echoed that same sentiment. He says they have no conception of the craftsmanship that is required to take a good idea.
and turn it into a good product.
As Christian George building out his first
Collection.
He says an idea that's really fascinating.
that a lack of information and an increase in mysteriousness.
can actually cause speculation and that this
Gossip.
is actually free advertising. He calls it free propaganda. It is widely and quite erroneously believed
Then when the House of Christian Dure was launched.
Enormous sums were spent on publicity.
On the contrary.
Not a single penny was allotted to it.
The relative secrecy in which I chose to work
Aroused a positive whispering campaign which was excellent free propaganda.
Gossip.
Malicious rumors.
Are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world.
And yet here's the interesting part. He was doing his best to avoid publicity and yet it found him.
Likely
influenced by the fact that he was avoiding it. So this is likely influenced by gossip and whispers. And this is really important because he's gonna get profile in Life magazine.
His biggest customers by far were not the French, they were not the Europeans.
They were the Americans. Think about where we are in world history.
This is post World War Two.
America economy is
Booming.
And so this was an unbelievable lucky break. My most fortunate piece of publicity was quite unplanned.
Life magazine.
asked me to do a piece. At the time I had no idea of the importance of an article in life in launching anything.
Like fortune, the goddess of publicity, often seems to smile most favorably on those who court her the least.
And what's fascinating is the closer he gets to the launch
The more nervous and the more tortured he becomes.
uh his collections cut he's got really talented people.
He likes what he's making. He's getting starting to get a lot of publicity. And he's constantly trying to like I need to run out of here. I'm he's he's just
Well there's c just constant self doubt that he has ha he's got to force himself.
to overcome. I felt that too many hosts were being pinned on me and I was incapable of fulfilling them.
It was only with the greatest possible reluctance that I was finally persuaded to show my dresses to my friends.
one evening just before their formal presentation to the public.
And so the next day is when he launches uh what they said was the most successful fashion uh line launch.
In fashion history.
And he just is a few sentences from here. The entry of each model was accompanied
By gusts of applause.
I stuffed my ears.
Terrified.
Of feeling confident too soon.
It was an immediate success. The response by all the people inside of his
fashion house couldn't be more enthusiastic and this is what he says.
As long as I live, whatever triumphs I win, nothing.
Will ever exceed my feelings at that supreme moment.
And throughout the book you just can't help but root.
For his success.
Uh, because really it just comes down, he just he he was obsessed with the we what he was doing. He loved it, he was fanatical about it.
And at the end of the day he
Essentially when I'm reading this, there's a bunch of notes where I have to myself which is like
My interpretation of what he's telling us.
I just wanted to make something that people love.
And he says, All my pleasure arose from the fact that my dresses were being appreciated.
By the public.
And he has a very unique way of describing
The way he views his work.
Design is definitely his entire life, and then everything he experiences fuels his designs.
I must admit that clothes are my whole life.
Ultimately everything I know, see, or hear, every part of my life.
Turns around the clothes which I create.
They haunt me.
Until they are ready to pass from the world of my dreams into the world of practical utility.
This continues. I know exact what I must give my designs care.
trouble and enthusiasm.
When I read that sentence, I was thinking of uh James Dyson's mentor, maybe the most influential person in his entire career was this guy named Jeremy Fry that gave James Dyson uh one of his first jobs.
And one of the most important things that Jeremy Fry taught James Dyson.
Was that you should believe
most of all in the power of enthusiasm you should believe most of all
in the power of enthusiasm, Christian Dior is saying, Hey, I'm going to give everything I have to my designs. I'm gonna give them care. I'm gonna give them trouble and I'm gonna give them enthusiasm. The most passionate adventures of my life
Have been with my clothes. I am obsessed with them.
They preoccupy me.
They occupy me.
And they post occupy me.
This makes my life
At the same time heaven and hell he is describing
The fact that there is no off switch.
For entrepreneurs.
Which again, he was forty one years old until he discovered
uh it it for himself.
goes back to this idea that everything he experiences. The world is a classroom for Christian Dior, just like it is for Da Vinci, which he's gonna get to in a minute.
Everything he experiences.
fuels ideas that he can use in designs. I scribble everywhere.
Constantly putting ideas on paper is what he's talking about.
I scribble everywhere, in my bed, in my bath, at meals, in my car on foot, by day and by night.
As Leonardo da Vinci walked in the Florentine countryside, he observed the patterns in the sand or the sky and transposed them into his pictures. My dresses take shape all around me.
As my fancy works on whatever it happens to see.
And what's fascinating is that
Christian Dior had one of the greatest assets, which is humility in the presence of a good idea.
He says, I give way to my instinctive reaction. So this idea, it's like I have an idea in my mind, I'm gonna get it on a paper as soon as possible.
Don't over int intellectualize that. It's like, oh, this isn't a good idea. Just get it down on paper.
There was uh advice that David Olgovy got from an a this guy named Albert Lasker. I did a podcast on him as well. Albert Lasker is one of the most important advertising agency founders to ever live. He made more money in his advertising agency than any other
uh advertising agency founder ever did.
And
This is what he told David Ogy.
When asked what the best asset a man could have.
Lasker replied, humility in the presence of a good idea.
And Og V says it is horribly difficult to recognize a good idea. I shudder.
To think of how many I have rejected.
Research cannot help you much in this domain because it cannot predict the cumulative value of an idea.
Tie that into what Christian George just said.
I give way to my instinctive
reactions back to this
internal battle that's happening. Like he just loves it. He's completely obsessed with it, but it also torments him.
I will follow the progress of each dress like an anxious father.
They have absolute power over me.
And I live in perpetual dread that they will fail me.
I find myself in a terrible mood.
All the time.
What he's describing is every year he has to make new products.
Every day the fever mounts, new crises arise.
Which I have to calm down. I nearly kill myself.
Repeating over and over and over again.
That if the models go wrong
It is after all my fault and nobody else's.
And the only way he deals with this intense stress and the torture that he imposes on himself.
I would describe him, he's not really a grinder.
Uh he has to in certain periods when getting a new collection.
And then once it releases, he takes long extended vacations. So I would say the way he works is sprint.
Rest.
Sprint.
Rest.
Sprint rest.
To me, peace and quiet are a necessity of life. If I am in one sense a very busy man, in another sense I'm a very lazy one.
The application and care which I devote to my work are rooted in my desire to be finished with it as soon as possible.
I am innately conscientious and therefore never stop.
Until I'm all together satisfied with my work.
And maybe the most important theme. Like if I was gonna remember one thing uh from his autobiography.
is I just love people that truly care.
about what they're doing. I don't care what that is. I'm not interested in designing fashion dresses, for God's sake.
But I am intensely interested in people like Christian Dior. The the most common note I have that I leave to myself over
dozens of pages in this book is he gives a fuck.
He truly, truly cared. You can tell by the effort, the time, the enthusiasm that he puts into this.
And then I just like the way that he that he thinks about his work in very intense and passionate terms. I think of my work.
as ephemeral architecture dedicated to the beauty of the female body.
That reminds me of Enzo Ferrari. There's a new movie coming out.
uh on one of the biographies. I've read three biographies of Enzo for Enzo Ferrary and they're turning one into a movie.
But it's exact like I w the way I describe it the obsessiveness
And Enzo Ferrari is no doubt one of history's greatest successes.

He had soul in the game and he describes his products the way you might describe your lover. Let me read.
uh two two sentences issue.
And this is Enzo talking about his cars.
Does this sound like somebody describing a car? This kind of love.
Which I can describe in almost a sensual or sexual way.
is probably the main reason why I no longer want want to see my cars race.
To think about them, to see them born and see them die, because in a race they're always dying, even if they win, it is unbearable.
He spoke about his cars.
As if they were alive.
Cars possess unique behaviors. They breathe through their carburetors.
They were skinned with metal. The engine of a car was both ha its heart and soul.
It's rumble, the heartbeat of the creature.
He said Ferrari's aim was to perfect an ideal to transform raw material into a living machine.
This is incredible, right? We have Enzo Ferrari saying I can't even watch
My car's
Race. That's why that's why he created them. How crazy is that?
Because they're always dying, and it hurts me.
'Cause it's my c I see my creation dying.
Listen to this.
Listen to this. This is a completely different industry. I'm pretty sure Christian Dior and Enzo Farr did not even know each other.
Yet they're to both of them, their creations are alive. My poor dresses, my poor dresses.
What of fate is there?
As the right to buy my dresses includes that of examining the dress thoroughly. They're measured.
They're turned inside out, they're unstitched, sometimes literally pulled to pieces.
This is how he describes what's happening during the slaughter.
I prefer not to enter the salon in order to spare myself
The spectacle.
Which would upset me almost as as much as it upsets the dresses.
clearly to the words of somebody that cares deeply about what they're doing.
Mark Andreessen has one of the greatest quotes I've ever heard.
about the emotional state of being an entrepreneur. It says the entrepreneur only
Ever experience is two states.
That of euphoria and terror.
the highest highs and the lowest lows, and and usually they can occur in the same day, or one right after another.
So we uh Christian Dior is now launching another collection.
Which to some degree is a finish line.
Or temporary break.
And this is how he describes it, I remain alone.
And ask myself over and over again.
Have I imported enough novelty?
Is this novelty wearable? Are the models sufficiently striking?
In fact, I am no longer capable of judging.
The most exacting jury in the world is assembling on
It's assembling to conduct my trial. He's talking about the market.
The game has now passed out of my hands.
I am in a perpetual state.
of tension.
I want to shout out, it's done, it's finished, it's over at last.
At the same time
I realize that tomorrow
I shall feel an intolerable void.
My life in fact revolves around the preparation of a collection.
with its torments and happiness, with its euphoria and terror is another way to say that.
I know that in spite
Of all the delights of a vacation.
It will seem an intolerable gap.
My thoughts stay with my dresses.
It is now that I like to sit down in front of my dresses, gaze at them a last time altogether.
And thank them.
From the bottom of my heart.
And that is where I'll leave it.
What I would do
My first recommendation, if you want to learn more about Christian Doer, I would actually buy Paul Johnson's book. I'm gonna leave links for both down below.
So I'd buy Paul Johnson's book, Creators.
And I'd read chapter thirteen, which is on Balenciaga and Dior.
And then if you want more, I would buy I would read them in the order.
In that order. Then if you want more, I would buy
The autobiography of Christian Dior.
I will leave a link down below to both of those books, and if you buy them using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.
That is three hundred and thirty one.
Books down.
One thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon.
Okay, so what you're about to hear is this question I was asked a few months ago. I actually recorded this a few months ago.
They asked how did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring all the answers. People think I have
A better memory than I
than actually do.
You know, if people say, Oh, you David, you have a great memory, my wife would laugh at that'cause I forget things all the time.
It's not that I have a good memory, it's I reread things over and over and over again. Every single answer.
Every single reference you're about to hear in this twenty minute mini episode.
Came from me searching.
All of my notes and highlights.
That option.
is now available to you.
If you like what you hear, if you think it's valuable, if you're already running a successful company and you want an easy way to reference the ideas of history's greatest entrepreneurs,
In a searchable database.
That you can go through at your convenience anytime you want.
You can go to founders notes.
dot com and sign up.
I wanna start out first with
Why this is so important?
There's actually this book that came out in like nineteen ninety seven. It's uh called In the Company Giants. I think it's episode two oh eight of Founders.
It's two Stanford NBA students, if I remember correctly.
and they're interviewing a bunch of technology company founders. And
In there, Steve Jobs is one of them. This is, you know, right be I think even before he came back to Apple.
And
they were talking about well, yeah, we know it's important to hire, but in a typical startup, a manager or a founder
May not always have time to spend
Recruiting other people.
And
St I I first read this this Steve's answer to this, you know, I don't know, two years ago, and I never forgot it. I think it's excellent. I think it sets up
Why
uh this question's so important and you should really be spending especially in the early days like
Basically all your time doing this.
Uh, in a typical startup manager may not always have the time to spend recruiting other people, then Steve jumps in. I disagree totally.
I think it's the most important job.
Assume you're by yourself in a startup and you want a partner.
You take a lot of time finding a partner, right? He would be half of your company. I'm gonna pause there.
This idea of looking at each new hire as a percentage of the company is genius.
Why should you take any less time finding a third
Or a fourth of your company.
Or a fifth of your company.
When you're in a startup.
The first ten people will determine
Whether the company succeeds or not.
Each is ten percent of the company.
So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all a players?
If three.
Three out of ten.
Uh we're not so great.
Why would you start a company where thirty percent of your people are not so great?
A small company
Depends on great people.
Much more than a big company.
Does. Okay, so
To answer this question.
The advantage that um
That
I have making founders and that you have as as a byproduct of listening to founders.
is not only that I've read, you know, three hundred something biographies of entrepreneurs now, but I have all of my notes and highlights stored in my ReadWise app.
And that means I can search for any topic. I can look at the past highlights of books.
Or I could search for keywords. So what I did is
First o of all, like what I've started to do with these AMA um questions is I read them.
decide which ones I'm gonna do next and then think about it for a few days.
I don't put any I just literally that m that I know that's the next question.
Just let my brain work on it in the background for a few days.
And then I'll go through
And start searching all my notes. And so that's what I did here.
And so there's a bunch of, you know, I don't have I may have like ten or fifteen different founders talking about hiring.
The first idea is the most obvious, but I think probably works best when you're already established.
So Steve Jobs is talking about hey, you know
great way to to hire is
Just fine great work.
And find the people
that did that and then try to hire them.
When you're Steve Jobs
Yeah.
That's a lot easier. Right. Than if you're just somebody that doesn't have reputation, maybe don't have resources.
Maybe your company's rather w uh new or not as well known.
David Ogie, I just did Confessions of an Advertising Man.
couple episodes ago, I think three oh six or something like that. Three oh seven.
And
He did the same thing.
But he's David Ogy at that point. So he would find he'd go through magazines, find great advertising, great copywriting.
And he'd write the person a letter.
And then
Set up a phone call.
And he says he wouldn't he was so well known and you know, he's one of the best in his field.
That he wouldn't even have to offer a job.
Just the conversation, then the person would the the
He'd want to hire the person, never mention it, and the person would apply to him.
Um, and so again, I think if you can do that
Then of course it's
Straightforward. Fine for somebody who does great work.
Usually you can do this. I actually have a friend that I can't say who it is. He's doing this right now, actually.
Um, I have a friend that's really good at doing this. He's finding people that do great stuff on the internet and then just cold
Yeah. Call DMing them. And then
Getting convincing them to work on things.
And
That usually works, especially with people like younger people earlier in their career.
There's a bunch of different ways to think about this and a bunch of different ways to prioritize. So
The first thing that that c that came to mind that I found surprising is you read any biography on Rockefeller.
And he had a couple ideas where
He felt
The optimization.
you know, table stakes that you're intelligent and you're driven and you're hard working, right? We don't even have like if you're listening to this, you already know that. But he prioritized hiring people.
With social skills.
And so this is what he said, the ability to deal with people
Is as purchasable.
A commodity as sugar or coffee.
And I pay for I pay more for that ability than any other under the sun.
There's a two the second part to this, though.
And this is also works well if you have access to more resources.
He Rockefeller would hire people as he found.
As he found how to people, not as he needed them. It's not like okay, standard oil has
Six open spots. Let's go find six candidates, right?
He'd come across what he considered a talented person. It didn't even matter if he didn't know what they were gonna do. He's like, I'm just gonna stack his team.
And if you really think about the the his partners of San It Oriol.
He essentially built a company.
An executive team of
Founders.
Of course,'cause he was buying up all their companies, so it's very rare, but
Um, there's a line from Titan I wanna read to you. Taking for granted the growth of his empire
He hired talented people as found.
Not as needed.
And then I found another idea.
in the hiring, like the actual interview process.
So there's this guy named Van Ever Bush.
I did two episodes on him, I think it's two seventy and two seventy one. He is the most important American ever.
uh in history uh in in terms of
Connecting the scientific field, private enterprise, and the government.
The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Van Ever Bush. Van Ever Bush uh is like the force gump of this h historical period. He is involved in everything.
From the Manhattan Project.
to discovering like a young Claude Shannon to building
uh a mechanical computer, like this guy literally has done he just he pops up in these books over and over again. If you were reading
about American business history during World War Two and post World War Two, you are going to come across the name Van Ever Bush over and over again.
Uh, I read his fantastic
autobiography called Pieces of the Action.
And I came across this weird highlight.
And so this is his brilliant and unusual job interview process.
And so he's talking about this organization he's running called Amrad.
At Amrad, I hired a young physicist.
From Texas named CG Smith.
The way I hired him is interesting.
An interview of that sort is always likely to be
on on an artificial basis and somewhat embarrassing.
So I discussed with him a technical point.
On which I was then genuinely puzzled.
The next day he came in with a sol with a neat solution.
And I hired him at once.
Here's another idea. This is from Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell's the founder of Atari, founder of Chucky Cheese.
and Steve Jobs mentor. He hired Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs was like nineteen at Atari.
Hm.
would ask people their reading habits in interviews. This is why.
Uh one of the best ways c his whole thing was he wanted to build a
all of his companies w laid on a foundation of creative people. So that's what he's looking for. He's like, I need creative people.
One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question, What books do you like?
I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits.
Actually which
Books people read is not as important as the simple fact that they read it all.
I've known many talented engineers who hated science fiction but loved
See books on bird watching.
A blatant but often accurate generalization. People who are curious and passionate read
People who are apathetic and indifferent don't
I remember w th that's such a great line, and I obviously agree with it.
I remember one
I'm going to read it again. A blatant but often
Accurate generalization.
People who are curious and passionate read, people who are apathetic and indifferent don't.
I remember one particular woman who during an interview told me that she had read
Every book that I had read.
So I started mentioning books I hadn't read and she had read those too.
I didn't know.

That time.
This much time to read so much.
But I was impressed. I was so impressed that I hired her right there and assigned her
to international marketing.
Which is having problems.
This is why. This is why I'm reading this whole section to you.
A job with a lot of moving parts.
benefits from a brain that has a lot of moving parts.
It wouldn't be possible to have read that many books.
Without such a brain. So do you see what I mean? Like
We start with
Steve Jobs saying this is the most important thing that you your role as the leader of the company and the founder to do, right?
And you are in
It's so important to study and this is why I'm glad this this question exists and why I'm glad that I've I took the time and I had like the foresight to like, hey, I should really
Organise my thoughts and notes'cause there's no way
I would have remembered all this.
without being being able to search my read wise, right? But you have Rockefeller saying, This is what's important to me.
You have
Bush saying this is how I hire.
Now you have Nolan Bush now.
Saying, Well, here's another weird thing that I learned.
Um, let me go through uh what Warren Buffett says about this. So this is about the quality. One thing that is consistent.
Whether it's Jobs, Buffett, Bezos.
uh Peter Thiel. This just pops up over and over again.
They talk about the importance of trying to find people that that are better than you.
the the hiring bar constantly
has to increase. Now obviously the larger the company gets, that's impossible.
Uh, Steve Jobs has this great quote.
Where he's like, you know, Pixar was the first time I see I saw an entire team.
Entire company of A players.
But they had four hundred players. They had four hundred
Team members.
He's like at the time Apple had three thousand. It's like it's impossible to have three thousand A players. So there is some
Number
that your company may grow to, where it's just you're just not.
You're not gonna have thousands of A players.
In my argument, I don't even know if you get a four hundred. I guess you I mean, I'll take Steve's word for it on there and Pixar
definitely produce great products, but it's probably a lot l lower than that as well.
So Warren Buffett would tell you to use
David Ogies.
Hiring philosophy.
And so Warren said, Charlie and I know
that the right players will make almost any team manager look good.
Again, that is why it's the most important function of the founder.
maybe directly next to the product.
Right above the product, actually,'cause those are the people building your product. We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogie and Mather's founding genius, David Ogie.
This is what Ogby said. If each of us hires people who are small smaller than we are
We should become a company of dwarfs.
But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are
We shall become a company of giants.
David or Jeff Bezos rather, used a variation of Ogee's idea too.
Jeff used to say in Amazon, every time we hire someone.
He or she should raise the bar for the next hire.
So that the overall talent pool
is always improving. They talk about this idea on Amazon.
Where
The the the future hires that we do should be so good.
that if you had applied for the job you already have at Amazon, you wouldn't get in.
That's a very interesting idea.
Take your time with recruiting.
Take your time with hiring.
There's this great book on the history of
PayPal.
It's written actually I've I've recently become friends with the author. His name's Jimmy Sony.
Um
And this is in his book.
The the most fascinating thing that I found was that PayPal prioritize speed.
So from the time they're they're founded to the time they sell to eBay?
It's like four years.
Jimmy spent more time researching the book than than four he spent six years researching the book.
I always tease him'cause like you took longer on a book than they took to start and sell their company.
It just speaks to like the quality he's trying to do. But
tha as a byproduct of that, like obviously they move fast, but they prioritize speed over everything else except
In one area.
Recruiting.
Max Ludgeon kept the bar for talent exceedingly high, even if that came at the expense of speedy sa staffing.
Max kept repeating.
A's higher A's, Bs higher Cs,
So the first B
you hire takes the whole company down. Let's read that again.
A players hire A players, B players hire C players. So the first B player you hire takes the whole company down.
Uh additionally the team the company leaders mandated that all prospects here's another idea for you.
All prospects must meet every single member of the team.
Now the next one is the most bizarre.
It makes sense.
If you study I I did this three part on Larry Ellison, three part series on Larry Ellison. I should read those books again.
'Cause the the podcast is like fifty times bigger than
than when I uh publish those episodes. And he's just he's crazy.
So he would hire
Based
On the confiden the self confidence level of of the candidate. Listen to this.
I have tears in my eyes. I don't know why I'm laughing.
Okay.
W you read about Larry Ellison and
He's one of these people it's like really easy to interface with.

Yeah.
You just know exactly who he is and what's important to him. That's why I think it's so funny.
Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest
New college graduates.
When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, Are you the smartest person you know?
And if they said yes, they would hire them.
If they said no.
They would say who is
And they would go hire that guy instead.
I don't know if you got the smartest people that way, but you definitely got the most arrogant.
Ellison, and this is why.
What
The personality of the founder is largely the culture of the company.
Apple is Steve Jobs.
Apple's just Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives.
Right. I was just t texting a a founder friend of mine.
Uh, he listens to the podcast. I actually met him through the podcast.
And he's going to this like
uh process of self discovery. Like he's already started a bunch of companies that are really successful, but he's like
I think I'm more of this type of founder than the other type of founder.
And that's good that he's doing that because he's he's
Hopefully his next mission is like his life's mission, you know?
And you can't get your life's mission unless you d you figure out who you are.
Ellison knew who he was.
Ellison's swaggering combative style became a part of the company's identity. This arrogant culture had a lot to do with Oracle's success.
Is another odd idea for you.
Izzy Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons, actually could figure it out that in his business, which was hotels, right?
that hiring could hiring the right p person
could actually be a form of distribution for his hotel.
He gave me the idea.
Because of what? What do we know? What do you and I know in our bones?
That history's greatest founders all read biographies.
They all read biographies of people that came before them and took ideas from them.
Izzy Sharp is trying to build four seasons. What do you think he did? He picked up a biography of Cesar Ritz.
The guy that it Rith Carlton is named after the great arguably the greatest hotelier of all time.
And when he realized like oh shit.
Rits
He he says, uh remembering that Cesar Ritz made his hotels world famous by hiring some of the foremost chefs, we decided to do something similar. So what is he talking about? Cesar Ritz.
went out and partnered with August Escafier.
What Caesar Rich was ho to hotel to building hotels.
August Escafier was to French cooking. And so what happened is you partnered with world famous chefs.
People come into your restaurant.
That's in the hotel.
Because the world famous chef and now they know about your hotel that leads to more gat that me leads to more activity in your restaurant that you own, but also leads to m more brand recognition of your hotel. And then by as a byproduct of that, more people staying at the hotel.
So hiring as a form of distribution. This is fascinating.
That is a fascinating idea.
Okay, here's the problem.
You can
Identify great people.
Right.
Maybe they even want to come work. Like you've identified them.
you've sold them, hey, uh this is what this is our mission, this is what we're sh we're doing.
And yet
humans have complicated lives.
They have spouses, they have kids, they have
A reason maybe they can't move across the country.
to work for you, even though they want to.
So
There's a problem solving element that you see in these books.
On
you have to solve like you've already identified the person.
You've recruited them. They can't go for some other reason. Okay. Well
The great founders are not gonna take no for an answer.
I read in um
in this book called Lift Off, which is about the first six years of SpaceX, this is what Elon Musk did.
They had anticipated his friend's issue, having convinced Mus they needed to bring this brilliant young engine from Turkey on board.
It became a matter of solving the problem. His wife had a job in San Francisco.
She would need one in Los Angeles, right?'Cause that's where SpaceX is at the time.
They're these were solvable problems and Elon's better at solving problems than almost anyone else.
Must therefore came into his job interview prepared.
About halfway through Mus told the guy.
That he wants to hire.
So I heard you don't want to move to LA and one of the reasons is that your wife works for Google.
Well, I just talked to Larry and they're gonna transfer your wife down to LA, so what are you gonna do now?
To solve this problem.
Musk had called his friend Larry Page, the co founder of Google.
The engineer sat in stunned silence for a moment, but then he replied, Given all that
He would come to work at SpaceX. That's really smart.
There is another idea.
When you're promoting.
Are you gonna promote from within or from without?
You know, that's
Dependent on you, depending on what what's going on.
I do think this is interesting though. There's a guy named Les Schwab.
Who built this?
This really uh valuable
chain of uh t like tire companies in the Pacific Northwest. I actually found out about them'cause Charlie Munger's like, hey,
You should read this biography. He said it in a
He didn't say it to me, personally.
He said it too uh in like one of the Berkshire meetings.
That

One of the smartest uh financial incentive structures of any company that that
Charlie Mugger had come across. So this is what Les Schwab did. He did not
Want to hire from

other people from other companies'cause they might come with bad habits. He liked to train his own
Executives.
And so he says in our thirty four years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside.
Every single one of our
More than two hundred and fifty managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires.
They have all earned their management job by working up.
And then another thing, if you're gonna hire the best of the best in A players.
They're players don't like to be micromanaged.
Um and so this came in Larry Miller's autobiography.
Call driven.
He owns like he owned like ninety three companies all throughout Utah, car dealerships, movie theaters, all kinds of crazy stuff, but he also owned the the the MBAT in Utah Jazz.
And what was fascinating is he's trying to recruit Jerry Sloane as the coach at the pa at at the point, and Jerry Sloan would only take the job on one condition and I really like it.
I really like this idea. If you hire me, let me run the team in business, right? That's what you're hiring me for.
One of the best things we had ever done was hire Jerry Sone as coach. At the time he said, I'm only gonna ask you for one thing.
If I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions. If you hire me, let me run the team slash
Business.
Here's another idea.
From
Thomas L uh Edison that I think is fascinating.
Really th I th the way I think about a founder is like you're developing skills that you can't hire for.
you you're gonna hire for everything else.
But you shouldn't be hireable.
And Edison wasn't.
Edison expressing his views on the preeminent role of applied scientists, which that's what he considered himself.
Coin the expression, I can hire mathematicians, but they can't hire me.
And so when I read that paragraph for the first time, the note I left myself was develop skills that you can't hire for.
Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable.
Uh Estee Lauder would give you advice that you need to hire people aligned with your thinking and values.
Hire the best people. This is vital. Hire people who think as you do and treat them well. In our business, they are top a top priority. So this idea is like
That seems kinda weird. Like hire people
Who think like
You.
There's obvious not one right way to build a business. I think the your business should be an expression of your personality and who are who are as a person at the core.
And so I think there is an
Art.
To the building.
Of your business.
And the reason he used the word art, I don't mean it like a hoity toity, you know, pretentious manner. That's not me at all. I don't even care about I don't art at all, really.
I mean that you're making decisions not just based on economics.
Like there are non economic
Important decisions based on how you're building your business. Like you could probably make more money doing a decision A.
But decision A is goes against who you are as a person.
Or you just don't like it or it's just not as elegant or beautiful.
And so therefore you don't do it. So that's what I mean about y you know, hire people who think it's you do.
And what for whatever reason when I read Essay Lauder say that, I was like, Okay, that there's like this art to what she's doing.
one thing that's gonna be helpful in recruiting.
Uh, this comes from Peter Teel. I think this is the book Zero to One.
understand that most companies don't even differentiate their
pitches to potential recruits and to hiring. So therefore like they're just gonna bu as a byproduct of that, you're gonna w wind up with a lower overall talent base.
And so he says, What's wrong with valuable stock, smart people are pressing problems? Nothing.
But every company makes us these claims.
So they won't help you stand out. General and undifferentiated pitches to join your company. Don't say anything about why a recruit should join your company instead of money of instead of many others. So that idea of like your pitch.
Your actual he would tell you you're you shouldn't be building a undifferentiated commodity business.
But
even above and beyond that. Like you're the the the mission that you're trying to engage everybody to join you in.
that pitch, that sale sale you're trying to make to potential recruit should be differentiated. Should not
If that person's applying to five other jobs.
There should not be like it's like
They may not like your mission, they may not like your pitch, but they shouldn't be able to compare it to anything else.
Uh another quote from Nolan Bushnell.
higher for passion and intensity. That's what he would do.
All right, that's what he did when he found Steve Jobs.
If there was a single characteristic to separate Steve Jobs from the massive employees, it was his passionate enthusiasm.
Steve had one full uh one speed.
Full blast.
This was the primary reason we hired him.
And one thing all these founders have in common is that they know how important hiring is and when something's important.
You do it.
Yourself.
This is again Elon Musk on hiring. He interviewed
the first three thousand employees at SpaceX.
That's how important it was.
One of Musk's most valuable skills was his ability to determine whether someone would fit his mold.
His people had to be brilliant.
They had to be hardworking and there could be no nonsense. There are a ton of phonies out there, and not many who are the real deal, Must said, of his approach to interviewing engineers.
I can usually tell within fifteen minutes and I can share
I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them. Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired.
through the first three thousand employees. It required late nights and weekends
But he felt it was important to get the right people for his company.
And then the close on this we started with Steve Jobs telling us
why it was so important and why should be a large part of how you spend your time.
And now we'll close with what you do after.
What do you do after you hire the person? This is what he says. It's not just recruiting.
after recruiting, it's building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people.
And their work is bigger than they are.
the feeling that their work will have a tremendous influence
And as part of a strong
Clear.
Vision.
So that is the end to that twenty minute
mini episode. I just re listened to the whole thing.
And it it really does, I think it's a perfect explanation and illustration of why I think
Founders Notes is so valuable'cause tha some of those books I haven't read
In five, six years.
And just
the ability to have a searchable database of all this
These ideas like this collected knowledge.
of some of history's greatest entrepreneurs to reference and then contextually apply to our own businesses.
It's nothing short of
Like it's magic. That's the really the way I think about it. I think it's a massive superpower. It gives me a massive superpower. I couldn't make the podcast without it.
I also think if you have access to it, it'll make your business better.
And so if you're already running a successful business, I highly recommend that you invest in a subscription. And you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com.