Anti-Business Billionaires: Lessons from Steve Jobs, James Dyson, and Yvon Chouinard

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/5bdd106dfdf6f2d5

They're like, Would you be interested in selling your company? The response was
Fuck you, this is a family heirloom.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to
I'll put my law in it like my days off. On the roadless travel, never looking back. Okay, so what we're talking about today is basically I don't listen to any business podcasts other than Founders. It's the only business podcast I listen to. I listen to Founders and I listen to MMA and True Crime. That's pretty much it.
Uh and so like I I I view you as my friend, but I also am a fan of yours.
And
You
Tweet out this amazing thing.
It was about the anti business person, the anti businessman billionaire.
So the first tenant of these uh anti business billionaires is they have high levels of disagreeableness.
This is very important because everybody around you
I just use the reference of Michael Dell. Michael Dell could be on this list too. I'm reading his autobiography, like I said earlier, and I got to the point where they're like he's he's taking the company private.
And they're just it's so difficult what he's trying to do. And it was just like
Why don't you just give up, Michael? You're already rich.
You can start another company.
He's like
I don't want to start another company. I want this this is my first and last company. And in his case, like that's very rare to have your first company or your last company. This is my last company. But then he has a line. He goes, I'm gonna care about this company.
After I'm dead. And I was like, Oh, that's a different level. So the disagreeableness, like if we use the three people within the clip, which is like Steve Jobs, James Dyson, and Yvonne Schenard, it's just like
They are hell bent.
on making the w they don't bend to the world, right? They make the world bend to them.
And they refuse to compromise on the product quality, even when it seems
Absurd and like James Dyson.
I gotta tell you a crazy story about James Dyson'cause you know, everybody's like, Oh yeah, Dyson, the guy that like
I wash my hands and like dries my the it's the hand dryer in the bathroom everywhere and it's that cyclonic vacuum cleaner. It's like no, the guy has built one of the most successful companies of all time. I think it's one of the largest privately owned companies in the world.
You wanna hear some cra so there's always rumors, right? And again, privately held so you don't have to tell.
And everybody's like, Oh yeah, you know, he's probably worth like ten or twenty billion I was like, You you're off by like
A lot.
So
A friend of mine
happens to know somebody that works for it then usually you can find you can find uh hints
You know, if you look at their family office, right?
And
A friend of mine knows somebody at the family office where they're just like, Man, we have a big problem. Like they have to deploy like four to five billion dollars every year.
Right?
Okay, and so they're like they you look and he's like
James Dyson now is like the largest producer of green peas in Europe. He owns the most sheep in the entire world. Like you see all these crazy so like
Why where's the four or five billion dollars coming from? It's like it's the rumor is that he's been taking out, you know, four or five, six, seven billion dollars a year in dividends, retaining the enterprise value, obviously, because he never saw any company still a hundred percent of it. So I was just this like super fancy um private.
investor only conference, right? There's only a handful of people there. One guy
controls a a shit ton of capital and he listens to podcast to we were talking.
And he has a problem where like the more assets our management have,
The bigger
You have to Bobby talks about this over and over again, like to move the needle, the opportunity has to be just so large.
And so they were buying like smaller family companies, maybe in like the billion to two billion range.
And so now he's like I have too much
too many assets are mainly I have to like
Had to swing bigger.
So they go
to approach Dyson.
Okay, I'm gonna paraphrase.
The response back from Dyson is gonna answer your question about high levels of disagreeableness, right?
They're like, would you be interested in selling your company? The response was
Fuck you, this is a family heirloom.

So it's like again, he's not doing it for money. He's run out of the money he will ever spend. He's doing it because he loves it. He wants you just talked about maybe if your kids want to work in the business. You see that a lot. They they're doing it because they want to pass it on to the next generation. They want to die still owning this thing. There is not you can't go to him and be like, I'll give you two trillion. It doesn't matter.
It's just there's no amount of money that you could give James Dyson to stop working on Dyson, just like there would have been no amount of money you could have gave Steve Jobs to stop if you go to Steve Jobs, imagine going to Steve Jobs and like hey.
This iPhone, you created you created the gr the most successful consumer product of all time.
How much
Could I would I have to pay you?
To not do this.
There's just no could you there's no number that you could have spit out that you'd be like, Okay, yeah, I'll retire.
I just this is what I like to do. Who's the most disagreeable person you've ever studied?
Mm.
That's a good question.
Um I mean
James Dyson's gotta be up there because uh if you see the bookshelf that's in back of me.
It's an order by episode number, uh starting in the upper left hand corner. So it goes all the way down.
And so I'm o I'm gonna hit like four hundred uh biographies read of history's gets printed this year.
And my number one recommendation is still his first autobiography. He wrote a f an autobiography when he's forty five, and he wrote another autobiography when he was 75. They're both great, but the first one's really great.
Be the reason I recommend that one
Is because it's
All struggle. The 90% of the book is just him failing over and over and over again and him refusing to give up. And what's he obsessed with? Like because
Obsessing over vacuums is strange.
So he would describe himself as an inventor.
And an engineer.
Definitely as an inventor. And so
I th what I would say is what he's obsessed with is is
making the world bend to what he wants to happen. And so in many cases, if you look at their his early career, he was inventing a bunch of other successful inventions and they were like taken from him because he didn't uh keep control of the company. There's like all these little things that are happening to him.
That caused him a lot of emotional pain.
then he fixes in the the new company.
And so for him it's just like he spent fourteen years be
Before he had the idea is like he's kind of simil and similar to Steve Jobs.
And Ivan Chenard, they're offended at the mediocrity of most of everything around us.
They always talk about like why is every product we use suck?
They talk about over and over and again. And so his idea is like I bought a vacuum cleaner from Hoover.
It it gets clogged after the first
time I use it because it has a bag.
This is stupid. Why do all vacuum cleaners have bags? And those then from that thought
It's fourteen years, five thousand one hundred twenty seven prototypes, so he has
A the world's first cyclonic vacuum up to his incredibly difficult standards.
That he owns a hundred percent of.
When does having that trait of high disagreeableness go too far?
That's a good question. I don't know.
Does his family love him? Uh like do they like do is does does he have a good relationship with his children? Because like Steve Jobs did did not.
Um and so can you be highly disagreeable and still loved by your children? Can you be highly disagreeable and still be proud of how you treat one another?
So there there is a devastating um line in Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaac Saint, because Walter was
Collaborating with them.
S T was dying.
And he told Walter one of the reasons he wanted to do this biography is because he wanted his kid he sacrificed so much of his time at Apple.
that he wanted his kids to know the kind of person he was and what was important to him. That's devastating line.
Dyson, from what I understand.
uh has great relationships with he's still married to the same wife.
has great relationships with his kids. Some of them work inside the company. Some don't.
Um but yeah.
Again, I spend a lot of the as you know, because you listen to the podcast, I spent a lot of time talking about their childhood, their relationship with their father.
Dyson's dad passed away when Dyson was like nine.
And he said, you know, he's writing a biography in seventy five, and he still cries and gets
And uh sad that his dad
He didn't get to know his dad as an adult. His dad didn't get to see him grow up, see his success, meet his grandchildren.
And so I think
having that experience was just like Man, I wanna make sure
my kids don't have that massive hole that I had in my life. Not did any fault of his own. His dad died of cancer from y at a young age.
Um no, so I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but yeah, you you you definitely see a lot of these highly distributed people.
Like James Cameron is probably the best podcast I've ever done.
in in terms of like what I like craft and I'm really proud of that episode. I did like
Two or three years ago.
And I start the episode kind of, you know, giving you a hint of the highly disagreeable personality where I'm like
reading from this GQ article and it's like James Cameron
has moved to New Zealand with his fifth wife.
It's like
Nobody could have a fifth wife without that's that that should tell you if you're in between lines.
That's a difficult person to deal with.
Alright everybody.
I know when you think to yourself
What is the best video series?
You think of us.
Who is the best creator, you think, of us?
And the Webby Awards are happening right now. It's like an online awards thing. And we are nominated for Best Video Series.
And best creator.
But it's stiff competition. Sam, who are we going up against?
Okay, so we are up against I shade my vag for this.
Which is sort of interesting. I've listened to a few episodes. But honestly
A few.
Well for you. We we're we're up against club shea she.
Which frankly, if you're listening to this
I think you should just
You should just vote for Club Shay Shay. I I agree. So please go vote for the Webby.
But don't vote for us.
Vote for Club Shay.
Alright, back to the pot.
All right, number uh two, they have extreme self confidence and they do what works for them.
So
What's an example of that?
So that line that they do what works for them.
There's this guy named Tim Grover, who was the trainer of both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and he wrote a book all about comparing and contrasting them. It was really fascinating.
And he says what they had in common was that they do worse for them regardless of what other people do. Like they were indifferent. There's another great line in that book that I think is a lot of people that you and I are gonna talk about have in common where it's like
Everyone who wanted to be like Mike.
Mike didn't want to be like anybody else.
And so
in situations like that, which like they're
I would say there's this line in in Dyson's book where he calls
His
method of invention, his method of company building. He calls it the Edison
Principle of design.
He is not a big
Hey, I have a master plan. He's like, I'm going to just
Do an experiment, get immediate feedback, and do a constant set of iterations. There's this great book.
That I I've re I've read three times. I think every single entrepreneur on the planet should read it. It's called Creative Selection.
It is written by Ken Cosien. He was a programmer who demoed jobs.
And in that book is the most detail he helped he was the one that in uh that programmed
the initial uh s uh Safari browser and then he created Safari browser and then the keyboard for the first iPhone.
What he shows in there is like
It was just
All the great products that came out of Apple were just a series of iterative demos to Steve and Steve applying his personal taste.
This is why I think when I do you talk to a lot of investors
And to me when I talk to him like man, you you think about business way too academically.
You know, like if as if you could sit at a whiteboard and like plan and uh master plan everything out, it's like I don't see that in the books I read. It's like these little s a series of just small decisions every day.
Getting a bunch of feedback and then essentially just changing course slightly every single day, and then doing that over a long period of time and constantly improving, you get to amazing products and amazing businesses.
Are the people who have extreme self confidence were they self confident at a young age or did something happen
Like I guess born versus uh becoming that.
Uh all three of those. If we're if if on Chinard
Steve Jobs and James Dyson excessively self confident at a young age. And I think part of this has to do
And I'm speaking from my own uh personal experience. It's like
You grow up with
Uh
Almost like you're seeking revenge for the circumstances in which you've been born in. You know, Steve Jobs was adopted.
Avant Chinard had no his family didn't have any money.
James Dyson doesn't have a dad.
And you just like everybody's around you is like, Oh, you're not good enough. And you're like, No, I I'm pretty sure I'm better than you are. And I will show you and I'm willing to work and make sure to prove what I believe. I always say belief comes before ability.
And you know, I see this over and over again. People are like, you shouldn't be confident you should uh generate evidence first. Like, no, you have that completely backwards.
They believe that they can do great things way before the like there's any
Let me give an example.
Uh in the Michael Dell book.
He hits the Fortune five hundred.
When he's like twenty six years old.
And ba basically for the listener, Michael Dell
I believe at the age of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, in college in a college dorm.
He was selling computer parts to help people assemble computers, right? He was he started Dell in as a really the prehistory of Dell really happened when he's like sixteen, seventeen. He officially started as a freshman in his freshman dorm at University of Texas. But the the Fortune five hundred thing is important because it's like, yeah.
He goes.
Could the kid that grew up reading Fortune magazine

That I'd start a company
That
Broken to the Fortune five hundred and he goes
Yeah.
I always thought big.
He doesn't try to hide he's like, Yeah, I had a lot of confidence, like I knew I could do this. I believed I could do this.
Now he did he think he'd hit at twenty six, probably not, but he g he got there even faster. That's the point. He had the belief first and then he demonstrated the ability.
You also say that the so the third principle is they're obsessed with product quality.
And I hear people say this a lot.
But I've because I've never had a job, I've never been able to like uh
uh intern or apprentice at one of these
folks who are obsessed with product. I've never been able to see firsthand what they're like on a day to day basis.
Can you give me an example?
Of what
They do each day in order to actually be product obsessed.
You know, I I love that you frame that question like that. What do they do each day? I was thinking about this this morning. Um I was thinking about w the conversation we're gonna have today.
And I think what all the the the entrepreneurs I admire have in common.
Is
How they want to spend their time.
is working on their company. So like I get invited to a lot of things. I say no to most of them because like everything that's
not working on the podcast is a giant distraction. So
If you go and actually look, Tim Cook said this after Steve Jobs died. He's like if you took an inventory of how Steve spent his time.
He was at Apple.
And then when he wasn't Apple, he was at home with his family. He wasn't going to conferences. He wasn't trying to be on the scene. Ivan Chanard, what is he doing? He's working on product and then he's testing the product. James Dyson, 75. The guy's probably worth$100 billion, if we're being honest. And where is he at? He's on the front. He he's
On literally the factory floor.
And then he's with the design team.
The important thing and you see this this is the problem with modern day entrepreneurship industry.
Is
They like
Like everything except
actual what their company actually does. So if you can find love.
Right, in the activity itself, you're able to do it for a long time. I got to have
This is the main thing I had lunch of Sam Zell who we could talk about too. That two hour lunch changed my life.
Right.
And his main advice to me.
was never relinquish the freedom on what you work on.
He goes.
the the the more successful you you become.
People are gonna try to constantly dangle opportunities that are distractions in front of you. And they're gonna do that for two reasons. They're gonna try to offer you more money and more status.
He's like retain your freedom and he said something that's fucking brilliant.
He goes, uh go for freedom.
If you have freedom, you can control with what uh what you work on. If you control what you work on, you can choose to work on what you love. If you love it,
You'll do it all the time. If you do it all the time, you'll get good at it.
And money will come as a result of that.
And so all of the people that I admire, it's like
They don't want to go
You know, they're not trying to go out fundraising, they're not trying to like go party all the time. They're literally like just obsessed.
with what they're doing. And so everything
Yeah.
Like the if you it take the inventory of their time, it's like the time is just spent on the company because I like that. Let me give you my example for me, right?
You know this because you have a podcast. We can log into our podcast host right now.
And chain you can char charge.
You could change the name of my first million, right? To to Sam's Club, right? You can change it whatever you want. I can change founders, whatever I want. The thing you cannot change.
Is the RSS the URL slug that for the n for your the first time you set up your RSS feed, right?
And that URL slug will have the first name of your podcast. My podcast went through multiple names.
The first one
Was autotelic.
uh the definition of telek is an activity done
For the sake of itself.
I was telling you right from the rip, I don't care if no one listens.
I'm going to do this. I it is in inside of me and I have to get it out.
I'm going to do this. I would be reading these books and talking about history and entrepreneurship.

And crazy
psychotic people'cause that's what I love to do.
I'd be doing it if no one listened.
I love hearing you talk about this. Do you think that you've gotten more crazy and more obsessed reading about these people?
For sure, for sure. So first of all, th you know this because we've talked about podcasting a bunch and and
A lot of people like try to like part time it. And I think literally like podcasting is a miracle. The idea that anything you want to learn, right? Me and you grew up similarly, we didn't have a l access to a lot of money. We didn't I don't think you went to a Nighby League school. Like I couldn't go to Night League school anyway at all, right? My wife went to N Ivy League school and when I met her and she told me first I she said she went to Penn and I was like
Is that where that football rapist coach guy goes? And she's like, No, it's like a it's she's like it's like it's like a
It's like a big school. It's like a big shot. Like we're like we're part of the Ivy League. I was like
What the fuck is Ivy League? Is that Hogwarts? I don't know what that means. Dude, I I I I have a c a rather embarrassing story. Like first of all, not only did my parents never grade graduate college, they never graduate high school.
So the entire time I was growing up, they never mentioned the word college to me one time. And so I remember being in high school and they're like
What college is you applying to? I'm like
What
The one I can drive to'cause I gotta go to school at night because I gotta work full time during the day. Like, what are you talking about? I I moved in, I went to student housing and I uh the my roommate was from like Colorado or somewhere.
That was the first time I ever knew, and this is really embarrassing.
That people didn't work.
And go to school.
Like he just
Went to classes. That's all he did. Like he had nothing else. I I couldn't f even fathom that. So the reason I'm so obsessed with podcasting and everything else is like
You have all any subject you want to learn about.
You have somebody that has usually spent five, ten, you know, ten plus years studying that.
And you can learn from them for free, on demand, anytime you want to.
How could you not be absolutely obsessed with that? So to answer your question.
The reason I started reading this and I didn't even understand this, a friend of mine is the one that told me this. He he visited me in Miami
And he's like it's pretty this like
Two years ago. And he's like, It's pretty obvious what you're doing. I go, What?
He goes, You didn't have any mentors or any good good examples. So if you're like how you are, which is kinda like psychopathically obsessed.
So you just
started reading and trying to find like good examples for yourself.
Um, and so there's a line there's a guy named Larry Gagosian who built this like multi billion dollar
our business that he controls a hundred percent of
And
On the the profile that I read.
to make the episode.
There's a line about him. It says he got so good.
At selling art.
to the masters of the universe that he became one.
He starts out literally selling art in a parking lot.
And he got so successful he's now a peer.
So the reason I'm doing this is like I'm trying to build the best product for the best people in the world.
And so yeah, like it is, you know, I I take a lot of the ideas from the podcast and just apply it to my own business, which just happens to be the podcast where I derive the the insights from to begin with.
The next one is retention of total control.
What are the trade offs?
Of owning everything and being maniacal about the details.
versus delegation because
Oftentimes, for example, my favorite author, business author is Felix Dennis. He wrote the book H How to Get Rich. He's not nearly as serious as these other guys. He's like
kind of like a Mick Jagger and
Richard Branson combined. He's like a rock and roll partier, but he became a billionaire.
He says that Del delegation is the reason why he's anything. Is he's like I'm a master delegator, which I imagine a Richard Branson type of person would say a similar
Tempet.
Whereas you have
Elon Musk or maybe uh Coco Chanel or a couple other folks where they are good examples of being in total control
and maniacal about the details. I think uh
Um
Este Lauder, I believe she was uh pretty nutty.
What are the pros and cons in trade offs and which do you prefer?
I love that you you asked this question because
This is the the great thing.
about entrepreneurship is like you get to decide what's best for you. Like
There is not one way. There's not one right way. I could give you examples of people I covered that delegated everything and people that delegated nothing. I just did Todd Graves. Have you ever eaten a racing games? Used to used to live in Austin.
You're you're a fellow fat boy.
Well I w uh former fellow fellow. But I saw him talk I think on Theo Vaughn or something like that and I was like
Wow, you're amazing. And so I went to racing canes and started eating it just because he was maniacal like
You don't think of a fast food restaurant as being focused on the product, but there is a a a need for it for sure. But he was like, We only do these types of fries. We only do chicken. We only and like it's the simplest thing where I'm like, How hard could this possibly be that you need thirty years to master this, let's go figure it out.
I so I just did an episode on him, which I think is gonna be one of the most popular episodes because I when people would ask me like who's how d you study dead entrepreneurs, like what about the living ones that you like? And I'd bring up Todd Grace and like
The chicken finger guy? Like no, he's got a and he got a he's got a really uh relatable demeanor.
He yeah, you wanna hang out with it. But also I'm even if I d was even if he was was a jerk, the way he built his business
You know, he owns over ninety percent of a business that's worth at least ten billion dollars, that's growing thirty percent year over year, and he's been doing the same thing, you know, for thirty years.
And I just love everything. I'm obsessed with simplicity. I just love everything about him. But the funny thing is in one of the interviews I found with him, he literally says.
You know, people told him when he was younger.
You're you're you're a micromanager, you have to delegate.
You can't possibly do the stuff you're doing now and he has a great line.
He goes, delegate, what kind of word is that?
Like he just like that doesn't even make sense to me. And he goes and all the people, the experts that gave me that advice, I'm bigger than they are now.
And so he's literally giving this interview and they interrupt the interview.
Because
They had some event and his social media team was showing them the reel or the video reel.
That was about to come out. This guy's
You know, running a business he has uh fifty thousand employees, eight hundred stores.
You know.
Unbelievable amount of
Responsibility and he's like it doesn't go out until
I approve it.
He's approving every single Steve Jobs did the exact same thing. He wouldn't let Apple Glass go out.
uh without approving it. He w there's a there's another thing um
Every single location, I approve every single new location.
Uh you mentioned Elon Musk.
Early days of SpaceX.
The he personally Elon personally interviewed the first three thousand employees of SpaceX.
Sam Walton, go back even further. He approved he picked out I think the first few thousand
Walmart's.
So
A lot of them are I would consider micro managers. There are some that, you know, del delegate wild delegate widely. What's more important than that, though, is like it depends on your personality type. Like for me
I am a complete micromanager.
I'm one of the only podcasters still
Like
Still making podcasts that actually edits its own podcast. Everybody, every other every other podcaster tells you, You're a fucking idiot. Why are you doing that? And it's just like I'm completely obsessed with it.
And
I hate it, but I love it at the same time.
I it's the the the part about podcasting I like the least.
But it's so important for me to completely control the final product.
Um, so again, I I I don't think there's one right way here. It's just like really you have to think about like how do you want to run your business.
Another thing that you said, uh, was that they uh refuse to make Me Too products. Is there a story
That you have were standing out.
by having a different product was key to them winning or also
Nearly ruined them.
let's I don't know about anybody ruin them. Um l let's use the the the the pre prehistory of Patagonia, right? Which is worth a couple of billion dollars, privately held company, you know.
And as you know,'cause it's it's in the book in the episode.
It's like he didn't
He was kind of like a communist. He didn't even want to start a business.
He was a he calls himself a dirtbag. He was like I was a dirtbag climber.
I lived in a van.
I traveled around just trying to climb mountains.
And
Which by the way, that it there's a dichotomy there. If you want if you're a communist, why do you fully own your company versus giving out equ equity?
'Cause he's obsessed with control. Exactly. There's a it's almost like a paradox, right? Uh the uh yeah,'cause he's obsessed with control. So that that go all ties back to control. Now sometimes you can maintain control, public company. Zuck Mark Zuckerberg has complete control of Facebook, public company. Steve Jobs had complete control of Apple, public company. Dyson, obviously private. Bloomberg, private, you know, uh Patagonia, private, but
If you start there, it's like
His his whole thing was just like hey, I'm
My life.
Is literally
hangs in the balance of these clips that people use.
For mountain climbing. He's like
These clips are plastic, they suck, they break, this is not good. And they they they would optimize for for cost because most dirtbag climbers have no money. And so it would be like 75 cents each.
And what did he do? He's I'm I'm a blacksmith.
'Cause that was his his trade, his craft. He's like hey I could do a better job on this. He starts using higher end steel and now he sells
What it used to cost seventy five cents.
'Cause there's differentiated for four dollars.
Well there's four X.
What what the market is used to pay.
And you wanna
sealing up like eighty to ninety percent market share.
Because his was so much better. So
They if they feel that the they're not starting companies just to start companies, they're starting companies to make products.
And so therefore they're not gonna make a product if somebody else is already doing that.
No one made the products that Steve Jobs made.
No one made the products that James Dyson made. No one made the products that Yvonne Chinard w made. And I talk to founders all the time and even podcasters and I'm like, man, you why are especially in in in our trade.
It's like, why aren't podcasters thinking more about differentiation? When I started my podcast in two thousand sixteen, one, I thought it was too late, right? It was like oh my God, I missed the boat.
But then I looked around I was like
What is everybody doing? Everybody's doing the same thing. It's like two people
One person interviewing another. This is why I my first million first came on my radar when I came on your podcast two years ago. I mentioned I listened over a hundred hours of it.
'Cause it was truly differentiated.
It's like two guys have great chemistry, they're funny.
They're both entrepreneurs and sometimes they're gonna just shoot the shit and talk about ideas and brainstorm. Sometimes they'll bring people in. Like it was a very unique format. You've seen since then, obviously, because of the success of the show. Like what happens? Like you have a bunch of people trying to do it.
And then none of them achieve the same success because they're not first of all, they're they're not they're the copiers. They're not the ones that actually came up with the format and came up with the idea. So
Uh, one thing I would just say is it's like
Yeah.
If
The product already exists.
I would only make it if you see that there's a giant hole and a way to like make it better. In the case of James Dyson, there's everybody hit vacuum from the air.
They were all crappy compared to his. I paid listen, I you can go on Amazon right now and buy a vacuum cleaner for four forty bucks.
I have a dice in it, it was six hundred dollars. It's literally the best it's the best.
Do you think that there's a a common theme amongst so everyone most most of the people who you've named and of m maybe most of the people you cover on founders,
They're creating higher end products where the margins are probably a bit higher. So I have a six hundred dollar Dyson
Um I have um you know, Patagonia now is more mid tier, maybe.
Um but
You've covered a lot of you know.
luxury brands and I think that a lot of like L VMH like luxury brands tend to be the biggest and best businesses it appears. Yeah.
Is there a commonality of you being different and thus being able to charge more and profit more?
I don't like the one person if if you ask like my own personal Mel Rushmore of like history's grace entrepreneurs, it's they actually had like uh some of them obviously have big margins like Apple, right? But then like think of Sam Walton.
Like Sam Walton had the tiniest margins.
Why? Because like his idea was like, Hey, I'm gonna be c totally committed to this one simple idea, which is like every day low price.
And so
The margins are small. Raising King's one of my favorite entrepreneurs. His margin's like less than ten percent.
So yeah, I don't
I I think these ideas can work.
for it it really just depends on the industry and the business, but like I you see them appear over and over again, whether it's a high margin business, a low margin business, if it's physical goods, if it's luxury goods, if it's software.
It's just like the kind of the same personality type over and over again.
I'm gonna combine the last two, which is this the the the first w of the two was they wouldn't sell at any price.
And this is the second one.
Their exit strategy.
Is death.
Which I love. I absolutely love.
Is this
particularly with AI, I don't know if you've seen I know you're not like with it when it c because you're so focused. Like you s I think you've said you don't pay attention to the news, you don't pay attention to social media too much.
There's this thing called vibe coding. Have you seen vibe coding? It's basically yes.
Yeah. So it's like young kids of which we've had a few of them on who
in a matter of six months can go from zero to a million a month in revenue because it's so fast and easy to make apps.
Yeah.
Do you think that people today are thinking shorter term than before, or has there always been a gap of a very few amount of people are willing to think long term versus short term?
I think both.
I think yeah, uh undoubtedly more a larger percentage of humanity is thinking short term and that we've always as a species been wired to be short term. Jeff Bezos has a great idea of this is why why he would be constantly willing to have a longer term view. His point was that like
If you're planning on a year, if you you're investing in a product that may not, you know, reap any benefits over a year.
You have a lot of competition. Five years, less competition.
Ten years.
No competition.
Like just nobody is thinking that long term. So if we have a long I think he calls it long term orientation. If we have a long term orientation.
then I want to do that because we just have by default, by sheer numbers, I have less amount of competitors.
Now I need to back up.
I am only interested in people that do things for a long term and I'm interested in your last business.
I am not interested in your
You know, your startup
Your first business.
In many cases, what I'm interested in is like what is the thing that is going to like the reason um I become so close with the founders of Ramp.
It's because and we have this deep partnership.
It's like
One of the things I love is I talked to Karim, I'm actually seeing him tonight, who's the the co founder and CTO of Ramp or one of the
Most brilliant technical minds I know.
And one of the things way before we we became friends way before we became partners
He's just like
Ramp's the last.
My last business.
Like
Like this is
I have all you know, ninety ninety nine percent of my net worth into it. I spend all my days. I'm not thinking about anything else like.
That's what I'm very interested in. And many cases to get to that last business.
You usually have to start. Cream had already started starting to sold a company, like
Usually you have to go to a ton.
It's very weird for like the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Michael Dells.
You know, even Steve Jobs, like
Just to be your for your first company to be your last company.
Which is what I had, I think and I did it because I saw a theme.
that a lot of the people who had who I had admired
Had a hit.
in their twenties or thirties that allowed them to think longer term.
Th that is key, right? One, I think it's a mistake if you ever sell your best idea, whether you have money or not. So never sell your best idea. But in in the case you're describing, it's like
If you can relieve
You know
Financial pressure mean you grew up with financial pressure. It feels and it's real. Like it it's
It it destroys you. You can't see there are people who can overcome and just go all in at a young age.
In general, it seems it's easier when you have a wealthy parent or when you have some type of
You don't need to worry about rent for three or four years. That that is it it is easier that way.
So so to get that like hey, I'm not gonna have to worry about feeding, taking care of my wife, my kids
Feeding myself.
And give yourself room to breathe and then you're able to step back and like
Here's the thing, a lot of this is just self exploration.
Like, dude, I know myself so much better now than I did think about when you're like
You're supposed to be picking your career when you're in high school, because then you got to figure out what you're gonna major in. It's like the stupidest thing ever. Like nobody, if you're the same person you're at 18, that's very bizarre.
And so like
I just think
Part of
Picking a successful company.
And a successful career you can do for a long period of time. It's like you have to go through this exploration of who you are as a person and what your true interests are.
The problem is with humans, like we think oh
Like vibe coding's really cool. I like these kids are making money.
But eventually through all these experiments, they might discover what they actually
Yeah.
Truly.
want to dedicate their lives to.
Um so I think it's like a a an overall good thing.
Um, but yeah, I I think the advantage that
If you as an entrepreneur, as a podcaster, as a writer, as an athlete, whatever the case is, like if you can think long you just have a massive image if you could just have a longer term perspective.
than other people. And this is the important thing is like when I'm able to choose what I work on, I'm not worried about what like
My downloads today.
Or like my audience size today. It's just like as long as I do this forever.
Right, and I keep focusing on adding value to other people's lives'cause money comes out to digital service.
then I'll get as long as I wake up every day, read a biography of history square entrepreneurs and sit down once a week and talk about what I learned and do that forever.
I'll let the ch the score take of itself. The chips will fall where it is. Like I would think I don't think I actually deserve.
I don't want the listener to think
Long term means it's it's okay if I don't kick ass today.
And a lot of people will justify this and say, Well it's a marathon, not a sprint. And to them I say
Yeah, but have you ever ran a uh like a hundred meters
At the world record marathon pace.
It's gonna feel like a sprint to you.
Like you have to be able to run fast for a long period of time.
And what I and what I and what I mean by that is that doesn't excuse day to day
Um
Lack of urgency. You still need to be
uh impatient on a daily level, but patient on an annual level. Additionally
Can you tell me the people who thought long term
They were still
Maybe you can give me examples, but that doesn't mean that they were broke five or ten years into starting their company or that they didn't have traction. Or did they? Am I wrong?
So
The the to like close the loop on what you just said. I agree completely. If you think of like there's not many entrepreneurs that had a longer term perspective than Jeff Bezos and his line about this was like, Yeah, we have long term.
But like we're gonna take step by step ferociously was his motto.
Step by step ferocious. You know, like oh we're gonna lollygag. It's like no no.
I'm fine being you know
you know, we're gonna be the the company we want 10, 15 years from now. But every day uh for the next 10 to 15 years, like we're pushing the pace and we're doing as much as we can.
Um people that were broke five or ten years in.
Jet uh James Dyson, for sure. He was
Literally going to sleep.
Covered in
Dirt because he's trying to build a vacuum cleaner.
For the entire time going going inside, crying himself to sleep.
as his kids are small and then his kids are completely grown up. He was in massive amounts of debt.
He couldn't find no one the reason he owns a hundred percent of his company is'cause no one would would uh
would actually want the equity, which is hilarious considering how valuable it is now.
But also he was like uh he had second loans out on his on his he had a second mortgage on his home.
He was crying himself to sleep.
So he was he was nearly bankrupt. He was Oh yeah, yeah, for for and if it's not the full fourteen years, it was a a good chunk because then he started licensing it. He had he had some small wins where he could actually pay his bills, but he was not like a a wealthy man.
Steve Jobs, rich from the get-go. You know, app he he builds the first Apple in his garage. Four years later, he's worth a hundred million dollars and the company's public. Like it was pretty crazy. Von Chenard broke for a an excessively long period of time. Like there isn't like a
You know, it it just it it's a case by case basis.
Jesus
already wealthy he worked for this hedge fund in New York called D E Sir Shaw.
And he quit that and gave up a huge bonus.
to move uh to Seattle, but he was already, you know, able to live in Manhattan. He was working for a billionaire.
Sam Walton. Now here's an another by the way, I think Amazon had like a hundred million in sales like four years in or something. Super fast. Super fast. He was like by the time he was thirty
So he starts the company at thirty, I think by thirty five he's a billionaire. I tracked him on this when I like had my uh I had this sheet.
Where I track
Probably three hundred people.
And I had timelines for each of them of when they were born.
when they started the thing that allowed them to be a little bit financially free, when that period ended, and then when they started the thing that made them
Huge.
And he uh started Amazon at thirty two, and between the ages of like twenty four or whenever you graduate college to thirty two, presumably he was making some amount of money, like the equivalent of two hundred fifty to five hundred thousand dollars a year today.
For sure, for sure.
Sam Walton ha his first he m this is an interesting thing.

Uh a principle I've noticed is like
Go slow now so you can go faster later.
And what I mean by that is like Sam Walton, greatest retailer of all time, undoubtedly
He had one store.
For five years.
And so he was ex obsessively learning everything he possibly could about retail, doing all these experiments.
And so then you fast forward, you know, one store for five years. Then you fast forward, let's say twenty five years into his career.
He has the idea. He's already has Walmart, but he's like, Hey
He means so price, we've done episodes. How many years did you say twenty five?
Well, let's say twenty five years into his career, right? So so so the first five years of his career, it's one store. Twenty five years in, let's say around there, he he's got Walmart, but then he has this idea.
For Sam's Club, which he got he took from other people. He took from this guy named Sol Price, who's uh he came up with the warehouse club idea.
Uh the founder of Costco was Sole Price's Menti.
when he was like uh Jim Sinegal was like eighteen working for a sole price. That's where he got the eighty for Costco.
Sam Walton sees that he's like, Oh, this is a great idea, I'm gonna do it immediately.
So twenty five years into his career
He didn't have to stick with one store for five years. So when he launched Stam's Club, within the first five years, he gets to like a hundred and five stores and like seven billion dollars in revenue.
Same period.
When he started out, he can only master one tiny little storm.
Arkansas, but the sk your skill set and your resources and everything compounds. That's the point. Todd Graves.
Talks about you know
I think he by the time he gets like
He's ten.
The the Raising Kane's guy, he I think he's ten to twelve years into his career, he's got twenty eight stores.
Sounds like a lot, right?
He opens like a hundred and fifty.
stores a year right now.
Or a hundred, featuring a hundred and a hundred fifty stores a year.
Go slow at the beginning to go faster later. He's learning.
And he's gonna apply that. Is this the important thing about not jumping from business to business is business, because if you jump from business to business to business, all you're doing is interrupting and compounding.
Was it clear a lot of these, you know?

Was it clear that their TAM was big enough to achieve
Their ambitions. No.
Absolutely not.
No.
Like for example, you'd be like look
This chicken figure thing, that's maybe silly, but I guess McDonalds is huge. I guess you could be kinda like McDonalds.
I think he's a if he did think of anything he thought of in and out.
Uh Internet was founded in nineteen forty eight.
If you look at In and Out's menu looks sh looks like
Todd Graves. I there's other people before him, but it's like
To me.
Todd Graves is just
Harry Snyder, reincarnated, who was the founder of In and Out.
But instead of doing burgers, he does he does chicken fingers. But no, like uh I I just went over this because uh I'm going through the Michael Dell episode right now. Like there's just like no way. Like you knew computers were like
Most people d hadn't even seen a computer.
And like he was just completely obsessed with it. So there's no way he could predict the financial success he was gonna have and the that and how big the market could actually get.
You know how you started with Dell with a thousand dollars?
No venture capital. A thousand dollars.
And his main competitor was Compaq, who started with like twenty five million of venture capital.
And Michael Dale's super competitive but nice. The the book's called Play Nice and Win, Play play play nice butt win.
But he's like he's constantly contrasting. He's like, I start with a thousand. They start with twenty five million. I'm kicking their ass. It's really funny.
And m Dell would tell you that having the constraints of limited capital
was really good at the beginning because it caught it forced him to innovate into uh
In a way that you wouldn't if you have money. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's interesting. So I go and pull my highlights from Sam Walton. Sam Walton says the same thing.
Kmart existed before Walmart. Kmart was dominating the big cities. Cause if you're gonna start retail, where are you gonna go? You're gonna go to Chicago, you're gonna New York and go to all those other places.
So he's like, Well, I can't go there. I don't have any money. So he starts going in these little towns in rural Arkansas. And what he learned, he goes, Oh, constraints are your friend.
Because if we were uh if we if we were better capitalized, I would have never went out into these tiny little communities. And what I discovered is in these tiny little communities there's far, far more business.
Than could we could have ever
Predicted.
Perfect example to your to your question.
You're the man, David. I appreciate you doing this. I could just like
I think the listener will notice this is probably the podcast that I've sp

I uh
I've I've listened to uh hundreds
uh of your episodes. I think you're at like what, four hundred? I think I've listened to half of'em now.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate you, that's it, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to.
I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back