#338 Monty Moncrief Texas Oil Billionaire

0:00 In nineteen seventy eight, Mani Moncrief was eighty four years old. He was still very much the patriarch of his clan, the man who made the decisions in his family and in his family's business. Family and business were in fact The same thing with him. the desire to found the one being inseparably tied to the desire to found the other.

0:20 When speaking of his business, he never mentioned himself specifically. He would always say We sign this deal. We figured out what was best. This is a we kind of business, he explained.

0:32 We don't tolerate any of that I stuff around here. In Texas, in the oil business, one sees, as nowhere else, that the ideal of capitalism is the ideal of founding a family and and conferring the right of inheritance upon it. Passing a legacy on. We're oilmen.

0:49 Monty McCrief would answer when asked about ranching or about real estate or about anything else. were oilmen meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrief concern. We're a hundred percent. Family owned.

1:06 Unincorporated and independent. And we intend to stay that way. In the world of oil promoters, one sometimes meets with independents who have bought and sold their way through six or seven businesses. who indeed start those businesses with the aim of going public and selling out as soon as possible. To Mani Montrief, such a strategy is unimaginable.

1:27 Moncrief oil is synonymous with himself. His dynasty. Continuity is what his blood demands. He was at the age of eighty four as big and as strong as a bull. He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and truly great people.

1:45 He walked without a stoop. and he carried his large frame without a trace of fat. He seemed impervious to age or to changing times. His unquestioning confidence in the worthiness of his enterprise made him seem impervious as well to the doubts and the questions about motives and meanings that inevitably beset the later generations of his family.

2:07 He kept his faith in the absolute value of building. of progress Of getting things done. When he spoke of his belief in the enterprise of producing oil in America. One could almost forget.

2:19 That he had made hundreds of millions of dollars doing so. Such benefits sounded almost incidental. to the task of settling the land and mining its resources. Perhaps this confidence is what set free the huge energies of this first generation of giants. The stories told about Mani Mon Crief all reveal him as tough.

2:41 Canny. Given to understatement. A man of action. Who waste few words. But can

2:47 When he wishes Move mountains. That is an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk about today, which is Wildcatters, a story of Texans, oil and money, and is written all the way back in nineteen eighty one by Sally Helgis Helgison. There's a bunch of characters. In this book, they talk about other uh oil families. But once I got to that part, that's when I realized, Oh no, no, what I want to talk to you about.

3:09 is Money Montcrief. And so I think that excerpt gives you and I a good idea on why we should focus on Monty Mind Creef and the shadow. That Because at at the time the book is published, he's still alive. His son is still alive.

3:22 And his grandson. Is still alive. And so I was I'm always curious, like, well, what are they up to now? So after I read the book, sort of researching to see what I could find out about them. And there's a line in the book that I think is very fascinating'cause it's like Why is this guy so interesting to me? He reminds me, Mani Montcrief, he reminds me of a lot of other people we studied and

3:41 And there's just this random sentence and it was talking about The fact that his grandson Was Essentially like measuring his life and his success based on His grandfather which I think is

3:53 Honestly a bad idea. Um but it says the shadow by which Dick Moncrief measured himself. was cast by his grandfather Monty. And I think that word shadow is really important. In fact I went back and searched uh founders notes for the word shadow because like this sounds very familiar to me. There's two things that are fascinating here that I think

4:12 uh you and I should spend some time talking about. And it's one that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. And so that that that's from uh Edwin Lance, one of Edwin Lance biographies, right? So it's not only the founder is the shadow of the company that they found. But you'll also know Uh that's true for Monty for the the company he founds, but his shadow also looms over his entire family.

4:33 And Mani's shadow loomed. over his entire family while he's alive. And it still has an effect in present day, I wind up looking uh up the characters in the book to see What like if they were still alive. Mani's son.

4:45 winds up living to a hundred and one, he passed away relatively recently, now the whole family's essentially fighting over this fortune, this multiple billion dollar fortune, that really stems from the work that the grandfather did sixty, seventy years ago. And this usually ends one of two ways. Most of the time the the future generations cannot obviously live up uh to the shadow or the example that the the founder of the family. uh UG set. So I was thinking of as I was going through searching Founders Notes for Shadow, came across an idea

5:14 uh when you study JP Morgan you realize I said this on the the multiple JP Morgan podcasts uh that I've made. He's very you know, obviously an impressive figure, but I found his dad to be even more impressive. And so there's a line from The House of Morgan written by Ron Chernobyl that talks about this. He says the Morgans always believe in absolute monarchy. while Junius Morgan lived, that JP that's JP's dad, he ruled the family and the business. Until Junius died, his massive shadow

5:40 dominated his son's life. And so I think The importance of The family business aspect of this. Is really important. So I want to read this section to you because this is what's part of what makes this story unique, is the setting in which it takes place. and the belief that family is destiny. So says what makes Texas different is not so much its money as its blood.

6:00 And it's awareness of that blood. bloodlines, human bloodlines. In Texas, there's always an awareness of exactly whose blood runs through a man Man's or women's veins. And what that blood demands. And so I'm going to pause right there before I continue. His grandson, which we'll talk a little bit about, but there's a lot more detail in the book, and I'd highly recommend getting the book. It was a really fun book to read.

6:22 uh but i fil his This pressure that he has where it's like Oh, you're Mani's grandson. causes Dick to maybe do things that like take risks that were unnecessary because he was trying to Not only match What his grandfather did, which is nearly impossible.

6:38 Uh, but also try to go one step further, basically supersede his achievement, which he obviously failed to do. So let's go back to this. Uh, you understand the blood that runs through a man or woman's veins and what that blood demands. People in Texas are raised to be what others in their families have been. Family is destiny here. Success is measured by what one achieves beyond what those who went before achieved.

6:59 future generations of the family feel the need to surpass them in order meaning the founders of the family surpassed them in order to prove themselves worthy of their blood. Okay, so with that background, I want to jump into Mani's life. And really what's fascinating is because he's born in the eighteen hundreds, right? He serves in World War One, then comes back and gets into the oil business. And that's really important decision because he essentially picked uh a an industry or a field where the opportunity before him

7:28 was really without limit. And that's not what his h that that same opportunity was not open to his son and his grandson. And so when I read the stories like this What I'm I'm obviously not trying to build an Oreo company, but I am very interested in finding these Area is like where today like what I wanna know is like today, where is opportunity without limits

7:48 available today. And I think reading history like this gives you insight into like what these opportunities look like and what to look for. And so this is a little bit about that. The old bulls in this story, so people like Mani Moncrief, Sid Richardson, there's a bunch of oil uh w one wind up becoming oil billionaires in the story. But the old bulls in the story, the giants, the men of Monty Moncrief's generation came into the oil business in the wild old days of the open frontier. Everywhere they looked, they saw opportunity without limits. The land itself was empty.

8:18 And so these men built cities upon it. and they founded dynasties. They left behind them a world made in their own image. They gave shape to a business and to a way of life, and their deeds made them legends. The major oil companies, which one day would almost destroy the independent. So think about that as like they're gonna talk about Exxon. Uh Exxon was once an independent. So these giant uh major oil companies, right? And then the independents are like the startups or the family owned businesses. Obviously the Moncriefs at this time are independents. The major oil companies which one day destroy the independents had not yet consolidated their power. Those companies were still independents themselves. And so they mentioned at this time in the story where Monty Moncrief is setting out

8:56 What what is gonna one day turn into Exxon. was just this company called Humble. Humble oil. And the way people would describe it at the time is like oh humble's just a fly by night Little Rinky Ding Company.

9:08 And so one of the first takeaways there is okay, if you want to look for opportunities where there's uh Essentially. uh or industries that where there's opportunities without limits, you it can already be consolidated. Uh second thing, as frontiersmen, the old wild wildcatters had neither the time nor the inclination to question their own purposes or to agonize about what the future consequences of their efforts might be. They just went out and did whatever there was to be done. Teddy Roosevelt has this famous quote that he took from his dad as his life model. It's called Get Action.

9:38 There's people in the book there like life motto is make action. They're at their very beginning of an industry, so they're going to have to learn by doing. That's another telltale sign that you might be in an industry where has such an unlimited opportunity. The second is The opportunity has to be open to or the third, I guess. The opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And so when they're drilling right now, in fact, you know what? Let me pull this up real quick. This is one of my favorite lines ever. I think uh I I I did another podcast and read another book aro around a similar time period. In fact, some of the characters in this book or in that book.

10:12 It's called The Big Rich. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. Well, what's fascinating is there's a line in the book that I never forgot, and I use it as a metaphor all the time. And they said the trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil. And my interpretation of that or how I apply it to my own life is like ever there's an essentially an uh inexhaustible supply of people that want to get the most for doing the least. And there's a lot more competition for things that are easy.

10:38 And so in my own life I want to get the most by doing the most. And so what's fascinating is that that quote was about the oil business, you know, maybe twenty or thirty years uh in the future from where we're in this book. But at this time it was very possible For a young wildcatter, and that's why the book is called Wildcatters, essentially just like these s little startup oil companies, to go out, raise some money, and then try to drill some wells. Over time that ability becomes cost prohibitive and the only people that are able to drill wells are these giant oil companies like we see today. So at the point at this time, you could buy it at this time you could try to drill a well

11:10 The oil or the gas that you're looking for might be 5,000 feet underground, right? So it would cost you, it would cost a wildcatter about twenty thousand dollars to drill. And in Oklahoma and Texas at the time, there there's a ton of oil at five at uh only five thousand uh feet underneath the ground. And so that was the advantage that Monty had. Right, but sh it's twenty years later. Everything near the top, right, is gone. So now you have to go thirty thousand feet underground to get the same amount of

11:37 uh oil or gas out of there. And that's gonna cost you go the cost goes from twenty thousand dollars to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars if I did the math correct that is thirty seven times more costs. Thirty seven times more investment required. To do similar work.

11:53 So if you're looking for fields with limitless opportunity, how they look in the very early days is they that opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And eventually as that opportunity is exploited, it'll usually just be open to people with a a lot more resources and you'll see the cost of doing the same things drastically skyrocket. So something that's been on my mind for the last few months since I reread uh the new version of Poor Charlie Somanac. Uh that straight press.

12:18 uh just republished. Uh the episode's three twenty nine if you want to listen to it. Was Uh Charlie has this thing that he talks about a lot, which is uh this model of surfing. Um, and he uses it to When he's trying to examine it's like okay, well, why was Sam Walton so successful? Why was Les Schwab so success successful? There's a bunch of factors, and one of them he says like they had to surf some kind of wave.

12:40 And so as I was reading this book, I was like, Okay, well what wave? I was looking for the wave. I was like, Okay, well, what wave did Mani surf? And I'm wanna read this. This is fascinating. Like why This was available to I basically at this at this time in history and at this specific place, the fact that he was lucky enough to be born in America because America's the only country in the world in which the the mineral rights underneath the ground, right, in which your the these wildcatters need to buy or to lease are privately owned.

13:08 Everywhere else. A a state. Or a crown will hold the title. And so it says in America, mineral rights must be purchased from thousands of individual landowners. The big companies very naturally preferred to make their deals with a single sheik or a tyrant or whatever for of the country for the wealth of an entire nation instead of dicking around with countless farmers in order to beg to put together a field. And this is the punchline right here. The wildcatter's competitive individual way of working was compatible with the private ownership.

13:42 Of the land. Okay, so for the fact for the fact that America's the only country in the world where such rights are privately owned. is the main wave. And then the second thing is the fact that let's say he buys, you know, a hundred thousand a hundred uh excuse me, a thousand acres. There might be fifty, sixty. two hundred different farmers or uh landowners that he has to go and negotiate with.

14:04 And so a larger oil company was like, I'm not gonna do that. I'll just go and see if like let me go let me go to the Gulf. Or let me go to Russia. Because if I can sell that one person or if I can convince that one person I get access to essentially sovereign level Assets. And then there's a second thing that Charlie uh Munger said about surfing.

14:22 Um that I think Well, one is useful to you and I, but also as you heard Mani in the opening, and there's I have a bunch of other highlights I'll I'll most likely read to you. Where he was anti diversification. Remember they're like, You ask him about cattle or real estate, he's like, We're oil men. Uh his future generations are you know diversifying in all kinds of assets, and he was very against that. Although it was good for him not to diversify. But you could argue that it was beneficial for his descendants, too, because the oil business vastly changes in his lifetime. But this is what Munger said about it.

14:54 Um let me pull that up again. It's from Port Charlie Zommanac. In fact I found my note too. So he says there's huge advantages for the early birds. So this is Charlie Munger talking about surfing, obviously applicable to way more um people and industries and than money. and oil. There are huge advantages for the oil the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing. When a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go for a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in the shallows.

15:22 But people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave. Whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people. Surfing is very powerful. And then I'm looking at the note Uh that I left myself When I read that.

15:36 Um when I read that portrait dominac, it says Charlie's surfing model. One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and staying in it. There's a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still. So Mani Understood that. And was only interested in the oil business for his entire life. Let's go back to this idea of

15:57 What is limitless opportunity look like. Limitless opportunity usually found in environments with little to no regulation at the time the money starts. There's N almost non existent. uh regulation. By the third generation, it's it's becoming increasingly difficult. And so this is the difference between what Mani had, which is essentially little to no regulation, and what the third generation is having to deal with. There was an increasing number of bureaucratic considerations governing everything, from the distance a well can be from an old Indian burial ground to the number of portable toilets that must surround.

16:29 A rig site. These regulations continued to increase as government agencies proliferated. I wanna continue with eighty four year old Mani Monkee before we go to his early life, which is actually absolutely incredible. And it's really again, uh main part of the book is the fact that this guy's shadow is over his entire family. All these oil dynasties are controlled by, you know, this one Need you.

16:50 What do they call them? uh prickly individual. I'll get there in one second. But one of the reasons that they their shadow loom so large is because they never exit. He's doing oil deals until he dies. Way past these decades past the need. uh to work for money. And so his his not only did are the every uh his entire family working in the business that he started, but his physical presence is still there. And so it says these grandfathers, so they're you know, these patriarchs of these family dynasties in Texas rarely abandon the towns where they raise their families and they don't venture forth into senior citizen uh senior citizen

17:24 communities in Florida or Arizona, they live where they've always lived, and their daily presence keeps their legends alive. The mystique of grandfather heroes exists partly because the grandfathers play a special in-between role in this land of men that are impossibly hard. All over Texas, the story is the same. My daddy was a tough old bull, but when he told me it was time to quit law school and come to work for him, I did it. Even though it was the hardest thing in the world for me, and even though he told me I'd have to run him out of business before I could get my share. That's funny. Because that's happening in Texas.

17:57 Also, I don't think it's exclusive to Texas. When I got to this, then I left myself was Oh, this this could be this quote could be from Ted Turner. As you and I learned in episode three twenty seven on Ted Turner's autobiography. You know, he he tried to rebel. His dad st ha started that company. It was very successful, one of the largest I think was the most successful billboard company in in in the south east. And you know, he took off running.

18:18 But eventually exactly what they said, you know he Called him, he's like you just now's the time. You have to come. And even though Ted wasn't sure, he's like, You know, I I'm gonna go do this. Back to this book. This is also something that I've noticed that the entrepreneurs that you and I study are way more similar to each other than

18:34 uh you and I are to maybe like the the the general population or or or the population that are not entrepreneurial. Uh traveling through oil country, one becomes aware of a similarity among the tales told of grandfathers who first subdued the land and claimed its riches. Like mythic heroes, the men of the first generation began to seem interchangeable After a while, like figures cut from the same rough, magnificent fabric. They call them. They had they said they possessed. Prickly individuality.

19:01 That's a great line. They were they they they possess prickly individuality. All the stories seem to be about the same prickly individual. I said this over and over. It's like the same personality type that reappears over and over again throughout history, different industries, different parts of the world, different times. Sa basically the same shape, same shape. More description of them. These are they are giants. They are successful predators. Acute and astute tamers of the untamable and defenders of vast treasure. That is a description of Monty Moncrief, another thing.

19:37 Where the second and third generation, they start to love luxury. They're spending, they're they're making it rain, they're bawling out of control, they're spending a ton of the family m money. Mani was not interested in that. He lives in the same house that he lived in For his entire life, old wildcatter's attitudes seem to be much like those of the original cattlemen, who preferred their familiar ranch homesteads to the palatial quarters that their heirs built in town. The allegiance is not to pleasure or luxury, but to comforts won by sweat. and handed down with an understanding of the duties that entail upon them. What drove Mani was achievement.

20:11 not money, knowing that if I chase achievement, the money comes with it. But it's also about being able to live up to your own ideals. And so at this point in the story, Mani's obviously very, very wealthy. So he winds up knowing a bunch of presidents. And this was a very fascinating uh insight into him. Monty Moncrief is quick to tell the visitor that he's got pictures in his office with like Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson and all these other people, right? This is very fascinating. Monument Crief is quick to tell the visitor that Nixon was a weak man. Destroyed by his own Averis. He speaks of Lyndon Johnson as a compassionate man, but greedy like Nixon and much prouder than he. Such judgments are not political, but personal. They are moral sentences passed upon men who were not large enough to live up to their offices.

20:56 But at the same time he still respects them because for this reason, but to whom a measure of respect is none the less owed simply because they won and held those offices. They exhibit personal pantheons across which fall The shadows of men who shaped American destiny. I so I need to explain that a little further. So it's talking about the this first generation of frontier settlers, which is what we what uh Monty Moncrief was, right? They have a sense of honor even for those who've disgraced themselves because even when a great man falls from grace, there are actions they did before that help shape America's destiny. Okay, so then the book goes into his early life. I think this is the way I I think I can essentially tell the entire story.

21:36 In just two sentences. And so This is not a direct quote from Monty Moncrief, but this is my interpretation. If we were able to talk to him, this is what he would say. My dad got to Texas in a covered wagon. I made hundreds of millions of dollars. In my lifetime.

21:50 And so when Monty is a young man, he serves in he goes to Europe To fight in World War One. While he's doing that, he actually becomes friends with the son of an Oklahoma oil family. And so after the war, when Monty gets back to America, he decides to head for Oklahoma and he starts working for his friends. Family's oil company.

22:09 And so his first job in the oil industry He has a job called a landman. So it says he worked first as a landman, as many future independents often did. Landman Land men do not buy land. Rather they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner. So this is what I mentioned earlier, how a lot of larger uh companies, oil companies like I'm not doing that. I have to go You know, in negotiate individually with fifty people, twenty five people, two hundred people, I'd just rather go straight to the ruler of the country.

22:38 So This is how it works. Rather they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner who takes a share. A lease, which is what he's negotiating, right, gives the operator Access to that tract of land for five or ten years, if oil is found before the lease expires. the operator may continue to produce it for as long as that well lasts. If not, the mineral right rights revert back to the landholder, who then may sell them to the next bidder.

23:04 But if the land proves productive The lease the person that's doing the leasing. Pays a royalty to the landowner, right? Uh, which is a share of his profits before costs. So share of his revenue before cost, rather. The share is usually one eighth, and this is this is fascinating. The share is usually one eighth.

23:21 And it is called a royalty because it was once paid to the crown. So after a few years, Mani decides to sc strike out his own. He wants to work for himself and he's gonna go from Oklahoma to West Texas. Now a huge part of this early industry it's like well, where are they getting the money from? And so there's two interesting sources for funding here. One is the oil industry at this point is completely dependent on the railroad industry. Remember this for later because there's this huge dispute. between two separate oil companies and wait till you hear the name of the led of the actual governing body.

23:53 It's it's not named after oil. So The earliest some of the earliest American oil financiers were actually Easterners, right, these are very far away from the frontier in Oklahoma and Texas. They're actually Easterners who control the railroad lines. And then the second source, which was uniquely Texan, is

24:11 Before oil came to Texas, they were their massive industry was uh a lot of the the richest families were actually cattle ranchers. Uh, so there's this guy named Pappy Wagner, for example. He was Texas's first billionaire. he obviously made his money in cattle ranching. And then he takes that money and then uh actually founds a bank and then he would fund a bun it's kinda like angel investing if you really think about what's going on here as a billionaire. He's like, Okay I'm willing to go ahead and issue

24:36 and invest these in these speculative like oil startups is the way to think about this. And he does it. through Fort Worth National Bank, which he founded. And so one of the main things that jumps out is like okay, well why would you do that? You have a good job, like why would you quit? You move states And th this is this idea where it's like he had w unbelievable Self confidence. I don't even know if that's the right word.

24:59 Default optimistic by far. But they also believe that they were born lucky. This is not a joke. So he says Mani Makree believed that he had a gift, a special talent for finding oil. He believed that he'd been born lucky.

25:17 When asked why he set himself up as an independent oil man, he said I'd always had it in my mind to better myself. And to better himself has always been his quest in life. And so these wildcatters raise money and they start Just start drilling holes. Mani's first twenty nine.

25:35 His first twenty nine Wells all come up empty. So at the beginning of his career. Remember, he still thinks Born lucky. He was destined to it. I have a gift. This is the way he's talking about have a gift for finding oil.

25:46 Imagine believing that, right? Quitting your job. Moving states. Raising money. First twenty nine times, they're all duds.

25:53 They start calling him Dryhole Monty. That was the situation right before he hits one of the largest uh oil discoveries ever. There is actually Let me read this to you. There's a great line I think about all the time. in the book The Fish That Ate the Whale, which is about Sam Zamur.

26:09 And it talked about this. Essentially he goes and and accumulates assets when he does not have the money to do so because he believed if He did not get those assets, his business in the future wouldn't work out anyways. There is some some degree of For some reason when I'm when I got to the section of the book, I was thinking about this line, this paragraph that's in

26:29 the fish that ate the whale. So let me read that paragraph to you first and then we'll get into This incredible discovery. That Mani is a young Mani Moncrief. His son Is I think 11 years old when this is about to happen, but this is the line from The Fish They Ate the Whale. There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile.

26:48 When certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough. To act on them. Even when he cannot afford to.

27:04 And so when a real estate trader by the name of BA Skipper comes and asks Mani if he wants to buy These leases, this is what happens. So BA skipper was trying to unload the leases that he held on four thousand acres. These four thousand acres just happen to be near Dad Joyner's well. So Dad Joyner is this guy that's sold out to this other guy named H.L. Hunt. H L Hunt is in that book I referenced earlier, which is The Big Rich.

27:29 Dad joiner site is The foundation of the HL Hunt family dynasty. Should have gone to dad joiner, but he sold out. I think that's a huge important thing to remember. So BA Skipper comes and he's like, Well, I got four thousand acres. He's in under fida financial pressure. They're kinda near joiners. Well, do you want them? No geological survey had been made in the land, but the acreage was cheap because Skipper hadn't paid off his leases. He had taken them on an open draft from a the the bank instead, hoping to get rid of them fast. and turn a profit by doing so so there's a bunch of these people

28:01 Where they'll they'll get a lease and especially they just want to sell paper. You have no issue. They're not wildcatters. They're like, oh, we got these. Let's say I paid, you know, making up the number. I paid a thousand for them. I will give you my rights for, you know, five X. They're like short term. Yeah, short term traders, I guess is the way to think about them. Very different than what uh Mani was interested in doing them. Uh Mani and Moncrieve thought it was possible that this site may be sitting on top of the North East running trend and on impulse, meaning that it's close to the dad joiner. Uh discovery and an impulse he bought the leases.

28:32 And he bought the leases even though he didn't have a the money. So what does he do? They they do this over and over again. They take on partners. Uh to s to save himself money, he went partners with a band man named JT Farrell. Who worked down the hall from him. Moncleef and Farrell didn't have enough money to permit them to expand their holdings and undertake the expense of drilling at the same time. So they did what independents have always done and then sold off pieces of their enterprise.

28:56 They gave up some of their interest. to get a Uh that's Getty Oil. So think about what just happened there, BA skipper. comes to Monty with a with an opportunity money's like

29:07 Okay, I'm gonna take another flyer. I've I've drilled twenty nine uh duds. Uh, I don't have money for this. What I gotta do? I gotta walk down the hall, knock on some doors, and see who wants to go in on this deal with me. So now we're fifty-fifty partners. We're like, all right, we got the leases. We ain't we ain't got no money. To to drill. What are we gonna do here? We'll go to a bigger oil company, say, Hey, give us somebody to drill, and if it works out, we'll obviously give you some move. uh you know, the the interest in and a goodwill. And then I love his relentless optimism here because of the first well that he drills

29:36 Gush forth. Eighteen thousand barrels of oil a day. And then his response was h was hilarious. Right,'cause it's like it's like to be delusionally optimistic, you get to just go from one setback to another setback without any loss of enthusiasm, which I love. And it says like he so you know, he has all these struggle for years.

29:56 Doesn't have the money, winds up figuring out how to do it. The first, well, they drill on this other thing. So this would be what his thirtieth attempt. Uh the first well is eighteen thousand barrels a day. And then it says this further convinced him that the good Lord must be looking out for him, in other words, that he was born lucky. Now, what's fascinating is how fast his fortunes change. So it says Mani and his partner held onto their leases until the end of 1931. If I'm not mistaken. They actually hit it.

30:25 I can't find The exact year. I'm pretty sure they hit it that same year. I think they held on to it for a year, maybe two. It was not long, the the point whether it's a year, two years, something like that. It's not a very long time. But the value obviously increases dr dramatically. And so it says they watch their worth increase many times over. Finally, they sold out to a larger oil company for two and a half million dollars. that'd be the equivalent of, you know, something like fift million today.

30:48 Uh, the company that bought it for two and a half million sold it. for thirty seven million to standard oil. And so a bunch of other people like were like, Oh, you you know, you sold too early, wherever the case is, but again, this is gonna be the foundation of a Which present day is a multi-billion dollar family fortune. So a lot of other wildcatters are like, Oh, you sold too early, but I loved what Mani Montcrees said here. He says uh in the oil business there's no what if there's only what happened.

31:15 And another interesting thing is one, he's sold, so now he doesn't have to worry about any money. He's gonna keep he's gonna be in the same business uh for the rest of his life and he's gonna keep having a lot of success in that business. But also b What was fascinating is because uh his wealth was based off like this tangible resource. He was able to survive and thrive in the Great Depression. So it says unlike the oligarchs in New York, rich Texans were not necessarily forced into diminished circumstances by the depression. Texas fortunes had been built upon the bounty of the earth. This is their words.

31:42 And the memory of this advantage a time of crisis has made many Texans mistrustful of of paper fortunes ever since, mistrustful of paper fortunes ever since. Remember that sentence uh for later on when his grandson is, you know, essentially like peacocking, like look what I did when this deal he's drilling oil for Israel. uh on like disputed land between Israel and Egypt in the nineteen seventies. And we'll get to there later. But his his his uh

32:11 grandfather wasn't buying it. He's like until the money's in the bank. It remind you know what, it reminded me of something that Sam Zell said. I think it was his autobiography. Where You know, somebody had said to him during the dot the original dot com boom in the late nineties. It's like Sam, you know, you took you forty years or something like that to be a billionaire. uh what do you think of this guy that you know started his company eighteen months ago and he's a billionaire, you know, this is like ninety-seven or ninety eight. And he goes, Tell me when he has the money in the bank.

32:35 And I'm pretty sure if I remember the cor the story correctly, that the that was always just a paper fortune. It wind up uh booming and then busting and then I think going bankrupt. So before I move on, I wanna go over some of the characteristics of these early wildcatters because I'm choosing to focus on Monty Moncrief. There's a lot of other characters in there. Yeah, H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Clit Murchison. In fact what brought this book to my attention. is I've been doing research. I wanna do uh a podcast on Richard Rainwater.

33:02 Uh very influential uh investor and company builder and yet there's surprisingly as influential as this person was А'снобіографіаном, со і фану. Uh this podcast And it's called Rainmakers Podcast.

33:16 I'll leave a link down below. Uh turns out uh Raim who runs the Rain Wakers podcast has been uh listening to founders for a while. And I sent him a message and he gave me all of his research. He's in that I'd recommend listening to that podcast'cause the level of research that went into it's incredible. I've been trying to find stuff in Richard Ring all the time. And Raym just came up with an like his sources are just way better than mine, and I uh one of his sources was this book. And so I immediately ordered all the books on that list.

33:42 And I started reading this like this is actually incredible. Um, and so my interest in this was I was like, Okay, I wanna learn more about'cause Richard Rainwater, how he got his start, was that there's an oil man winds up becoming uh I think the richest person in the United States for a certain time. He's more like a gambler, though. Same Sitch Richardson Uh he passes away, his fortune goes to he didn't have any children, his fortune goes to his nep nephew, this is the Bass family, and then the Bass family hires Richard Rainwater. And so the podcast I'm telling you about talks about how Richard, I think, turned fift million of the Bass's money into five billion.

34:11 But Sid Richardson, just like Monty Moncrief, they were a big belief in luck. In fact, uh Sid's credo says that uh he He'd always been Uh, his credo had always been that he'd rather be lucky than smart because a lot of smart guys go hungry. Uh another trait that they had was they were not afraid of debt. This is not advice, by the way, because there's a lot of people that did the exact same thing they did, but did not survive. And so Sid Richardson's uh his partner was this guy named Clint Murchison.

34:40 Who's also fascinating, he's in the big rich. I highly recommend I I'm gonna leave links for this book, but I'd also go back and listen to episode one fifty. Oh no, it's not one fifty, is it? I don't know why I'm guessing, I can just look it up. Uh it is episode one forty nine. One fifty Sam Walton. So one forty nine. I'd listen to that episode, but also read the book. The Big Rich is excellent. It's g I'm gonna wind up rereading it and doing another podcast on it in the future'cause I thought the the book was uh fantastic. But so Clint Murchison's In there as well.

35:05 They were one time partners. uh with Sid Richardson. And you might find this interesting, Clint Murchison's son, it was actually the founder of the Dallas Cowboys. But So what they have uh in common

35:16 They have an absence of fear of disgrace, as we just saw, like they're failing over and over again, and they just keep getting back up and going at it. uh as we just saw with Monty ch he was oh in twenty nine and he was still going at it and and thirty was you know changed his his life and really not only changed his life but changed of many generations of his family. Uh, they're also not scared of of having tons of debt. There's a great law there's a great exchange between Sid Richardson in this uh and Clint Murchison in the book and Sid tells Clint, I must be the richest one between us because I owe more money than you you do. They've got paper of mine floating all the way to London.

35:51 Sid believed that this is crazy. Sid uh had an attitude that Uh there was no innate shamefulness in going broke or in borrowing as long as there was a reason for it. They all were delusional optimists. They believe that optimism was a personal quality that nurtures luck. They hated timidity. They said you cannot you simply an oil man simply could not afford to be timid.

36:12 And then they did not feel uh the need to apologize uh for the occasional big losses. They believe that if you were not having big losses that means you weren't trying enough. And in many cases they operated in legal

36:26 Like grey areas. Uh they built concrete bunkers around wells and hired arm guards to defend their turf from government inspectors. They smuggled oil across state borders. They operated unregistered refineries In backwoods. They processed crude in excess of what each operator was allowed. This is later in the oil industry. Uh it says chaos and they believe in chaos and defiance and they refuse to be controlled.

36:49 They were not afraid of risk. They said the risk is always there. And then Clint Merchinson has a great saying. He says uh So the risk is always there. And as Clint Murchison was fond of saying, after the first hundred million, what the hell? And so what he's talking about there is like after a hundred million dollars, you can have a hundred and at this point, you're gonna have a hundred million or a billion, the difference in your lifestyle is negligible. So you should be going like you should be building businesses, going for risk.

37:12 Uh in Clint's case he was he would spread money all around He would own oil companies, railroads, cattle ranching. Obviously his son uh eventually uh started the Dallas Cowboys. But really, this is the I guess the punchline for this entire section. They were motivated to found dynasties. to which their sons and their son's sons could succeed. This is more about their mindset.

37:34 Uh, West Texas, where all these these guys are operating, was settled by optimism, by pure booster spirit, by the willingness to go on faith and instinct, to believe that hard work and the taking of high risk must inevitably bring reward. Only something as stubborn and unreasoning remember, this is not like an intellectual thing, because in many cases they're being irrational and people around them are telling them they are. Only something as stubborn as unreason and unreasoning as faith could have inspired men and women to settle and remain upon this harsh unyielding land. These Texas wildcatters were optimists without equal. They had to be. This was very fascinating. Uh so keep in mind, Clint uh or not Clint, uh Monty gets in the business, right, after World War One. So we're talking late nineteen the nineteen teens, right? In the years before and after the first world war, the US Bureau of Mines had begun issuing a series of pessimistic surveys. They estimated, these are the quote unquote experts saying you you're wasting your time here. Why? Because we estimate that forty percent of America's petroleum reserves had already been exhausted. That is

38:29 Insane. That is an insane statement. This is over a hundred years ago. Right. So a hundred years later than the the this report by these experts was issued, right? Over a hundred years later, there's more petroleum produced. In America, there's hundreds of thousands of barrels A day.

38:45 In the nineteen twenties. So at that time and then let me let me be clear what I'm saying here. The 1920s or 19 teens, when this report is issued, it's like, hey, we've already we're estimating that you guys have already tapped 40 percent of America's petroleum reserves. We're already producing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, right? That can't like we're gonna run out. A hundred years later.

39:04 We're producing tents. Of millions of barrels a day. This is why I keep bringing up this like irrational optimism. And the belief in luck that they have because Ever like the the the industry reports like nope, we're forty percent of the way through.

39:17 Uh and the report concluded, right, that the domestic oil business was not far from dead. Вес Текс Оймен рефуз. To take these reports at their word. And it was a good thing they did because when they start drilling all of these findings that's gonna happen over the next 10, 20 years, right? It was the greatest

39:38 Frontier gold rush of all time. And they the they make a great point in the book that Th these discoveries in Texas in you know, twenties, thirties, forties. Uh we're ten times The size of the gold strike.

39:51 That brought the forty niners to Northern California in the eighteen hundreds. And I think there's some needed context around this, right? Like why could you have this default optimism? And I it goes back to this this theme that I was thinking about I was just reading this book. It's like okay Let's let's study this not to like try to start an oil company, but I'm really curious, like where is their opportunity without limits today?

40:13 And Can we derive insights into like what those opportunities look like and what to look for? And part of this was that these are Is it Actually a dual theme here.

40:24 It's like these are poor men. Mani Mon Crief, when he was doing this, was not a rich man. When his grandson or his son tried to do that, they are rich men. And so I think the benefit that like a Clint

40:36 M merchantson. Or uh Sid Richardson or Maniuan Creehat is the fact that really they really they could speak as uh growth as an inevitability because there's nowhere to go but up. They had begun their lives in a lot of these wildcatters, they begun their lives in hovels and had nowhere to go. And so they were willing to sleep in tents. They would pit in some cases they would pitch uh they would pitch a tent right next to a uh a Derek, right?

40:59 And They're out in the open. They describe this environment as ungoverned backlands with a climate that was predictable only in its violence. So you got Either freezing, there's storms, there's mud, then there's heat. And the only thing pushing them through is one, they're broke, and two, they're very optimistic. Such harshness put to the test the willingness of people to put aside all thoughts of present. comfort and pleasure and live exclusively upon hopes for the future. This same stern ability to ignore their present circumstances and live upon their hopes.

41:31 As one descendant of a wildcatter said, My granddaddy was born in a hole in the ground. You can't start life much lower than that. And so I mentioned the surprising role that railroads uh played in the Not only the the growth of the oil business. But also the regulation of it. So

41:49 Says uh growth meant railroads. Some West Texas fields had to be shut down after they were discovered, but Because so it means they struck oil. Because there was no means for hauling barrels of crude out of there to the refineries. And if the discovery was big enough. They would actually be able to influence

42:06 railway railroads to lay track. So it says it they became a bonanza for railroad schemers as much as for wildcatter. So That was that's at the stage. It was very interesting that uh you know, the there's a kind of like symbiotic relationship between independent oil wildcatters like Monty. And these larger companies. Like they're kinda doing deals with each other. Their fields are next to each other, they they become partners for a little bit, then they break up.

42:30 uh if an independent s usually is g it's going to eventually sell out, he's going to sell out to a major So This was fascinating. This was really surprising and it I think it speaks to the influence that that railways or railroads had on the uh early American oil industry. So independents like Mont Crief, they're they usually are rarely willing to jeopardize their relationship with major companies by taking them before regulatory boards. Mani Mun Crief had to do this because

42:55 He feels That He thought that Humble was decreasing the value of his oil fields because they were draining essentially like Let's say he was on the outskirts, they own the middle, they were draining things that were not in the middle.

43:10 And so if an independent wanted to file suit against a major, he would go through the regulatory board of the oil industry at the time, which was called the Railroad Commission. That was surprising. And again, you it's not the oil board oil regulations, the railroad commission. And uh in this case, this wind up making him over a hundred million dollars. The railroad commission ordered uh Humble to compensate him for his fields. They were forced to pay him uh a hundred million dollars along with percentages and residuals on the on those percentages.

43:40 And so it said it was a victory for his dynasty and a means for its perpetuation. And there's just a great line in the book about this, you know,'cause you th you think they're nuts. for, you know, essentially suing a potential partner in the future. You're nuts for doing all you know, all the the behavior that the wildcatters are doing. uh seemed nuts at the time. And it says being crazy is something that majors just don't understand. And being crazy and having imagination is actually a huge asset for the independents. This this stat blew my mind.

44:08 Independent wildcatters find eighty percent of the oil and gas in America, despite the fact that most of the mineral leases they acquire have been rejected by By the big companies. And so when the book ends, Monty's in his eighties and he's still at it. And I think this is a good description of why. Mani Mon Crief grew up amid the harshness of a developing frontier land. and made hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his eighty odd years.

44:33 He had realized his ambitions in a town that he helped to settle and shape and make grow. He had been able to trace his shadow, leave his mark upon an empty land, and set a standard for those who were to follow. He created a dynasty. For Money Moncrief. And for men of this pioneer generation, achievement

44:52 Not refinement. Is the measure of all things. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story, highly recommend reading the book. If you buy the book using the link In your show notes are available at Funderspodcast.com. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. There's only a few limited copies of this, so in case you can't get this, I will also leave a link below.

45:11 Uh to read the big rich, which tells a lot of similar stories and it's an excellent book. That is three hundred and thirty eight books down, one thousand to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

45:22 Okay, just a few quick things in fact a few quick new things. Uh before you go. First one. was asked for and requested. uh for many, many months. Founders now officially has merch. If you go to shop

45:36 dot founderspodcast dot com or you can just go to founderspodcast dot com and click on merch. Uh a few months ago I did an a live show in New York City with my friend Patricky from the Invest Like the Best podcast. And We sold for the first time ever like founders merch, like sweatshirts, hats.

45:53 People seem to love it. I've been wearing that. I have I actually took like four of them for myself and have been wearing them for the past few months. They are super, super comfortable. Uh, I would definitely order the sweatshirt. The hat that we have on there right now. I'm actually going to replace soon with a hat that's the the'cause the founder's logo on the hat is big. Some people like it. I personally like it if it's a little smaller, but if you happen to like the bigger logo, get the hat soon because eventually they'll be replaced with the hat with the smaller

46:21 Uh logo. So if you want to buy some founders merch, go to shop.founderspodcast.com or go to founderspodcast.com and click on merch and you can do that. The second new thing, and this one is incredibly important. Me and Patrick are looking for partners. If you are building products, if your company is building a product that makes somebody else's business better. So B to B. And you would be interested in becoming partners with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from advice like the best. Email partnerships.

46:48 at founderspodcast dot com. That is partnerships with N S. Partnerships at founderspodcast dot com. Tell us about The company you're building, obviously any important links that we need to know. And why you think we would be good partners. So we're able to obviously help with distribution. We're looking for partners that we can actually partner with and then help

47:06 advertise across both of our podcasts. We can also bring capital and then access to talent as well. And the r one of the reasons this came uh this this idea came to mind is because I keep having this experience where Whether um touring a company'cause I've been invited to, or I'm giving a speech, or I meet somebody uh through like a a friend of a friend that listens to the podcast. I keep coming across these unbelievably talented and formidable

47:32 uh founders that listen to founders and in some cases have been listening like I j I just met one last week Is incredible. And he's like, Yeah, I've listened to two hundred episodes. And so it's very apparent to me that I'm doing something wrong where because these supremely talented people There's no mechanism for which for them to like reveal themselves to me. And that's important to the podcast because supremely talented people usually build supremely impressive products, products that can make your business better. And I would like to use the podcast.

47:59 to essentially highlight founder led companies From founders that listen to founders. That would benefit other listeners of founders. And so Patrick and I don't know what shape this is gonna take yet. All we know is we have access to a lot of resources. We have very unique assets that no one else probably on the planet has.

48:15 And if you're you think you're a right fit. Just email partnerships. at founderspodcast dot com There'll be more details in the future. I just want to put out put that out there for now. So if you're building something and you would want to partner with Patrick and I, email partnerships. at Founders Podcast dot com.

48:32 And I think you'd be surprised about all the kind of unexpected benefits that could happen. So this this just actually just happened. Um because I've told you about this company, Vesto. Uh V is in Victor E S T O. It's Vesto dot com.

48:45 And I partnered with them for a while. I knew the founder. uh uh two of my close Found her friends. We're both using Vesto. to get higher returns on their businesses idle cash. And so I was like, oh this is a a new Ben I'd spend a bunch of time with them, went out to dinner with him a bunch of times.

49:00 And then I had two people I trust where and they were both In very opposite uh situations. One was I had raised a bunch of venture capital. And so he had a long runway and he was using Vesto to uh lengthen his runway. And the other one had this giant bootstrap business with a bunch of companies. And he was using it to get

49:17 a higher rate of return than his bank was offering him. And so there's a bunch of people that heard about Vesto. Uh from the ads I was doing on the podcast. But what was fascinating and this is an unexpected benefit They actually pulled a product out of Vesto that didn't exist and now exists because of that.

49:34 And this is also the benefit of founder led calls. uh sales calls if you can do that in your company because Ben was taking all the calls right explaining getting to know who the prospects were. Explaining the business, explaining why the business exists. You know, he built the the from it from the ground up. So he's the person in the best possible position to uh explain to explain its value to potential customers. But he was having

49:57 bunch of these conversations and what was fascinating is people didn't know e that didn't even know each other were asking for the same thing. 'Cause like yeah, I have excess cash and I would like a higher return. Obviously now the interest rates are higher. But There's this other problem. uh that I really want to find a solution for.

50:11 And a lot of people have Uh in many cases multiple bank accounts spread across multiple banks, in some cases multiple countries, and in some cases multiple currencies. And multiple entities. And the only solution they could find, and this is what they were asking Ben to build for them, was hey, I have to hire somebody, right? They're paying somebody every morning or every day to log into all their accounts. In some cases, there was like ten to thirty different accounts. Uh reconcile all the balances.

50:38 And in some cases convert the currencies just to figure out how much cash is all my businesses have right at this exact moment. And so as a result Oh. Founders. In the founder community, in the founders podcast community, this product now exists. If you have this problem, you can go to Vesto.com V-E-S-T-O.

50:56 Everybody says I slur my words. I know I don't pronounce things correctly so it's V is in Victor. And obviously I will leave the links in the show notes and the links for everything I talk to, uh talk about is at founderspodcast.com. But if you want to see all of your company's financial accounts in one view. uh Vesto this this version of Vesto will connect and control all of your global business accounts from one dashboard. And then if you choose to, they can a automatically also help you earn higher rates on your business's idle cash. And then when you go to Vesto and schedule demo, you actually talk to Ben. So just make sure that you tell him that David from Founders sent you. So uh two more quick things I want to talk to you about founders notes, founders notes uh is the best way, the single best way

51:35 Uh, first I think it's it's the world's greatest uh the world's greatest notebook for founders, but it's also the best way to support the podcast. I think last week. uh the Napoleon episode really honed in on the value proposition from just reading and re reading Uh all the uh the note all of my notes and highlights. So what Founders Notes is is for

51:56 What is this now? Six years since two thousand eighteen. Uh I've been cataloging all of the notes and all the highlights I've been putting in this app called ReadWise, which allows me to search by book, search by keyword. uh constantly review my highlights. There's this thing called the highlights feed, which I think is incredible, which is essentially a random generated like a smart Twitter feed, but instead of reading the psychotic delusions of these crazy people that are that hang out on social media all day. You're reading notes and highlights.

52:24 From history's greatest founders. And so I went to the team of ReadWise is like, Hey, uh, people have been asking for a long time to have access to my notes and highlights. Is there any way we can build a product together where we can we can essentially mirror what I see? So when you subscribe, when you go to founders notes, that's founders for the N S, founders notes.com, and you subscribe to this, when you invest in a subscription, you see exactly you see a direct mirror. You see exactly what I see. This is something that I use every day. This is A product that I could not make the podcast without. It is literally embedded in my workflow.

52:56 So if you had already had access to founders notes. You would have already seen the highlights for the for the Wildcatters, the book that w j we just went over. Because I'm updating it nearly every single day. And the reason I thought that there was a lot of there's a couple of things that people emailed me that really resonate from last week is Uh one it uh I talked about the fact that it's only for people that are running already successful companies, right? If you're not already running successful company, though the people running a successful company

53:22 uh are going to get the most value out of founders' notes because they already have a mechanism which to turn that knowledge that's in the notebook into profit. Right. And if you're not, listen to the podcast. I said like the founders notes does not have a free trial because the podcast It's the free trial. So if you're not already running a successful company, it doesn't make any sense for you to to invest in a subscription. Just go and listen to the three hundred and thirty seven episodes.

53:46 Whenever you want. as much as you want and then use those ideas to build a successful company, then this is this is in addition to but for people that are already running a successful a successful company, then it's a no brainer. You can invest in a year's subscription, right? At the end of a year, first of all, there's already, you know, I don't know, something like twenty thousand highlights. uh in there.

54:05 I think r the team of Reedwatch just sent me my stats page. Um, I think they said there's twenty four thousand highlights. Um, but I'd have to go back and double check that. But anyways, my point being is like i the you s if you had sign up today In the next year, I'm gonna add another, you know, fifty something books and you know, probably four or five thousand highlights. So the product literally gets better. Every

54:28 day and then you could decide at the end of the year, did you get value out of it or not? Well I think I think it's a no brainer to to try for at least a year. And the reason I say that I heard from a lot of people that that uh the Napoleon uh episode resonate with them and they realized helped them realize the value of You know, not just listening to the podcast, but really going deep on this and reading and re rereading over and over again because that's that's Napoleon's own words. He said read over and over again. He didn't say read once, listen to one episode and then keep it moving. No, he said read over and over again. the the campaigns of Alexander Hannibal Caesar.

55:01 Uh, Frederick the Great, make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general to master secrets of the art of war, with your own genius enlightened. By this study. I truly believe that if you subscribe to Founders Notes and you read it every day. Keep it open in your browser. What I would do is pick A new book every morning, right? And just read the highlights. You can see my notes too.

55:21 uh search wherever comes to mind uh use the highlights feed, which is that is a really cool thing if you can build the habit of just scrolling the highlights feed. Take ten this is what you should do. Take ten minutes out of your social media scrolling. Right? Just take ten minutes out of whatever how much time you're using. And use that to read the highlights feed for ten minutes a day. There's it's impossible.

55:40 that you're not gonna get valuable information that makes your business better if you do that ten minutes a day. For the year. It's just impossible. That d it's not even including the crazy thing that I've been testing. And I might just release it soon. I uh uh it's the f essentially a founder's GPT. That I can't call it that. There's gotta be a different name. So I gotta figure out what I'm gonna call it. But it's like chat GPT. Instead of being trained on the entire internet, it's trained on all my notes and highlights and then now all my transcripts. Um and it's just

56:08 Yeah. If you've ever heard you hear it on the podcast, but if you've ever heard me speak in in person too. It's this thing where some are being interviewed on a podcast. I don't know what that other person's gonna ask me, but everything that I hear is filtered through all the reading and research and the constant rereading my highlights. So like, Oh, that reminds me of this and that reminds me of that. You'll hear me do this over and over again. The founder GPT version does that. And I'm like it it now is making connections that I didn't even think about.

56:33 And I'm like, ooh, this is interesting. Now here's the problem. Just like with any kind of these like new You know, chat models. you know, eighty percent of it's amazing. And then some of it's like that's not You just made that up. So we gotta figure out what to do with that, but That's super exciting. So

56:49 Uh this idea where it's like Napoleon said multiple times in his maxims the importance of this. You know, he says it's it's profitable to study the campaigns of the great masters. I don't know about you. If you're reading notes and highlights from biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, what is that? That is this you're studying the campaigns of the great masters. Napoleon's saying that's profitable to do so. Uh he says that all great captains have been diligent students of history. U you and I talk about this every week. That's one of the main recurring themes.

57:17 in this this uh in the history of entrepreneurship that comes up in these biographies over and over again. And then Napoleon says experience must be supplemented by study. No man's personal experience can be so inclusive as to warrant his disregarding the experience of others. Experience must be supplemented by study. During the day, you know, you're busy working on your company, you're building your empire. When you're not doing that, I think listening to founders, reading these biographies, investing in subscription to founders' notes, that's professional research. You are supplementing your

57:44 that you're supplementing your own experience by study. So If you have not Yet Signed up for it, highly recommend you do. You go to founders notes. Dot com.

57:53 after you sign up, you'll receive an email. In that email, it goes into detail, that welcoming email. Make sure you you read it. It goes into det exact detail how I use this on a daily basis. And even this morning, I was going and rereading highlights'cause one of my favorite books that I've ever read was uh this it's called Hard Drive. It's ex it's uh episode two ninety. It's a it's a biography on Bill Gates, but what I love about it is like it's the first like thirty five years of his life because it ends At the Microsoft IPO.

58:23 And w I was rereading the highlights'cause uh he youngo Gates had the there's this line it has like this monomaniac quality. And it essentially what I'm just brainwashing myself to make sure that I don't lose my focus. And so I was reading uh to the highlights. And I was also thinking about this idea. uh then I'm thinking about in my own business, the importance of uh like uncapped limitless opportunity and his decision to insist on a royalty agreement between him and IBM. So all these weird things that, you know, I I maybe had forgotten or hadn't thought about in a while, I'm rereading. And then I get to this point where he was like, Oh

58:55 He consumed biographies uh to understand how the great figures of history thought. And like oh there it is again. Except he was doing that, you know, thirty years ago. No, probably longer than that. Forty years ago.

59:08 But this idea it's like oh this constant Rereading and re reading. and studying of the great people that came before us. And I I really do uh'cause I I can tell you with my whole heart, like I made the product. I use the product every day. it's it would be impossible for me to endorse uh uh another product in the world to a greater degree other than you know the listening to the podcast. So I I truly believe it's valuable. If you want to try it off for a year, go to founders uh founders notes.

59:34 Dot com. As always, thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon.

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