Mike Bloomberg

0:00 Periodically, while surrounded by the fruits of our success. The profits, the power of the notoriety. I get frustrated. And I dream of starting again. But something stops me.

0:10 Perhaps I'm too old. I'm afraid it was all luck. Or maybe deep down inside. I really do like the trappings that I've accumulated. Nevertheless, when I find that we just have to clear it with legal

0:22 Or had a meeting to keep others in a loop. Are we are justifying staff versus producers? I wanna scream. We used to have the Nike Moto attitude. We just did it.

0:33 Now there's a Why we can't. Lurking in the background. Keeping it from coming out while we grow. Is our number one management focus today.

0:42 What started simple with time. Has become complex. A single straightforward policy has picked up exception after exception over time. Products have grown to overlap. No one's got an excuse, but everyone's got a reason.

0:58 Maddening. Why not just quit then? Chuck it all. Sell the business. Take the money.

1:05 And run. Play it conservatively. Relax a little. Real entrepreneurs never do, though. And I haven't either.

1:13 Generally. Real builders are so focused. One dimensional, and dedicated, they'd have a nervous breakdown after two weeks of sitting around. Their challenge. Even their reason for living.

1:25 Would be gone. Why would I swap fun? Influence. challenge and more money than you could ever spend. For only a multiple.

1:34 Of more money than you can ever spend. I can't think of anything. Better than my current situation. Should I take the company public? And have to answer to more partners, stockholders, and security analysts?

1:47 Why would we want to do that? We're going in the other direction. We've already bought back Merrill's thirty percent investment in our company. The first per ten percent we bought back for two hundred million in nineteen ninety six. And the second twenty percent we bought back for four point five billion in two thousand eight.

2:03 Not a bad return on their original investment of thirty nine million dollars. Sell? No thanks. Answering to no one is the ultimate situation.

2:13 So Back on the treadmill I go. Ratchet up the risk. Enter a new medium, start another project. Improve.

2:20 Develop. Expand. Go for it. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Michael Bloomberg's autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. And that is an awesome example of why

2:32 This book moved up to Q. Uh he is unapologetically extreme and he sets the tone from the very, very beginning. This book had been recommended to me over the years. and I wanted to push it up to the front because of something I saw somebody wrote Um, so there's this writer who does

2:49 He studies great history's great investors. Like I study history's great founders. Um, but he does it in writing, he's got this email newsletter. It's called Necker. Which is uh it's like N E C K A R I'll link to he wrote a tr uh a Twitter thread. One of the a better Twitter thread than I could ever write.

3:06 And it's on m the lessons that are in Michael Bloomberg's autobiography. And so I'll link to that Twitter thread if you want to read it. It gives a great overview of the book. And his his unapologetically extremess jumps out in that thread. I was like, Okay, I love studying people like that. I wanna read his

3:24 Biography. Or his autobiography. And so this is a short book. I got a lot of highlights. I'm gonna jump into'em before I have to tell you like where how I came into this Like I knew Bloomberg's name. I know he's got a really successful company. I didn't know I have just haven't really paid attention to him. I don't know that much about him other than his name recognition. I knew he was the mayor of New York. And anyway who's unbelievably wealthy, I just assumed, okay, if you have a f net worth of fifty billion dollars and you did it in a very short amount of time, relatively speaking,

3:50 I mean I guess it's not a short amount of time, hey, but I have the updated version of this autobiography and he's been working for fifty years. So there's a lot of information in here that's gonna be useful to you and I. But I just assumed okay, this guy, you know, had a has a public company. I didn't know Bloomberg was privately owned. To this day he owns around eighty percent of it. Uh, they do around ten billion dollars in revenue and I've seen varying uh estimates of his profit margins.

4:14 But there's somewhere around thirty to forty percent. Which just blew my mind. The idea that you could have a private company that is throwing off, let's say, three billion dollars of profit every year. And then take into account the fact that he started the company when he was almost forty years old. Okay, so I'm gonna jump into the book right from he sets the tone from the very first page. This is in the preface of the book. And he says what started in nineteen eighty one with four guys in a coffee pot.

4:37 And not one customer has grown beyond our wildest imaginations. The culture that we created at the very beginning continues to define who we are. We are still a company that will outwork our competitors. We will take more risks than they will. We will serve our customers better.

4:52 We will invest more in the long term and we will place a greater emphasis on transparency and teamwork. And on the very next page he makes one of the best points he makes in the entire book is that you cannot mistake Your product. for the device that delivers it. And then of course we see right away just Michael Bloomberg, just like every other founder that we uh study, they have deep historical knowledge about their industry. They go back and they learn from the experience of entrepreneurs that came before them. This helps them understand how they think, copy their best ideas and avoid their worst mistakes. And so he's gonna say, Hey, we're not gonna mess up like Kodak did. Okay. So he says the technology that we pioneered in the early nineteen eighties has long been ancient history.

5:28 But we never made the error that so many others have. We m uh mistaking their product for the device that delivers it. So now he's gonna give us an historical reference of A pitfall that he was able to avoid. Kodak. thought they were in the camera and film business.

5:43 Instead of the photography business. See, that's so easy to make that mistake though. From Kodak's perspective, we're like, hey, we make money. We make cameras and we make money developing film. So that must be our business. They didn't even understand that. No, you're in the photography business. This is also something we saw Um I did a couple like five podcasts on Edwin Land because his company overtook Like he was heavily influenced by Uh Eastman Kodak.

6:05 He creates Polaroid. Polaroid displaces Eastman Kodak. So it says Kodak thought they were in the camera and phone business instead of the photography business. The digital photography revolution passed them by. And after more than a century, as one of the most innovative companies in the world, they filed for bankruptcy. At Bloomberg, we got out of the business of building physical computers as soon as PCs began taking off. We knew our core product was data and analytics. Not hardware.

6:34 So I'm gonna finish this paragraph, but again, I think the takeaway right there is hey, what is your core product? Think about what are what is the the service that you're actually delivering to your customers. Uh so it says we knew our core product was data and analytics, not hardware. Look ahead or fall behind. When we started the company, we were refugees from Wall Street's mo wall fr We were refugees, excuse me, from Wall Street, motivated by an idea that we could build something new. That just might make a difference. in the world of finance. So take a part of that sentence.

7:02 We were motivated by an idea that we could build something new that just might make a difference. A feeling is universal to founders. People told me I was crazy to think we could overturn the status quo on Wall Street and challenge the giants of financial information. So something Michael talks about a lot is the fact that getting fired. wind up being the best thing that ever happened to him. He loved his job. He was comfortable in his job. He would have stayed there forever. If this didn't happen, obviously he stays in that company, never builds Bloomberg.

7:30 And this is gonna echo what uh I think it was in the the uh commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford, I think back in like two thousand five. Well he talked about the same thing, he's like the getting fired from Apple the first time. It's it was the best thing ever happened to me. Um he he says he says something like Sometimes life is gonna hit you in the head with a brick, but don't lose faith And so we're gonna go to this part in Michael's life. So there I was, thirty nine years old, and essentially hearing here's ten million dollars in your history. So Michael was working at Salman Brothers.

7:58 Uh I've I this guy's famous. I don't know I never know how to pronounce his last name John gut friend, maybe. I'm just gonna call him John throughout the book. So John was the managing partner of Wall Street's hotest firm. He told me my life at Solomon Brothers was finished. It's time for you to leave. I was terminated from the only full time job I'd ever known and from the high pressure life I loved. This after fifteen years

8:19 of twelve hour days and six day weeks. I was out. Now what's remarkable is this came the next day after a giant celebration. They had just sold the company Uh so they have a huge party. They're all partners, so they have actual ownership. So that's where the ten million dollars is gonna come from. And so he says after the meeting we ate greasy steaks and drank hard liquor, we shot pool, we smoked Cuban cigars, we played poker and we laughed. It was a great big wonderful fraternity party.

8:43 boozing and carousing into the wee hours. No thoughts of others, a moment just for us. We had worked for it. And whether or not we deserved it, we got it. So he's talking about hey, I was in here for fifteen for fifteen years, working six days a week, twelve hours a day. This is this something that he he preaches over and over again. He's like y you people are just not working hard enough. This is what I mean about him just being unapologetically extreme. Kinda reminds me of what we learned uh in Arnold Schwarzenegger's uh biography. where he talks about trying to hire other bodybuilders. He was trying to be the w the world's best bodybuilder.

9:11 And he needed to make money, so he starts this company, this construction company. and he called the other bodybuilders uh lazy bastards because they wouldn't want to work every day. Uh, and he's like I ha I was in a r uh a huge rush to get rich. There's like that kind of energy from from this book for sure. So it says uh the next day with enormous hangovers.

9:29 Uh each partner sat down with two members of the executive committee. Most of the sixty three partners were asked to stay on as employees of the new company. Not me though. A half dozen other guys were pushed out at that time as well. Wa and so he talks about was I sad on the dry this is really actually smart. He doesn't really linger over regrets or mistakes. So says was I sat on the drive home, you bet. But as usual I was much too macho to show it.

9:52 Ten million dollars as compensation to hurt my feeling uh to For compensation for my hurt feelings. If they had told me we have another job for you. I would have done it in a second.

10:02 I was willing this is so important. I double underline the s the sentence. I was willing to do anything. That they wanted. It was a great organization. I would have been happy to stay. I and it's another important sentence.

10:14 I would have never Left voluntarily. Afterward, I didn't sit around wondering what was happening at the old firm. I didn't go back and visit. I never look over my shoulder. Once finished.

10:26 Gone. Life continues. And then he makes the point, Okay, it's nineteen eighty one, I got ten million dollars, it's a good amount of money. I don't ever have to work if I don't want to, like I could Play it easy. obviously right from the beginning we see that's just not his personality type at all.

10:40 And he does something that that was considered odd at the time. he decides I'm gonna start my own company, my own startup, and a lot of people were obsessed with the prestige of working for a large company. You have this expense account, Michael goes into detail, he's w you know, all throughout his twenties and thirties. He's able to travel the world Salomon Brothers is picking up the check. He's working twelve hour days, but he's also partying constantly, entertaining clients. He says he th this goes back to this this recurring theme in the book that he's unapologetically extreme. He's like, No, I they tell you don't burn

11:11 uh the cand at both ends. He's like, I burn the candle at both ends. He's like, I want my life to be full as full as possible, so the way to do that is to do more. Um but The point being is okay, I'm gonna do this even though people around me, my peer group, think it's odd. Like that takes a s a sense of courage and this it's obvious. The guy's got a gigantic ego. And superhum levels of self belief. I don't think you accomplish what he's accomplished without those two things. And so he says I was never embarrassed to say that had been fired and was now running a small a stall uh a small startup. I'm tougher than many others.

11:43 Or Perhaps it's a psychological defense mechanism I that I convinced myself not to care with others thought. But I w but he makes the point he's like I don't care what other people think, but he's married at this point. And I think he's got two small kids, if I'm not mistaken. Uh but he's like

11:56 Listen, what other people don't think about me, I don't care about that. But I do care what my wife thinks. And he says but I was worried that Sue might be ashamed of my new less visible status and concerned I couldn't support the family. So I wanna pause there. think about this. This is not the Bloomberg we see today, which he's what? He's gotta be close to eighty years old, right? This is thirty nine year old version of Michael Bloomberg. He's sitting around.

12:18 And before him. Is this Vastly uncertain future. Right. And

12:23 He's other people are saying, look at this poor Mike, he got fired He's now look, he goes from Solomon Brothers is prestigious uh headquarters that we have to this tiny little hundred square foot office which I'll get to in a minute. And it's like

12:37 Oh, I'm th I'm worried that my wife might be ashamed of my new less visible status and concerned I could and concerned I couldn't support a family. So thirty nine year old Mike does not know what eight year old Mike is. Mike does. And that's the fact that this little startup that everybody's making fun of, that you might w you're worried might other other people might be ashamed of. is going to produce Tens of billions of dollars.

12:59 for you and your family. I think that's an important point to to think about. So I'm gonna go into his early life reho real quick. Um and he just talks about, you know, I came from like a middle class. My dad never made more than like six thousand dollars a year, but they taught him important things and he says uh from my parents as a child I learned hard work intellectual curiosity and the ambition to strive relentlessly For the goals I set. So that's something he repeats over and over again. He's just got this inner drive, this fire in the belly.

13:26 That just cannot be extinguished. So he talks about, you know, I was bad and really not really pink t paying too much attention to school. I was totally bored in high school until my senior year. when the school started two honors courses, one in history and one in literature. Uh so

13:41 This is really important. The history teacher made current events come alive. Sh uh the instructor made history real and relevant. Not just something to read and memorize. And then the English teacher helped us analyze the world's great books. Instead of teaching spelling and grammar

13:57 Which are two things I never did learn. What a great idea. The English teacher helped us analyze the world's great books. Instead of teaching spelling grammar, two things I that I never did learn, discussing the meaning of the story versus memorizing the plot made the difference. Fast it made it fascinating versus boring. But classes uh both classes broadened my perspective. The exposure to history and culture opened my eyes to a whole new world.

14:20 What a shame all the preceding time was partially wasted. It was an early lesson for me how we as a society must find a better way to engage our children in the joys of learning. I developed a sense of history and its legacy. And remain and this is such an important point that I think you and I talk about over and over and over again, the fact that the that we are dedicated studying and learning from history just gives us a massive advantage over the people that don't, and most people don't. They're just gonna go on repeating mistakes that we that we can easily avoid. I developed a sense of history and his legacy and remain amazed at how little people seem to learn from the past.

14:53 How we fight the same battles over and over again. So I'm gonna skip over his college uh his his time at college. I want to get right to when he goes to to business school. He goes to Harvard And he p he he He starts to learn about okay what actually affects achievement in the future.

15:10 And so he says my two years at Harvard were well spent. The academic standard there were superior, but not what I'd call outstanding. There were some very bright students in my class. Some classmates I thought were not exactly intellectually gifted, and a few that I considered total frauds. Who can only talk a good game.

15:26 And then he pr he so he's talking about the way he viewed his peers at Harvard Business School and then what happens to these people that he categorized later in life. Those of whom I thought were smart generally did well later in life. Those whom I consider dummies. Did less well. The bullshitters. Faded away.

15:43 Sh and then so he's talking about that, you know, you can't it's Time is the best filter, right? It's like you can fake the funk for uh maybe a year, maybe f two years, maybe five years. But not over the course of your entire career. You're either talented and and hard working and driven or you're not. And so he realized what's the most important elements. He says street smarts and common sense, it turned out. were better predictors of career achievements.

16:06 So at this point in his life, he's twenty four years old, he just graduated from business school, and I think what he's experiencing here. a lot of people go through this. Like what the h you're just not sure what what you want to do after college for a lot of people aren't. And he says this, I really and this is such a crazy statement, thinking about w what the future does in front of him again. I really hadn't pondered where my life and work would take me. What would I do with my life?

16:29 And it's his friend. that actually makes a decision for him'cause it's like, I don't know, I figure I'll go into maybe manufacturing or work in some kind of business, you know, I just started I just graduated from uh business school. Isn't that what I'm s expected to do? And his friend Steve is the one who's like, Hey why don't you go to Wall Street? So he says my good friend Steve told me to call the firm

16:47 Uh Told me to call Salmon Brothers and Goldman Sachs. To say that I was desperate to be an institutional salesperson or equity trader. This is nineteen sixty six this is happening, okay?

16:58 Who are they, I asked, and what would I be doing? Don't worry about it, Scott said. Excuse me, Steve said Uh just do it. And then he says, Not having any better ideas of my own, I made the calls.

17:09 And then he goes into th there's like three paragraphs here that I'm gonna quote from. This is very interesting. So there's two Main Points I wanna make to you. Number one, it was a mistake. For others to overlook these jobs.

17:20 And number two. What he's learning there. It's transfer transferable to Many other domains. And so he says securities trading and sales at that time were considered second class occupations.

17:33 And he says that's a mistake. Both involve getting your hands dirty by actually picking up the phone and talking to customers. Forget the fact that almost all occupations have a big selling component. Selling your firm, your ideas, and yourself. And that is really what he talks about later. He was like the the master salesman at the beginning of his own company. Overlook the fact that a good trading mentality is synonymous with the ability and discipline to compartmentalize Focus and compete for success.

18:00 In those days, no self respecting research analyst or banker ever thought of working the phones. of actually bringing in business. Soliciting was viewed as undignified. This is exactly what he's doing. And so he's like, I didn't look at it like that. For me, I had college loans to pay off. A good job was a good job.

18:19 And I and as I would learn later on in life, it is the doers. The lean and hungry ones. Those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies who go the furthest and achieve the most. And this is wild. This is his financial situation. At the beginning of his career.

18:37 He winds up getting a job offer, he says and he's telling. He's like Look look I can't afford to work here. I wanna work at Saleman, but I can't. I want to, I'd love it, but I don't own another suit or clothes. I don't have an apartment to live in. I have no cash in the bank. All I've got are these outstanding student loans I took for tuition when my part time campus job didn't pay enough. And so he's they I think they wanted to give him on like nine thousand dollars a year. And they gave him eleven thousand five hundred. And so he accepts the job. And he says to say that I fit into Salamon and love the industry is an understatement.

19:07 I reveled in it. Every minute of the day. So I really thought about this. Okay, so Obviously he's one of the wealthiest men on the men on the planet right now. That's his financial situation at the very beginning of his career though. Like I don't have any money, I don't have an apartment, I like I I can't take this job. It's the pay's not enough. And really what I thought about is like this is just a temporary

19:26 Poor person. Who is smart. And determined. Who found a job That he loved

19:32 And he was good at. He's not gonna stay broke for long. It's impossible. He's smart. Determined.

19:39 Found a job he loved and was good at. You're not staying pro for long. And so this is the beginning of his fifteen years there. I really like his insights where he compares and contrasts the different leaders that he worked under. And you can clearly tell How he thinks about leadership.

19:54 I would say by far Billy Salomon was the guy running the place when he uh when Michael started there, this is the person and he he's gonna compare and contrast him with that other guy, John. This is the person that to me seems more like the phot uh Bloomberg's personal philosophy on leadership seems to be heavily influenced by his boss, uh Bill s Billy Salamon. So it says the boss when I joined was Billy.

20:16 as he preferred to be call uh as he preferred to be called, he made the culture special. He was decisive and consistent as a leader. So again, this is something you and I talk about over and again. You can tell a lot about people by who they admire. Um and so we're gonna clearly see This is Bloomberg saying, What is this? He's writing these words, you know, fifty years after this happened.

20:36 clearly this guy had a heavy influence on him. So he's he was decisive and consistent as a leader. If he ever harbored doubts after making a decision, I never saw it. He was easily approachable and willing to listen to everyone's views, But when he said we were going left. We went left.

20:51 And when he said right. Right it was. We didn't have to prepare for both directions. He said The rules.

20:59 So he's open to discussion, he wants to hear your ideas, but I he's the o he's the the buck stops on him. He's the one that's going to make the decisions. If I say left, we're going left. This is again very, very common in the history of entrepreneurship. But also what he does here is like there's this is a really important paragraph. There were no different set of rules for him. Leading from the front is essentially what Michael's telling us, right? He led by example. What he said he d what he said, he did. And the rest of us did as well. And so now he brings in the second person he worked for, John. John was a great leader too. This is also the guy that fires him later on.

21:29 John was a great leader too. But I always thought he listened to too many people. Okay, so this is crazy. Really I would summarise this as more egalitarian. But less effective.

21:41 It's John. Billy. Trusted his own judgment. I'm open to ideas, but I'm gonna make the decision. And we know founders have to trust their own judgment. You gotta work yourself into a position it's very clear where you can actually trust your own judgment because you're the ultimate person making decisions. No one can do it for you. It made running the firm much more difficult for him. Smart people prepared for both left and right when when John succeeded Billy.

22:03 This event this split resources and made it harder to lead when the t when the going got tough. Unlike Billy so now here comes the contrast, and we can clearly see from Like re if you read between the lines of what Michael's saying, like d he's clearly saying this is a mistake. I'm gonna be the ultimate decision maker at Bloomberg. Unlike Billy. Uh John consulted all interested parties before making a decision.

22:24 No matter how noble the motive, the resulting apparent indecisiveness. Uh th excuse me, that resulted in apparent indecisiveness. Comparing John to w to Billy on leadership, I always thought John was more egalitarian than But less effective. And so Bloomberg is kinda starting at the bottom of this organization. And we see that he's really too embarrassed to tell his peers, his to fellow graduates of Harvard

22:50 The truth. And so he says I worked my first summer there in the cage. Physically counting securities by hand. It was a pretty lowly start. We slaved in our underwear. In an unair conditioned bank vault.

23:02 With an occasional six pack of beer to make it more bearable. When my friends asked what I was doing at work to save face, I told them I was studying methods and procedures to simplify the workflow. My friends were research analysts and investment bankers with lush private offices. And I was what I can only be called a clerk. In his underwear, no list.

23:21 Why didn't I quit? I was too embarrassed to quit. So Mike's learning the value of sales. He also l is learning the value of the the thrill that you feel feel when you're really good at your job. Um, and then this is gonna be really interesting that I've seen a couple of times. I'll get to one second, Billy and John would stand over me, watching silently while I was on the phone with the customer, heads down, totally focused on making the sale.

23:42 Talking, explaining, cajoling, pleading. I felt a great thrill when I had closed the deal. They would walk away. Without a word. There weren't any congratulations.

23:52 They weren't needed. I was expected To make big trades. So a few months ago I read this book, uh The General and Genius, which is about the Manhattan Project, which I before I read the book thought Robin Armenheiper J. Robert Oppenheimer was the lead on that project. I didn't know he actually worked.

24:08 Leslie Groves was the same Way. He's like I'm not giving you congratulations. on something you supposed to do. I've been listening to a few of these interviews with uh the I read this this article this post that was really interesting by Frank Slootman, which I guess he's he's

24:25 run like three different technology companies and I think he's like either turn'em around or taken um public in the last like ten years, something like that. maybe twenty years, I've I forgot the exact time frame. But he has this great Uh post called Amp It Up. Well guess that Post has now been turned into like this short book. And he's going on these all these podcasts to to promote the book.

24:44 and he realizes he says something I just I I I jotted down He i he's a very extreme individual. Just like Boomberg is and this is what Sloopman said. I don't believe in offering congratulations for something we are supposed to be doing. We are supposed to win.

25:00 And it's really interesting to read Frank's post or listen to him speak because That's what he says. Like listen, there's all this slack. Most people are just w it's really a he's identify the the the like you can get drastically different results with different energy that you apply.

25:14 Uh Diff different businesses, different tasks that you have to do. Even if you have the same employees and the same assets, it's just under different leadership you get vastly different results. I might I th there's a good chance I'm gonna read his book'cause I think it's like a hundred and fifty pages and maybe I'll do like a short little Uh bonus episode on it. Okay, so This was something that was really interesting,'cause I was like, Wait a minute, d d Bloomberg

25:36 If you study his his uh His career Yes, he's gonna eventually on in Salmon Brothers trying to like uh like So like the second half of his career, maybe this to the third of his uh towards the end of his career Salmon Bros is v is kind of

25:54 In my opinion, where he got the idea. Um to to build Bloomberg his company. But I was like, wait a minute, if you're thirty nine years old, you just made ten million dollars, it's nineteen eighty one Why build a business? Uh you were just selling bonds and equities, like you're in Wall Street. It's surprisingly he didn't choose to be an investor.

26:12 And so What I realise I didn't Uh understand that until I got to this paragraph. And really what Mike is telling us is the surest way to get rich is to build a business customers love, which is exactly what he the that's the route he took instead of just being an investor.

26:27 And so he says Wall Street promise promises vast riches. Although few of the great fortunes have been made there. Now he goes back into history. From John D. Rockefeller. To Sam Walton, to Bill Gates.

26:38 Great financial success comes from starting businesses with concrete products in the real world. Building jobs, creating value, and helping people. The surest way to so he's saying the surest way to get rich is to build a business customers love. Okay, so we're still at the point in his early career, he's still at Salmon Brothers. This is again, more of he preaches this over and over again. He's like you're just not working enough. You don't want it enough. Like you're going to lose to people like me

27:06 who have a high pain tolerance, who get up every day, I'm I'm excited to do what I do. And I've been like this forever. Um so he says, I came in every morning at seven AM. Getting there before everyone else except Billy. When when he and what he's doing here

27:20 David Geffen, I read his uh his biography, The Operator, I think is what it's called. I think it's founders number one ten, one eleven something there. He used this David Geffen uses this same idea to get ahead when he he started in the mailroom. I think he was in his early twenties. And he figured out he's like I'm gonna make I'm gonna build I'm going to intentionally build a relationship

27:38 With the head of the company. because I know if this the h the person making all the decisions thinks I'm smart, I'm motivated, I'm willing to do whatever he needs done. I will accelerate faster than my other peers in the mailroom. Bloomberg's doing the same thing here. Uh so he says I came in.

27:54 I got there. The only person that beat me there was Billy. when he needed to borrow a match or he wanted to talk sports, I was the only other person in the trading room, so he talked to me. At age twenty six, I became a buddy of the managing partner. David Geffen did the exact same thing. I would stay then so Billy's coming in early, but then he's going home. John's the one that's staying late. So he says, Okay, I'll stay later than everyone else except for John. When he needed someone to make an after hours call to the biggest clients or someone to listen to his complaints about those who'd already gone home, I was that someone. And then I get a free cab ride up town with him.

28:24 The number two guy in the company. So in the morning I'm building a relationship with number one guy. And at night I'm building the relationship with number two. Where's the other twenty six year olds? They're gone. They're not here. Making myself omnipresent wasn't exactly burdensome. I loved what I was doing. He repeats this over and over and over again in the book, The importance of loving what you do. If you love it, you'll do it more. The more you do something, the better you get.

28:45 So we've talked about that over and over again. Uh, I love what I was doing. Developing a close working relationship with those who ran the show probably didn't hurt my career. I've never understood why everybody else doesn't do the same thing. Make himself indispensable on the job. That was exactly What I did.

29:02 And then this might be this might be m my favorite part of the book. This part is amazing. It's gonna go on for a little bit. It's on the importance of showing up. Working hard. staying flexible and loving what you do. If you were able to see the book that I have in my hand, I would say seventy no.

29:17 eighty five percent of my highlights come from the beginning of the book. Towards the end it's like I'm really rich and I give up like it's cool that that you donate seven hundred fifty million here and That's amazing. I'm interested in the climb, the early, who you were before who was the version of you that made that wealth that's gonna happen few uh few decades in the future Possible.

29:41 'Cause that's where I think most of us are, right? We're in that the beginning, the climb the middle, whatever it is. And so for Michael to be able to sit down and say, Hey, this is what the things I was thinking about at this time, this is my approach, this is what I learned in fifty I think he uses the word later on, fifty years of toiling. Like that is I can the fact that you can put the the fact that these books are widely available, you can pick up for fifteen or twenty dollars, that's insane. There is not a better investment on the planet. So it says it's uh it is said that eighty percent of life is just showing up. I believe that. You can never have complete mastery over your existence. You can't choose the advantage to start out with, and you certainly can't pick your genetic intelligence level. But you can control how hard you work. I'm sure someone, someplace, is smart enough to succeed while keeping it in perspective and not working too hard.

30:25 But I've never met them. The more you work. the better you do. It's that simple. I've always outwork the other person. Still I had a life. I don't remember being so driven or focused that my job got in the way of playing in the evenings and on weekends. I dated a lot, I skied, I jogged, and I hit the town more than most. The more you try to do, the more life you'll have.

30:42 Although I was serious about my career, this is when he gets into the point of like don't And again, something over and over again, don't have these rigid plants. The history of entrepreneurship is clear on this. The the best entrepreneurs that have ever lived, the best investors I've ever lived, they optimize for flexibility. They adapt to the circumstances. Although and I'm talking about people like Herb Keller, Henry Singleton, Warren Buffett, now we have Michael Bloomberg in this mix. Although I was serious about my career, I had never had a budget for my future. Unlike so many of my classmates, I didn't set out to be a partner or vice president by age thirty or a trillionaire at thirty five. Make a comprehensive scheme for the rest of my life?

31:15 Both at business and at home, I've never let planning get in the way of doing. This is such a fantastic uh paragraph here. Life I found works the following way. Daily, you're presented with s many small and surprising opportunities. Sometimes you seize one that takes you to the top. Most though, if valuable at all, take you only a little away. To succeed you must string together many small

31:35 incremental advances rather than count on hitting the lottery jock p jackpot all at once. Trusting to get great luck is a strategy not likely to work for most people. As a practical matter, constantly enhance your skills, put in as many hours as possible, and make tactical plans for the next steps. Then based on what actually occurs, look one more move ahead and adjust your plan. Take lots of chances and make lots of individual spur of the moment decisions. I'm gonna repeat that because I think he's summarizing he's that's his punchline here.

32:06 Take lots of chances and make lots of individual Spur of the moment decisions. Don't devise a five year plan. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao. And it doesn't work for entrepreneurs either.

32:19 Damn, that's good. And then he's gonna go back into the fact that these are just small little steps. Every significant advance I or my company has ever made has been evolutionary. Rather than revolutionary. small earned steps. Not big lucky hits. Something that he did that that vastly increases his odds of success is that he didn't quit.

32:39 He founded the company in nineteen eighty one. Forty years later, that company is still operating. It's not just money. He understands just like Warren Buffett does, it's not just money that compounds. Knowledge and skills do too. Stop quitting.

32:56 I stay flexible. A reporter once asked me what what we at Bloomberg had failed at. My answer after some thought was Nothing. But what we accomplished wasn't always what we set out to do. This is not as arrogant. the the very beginning of this all right guy, like come on, what are you talking about? But his explanation makes sense, so let me read that to you before you you're like disguise it

33:14 Yeah. Yeah. Whatever expletive you want to put in there. Often in the process Things worked. That we hadn't planned on.

33:22 Unforeseen uses arose for our products. Customers appear appeared whom we hadn't known existed. And exactly the reverse occurred for those that we were dead sure of. So planning has its place. The actual thought process sometimes leads to great new ideas, but you can only accomplish what's possible when you get there. Then whatever your idea is, you've got to do more of it than anyone else.

33:46 I t so this is the defining, you know, um let's use Navall's I think Naval's uh way to describe this idea is the best, the most succinct. And fine work that means fine work that feels like play. So he says Whatever your idea is, do it more than anyone else. A task that's that's easier if you structure things so that you like doing them. Since doing more almost always leads to greater accomplishments, in turn you'll have more fun. And then you'll want to do even more because of the rewards. And so on. So he's talking about this virtuous like flywheel effect, right? And so on. I've always loved my work and put in a lot of time, which has helped me make have make me successful. I truly pity people who don't like their jobs. They struggle at work so unhappily for ultimately so much less success. and thus develop even more reason to hate now he's talking about the negative flywheel. If you don't love what you do, that's actually really smart. So it's let me go back to the beginning. They struggle at work, so unhappily, for ultimately so much less success, and thus develop even more reason to hate their occupations. There's mo there's too much delightful stuff to do in this short lifetime not to love getting up on a weekday morning.

34:44 Okay, so that's the end of that section. I absolutely loved Uh That I mean that gu that took place on over three pages and I had a ton of highlights just from those three pages. I really like the advice he's giving here. Now he's got some advice for young people, which I thought was really smart too. Some young people starting their careers today are too impatient for current compensation.

35:03 at the expense of continuing their education and giving their jobs a chance. Get back to work. Forget the money today. There's plenty of time for that later. novices should go to the best firm they can get into

35:16 And then listen and learn. So what is he saying there? He's saying optimize for learning over money and you'll make more money in the future if you do that, right? This is very similar to what Steve Jobs told us, what he did in his early career. That's a quote from him. I think that I've consistently figured out who the really smart people were to hang around with. So Michael Bloomberg saying do the same thing.

35:37 Go. Fine, the smart people And go listen and learn. And in some cases you can't y maybe you don't have opportunity mo I would say for the vast majority of people You're not gonna be able to just

35:47 in person. Right, you can you can't you don't maybe have the skills or the the uh like the resume or whatever. To get hired. To be around these people.

35:55 So maybe you gotta find like a different path. Uh to do so. But one opportunity that's available to everybody is to pick up the the biographies and autobiographies of these People that Had remarkable lives.

36:06 And we're able to accomplish more in one lifetime than most people will in a hundred lifetimes, right? So and again, this is a very similar to I I talked about this before, I'm not I'm not gonna go into detail'cause I got a ton of highlights in this book, but the the kernel of the idea that spawned me to start founders was this interview that I saw Elon Musk do with Kevin Rose on Kevin Rose's video podcast series foundation, I think back in two thousand twelve, and he said the same thing. He's like, I didn't have

36:29 you know, mentors. I didn't have resources when I came from to California. So I sought out mentors and historical context. And he says I read biographies and autobiographies. And so when I pick up the bi he was using the example of like Benjamin Franklin. So I pick up the biography and I study what Franklin went through. And now he becomes to use Charlie Munger's word, like I I'm I become friends with the eminent dead. U Elon says I'm d I I I am now have a a mentor in historical context. Ben Franklin's been dead for two hundred years by the time I pick up his book, but he's still teaching me things. So I think that's the same exact idea that he just put here. He said, Listen Uh, forget the money today, there's plenty of time for that later. Novices should go to the best firm they can get into and then listen and learn.

37:08 When you read a book, you're having a one sided conversation with somebody. You can't do anything but listen. sentence again demonstrates this this theme. I w I wanna make sure I bring to attention Bloomberg is unapologetically extreme. I would be tougher than the rest of the And so he says it over and over again, uh I I I will be tougher, I'll outwork them, I'll be more competitive, I won't give up.

37:32 I have an advantage. He's just told us eighty percent of life is just showing up, he's making sure that he's Building the strength. Both. m really mentally, to to not give up. Uh eventually he's gonna tr switch jobs as at Sullivan Brothers and this is really w in my opinion

37:47 Yeah, he doesn't say so explicitly. I don't think he does at least. They gave him the idea to uh to start his own company in the future. He says I started what would be my last job at Solomon running information systems. This group was responsible for both keeping the firm's books and providing the analytical tools the traders and salespeople needed. That's exactly what yeah, I think how he described what his company does today. We provide analytical tools that traders and salespeople need. He does make an interesting point here that all your previous life experiences are just preparing for an opportunity that you can't yet see. So he says this and I spent my first twenty four years getting ready for Wall Street.

38:21 Then I spent fifteen years surviving on Wall Street and then at thirty nine all these experiences led me to the the decision that okay, I I'm gonna start my own company. And again, I I feel like there's seventeen notes in this book where I write down unapologetically extreme. Let's do what he says here. This is wild. So he's talking about listen, I could be in

38:40 I could have went to Goldman Sachs, had another job, I could be an investor, whatever. He's like No I'm gonna choose to be an entrepreneur rather than employee Okay, and so This is crazy. Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly failure? Absolutely.

38:55 Happiness for me has always been the thrill of the unknown. Trying something that everyone says can't be done, feeling that gnawing pit in my stomach that says danger ahead. I want Action. I want challenge.

39:08 Even today. After toiling for fifty years, I wake up looking forward to getting in early. Practicing my profession. I really appreciate he used the word practice there. Creating something. And competing against the best.

39:21 It is a real high. to be a participant. rather than a spectator. Think about that. Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly app uh failure? Absolutely I did. And so what he's when he's figuring out okay what what do I want my company to be

39:35 a good question to ask yourself is what do I do better Than anyone else. And so he says I would start a company that would help financial organizations. They were there were better traders and salespeople. There were better managers and computer experts. But nobody had more knowledge of the securities and investment industries and of how technology could help them.

39:55 He is telling you. When before you start a company, ask yourself. What do I do better? Than anyone else. Another main theme that he would tell you if you could sit down and talk to Bloomberg, which is what you're doing when you read his autobiography.

40:08 Stop with the overanalyzing, stop with your stupid projections. Uh just go. Take one step forward. And why is he telling you that? Because learning by doing is a faster process. One my one of my favorite entrepreneurs I've ever discovered to this podcast, uh Yvon Chinard, founder of Patagonia.

40:26 He's got this amazing book called Let My People Go Surfing. And he says in that book, the entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good Take another. If not, step back. Learn by doing. It's a faster process. If you're gonna suc this is now Bloomberg, if you're gonna succeed, you need a vision, one that's affordable, practical, and fills a customer need. Then go for it.

40:44 Don't worry too much about the details. Don't second guess your creativity. avoid overanalyzing your new project's potential. And that's really important. Think about all the waste of time and energy. When he's first building his company.

40:57 So he has no way there's no way you can sit there and pred nobody can sit there and predict at the very beginning. Like think about Steve Jobs and his garage. Making the first fifty Apple computers. Oh, one day it's gonna be a two trillion dollar company. Same thing, like Bloomberg had a lot of confidence, but when he's in a hundred square foot office with four people in a coffee pot. He's not gonna be like Oh, I'm gonna have sixty billion dollars in a couple of decades, just you wait and see.

41:19 So I think that's just really good advice. Stop second guessing, just go. Uh at Bloomberg he's got more advice for if you're working on product. He's like listen, you should work on your product and sales first and then everything else after At Bluebird we always built the product first. Selling is the only process we run simultaneously with development from the very start. And then this is just what a paragraph I rented a one room temporary office. It was about a hundred square feet of space with a view of an alley.

41:44 A far cry from my previous place of employment. Salomon had a multi acre forty first forty first floor trading room overlooking the New York harbor. I deposited three hundred thousand dollars of my Salomon Brothers Windfall into a corporate checking account. Fifteen years later, I had a billion dollar business. And I don't know if I mention it later, but just in case I don't.

42:06 Again, think about the confidence and almost the borderline arrogance this this this guy has. And it wind up betting it wind up working out for him, but he's got ten million dollars. He winds up putting four million dollars. So forty percent of everything he's got. into the company. Which is all a uh also helps him

42:23 retain so much ownership to this day. And he's doing that when he's got a wife and two little kids to support as well. to spread out the risk. Uh he's he's gonna find his first come uh first customer, excuse me. Merrill Lynch, they're gonna make a um A

42:38 an investment as well a little later on. Th the the one he referenced earlier where they bought like thirty percent of the company and then he buys them out uh two separate parts later on. But I wanna get to this point. They agree he's essentially has an idea for a product but it's not built. So it's him, bunch of programmers, salespeople. And this is the the thing that you and I talk about all the time. Uh running a company.

43:01 running a start up I think is uh the actual term Mark and Dreeson uses for the quote. It's like You only experience when you're running a startup you only experience two Uh motions euphoria and terror. And then he says I find a lack of sleep enhances both. And so he's gonna uh

43:19 When I came back from the meeting my colleagues were elated until the reality of a six month delivery for something that didn't exist began to set in. As developers were magicians, not miracle workers, month after month as we worked, our mood alternated between inulation and the feeling of impending disaster. We weren't just putting out fires, we were adjusting to major earthquakes when some new software bug forced us to start over. But every day we got closer to building the machine we'd promised, and he's also building hardware at this time. Which he mentioned earlier. Uh my my advantage is not hardware. I did that because I was trying to create uh the device I wanted to create didn't exist. Once the hardware manufacturers uh exceeded my talent. It doesn't make any sense. Let me use if there's PCs everywhere, let me use that platform and realize that's what he's referencing about okay, I my what my business actually is.

44:02 what Kodak failed to realize. He Bloomberg understood what his business was. It's the information that's that I'm giving you that's valuable. It doesn't matter how I transmit that information to you. It's also probably my main takeaway for myself for the book because he talks about repurposing your information later on. Remember, I didn't know why like before I read the book, why the hell does he have a new service? Why does he have all these other things? Everything he does. goes back to selling subscriptions to Bloomberg. It's freaking genius. I we'll get there in a minute. So he says uh month after mor I just read that part. We weren't just putting out fires, we were adjusting to major earthquakes when some new software bug forced us to start over, but every day we got closer to building the machine we promised. Our style then was pretty and this is a good idea on problem solving right here.

44:39 our style then was pretty much the same as today. We took the problem and broke it down into little manageable, digestible pieces. Then each of us took responsibility for the ones for the part that we were best suited to do. So just a few lines for you here.

44:54 This reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt. He is again fantastic. I like that idea of a life motto, a family motto. This has come over a couple times with Stan Lee, the guy that created Marvel Marvel Comics. His uh motto was Excelsior, which means ever upward.

45:09 Ernest Shackleton, the gr one of the greatest uh polar explorers to ever lived. Uh he's actually my I've told you this before, but My lock screen on my phone is just a picture of him. With like Snow in his beard just looks like hell.

45:21 And'cause when I look at him it's reminding me of his motto. Which was by endurance we conquer. So I see that like all right, he didn't give up, he was gonna freeze to death. You can keep going, David, stop it. And then the um Then d the one I that

45:34 Wloomberg's about to say here is Theodore Roosevelt. He took the the the family motto from his father, which is get Action. And so he says, We act from day one. Others plan how to plan for months.

45:47 something Bloomberg's gonna repeat you over and over again. He's like you're sitting there planning? I'm already out running. So you think you're gonna catch up? Good luck. Uh, then he talks about still in the early days of product development, this is more about the terror. I must admit I was worried. Why was he worried? We were spending what would grow to be uh four million dollars of my ten million dollar

46:06 Salomon Brothers Windfall. Simultaneously I was becoming responsible for the families of almost two dozen company employees. I convinced these people to follow me. And if the venture had not succeeded, I would have failed them. Their spouses and their children. As well as our customers. And then

46:23 Yeah, the sentence you're not expect to to see after he just said that. We ploughed ahead. From the beginning. I was convinced we were doing something. Nobody else could do.

46:35 Норні елс чай. That's a wild those are two wild sentences. And really what he's telling us is hey You gotta differentiate your product. That's where all the the the the the profits are in. It's a very an idea that's been spread throughout startup culture.

46:50 Peter Teal's book Zero to One, he he says, Listen, you want to create and capture lasting value, then you don't build an undifferentiated commodity business. And so what is Michael telling us? From the beginning I was convinced we were doing something nobody else could do. Nor was anyone else trying. So one of my favorite or I would say most unique ideas I've ever come across was in the founder of Sony

47:11 His autobiography Aquarito, I think his founders one oh two and they're they're producing audio equipment in the early days of Sony. Well before like they're not successful, they have no money. And they find um a music student who loves their product and kept sending them hey Like

47:26 Like basically critiques on what you could do Like how he thinks uh they they could be improved. He had like a very like uh advanced ear, like good hearing as a music student probably has to have, right? And so Kyo kept getting these these um

47:41 The suggestions from him. He's like, Hey, you want a job? And so he winds up hiring him. Literally all his job is Critique. And uh critique our products so then you're h by when you do that you're helping them get better. And then like a decade or two later, that guy winds up being the president of Sony.

47:57 It's one of the most remarkable things I've ever read in Indies books. And we're gonna see s a similar situation. Kind of like the same idea here. Merrill's Not only are they a customer but they're they're

48:06 giving Bloomberg an investment. And so they put on two traders. because the traders are the ones that are using the product. And he says, Well when we first install it, Meryl assigned two traders to work with us. I thought they'd be real pains and they would second guess us every step of the way. Was I wrong? It turned out both of them were as responsible for our success as anyone. And why's that? Because they were nitpickers, but not in a nasty way.

48:29 they wanted us to succeed. When they said something didn't work, they could show us it didn't work. So we knew for sure it didn't work. And more important, they would help fix the problem. Uh, because they would tell us under what s specific circumstances it didn't work. Every day our system got better as we fixed each problem they pointed out. I'd always rather have a smart Fair Honest, demanding client.

48:49 Than a nasty dummy. Uh so he says uh for our first this is really just uh a reminder that at the beginning you're gonna be doing everything yourself. Uh, for the first three or four years in business I did all those all of these functions. I worked full time selling our services, I negotiated all of our contracts. Uh I was running the company Never before or since did I have as much fun.

49:09 And as a challenge or as a challenge are as challenging a time in business. Uh, back when we started the original half dozen of us after finishing our regular jobs would go into clients' offices on the weekends. Uh, we'd have to climb under the desks. And where we had to lay our cables. We dragged wires.

49:24 stuffing cables through holes that we drilled in other people's furniture, all without permission, without giving any thought to any fire law or building code. It's amazing we didn't burn down some office or electrocute ourselves. At the end of the day, at ten or eleven o'clock at night, we turn it on and watch what we created come alive. It was so Satisfying. We improvised. Everything.

49:44 As we went along. I used to write all the checks myself. I signed every contract. I paid every bill. I did all the hiring and firing. I bought the coffee, the soda, the chips, I emptied the waste baskets, I tested the window seals, I wrote and handed out every paycheck personally. Those were the best days.

50:00 The very first few years in the early nineteen eighties we were involved. in running every aspect of the company. As we grew and turned these functions over to newly highly specialist, I felt like I was losing a child to adolescence. Good for the kid. But painful for the parent.

50:18 In addition to selling customers, he also sold recruits. He wanted the the the the best. uh the most talented the s he wanted to work with the smartest people He really understands Bloomberg understood s uh understood like Estee Lauder before him. Has to be sold.

50:34 all the time. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote from S Day Lauder. Everything has to be sold all the time. And so this is a pitch I'm just gonna g uh give you an example of a pitch that he would give to prospective customers. Oh, excuse me. Prospective employees. uh about why they would want to work there.

50:48 We've got the best people in the world working here. All of them think they walk on water. All of them are workaholics. Once they come, they stay for the rest of their lives because they love it. They've built the better mash mouse trap. They're doing something important. They're giving the little guy. The information he needs to fight. Okay, so now we're gonna get into what I think might be his most

51:06 applicable idea for us in the age the age that we happen to live in 'Cause it's we're talking about what is uh in the almanac of uh Naval. put together by Eric Jorgeson. It's uh documents Naval Rabakant's wisdom. It's in um I think founders I'll leave in the show notes, but you can find in the archive, I'll tell you the the the the number. But

51:26 It's about he says something in the book, it's like it's not white collar versus blue collar. It's V it's unleveraged versus leverage. And so how the hell? Does Michael Bloomberg get himself into a position where he is Like he gets his leverage through media, I guess is b what I'm trying to tell you here.

51:43 Um and there's many ways for us to do the same thing today. And again, I think these ideas scale up and down. It could be like a one person business. up into a giant company like Bloomberg. It still works. And so he's having Conversation with um

51:59 With a reporter. And again, remember, Michael's Go. I'm going to make money. by selling I think the subscription's like twenty two thousand dollars a year.

52:09 'Cause his sales pitch is interesting. It's in the book. He's like, Listen, people say oh Bloomberg's terminal's too expensive, it's twenty two thousand dollars a year. He's like that's eighty eight dollars I'm um hopefully I'm remembering the numbers correctly, I don't have in front of me, but he's like says something like that's eighty eight dollars a day. If you can't make more than eighty eight dollars a day with the information I'm giving you, then you have bigger problems. Um, and I think that's just a really interesting way because twenty two thousand a year, it's the same number, right? Twenty two thousand a year sounds a lot to me. Eighty eight dollars a day sounds less, even though it's the same. It's like this weird hack of our brain, right? So really. I'm gonna read this conversation he's having with this reporter that gives him an idea that helps greatly expand his business. This is why I'm telling you all this

52:45 And really the note I asked myself is your company has information no one else has. How can you repurpose it? To benefit other people. And Achieve your objective.

52:57 And so Let's go to this conversation he's having in the early days of his company. А вона мікромінал индисбал ток. As well as bond traders. Should we get into the text?

53:08 News. Business. His answer, this other reporter, who's eventually gonna be hired to run this part and I think might still work there if I'm not mistaken. His answer wasn't what I expected, although it encouraged me to keep the conversation going. Mike, he said. Remember this is a financial reporter talking to Mike, okay?

53:24 I think he might have been from the Wall Street Journal. I can't remember, unfortunately. Uh, Mike he said, You and the people you work with have created a terminal. That explains more about why bonds fluctuate each minute. Day and week.

53:36 Than any collection of reporters. Ever could be a good thing. You already provide charts. and graphs that influence the major debing decisions worldwide. If you add text to that information, you'll have something

53:49 That doesn't exist. Anywhere else. No one in debt or equity. would be able to live without it. And so if you stop and think about what he's saying, he's like, Mike, you have information no one else has

54:02 It's It's you just happen to present it in the air. picture form, and graph form. Why don't you just ha hire a bunch of people?

54:09 Then add text. written narrative explanation about what's going on. That is useful information. Useful information is known as news. Put that news out. say this news comes from Bloomberg, people read it for free. They're like, What the hell's Bloomberg? Let me look into it. A percentage of the people that discover your the the y m you can have ninety nine percent of the people

54:28 That don't Ever pay you a dollar. And that could still be a profitable line for you. When I read Sid Meyer's book, that's the guy that wrote um he wrote a computer game or made a computer game called Civilization. that uh that winds up selling like fifty three million copies. It was amazing. I love his book. I think it t teaches you a lot about building like a modern like if you want to build like a highly leveraged business how do you do so? Game gaming being uh successful game being a great example of that. But in that book he's like listen, seventy percent of the users of Candy Crush

54:56 Don't pay have never paid a dollar. Yet that game still brings in millions of dollars every day. So that idea that Sid picked up on is very similar to what This guy I don't I can't remember his name. Mike? No. No, he's caught in Bloomberg. I don't know this guy's name.

55:11 Matt, sorry, his name is Matt. But Matt is telling him. Like you already have this information. Make it easily publicly available. Share the information that you have with other people. They'll know about you and then you can offer those same people what you want them to buy. And even if millions I think tens of millions of people is like the reach of Bloomberg today.

55:30 But yet they don't they have like I can't remember the n I wanna say it's like three hundred thousand subscribers. It so Again, millions of people are familiar with the name. I was familiar with the name, never subscribed to the terminal.

55:40 millions of people will read the the and the analysis and the information that your company produces and a tiny, tiny percentage of them will will actually give you money for your other product. And that is going to allow you to have this giant leveraged media business that is just funneling in subscription Uh customers. And so this is this idea is I'm gonna spend some time here'cause this goes over many, many pages but I'm about to read to you. This is all separate, but it really I feel I feel this is a very powerful idea. I wanna point out before I get into the the this idea uh to expand on that with you.

56:10 This is what he does. So it takes some convincing. Matt's like, Yeah, you should do this, of course. And Bloomberg's not sure. Uh not sure. So what does he do? He consults history when trying to decide if she should enter the news business. And so again, this guy has it's rather impressive that he's able to know all this stuff. I mean he's been alive for a long time.

56:29 Um and it doesn't sound like he's a guy that's ever gonna stop learning. But listen to what he does. He goes, history shows that any gutsy entrepreneur can enter the news business any time. And he lists off all these people he studied. Joseph Pulitzer, you know I did a podcast on him. William Randolph Hurst did a podcast on him. Uh Henry Luce, don't know who that is. B C Forbes, Ted Turner, Ruber Murdoch, and Oprah Winfrey. So he just gave me a bunch of ideas for different people to to pursue biographies of. So he just lists off what is that, like you know, seven, eight people.

56:57 Like, Well, they did it. Why can't I? Best uh so then he talks about Oh, this is the advantage. Um Okay, so I need to pause and tell you what I wrote before I read this to you. uh the question to ask yourself, what advantage do you have that existing companies in your space lack?

57:13 There's a million other media companies. Why is Bloomberg thinking he can do it? One history shows that if you're a gutsy entrepreneur You can pull this off, but two. I don't have to worry about it turning a profit. Okay. This has been run over and over again by different companies to introduce different product lines that don't need immediate profits. Best of all, we had revenue from terminal rentals, which meant we didn't have to worry about a new service paying for itself as a standalone product.

57:35 This is one heck of advantage, he says. Fundamentally at Bloomberg we're builders, not buyers. So it never occurred to me to acquire news organization as a starting point. It's always more fun to create from scratch and it's a lot less risky. So that's another thing he he repeats over again. He's very anti acquisition even though there are there are a couple of examples like he buys Was it business week? I can't he buys one of them, they're like almost close to bankruptcy. So he he does point out when he does

58:02 the few times that he's done uh acquisitions, at least when the book was published, he points out why he did that. But he in general he repeats over and over again, he's like just and just build it yourself It's more fun, it's less risky. And you can do it exactly how you want to do it from the very beginning. Okay, so now he's full on on this idea. This is gonna be this gigantic customer acquisition strategy form.

58:21 I'm gonna read this to you really I the note left myself so I when I go back and reference these ideas in the future I need to understand instead of reading this whole page, what is the the the compressed idea here? Each new story. Is a product demo. More demos lead to more revenue. More revenue leads to more stories and then even more revenue.

58:39 This is why I meant, like this is really my favorite idea in the book. I handed him a three page list of what Bloomberg News should be doing. Our purpose was to do more than just collect and relay news. It should also advertise The analytical and computational powers of the Bloomberg Terminal by highlighting its capabilities in each news story.

59:00 Each news story is a product amount. This is wild. With our terminal functions included, each of our news stories would be more informative than the competitions and more people would want access to them, which meant more revenue, which in turn meant we could afford more reporters and have more news and so on and so on. Each news story is a product demo. More demos lead to more revenue, more revenue leads to more stories.

59:27 And then even more revenue. And then he just gives us a simple, like formula. As an entrepreneur, I've learned to know what I don't know. To get access to the people who do know. And then study hard. And then he goes back to this idea.

59:41 Of knowing what you Like what is the purpose of your business? What is the actual the what is the actual product or service that you provide your customers? So I I referenced this earlier, let's let's go over it again. When we first began we manufactured computers and keyboards because we had to. Personal computers didn't really exist in order to deliver our product. So we made'em because that's how we delivered our product. But we never made the mistake of believing that we were in the hardware business. We are in the business of producing and distributing the world's most accurate, reliable

1:00:09 Comprehensive information and analysis. That has been our mission from day one and it has never changed. Technology will continue and he makes a important point here. Technology will continuously revolutionize distribution. But our product is content.

1:00:24 And much of that content sits behind the media world's Most expensive Paywall. And so that's where he says it's twenty two thousand dollars that works out to eighty eight dollars a day. So now he's gonna give us advice on how do you make your product or your company stand out.

1:00:40 And his advice is you gotta be you. You know more about your business. than anyone else. You think about it more. You care about it more, you're in the best position then.

1:00:51 If those facts are accurate. to tell other people why it's valuable. And it doesn't you don't have to be this like polished speaker. Charisma definitely helps. There is some kind of weird uh like, you know, hypnotic effect that charisma h ha has on on people. We see that throughout history, right? Good and bad Uh people.

1:01:07 Um But You just tell'em why. The people want to know why. Like why did you make it? Why is it valuable? What does it do?

1:01:15 And so he says entrepreneurs in the booming uh nineteen eighties were commonplace. My company was small and virtually anonymous. Our product which was the terminal that we're selling t uh was call the Market Master. It could have been c confused with a kitchen appliance with that name. No one knew us. No one cared about me.

1:01:30 But by nineteen eighty four this was about to change. Those are the days when Ronald Reagan proved how marketable ideas could be when they were peddled with charisma. You needed a spokesperson for mass appeal. Consumers and the media identified products and policies with people who pitched them. So again, just an example. Nike didn't just make sneakers, it pushed them with a mystique that could only come from Michael.

1:01:52 To have the best mouse trap wasn't enough. Success was delivered. By people Promotion. If we were gonna build our business, we too needed a personality.

1:02:02 The obvious choice. was me. Our competitors founders We're all dead. I, on the other hand,

1:02:09 was alive and out making speeches and sales calls every day. uh turning my name and work into a great weapon that others in the financial news and market data businesses could not match. And since I spent so much time demonstrating our product People had begun to mentally interchange me with the terminal. So that's why he changes it from Market Master Terminal to the Bloomberg Terminal. And then the the company also had a different name. It was like

1:02:33 It was some op like basic name, like innovative market solutions or something like that. So he's like, Well that doesn't make sense, we'll just call it Bloomberg Two. Uh and then he says one of the funniest lines in the uh or one of the most unexpected lines in the entire book. I would become the Colonel Sanders Sanders of Financial Information Services. Uh, as the owner, by definition, I spoke with authority, and to make good copy I gave the press a colorful personality. to focus on. So we talked about starting the news, st start with print and then he's like, I don't care about the medium. The medium like I'll I'll produce he produced a magazine. Magazine might take an hour to read.

1:03:07 I will give you thirty second. Uh news. uh audio like radio uh clips On our new Thirty second.

1:03:15 News clips on the radio, pardon me. Uh I'll do that. Uh I will write articles that take five minutes to read. I will Uh get into TV.

1:03:24 I will do anything and really uh W what I'm trying to explain to you is he's got a lot of these like roundabout ways. To get in front and everything that has to do with the fact that he's repurposing the information that his unique business

1:03:38 Collects. So he talks about this here. He's like people often ask me, Why did Bloomberg get into radio and T V? We have the necessary information and the t technical know how. So broadcasting is an easy extension of what we do elsewhere. Radio and television provide our company with instant visibility.

1:03:55 Why does he want that? More people know who whose company is. They're gonna buy the his product. The media like the me th really, I'm I'm telling you just because This is how you did it. in his time, right? You had to maybe start your own T V network. uh he winds up buying a radio station. He does some crazy stuff, right? But this is We are we have

1:04:13 a lot more access and easier ways to do to run the same playbook today. We don't have to buy a radio station You can start a podcast. It's the same thing. Right. Uh you don't have to buy a T V station. You can start a YouTube channel, you can start making vertical video on on TikTok or anywhere else, right? It's the same exact thing.

1:04:30 The same idea, it's just like he just warned us early in the book. It's like technology's always gonna revolutionary distribution. Just ride those waves. Just stick to your core thing. And so he says, uh we have the necessary information. Radio and television provider are a company with instant visibility. The media like not the media like nothing better than writing about themselves. The more exposure Bloomberg had to the media, The more they promoted us to the general public. So really the way you think about that is like there's roundabout ways for you to get

1:04:57 in front of potential customers. Just think about it. Clear your schedule. Spend half a day just thinking was like where are these things that I'm not I could be doing and I'm not currently doing. Uh just a more Like specific ideas for you. There's a great way to how to pick the person. So your company's launching a new project, okay? Who are you gonna put in charge of it? This is what Bloomberg how he d made that decision.

1:05:18 I've always believed in markets rather than central planners' ability to make efficient selections. In many of our new ventures, we don't appoint a manager at the beginning. We simply throw everyone interested into the deep end of the pool. and then stand back. It becomes obvious very quickly who the best swimmers are. We just watch who people go to for help and advice and later when we formalize a management appointment Но вони з евер Супрайст. That's really smart. The leverage we gain from employing creative people and letting them do their own thing

1:05:43 is incredible. I've now skipped ahead a couple of pages. We're back at that same idea. Everything they do increases the likelihood of selling Bloomberg subscriptions. So I'm just gonna pull out one sentence of this whole thing goes in more detail but he says, T V stories relate to magazine articles that relate to computer data. So every piece of media that we're producing comes from the data that we happen to have, the computer data that we have that very few people, if anybody else in the world has. And I'm gonna repurpose the data. I'm gonna put in a T V story.

1:06:13 and have a narrative around that. I'm gonna w write a magazine article. I'm gonna give you uh thirty seconds on the radio. I'm gonna give you fifteen hundred words. uh on bloomberg dot com or in a newspaper.

1:06:24 And every time you're listening to a r a little radio You're watching the TV, you're reading the article, it's just a demo of the what my product is capable of. Oh, you read that article. Where'd the information come from? This information's helpful fr to my business. Let me go look up this. Oh Bloomberg Terminal. a few pages later he hits this again and this is why I say you should read the whole book. Uh, so he's like, Listen, our business is information, it's not the information that

1:06:49 that uh excuse me not the medium that that information is delivered. That's really what he's about to tell us. Why use all media forms rather than focus on just one? What business are we in? I love the fact that he he's constantly telling you just ask yourself these questions. The and if you ask if you pause for a minute, ask yourself some these questions, the answers are valuable. They're gonna crystallize your thinking and make sure that you're actually headed in the right direction or what you wanna do.

1:07:12 So it's like what business are we in? Some companies declare themselves to be in radio or in television or in newspapers and so on. We have a greater vision. Bloomberg is in the business of giving its customers The information they need.

1:07:24 In whatever form is the most appropriate. With all methods at our disposal, we do better. We create Or adopt a new medium. We don't ask our customers to accept less.

1:07:36 So then he goes back into the point that technology gave him his his leverage. His advantage because when he started out and I skipped over all this but in the he talks about in the book where you know ev they're doing everything by hand. They're writing down trading slips and keeping track of stuff literally by pen and paper and notebooks. And so he's like, This is ridiculous, we should automate it. He starts working on that when automation is, you know kind of like a science fiction. This is the nineteen sixties, I think maybe the very beginning of nineteen seventies when he's doing this.

1:08:04 But I wanna pull out one paragraph for you here because I think this is really important and it's what you and I are both doing right now. You gotta spend as much time learning as possible because you never know what opportunities that knowledge will open up in the future. He is talking about the education he gets in the nineteen sixties and seventies that will make him billions of dollars three decades in the future. But it would not have made him that money if he didn't have that experience.

1:08:25 So says my education in nineteen six and then he talks about something you and I talk about over and over again, history does not repeat, human nature does. human nature's constant. It's not changing. My education in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies era of horse and buggy computer systems formed the basis of what I did more than a decade later when I bought the Bloomberg Terminal to financial desk worldwide. What I discovered then about data management. about people management.

1:08:47 Still serves me well today. People have a need for information and once confronted with it They can exhibit bravery, jealousy, adventurousness, and fear of the new. No matter what systems we create in the next decades. These two statements

1:09:03 will remain true. So there's a lot more detail. Some of it was confusing to me, but he'cause he's talking about w essentially what they built When he's automating these systems at Salem Umbrella's before Bloomberg. he goes through a lot of detail like what it what it meant. So I just need to give you the punchline and I'm gonna tell you why this is a an idea that's been in existence for at least a hundred and twenty nine years.

1:09:23 So says Solomon needed an edge. And that's exactly what having the only useful data retrieval and analytical tool in the industry gave them in the nineteen seventies. This is what he was in charge of with the closed proprietary system we built, Solomon got a period Got got for a period when no one else had. Solomon jumped way ahead and stayed that way for a decade. In a sense, for ten years, when Salomon went to a knife fight. It carried a gun.

1:09:44 And so Andrew Carnegie founded Carnegie. Historical company. Hundred twenty nine years ago.

1:09:51 And he used this idea, he talks about his autobiography. You can go back in the archive of the three part series on him and Henry Cay Frick, that's worth listening to. Those books are worth reading. because what Andrew Carnegie realizes is an is an idea that I've seen used By Almost every founder after the fact. that came, you know, in the last hundred and twenty nine years.

1:10:10 And so Andrew Carney, even though when he was younger the older people in the industry like uh chastised him, like criticized him for doing this. So the the way I summarize Andrew Carnegie's idea is that you need to inv always invest in the latest technology for your business. This is why the savings compound. It gives you an edge over your slower moving competitors.

1:10:29 and can be the difference between a profit and a loss. And so think about what he just said. For a decade Solomon had a tool, a technology no one else did. So they're showing up to a fight, you got a knife, I got a gun. That's the second part of uh Carnegie thing. It gives you an advantage over slower moving competitors.

1:10:44 It's the same idea. Uh something that Bloomberg's gonna preach to you about management. Is Find the very smartest people. You can.

1:10:52 Find the most talented people in your company. And then Give them freedom. And he says, I always believe that management's ability to influence work habits through edict. is unlimited.

1:11:02 And then he just has one sentence here, and really this sentence spawned a a a thought. I was like, Oh, he's given us a blueprint for a modern company. We should combine software. sales and content marketing. And so this one sentence says says, We have phenomenally low turnover for a company employing many young programmers, salespeople.

1:11:21 And reporters. So those are the three areas in terms of humans. Like human capital, human resources he's investing in. Software. It gives you leverage.

1:11:31 Sales gives you leverage. Content marketing gives you leverage. And then he goes right back into this aggressive warlike posture that he has throughout the book. Every day at Bloomberg we face challenges that jeopardize our comfortable life. We constantly have to fight established competitors trying to take food out of our children's mouths.

1:11:49 And then there are the startups that want to destroy everything we've built. And it's again, it's just good to know. This is why history is so much beneficial so so beneficial to learn or to study. It's'cause D these people usually don't speak like if you watch an interview of like a founder now Very rarely will they talk the way they talk in these books.

1:12:07 the extremist, like they keep that under wraps. Um so again I He's just A borderline. crazy person in his approach. And the reason even if you don't want to emulate that approach, it doesn't matter. It's I wanna be aware that these people are out there.

1:12:21 So I can avoid them. Alright, so uh a couple pages later This is another idea that we see over and over again. More questions to ask ourselves. What can we do that our competitors cannot?

1:12:32 There's no reason to do a copycat product. Consumers can just buy that from others. Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid. Says don't waste your talents on me too products. And I already used that other quote earlier.

1:12:45 Peter Teal, don't build an undifferentiated commodity business. Bloomberg, Land, Teal, they're all telling you the same idea. Let's go back to this idea that Bloomberg repeats a lot. I don't want like I want a lot of small bets with limited downside and uncapped upside. I'm not gonna sit here and and put all of my resources like we're talking about buying another company.

1:13:05 It's like I I spent almost all my money buying a new company, what if it doesn't work out? Like why don't I just have these opportunities, these like little miniature bets? And this is something that's very similar if you go back and read about like what Jeff Bezos' thinking on this. Um, you know, he's very willing to invest Ten million dollars. in m uh ten million dollars a pop in multiple different businesses and and then giving them time to see what they grow into.

1:13:27 You know, and he's had multiple different product lines that grew from, you know, ten million dollar to billi billion dollar plus and even ten billion dollar businesses. Um he talks about that in marketplace, AWS, Echo, all these other examples. And so it's a very in uh like similar line of thinking here. And so Bloomberg says our modus operandi remains building from within, which avoids the bet to store high risk gambles that often carterize large takeovers, such as the disastrous Time Warner AOL deal. Maybe I'm just not that smart. When I'm looking to expand, I prefer starting with a little capital.

1:13:57 uh that we can afford to lose and a few people we can always reassign to other projects. This way we never feel we've committed to stay with our mistakes. Nor are we so overextended that we can't handle other additional experimental Ventures simultaneously. So Lot of little small bets, limited downside. Uncapped upside is what he's telling us there.

1:14:16 And then he's got this great Historical analogy. It's I found very interesting. And this is why I favor audio. Over video.

1:14:26 'Cause one human talking to another Is as old as time. And I'll watch videos, don't get me wrong, I love movies and stuff like that, but I like the fact that podcasts let you do other things while you listen.

1:14:36 The fact that like you could buy a subscription to founders. Listen to two of these a a week. And over a year while you're driving your car, you're commuting, you're going for a walk, you're at the gym, you're washing dishes, you've just downloaded The

1:14:49 the ideas, the best ideas to copy and the worst m mistakes to avoid of over a hundred of history's greatest entrepreneurs. Podcasting to me is a an absolute miracle. And so this is what Bloomberg says, We exchange ideas more than information. And we do most of that. Orally. Having text and visuals to add to understanding is nice, but we're men and women.

1:15:07 Not machines. Face to face or even over electronic media. We need to transmit and receive. Sound. When Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, he gave us electronic interactive digital text communication.

1:15:20 Nevertheless, the We flock to Alexander Graham Bell's Analog voice telephone instead. Because it better mirrors The way we live. We talk to each other.

1:15:32 So now we're gonna see another idea from Bloomberg that is Jeff Bezos says exactly the same thing. I'm pretty sure it's in shareholder letters, I'm gonna read that to you in a minute. Since Bloomberg was always up against companies many times our size, we had to enter each commercial fight with an advantage. I don't believe that business battles should be even. We don't want fair fights.

1:15:50 We want to go into contests. With an advantage. Bezo says when it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't.

1:16:06 And then I think they're both making points they I guess next to their uh this idea that they're saying. is the fact that we live like we're our world is dominated by power laws. And so the the the The being The the f the best in your category as opposed to the second best.

1:16:22 You might talk the difference of, you know, thousands of percentages of more profitable or wealth created or whatever metric you want to use, but They're talking about okay, not only for survival, you want to be into fights where you have an edge, right? This is very similar to what Dorp told us Excuse me. He said his fifty years of as a money manager taught him one thing. He's like to only play games and make investments where you have an edge. Very similar to what Bloomberg and Bezos are saying. It's like I don't want to f I don't want to plan for a future or I have to fight somebody who's as good as me. I have to be the best, not one of the best And Bloomberg's saying, I don't want a fair fight. I want to go to into a contest with an advantage.

1:16:55 Then I want to talk We're always thinking like we're setting these people's lives. Part of having a great life, which I think was what you and I are after. is the fact that we have to be good at at our work. Our work is a third of our lives. If you don't enjoy it, if you're not good at it, you're you're you're losing a lot uh on the table. Like your your enjoyment of life is going to be diminished. You have to learn how to be

1:17:16 A capable Craftsman craftsman, professional. whatever it is that that you choose to do during the day, right? But That's just one part.

1:17:24 the main goal is how do we have a great life? How do we get to the end of our life and not have regrets. And that's why we have to learn from the the the intelligent dead that came before us. Because these people were formidable, smart Driven. And yet they got to the end of their life.

1:17:39 With regrets. So we are we are foolish. If we do not learn from their examples and be like, Okay, how do I avoid that? And this is about

1:17:48 The fact that the relationships we have with people is more important than chasing an extra dollar. And that is if history teaches an anything, it's that these type A driven personalities These people with fire in the bellies. These really smart people.

1:18:01 Make that mistake. And so given the choice we've gotta be smarter about this, given the choice between optimizing for an extra dollar, which we can make later, or spending time with a loved one that may not always be here, you gotta choose The the loved one. And so he's talking about The note I've myself here is dad would have been proud.

1:18:19 And so I've heard from people like I have mother and daughters that that listen to founders together. I have father and sons. I have married uh I've heard from married couples that do this. And these relationships are special, they impact us for the rest of our lives. I've s over and over again in these books. And so if you have kids you already know this, but if you don't have kids

1:18:38 You have no ID. How much Your parents love you. They love you more than they love themselves. And as we're about to see here. the the impact a parent can have on their child

1:18:50 І афестем фоторф. Із апорт. There is no slacking. 'Cause we're gonna get to a sentence that Bloomberg writes. That's gonna that gives you chills. So first he talks about his mom. His dad dies early. He was uh unfortunately his dad died.

1:19:06 when he was still in school. So he didn't his dad never got to see the success that he had. But his mom did. So he says Until my mom died at age one hundred and two. I called her first thing in the morning when I got to work. Taking care of your family was a given. Something I hope my own children have learned.

1:19:23 The person who would have been really thrilled Was my father. Who had died earlier. He's talking about the fact that he'd be thrilled not only with the success, but the fact that he got into Harvard Business School.

1:19:33 For Dad, an average working class guy. Harvard was a rarefied and almost unattainable waypoint. On the trail to the great American dream. The business school. The Salmon partnership.

1:19:46 And then and our notariety today. All would have meant even more to him. Then to me. And this is the most powerful sentence in the entire book. Today.

1:19:57 Fifty five years later. I still miss them. And then Michael has some parting advice for us. The importance of being persistent. And resourceful.

1:20:10 Most fortunes are built by entrepreneurs who started with nothing. And generally got fired once or twice in their careers. And throughout history, the vast majority of great writers, artists, musicians, dancers, and athletes Have come from less financially secure families. The rewards almost always go.

1:20:26 To those who outwork the others. The time you put in Is the single most important Controllable. Variable.

1:20:34 Determining your future. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story, you gotta read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I also leave a link down below if you want to give uh give description to a friend. Or family member.

1:20:48 That is an option as well. That is one or excuse me, that is two hundred and twenty eight books down One thousand ago. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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