15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders - David Senra

did you hear me say when I was asked who is the podcasters podcaster the underground one that all of us listen to is you yes I almost clipped it and then posted it I appreciate it I watch all your q&as I love them thank you yeah dude I uh I would love a weekly Q&A from you oh God I I don't know whether the internet's ready for that there'll be a new one coming up soon anyway today I want to go through a bunch of lessons you spend your entire time studying History's Greatest Founders greatest

leaders thinkers and I wanted to go through some broad buckets of lessons that you've taken away from them uh so we're going to do 15 today okay first one Excellence is the capacity to take pain persevering through pain is mandatory why that is probably my all-time favorite Maxim from studying all these history great on trainers actually comes from the founder of Four Seasons this guy named Izzy sharp and he sometimes like you're reading a book or you're listening to a podcast or sometimes it is even like a a music ly lyric that just the one

sentence can stay in your brain forever I haven't read that book in probably five years and he's describing how difficult it was like he had no experience in the hotel industry when he founds Four Seasons and yet his goal was like I'm going to make a collection of the greatest hotels in the world and he didn't kind of disregard the fact that I've never made a hotel before I don't have any money I don't have resources I don't have contacts so the whole book the audio autobiography which I think he wrote when he was close

to 80 years old is now him recounting this for the for the reader and and there's just so many times where he's just like he hit a uh like there's a problem that he can't figure out how to solve uh you know problems with partners with contractors with financing uh all kinds of like you know basically unresolved issues and he's laying up late at night and there's interviews with his wife which is fantastic because they were married through this whole thing this whole time they're still married to this day and she recounts where like she

would wake up at like 2 in the morning and he's just sitting there right Wide Awake hands behind his head looking up at the at the ceiling just like can't sleep depressed agonizing over this Rel like this Relentless pursuit of a goal and so he's the one that said that that coined the term you know Excellence capacity take pain I was like that and I think by that point I had read like 180 biographies and autobiographies of hist like that's exactly what I see in every single book um there's never a book there's not a

no no life story or no book starts with hey uh this guy had an idea uh he did the idea everything went well end of story it is all like hey I have this idea I want to do something and it's just one problem one obstacle one and it's and it's one uh like essentially uh emotional and mental and in some cases physical pain to like persevere and push through to till they get to the other side and actually achieve what they're trying to achieve why why is that the ca is it just that achieving

anything that is excellent requires you to negotiate with a world that's going to push up against you and that means that you're going to end up feeling discomfort therefore the Capac to deal with pain is important yeah there there's no such thing as like an important goal an audacious goal that comes easily I think um Jeff basos has his own way of saying this and um there's this great book called invent and wander and it's the collected writings of Jeff basos so they take his shareholder letters and they take transcripts of his speeches and you

really get to understand how he was thinking as he was building Amazon and all the stuff that he's learned and his whole thing was you know I have unrelenting uncompromising uh standards for excellence and the talent of the people around me and and if you're coming to work at Amazon like you I'm not going to bend you're going to raise to to my expectations my standards it is not easy to work here I'm going to tell you that up front because we're trying to do something that we can tell our grandkids about that we can

be proud to say this is what Granddad did this is how I spent my life and he says he's like things uh things that you could tell your grandkids about are not meant to be easy there's a a quote from Tim Cook at Apple where he says um people say if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life I found that to be a total crocod [ __ ] uh at Apple you will work harder than you ever have before but the tools will feel light in your hands I I'm

surprised Tim said that because if you go back and Steve Jobs is like obviously what I consider him probably the greatest entrepreneur of all time just for his his he's got a very unique story like there's only there's really no other founder that if you think about the the story of Ste jobs he founded Apple twice and the second time he was Alone um and then he winds up coming back you know after 12 to 13 years in in the wilderness and he comes back and then goes on the greatest run that we've ever seen

created creates you know the most successful consumer uh product of all time gets sets the foundation for the multi- trillion dollar market cap that Apple has today and Steve's take on this was the reason you have to love what you do is because it's so hard and so painful that if you don't you'll quit and it's sane and he goes why do people quit because it's sane it is that's the sane thing to do it's the Misfits the rebels you know uh the the people that actually are obsessed with what they're doing are able to

persevere he also has this other quote that he feels what separates the success half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is just pure perseverance another all these all these ideas are all related like Excellence capacity to take pain you should love what you do because if you love what you do you'll keep doing it through the pain did you ever hear me uh tell Rogan about the region beta Paradox that thing so it's just a an idea about why you get stuck in Comfortably Numb in the middle things aren't too bad

they're not that good but because they're not that bad you don't have the motivation to go make them better it's like a well well-known psychological uh State and I I came up with a cery cury of it which is the reverse region beta Paradox being in an aggressively terrible working Cadence or environment but having such a tolerance for discomfort that you can endure it for a lifetime lower resilience less stubborn people would snap and have to find a way to change but not you you're the David goggin of working hard who's going to carry the

workload you are forever and uh that that thing is um it's a blessing and a curse because it allows people to maybe continue moving when they actually should pivot to something else but if you know that the idea is right I guess that that's a competitive Advantage I would say one of the great if if you're talking about like one of the near perfect entrepreneur autobiographies is Phil Knight's shoe dog where he's telling the story of Nike and the reason I think it's great is because it's in every chapter is a year and it goes

in sequential order from the time he has the idea till the IPO of Nike so like everybody identifies with the struggle wanting to like have a dream want to achieve it I wish more biographies were like that because they they spend too much time after the person's like super rich and like donating things to education that's way less relatable this is an egalitarian a temporally egalitarian book this is like 90% struggle and then he finally breaks through and then gets the IPO and then we know what happens after that we we got that but he

ends that I love what that what you said because the last chapter he's like for the Char I think he calls him charlatan he's like for the charlatans to tell entrepreneurs to never quit he's like that's that's [ __ ] he doesn't use that word but he's like he goes he goes you don't ever stop but sometimes quitting is the best thing meaning like you're in the wrong path so quit that path but don't stop trying to actually do what you what you like want want to do in life and what you want to set

out to accomplish what about what about Elon because he strikes me as somebody that's just got a a pretty high pain tolerance so now I'm I'm completely back so the very first episode of Founders in September 20 2016 was Ashley Vance's book on Elon and in fact um there's this guy named Kevin Rose who's the founder of dig right he's like one of the the first internet OG creators he has like one of the first podcasts but they weren't called podcast back then he had this uh video podcast where we call a video podcast today

called foundation and it was excellent high quality you would love it cuz like shot in like crazy cameras great sets and so you go back and he actually interviews Elon and so I watched this in 2012 okay and they're on the interviews on Tesla's Factory floor so you kind of hear the stuff in the background Elon looks way better than he does now like you know he's he's been going through hell for the last tough paper yeah 15 years but at the time they're they're just starting to produce the model S and what was fascinating

about this is the reason that was the first book that I covered right because I wanted to do a podcast on biographies and autobiographies is because Kevin Rose asks Elon a question that changed my life and he's like hey you know Elon has a crazy experience everybody knows Tesla SpaceX but like if you go back and him immigrating from South Africa to Canada and then Canada to the Bay Area and you know I don't think a lot of people don't know that he had his first successful company exit when he was like 25 something like

that 26 he sold this company called zip 2 uh winds up netting something like you know 20 $30 million at that age and then immediately rolls it back into PayPal and then he rolls PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX and does exactly what he always does now but the fascinating thing K was like dude you didn't know anybody you didn't have resources like you didn't have a network like how did you learn like who were your how did you learn how to build companies you were so young when you were doing that did you have a

mentor did you real out uh business books and Elon said something that's fascinating he's like I didn't read a lot of business books he goes I like biographies and autobiographies I think they're helpful he goes I was looking for mentors in historical context and so he talks about you know reading the biography of Ben Franklin Henry FL Nichola Tesla and I was like that's genius cuz for the vast majority of humanity right we don't have world class mentors in person but you can access that their entire life learnings by picking up the biography so few

years later I started getting obsessed with podcast I was like I remember that because as soon as he said that I started reading a ton of biographies and then I got addicted to reading biographies I oh I should just make a podcast about the biographies I'm reading and so it's funny you bring him up because I just read for the second time I reread a lot of books I think that's actually important we can talk about that later if you want to but I just read this book called liftoff uh Elon Musk in the desperate

early days of SpaceX Elon is in a class of itself himself there is not in many cases like a lot of the modern day Founders like there's a historical event there is like a you know uh there is a even a Steve Jobs before a Steve Jobs I've given up on finding there's no Elon Musk before another Elon B before Elon and the reason I love this book liftoff so much is because it's the first six years of SpaceX that's it just like I said I loved how Phil Knight just cover get to the IPO

is fine this is even better because then you go back and what I do is when I'm reading books I'll look up how old are they when this is happening in their life that book is about Elon Musk when he's 30 to 37 now me and you think of Elon now like world's most richest man like unbelievable powerful tipping elections like going doing all this crazy [ __ ] right it's like no no no he was 30 to 37 and it's insane and 90% of the book is him failing it is they can't get the

rocket into orbit he's running out of money he's going to a divorce his his infant son dies um his girlfriend talks about in the book him literally waking up in the middle of night screaming not like oh how you doing honey I can't sleep no no screaming in pain and Agony and because he put when he when he was the largest shareholder in PayPal okay this is what I also admire about him his skin in the game when he when you already have multiple successful exits you don't have to put your money on the line

anymore you can raise money from whoever you want he's like no no I want to be the largest shareholder he made more money on PayPal than anybody else right because he put in all his own money gets $180 million after taxes when uh when they to eBay puts 100 of million into doing a rocket company who's never no experience doing 70 million into Tesla where there hadn't been a successful American car company for like 80 years and then puts 10 million in Solar City has to borrow money for rent and so then this is talking

about he's like you know that book is the next few years he just sees all that money just essentially being lit on fire how does he keep going he has [ __ ] malaria and at the same time um this is what I love so originally he's like hey uh I have enough money for three rocket launches and that's what he thought he's like we can do this he's also like super super optimistic so he's a little nutty you know in that in that case he just thought he could do this um and so the

third rocket fails and he's like you know what we're going to scr up enough money and we have 30 days we don't have six months I think it it might be six weeks uh we have we don't have six months we have six weeks we have to launch this rocket and his whole thing he ends that that speech uh after the failure of the third rocket he's like come hell or high water we're going to make this work and I just think another thing that history get entrepreneurs have in common and I think me and

you probably agree with this too I definitely do is like the The Power of Will and the Power of One Dynamic individual to change the course of history um I feel that like belief comes before ability is another like repeated um lesson that it's obvious if you read biographies of people that do great things and for Elon it's just like I think he believes that he has strength and power well and that he can literally Bend and change the world problems are just opportunities in work clothes business is problems the best companies are just effective

problemsolving machines that line so the closest now the closest like historical equivalent to Elon and this is still a bit of a stretch so you have to bear with me this's a guy named Henry Kaiser okay Henry Kaiser founded like over a hundred different companies uh he built the Hoover Dam in his day around World War II he was almost as famous in his day as Elon was today I think now El on like on a different level um you know multiple billion dollar companies he built uh ships and he just like helped uh the

Allies win World War II but that's his line where he was just like Elon just default optimistic like every day like I'm going to I know I wake up every day there's going to be problems that's fine that's what I want because problems that's his line problems are just opportunities and work close so when his like employees would you know [ __ ] and complain about oh my God this this thing failed or this order fell through or we can't find a guy for this like good problems just to work close so you the default

State I think for humans is like to complain oh wo is me here's another problem entrepreneurs what they realize is like oh the problem or actually if I can solve that problem any problem you solve for a person could be a business and so um that that the second line where it says like you know businesses problems that's something that's repeated over and over again but then when you when you think about it that second line is something I came up with where it's like oh well if businesses problems that means the most successful companies

are just effective problem solving machines because they're the perpetuation of their existence is the fact that they're you know that they're solving problems for other people and they're doing so effectively and so if you want to build wealth that you want to be a successful company it's like find a problem and then solve it better than anybody else it's the reason that people at the top get paid more because they have more levels of input coming in anybody that's in the suite the SE Suite that's good in the SE Suite uh is basically just a

very complex highlevel problem solving algorithm yeah but they can just the number of inputs that they're able to see and the the way that they can triage top down and prioritize what the most and wait their waiting is appropriate because of experience uh and maybe taste or Talent or whatever Insight um but yeah I I think you're right I think that the best companies just solve problems I was thinking about this yesterday because um you know we talked we we you know we talk all the time and one thing that you notice is like I'm

kind of like oblivious to what's going on online like I'm just reading books and enviously and you know talking to podcasters and entrepreneurs it's like oh that's what my entire life outside of spending time with my family and I was struck and like kind of shocked because I saw a headline where uh there was a bunch of protesters that set up a guillotine outside of Jeff bezos's Washington DC house this was like a year or two ago or something like that an actual Guillotine and you know like kill the rich or eat the rich and

I looked at that and I was dumbfounded because I'm like Jeff Bezos made a magic button that I could press and and I if I want something to appear in my house in a day or two I just press the button and Jeff hides all that operational complexity right like do you understand how difficult that was to do and this you know talentless hack shows up his house with a guillotine like give me your money like what did you do like did you make a magic button Jeff deserves that money and that doesn't even talk

about all the other businesses fact that he owns the largest cloud computing business the fact that the hardware businesses he has the mention of the Kindle uh his advertising business they probably have more multi 10 10 billion plus businesses uncorrelated 10 billion plus businesses inside of Amazon than any other business on the planet like you think you could have done that like that's insane he deserves that money and then the other thing I was thinking about too in response to because I've done probably like I don't know like eight podcasts on Jeff I think he's

incredible um and so I read everything about him and I'm like this is kind of hypocritical like you're protesting now because you know he's got a a trillion or2 trillion dollar market cap right but there was no protest in front of his house and the after the dotom bust when the stock goes from $180 to six you could have bought a share of Amazon stock at that price that time for $5.9 you weren't out in front of his house then you weren't and when he had a mass exod Exodus of employees you weren't saying anything

about that you wait till it's not there's a line that um that again we talk about the fact that it's just a single line like I read all the time you know you're not going to read everything you're not going to remember everything in an entire book maybe 500 page book I'll remember a story a line right and there's a line that I heard Charlie Monger say one time which he was actually quoting Warren Buffett and he says it's not that greed it's not greed doesn't run the world Envy Envy runs the world he yeah

his whole point he's like cure yourself of Envy I was like dude you're not outside of Jeff vos's house because you're trying to fix the broken word world you're envious it's like that one you hear that line and then now you start to look at all the interactions you have and the actions of other people you're like oh they're right greed doesn't run the world Envy does yeah it's a shame because one of the things that this can incentivize people to do is to track the low points and track the journey in the beginning sufficiently

so that you always have this sort of stake that you've planted in the ground to say see you know that famous photo of Jeff and he's in front of the handwritten Amazon sign and it's like CRT monitors and old school style keyboards and stuff everything's beige um why is that photo important because most of Amazon's Inception is bereft of the 4K behind the scenes footage that you would like to have now yeah you look at somebody like Chris Bumstead best bodybuild builder in the world X I guess he just retired a few weeks ago um

he has been tracking his journey from for over 10 years yeah on YouTube so when it comes to him people can look at this person and the Envy I think you're able to dampen that down you're able to amarate it because you can show people the difficult times if you were able to see Jeff Bezos at his worst Elon Musk at his worst Dyson at his worst whoever Trader Joe at his worst if you could see those guys when they were really in the [ __ ] I think far fewer people would think that they

did not deserve the success that they get on the other side the issue people have is that looks like it came easy therefore they don't deserve it I didn't have something come easy y therefore I should take it from them yeah I um you're the one that introduced me to Chris I didn't know about bum said before I watched your episode with them I love the question you had for him you're like do you think you're a strange dude to be the best in the world way you are he's a real Soulful dude correct he's

very Soulful um I thought that was fascinating I loved his perception because again or his perspective rather like you know this is somebody that got to literally the best in the world of what you do and I love the this is something that's obvious because one of the um complaints that some very few complaints I get most of the like the people listen to the podcast are nerds right and I'm talking about history like and it just self- selects for like you have to be kind of a you know a driven kind of um like

obsessive person to even be into this kind of stuff and I think you obviously me and you are both like this as well but they're like I can tell when sometimes a podcast is not for other people CU like oh you're not you're not telling me what to do and I was just like because there's no formula and Chris made the point he's just like listen this is how I got there but there's six other ways there's 15 other ways there's like you could do all there's no there's no right way it's the right way

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slod wisdom that's function health.com modern wisdom I was listening to um Michael Dell's autobiography which is really excellent the second one he wrote two but they're both good but the second one is one I was listening to and for the longest time I kept talking about the importance of building a life and business as a byproduct of that that's authentic to you and then I'm listening to Michael Dell who's a phenomenal entrepreneur even when he was like young like right away like when he was like 19 he was like making millions and millions of dollars

and so he's running this crazy company in Austin and it's just exploding and he's he's still in college and he winds up recruiting like an older more experienced uh you know sea Suite executive to help him and the guy helps him for a few years and he burns out real fast he's not sleeping he's gaining weight and he's like Michael I love you but like I have to I I have to take a break I can't do this I have to like leave the company and Michael felt the opposite like he's working all hours of

the day he's going to the full limit but what he realized and he put it better than I did he's like oh the difference was I built a business that was natural to me this is how I naturally want to spend my time this is what I'm naturally interested in this is what I'm naturally obsessed with this is what I'm natur what I naturally want my life to be I'm like natural is a better word than authentic and I think what I took away from your conversation with Chris was like he built a life that

was natural to him he's swimming Downstream yeah makes it makes life so much easier he's swimming Downstream the partner that he picked uh compensates for his shortcomings and accounts for them and helps him to be a better person by so so does mine so does my wife yeah uh you know the I I I keep [ __ ] hopping on about it this Michelangelo effect thing two people they make each other better to be better for each other and for themselves and together they are positive some more than they could have been a part Etc

and uh I actually have a interesting tangent I think you you you might um enjoy I read a book um so I was obsessed with Arnold Sher I love Arnold and you know his his his autobiography that he wrote when he was 70 called Total Recall is excellent right but what's even better is he wrote an autobiography when he was 30 that is not that people don't think of as an autobiography it's called the education of a bodybuilder right the first 110 pages of that book is Arnold telling his life story at 30 and then

calling a shot saying hey I the same principles I just did to be the best bodybuilder I'm going to get into movies I'm going to build a business Empire he just literally calls a shot and so I read everything I get my hands on I watch everything with Arnold and so I thought I read every book about Arnold then I'm watching that Netflix documentary on him that came out and they kept interviewing this his his girlfriend that Arnold lived with before he was famous from 21 to 26 and she go and it's like author of

Arnold and me I'm like what I was like I ordered the book immediately and then I read the book and it's 300 pages of this woman bless her heart right I could have helped her in a minute her saying I don't understand while the why this outlier of an outlier of an outlier won't just be a normal guy oh man and and so the the main takeaway from that book was especially for entrepreneurs especially for driven people and you know people like Chris as well and uh PE I can give you multiple examples in the

books as well like the founder Four Seasons it's also it's like for entrepreneurs you either need a supportive spouse or no spouse at all because like there is no separation from our work and our lives and it's not going to work if like you're completely obsessed the reason me and you get along the reason I love hanging out with you we've spent nine hours talking about podcasting in Miami like because you're a fellow obsessive and I was like that's why I flew here I was like there's no way I'm recording remotely I'm coming to like

give you a hug and to sit down with you but you can't like you imagine your wife you know your future wife saying Chris don't work so hard on the podast like oh it doesn't matter like that doesn't have to be shot you know with a a camera that's going to break spotify's video player like calm down like you don't need to redo the barn it's just Matthew MCC like why does this stuff matter it's not going to work you either need a no spouse or a supportive spouse and I've SE this is where I

see so many entrepreneurs like fight against this where their spouse makes them feel guilty they they're attracted to them because they're so driven and obsessed right which is abnormal for the the human population and you deal with a lot of young men a lot of young men don't they need to get offline and like increase their level of ambition and service to the world right stop thinking about themselves start thinking about other people um and so you're you're attracted to this person because they're so driven then you marry them just like hey I love what

you are now be some something you're not please stop that thing that made me so attracted to you it's actually kind of getting in the way of the comfort that I want to get yeah so true man I mean uh H Mo's got some thing where he says um the cheerleader should not be telling the quarterback to get off the field when it's in the final play of the game yeah uh and you know that can switch I'm sure there's times when you need to step up and be the cheerleader for your wife uh not

in the podcasting world but in all sorts of other stuff and you're like hey uh there you go Stadium flow crack on I'm here to support you um I think what horoi did too um that's smart that I've seen a few times um because you are going to you know these these people are obsessed like they're not going to write biographies about normal people it's not like hey this guy had a 9 to5 and you know you just play P off yeah pickle ball on the weekends and he barbecued and like no one's going to

read that book so about by default like you're self- selecting into these very extreme people and you know my entire life outside of spending time with my family is talking to entrepreneurs and hanging out with Founders like I don't have any friends that aren't Founders and like one thing that you see this conflict between like how do I balance work and family and I think what hormozi did is like he combined he com he combined you know work with witha um Este I actually got that idea from two people from Estee Lauder and Sam Walton

like Estee Lauder is one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live that no one ever like thinks about they know that the company it's named after her you know it's probably $20 billion market cap whatever it is today but they don't there's a very hard to find autobiography uh about saay La when she was still alive published I think in the 80s it's one of my favorite books I ever read if you can get a copy you can read in a weekend and there was a huge conflict between she's a monster she is a d

one of the most driven entrepreneur ever and she's like but I want to also spend time with my sons and my husband so what do I do she brings them into the business with them so her husband shuts down his business because her business is a lot more has a lot more potential he works in there and then they involve the kids since they were like six Greg mchu an author of essentialism uh was on the speaking circuit's 10th year anniversary of essentialism next month and um he's done speaking for forever and he didn't want

to miss his kids but he also wanted to build a life that his kids would be to benefit from so he's sort of caught between a rock and a hard place because being away from his kids is the very thing that facilitates the life he wants to give them so he just put in a request part of his rider was a second ticket business class and a second hotel room and he took one of his kids with him every time that he did a talk I love so his kids got to travel the world with

him can I tell you a funny writer so I was at I do a lot of well now I do less of them but for for the right people I'll do like a lot of speaking gigs for like private companies and usually like private companies or investment uh firms and so I was at one there was two speakers me and Tucker Carlson and so the CEO of the company that will not be named um I was asking him because I was like there's no way like I I probably charged way too less for like not

enough money for this so I like how much how much did you pay Tucker and because you know he like he's a fan of the podcast like I knew I could talk to him like you know friend and he goes well his writer is a little different than yours I was like what do you mean he goes he insists that we fly him in in and out on our private jet I was like I didn't even know I could do that uh number three there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book History's Greatest entrepreneurs

all learned from History's Greatest entrepreneurs so that is a a direct quote from poor Charlie Almanac and it is literally true um in that case uh there's there's this guy named Henry Singleton that I didn't know I guess I should back up and talk about part of my process which I think is is helpful outside of just making a podcast I really believe like anybody you admire would ever field it could be a director it could be an entrepreneur it could be an athlete read find a book about them and read about their life like

I am an evangelist for reading biographies I think it's the one of the highest value activities that you could have outside spending time on your health with your friends and family I really think people should make it a habit and so what I what I do is like I was I I think Charlie Monger is the wisest person I've ever come across he's like a hero of mine I got a chance to meet him I got to go his house this was incredible but what I'll do is like I'll read every single book I can

find about somebody I um admire and then I usually find other books about them by going through the bibliography and like books are made out of books so you you anybody usually has one regress of people referring other people yes and then not only so that's not only how you find books to like a hard to find books or books that other people are reading but inevitably in that book they all studied History's Greatest entrepreneurs all studied history greatest entrepreneurs so they will talk about the people that influence them and so I'm doing this going

through the same process I just described to you for monger and Buffett and they keep bringing up this guy named Henry Singleton I was like who the hell is Henry Singleton I've never heard of Henry Singleton and they say wild stuff like Henry Singleton's the smart Charlie marer says Henry Singleton is the single smartest person I've ever met that Singleton is smarter than Buffett uh Buffett says that it's a crime that Business Schools don't study him that if you took the the the the top 100 business school students and compared their record for Singleton he'd

blow him out of the water I'm like I have to read about this guy so then you start um there's this book called The Outsiders and I pick it up I start reading about it I'm like oh my God the ideas that I thought were Buffet Anders were Singleton they just applied it to building birkshire and then you go and so then what I do I go and read everything about Singleton and then Singleton says hey uh there's this book that changed the trajectory of he built this conglomerate called tadine and he goes there's a

book that changed the trajectory of tadine I was reading Alfred Sloan the the CEO of GM's book and he says if as you're building a business you need access to a financial institution so I went out and bought either a bank or an insurance company I forgot which one he did he's like and that solved like that that made that helped teline not only did he use the money to invest and keep buying more companies to increase his conglomerate but literally they made billions of dollars from an idea that was in a $30 history book

and you see this over and over again and that's another thing where it's when I say like all of history entrepreneurs study all of study history entrepreneurs it's really important you're not what they're doing is they're not trying to copy the what they're trying to copy the how they're not trying to build another Tedy they're building their version of their bu business what they were interested in and um the greatest example of this is you go back and all the great entrepreneurs can can place their work in historical context so when Steve Jobs is developing

the Macintosh he goes and studies what did Alexander Graham Bell how did he Market the telephone because I feel I just made the telephone of my generation and so they're like oh there's ideas around marketing this other invention a 100 years before I'm my invention that's still worked to this day and so that's what I mean it's like oh these ideas is there's 30 there's ideas with billions in $30 history book what about that line between SpaceX and NASA oh so this is nuts so this is this was in that book liftoff which is really

again I highly recommend that book because you can again read in a weekend some of these books you know I don't read people like oh you must read fast no I read pretty damn slow because I'm taking notes I'm like doing arts and crafts over here got H I got scissors a ruler a pen I got Post-it notes like it takes a long time but you can read that book in a weekend um and what they realized is like hey uh NASA has because it's a a government run agency they documented all of their experiments

all of their all their their their hypothesis all their uh everything in papers and they're you could just download them and read them nobody read them so they wind up they I think they said they like cribbed NASA's notes and they got a couple billion dollars of value uh from like for ideas and their ear of SpaceX and then you could also do that um there's another line in the book that Elon um talks about where this Reporter Goes he's flying on Elon elon's jet after a a failed uh I think it's like the second

failed rocket and elon's brother's on the Jet and he's like watching TV or playing video games and elon's in the corner reading biographies of all the rocket Engineers because again he's like I want to I want to know what they know so I can one take the good ideas and avoid the bad ones and so this just happens over and over and over again relationships Run the World trusted personal networks may be the most valuable asset in the world okay so this this this might be the most important idea that I've actually internalized and seen

play out in the last like Year of My Life um I'm going to go to there's I had the ability to to meet Charlie M I just met and went to his house had dinner with him uh the night started out in his Library which is really cool for me because you know I love reading and I got to see um I got to see not only like what was in his library but I also got to see like I could read biues for the rest of my life and like I'll never have what he

has um and what I mean by that is he's sitting in front of his bookshelf right and I get there and first of all he's like my hero when I mean that so I first of all I'm sitting there and you know I'm there with two other of my entrepreneur friends and you just start having conversation they had met him before and I'm in shock I'm just staring at him cuz I'm like that that's Charlie Munger like I watch all the AGM videos like that's I watching speech is like that's him he's just sitting there

and you know he's looking at you because he his eyes were really degenerated so like he has like the bifocals but it's not just like he looks at you like this he he'll look and I'll go like this cuz he's got to look through the bottom and he's making eye contact with me and I'm looking and for 10 minutes I'm just like Frozen and then my friend Andrew is like hey like get in here start asking him you're gonna waste this and so what I do I was like I don't know what to say like

I had all these notes I had made all these things on my Apple notes on my phone never looked at my phone once in three hours and so immediately I just start looking at his shelf behind him and I start noticing all the books because again I find people I admire and then if they say hey I like this book I go and read it so I start asking him questions about all these books and what I mean that I'll never have what he has I have to like reread stuff I have to like study

I have to like practice immediately ask him about a book he hasn't read in 25 years he can tell you what the what the company does what their revenue was what who so who whose Partners who sold it like he was a legit Genius Like absolutely I don't have whatever brain he has and anybody in 99 is going to have some level C of decline right you have to some level imagine him at 35 he would destroy me he would just like 55 any of that you destroy me so the relationships around the world is

one of the lessons that he taught us because you know he he knew he was not going to lift up he knew he didn't have that much longer and so he prioritized meeting with other young ambitious like entrepreneurial kind of people and his whole thing was um we we talked a lot about Ben Franklin because he's got a a bust he he uh like he commissions bust people he admires so he's leanu and Ben Franklin and he's got every biography I've ever seen in Ben Franklin and his whole thing he's like one of the things

I learned from Ben Franklin is that no matter your age go out and seek talented people if they're peer group that's fine but if they're younger and build a relationship with them he talked about how Ben Franklin did that with a young George Washington Ben Franklin's like 48 years old when he cold DMS of the day slides in George George Washington who's 21 right and they build a relationship and they have relationship with their their uh their whole life but and then he was describing that as like that sounds like what you did he's like

that's exactly what I did he's like I met Buffett I was 35 Buffett was 28 and we built a seamless web of deserve trust he goes everybody knows about us but there was all these other guys around us that were similar age and similar interest and we just did deals uh forever and most of them had passed on you know but by the time I got to meet uh but I got to meet Munger but relationships around the world what you realize is um every like we think of like an organization like let's say we

need uh there's something there's there's certain uh organizations that are important in podcasting Spotify being the most important one so we think of Spotify as an organization but is it an organization well inside an organization there there's people and there's people that me and you have relationship with like Daniel Eck or people on the board or the head of podcasting so if you need something done right because of their personal relationship they have with you it's a call it's relationships around the world and so there's another guy that I got to meet who was one

of my heroes this guy name is Sam zel he also uh he was 81 years old when I met him he he pass away unfortunately about 6 months after I got to have lunch with him and in his autobiography he mentions uh Sam's a legend you know one of the best entrepreneurs investors he sold uh his the largest real estate company in history for like $38 billion like the guy just could he felt as backwards into deals and Deals and money he was just phenomenal but I got to have a two-hour lunch with him and

he's sitting you know closer than you are to me and got ask him whatever I wanted so I brought up the fact that um that I read he knew I read his autobiography because the way I met him is he got into podcasts and he heard the podcast I did on his autobiography and he starts listening to a bunch he goes hey can I meet this guy and so I get a message like Sam Z wants to meet you I thought it was like fake I was like yeah he doesn't want to meet this is

ridiculous so I go Sam um I bought the book that you talked about that change go back to there's ideas worth 30 I forgot about this there's ideas worth billions of $30 historybook when Sam Sam zel was making millions of dollars a year when he was in law school he was an entrepreneur for 61 years one of the best ever do it and he picked up a book that changed his life when he was in law school it's this the autobiography of this a guy named William zindorf William zindorf is one of the greatest real

estate developers to ever live in that book he has this idea he calls the Hawaiian technique right and it works in real estate and what and it worked in real estate um when Sam zel used it but he samel also realized it works in business buying private businesses where he says like there's components of a building that you know the land underneath you can piece it apart like the land uh is valuable is high would be high highly valuable to a certain party you could sell to the highest bidder there and then maybe the leases

that somebody else prioritizes that so so break up the the components of the business and sell to the highest bidder and the some of the parts like that'll that's how you make more money right and so Sam used that idea made billions of dollars he also used it in private business but I tell Sam I go Sam I bought zond dorf's book he's like did you read it and I go not yet and Sam had this he was famous for this grably voice he goes read it I was like okay Sam zel tells me to

read the book I immediately read the book in that book is where it crystallized for me that relationship Sur around the world zindorf you know very wealthy winds up losing all his money but at the time very wealthy and didn't wasn't born wealthy so like very similar to me and you with our background right we don't understand any of this stuff so what he realizes as he climbs through society and he's in New York and he gets more successful and he meets more people and he gets richer what he goes hey you're a normal dude

you know how we grew up uh you're at the base of the mountain you can might be able to see that Peak right but what you don't see because you're not climbing in the mountain is when you get to the other as you get closer to the peak other Peaks starting to appear and then so these are all very influential Rich very powerful people and then what you realize is all these mountain peaks are actually connected by little pathway Pathways and you don't have access to this Pathways unless you've climbed the mountain and he goes

and then if I need something from a Howard Hughes or a j priter family which is you know multi-billion dollar Chicago family or you know the the mayor of New York City cuz I'm a developer well guess what I'm on a peak too this path right here relationships around around the world and so the advice that they both gave me is like you need to develop seamless webs that deserve trust good just that there's an additional element in there which suggests you need to also be able to display value in some way you need to

be able to have yes you can build a relationship with somebody but the analogy of the peak suggests to me that you stand alone at top a mountain of your own yeah you have done a thing which enables you it unlocks that I love I love that you said that there's another maximum so I I try to break everything down to maxims like to still everything I'm learning right cuz I've done let's see you probably read 380 biographies 100 over 100,000 pages eight years two months but like you can't remember all that stuff so you

have to like I love what Nal raicon said he's like I break things down to the maximum level so then you they're easy to remember and then you contextually apply it to your situation zipped file if people this is a because of the way that I learn as well which is the same essentializing right taking log concept into memorable Mantra Maxim aphorism whatever it is uh it can feel like quote porning right which is fine and I don't actually mind all that much but that's the sticky thing that stays in the back of your mind

and if you you're not going to be able to remember the entirety of a book but you can remember do less but better that's the concept of essentialism right do less but better how awesome that's really lovely do less but better it's like from a German saying you go right well you can't use it if you can't remember it correct David has this line where he's like why do you have to write uh interesting ads and you do this phenomenally I just saw the ad you just did yesterday thank you uh you can't because in

his response is you can't save souls in an empty church so then you'll remember I I I'll remember oh I can't save souls in an empty church if no one reads this or no one if I want to educate so I have a my life's goal is like very simple I have one simple organiz organization principle is I want to help people learn from history entrepreneurs and I want to do that better than anybody else in the world that's it so then I can I remember that that's my principle and I look at how I'm

spending my time single ordinating single Direction yeah I want to I want to go back to what you said though so my maximum on this is you need to make yourself easy to interface with okay and I go back to how we were able to build a relationship we're in a industry full of second rate products and second rate talent and most people that go to podcasts are podcasters don't want to work they do it's not the only thing they do it's like one of 10 and what me and you saw in each other immediately

it's like oh this is another me it we may talk about different things we have different formats but it's another me it's so much easier for me to like I knew I listen to your podcast so I know exactly who you are and then we can build a relationship real fast so easy to interface with the person that did this the best and he did it in three words Steve Jobs insanely great products he said you want to come make insanely great products then you come to Apple if you are passionate about doing this then

come work with me if you're not interested in it then remove yourself from my life and the key thing is where where people make mistakes when go back to relationships around the world okay it's very important that you build a seamless We Trust I really do believe these these high-end personal networks are the greatest Assets in the world I'm not that's not hyperbolic I literally believe that you have to make yourself easy to interface with right and what people make the mistake of is all these people right on these Peaks that are connected to these

paths all day long I call it gimme gimme all day long they wake up and somebody wants something from them you know give me money uh be my customer uh let me pick your brain like all this stuff it's like no no the way you build relationships is doing acts of service I make myself the way I'm able to build relationships with these kind of people is really simple I make myself easy to interface with why because I can point to a body of work like I and one I don't ask for anything never I

never ask for a favor I don't want to pick your brain I don't want any money from you I don't want anything I just want to give give give and my active service is the podcast it's like hey I spent eight years and two months doing this you know hundreds of thousands of hours or whatever the time the time frame is and I condensed it down into you know 400 hours it you can learn and hopefully be educated and entertained while you're doing other things while you're on your plane while you're walking your dog while

you're washing dishes whatever it is and I make myself easy to interface with it's like oh is this a serious person well you've read [ __ ] 400 biographies of entrepreneurs that seems a little odd that seems like that seems like somebody worth my time and then you the the higher up you go right learning from history is a former leverage that's another maximum from Charlie Munger why is Charlie merer Charlie Monger is a multi-billionaire could learn from anybody why is he still reading biographies he could literally pay anybody in the the tutor he's say

this is the best value of my time and so anybody that that builds a very valuable company sees a podcast like Founders just sees somebody like me like oh talking to this guy a a good friend of mine um says said this the perfect way and he runs a multi-billion dollar fund and he goes talking to you is like talking to 50 of History greatest entrepreneurs simultaneously I made myself easy to interface with and I never asked for anything I'm not like oh you know can you do this can you introd me this person can

you do me this favor can you help me raise a fund nothing in other news this episode is brought to you by netsuite the less your business spends on operations on multiple systems on delivering your product or service the more margin you have and the more money that you keep but with higher expenses on materials employees distribution and borrowing everything costs more so to reduce costs and headaches smart businesses are graduating to netsuite by Oracle netsuite is the number one Cloud Financial system bringing accounting financial management inventory and HR into one platform with net Suite

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a lot of the people that have ended up working for me in one form or another in nighlife on the podcast so many of them started off working for free Dean the guy that's still with me now that's edited 2,000 videos that have gone out every single one of them creative director now maybe the best podcast editor on the planet arguably I would say so uh he did the first two three years for free yeah he came and did the first shoot for free now we were friends or whatever but he was a working professional

photographer and videographer but he was like I think there's something here I'm just going to do it and let's see what happens it's like offer offer offer give give give and just to round out what you were saying before about uh this sort of essentializing the fact that mantras and maxims are a useful windzip tool to then unlock this file Downstream from it uh Andre GED a Nobel Prize winner everything that needs to be said has already been said but since no one was listening everything must be said again that that line is in my

favorite book um on Buffet Ander it's called all I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there um and I thought it was them so that's funny that you said it's his because I thought I thought it was their yeah you've got like mangaran drift uh all right you can always understand the Sun by The Story of his father the story of the father is embedded in the son a desire to not end up like your father is a powerful source of extreme drive so again this that line comes

from a Francis Ford Copa biography so the way I would say this is like I think I have a very broad definition of entrepreneur right entrepreneur is like somebody has ideas and does them and so I think filmmakers entrepreneurs I think certain athletes are entrepreneurs I think podcasters are entrepreneurs it's not like it's literally somebody you don't have a job you have an idea you have something you want to happen in the world and and you're you build a company around it to to be able to accomplish that and that I think it's like I

know if I'm correct it's like I was like 242 243 books in and I'm going through and reading all these biographies of filmmakers cuz I feel like creating uh I think directors and entrepreneurs like there's just a lot of uh they have a lot of similarities and that line like you can always understand uh the the father by the the son by the story of the Father the Father the story of the father is a better than the son was literally in that book and it's because Francis Ford Copa right is talking about the relationship

that he had with his dad and as somebody I have two kids and you know I have a a daughter and a son and I could never imagine talking to my son the way that Francis Ford cop's dad did Francis Ford cop's dad was a musician but he was a failed musician and what's going to happen if like you have something you want to do in your life and decade after decade you're saying I'm a talented musician in the world saying no you're not we're not interested in what your offerings are you become most people

you know the we I would consider the weaker people become bitter right and so it's not them I'm not the problem it's the world that's the problem no it's always you you have to have extreme ownership you know and so he would say stuff to his son like Francis when they were growing up obviously not a lot of money uh there there can only be one genius in the family and that's me so it can't be you and like he would try to like basically you know pull his son down I want my son to

like I would like I want him to do whatever he wants his life all of your accomplishments yeah I think Entre some entrepreneurs some driven people make the mistake of like oh you're driven and so I'm going to make my kids driven and I think you alienate them Sam Walton said this the best because if you think about how crazy Sam Walton is like if he didn't disperse his um Fortune through his kids and he did this way before the the actual assets appreciated you know he created one of the world's largest fortunes the family

net worth today is like $220 billion he say he's dying of cancer when he's writing his autobiography and he says something like well I'm a fair in the biggest understatement of the century he's like I'm a fairly overactive fellow and I don't and he goes I don't expect my kids to be like me so I don't push them that hard yes well think about it that way like it is an odd thing for you to be an outlier for you to know that you're an outlier for you to kind of want to bestow the benefits

of outlierness on your kids but if you're that much of an outlier hopefully some smarts have come along with you and if you're that smart you'll know what regression to the mean is and if you are way out on the tail of this thing where do you think your kids are going to be they're going to move back toward the center that's how it works yes right yeah I I would like I just want my kids to do whatever they want like my daughter wants to she sometimes she's like oh I want to you know

I want to sing I want to dance whatever I don't care what you do you don't have to make any money I'll I'll take care of that don't worry about that I want my son to just be happy I want them to have good habits like I wouldn't ever like you're not going to do drugs you're not going to be a loser you know but you don't have to like shoot for outside success that's ridiculous um and so like just bringing your son down I so I get just I need to interject um isn't it

interesting though that the thing that gives you such a sense of contentment and meaning in the world is your pursuit of something difficult is this insatiable Unstoppable drive to go and do this thing and what you're trying to bestow on your kids is equanimity and peace and enoughness uh if I went to you and said I can I'm I'm a super intelligent Ai and I can go in and I can change your source code and I can get rid of your need to do the drive you can be as happy in a hammock as you

are in a podcast Studio as you are reading a biography I don't think that you would take that deal no so even though my first proposal was you know don't try and expect your kids to be as much of an outlier as you are Tales go back to the middle they don't go further out to the tals but on the flip side of that too what if your kids are made of the same stuff as you and throwing some fuel onto that furnace would be maybe the best blessing because wow I made of same stuff

that Dad is and Dad gets me and dad taught me how to handle and and control this huge stallion that I've got that I'm trying to you know what I mean we've got this sort of really interesting easy for a [ __ ] Nona to say here no no no no no no I this is a really important like I think this may be the most important maximum I I say so much like people so I I I surveyed my audience the other day because I've been trying to break down all the lessons cuz like

I think repution is persuasive I'm not this person who like oh you should learn something new all day like no no you should I think the people that build great companies they identify a handful of principles they Master the fundamentals and the basics and you do it for decade after decade that's what it is it's the boring [ __ ] decade after decade where most people especially now they're like I need you know two you have I have to memorize the 2,000 new things no no it's like a handful of principles and you'll just see

them repeat over and over again that's why I think the best description of Founders podcast was it's church for entrepreneurs so I grew up in a in a Christian like a fundamentalist Christian Church it's not like the the preacher setup on Sunday like okay last week we went over that Jesus guy we're done with him like let's go on to to somebody else no they literally go and teach messages from the same book for for centuries forever I think there's actually a power to that and I think the best entrepreneurs do that Jeff Bezos identified

a handful of principles he has 14 I would argue he has one obsessed over customers and he said it over and over and over and over again so I would be fine with that my son because he's going to grow up it's not the drive they have an issue with it's the source has to be positive yeah my source is not positive yeah mine neither yours is not positive Francis 4 is not positive we're trying to write a wrong we're trying to write in many cases a multi-generational wrong and so like I'm not sitting on

a [ __ ] hammock I don't like to relax I'm incapable of relaxing people like how many hours you work all of them literally all of them because I just got to get this out sorry because like so I'm willing and again I I love my job I think it's the best job in the world I love like my life but yeah I have a hole in my heart that will never be filled and it's because it's personally important to me and a mission to me is like to there's there's this um this term I

have and you can call it the founder of a family is the generational inflection point right and essentially you go and look at this family tree and you just see like one shitty Branch after one shitty Branch after one shitty branch and then eventually it's all going downhill and then there'll be literally a g there's like one dude sometimes it's a woman most time it's a dude and then straight up right and so a circuit breaker exactly that is what the role I'm trying to to play that is I my friend Sam Hy has this

great line he says I find it intoxicating to be there for my tribe and like I want that I want that pressure I want that responsibility so if now I know for a fact like you know I got the [ __ ] beat out of me when I was a kid like stomped on like all kinds of crazy stuff happen I've never touched my kids like my kids grw up unbelievable like they're they're great kids too and they're way sweeter and nicer my boy is way sweeter than I was at his age and that's fine

so if he grows up in this positive environment he knows he's loved he knows me and my wife have a good uh good relationship he sees that his dad gets out of bed and tries to help other people all day we can talk about this my one of my favorite Maxs from history of Entrepreneurship is that money comes naturally as a result of service people like oh I'm going to be wealthy fine find a problem solve the problem and then all you have to do is scale up the amount of people you serve that's where

wealth comes from so I wake up every day trying to do things for other people I'd be reading these books anyways no matter what but the fact that I sit down and record my thoughts and condense a 40-year career and 40 hours of reading into 45 minutes that's an act of service so he's he sees what I do all day he sees I take this very seriously and if he says Hey I want to do that and he does that forl a good then good that's what I want in other news this episode is brought

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a1.com wisdom I wonder you I've spoken to 850 people whatever on the show maybe with doubles like 750 something like that and uh I would say that on average high performers are driven 90% of them 95% of them are driven by a sense of insufficiency not a p perfectly balanced desire to enact their logos forward and be the best version of them that they can be simply for the flourishing that comes along with it most people don't have that most people are trying to fill a void they're looking for validation they want the world to

see them as useful because they've never felt like they were loved they want someone to tell them like they're enough so they're going to make themselves so much more than enough that they have they have this undeniable stack of mountain of evidence that they were the thing not the thing that they feared that they were and and um I just get the sense that it is a balance between happiness and success but given that most people try to become Happy by being successful unhappy people try to use success to achieve happiness if you can just

shortcut it and go straight to happiness which it sounds like you're trying to teach your kids to do and much of this is genetic in any case it's like hey here's a role of the dice there's 50% of your psychological disposition like good luck hope you ready um but yeah if you can do what you can from a rearing perspective you're safe you're validated I love you if you win and I love you if you lose as long as you try here's some principles that you should do that are scalable that are blah blah blah

like I I think the success thing especially especially the people that listen to this podcast the people that listen to yours are the kinds of people that have buried themselves being that Breakwater being that circuit breaker of intergenerational trauma of one kind or another and uh if that's you if that if you've prostrated yourself on the like Domino lineage of your ancestors and you've just like no you've Samson this entire thing together that's what it's like right holding these he's holding these pillars up that's you and your you know intergenerational problems uh if you've done

that first off Bravo secondly you have got the skills you have got the gifts you have got the insights you've got the lessons you've probably got the resources that your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents couldn't have even imagined existed not only because we're in a world that offers you that opportunity and education and so on and so forth but because you were the outlier and that's why you listen to shows like yours and shows like this because you are an outlier among outliers right you can't overestimate how normal the normies are go out

in the street like like I I I served the normal people at my nightlife business they're [ __ ] fantastic they're not Riven with this sense that you have that for the most part is probably pathological and you would be significantly better off if you didn't have but what does it allow you to do it allows you to push yourself into places that other people won't go so can you take on that pain can you take on like we said in the very beginning can you take on that burden shoulder that burden pass on what's

good try to hold on to the stuff that you wish didn't go and then use the fruits of that labor the lessons the resources the insights give that and be like I have it was me that did the thing I accumulated the stuff I passed it on to my kids and they got most of the benefits structurally of what I did with as few of the pathologies emotionally of what caused that to happen yeah I think that would be definition of success the definition of My Success is that like my kids grow up happy like

that's I'm like there there is something I I think what you said like when you I think you correctly identified like this the source of this internal drive and one thing that I think would surprise most people is there's one I think people would be surprised that a large source and I think we'll go back to Francis for Copa because this certainly was the case with him is like revenge and it's revenge for being born in an environment like that with a father like his yeah and so you how does it manifest oh revenge is

so interesting it manifests right where his dad's like oh no no I'm the genius of the family you're you can't be him his Fierce work ethic so it's obvious in the very beginning of Franc cor is trying to break into movies and he's one of the first and at the time at the time in Hollywood there was no such thing as young directors he's the one broke down the door for like a young Steven Spielberg or George Lucas and all these other people right the idea you have a 28-year-old feature film director was unheard of

back then and so he meets a young George Lucas he meets Stephen SP like hey that guy did it I can do it but you you see the 10 years of work that he put put in before that in the book when he's literally he starts out as an editor and he's literally editing 24 hours he falls asleep he doesn't get up from his desk he just time to go I'm editing time to go to sleep I'm going to just put my head down he has this Fierce work ethic and then the revenge is Dad

I'm doing this uh movie it's probably gonna be a success because it's the sequel to Godfather right he goes he has one of the greatest uh directing runs ever in one decade he does Godfather one Godfather 2 and Apocalypse Now like maybe you've never seen another 10-year run like that ever except she at such a young age and he's like Dad I'm going to let you do the score for the Godfather too and then his dad wins an Oscar for the only achievement he ever does for in music came because his son hired him wow

revenge and so this idea you just nailed it I think it's 909 90 to 95% of sons usually trying to say I I don't want to be like my dad I'm going to succeed where he failed and then there's maybe a 5 to 10% where it's like my dad is my hero I want to be more like him and I'm going to try to like I wonder whether this could totally just be available ability bias because the people that I look up to uh and that I surround myself with but I get I I'm really

hopeful for the Next Generation that maybe they have more of those maybe that 90 to 95 actually gets closer to sort of you know 70 or 80 because the proliferation of people trying to make themselves better like if Founders is church for entrepreneurs then modern wisdom is church for people who want to make their lives better like I'm curious I I have the sense that I'm built for more and I'm interested in finding out if that's true yes and I don't know I just I don't get how so much of this stuff even if you

only take [ __ ] 0.1% of the things that you're exposed to and you're a little bit Discerning about what's good and what's not good you are this is what I said before about the difference between a parents and grandparents and a great-grandparents generation and ours you are orders of magnitude better constructed better informed I listen I think podcasting is a miracle I think it's world-class education on demand anytime you want about any subject you want like you want to learn about history you want to learn about philosophy you want Lear business you'll find somewhere

in the podcast directory some nut crazy educator that has gone down the rabbit hole to a degree that most people find unreasonable and you can download that into your brain on demand here's the problem that I noticed people don't understand what learning is learning learning is not memorizing information learning is changing your behavior correct okay that's that's Alex's definition too yeah perfect there's a lot of like you could tell horoi like I don't know if he reads a bunch of biographies but he sounds like he does because a lot of the stuff he says is

like oh like that sounds a lot like Buffett there's a lot of stuff you should hang with him I'd love to I'd love to see you two talk yeah I'd love to um so the what I am shocked by because again like the way I spend my life like if I'm not with my family I'm hanging out with other founders and all the founders listen to the show because that's like my entire network right and I'm so and you know I become like the founder Whisperer and I know a lot about what's going on in

their business and everything and I'm like you said you listen to episode 299 or like that idea it's like hey uh never ever forget the dynamic range of human beings like you saying hey This Guy's super talented but he wants five times the amount of salary as this other guy who's like oneth is good obviously pay the the most talented person like there there's so many where they know the lessons and they're not actually changing their behavior and so I I am delusionally optimistic on the impact that podcasts have because I say podcasts are a

miracle and so I do hope it you're living in it yeah but I'm worried I'm worried that I'm overestimating I think you I think we both are how many people like I change my behavior I'm obviously not a perfect person but like I literally say every single person I've read about and I have no ego attached to this they are smarter and more productive than me that's a fact that's not like that's not hyperbolic that's a fact so what is the point of me spending all my time studying and learning from them if I don't

change my behavior that means my entire life was a waste and I refused to waste my life so I changed my behavior and so I'm just worried that a lot of people don't so I would love it to be 70% 60% my also thing is people are like oh do you have to grow up poor to like have outsized and no the answer of course not it's just most people grow up poor like if we you IM sure we're in a bubble inside of a bubble inside of a bubble even if you look at like

the top 1% in the world you know across eight billion people what is this like $40,000 a year or something like that let's say just an America I think it's like $70,000 a year it's like we're in a bubble inside of a bubble inside of a bubble um and so I I I'm very uh and I I think also human nature is constant so I'm a little worried that we can shift the variants by that much yeah yeah behavioral genetics is like the physics of the way the people people show up and there's no changing

that you don't get to go in we talking about like the the the impact that your the relationship with your father could have on increasing your drive well was Francis fora siblings that way I just did this episode and this guy named James J Hill right and again same way I found him MERS like hey there's this great James J Hill is a great operator like Rockefeller and Carnegie I'm like what like I know who Carnegie and Rockefeller are who's this guy he's the greatest railroad entrepreneur in American history uh he created this the the

only uh at the time railroad industry right in 18 late 1800s were as it was the by far the most important industry in America by far it's like what the internet or AI would be now uh in 1885 the railroad industry took in twice the amount of Revenue as the federal government uh it was holy [ __ ] yeah yeah it was the large the nation's largest employer the railroaders which were the the railroad entrepreneurs that's what they were called railroaders owned over 10% of the land mass in the United States like wild that you've

got such [ __ ] railways I know I know I know and but James J Hill was the only person right the only person only railroad entrepreneur to ever uh Su to run a rail rail line that did not go bankrupt so this is guy is the best in the most important industry of his time okay he's the Elon of the train he he grows up with a poor father so poor that he's laying at his house and he can see the moon through the roof because there's holes in the roof yet he dips out

of Canada he's like I I'm he believes in the dynamic you know the power of one individual and everything else so he goes and seeks his fortune in America right what does his two siblings do they talk about inphy they're like this is what our life is we're just poor Farmers they stayed yeah fascinating what is that fascinating yeah you've got this split test you've got the same father you've got the same environment but a totally different outcome this is why uh so much woman called Nancy atov and uh she's probably the leading twins researcher

on the planet and um between her and Robert pman you realize just how squirly uh life can become even when you share the same uh environment when you grow up in the same environment jeans jeans matter a lot man so I did uh I was going to tell you about this a little bit later on I did a a genetic test so I had a full genome uh sequence done uh and as a part of that the uh organization they're able to compare you to the population at Mass they can say this is a one

copy of this snip or two copies of this snip is uh 20% of the population have got that 6% of the population have got it when it's both and they do it for everything yeah and uh this is related to this this is related to dopamine this is related to drive this is related to Obsession this is a risk for alcohol this is realis risk for Alzheimer's or or or whatever whatever whatever whatever and um I need to go back and and uh go through it properly before I start talking about it fully on the

show but um I want to introduce you to the Sim company cuz I I want you to get it done because it taught me so much about myself so many of the things that I thought were cultivated virtues um what it very much being is like unbelievably fertile ground I've thrown a bit of water on and it's just like oh you were going to be this way now you could have been this way for drugs or alcohol or or you know any other kind of Obsession but you were going to be obsessed there was no

way there was no way that I was going to grow up and not be obsessed about something did they identify why your forearms are so huge that that actually isn't available uh I love the Q&A they're like it's just the F bro do you know you know what the other thing is when I do these [ __ ] live shows the q&a's live are just the same I like Shake someone's hand doing a Mee greet and they're like dude they really are big in real life they don't even refer to the forearm they're like they

really are as if if it's like bro you need merch just just a picture of your forarm forearms all right actions Express priority we are only what we do not what we say we are no I mean I and this is I think just part of getting older having more experience but I don't care at all what people are like what they say is important to them I just look how do you spend your time like you came in here early and I gave you a hug I was like how the hell you even bigger

than I saw you last time I just saw you in Austin like two months ago and you're like I lift heavy weights yeah I could tell like like what is important to Chris is obvious obviously you take care of your health health uh you're a Madman about you have probably no not probably you have the best most cinematic video podcast on the planet like you are expressing to the world and you make yourself easy to interface with as as a byproduct of this is like what is important to you as opposed if I saw you

and you had like this big gut and you're like yeah you know I love working out and you know I eat healthy I'm like yeah are you sure about that or like I take my podcast so many people come this part happens to you too they like hey you know talk to me about podcast and I remember this happened one time where this guy's like all right I started a podcast and like he's a a family friend and so he asked my brother-in-law he's like can can do you think David would meet with me about

his podcast and so I I was like yeah if it's a favor for you that's fine I talk to him and five minutes into I like wait a minute how many episodes Have You Done he's like six I was like six I was like there's nothing to talk about like come back when you've done like 200 and then we can talk but like this doesn't make this is not a good use of your time and so so the entrepreneurial uh like the reason that's that's so powerful in the history of Entrepreneurship is because the greatest

entrepreneurs like they most of them work well beyond well beyond the need for money so money is not their greatest resource money is a way and an asset that they use to bring what they want forth into the world what they want right they all know that time is your most valuable resource it's the only R unrenewable resource that they have and so if you're watching like if you you're curious about like what was important to Steve Jobs for example he really gave blew my mind about this and this is something me and you have

talked about in private like I need to get better at marketing the podcast right and because his whole point was like hey I think the the Apple devices I'm making are good for the world I want every single human on the planet to own an Apple device and first of all Steve not at the price point that you're at but that's fine and he goes but and to do that we have to become a great marketing company he goes we know how to build great products we are not a great marketing company so what do

he do his action Express priority so he said every Wednesday we are going to have a 3-hour meeting I will be there every Wednesday I will be involved all the people involved in the marketing advertising for Apple are going to be present and we're going to review our work every Wednesday and he got to the point where like you know some people call them micromanagers I just say they're into the details you know James J Hill all the all the great entrepreneurs are into the details when you came in here and started I saw you

directing I was like oh this guy this is another Steve Jobs guy um it didn't matter if it was an ad that was was going to run as a full page in the Wall Street Journal or a billboard in nowhere Missouri it did not go out without his approval his actions were expressing his priority and what you do is like that's not just in business it's in everything if you want to be a good dad and you don't spend any time with your kid your actions are expressing what you what you actually want to do

so uh yes and I love this um but the issue is that it can become difficult to work out where the boundaries of that stop how much should you care about the things that you do I'm not sure but the answer probably isn't as much as possible all the time about everything yes you can't be perfect example of this and the the the solution is deliberate deoptimization right so it's choosing in advance what you're going to suck at these are insights from Oliver burkman who's fantastic um one of my friends uh told me about deliberate

deoptimization strategy that he was using I asked him for an example he said well I fly a lot and if I had the right number of different credit cards and I had all my points tied in and I made sure that I used them the best way and I had you know a wallet this big I would be able to maximize my points but I just it it's not a sufficiently high priority I have other things that are higher up so I just I'm going to let that one slide that's just going to be an

L for me could I be more optimized yeah I could but look it works yeah now are you going to do that in your highest calling am I going to do that when I'm trying to book a guest on the show or we're trying to set up the lighting or we're fighting for a great location or whatever no no that's an area that I need to do it and the problem that the insecure overachiever has that the type a person with a type B problem has is not knowing where the boundaries of their Obsession should

stop because it can't be everything I agree with that it can't be everything and if it is everything the things that it really should before will suffer and you will feel it and you feel miserable no I definitely agree so you mentioned Tim Kirk earlier Steve I think was the best like he was Ruth he was a ruthless uh he had the ability to like ruthlessly prioritize things and so he picked like product right and he would again just like every ad every pixel on your screen every button on that device he would have to

approve before it goes out but could he do that for everything no he sucked his supply chain so that's why he actually hired and and had Tim Cook that was T what Tim Cook's job was primarily before you know Steve died of cancer um so yeah I completely agree I the way I put it is um something that also reappears in the books is they limit the great entrepreneurs limit the amount of details to perfect and then they make every detail perfect where a lot of entrepreneurs mistake is like they are optimizing something that should

never exist this is something Elon talks about over and over again he's like before you optimize something make sure it's actually essential to like what you're actually trying to bring into the world um and so for for like me and you or I guess for me is really simple it's like how should I be spending with time I should either be reading or I should be making podcasts in my work that's all I have to do and the one reason like I don't have an assistant or I don't have anything else like well you need

an assistant you're hard to get in touch with I was like well then I'm managing a calendar I shouldn't have a calendar because all I have to do is wake up every day as long as I wake up every day and I read for a few hours a day right and I sit down once a week and I summarize what I learned that week from my reading I will get everything I want in life everything else from that is a distraction dude we uh we broke the entire show this whole thing all of the different

machinery and the bits and pieces behind it how the growth happens and what I feel fulfilled by and what makes the world a better place and what grows the revenue and all the rest of things we broke all of that down and it's one two three four it's four things but because of your next lesson I'm not going to say them but there's four things yeah there four things that's it should we oh I've heard that Tik tok's prioritizing videos that are over seconds long so maybe we should be is it one of those four

things no it's not well what if we repur because we can do a Cross promo it's not one of the four things yeah there's only four things that make an impact on everything you see this at Elon so all the stuff that happened with the election I you know I saw all the tweets and everything I think the most important tweet was that uh the this per perfect encapsulation of why makes Elon great and like he literally figures like what is the most important lever for what I'm trying to accomplish today and then he he

relentlessly jumps up and down on it so he identifies like oh the entire election hinges on Pennsylvania so like I will build a ground gain there I will go like he's like if we win pennslvania we do everything else and so he sets up shop and he just puts all of his resources behind it you know the early days of SpaceX the only thing that matters is if we don't get a rocket to orbit we have nothing else so what's the most thing getting a rocket to orbit and then once we do that we obviously

have to sell and everything else he and uh one of Elon doesn't have a lot of mentors but I've heard him reference uh Larry Ellison is one of his mentors which I thought was fascinating and I've read three biographies on Ellison um I wish there were more and he there's in one of the biographies he Larry Ellison is arguing right he's one of the richest people on the planet he was like 40% of Oracle for God's sake um he's arguing with his assistant because his assistant is like hey we have a 100 important things there's

a thousand things we need to get to he's like no no no there's not a 100 there's not a thousand there's three he goes I'm going to focus on those three and I'm going to ignore everything else ruthless prioritization like that is such a key part of ACH things on life in other news this episode is brought to you by Shopify Shopify Powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States including huge Brands like gym shark and all birds and neonic they are the global Commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your

business look you do not want to learn to code to start your business you don't want to learn how to build a website or how to do inventory management or web hosting or to design stuff you want to get all of that out of the way so you can get on with what you're here to do which is to build and sell cool stuff that's what Shopify helps you do and that's why we use them for newtonic they're literally your no excuses business partner you can sell without learning to code or design you just bring

your best ideas and Shopify will help you to sell immediately plus shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way right now you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to shopify.com slod wisdom or case that's shopify.com wisdom to grow your business now no matter what stage you're in Bad Boys move in silence yes when you find an edge shut up about it talking invites competition competition destroys profits so I grew up listening to hip-hop and

the the interesting thing about my obsession with like maxims and memorable things like you I think a lot of that came from it's not like I read poetry when I was younger I listen to hip-hop and like they're very poetic and they have lines in there that you just remember that's from Biggy Smalls Bad Boys mooving silence and it's funny because I'm reading this obscure biography of Rockefeller and it really clicked because everybody's read there's there's one canonical biography of Rockefeller called Titan it's like 800 Pages it's great that's fine I've read it like two

times Rockefeller is the man right but I went through the biography or the bibliography and I I discovered books are made out of books and so I found this obscure biography uh published uh in like 1970 and now you try to get the book it's like $4,000 because all these books are out of print and it's in there and it's it's 250 pages right um there's a longer thing here where I think I think it's slothful not to compress your thoughts that's like church say stuff like that what was that thing about uh sorry I

wrote you such a long letter if I'd only had more time I could have written you a shorter one I I think it's disrespectful to people to not like think about if you want a high value audience and you're saying hey I can tell a story in an hour and a half or I can tell a story in 45 minutes but I took an hour and a half I just stole 45 minutes of your life that you're not getting back times that by however many people like I I I spent an entire day I me

and you've talked about this privately uh one of one of the big breakthroughs I had is like spending an entire day before I sit down and record just literally going through all my notes and highlights and just cutting I never I never add it's like nope ruthlessly cut try to respect the people's time but anyways I think authors should do that I like Titan do I need to know what the furniture is like in his grandfather's house no I do not I want to know how he built maybe the greatest business has ever existed and

so this book is 200 50 pages of how he built Standard Oil it's called John D the founding fathers of the Rockefellers I know friends that have literally bought the book because they heard the episode and they spent $2,000 because it's like this is the guy like there's an idea worth billions in a $2,000 history book and so in that book it's all secrecy covered everything in his when I think of Bad Boys move in silence I think of Rockefeller it's it's in all kinds of um other entrepreneurs but essentially saying hey uh you don't

understand how lucrative this is and I'm not going to educate my competition because if you go and say hey look how much money I'm making what are humans going to do they're all a medic they're like oh I'm GNA try to do exactly what Chris does and so I'm gonna do and it's you invite competition and there goes your profits and so not only he would like do deals and he's say hey I'm going to buy your Refinery you can't tell your wife how much I bought it and who bought it he would have this

thing called uh there would be secret ownership so people hated Rockefeller because he was dominating this area in Cleveland and so there's this thing called Cleveland Massacre where he he essentially in like a day or a few days rounds up like 22 of his top 25 competitors like and then from there on at 25 years old or 28 years old he's real young he's the dominant player and so then he goes he also has a secret Alliance where they put him at the head of the national is the kerosene refineries Association something like that essentially

just like a trade group and he goes around he meets with all the other people in his business and they're trying to uh collude to keep price is like at a profitable level and so he gets to see their books and now as a result of this secret Alliance he knows oh just how we we know each other it's like I knew Chris was a a legit player I need to spend more time with him because he's another me right and then he goes oh that's a that's a good competitor maybe I need to buy

him this guy I don't to worry about this guy this guy's not serious I see his books and so what he would do some of those people say Rockefeller are too powerful I'm not selling to you and so they go and they sell to a company not knowing that Rockefeller secretly owns that company so if you really want to internalized Bad Boys moving silence it it Rockefeller is the the the Prototype but there's another great thing um in in Steve Jobs lost years he dumps 50 million of his own money and at the time he

only had $70 million so he dumps almost all you know majority of his wealth into Pixar and literally they can't make payroll they don't have a product he's just writing checks to cover the payroll and they pivot from trying to sell Hardware which is how Pixar started to what the team really wanted to do when they were passionate about was like we want to make the world's first computer animated movies and so Steve's like okay we need to study like is animation profitable and he has a great line in that book he's like it's not

like you can go to the library and check out a book that says the business model for animation because there's only one company that's ever done it successfully that's Disney and they don't want anybody to know how lucrative it was so he winds up building relationships relationships around the world see how all these things tie together with people in Disney he finds out holy [ __ ] they they can literally like they take Snow White what he discovers the Snow White came out like 60 years before and then you have the invention of VHS and

you have a new invention of DVDs so you in the '90s and they take something they haven't put a dollar into in 60 years that our kids are still going to watch they put it on the new technology of the day VHS DVD quarter trillion or excuse me not quarter TR 250 million drops to their bottom line all profit that's one movie and so that's when you realize oh the reason they shut up about it because they don't want people to know how lucrative it is and you see this over and over again A friend

of mine is doing uh he's doing let me see if if I can put this sensitively he is buying a bunch of other companies so he's rolling up a bunch of other companies okay and he's doing it so successfully he runs a publicly traded company that he caught the attention of somebody else that has been doing a similar strategy in a different domain for the last like three decades and he goes they share a board member and so he meets with them and this older wiser guy tells my friend he goes hey uh what you're

doing is working he goes now shut up about it stop do interviews stop talking about your strategy he goes because I you know the amount of competitors I created for myself because I didn't hide what I was doing successfully and so people saw how this guy became the guy that's giving him the advice became a multibillionaire how anybody's like this guy's worth $3 billion whatever number is how do he do that oh this is what he does let me copy him he's like now I just created all these clones of me and now I have

made it more difficult to do what I wanted to do anyways so bad boys moving silence is something appears over and over and over again belief comes before ability the external world has this backwards the belief that you can do something is a prerequisite for trying this drives me insane so you you mentioned earlier like you don't know how normal normal people are and I'm going to remember that line because people are like over and over again when you have somebody you have somebody like the founder of Four Season we talked about you know hey

uh Chris we're friends like I'm going to tell you my dream and my dream is to build uh the collection not just one a collection of the world's greatest hotels and you're like Izzy you've never you have no money you've never built a hotel like what are you talking like why would you even think this is possible what you need to do is prove it first and then we'll believe in you it's like no that's ass backwards belief always comes before ability there's a story where elon's on you know he tries to buy a rocket

at first he thought he was just going to shoot like this this um this like Garden uh for lack of a better word to Mars on somebody else's rocket and because he was trying to like draw attention to the fact that hey NASA is not innovating we're like not we're stuck in like lower Earth orbit like why aren we trying to get to Mars why AR you trying to you know um colonize the Galaxy and he he's goes to Russia they like treat him like [ __ ] and he's on the way back and he

just realizes hey we're going to build our own rocket and people laugh at him they're like oh this internet kid CU you he's 29 28 he's like who are you internet kid you can't do that his belief came before his ability he believed that he could do that and then he went out and proved it now when I say belief comes before ability it doesn't mean you just sit there and be like I'm great and you don't do it no you do the work necessary to achieve what you want but if you're waiting for the

external world to like push encourage you or and Ed you on like it's impossible so I wasn't sure I wasn't sure what direction you were going in with that because one reading of that sounds fantastic and I wholeheartedly disagree mhm but the one from the outside world I think is absolutely bang on so the reason that I disagree if you would to say belief comes before ability as in self-belief uh I wrote an essay this week about it so I'm going to read it to you okay an Ode to people who don't believe in themselves

what comes first belief or action do you need to believe that you can do a thing before you do it fake it until you make it is one option but incredibly hard if you're introspective or have low self-belief and high standards so what about make it until you fake it here are some lessons I've learned you can believe you're not worthy of a thing and still attain it you can be adamant that your efforts are going to go badly and still succeed you can grip and grasp and fear and it ruin the enjoyment and be

totally unwarranted and things still go well you can have no self-belief and show up anyway and still win you can want more for yourself without knowing exactly what that looks like you can doubt the process question your talent be uncertain that you're making progress disparage your accomplishments permanently feel like you're not working hard enough no matter how hard you work never give yourself a break fail to fully feel gratitude be terrified of never reaching your goals and still end up in a place that your 20-year-old self could not imagine you'd ever get to self-belief is

overrated generate evidence yeah I would like I you could say self when I say belief comes before ability I mean self-belief yeah but I don't that line I would disagree where it's like self-belief is overrated I think it's the the the the highest order bit there's actually one area where I disagree with Steve Jobs and he talks about like um the highest order bit it's a it's from like computer science where it's like the most important part of the system right and this is like a complete like oversimplification of it but um and his whole

thing was like the highest order bit is that like you love what you do and for all the reasons that we discussed earlier you'll keep doing it for a long time you'll persevere and everything else and I love what I do I know you love what you do and I agree like it's super important I think it makes life easier you Ed the phrase like you're swimming Downstream earlier I think is a great way to put that and so I was thinking about that because um the Steve Jobs archive which is run by Steve's Widow

just released this free book you can read online called make something wonderful Steve Jobs in his own words and it's remarkable and so like I've read it a bunch of times and you know he talks about this in there um that's where I discovered the highest order bit part and then I was thinking about it more and more and I was just like well no that's not like what comes first it's like the belief that you can actually do something that's valuable to the world that provide that like is an active service and makes the

world a better place and I think me and you might be good examples it's like how many years were you doing the podcast before anybody gave a damn three and a half mine was five and a half why were you still doing it because I was swimming downn stream because you believed that you could like you believed that you could do it the belief that you had that you could actually make something worth people's time and listening right that lag was a couple years before the world's like yes Chris we agree with you yeah that's

an interesting way to think about self-belief um because I believe that the thing that that I'm doing right now is of value to the world and the world just as yet hasn't recognized that it's like an interesting pivot on self-belief um the belief I know that I can make it I have never had I've never had yeah ever ever I am the best avatar for somebody that is permanently looking at his feet going how the [ __ ] am I stood here like how did this happen uh very much don't believe that you're worthy of

a thing still attained it disparage your accomplishments but still get them uh grip grasp fear ruin the enjoyment all of that all of that like the entire for me Journey up until probably only the last two years basically moving to America was sort of Riven with self-doubt and uncertainty and and am I even is am I even doing this right like but I enjoyed the thing that I was doing and I knew that I was good at that thing mhm but I didn't know that there was going to be some outcome so I think it's

what is the sort of self-belief directed at yeah in a way directed at the outcome of I know that I can do this thing well and I enjoy it all day directed at this is going to reach something that some portion of people will accuse of being success never really once so I I've heard you say that perspective on your show before I would say like interacting with you in person you come across unbelievably you've only known me for the last two years yeah much bigger much bigger mountain of evidence yeah good point after a

while if impostor syndrome continues to persist even though you keep disproving it do you have imposter syndrome today no okay no no more I'm about to step out on stage in front of three and a half thousand people in London I just came back from Oz 5,000 people other side of the planet yeah and um no not anymore uh but that like I I need to really write this out cuz I haven't yet I'm just such a [ __ ] poster boy for somebody that would have abiding impostor syndrome like very uncertain very unsure of

himself of his place in the world a need for validation a desire to be seen as competent like all of the thing all you know just like the [ __ ] ingredients to make a really beautiful impostor syndrome cast role and um it's dropped away and it's gone and it's not gone through any weird combination of mindset changes and and sort of conscious reframing uh it's gone because it's been crushed under a [ __ ] neutron star worth weight of evidence yeah that I'm like I just can't I can't keep holding on to a belief

that that things are going to go badly or that I'm not good enough or that I don't have the talent or that even though I feel like I'm working hard I know that I should be working infinitely harder because I'm just like how many times do you want to roll the dice and it come up six six six like over and over and over and over again and um yeah I just I really want to write it out because I think that there's a lot of people who have a a level of self-doubt so great

that they struggle to even connect with with like an inspirational story because it feels like it's a different I agree completely I think um a lot of people accuse entrepreneurs of being arrogant and of course they are like you'd have to be arrogant to think like oh I don't have to go I can I don't have to work for somebody else like I can I can literally take something that doesn't exist and like bring it to the world but my issue with that is like we don't have an epidemic of arrogance we have an epidemic

of people who don't believe in themselves and so the weird thing about the early days of the podcast you know these people that I'm reading about and telling stories about they're they're crazy people like they are all crazy people and yet I kept hearing the same review the same email the same DM I find your podcast so comforting I'm like what kind of I was like oh there's a million you know of us out there that are like this is me too and that's the biggest key we're like the the reason the the biographies are

important and life stories in general is not because like we're talking about Francis for cop's life or Steve Jobs life or any of the lives we've talked about it's like no no you see yourself in them correct that's the key dude I I've realized this over the last couple of years we don't fall in love with other people who are perfect we fall in love with other people who we see ourselves in their flaws and there's been a few times on the show or or going out for dinner and meeting people or whatever like ha

I this person's you know really smart or really interesting or really insightful and I just don't care and I have nothing to talk to them about and I realized it's that can't find hooks mhm in their shortcomings that I can latch on to that either I'm not uh I'm unable to see them for some reason they're being hidden they're incentivized to hide them they don't align with the way that I see the World perhaps you know cultural differences stuff like that um but yeah we we what we really really resonate with is somebody else who

has a shortcoming that we see eles in you see a little version of yourself in Chris Bumstead when he cries on stage or when he's uncertain about whether or not he's going to win you see a little bit of yourself in Kobe when he snaps his Achilles and he's unsure about where he's going but then he pulls himself back around you know like whoever it is like you see your and that I think is um is reassuring to a lot of people it's certainly reassuring to me when I realized that the most interesting person in

the room in fact this was this was born out of our trip to Miami for George's birthday uh the most interesting person in the room isn't the most interesting person in the room it's the person who makes everybody else feel like they're the most interesting person in the room so you don't need to worry about not being charismatic you just need to make other people feel charismatic like I I called it inverse Charisma MH um that you know that story was it Winston Churchill's wife who went to go and see the two different American presidents

and she said I sat down with one of them and after a dinner being next to him I left feeling like he was the smartest person in the world I sat down a couple of months later with his opponent and after that dinner I left feeling like I was the smartest person in the world like who do you want to be I want to be the sort of person that makes other people feel like the smartest person in the world and the beautiful thing about this idea is that so many people want to be liked

and charismatic but feel like they don't have any Charisma or likeability mhm you don't need to it's not about you yeah it's about what you do to other people and that is so much easier if you're just you don't need to be interesting you just need to be [ __ ] interested in somebody else I love that you said that cuz I say the most interesting people are the most interested and like the the people that I'm drawn to right because to your point like you meet so many people and some cases like you admire

them a from afar and I think one of the the biggest benefits is like and this is why I'm again evangelist for reading biographies and autobiographies is because like we're incentivized in our day-to-day to like make things seem better like you were just talking about the health problems that you know you're like hey I'm not ready to talk about this but you know when I am I'll talk about it but like from the side people like Chris has has at everything you know he's handsome he's in great shape he's world famous like he's got one

of the best podcasts in the world and you're like yeah but you haven't seen the [ __ ] that I've been going through for the last like 12 months and the biography is like you see that because they're not people don't write sit down to write a biography when they're like 30 35 40 when they're still in it they there's some weird genetic thing where it's like I know I'm going to die soon I want to pass down everything I know in this book it's a Act of service to the next generation of entrepreneurs I

think is really important and that's the I I when I just did the the Elon episode on um the SpaceX book the one of the things I said is just like the reason that you guys should read this book is because like you have not only just Elon a genius but all the early SpaceX employees are genius and the whole book is these Geniuses can't figure [ __ ] out and like they're running into problem after problem after problem and then you know six years later they figure it out that is so good for you

it's like oh if that guy you know if that guy couldn't do that then then then it makes sense like I feel better about myself again it's Technic a story about El SpaceX but you make it about yourself I just think that's human nature by endurance we conquer time carries most of the weight it is hard to beat someone who never stops oh this is uh I feel hormos would say something like that too so uh my phone is now changed uh you know this one I call you it's it's it's Michael Jordan being really

intense but for like a year and a half it was uh or for like maybe two years it was uh by endurance we conquer is the family motto of Ernest Shackleton who's probably the greatest you know polar one of the Great greatest polar explorers and I believe I'm a huge believer in consistency over intensity and I think what a lot of people a lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake is like there's there first of all there's never up until the first few years ago there's no such thing as like an entrepreneurship like industry now there's

like an industry and people are incentivized to try to spread it and try to put money to these companies and so what happens like people are in a rush right and they try to take like an idea and like instead of building it slowly and making it durable right they're like let's just throw a lot of money and at it and like try to do it fast and then you see them like it may grow for a little bit and pop and I think there's an issue and so what I realized is like the greatest

entrepreneurs is like no one writes a book about somebody's like oh they ran a company and five years in it was really successful 10 years it was gone right they they write about businesses that last and so um I had one of the greatest experiences of my life this year and um I was at this company offsite and it was a 70-year-old female billionaire owning a private company right and like just the her company building philosophy like I told her I was like I'm in love with you and my wife was with me and I

was like like I literally love you like I love every way you build your company and her whole thing is just very common sense she's just like handful of principles I'm always just going to do what's best for the customer and the customer experience and that's where I'm going to put my money and I'm in this forever and so she told me this hilarious story where um you know she felt because she she wasn't trained in business and she was a woman like I need Consultants I need McKenzie and I need Bane and I hiring

spending millions of dollars on this and first of all they're like uh you know you should buy up all your competitors and so they start looking into this and it's like well how much would that be and you know whatever let's say that company's going to cost 200 million to buy and she's like but why don't I just put that $200 million into like making my customer experience better and so she told me the hilarious story she's like year five you know I had 15 competitors uh year 15 I have 10 year 25 I had

three year four she's rning company for 40 year 40 I have one he goes I took took the money instead of buying out their companies I made my customer experience better my product better my marketing better controlled more things and they went out of business slowly but surely and so time carries most of the weight that that's a that's a maximum that I came up with where I was listening to Charlie Munger Charlie Munger has this good his whole point is like hey there's if you just Master the Big Ideas in a handful of disciplines

and you really Master them and Implement them that it like the big ideas in like you know physics biology psychology economics there's only a handful of ideas you actually need to memorize in all these main subjects and that carries most of the freight it's like oh that's a good turn of phrase like that that makes sense and then I'm reading more and more about these stories and it's like oh like you're not winning because you're a genius you're not winning because like you're winning because you just Outlast Everybody by endurance we conquer you she conquered

through endurance because she made she was she made her company durable this is what Peter teal is wrote what I if you're only going to read one book on business obviously in my opinion especially today's day age you read Z to one right and everybody that's building a tech company has read that book and yet they miss his most important lesson which is like hey don't optimize for growth at the expense of durability and the reason you're likely to optimize for growth at the expense of durability is growth is measurable and durability is not and

the reason durability is so important he says is because in technology compan and almost all companies all the vast majority of the profits are 10 15 20 years out the amount of money that that company that woman I just described is making today is 95% 99% more than what she was making year 10 all the money was in the future what's that thing about uh Buffett made some obscene percentage of his entire net worth after 6 yes like 90 you see that graph it goes viral on Twitter all the time and that's obviously the magic

of compounding too and it's like that's why I say buy endurance reconquer like I'm not trying to have the hot podcast or a great episode this week I'm trying to do this until I die I want them to pry the microphone from my cold dead hands and so therefore I need to make sure that I'm how do I do that I have to maintain first of all it's is valuable for the audience I have to have trust with the people that give me their time and so like you just say hey I'm not making a

decision based on what what I'm doing today I'm is this decision going to serve that goal so people will still think that I'm trustworthy and that what I'm doing in the world's valuable over 10 15 20 years from now if you know your business from a to zed there is no problem you can't solve the best entrepreneurs stay in the details of their business I love that you say Zed every time I hear it on your podcast I just so this is a literally a line that um was this guy named Sam Z Murray okay

so I go out this is our friend George Mack right who we both love he's the one that really has put into my brain the import of being high agents you know he's really good just breaking everything the [ __ ] yourself keep going it's all your big muscles that's true um so so George Mack is the one that put the importance of being high agency in my like I think his writing on it his memes the the stuff he makes is just perfect and I I would say every single person I read a biography

about is high agency the most high agency person I've ever come across is that guy named Sam zuray so what's funny is there's another line in 0o to one that I think people mistake too where they say um all technology is is a better way to do something so people think technology is got to be like software it's got to be computers it's like no at one point a steamboat the invention of the steamboat engine was a technology of that day because it made uh it made it possible a better way to do something and

what did that do so one of the first this will surprise a lot of people one of the first multinational corporations in human history were the fruit companies because you before you had a banana you grew it in Jamaica or you grew in Honduras that banana you have to eat in like like four days so without the or 5 days or week whatever it is without the invention of the steamboat you have a local market so you match fruit which humans have you are going to eat forever with the steamboat and you create one of

the first multinational corporations so Sam Z Murray right is this guy he is a poor Russian immigrant right comes to America shows up in like Alabama and builds this gigantic fruit Empire and the book the reason the book is called the fish to ate the whale is because the the biggest fruit company of the time is called United Fruit and Sams and Murray competes head-to-head with them and then eventually he takes over the little fish eats the whale he takes over that company so the reason that he says that is because his competition when the

founders die the people running United Fruit their business is in Central America that's where all the fruit is uh is grown and then it's shipped into like the Gulf Coast and Florida and then and then put on trains and put everywhere else they thought they were going to run their business remotely in Boston and this guy's out here he's literally hacking machetes he's helping the railroad track uh he's taking uh inventory he's building the boats he's doing every single thing and the reason he's did that they're like why are you doing this his whole point

he's like because if I know my business from A to Z there's no problem I can't solve because I know every component you just said you broke down your business to four components you probably know those four components in and out now if you know hey we have a problem with component three no problem I understand what we need to fix it's such an important thing where a lot of people like this goes back to normal people or you know un obsessed people they call this micromanaging or oh you shouldn't do all this it's like

no they're in the details he is in the details one of the funniest stories of this is the the like the fruit Association or something there's some kind of trade group he's in Havana right this is probably like 1900 1910 or something like this and he's they're they want to give him an award so like they call out his name here's this award for the you know fruit guy of the Year whatever they call it and like he's not in the audience they track him down he's on the port he's going over the inventory he's

like I don't have I don't care about a WS I care about the business like I'm in the details of my business and so I would say way this isn't like a none of these are like you know like what Chris bum said said like you know you can some of these work for you some of these are not going to work for you I would say most of the people I read about are you would consider like micromanagers Larry Ellison I mentioned earlier not a micromanager not a grinder he says in his book He's

a sprinter he's like I take care of the top level stuff strategy product stuff like that putting the right people in but then I hire other people to be in the details Elon in I think maybe change now but in his early days like in SpaceX he knew the rocket forward and backwards so it could also these could also apply again Contex apply them to your situation the beginning of company might want to do that maybe your your interest shift or maybe you find somebody's better at that detail than you are you just figure out

how to apply yourself but but this is something that re occurs over and over again the public Praises people for what they practice in private there is no such thing as an overnight success every Great ACT is built on your of practice no no one sees so this goes back to my love of hip-hop that public Praises people for what they practice in private is this line from this rapper named Russ and uh I think Russ is actually interesting he'd actually be a good guest for you um he's done some great interviews but Russ was

the first person in history to uh write record produce mix and master an entire album so one person only one person and it got over a billion streams and so I think he's like very fascinating person how he thinks about things but he's also gifted Lyricist and he he um says stuff that like kind of Sears in my brain um and so the this is like the point we were talking about earlier we like you know you can go out and say Jeff Bezos has too much money he shouldn't have the the world's largest yacht

and he shouldn't have all these things and the giant house everywhere and so I'm going to put a guillotine and I'm going to take things away from him but you didn't see like all the stuff that that he was doing before that you didn't see the fact that he was making door desks you didn't see that he was literally there's a line in his biography where he is buying um knee pads because he's the one putting the back packages together putting them in his like Jeep and then taking them to to UPS um and so

one of my favorite stories about this and there's actually like an idea I think that's related to this that the public Praises people for what they practice in private is this idea of going slow so you can go faster later on and I think Sam Walton's a perfect example of this um and I I bring up Sam all the time because he's one of my favorite entrepreneurs because he's like a very a business is so easy to understand in a way that I think Amazon is not you know what's Walmart's business I buy cheaply and

I sell cheaply and I just do that and I'm big bigger and better than anybody else and that's what generates the wealth and so the crazy thing about um like the outcome that Sam had is nobody saw that for the first five years of his life he had a single store one store he was like trying to figure out like what is this retail thing what am I good at what should what's the merchandise I should do what like how do I do this how's the marketing and there's a great line in his biography where

it talks about the fact that his first store they owned for 5 years was so successful that he made a a mistake a rookie mistake his land he he had a lease and the lease could be terminated any time there was no option he didn't have the option to renew the landlord said would have to say yeah I want you back in here the landlord realized that oh my God this store that you know was making $20,000 a year is now making 300,000 in a tiny little tiny little town I'm just going to say sam

nice to know you I'm taking over your store and so he's forced to then go look for another store that's he discovers Bonville Arkansas so he buys a store there but there's like a multiple month time frame where he has to run two stores for the first time in his life and this was really important because one he realized oh I can I don't have to have just one store I can run two stores at a time but he's also driving back and forth over between these like mountainous roads so even though the stores are

let's say they're 300 miles away from each other it's like an8 hour drive or something there uh each way and so he's like man there's got to be a more efficient way to do this and one day he's he's driving driving and he hears a plane overhead and he's like oh this a Cessna so he goes to the air Airfield he says hey how much would it cost to hire Cessna to fly me from bville to I think Newport is where the other store was and it was you know whatever 50 bucks $100 back in

the day and then he realizes hey I don't want to keep having this expense of um like having to Charter a plane every time like have somebody else drive I'll just teach myself how to fly and why is that important this goes back to the public Praises people for what they practice in private they say look Sam you built a $200 billion [ __ ] fortune look at all the stuff you did they don't see all the stuff that happen what he realized is like hey now I can fly my own plane so I this

this this what was a problem was problems or just opportunities and work close I thought me losing my first store was a problem one being the best opportunity in life it taught me one that I can run more than one store at a time and then two I accidentally discovered oh I can now fly I learned how to fly and so the advantage he head over his competitors where I can fly over you're they're in Jets my competitors in Kmart they're in Jets right they're above the clouds I'm in a little tiny cesa I can

see traffic patterns I could see and he was scouting out I think he scouted out personally the first like 300 stores that he was doing um and so the the idea where it's like yeah we can see that you know he's one of the richest people in the world uh when he was older we could see that he has 300 stores and he's got all this other stuff but it's like you didn't see all the practice that went in there there's another story that that that illustrates the uh public Praises people for what they practice

in private he had no relationships with suppliers so at the time there was a there's a the hula hoop was like a huge craze all the kids wanted hula hoops All Over America the suppliers didn't know him so they wouldn't buy um they wouldn't sell hula hoops to him so he just looked he's like what's a hula hoop well that's a problem right what's a hula hoop he's like it's just a little pipe that's connected and it's colored and you just wiggle your hips and that's like what the toy is he's like okay he bought

the the material and at the end of the night after he worked all day he's like I'm going to make my own hula hoops he winds up doing thousands of these and then because he didn't have any money he's like how now he had multiple stores how do I get to hula hoop to other stores he had a John Boat which is like a little tiny boat cuz he's like a redneck fisherman and he just put all the hul loops in behind the John boat and he towed behind his car and that's was his delivery

system so in every single story you're going to see like it seems like there's no possible way these giant companies can start with this these little basic improvisations like just feeling your way through and then you're slowly practicing you're like oh that idea worked let me do more of that oh that idea didn't work let me avoid doing that in the future and just over and over and over again and it just compounds so the public Praises people for what they practice in private I love it I mean it's cliche to say it takes 10

years to become an overnight success but go go listen to I remember um when George Mac uh I went back and listened to because George was like one of your first guests and I went back and listened to the very first time the show and then you go and look at your skills as a podcaster it's you see this literally everything yeah self-pity has no utility if you live long enough bad things will happen to you your goal is to use the bad in life in a constructive fashion so self-pity has no utilities another Maxim

from Charlie Munger and um Charlie you know a lot of people don't like that they don't like oh don't tell me how to feel like you know like uh he he can speak to this because he had he went he experienced the worst uh thing somebody could go through I think he was like 29 years old he went getting divorced he's got a 9-year-old son named Teddy if I remember correctly and teddy gets diagnosed with fatal leukemia and at this time now he could have been safe but at that time in history there was nothing

they didn't know how to to to heal him so he is just went through a divorce he's not doing well financially because Charlie Monger doesn't become a full-time investor till he's 40 so he's 20 late 20s in the story and he is struggling at work failed marriage and he is going to the hospital every day and slowly watching his son fade away so anybody lost somebody from cancer like my mom died from breast cancer in 2017 the last two years of her life were the worst way to die because it was all through her bones

too and so like you literally see her like get smaller and like not be able to get a bed and be addicted to pain medication and like can't do anything without it um and so it's one thing for that to happen to your mom is obviously going to be devastating it's the love you have for your mom is orders of magnitude less than you have for your child when people talk about oh like the way I would describe why this is such an important thing and why this to Anchor that self-pity has you no utility

in this story that that Charlie merer mentions it in is because you know people that don't have kids are like they think they know what love is right and the way I would describe this the best description of why they don't know what love is yet is actually a story that I heard Ryan Reynolds the actor say and he's like you know his wife Blake Lively he's like I've never loved somebody as much as I love Blake I think it's it was impossible that I'd ever love somebody more he goes and that instill a day

that Blake gave birth to our baby daughter and then the moment I saw the daughter I knew that if we were ever under attack I would use Blake as a human shield to protect that baby and having two kids I was like that's exactly right that is the best description and so when I I I I don't just read these stories I try to put myself in their shoes and like I want to like cry thinking about that happening to my son and even then he's like listen you're GNA mourn it's going to change C

certain bad things are gonna happen in your life right and many of these they're out of your control that's the point that's why it's like self utility is not the solution yeah you're going to grieve you're going to mourn you're going to be changed forever if you lose your God for you lose your child your life the rest of your life is going to be fundamentally different using a parent your life is fundamentally different and his whole point I think he he um quotes EP epitus if I'm not mistaken where he's just like the the

response to the inevitable tragedies the trials and tribulations you have in your life is like learn learning from them and trying to use them as constructive in a constructive fashion it's not to wallow oh wo is me like bad things happening is a part of The Human Experience so self self-pity has no utility utilize spend your time doing something else the good ones no more the top talent in every industry has gathered more information than most people would find reasonable oh this is my favorite this is literally what I'm doing for a living because it's

also in the books so my idea was just like I don't think like you don't have to be smarter than everybody else right and some of that's outside your control it doesn't matter what I do for the rest of my life I will never be as smart as Charlie Monger but I can gather more information than another person wants would want to right um and so like the the example I have of this is like uh I read I I just told you my thing where like I read a biography about somebody I go into

the to the um bibliography and I find obscure books I I found this obscure book on Thomas Edison right in the bibliography of a book uh it was published in like 1950 or something like that and it talks about when he was 12 years old he was so voracious and had such an innate inner drive to to to make something of himself and to become an inventor and like to really have control of his own destiny he was working as like a boy so like you know very common for a 12-year-old boy to have a

full-time job at that point he was working on a railroad uh on actual train and the train would have like a switch over so it'd be a few hours every day where he would go and he'd wind find himself in Detroit and so what does he do he goes oh there's a library here he reads every single book in the library over the course of a few years um there's a guy named Edwin land who I won't shut up about I talk about all the time because he was Steve Jobs before Steve Jobs Edwin L's

the founder of Polaroid he's also one of the most prolific uh individual inventors in American history when he died he had the third most patents to his name behind Edison is somebody else um and so Steve Jobs the reason I found Edwin land is because Steve Jobs when he was in his 20s talks about meeting Edwin land when he was in his 70s and he said that meeting was like visiting a shrine so Steve's talking about edin Landon when he's 20 Steve's dying of cancer in his late 50s right still giving interviews Walter isson for

his biography still talking about this guy Edwin L right so I like oh obviously I need to to read about this guy you start reading about Edwin L he does the exact same thing he his idea he had two two goals in life I want to be the world's greatest scientist and I want to be the world's greatest novelist so obviously outsides outsides levels of ambition he decides he's like he picks a scientific field where he feels he can be the best he that's the field of light and how it like how it affects our

vision and so he starts sleeping with the canonical textbook on the the science of light and vision it's underneath his pillow when he's like 14 okay gets accepted to Harvard realizes there's there's nobody at Harvard that can teach him what he wants to learn so he goes to the Harvard Library reads every single book in the Harvard Library on light then immediately drops out moves to New York goes to New York City Public Library the beautiful one with the lies up front reads every single book on light and then and starts to do his experiments

doesn't have any money doesn't have resources he breaks into I think NYU might be Columbia let's say it's Columbia breaks into Columbia right there's a lot of you know Misfits that break do uh breaking eny they're like trying to steal your TV or something this guy was breaking in so he could use scientific uh scientific equipment so he can run his experiments but it's like they just go to unbelievable levels of um like just Way Beyond that you would you would find reasonable so another example of this the good no ones no more is this

line from David ogy again I didn't know who David ogy was reading all of Warren Buffett shareholder letters right and he keeps talking about this gen he calls he this genius David ogy I like genius who is this guy read about him he talks about he built one of the most valuable uh advertising agencies that ever existed and he talks about he's like oh you want to get promoted you want to get my spot like how do you think I got to my spot and he would encourage his the people coming up the young men

in his organization goes I'm going to sign you to uh one of their biggest clients with Shell Oil right you're going to read every s you're going to read uh every single piece of paperwork on the company history you're going to read textbooks on geology you're going to read textbooks on oil exp exploration uh you're going to know all the executives at Shell you're on Saturdays you're going to go down to the Shell gas station and you're going to interview the customers of that are that are patronizing their business within a year you'll be ready

to uh you'll be ready to take over your boss's position but that and he's like the good ones no more it's like that he worked for a friend Chef he's like they just knew every single thing about they collected more information about their craft and things related to their craft than anybody else it is interesting you know so much of the stuff that we're talking about today is going beyond the reasonable yeah there is a bar that lots of people get to tolerance for pain endurance amount of time persisting doing a thing that's a great

Insight amount of talent that somebody has prepared and it's just a case of going orders of magnitude past that there's a guy named L Schwab um who he he we could have talked about him when we talked about the the trying to not wind up like your dad cuz his dad was a drunk and a loser and Les was very poor and his dad I think Les is like 12 years old or 9 years old and his dad they find him dead in a ditch in front of a bar andless goes on to build a

multi-billion dollar Tire Company and like you know half a century ago 40 years ago um and he says something in his autobiography he's like everything you do it's volume it's like Gusto and it's he goes the combination of Gusto so like you know really throwing yourself into it and volume and he's like he he says it's a case of repeat repeat repeat repeat and again I think the the if you really want an edge in what you're doing again I'm not trying to copy I'm not trying to make atire company I'm not trying to invent

the instant photography like Edwin land did I'm not trying to be an inventor like Thomas Edison I'm not trying to uh build an advertising agency like David ogy but I just take that idea it's like the good ones no more so it's like not only am I going to spend I read for a few hours every day right that's usually in the morning because that's the time my my brain works best then I usually have lunch and then in the afternoon what I do is then I reread past highlights and relisten to old episodes and

I just seep myself in that so anytime you see like some kind of social media post from me all that is is something I reread that day that I read for the first time four years ago and I was like oh that's kind of interesting I posted this this quote about Rockefeller and importance of concentration because I went back through and I reread the highlights from the book Titan and that's what I was spending you know 30 minutes doing and it's just like all I'm I I can't guarantee that I'm going to be successful I

can't guarantee that I'm going to make a podcast that people find they think it's worth their time but what I can do is like I can't control that but I can because it's more like a um especially with podcast it's like more like a it's a subjective kind of thing right and but I can objectively do more work to hopefully influence and tilt the subjective uh like nature of podcasting in my favor and I just all I did is all I do is read books I'm like oh that's a good idea I'll take that thank

you very much this isn't [ __ ] rocket science money comes naturally as a result of service a business is just an idea that makes someone else's life better this drives me insane because again all I do is hang out with Founders and you know now the the filter's got a lot tighter than it has for the last few years but what I don't like is when people are like you know I always ask them like you know who are your entrepreneurial Heroes like who's the smartest person you know what's the best business you can

think of like what's your fa favorite biography like who do you want to emulate I think picking the right Heroes is like one of the most important things you can do in your life because you're going to naturally like all of us are going to copy and absorb things from people around us whether they're we're we're in together in person or I'm reading a book about or watching a movie about it and what drives me insane is they're like well I want they put a number on it it's not like I want to start a

company that does X or I want to help somebody do y it's I want to build a hundred billion doll company and it's like do you understand the people that build1 billion dollar company you think Jeff basus was sitting back there and like I'm going to build a $3 trillion company you think Steve Jobs What Am my you think Steve Jobs thought that Apple was going to get to 2 trillion or whatever it's at today one of my favorite uh pieces of trivia about about Apple is the first ever Apple sale was made Barefoot he

didn't even have shoes on when he sold his first set of computer they weren't even computers like his first Apple product his first sale was made Barefoot there's no way that guy was like I'm going to start this because there's a number attached to it so money comes natural's result of service is from Henry Ford okay Henry Ford's autobiography I think is like a mandatory like I think entrepreneur should read it over and over again you know every two or three years and he Henry Ford in 1919 he owned 100% of Ford Motor Company because

he bought out all all his investors and he was arguably the richest person in America at the time so it's like it's like me and you owning like a 20 billion company with no outside shareholders today like just insane right and yet you go and you analyze like the life of Henry Ford and he's the one that said that he's like he had one single idea he's like it's kind of messed up that uh cars are only for the rich people at the time they're like handmaking them most of the cars on the road are

either electric or steam he obviously populares internal combustion engine there a funny let me take a tangent a funny story I'm rereading uh rockefeller's autobiography that he wrote when he's like in his 80s uh like a few months ago and he he there's a line in there he's like young Henry Ford came to visit to me day I love that guy like yeah he made like the demand for the product you have a monopoly on like orders of magnitude yeah yeah I bet you probably give him a hug and a kiss when you see him

like of course you love him but but uh Henry what I love about Henry Ford and I love this about everything it's like you only need one idea you only to be right one time Henry Ford had a single idea in his entire career one idea uh everybody should be able to afford a car we can't do that right now because at the time car let's say cars were like $6,000 and the average person made you know two bucks a day a dollar a day is not going to happen and so it took him when

you read biographies about him and study his career took him like I don't know a decade and a half two decades to finally figure out mass production so you can drop the price of the car right and so how did he become the wealthiest person in America at the time that he was alive money comes naturally of service he the service he provided was he made the car affordable so everybody and I literally think about like there's a lot of great products there's not many products you can make that change the geography like that's how

influential this guy was and so what what I think where people make mistakes they're always like I want to make x amount of money uh in my pocket or I want to make you know my market cap of my company being this it's just like well the way to get wealthy is to solve a problem for somebody and then increase the amount of people that you're able to solve that problem for assuming that is a widespread problem turns out how many people would want a car that they could afford well they're either on foot or

they're being driven by horses probably a lot if you can solve that problem and so the the second line of that after head before it says money comes natur as result of service the best definition of a business I've ever heard is that second line from and that came from Richard Branson and the the weird thing you're going to see and he says that all businesses is an idea that makes somebody else's life better the weird thing that happens this is there's another Maxim I repeat over and over again on the podcast that history doesn't

repeat human nature does every generation thinks that there's no more opportunity like oh we missed it there's it's like there's always there will be Limitless opportunity as long as humans are alive because all a business is is an idea that makes somebody else's life better a can make somebody else's life better the people that made the camera that makes your somebody else's life better whoever made the microphone the iPad your drink that I down the orange Sunrise when I'm doing my podcast that makes somebody else's life better there's an infinite way to make other people's

lives better if you love what you do the only exit strategy is death retirement can be fatal again this is something that that that's fascinating cuz like my dad is like a he's a blue collar guy he's got like an eighth grade education and and um I realized you said how normal normal people can be and um I told him like like it was like a big deal to me because like the first like super famous and like wealthy person that I got to spend time with was samel and you know at the time samel

probably had like1 billion or something like it was insane he's 81 years old he's working seven days a week and um he was you know I talked to him he's he's like I'm going to be doing deals till I die he was like obsessed with this and he was right he was working on deals six months later he's dead still working you know every day or you know very a lot maybe not every day but he was he was still on it all the time and my dad for the life of him could not understand

that this guy had billions of dollars and he still chose to work and it realized like oh for a vast majority of people work they equate work with something I have to do it's drudgery there's a great line called how to do great there's a great essay called how to do great work it's by this guy Paul Graham yeah and he he s his guess is like how many people out of eight billion people on the planet really wind up finding work that they love to do and is they're able to like support themselves with

it there's a lot of people find things they like to do that they love but can they make your uh your advocation your vocation I think is a line from Steve Jobs and Paul's guess Paul gr's guess is like probably a few hundred thousand I I think he might be right about that like it is unbelievably rare where I don't look at like I wake up every every day like I get to do this not I have to do this Sam zel looks at it like I get to do this not I have to do

this and what's remarkable is the overlap between people that got to the top of their profession and the people that had no exit their exit strategy was death Not only would they not sell their company they would never retire I did this this one of the episodes I'm most proud of and one of the guys I really like and I uh uh the founder of Red Bull and his name's like deatric mat diatric M or something like that there's no even biography of him in English so I had to I had to use cat GPT

to translate a German biography to read in English which is you know the translation not perfect to do that episode and he he came to my attention because he had just passed away and he remarkable story didn't start he was like a executive like a account executive for like unil lover or something like that and didn't started his first company it was Red Bull he was like 41 years old uh he owned 49% of it so he had there was a 49% partner 49% partner another guy that owned 2% um towards the end of his

life uh he turned uh he was paying himself between like 200 million a year and 5 700 million a year every year so that's his paycheck that's his paycheck right right uh was turning down like right now you could sell Red Bull for $40 billion probably more so multiple times he turned down 10 billion in his pocket 10 his share would be 1020 billion and his whole point he's like I love what I do why would I sell it then I don't have anything to do and he and he was like you would love him

because like he liked to uh he took care of his health um you know he was he he had his own Fleet of airplanes so he'd fly his own planes he' ride his motorcycle he just lived life to the fullest and there's so many people like that where like they achieve outside success because time carries most of the weight it's all the stuff we've been talking about today and to them taking that away from them would be like losing a child what about retirement can be fatal why did that line come from that's a line

from David Orby and um same thing where he noticed it the problem is is like I I think you you've mentioned this on your um show and I think you got some like [ __ ] for it before too about like the different values that historically men and women and like how it contrasts um but for men like for us I I think it's really important for us to like wake up every day and like put solve a problem put something out into the world feel like we're being useful to our tribe you are not

a selfish person like you are a driven person but you are doing you you are doing things every day for other people and I think when you move that and they've showed studies that like this like then they don't have they it's not just work it's this is my life's work this is my purpose like I wake up every day with a burning desire to achieve Mission success like well there's a you know thinking about it through uh an evolutionary lens you're useful yes what are the signals that the world's giving you you're moving toward

a goal you're useful people need you you contribute and yeah I the evidence is there you you're you're friend Jordan Peterson said something one time I saw this clip on um on YouTube and I don't I didn't see the whole conversation but the clip was I was like oh this sounds exactly this sounds like this guy's read hundreds of biographies because he said successful men are insane and he's just like they wake up every day he goes you could put them in a forest and they would just run around all day chopping trees down with

an axe like they have to do something and to take away their ability to be productive to be useful using your term is torture it is it takes away their purpose it takes in many cases like you'll find like oh they stop working and then all of a sudden this young or not young this you know viral healthy overall healthy older person is dead how did that happen and so I I think when the the the the point is like this is the way I would describe this I think is really important um and this

is the the maximum that uh I took away from the two-hour conversation I had with samel is go for freedom and essentially what he told me he's like listen I know all the rich guys he's like they're all miserable uh he's like they make the mistake of like buying spending more time doing [ __ ] they don't like to buy slightly more nicer versions of the same [ __ ] that's his word himself that's what he said right he also did something is hilarious he's like I have a place in Chicago and I have a

compound in Malibu that's the word he used right and he goes every year I take my family he like his kids his extended family and uh we we spend the the holidays in the south of France he goes I could buy The Village he goes I don't buy it I rent it because the things that you own start to own you and then he he's the funny thing is he wanted to show me pictures of his Malibu house and so I thought it would be like pictures on his phone he hands me his phone and

it's Google Images it says Sam zel Malibu house and so it's like imagine having a house that's so well known a compound where it's like it's on Google Images Jesus but his whole point was like David you do not trade money for Freedom okay he goes go for freedom and this is the the rough uh synopsis of what he said he goes if you go for Freedom if you have freedom you can control what you work on if you control what you work on you can work on what you love if you work on what

you love you'll do it for a long time if you do it for a long time you'll get really good at it if you get really good at it money will come as a result and so his whole point he's like I had unlimited money I never made the mistake of trading money in exchange for my freedom and that is really powerful and that gives you the ability when you find like when you really your goal in life is to find your life's work and the thing that like the purpose why you feel you're here

and then to do it until you die I can give you a list of people Enzo Ferrari Steve Jobs Warren doing this Charlie Munger Coco Chanel Estee Lauder the list goes on and on and on and on they these people were decades past the need for working for money and in many cases like Enzo fi he was working like 11 hour days seven days a week for the rest of his life he didn't need the money dude I love what you do I said it at the start I said it on the Q&A I think

Founders is a podcast that everybody should go and listen to It's not a Cadence that's going to actually eat into your wisdom time cuz you can only get one out a week he's got to read all of the books bro you're great you're great I really appreciate you as a friend I appreciate everything that you do where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you got done Founders podcasts uh and your podcast player you Founders podcasts on all the networks dude Chris I admire you I'm so glad we

became friends like I love the uh opportunity and I appreciate you uh you inviting me until next time man you're the man appreciate you thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap