30: David Senra - The Clarity of Commitment

Speaker A: The value prop of Founders is very easy. 40-year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40-year career that learned all these lessons. Somebody put it into a book, probably took 'em a couple years to, to write. So 40-year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That's it. And if you want more, go read the book. If you want less, listen to less of the podcast. I don't know what to tell you. And the reason I say 45 minutes is 'cause a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed.

Yeah. I'm a purist. I listen on 1x. Speaker B: You're a 1xer. That's crazy. Speaker A: 1x. 'Cause I actually love the medium. I love podcasts. You can rush through sex. That's probably not the point. It's probably your goal when you're going to make love to whoever you're making love to these days is probably not, let's see if I can get this over in 2 minutes. People think this is crazy. I think it's crazy that you don't do this. So when my Spotify rap comes out this year, my top podcasts will be Founders.

I listen to— Speaker B: this is to be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator Spotify rap. This is the consumer. Speaker A: I remember like It was like 7:00 AM on a Saturday and I text him like, this whole game is for the taking. Like there's nobody else. Like there's just like the, the work ethic's not there. Like it's just, this is, this is bad news. Like this is fait accompli. Like as long as I don't stop, like, and he texts me back, he's like, first of all, he's like in, I think like Nantucket with his family.

I was like, what the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But, uh, he was just like, out of all the people I know, and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do. I thought that was a great, like, response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that. Elon, they're all like that. It's like they're not sitting there wondering, like, how do I feel today?

What should I do? It's like they— it's like blinders on, wake up, go. Speaker B: Welcome to Dialectic, episode 30, with David Senra. I don't think there's somebody better to commemorate 30 episodes with than David, who's been a huge inspiration to me and help as I get Dialectic off the ground. David is one of the most energizing and enthusiastic people I've ever met, and you can get that as he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs on his podcast Founders, where he reads biographies and teaches the rest of us their best lessons. And now you can also get that when he talks to the greatest living entrepreneurs with his new podcast, David Senra.

Speaker A: It just launched. Speaker B: The first episode is with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and I really hope you give it a listen. My goal for this episode was to have a conversation that felt like so many of those I've had with him over the last few years, and I think I did that. Uh, it's wide-ranging. Speaker A: It— Speaker B: we go to a whole bunch of different places. You get max David energy enthusiasm, and you also get so much of the wisdom that David has amalgamated over the course of reading and doing founders.

David's work is embodied by the advice he follows from one of his favorite people, Charlie Munger: take a simple idea and take it seriously. I hope you are inspired to do the same and to commit to something worth your days and your years. With that, here's David Tebra. Somebody tweeted about this. It's like coffee's good for like at the beginning of the day when you need to like work, and matcha or green tea is good for like being with other people. Speaker A: I don't like being with other people. Speaker B: That's our opener.

Speaker A: I'm not kidding. The guy that sits in a room by himself reads books for decades. What a shock. Speaker A: I don't like being with other people. Speaker B: That's our opener. Speaker A: I'm not kidding. The guy that sits in a room by himself reads books for decades. What a shock. Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Fair enough. Speaker A: Fair enough. You could have, you could have your green tea day, your actions express your priorities. Like, what's going on there? Speaker B: Well, my, my dinner with André, which I brought up, it's, it looks like it's just a dinner.

The whole movie is just these two guys having dinner, waxing philosophical, whatever. But it was directed by this famous French director. And they, it's not done in a restaurant. They built a set and it's like the most meticulous, so many different frames. They've like got the guys in the mirror. So it's, it's a cool inspiration if you wanted to get inspiration for like a really intimate kind of like conversational setting on video. Uh, it was made in like 1980. Speaker A: Yeah. 'Cause if you think about, um, like the best nights of your life, they're not like sitting in a studio, light on, makeup.

It's just like, oh, dinner with friends. You don't know what you're gonna talk about before. It's like rambling. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: You're eating good food. You're probably, getting a little tipsy. Speaker B: Like, yeah, it's like a 4-hour dinner and there's bottles of wine. Speaker A: I can't have like short dinners. Like, I can't have short conversations. Like, every single time, especially if they were interested in the same— we're like the same person, we're interested in the same things, you're gonna talk for like 3, 4, 5 hours. Speaker B: Jeremy, the first time we ever met, one of the only times we've ever hung out, we literally had a 5-hour first call.

Speaker A: He told me it was 10 hours. Speaker B: It was close. I got the preview of— he went on O'Shaughnessy a month later and I got— I was like, this is the same thing. I already got this. Speaker A: I was badgering him for hours today. I was like, do you understand how few people are actually good at podcasting? You went on, you know, one of the most important shows, one of the biggest shows. It was the most downloaded episode that year. That is a sign that people like the way you think and you're really good.

The thing about Jeremy is he's quick-witted and quick with it. And so he's able to package and brand ideas really interesting to, so they're like memorable. Speaker A: He told me it was 10 hours. Speaker B: It was close. I got the preview of— he went on O'Shaughnessy a month later and I got— I was like, this is the same thing. I already got this. Speaker A: I was badgering him for hours today. I was like, do you understand how few people are actually good at podcasting? You went on, you know, one of the most important shows, one of the biggest shows.

It was the most downloaded episode that year. That is a sign that people like the way you think and you're really good. The thing about Jeremy is he's quick-witted and quick with it. And so he's able to package and brand ideas really interesting to, so they're like memorable. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And so part of what I was telling him today for like an hour is just hounding him about like, you really dropped the ball here. You should find a format that suits you. And it's not a format— him, he should not be interviewing anybody.

Like, that's the worst thing. Yes. You, and you don't want an hour of him. You want like, you have this tweet. The idea I gave him was like, okay, I don't like reading Twitter. You have some of my favorite tweets. You stop tweeting, right? Because now he's got like a real job and everything else. Speaker B: All right. Speaker A: And go just, you're, you know, you probably tweet 100 times, pick the 10 that resonated the most and just expound on them in 2 to 5 to 7 minute episodes. Speaker B: That'd be cool.

Speaker A: And that's the whole thing. Speaker B: One of my favorite podcasts to listen— one of the ones I listen to most is, um, Dithering with Jon Gruber and Ben Thompson. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And it's fine, like, I like Jon and Ben. It's 15 minutes twice a week, and it's exactly 15 minutes. I think that's a huge— I mean, TVPN's kind of cracked this a little bit, but there's so much room for— you got these guys doing 2.5-hour-long conversations. It's a nightmare. Like, you don't even get to the end.

Speaker A: It's, it's— those are very valuable, but very few people are actually interesting to have a conversation with, right? Or to hear speak for many, many hours. So like, you know, I, this is gonna sound very like disrespectful and I don't mean this way, but like a lot of people reach out to me and they're like, hey, I need help with my podcast. And like, I'll listen to it. And they're like, what do you think? I was like, it sucks. And they're like, well, what should I do? I was like, make it better.

Like all the clips and everything you're trying to do is like, you have to make something good first. And then I, I just ask them, I go, podcast, podcasting is straight energy transmission. That's all it is. Okay. So the, when I listen to your podcast, it's like very similar to the conversations and the walks we've had and the dinners we've had. And so I'll ask them, I was like, hey, when you have dinner, like, are the people captivated by you? And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, do they desire more of your presence?

Are they engaged? Do they have a good time? Do you see them again? And they're like, uh, not really. I was like, 'cause you have the charisma of a cardboard box. So like, you can't podcast to go write or do— there's other mediums, but like, this is not the one for you. Speaker A: It's, it's— those are very valuable, but very few people are actually interesting to have a conversation with, right? Or to hear speak for many, many hours. So like, you know, I, this is gonna sound very like disrespectful and I don't mean this way, but like a lot of people reach out to me and they're like, hey, I need help with my podcast.

And like, I'll listen to it. And they're like, what do you think? I was like, it sucks. And they're like, well, what should I do? I was like, make it better. Like all the clips and everything you're trying to do is like, you have to make something good first. And then I, I just ask them, I go, podcast, podcasting is straight energy transmission. That's all it is. Okay. So the, when I listen to your podcast, it's like very similar to the conversations and the walks we've had and the dinners we've had.

And so I'll ask them, I was like, hey, when you have dinner, like, are the people captivated by you? And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, do they desire more of your presence? Are they engaged? Do they have a good time? Do you see them again? And they're like, uh, not really. I was like, 'cause you have the charisma of a cardboard box. So like, you can't podcast to go write or do— there's other mediums, but like, this is not the one for you. Speaker B: Do you have to be charismatic to have a good podcast?

Speaker A: I think, I think charisma wins in almost every— Speaker B: like, is Dan Carlin amazingly charismatic? Speaker A: Yes, for sure. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Okay. For sure. I don't know if he's charismatic in person, but on the show he's a master storyteller. Storyteller. So it's funny you bring him up because I'm always interested in studying like who influenced the influencers, right? So like, it's not enough for me to be like, oh, I like Steve Jobs. Like, no, no, I need to know every single person that he studied and then every single person that he, they study.

And you just realize these ideas started 200, 300, 500 years ago. It just, and they're just repackaging them and using them. And so the reason that I have a solo history podcast is because of Dan Carlin. I think Dan Carlin is the greatest podcaster to ever live. And my own personal view on this is I liked him a lot better when he used to do, like he does these multiple part series like Ghosts of the Ostfront, Wrath of the Khans, you know, these are Blueprint for Armageddon. These are some of the best podcasts ever created.

And they were like 5-part series, but they were like an hour and a half long. As his career progressed, he now does 5-part series, but they're 5 hours long. Speaker B: Yeah, that's crazy. Speaker A: And I get lost in it. I actually think the product was better back then. It's actually an interesting conversation. One of the, the, my favorite podcasts that came out I would say in the last like 2 or 3 years is Rick Rubin, who is a phenomenal listener. Phenomenal listener. Turns out that's what he did for his job, right?

He did this episode with Jimmy Iovine and he talks about, they, they talk about on that episode the first time that they met each other. And Jimmy's like 10 years ahead of Rick and everything. They produce the same people, all their accomplishments Jimmy did beforehand, and they talk about that. But Rick plays, Rick's just starting out, plays him the song and Jimmy's like, man, that's really good. I wish. I could do something that simple. And Rick didn't understand as a young man, like, what does that mean? Like, of course you could do that, something that simple.

Like, you're better than I am. You have more experience than I do. But the, what a lot of people make the mistake is the more experience they have, the more complications they let in. And I think that's what happened with Dan where it's like, this was perfect. It wasn't, you didn't need, you told the story in an hour and a half. Now you're taking 5 hours. Like you're taking more time. It's, it's, it's the old saying where it's like, oh, I would've wrote you a, a, you know, a short letter, but I didn't have enough time.

Sorry, I wrote you a long one. Speaker B: Has Founders become simpler or more complicated? Oh, for sure. Speaker A: No, way simpler. And so this is actually interesting. I, I think I'm actually gonna do an episode because I get so many people ask me, it's like, hey, how do you like make the show? And they're interested in like the process behind it, which is fascinating. And this is actually, this is a principle I think is really important for entrepreneurs or anybody trying to, to market or to sell something is people buy stories, right?

Money flows as a function of stories. And what the, if you go back and, and study like the great advertising agency founders from like the, the heyday area in the '50s and '60s on Madison Avenue, they would all study like the copywriters from like the early 1900s. And what the copywriters would do is like, there's this guy named Claude Hopkins, probably the greatest copywriter of all time. Okay? He was alive in the early 1900s. He worked for this guy named Albert Lasker. Albert Lasker was an advertising agency founder. Okay? He made more money than any single other person in, in the agency business.

And his business was simple. He's like, we write copy that sells product. And we don't do anything else. We don't do art, we don't do visuals, we don't do any other shit. Just write copy. Those words make the cash register ring. And the basis of his business was the copywriting work of Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising where it lays out exactly like he, he learned through experimentation. So history doesn't repeat, human nature does. He would just run these experiments and see, this is, I put, you know, this in front of 1,000 people, this is how humans reacted.

And then he would just constantly iterate and adjust. So he wrote this and he is like, hey, I have a book here. And Albert's like, yeah, that's like how I built my business. And he took the book from, from Claude Hopkins and, and didn't allow him to publish it. He literally locked it in a safe for 20 years. Wow. And now to this day, you can go and buy Claude Hopkins' autobiography, which I think is called My Life in Advertising. It's probably like episode 170 or something like that. It comes with Scientific Advertising for free.

So the reason I bring that up is because one of his clients was like a, a, a distiller, like a beer company. I think it was called Schlitz Beer, and they were like, fifth or sixth market share. So they weren't doing well. They're like, hey, we need, we need help here. And so Claude is a big believer in research. He spends a lot of time with executives. He tours the distillery, sees the process. He's like, this is magic. Like, I love beer. I had no idea how you made it. Like, and so he's like, I'm gonna, I'm going to describe that.

That's what our ads are gonna be. The ads are going to be what goes into making the product, the product. And then once you understand it, you'll have a better, uh, like understanding and a love of that product. And, but the distiller's like, yeah, but we're not doing anything special. He's like, yeah, but the difference is no one else is telling them. So you have to educate. And so they wind up educating the, the public on how they make their beer, which is the same process as other, all the other distillers are making.

And it shot 'em up from like 5th to 2nd or 1st. Wow. Speaker B: And when was this? Speaker A: Like, that would be probably 19— somewhere 1910, 1920, 1930. Speaker B: And so, so ahead of the time. Speaker A: And so, One of the reasons it, it's like normal to me, and I'll answer your question how I've simplified it. It's so, it's like normal to me, but abnormal to other people. And so I realized like, oh, if I just like make an episode where I talk for like 20 minutes and like, this is what goes into it.

If you, if you get to the end of that episode, you'll have a further appreciation for, you'll, you'll like the episodes more. Just like James Dyson, rereading his autobiography for the 5th time now. And he's got this great idea where he is like, yeah, you walk in, I make vacuum cleaners. You walk in, you see 5 different vacuum cleaners. Mine looks different on purpose. 'Cause he thought that was important, but more important than that would help to sell is he would put this little flyer on like a piece of string on like the handle.

And in 200 words he would say, Dyson, this is who Dyson is. It's a person. This is how I make it. This is what makes it different. Really simple. And if you read that. The likelihood that you would choose that one over the one next to it that's half the price was a lot. People buy stories. Speaker B: Also, there's a thread there though that is like the Yvon Chouinard, like, nonfiction marketing thing, which is it's not like rocket science. It's not like clever. It's like very— there's, there's a broad sort of, uh, internet advice now.

Sam Higgies talked about this, other, others have too, which is just like you have specific knowledge that other people don't have, and 90% of people just like don't think what they have is special and don't say it. And the people who do have giant followings for the most part. And it's pretty obviously within reason, but I think like most, we all have things that we actually know disproportionately well. And, but you're like, oh, how, like it's not that novel or it's not that interesting. Speaker A: Yeah. It, it's, and you, you're afraid to repeat yourself.

Yeah. Where it's just like, they're like, no, I need a new idea. Like you kind of see this with like, like Peter Thiel goes and gives these talks on like the Antichrist and all this other stuff. It's like, really? What we want from him is just like repeat zero to one over and over and over and over and over again. Because that, if you only read one book on startups, it's obviously the book. There's like, there's nothing else but this desire. Humans crave novelty, this desire to like, no, no, no.

Like I created great ideas or I packaged these great ideas and I have to do something new. It's like, no, you have to repeat it over and over again. Actually, there's this, I'm obviously fascinated with people that do things for a long period of time. Right. I'm not interested at all in the start, sell, start, scale, sell. It was a good go do that and like I'll just keep dominating for decades and that's fine. But what I, what I, so I contemplate, it's like what causes things to last and endure for a long period of time?

There's this great line in Poor Charlie's Almanac of that Charlie's son says that he thought that his dad thought durability was a first-rate virtue. And I was like, that's a fucking powerful idea. Durability is a first-rate virtue where everybody, this modern environment, we fetishize growth at the expense of durability, which I think is a massive mistake. Also mentioned by Peter Thiel in Zero to One, by the way. And so then I'm like, okay, so what lasts like a long time? Right? Like we know what like a human life lifetime is typically is how long do companies last?

How long do countries last? And I was like, well, what is the things that are created by humans that endure the longest? And my answer to that is like religion. And so then I analyze, like I grew up like fundamentalist Christian, right? It's probably like how, why Founders is the way it is. I didn't even understand this about myself. It's like, like jumping up and down preaching. I'm very familiar with the church. I'm very familiar with religions and it's like, Well, what do they do first? They have a shared base of knowledge, right?

And it's usually in the form of written text that has been around for thousands of years. And then they gather with like-minded people, with fellow believers at regular intervals, right? Just analyze what religions do. Even if they believe different things, they do very similar things. Yeah. Speaker B: It's almost, it's a scaffold. It's like a social scaffolding. Speaker A: Yeah. And so then now what happens? We went to church on Wednesdays and Sundays, right? The preacher didn't get up there and be like, okay, we're today we're gonna talk about Jesus and Sunday we're gonna talk about some other guy.

It's like, no, it's like we're gonna re— repetition is persuasive. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: You repeat, repeat, repeat. Speaker B: And by the way, if this is important, like one of the central, uh, or the central idea there is like, this is the most important thing. We are going to keep, we're gonna talk about Jesus every weekend forever. Speaker A: Yes. And if you actually analyze the people that last a long time, like if you analyze like what has Buffett been talking about for 60 years? Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: What has Michael Dell been important to Michael Dell for 40 years?

What is Elon Musk? I just did this crazy episode on Elon. Right? And you wouldn't expect him. You think he's running 7 companies, obsessed with technology. He says he repeats the same thing so much that the executives in the meeting can mouth the words before he says it. So why the fuck are you jumping around idea after idea after idea? You have to identify a handful of timeless principles and repeat them and work on them and make the center of your work for decades. That's how greatness is built. Speaker B: What makes durable products?

Speaker A: I don't know. I really don't know. Because if you think like, the products that, what, well, let me flip that question back on you. What's the product that you've used for the longest time? Speaker B: The first thing comes to mind is like Nike shoes, which I don't super actively wear, but like I've always had a, are those Nikes? Speaker A: They aren't. Speaker B: I've used an iPhone for a long time. That's not very interesting. iPhone, MacBook, these, these types of utilities. Speaker A: So we've been using the iPhone for what, 15 years?

Speaker A: They aren't. Speaker B: I've used an iPhone for a long time. That's not very interesting. iPhone, MacBook, these, these types of utilities. Speaker A: So we've been using the iPhone for what, 15 years? Speaker B: Yeah, it came out in 2007. Speaker A: Okay. Speaker B: I haven't had one that long, but something like that. I think like for most people it's probably like a deodorant or underwear or like t-shirt or things like that. Speaker A: Like these, I think there's actually an interesting principle here. You read Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters and once he realized he had a winning system that if you started using Amazon, you kind of stayed in Amazon and then you're gonna buy books, but you really buy anything.

He said he got this great email one time where he realized, oh, like this, there's has no limits to what we can do. 'Cause the guy emailed him, he's like bought some books, he was happy. He's like, hey, do you sell windshield wipers? 'cause like, oh, if this guy wants windshield wipers, he'd buy from me. They'll buy anything. Yeah. And one of the most important things I think people skip over in the early Amazon shareholder letters is the fact that he says we, and then Bezos repeats this and he's adamant about this.

Like, we're gonna invest heavily in introductions to new customers. And why? Because what you just picked up, people are habitual. You know what? I don't, I order a ton of books, more books than probably 99.99% of people on the planet. I don't go shopping for price or like something else. Like Amazon got me and they just got me and they've had me, you know, for 20 years. Yeah. People are much more habitual than we take them for. Even in software, people are like, well, I have a, you know, unless it's drastically different or a lot better, they're like, well, I'm a little cheaper.

It's like, yeah, but I don't want to switch. It's just like a, it's a headache. Speaker B: Maybe part of it is trust. Like trust is the thing that's feeding that habituality. Like when you think about, I mean, in theory, the reason somebody's still listening to Founders in 20 years, like if they, if we're like, you always talk about this, like very tangibly, the only conceivable way that makes sense is that you have built enough trust that just says, come follow me to as far as I want to go. Speaker B: Maybe part of it is trust.

Like trust is the thing that's feeding that habituality. Like when you think about, I mean, in theory, the reason somebody's still listening to Founders in 20 years, like if they, if we're like, you always talk about this, like very tangibly, the only conceivable way that makes sense is that you have built enough trust that just says, come follow me to as far as I want to go. Speaker A: I think the way I think about, the best way I've heard described is Buffett says that a brand is a promise. And I think in 3 words, it's like, I know what I'm getting with Apple products.

Like I had an iPhone before I had a MacBook, but I was like, oh, the iPhone's good. So if you're making something else, that's probably good too. Yes. And I just met, I think this was yesterday. I'm like, my life's a blur right now. But, uh, they're like, basically what the person that I met that is a fan of the podcast was describing to me is just like, thank you for introducing me to people, like spectacular people I didn't even know exist. Speaker B: This is what I'm saying. Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So it's like, by the way, this is Rogan. Go down the list. Yes. Any modern person with influence, they are usually this, which is, I trust you to, I'm gonna sit, I get to sit in the seat that Rogan, like Rogan's my avatar. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And I get to just have the conversation he has. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And I trust him. Speaker A: I trust his taste. Yeah. So they might come in for like Jobs or Rockefeller, Bezos, but then they're like, what about this Ferrero guy?

What about Del Vecchio? Like what about Sam Zamuri? Like overthrew the Nicaraguan government twice. Like how is that even possible? Like what did he do? Daniel Ludwig was the richest person in the world and no one even knew who he was. He'd beat up the guy that tried to take his photograph when he was 80 years old. Like what is going on here? There's all these crazy stories and the bar for founders, like the unfair advantage I have is like, you know, they're good because They were so good at their job.

Somebody wrote a book about their life. Yep. How many? Come on. Yes. Speaker B: And then if you're doing an episode, it's a, it's a multiplier on that. Speaker A: Well, it, this just happened. Um, and this will probably be in the episode I do on like how I make the shows. Like they're, you know, I, I'm trying to do one a week. I'm, it's always late. Um, and part of that is because I read a lot of books that never make it and it takes a long time to read.

And it got even worse like 2 weeks ago, 2 or 3 weeks ago. I read the book, did the outline, which we'll go back to why it's simplifying. We can go back to that too. Um, recorded the episode and then listened to it back and I'm like, this isn't good enough. This is not good enough. So I fucking threw it out. Speaker B: That is hardcore. Speaker A: And that's like, you're talking about like 60 hours at least, maybe a little less. Cause I, it was like in the edit process where I realized like, oh, this is not going to happen.

And what I realized wasn't good enough is I was taking an hour. To tell really 15 minutes of good information. Speaker B: You were, you were comp— uh, making it more complex. Speaker A: Yeah. And it was like, I was talking to our, my friend Justin Mares and he's just like, just make it 15 minutes then. And so I might go back and like edit it down. Yeah. You know, there's no rule that it has to be an hour or 90 minutes or anything else. There is good ideas here, but I didn't like how long it was taking me to like actually tell.

Speaker B: Do you cling to those rules you make for yourself? This is something that I've run into a lot is I'm, I'm 30 episodes in, a tiny, tiny fraction, but there are certain ways I chose to do something probably arbitrarily and a lot of times I find myself like, oh, I have to do it this way cuz this is how it was done. Speaker A: No, no. I, I addicted to the best people in the world at what they do are addicted to continuous improvement. And you can't be addicted to continuous improvement unless you're willing to throw out like what used to be good.

Like, uh, we just met, uh, one of, uh, I think her name was Grace out there and she was very complimentary to the Michael Dell episode I did at the time I put it out. I thought it was one of my best episodes. I listened to it again myself yesterday. So when my, this is, people think this is crazy, I think it's crazy that you don't do this. So when my Spotify wrap comes out this year, my top podcast will be Founders. I listen to— Speaker A: No, no. I, I addicted to the best people in the world at what they do are addicted to continuous improvement.

And you can't be addicted to continuous improvement unless you're willing to throw out like what used to be good. Like, uh, we just met, uh, one of, uh, I think her name was Grace out there and she was very complimentary to the Michael Dell episode I did at the time I put it out. I thought it was one of my best episodes. I listened to it again myself yesterday. So when my, this is, people think this is crazy, I think it's crazy that you don't do this. So when my Spotify wrap comes out this year, my top podcast will be Founders.

I listen to— Speaker B: this is to be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator Spotify wrap. This is the consumer. Speaker A: Yes. So the reason that is, because the reason that is right, is first of all, I've done— I've been working for 10, almost 10 years, 9 years. There's like 400 episodes and I listen to past ones because one, I think of it more as a tool than like a form of media, but also like I forget a lot of the great ideas. So just like if you go to church, you have to remind yourself.

Speaker B: Repetition doesn't spoil the prayer. Speaker A: Exactly. And so then what I also do is it's like, it's like a basketball player watching game tape. You think Curry's like, oh no, sorry, I can't look at me shoot a 3. No, he knows exactly. And so I have to listen to it. And so when that came out, which is probably, I don't know, 6 months ago, 5 months ago, something like that. Thought, great, I hear it now. I'm like, you fucked that up. There was an easier way to say that.

Should have cut that part. What was that? Why did you leave that in? Like, I see all the flaws, which I know if I did it today, it would be better. Speaker B: So to go back to the question, and maybe I'll add a piece to it, which it sounds like you're getting simpler and you're getting better. Does that feel linear? Like, are you getting con— like, is episode 400 better than episode 390? Certain— certainly episode 400 is better than 100%. Yeah, for sure. Speaker B: So to go back to the question, and maybe I'll add a piece to it, which it sounds like you're getting simpler and you're getting better.

Does that feel linear? Like, are you getting con— like, is episode 400 better than episode 390? Certain— certainly episode 400 is better than 100%. Yeah, for sure. Speaker A: I don't know about if it's, I don't think it's linear like that. 'Cause some of these things you don't even understand what you're doing. It's more, much more experimental. So like, let me give you an example. Speaker B: I just, I just re-listened to the Steve Jobs Make Something Wonderful. You re-released that episode is incredible. Like, yeah. Speaker A: So, okay, so this is some of this stuff I shouldn't even say because it's like I repeat it over and over again, then people don't use it, but it's also an unfair advantage.

So one of the main principles is that you're not advertising to standing army, you're advertising to moving parade. Okay. That is Ogilvy quoting Hopkins. So this is like this 100 and now 27-year-old idea that I use. And so when I smoked that episode where I was like, I spent 60 hours, that means I can't really, I don't have more time in the week to make another episode up to my standards. So I have to republish an old one. So I, I, I think 299, I republished as 398 or something like that.

I had, when I do that, I usually like put, say at the beginning, hey, this came out. Re-listen to it again cuz it's timeless. You should. But if not, you need to listen to it right now. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: I forgot, I wrote it out. I forgot to add that part. Okay. That episode ripped. And then I had people sending me like 5 paragraph essays about, I've listened to hundreds of, uh, a hundred of your episodes. I thought that Steve Jobs one was the best one. It's like they didn't even realize it.

You're not advertising this thing or you're advertising to be afraid. And maybe I guarantee you, I, me and Jeremy just had this conversation on the walk over here. I guarantee you there are people, right? 'Cause I told him, I was like, you need to tweet more. Like, he's like, well, I don't have anything. I go, go on advanced Twitter search. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: And put that out right now. Speaker B: This is, Will Menides did this recently. Speaker A: I do it. No, I do it all the time.

Crazy. I do it all the time. Speaker B: I had a second exact, I did this tweet about coffee, the most engagement I ever got, and I did it again. Exact same thing. Speaker A: Because people aren't paying, they think about how much information. So I guarantee you there was, this is the TikTok mindset. This is what I said to Jeremy on the walk over. I guarantee you there's people that listened to that Steve Jobs episode when it came out. 2 years have passed, they listened to it again and didn't even realize it's the same episode.

And I'm not trying to be duplicitous. That's not what I'm trying to do. I usually, and in the show notes I put, 'cause I forgot to add the intro to it, you know, I originally published this, et cetera, whatever. But people vastly overestimate how much people are paying attention and just how much information people are consuming. They, you think that every single person is paying attention to every single thing you're doing and nobody is. You're the only person doing that. That is why, so I talk to my friend Ben Wilson who does the How to Take Over the World podcast.

And I think Ben is really, really talented. And what I would say is like, he wasn't doing enough volume. 'Cause I remember we were sitting there one night and he was asking me advice on podcasts and me and, uh, Cliff Weitzman were talking to him about it 'cause we were both fans of his podcast. And then like 20 minutes in, I go, wait a minute, you don't number your episodes. So like, how many have you done? And he's like, 90. Like, there's nothing to fucking talk about. 90. When I did 90 episodes, nobody was listening.

Go do 200 more and then we'll talk about this. So he needs volume, but also I would say like, He doesn't know how talented he is. And I think I would rather have more confidence, self-belief than less. He sent me this like Twitter thread where he was changing something about his podcast where he was like adding sound effects and he's like, I don't know what to do here. Like the feedback that I'm getting is like conflicting. So I go and click on it and it's like one person's like, I love the sound effect.

The next person's like, I hate it. I was like, Ben, why are you even reading this shit? He's like, what do you want to do? What do you think is great? Stephen King said, I'm not just a, writer, I'm the first reader. So when I, I'm the first listener, if I listen to that podcast I just told you about and it sucks, you'll never hear it because it didn't make, make my standards. And then you just keep doing that and you're eventually, the internet's big enough, you'll find people that like the same stuff that you like.

Speaker B: Hmm. We can go back to the simplicity thing briefly if you want to. Speaker A: Yeah. So my, my thing is, again, I didn't understand this. I just followed like my natural drift and my natural star and like, this is just like my own obsession. You know, for 5 and a half years I was just doing it and very few people were listening. The people that were listening were really impressive. So that's why I was like, oh, I might be on something. There's two things I figured, like one, it was a subscription podcast and so I saw the email addresses to the people that were listening, which is very rare.

Yeah. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And even though it was like only a couple thousand people, it was like murderer's row. Yeah. So like, oh, this is interesting. And then as I read more biographies, I realized, oh, the greats of every era studied the greats that came before them. And that's an enduring human principle. And if you can just be the best at doing that, you're gonna have the best audience in the world. Because I've met, you know, if you just even seen how I've spent the last like few weeks spending hours and hours talking to you, like some of the wealthiest.

Speaker B: Were you self-confident before that? Before you had that in? Speaker A: Yeah. I had, where does it, where does it? I was, I was born with Tom Ford syndrome. I'm not kidding. Do you know what that is? No. So I have a sense, but let me pull up cuz I want to get the exact, the exact thing. Hold on. Okay. So Tom Ford syndrome. Tom Ford was interviewed by GQ and he was asked, didn't you always feel like a freak growing up? And he says, I thought I was fabulous and everyone, everyone else was stupid.

And so I obviously didn't think everyone else was stupid, but I think because I grew up in an undereducated family, didn't have any money, like, and I had like, I knew I didn't want, I basically just saw bad examples. So I was like, oh, like that's a good path not to take. And so to say that I'm going to change the trajectory of like multiple generations on both sides of my family, you have to be I would even say like arrogant. Speaker B: But you did a lot of things prior to this.

Speaker A: Yeah, but not, not on a world-class level. Speaker B: Like, so that's, that's precisely what I'm curious about, which is you start doing the podcast, you'd done plenty of other things, you've always been self-confident. That's not the issue. That's kind of what I was trying to ask. Speaker A: You fight against— so the conversation we just had out there where like it sounds so almost like cliché and cheesy, but when we were talking about there, like we were talking about Michael Dell's infectious enthusiasm. 41 years into his business, he's like giddy to tell you about new products.

Like how many products has that guy made in his life? Doesn't matter. He's still just as enthusiastic about what's in front of him as he's ever been. And I mentioned when we were talking to Grace, this is, well, when Kobe Bryant was asked like what combined, what is all the people that he knows that are great at what they do, what do they have one in common? He goes, oh, it's simple. It's like love. Like we have a deep love of what we're doing. Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: And so this is why I, you know, I, I see a lot of bad advice on Twitter and they're like, oh, don't, you know, people say you should be passionate about, that's bad, bad idea.

You should get like a, you know, just a normal, like buy, you know, dry cleaners, some shit like that. Speaker B: Or just like the David Goggins thing of just like gr— like grind yourself. Speaker A: No, I, yeah, but you, you'll have superpowers if you love, love it and you still have the discipline and grind. I work, if my eyes are open, I think I'm thinking about podcasts. It's not an exaggeration. Speaker B: Like, raising your eyes are closed apparently too. Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you dream about it. Well, this is another common thing.

Speaker B: I just talked to Todd Graves and I had Raising Cane's last night in his honor. Speaker A: Yeah. So he's, you know, he, he's been working on his company for 30 years. He owns over 90% of it. He's worth at least $20 billion. The guy's gonna be worth $60 billion. He's, his menu has not changed since day one. And we were talking about this because I was telling him I was having trouble sleeping. Uh, something that I've been doing, like the Jiro Ono episode, the sushi chef is on this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

He was so addicted to his work, he was dreaming about it. Then I'm reading about Michelin brothers. They were selling fucking tires. They're dreaming about tires. Uh, the Ferrero chocolate guy was dreaming about chocolate. This is a very common thing that you're just obsessed with this. So in your subconscious, you start dreaming about it, which obviously I think about podcasts and books and, and all kinds of, uh, and other things. But my point being is like, if you love it, it's so much easier to just give yourself and let essentially like let yourself be consumed by your craft and the love of what you're doing.

I would say like, that doesn't mean you can't have a family. It doesn't mean you can't have friends. It doesn't mean you can't have fun, but the level of detail and obsession is like, there's only one way to describe that. It's like they're consumed by their craft. So the, I don't know if I answered your question about the simplicity part, though. So to tie that back together, it's like something I accidentally discovered in addition to like all the greats want to learn from the greats. Every single person, like when I meet somebody that's, you know, crazy, uh, crazy successful, Michael Dell, Charlie Munger, Sam Zell, Daniel Ek, just list goes on and on and on.

It's like they all have like this historic base of knowledge in their head. You go to their houses, you look at their libraries, they're reading biographies, they're obsessed with history. Then you pick up the biography and the person that's the profile in the biography is also reading biographies and history. And so if you want, uh, wanted a high value audience, which I stumbled upon just because I, I have a, like a low threshold for fluff. Like, you know, think about like, there's no, somebody said founders like sashimi style podcasting. There's no intro music.

There's no, it just goes right into it. Yes. And just kind of rip through ideas that, you know, talk about simplicity. Speaker B: Like, raising your eyes are closed apparently too. Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you dream about it. Well, this is another common thing. Speaker B: I just talked to Todd Graves and I had Raising Cane's last night in his honor. Speaker A: Yeah. So he's, you know, he, he's been working on his company for 30 years. He owns over 90% of it. He's worth at least $20 billion. The guy's gonna be worth $60 billion.

He's, his menu has not changed since day one. And we were talking about this because I was telling him I was having trouble sleeping. Uh, something that I've been doing, like the Jiro Ono episode, the sushi chef is on this documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. He was so addicted to his work, he was dreaming about it. Then I'm reading about Michelin brothers. They were selling fucking tires. They're dreaming about tires. Uh, the Ferrero chocolate guy was dreaming about chocolate. This is a very common thing that you're just obsessed with this.

So in your subconscious, you start dreaming about it, which obviously I think about podcasts and books and, and all kinds of, uh, and other things. But my point being is like, if you love it, it's so much easier to just give yourself and let essentially like let yourself be consumed by your craft and the love of what you're doing. I would say like, that doesn't mean you can't have a family. It doesn't mean you can't have friends. It doesn't mean you can't have fun, but the level of detail and obsession is like, there's only one way to describe that.

It's like they're consumed by their craft. So the, I don't know if I answered your question about the simplicity part, though. So to tie that back together, it's like something I accidentally discovered in addition to like all the greats want to learn from the greats. Every single person, like when I meet somebody that's, you know, crazy, uh, crazy successful, Michael Dell, Charlie Munger, Sam Zell, Daniel Ek, just list goes on and on and on. It's like they all have like this historic base of knowledge in their head. You go to their houses, you look at their libraries, they're reading biographies, they're obsessed with history.

Then you pick up the biography and the person that's the profile in the biography is also reading biographies and history. And so if you want, uh, wanted a high value audience, which I stumbled upon just because I, I have a, like a low threshold for fluff. Like, you know, think about like, there's no, somebody said founders like sashimi style podcasting. There's no intro music. There's no, it just goes right into it. Yes. And just kind of rip through ideas that, you know, talk about simplicity. Speaker B: Totally. Speaker A: Yeah.

1.5x speed for an hour, an hour and a half. So if you're like a Michael Dell or a Brad Jacobs or any of these, these people that, you know, tweet and, and talk about the fact that they like the podcast and you know, that they get a lot of value out of it. It's like, how much information, how much time do you think they have to ingest content a day? Speaker B: Not very. Speaker A: I think Brad Jenkins has 148,000 employees. Speaker B: Like crazy. Speaker A: It's so the shorter the better.

Speaker B: You're probably the, I don't wanna make too many assumptions, but at least for some of these people, you're probably the only like regular media they consume outside of like news and Twitter and things. I wouldn't be shocked at that. Like they're probably not watching Netflix first of all. And then I would assume they're probably not listening to a lot of other podcasts. Speaker A: Yeah, this, this just happened with the Huberman Lab cuz I'm close with those guys. And so they did something that was really ingenious and they do the standard like super long deep dive into one health topic and it might be 2 or 3 hours and they put that on Mondays.

They've been doing that for a few years and then they realized like, hey, we have this like kind of timeless content and what we should do is they, they created this new SKU called Essentials. They put it on Thursdays. And it's a 3-hour podcast edited down to 30 minutes. You know how many high-value people I have talked to that say that they only listen to Essentials? Speaker B: Mm. Speaker A: Because what is an hour of like Michael Dell's time worth? Hmm. It's not an exaggeration to say like the, it can have effect, a swing of $10 million in one direction or another.

Like it's ex— whatever the number is, you can argue over, no, that's less, David, it's more, it's fine. The number's giant and he's giving you an hour of your time. And he will continue to do it because you don't waste any of his time. And they're smart enough, like everybody's like, they're smart enough. If they want the full story, they can read the whole book. Speaker B: Mm. Speaker A: Because what is an hour of like Michael Dell's time worth? Hmm. It's not an exaggeration to say like the, it can have effect, a swing of $10 million in one direction or another.

Like it's ex— whatever the number is, you can argue over, no, that's less, David, it's more, it's fine. The number's giant and he's giving you an hour of your time. And he will continue to do it because you don't waste any of his time. And they're smart enough, like everybody's like, they're smart enough. If they want the full story, they can read the whole book. Speaker B: Totally. So I'm, I'm curious on this. You don't make 15-minute podcasts. We, we also live in a world where like no one, kids can't sit through movies.

They, nobody can read books. Like we, we watch 3-minute or 30-second videos. Um, and so you've, you, you, you describe this sort of gradual path of simplifying the show, but it's also still 45 minutes to an hour and a half. There's some bar. And like, so I'm curious what that, like, what that tension feels like. What is like, there's no fluff, but also I'm still going to, I'm going to demand a lot of you. I'm actually going to say that there's an hour worth of content here that no matter how busy you are, like you could get this much, much shorter in like a whatever, a classic Instagram video that just like gives you the— Speaker A: No, I think spending some level like more time with it's not necessarily bad.

So like, right. I just think about the distillation. So the distillation, I don't know how to say that word. I don't know how to pronounce anything. Everybody that listens to the podcast knows this. And people like leave me comments like, you mispronounce this. Like, where do you think my vocab came from? Do you think I heard these words or I read them? Like, come on, man, pay attention. So the value prop of Founders is very easy. 40-year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40-year career. They learned all these lessons. Somebody put it into a book, probably took them a couple of years to write.

So 40-year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That's it. And if you want more, go read the book. If you want less, listen to less of the podcast. I don't know what to tell you, but I think that's a pretty, like, it's gonna be hard to like top that kind of value prop. And the reason I say 45 minutes is 'cause a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed. I'm a purist. I listen on 1x. Speaker B: You're a 1xer.

That's crazy. Speaker A: 1x. 'Cause I actually love the medium. I love podcasts. I'm not trying to rate— rate— you can rush through sex. That's probably not the point. It's probably your goal when you're going to make love to whoever you're making love to these days is probably not, let's see if I can get this over in 2 minutes. Yes. That's not the point. Speaker B: Right. One thing I don't think you've ever talked about that I was really curious is our friend Tammy has this line that, uh, a biography says as much about the biographer as the person being profiled.

Speaker A: She said that on your podcast. Speaker B: Maybe it was. Um, You've read more biographies than anyone, and you talk extensively about these amazing people that are being profiled for good reason. What makes a good biography and biographer? Maybe especially because you've read, there's a lot of these people like Steve Jobs, an example, you read a bunch of biographies on them. Speaker A: Okay. I'm not dodging the question. Something I didn't understand about myself that I guess I picked, like my life's work kind of picked me, I guess.

Is I kept the people like, you read a lot, so they're like, gimme a great book recommendation, right? And so I give 'em a book recommendation and they're like, that was the most boring shit I've ever read. And this kept happening over and over again. And then somebody literally tweeted this like a couple days ago. They're like, I just finished the book, the Red Bull biography. It was a piece of shit. Speaker B: Yet David's episode, it's translated from German. Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. But now it's in English. Okay. Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So like, but David's episode is amazing. And my response was like, but it wasn't a piece of shit to me. And so what I realized is like, oh, I, I, I have a higher threshold for boredom when it comes to reading than almost anybody else. Because like I read— Speaker B: Yet David's episode, it's translated from German. Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. But now it's in English. Okay. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: So like, but David's episode is amazing. And my response was like, but it wasn't a piece of shit to me.

And so what I realized is like, oh, I, I, I have a higher threshold for boredom when it comes to reading than almost anybody else. Because like I read— Speaker B: Subject matter, the, the, the distilled subject matter somewhere down there is what you really care about. Speaker A: No, not even that. It's just like, it wasn't boring to me. Mm-hmm. Like I'm recommending this book. Everybody's like, this sucks. The amount of people that send me messages, they're like, I'm so glad you did an episode on Elon on the Walter Isaacson book because they didn't like that book.

Uh, and I'm just like, they're like, did you hate it? And I'm like, I didn't hate it. I was just like, look what I made after reading it. So I'll show— Speaker B: but there's like, there has to be some of these that you love more than others of them. Speaker A: Yes, for sure. Speaker B: More than just the person. Speaker A: Yeah. There, there is that. What I find objectionable in all, doesn't matter what the product is, if it's a book or company, it's like a lack of like taste and craft.

And you can just tell if somebody cares about like what they're doing or not. Uh, it's very similar. And that's not even my idea. It's like essentially parroting what Jobs would talk, say about like Microsoft's. He's like, I don't, you know, I don't, I'm glad they're successful, but their products have no soul. And you know, it's just like, I couldn't, I wouldn't use 'em. I don't want them in my house. I don't want them in my presence, that kind of thing. So yeah, like it, it, I think very few people in the world should be allowed to write a 1,000-page biography.

I've read several of them, a 900-page biography. There's exactly one person living. That I would exclude from that rule, and that's Robert Caro. He's obviously the greatest biographer living by like, there's nobody even close to him. I think most of the books shouldn't be 600 pages, it should be 250 pages. But that's the problem. Like most people don't actually understand like what's important. Even like think about, so one way I find books to answer your question, I will read them and they'll be fine. Like everybody's read Titan, the Rockefeller biography by Ron Chernow, right?

But what I will do is I'll go through all the bibliographies of every book that I read and I will find so much great source material. Books are made outta books. And so then I'll order like 15 books from the back of the bibliography. I don't even care. I'll look at the title and just like order, order, order. I'm not like, I'm very promiscuous when it, when it comes to this stuff. And so in the back of there, I found this book. It's called John D: The Founding Fathers of the Rockefellers.

So when I bought it, it was like $6, then I make an episode on it and then it goes up to like $2,000 because there's only like 5 copies in the world. It was published in 1970. And it's 250 pages or 224 or something like that instead of 700, 800, whatever Titan is. And it's hyper-focused on what I'm actually interested in. Mm-hmm. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Which is how he built Standard Oil and the methods and how he thought about his business. There is a section, I can't, I think it was in Titan.

It might've been a book that I literally, cuz sometimes I get so induced into a state of rage. No, this is a Picasso book. I, I still have not found a good biography of Picasso. And I remember the, the one, the definitive one everyone recommends. It's like a 3-part series. I can picture it. It's at my house. It's like a blue cover with white letters. But I got to the point where there was a bar that he would hang out in and they were describing in detail where the fur— how the furniture was made in the bar.

And I was like, this is unacceptable. No one is reading this 'cause they give a shit about a chair that, that is in a bar that like I'm never gonna go to. And I literally like threw the book across the room and never read it again. 'Cause that's like a sign of somebody not understanding like what, why people were picking up the book. Maybe this guy had a fetish for chairs. I don't know. But he's like, I wasn't gonna take time to find out where this, this— Speaker B: there's probably people who love that book, by the way.

I'm almost certain. Speaker A: I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure there is. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: I also think people, like, I think when they read, they like skip over things. I like read every page. Yeah. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And I'll know this because like, I'll talk to people that like read the book and you don't have to memorize everything, but like there's like big chunks of stories and they don't, it doesn't like register on their face. I'm like, You own the book, it's on your bookshelf. I don't know.

Speaker B: One of the things I've found, you, you, you talk about this a little bit. I've found that if I watch a movie or read a book and it's been 2 years or more and I've only seen it once, the plot's new. Speaker A: You'll, you'll for— we forget that we forget. I'm rereading Dyson's autobiography, both of them, but the first one 4 or 5 times. I just finished reading it cover to cover again and I'm like, I don't remember that at all. Like, how is that possible? Again, why repetition is so important, why you should stop jumping from idea to idea.

And when you just study people that are great at what they do, it's like, you know, Steph Curry's not like, hey, I mastered a 3-point shot. Let me go like, you know, work on something else. Like he's just shooting 3s over and over again. You know, Tiger's working his putt over and over again. Elon's repeating the algorithm over and over again. You know, Jeff Bezos in 23 years of a shareholder letter talking about obsessing over customers over and over and over again. I just think it's a super important idea that you, it's, I guess the level of its importance and how frequent you see repetition is, is completely like off kilter to me.

It just doesn't make any sense. Like very important and no one talks about it. Speaker B: One of the things I've found, you, you, you talk about this a little bit. I've found that if I watch a movie or read a book and it's been 2 years or more and I've only seen it once, the plot's new. Speaker A: You'll, you'll for— we forget that we forget. I'm rereading Dyson's autobiography, both of them, but the first one 4 or 5 times. I just finished reading it cover to cover again and I'm like, I don't remember that at all.

Like, how is that possible? Again, why repetition is so important, why you should stop jumping from idea to idea. And when you just study people that are great at what they do, it's like, you know, Steph Curry's not like, hey, I mastered a 3-point shot. Let me go like, you know, work on something else. Like he's just shooting 3s over and over again. You know, Tiger's working his putt over and over again. Elon's repeating the algorithm over and over again. You know, Jeff Bezos in 23 years of a shareholder letter talking about obsessing over customers over and over and over again.

I just think it's a super important idea that you, it's, I guess the level of its importance and how frequent you see repetition is, is completely like off kilter to me. It just doesn't make any sense. Like very important and no one talks about it. Speaker B: Right. Speaker A: Cause it goes against human nature. We just like novel seeking, you know, primates. Speaker B: Yeah. There's some, you, you, you also talked about like the, um, the order in which you learn things or study things. Like we aren't the same, even if the book's staying the same and our memory, even if, even taking the memory part away.

Uh, whether it might be that you studied somebody else and now you're connecting the dots, or even just like you've changed, I find that like coming back to stuff can be, it's like, it's totally new. Speaker A: Even if I remember what the story was about, the words don't change, but you, the paper, words on paper don't change, but you do. This happens like when I do podcasts, so we can record today and then I'm just gonna talk about, I've mentioned Dyson a bunch of times cuz I'm reading Dyson right now.

Talking about Steve Jobs, 'cause that just happened. A quarter year from now, I'm gonna be talking about whoever I'm talking about then. Yeah. That's why it's like so important to go back to these things. And this is why I said, it's like, I don't consider it, I'm not, I don't have a media company. I'm not even making media. I think of podcasting as building relationships at scale. And I think of it much as like I'm building a tool for somebody. You are a super successful person. This is what Todd Graves told me.

He's just like, your work is very important and it becomes more important the bigger my company gets because the effect of the decision. And if I can hear like one little idea If I can do a 1% improvement on a $20 billion company, that's a huge level. Exactly. And so it's, it's like irrespons— I wanna get to the point where it's like, listen, I'm covering so much valuable information in 45 minutes. If you're not listening, it's irresponsible. Speaker B: You've said the reason to read biographies over business books is the human element.

Can you say more about that? Speaker A: That, that's not even my idea. Again, like I, this is what I love. It's like, uh, Kinky, you know, always talks about this cuz he's a very funny person. And I do think, I think he would consider me a close friend and I consider him a close friend. He's kind of like an older brother, but I think I frustrate the hell out of him. I really do. I think I frustrate everybody that deals with me. It's just like, it's very much an acquired taste for sure.

Speaker B: But Sam, I think Sam like kind of likes to be frustrated a little bit. Speaker A: Like he finds these frustrating people and he keeps hanging out with them and he just likes, I mean, he gave me one of the best mental models in terms of like who to spend time with. He's just like, I, he's like, I like people that are so interested in what they're Like they're so intensely interested in whatever it could be. It doesn't matter. It could be reading, podcasts, investing. But he's like, there's no, he never reaches the end.

He does this thing with his hands. Like I see him doing, he's like, there's just no bottom to it. Yes. His idea, he's like, the advantage that you have is that you are now by association, right? You are going to automatically be associated with like the Steve Jobs and the John D. Rockefellers and everything else. And then it's even worse because their ideas are coming outta your mouth. So it's like, David's so wise. I'm like, no, I just read a lot. Speaker B: But Sam, I think Sam like kind of likes to be frustrated a little bit.

Speaker A: Like he finds these frustrating people and he keeps hanging out with them and he just likes, I mean, he gave me one of the best mental models in terms of like who to spend time with. He's just like, I, he's like, I like people that are so interested in what they're Like they're so intensely interested in whatever it could be. It doesn't matter. It could be reading, podcasts, investing. But he's like, there's no, he never reaches the end. He does this thing with his hands. Like I see him doing, he's like, there's just no bottom to it.

Yes. His idea, he's like, the advantage that you have is that you are now by association, right? You are going to automatically be associated with like the Steve Jobs and the John D. Rockefellers and everything else. And then it's even worse because their ideas are coming outta your mouth. So it's like, David's so wise. I'm like, no, I just read a lot. Speaker B: Like, it's funny, I was many years ago, I somehow found myself sitting next to or across from Naval Ravikant. Yeah. And I told him something that I had heard from Tim Ferriss and he's like, that's such a great idea.

And I'm like, no, no, no, that's your friend Tim's idea. And he's like, well, it's yours now. No, there's something to that. Speaker A: So the biography thing was the way, the first thing I was, I was introduced to that By Charlie Munger's the one that framed it the best for me, but Elon Musk was the one that introduced to me for the first time. So like, I didn't know anything about tech when I was younger and I got into introduced to tech by, uh, this guy named Kevin Rose, who's founder of Digg.

OG. Uh, yeah, it was like Web 1.0, 2.0, uh, 2.0, whatever it was called back then. And he had this, this show that I guess we'd call a podcast today called Digg Nation. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Where they would like drink beer on a couch and like go over the top stories on com. Right. Speaker B: They're bringing it back. Or maybe it's already back. Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think that the lightning's, you can't put lightning back in the bottle, but like they had, um, for a moment of time, you know, and this is the dangerous thing about all these people that jump around.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: Because Kevin had this super high quality video podcast called Foundation, 2012, best guest, best shot, and he stopped. Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: And you, this is the thing, it's like most people, this, the advice that Michael Dell gave me, he's like, you're not gonna be taken out by, most entrepreneurs aren't taken out by competition. They just sabotage themselves. They like either, like they get to the point where like they want to go, they, they, they don't, they don't love the activity for the sake of itself.

So they'd rather be at their vacation home and they're rich now, so they don't wanna do it. You know, I saw Michael recently and then also last month I had like a 5-hour dinner with him and I was like, what the hell are you doing in Austin in July? This sucks to be here. Speaker B: You should be in Italy. Speaker A: You know, he's got, he's got like a crazy house in Hawaii. Speaker B: Okay. Speaker A: And his answer's simple. He's like, well, I just love my business. Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: This is where my business is. It's like very, you know, straightforward, um, and simple. So Kevin Rose though had this show called Foundation and he interviews Elon on, in, on the factory floor of Tesla. And I think this is right when they were starting with the Model S production. So Elon looks totally different. You know, this is, I don't know, 15 or 20, 12 years ago, however long. And he's just asking him like all these questions, a great like 40-minute interview. It's a short interview. It's, I, I looked it up the other day.

I think it only has like a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube. It's remarkable. He was just asking him like, how did you like learn? Like you come from Canada, you go from South Africa to Canada, and then you wind up in the Bay Area. Like you start companies really young, you know, people had forgotten because of Tesla and SpaceX that, you know, he had Zip2 before PayPal and everything, all the stuff he was doing in his 20s. Like how, so Kevin's like, how did you learn like how to build a company?

Did you read like a lot of business books? Did you have a lot of mentors? And he was like, no, I didn't, uh, have, I didn't read business books. I read a lot of biographies. I thought they were helpful. And so he says, I didn't have mentors, so I looked for mentors in historical context. Speaker B: Hmm. Speaker A: I was like, that's a really interesting idea. Looking for mentors in historical context. 'Cause if you read enough about a person, you kind of understand how they think. Yes. And then you can kind of like have this inner monologue with yourself, like, oh, I'm in this situation.

Like you mentioned Yvon Chouinard earlier in nonfiction marketing. I have a good model in my head because I've read that book 2 or 3 times. I've read every single other book he wrote. And like if I'm faced with a problem and I say, and I would say, hey, well, what would Yvon Chouinard tell me to do in this situation? He would tell you to increase quality. Because his response to any problem in his company was our quality's not good enough. So increase quality. It doesn't mean it's the right answer for your specific situation, but you should be able to pull that from your head.

Speaker B: But having that in the context of his story, by the way, is way more textured than like some business advice. Speaker A: So that's why I started reading biographies. I discover Buffett and then Buffett keeps talking about this Munger guy and then I fall in love with Munger. Munger's still learn from one person for the rest of my life, it would be Munger just over and over and over again. Just the way he frames ideas, the way he, he's just very wise. And it was fascinating 'cause I got to meet him is all the greatest people in the world living came and came to his house.

They went to him in that very modest house in LA and sought his counsel. What does that tell you? He wasn't the richest, but all the richest guys were like, he's the one, the guy I wanna talk to him. So he, his, his thing about this, he understood human nature maybe better than anybody else I've ever come across. He's just like, You need to read biographies because it helps to tie the ideas to the personality that developed them. And you'll understand why they came up with the idea, why it was important to them.

Speaker B: Yeah. They can't be out of context. Speaker A: So this is what— Speaker B: less useful out of context. Speaker A: Yeah. So like we were just talking about our mutual friend, Jeremy Giffen, who walked over here with me and I didn't even— he's really good at like getting to the essence of things. We should cut this part because I don't want him to feel good about himself. I want him to feel bad about himself. But he kind of like nailed this really fast when we started becoming friends.

Like, I don't know, like 4 years ago or however long it's been. And he's like, yeah, it's pretty obvious like what you're doing. Uh, he's like, you're a psychopathically obsessed personality. You didn't have any good, uh, mentors. So you just, you're doing that. Like, that's what Founders is. It's like, it's not for, so going back to Tai, to Tammy's idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's not for you, it's for me. It's just you needed that kind of personality type to do it. And then the act of sitting down and recording it makes an act of service to the world and to other people that, so they can benefit from this activity you'd be doing Even if no one listened.

Speaker B: Yeah. They can't be out of context. Speaker A: So this is what— Speaker B: less useful out of context. Speaker A: Yeah. So like we were just talking about our mutual friend, Jeremy Giffen, who walked over here with me and I didn't even— he's really good at like getting to the essence of things. We should cut this part because I don't want him to feel good about himself. I want him to feel bad about himself. But he kind of like nailed this really fast when we started becoming friends.

Like, I don't know, like 4 years ago or however long it's been. And he's like, yeah, it's pretty obvious like what you're doing. Uh, he's like, you're a psychopathically obsessed personality. You didn't have any good, uh, mentors. So you just, you're doing that. Like, that's what Founders is. It's like, it's not for, so going back to Tai, to Tammy's idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's not for you, it's for me. It's just you needed that kind of personality type to do it. And then the act of sitting down and recording it makes an act of service to the world and to other people that, so they can benefit from this activity you'd be doing Even if no one listened.

Speaker B: That's based in love. Speaker A: Yeah. And fear, probably fear of failure, fear of being a loser. Like definitely more like that's a very, I think that's a very common motivator for anybody that has an unusual, like extreme career. Speaker B: If you've, you, we talked about confidence earlier. You have this amazing, lemme see if I can find it. You have this amazing line from Kobe about fear. The greatest fear you have is yourself. It's scary to accept that dream you have. It's scary to say what you want lest you fail.

And then you also said Jimmy Iovine's career was built on a tremendous lack of fear of moving forward. On one hand, you have like this radical self-confidence and like the love of the thing. Like, do you experience any kind of fear or have you had, have there been periods of fear with founders? Speaker A: Yeah, I feel fear like every day. So like, I don't like it. It's weird for me because this is, uh, okay, well I guess to back up, it's also like bizarre. It's like some people get into what they're doing for different reasons.

Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Right. And one of the things that I started podcasting where it's extremely low status, like it was like a dorky thing to do, especially to do it by yourself with a $100 microphone in a kitchen. Like it's just a weird paid only, like, yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's just a weird, like, what is going on here? It was just like something I was obsessed with for, uh, like a very long period of time. And then, uh, I've become close with, uh, a lot of the people at Spotify and I've spent a lot of time in Stockholm.

I've spent, traveled to Stockholm twice this year alone just 'cause I think they're geniuses and they're very like generous with their insights and time for me. And they were talking about the fact that like they, one of their biggest mistakes was like when they were signing all these people, they'd start, the beauty of podcasting is like you can, it's like Andrew Huberman says, it's like punk rock. It's like you can start in like a garage. Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Speaker A: And you come up with like, there's no money in equipment.

You're just doing it for the love and you get better, right? Yes. Spotify, what they said is like, we signed like celebrities that are expensive. Speaker B: Meghan Markle. Speaker A: And then, yeah. And then we had like expensive production and they're like, we should have partnered with people like you that like came up with, because of the love. Speaker B: It's the whole story of content on the internet broadly, by the way. YouTube took out every good— I don't know. Speaker A: Yeah. And so there's a lot of people that start podcasting because like they want like fame.

Speaker B: Right. Speaker A: And so I don't have guests, so I don't like, I, it's just a solo thing. And like, it's one of the few podcasts in the world, uh, that is made by one person. So like, I think that's why Daniel Ek, like he'll, he'll be interviewed. He says over and over again, like his favorite show is Founders and he's very generous with his insights and advice to me. And one of the things he does is like when I'm, when we've been together, like he'll introduce me and we'll start talking about the podcast and he goes, he does everything himself.

He's like, he just like, he's like, it's like Prince. It's like playing every single instrument. And it's because it's very unusual to like read, record, edit. I'm hand updating the transcripts now. So like the amount of time that you're writing them, no, after the fact, because now I had this idea of like these beautiful captions I did for like the Elon episode. I think it's just better than my face. Yeah. Speaker B: It's the whole story of content on the internet broadly, by the way. YouTube took out every good— I don't know.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so there's a lot of people that start podcasting because like they want like fame. Speaker B: Right. Speaker A: And so I don't have guests, so I don't like, I, it's just a solo thing. And like, it's one of the few podcasts in the world, uh, that is made by one person. So like, I think that's why Daniel Ek, like he'll, he'll be interviewed. He says over and over again, like his favorite show is Founders and he's very generous with his insights and advice to me. And one of the things he does is like when I'm, when we've been together, like he'll introduce me and we'll start talking about the podcast and he goes, he does everything himself.

He's like, he just like, he's like, it's like Prince. It's like playing every single instrument. And it's because it's very unusual to like read, record, edit. I'm hand updating the transcripts now. So like the amount of time that you're writing them, no, after the fact, because now I had this idea of like these beautiful captions I did for like the Elon episode. I think it's just better than my face. Yeah. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And like there's other ideas. I wanted to talk about that when you said, do you still like kill, do you hold onto, I used to do it X way, so I have to keep doing X.

I was like, no, I'm going to do what I feel is best today. The fear, basically I didn't understand other people's impression of me was different than my impression of me. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And so I think this is a conversation me and Jeremy just had on the walk on the way over here. We're like, I don't think about other people. Like, I'm kind of like lost in my own world. And Jeremy's a little bit like that too. Speaker B: It's kind of the fear Kobe was talking about, by the way.

It's not actually fear of other people. It's, it's this internalized fear almost. Speaker A: And so I think this is a conversation me and Jeremy just had on the walk on the way over here. We're like, I don't think about other people. Like, I'm kind of like lost in my own world. And Jeremy's a little bit like that too. Speaker B: It's kind of the fear Kobe was talking about, by the way. It's not actually fear of other people. It's, it's this internalized fear almost. Speaker A: It's like you just wasted you.

Your, your life are like, so what I mean by like, I don't think about other people is just like, I'm so lost in what I'm doing that I don't like pop my head out and wonder, like the idea that like, shh, that shh, who I just ran into in this office, like, oh my God, I'm a fan. Or like, I got recognized on the street earlier and then at the airport yesterday, I was like, I have asked, how the fuck do you even know what I look like? It's so weird to me because I didn't even look at numbers.

Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: I just did this like giant, uh, multi-year, like partnership with Ramp, and we had hammered everything out. Like, we had everything in agreement. They're like, hey, what are your numbers, by the way? Right? Because they, they, audience quality over everything else. And I was like, good question. Let me look. I was actually shocked at how many fucking people listen because I'm not doing it for that. I honestly didn't even want to know, but I didn't want to know because like, then, then what happens? I put an episode and it's like, oh, I usually get X and now it's like 10% less.

Yeah. Speaker B: You're focused on the wrong thing. Speaker A: No, it's just what it, Quality puts over input. Yeah. It's just quality. It just doesn't matter. I'm making this for me. Yeah. And so like the, the fear that I have is like, I still wake up every day thinking that like this could be taken from me. Or in many cases, like if you go back to the Michael Dell's advice, like how you sabotage yourself, Conor McGregor, right? Has this great line where he is like, if you go to sleep on a win, you wake up with a loss.

And so his whole thing, if you look at young Conor, it's like he just, he wakes up every day, doesn't think. Right? He's just like a go-see, he's like a shark. Wake up, go train, eat, rest, go train again, eat, rest, train again. Do that again over and over again. Then what happens? He makes hundreds of millions of dollars and he's doing coke, he's on boats, he's doing all this other stuff. He's not training. Goes, then he goes back into fights and what happens? He gets knocked the fuck out. And so my fear is that, my fear is that like, like the way to not go, to not rest on your laurels to not have a rearview mirror, to not sleep, go to sleep on a win and wake up with a loss is just my routine, which is also, it's just like, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna read for a few hours every day and you're gonna do that.

And then once you finish the book, you're gonna sit down and you're gonna talk about what you learned and you just do that over and over and over and over again. It's the same conversation we had out there where like, it's so perplexing to me when people ask, the example I use is like, people are like, I, hey, I love what you do. What's next? This today, tomorrow, and forever. That's the only way. And as soon as I stop doing that, everything will go away. So that is the fear. Speaker B: You brought up Gagosian, um, crazy article.

He talks about, uh, they ask him something along the lines of like, um, something introspective and he's like, oh, I try to avoid self-reflection. That's how you lose your edge. Speaker A: Uh, that's a great quote, by the way. And 100% true. Speaker B: So So this is my question. First, a brief excerpt. You did an interview years ago with Fredrik Gießen for Compound, and in it you say, whoever you are and whatever is important to you, put that into your company. Don't shy away from the eccentric part of your personality because your personality is the foundation and the beginning of the culture of your company.

And you also talk about like everything, everybody has something they loved as a kid. They forgot, they forget about, they forget the love. And yet you often say along the lines of Gagosian, like great entrepreneurs have low to zero introspection. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Like, can you square that for me? Am I, am I mi— like, to me it sort of sounds like, like you might not— I, I, I understand that there's like maybe a spectrum of introspection, but you actually seem to know yourself really well. And so, and, and frankly, some of the entrepreneurs you study, maybe some of the more evolved ones or whatever, some of them at least do.

Why do you think— yeah, like, am I, am I making a false equivalency? Speaker A: I, I don't think they're like, those two things are in conflict. Um, so I think there's a lot of introspection they go through. This is why reading biographies is so good because like you see, you know, them like go down these false starts. They, they make mistakes, they have to backtrack, they have to change their mind about things. They have to direct their energy elsewhere. And, but so it takes a lot of like introspection to figure out like what you wanna do.

But once they find their thing, so Gagosian did a bunch of shit. He was, you know, he worked for Ovids. I just had dinner with Ovids. He was talking about Gagosian. He was like his assistant or something. I forgot. Yeah. And he is like selling art in, in a parking lot. In a parking lot. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: But then once he found his thing, he is like, oh, there's nothing else. Boom. So, um, our, our, our mutual friend Patrick O'Shaughnessy, like I text him, I, I text people crazy shit sometimes.

Again, sometimes I get in trouble 'cause like I don't have a filter and sometimes I think I should have a filter. Like some dudes like, like researching some of the ideas. and he's like, I've been researching you and here's a list of ideas you've said on other podcasts. And there'll be the podcast I did like years ago. I don't remember. And some, I'm like, I can't, that I believe, I don't remember saying that, but that sounds like something I would say and I should not be sharing that publicly. And then every time, and sometimes I think about, you know, if you think about Founders is like my reaction to what I'm reading.

And sometimes I'm like, man, I shouldn't say what I'm about to say. But every time I have that and just say it where it's like, you know, you're just like, damn, like, You know, I haven't processed the death of my mom or like, just like some shit that you would not tell fucking millions of strangers. Every time I do that, you hear from people like, I'm like that too. I'm so glad you said that. I had that exact same thought. So that's why I try to like, just like let it rip and like not have, I don't, I'm a bad actor.

I don't want to act like if people listen to the podcast and then we hang out, there's not like, oh, this is kind of weird here. It's like, oh, it's the same. Freaking guy. Yes. Speaker B: All the best. Bill, I met Bill Simmons years ago, like literally exactly the same. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: To a T. All of the best people are like this. Speaker A: Yeah. And it just, it makes life easier because like, listen, you don't have to like it, that's fine. But the people that love you will, will deeply love you.

And so I'm like, you know, I, I text some random stuff and like, you know, inner monologue stuff. And it's just 'cause me and Patrick work together and like we both are obsessed with podcasts and like we talk about podcasts a lot. And I remember like it was like 7 AM on a Saturday and I text him like, this whole game is for the taking. Like there's nobody else. Like there's just like the work ethic's not there. Like it's just, this is bad news. Like this is fait accompli. Like as long as I don't stop, like, and he texts me back, he's like, first of all, he's like in, I think like Nantucket with his family.

I was like, what the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But, uh, he was just like, out of all the people I know, and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do. I thought that was a great, like, response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that. Elon Musk, they're all like that. It's like they're not sitting there wondering, like, how do I feel today?

What should I do? It's like they, it's like blinders on. Wake up, go. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: To a T. All of the best people are like this. Speaker A: Yeah. And it just, it makes life easier because like, listen, you don't have to like it, that's fine. But the people that love you will, will deeply love you. And so I'm like, you know, I, I text some random stuff and like, you know, inner monologue stuff. And it's just 'cause me and Patrick work together and like we both are obsessed with podcasts and like we talk about podcasts a lot.

And I remember like it was like 7 AM on a Saturday and I text him like, this whole game is for the taking. Like there's nobody else. Like there's just like the work ethic's not there. Like it's just, this is bad news. Like this is fait accompli. Like as long as I don't stop, like, and he texts me back, he's like, first of all, he's like in, I think like Nantucket with his family. I was like, what the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But, uh, he was just like, out of all the people I know, and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do.

I thought that was a great, like, response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that. Elon Musk, they're all like that. It's like they're not sitting there wondering, like, how do I feel today? What should I do? It's like they, it's like blinders on. Wake up, go. Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. When you know what you're working on, especially if you have momentum, you spend very little time wondering about like what else. Speaker A: I would be curious your perspective on this, cuz we've talked for a while and like you were kind of like in the wind trying to figure it out.

And what I would say is like, I've been in that spot too. Once you find it, the sense of relief, it literally feels like, like this thing just comes off of you and then now you can direct your energy. You still have the love and the fear and all, you're a human being. So you have these, like these oscillations of emotions. But the fucking relief that I have that like I found something. It's, what is it? What's the Ikigai? Ikigai. Yeah. So it's like something you're— Speaker A: I would be curious your perspective on this, cuz we've talked for a while and like you were kind of like in the wind trying to figure it out.

And what I would say is like, I've been in that spot too. Once you find it, the sense of relief, it literally feels like, like this thing just comes off of you and then now you can direct your energy. You still have the love and the fear and all, you're a human being. So you have these, like these oscillations of emotions. But the fucking relief that I have that like I found something. It's, what is it? What's the Ikigai? Ikigai. Yeah. So it's like something you're— Speaker B: something the world wants, something that you're good at, something that you love.

And there's a formula. Speaker A: Yeah. Like that intersection. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: And so if you look at like, what are my actual interests? Well, I'm interested in like 4 primary things. I'm interested in podcasts, reading, entrepreneurship, and history. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Well, that's kind of funny. Like what sits— and it's also valuable for other people. Duh. Yeah. So it actually said like, and it's actually beneficial for people where like, this just happened. We were at a, like a really fancy wedding this past weekend and one of my friends who's an absolute killer, just remarkable, one of the world's best at what he does.

And he's just like, man, and we, we spend a lot of time together. He knows, he's like, you have no idea. Like, and maybe 'cause you don't wanna think about it, but you have no idea the impact you're having. Like you are changing people's lives. You are, it's one of the few things that you can put out into the world. It's like there's no negative externalities. Like it is, good work. And I appreciate that he said that. And then as soon as he says that, you think about it and then you forget it and then you go back to doing it because then the dangerous part is like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I heard another podcaster, super famous, probably top 5 in the world. And this person mentioned that like now these interviews that this person is doing, she is doing, if I give it away, she's like, I can do this in my sleep. I'm like, No, you can't. No, you can't. And if you believe that, you won't be one of the top ones a few years from now. Speaker B: I have something related, but just to directly kind of respond or answer your question, one of the things I found myself telling people very early on at the podcast, it was, I'm not totally sure what this is, but it's easy for me to care a lot about it.

And that was the, that was like the thread that was like, oh, I have, I have to keep pulling on this thread. There's another quote that I really loved in your interview with Chris Williamson. He brought up this quote. Somebody he knows, like, works with Tim Cook at Apple, and Tim said, like, when you find the thing, when you're focused on the thing, it's— you're gonna have to work super hard or whatever else, but the tool— your tools will feel light in your hands. And I feel like that so captures what you just said.

It's this sort of like, when you're on a mission, the other stuff falls away, and that's, that's cool. Speaker A: I don't spend a lot of time with VCs, but one of my favorite VCs is this guy named Ho Nam. From Altos Ventures. Speaker B: Okay. Speaker A: And I went and he invited me to have dinner with him and his whole team in their office in the Bay Area. And the reason we bond is because he's got this great blog post that I think came from like Good to Great or something.

It's called Hedgehogs vs. Foxes. And their investment thesis is very similar, like simple. They back hedgehogs. And so you go to their office and there's like a giant picture of a hedgehog, like right when you walk in. And the hedgehog knows a lot about one thing and the fox knows very little. About a lot of things. And so I'm like a hedgehog guy. Like Ho says that Founders is a podcast about hedgehogs run by hedgehog. Hmm. And spiky. And the interesting part about this is at the very bottom is there's, he quotes from this book on Vince Lombardi and it was about commitment.

And it says something about like the Latin, the original like Latin, wherever commitment is derived from, meant to like in an incision to cut. And Ho's point was just like, once you make a commitment, you cut away everything else. Yeah. I think most humans are very scared to commit to something. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: They want to maintain optionality. I'm not interested in optionality. I don't want to think about anything else. Like, you know how many people are like, you should raise a fund. You should do all this other stuff.

No, I will keep podcasting. Thank you very much. Like, you're not going to distract me because I know that 99% of the people on the planet cannot focus on a single thing for a long period of time. That's why 99% or more, probably larger than that, will never be great at what they do. It is very important for me to be really great at what I do, if not the best in the world at what I do. Speaker B: There's a Munger idea about learning is changing your behavior, and so I have a, I have a joke that there are a lot of things I know but haven't yet learned.

And I think this is one of the things I'm in the process of maybe finally starting to learn is, as someone who's very freedom-seeking, the most freeing thing is commitment. Because when you commit, it's, it's what you were saying earlier, which is like the other stuff drops away and you're free to run. Like there's open road. Speaker A: And I think like the, what's fascinating to me is like when you commit to something, you, you have a fundamental, like my favorite people, my favorite founders to hang out with are like old.

And when I mean old, I mean like over 70. Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: And because they've been working on their business for, you know, 30, 40, 50 years and you get the sense of them, it's like they have an understanding. They can't even, there's, there's not language that they can explain it to you. It's just like they, they, it's like this intuition, it's like that's built up over an excessively long period of time. They can tell you certain principles that are important. Like, you know, they're usually micromanagers.

They're upset. They were like very close to the customer. They spend all their time with the people actually delivering the service or the product to the customer and none with their executives. Like you see a lot of the same patterns over and over again. I mentioned Todd Graves, like the reason he couldn't sleep is because he wanted to wake up to go to one of his stores. His stores are restaurants. He owns 915 of them. That kind of guy will not franchise. He, they're all corporate owned. Speaker B: Crazy. Speaker A: It's just like he's not hanging out at the office.

Like he wants to be there like making bread and, and, and handing chicken fingers out the drive-thru. It's like, that's what's important to him. So you see that over and over again. So the reason I think that's important is once you make the commitment, you, that's where you like true knowledge, like specific, I think you used the word specific knowledge earlier. Uh, that's where like true specific knowledge comes from. It's like this going down this path and like iterating and, you know, making a mistake. I was like, oh, that's a form of education.

And then adapting that to your work where the reason I think I'm going to make this episode about how I make Founders, because like I talked to a lot of other podcasters and they're like, you do what? And they're very surprised. I was just at this dinner. They sat me next to Harry Stebbings on purpose and Harry's been really nice to me. And it's the first time I met him in person, but they sat me next to him cuz they know if I'm sitting next to a podcaster, like everybody else falls away and I'm just gonna fuck him.

Like, how do you do this? Why do you do this? And so 30 minutes in, Harry's like, oh my God. He's like, you're like an artist. He's like, because we do different things. He's like, I'm glad I would, he's like, I wouldn't compete with you cuz I couldn't, like I couldn't compete with you. Speaker B: Yes. Speaker A: Like we're not doing the same thing, so it doesn't matter. And I highly, I think people overrate like the competitiveness in podcasts. I think actually like it doesn't, the world's very big out there.

Speaker B: Like you're very positive sum for a highly competitive person. Speaker A: I would add, I wish it was zero sum. Believe me. I wish at the end of the year there was some way to say, I told you motherfuckers that you shouldn't have competed with me. There might be eventually, but, uh, no, but like, because I think the best analogy for, for podcasters is filmmakers. It's like, They were all friends. They shared information, they shared techniques. They in some cases helped each other finance their films. And if somebody goes and listened or watched Jaws on Tuesday and Star Wars on Wednesday, it doesn't take away from Spielberg.

Didn't take away from Lucas. Yeah. And it's just a better way to get through life because it raises, yeah. It is just like, it's weird because I know some other podcasters are like fight and like, uh, with each other and it's just like funny. It's just like, to me, it's just like, it doesn't, it's not, it's not a competitive thing. Mm-hmm. It's, it just doesn't. I wish it was, it's just not. And I think it's fascinating how to see people that are doing similar work to you, like how they approach it.

And I think that's my point. It's like if you've thought about it and only thought about that for 9 years, of course you're gonna come up with like some weird technique that would be impossible to predict from the outside. Speaker B: Like you're very positive sum for a highly competitive person. Speaker A: I would add, I wish it was zero sum. Believe me. I wish at the end of the year there was some way to say, I told you motherfuckers that you shouldn't have competed with me. There might be eventually, but, uh, no, but like, because I think the best analogy for, for podcasters is filmmakers.

It's like, They were all friends. They shared information, they shared techniques. They in some cases helped each other finance their films. And if somebody goes and listened or watched Jaws on Tuesday and Star Wars on Wednesday, it doesn't take away from Spielberg. Didn't take away from Lucas. Yeah. And it's just a better way to get through life because it raises, yeah. It is just like, it's weird because I know some other podcasters are like fight and like, uh, with each other and it's just like funny. It's just like, to me, it's just like, it doesn't, it's not, it's not a competitive thing.

Mm-hmm. It's, it just doesn't. I wish it was, it's just not. And I think it's fascinating how to see people that are doing similar work to you, like how they approach it. And I think that's my point. It's like if you've thought about it and only thought about that for 9 years, of course you're gonna come up with like some weird technique that would be impossible to predict from the outside. Speaker B: Yes. There's, there's one little thread there I talked about with Tammy, which is the, the people, the, the 7-year-old entrepreneurs and, and, and clearly like I think someone like you is getting this point.

You actually have this level of mastery where you go from— there's these stages of unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, meaning you don't know what you don't know, to you know what you don't know, to conscious competence, which is most people. And then at that final level, you actually get to the unconscious competence where, like, you started to say this, like, they can't even really describe exactly what it is. Yeah. Like, I almost wonder— I have to imagine the 70-year-old David Senna that's doing this in however many years is like Or like, it's like Rick Rubin.

He's like, what do you mean? I, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just like, it's just, it's simple. The other thing, uh, that made me think of that is sort of a selfish question, but I was thinking about like, if you were gonna do, and maybe this is sacrilegious already, but if you were gonna do anything else, the one thing that I could see being a natural extension of Founders, um, speaking of filmmakers, would be making a documentary. In many ways, that sort of feels what Founders is a mini version of.

And I'm curious if there's anybody who you would, that, that would immediately come to mind as like someone big enough or interesting enough or whatever that you would, that, that would be exciting? Speaker A: It wouldn't come to mind. Speaker B: No. Speaker A: No. Speaker B: Is there anybody you, uh, like, that's so, that's work for somebody else. Speaker A: Like they're writing the book. You know how many people, all the publishers, 'cause I sell a lot of books. Like obviously sell a lot of books. Speaker B: Like, well, but there's, there's writing.

Um, I think my version of that question would be similar, which would be, would you write a biography? Not would you write a book about all the— Speaker A: No, no, I will podcast. Is there, if the, if you're, if your question is, will you do something else than podcast? The answer has to be no. Speaker B: Fair enough. Speaker A: And so like right now, uh, there's this, there's this kid that like traveled all over the world and he, he like made the Founder's Book and spent all this money.

And then like I was hosting this event at Ramp and they're like, dude, this guy won't fucking— Speaker B: Uter. Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Speaker B: I got a meeting him next week. Yeah. Speaker A: And he's doing like crazy research and everything else. And like, will you please just take the Ramp events team? We're like, just take 2 minutes. Like, yeah, fucking paid $5,000 to make me a book. Like, that's kind of crazy thing to do. And so I wound up talking to him and like, I just like people that like show effort in whatever they're doing, whether they're sweeping the floor or making a podcast or building company, don't care.

I just want you to take what you do seriously. And, and then we sat around, it was like me, him, Patrick, and then the two founders of Ramp. And given this like young kid from like the Netherlands or something, like how much valuable information did he get out of that conversation? Like, you know, and so I was like, Listen, if you wanna do this, what you have here is not what I want, but if you wanna partner with my friend Eric Jorgensen, who I can't po— like Eric was one of the first people to put me on his podcast.

No one knew me who the hell I was. Like, I think it was the second podcast I ever went on. He's the one that introduced me to Chris Williamson. Speaker B: Like, yeah, he, he, he does, uh, Naval, the Naval Almanac and some other things. Speaker B: Like, yeah, he, he, he does, uh, Naval, the Naval Almanac and some other things. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Right. Speaker A: And he's the CEO of Scribe, which is the, like a way to self-publish. Um, and I was like, Eric's gotta be the one that does the book.

But if you can build, if you could make some, I'm never gonna sit down and write the book cuz it's not podcasting. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And all the podcasters I know that write books, they're like, fuck, I shouldn't have done this. I was like, yeah, I told you. So they're in the process of doing that right now. And the deal I made is like, I wanna make sure it's available for free to read, just like Wim Hof did. I think it's a great idea. You can read it for free and if you wanna buy it, then whatever, it's $15, $20 and the money it makes can go to you.

I don't need to make money off the book. I will, if it's high quality enough, I will make my audience aware that it exists. Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: And then I would love to give this kid, you know, if it sells enough, the kid would probably make a million dollars and then that's fine. I just want, it has to be good enough. And so far the drafts that they've sent are not good enough. So this book may never come out because I have to like put, you know, say no, this is worth, like you spending $20 on, or not even the money really, spending 8 hours to read or whatever.

Speaker B: On this note, if focus is saying no, this is the classic like Steve Jobs idea. Yeah. It's not saying no to bad ideas, saying no to good ideas. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Have there been any, either personally or if not that, other examples from founders you studied of like truly painful things you've had to say no to? Like it does, that didn't sound painful at all. No, I'm not gonna do it. It seems really easy. You make it sound easy. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Have there been any, either personally or if not that, other examples from founders you studied of like truly painful things you've had to say no to?

Like it does, that didn't sound painful at all. No, I'm not gonna do it. It seems really easy. You make it sound easy. Speaker A: So the Johnny Ive quote, yeah, I have ne— I, me personally have never experienced something that was like truly painful. I think the, the one thing that you could say is a distraction from the podcast is something I always pri— I also prioritize is relationships. And so like, I'm in New York right now, right? My schedule's gonna be different when I'm in New York than from in my studio, you know, at home.

Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And part of the reasons it's so important is because relationships are really important to me. Like, what is the podcast? It's ability for me to build relationships at scale. And then that is another form of education because I'm reading about great people, but now I get access to them. Yes. And then we build relationships. I learn from them. They'll also check you, which is very, very like, I have 2 or 3 people that like I've become close with that I've met through the podcast that will like tell me when I'm fucking up.

Ah, in like a direct way. Like, this isn't good enough. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: This, you're making a bad decision here. They're not, they're not trying to do it to like, belittle me or anything like that. They're just like, no, you, you don't understand. This is not, this is not quality. It doesn't fit the rest of the stuff that you're doing. And it's not a good use of your time. And so the one thing that would say would be painful if there was a thing to say no to is like, I don't spend as much time with the people I could spend time with because my work is so labor intensive.

I feel like I'm a manufacturer. Like I'm not the guy, I'm not capital, I'm labor. Like I am the labor. Speaker B: Yes. Yes. No, I, I, I think that point like actually can't be understated in this case. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And it's, that is the foundational thing that I actually think is like most people are at odds with and they're always like looking for the next, like most people are looking for to automate and like get leverage on a thing so they don't have to do the thing, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: You're the quite literally the inverse of that. Speaker A: Yeah. Like you don't work your entire life to do something you love to not do it. Speaker B: It's the Charlie Brown guy. Speaker A: Yes. And so the, the, And the interesting thing about that is I've literally, you know, I've had dinners with very powerful people in media and entrepreneurship and they're like, I had an idea for you. Have you ever thought about somebody else reading the books for you? Speaker B: That's crazy. Speaker A: And I'm like, what?

Speaker B: You do not understand what this is. Speaker A: Yeah. It's like, I'm not doing it for that. Yeah. I think the hard way is the right way. And then if you just think about that, right, it's like if you just This is not intelligence. This is effort. If you just apply considerable more effort over a longer period of time, by default, by human nature, you will just have less competition. I'm sure there's another me out there. I'm sure there's probably 10. Are there 1,000? Unlikely. Unlikely. So if I, there's 10 of them and I have to, if there was a competitive game going on, we'll share the prizes.

It's 10%. I have a 10%, like that's a way better, the odds are way better in my favor than, you know, something that is a low-hanging fruit, you know, something that is less labor intensive, less time intensive. Speaker B: It's just like, man, just, yeah, the friction is good. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: One question on this. You Walt Disney idea, if we lose the details, we lose everything. Elon talks about sort of not separating yourself from the pain of your decisions. Like you want to have your hand on the stove.

You're very anti-delegation automation. Speaker A: I have— Speaker B: I, I was just thinking about this. We are entering a world now where we have like truly intelligent help, um, or automation, and it's only going to get better. Um, you recently hired Maxim. You have somebody actually doing shorts for you. It's like the one thing that isn't the podcast, but it's kind of adjacent to it. Um, and in most, most people's businesses aren't like podcasts. They, they have to hire people, they have to delegate. Um, Elon has a line in, in the recent episode where he talks about that if you automate things, you have to make sure you like fully do the whole process first.

And so my question is like, maybe not explicitly for you, but maybe even for you, there are like, even MrBeast has an editor now. He used to not. Um, what is the line for that type of thing? Or is it actually gonna go the other way and like most things are gonna become more like podcasting and you'll have one-person companies and like, like, is, is there a line on deli? Like what, what enables you to actually go hire someone like Maxim maybe is an even simpler version of the question. Speaker A: So that, this is the interesting part.

So obviously like making videos to promote the podcast is not the podcast. Speaker B: Totally. Speaker A: Right. Totally. And maybe that's the point. So I could take time away from making the podcast to make, try to like learn how to video edit. That doesn't make sense. So I went through and I did what every other podcaster does and like you have podcaster friends and they're like, oh, use this. And they all like outsource it. God bless them. But like, I am, Like, I don't, they're outsourced to like, you know, the Philippines or India.

And I was like, I'm not trying to make the cheapest thing. I'm trying to make the best thing. I want great. I don't want— Speaker B: Totally. Speaker A: Right. Totally. And maybe that's the point. So I could take time away from making the podcast to make, try to like learn how to video edit. That doesn't make sense. So I went through and I did what every other podcaster does and like you have podcaster friends and they're like, oh, use this. And they all like outsource it. God bless them. But like, I am, Like, I don't, they're outsourced to like, you know, the Philippines or India.

And I was like, I'm not trying to make the cheapest thing. I'm trying to make the best thing. I want great. I don't want— Speaker B: Great is above scale. Critically, you care about scale, but scale never surpasses— Speaker A: I went through so many of these people. Yeah. And I'd watch what they make and it's like considerably worse than the podcast where I feel the, the edits that Maxim does. Are on par, if not better. Yes. And so how did that get that? For years of trial and error of me buying clips that you never saw because I spent money on shit that no one ever saw.

I was like, this is embarrassing. Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: It's just, I won't have clips. I'd rather have nothing. Yeah. Than shit. And so, um, and then Blake Robbins can, you know, he hangs on the edge of the internet and he's got great taste and he's just like, there's this kid Maxim. Speaker B: I met him on that same trip to New York, I think. Speaker A: Yeah. And, and he's obsessed with one podcast. Will you take time to meet him? And so me, him, and Patrick met in New York, and I think Maxim was 23 at the time, and it wasn't for to work together.

And I saw, he's, Blake had sent me stuff. I was like, oh shit, this, this guy's good. Like he was making his own, he went from like zero to like 800,000 followers. Speaker B: So I was making a video every edit every day. Speaker A: Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. And he did in like, I don't know, 6 months, 9 months, something like that. And so, uh, then we just talking to the kid and it's like obvious, like you can tell if somebody's just with it, got a brain, serious. It's a lot easier if they have a body of work to point to.

Yes. And so like you realize like this is a serious player. I can like spend, I'm not wasting my time here. And the whole time I wasn't convincing him, uh, to work. I was like, you need to get your ass to America. I go, how old are you? He's like 23. Do you have a girlfriend? Nah, kind. Do you have any kids? No. Like, what are you doing? Like you're super talented. Like the opportunity here is like so much better than, I think he was in England at the time and now he is in France, but he didn't listen to that, but we just like, I thought he was smart and interesting.

And so like we would text and it took me like, I don't know, like, I don't know, 6 months, something like that. Because I know what he wanted to do, like what he was like making documentary and then he wants to make like, he didn't wanna just stay in short form. He has like other ambitions. And so, and he was going, going back and forth cuz he's doing this like insane, like, full-length documentary on Steve Jobs. And I remember texting him one day and it was just like, like, how are you paying your bills?

'Cause he stopped uploading. He's not doing any brand deals, he's not doing anything. And he's just like, well, everybody always like asks me like how to do my edits. So I made like a course on how to do it. And, uh, like I'm living off that. I go, do you wanna do that? He goes, no. And I was like, why don't you do this? Like, why don't you just like exclusively come and make clips for Founders? And I'm pretty sure we did this over text, the whole thing. And this is a sign of like working with truly talented people.

Uh, they just make, they're easy to understand and they make things easy. Uh, and so I was like, listen, uh, this is what I want. Uh, I don't care about numbers. I want great. And so I go, can you do, you know, one a day or I think one every weekday and name your price. And then I wake up, go to bed. 'cause we're in different time zones. I wake up and it's like 3 paragraphs, lays out exactly what he, how he envisions it. Says the same thing, like, can we not judge it on views?

Which obviously, again, it's audience quality. This is what people don't understand in business podcasts. If you're chasing numbers, you don't know what you're doing. You chase the, and 'cause you can measure numbers, you can't measure quality. You have, it's way harder to measure that. Speaker B: Same thing as growth and duration. Speaker A: Yeah. So, um, and then he named his price and I think I sent him back, which is 6 times what other people pay. Speaker B: Sure. Speaker A: And I sent back one word, done. And that's it.

And so like, I don't give him any direction. Doesn't take any of my time. He sends them to me. I don't give any access to my social media. You're not fucking posting for me. You're not doing any of that. I watch them. If I would watch that, if I think it's good, I post it. And we've done, I don't know, like 150. And I think I've only not posted maybe like 6. Speaker B: So, so this is, this is getting something really interesting, which is obviously he's an exception, but there is something to the notion of like, I don't delegate at all.

And also I allow for exception. You, you have another thing, you have a Post-it, or at least you used to have a Post-it on your computer, one of two Post-it notes, which is what assets do I have that I'm not currently using? Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And I realize that's not exactly the same thing. That's kind of related here, which is like, yes, don't delegate, focus on the thing. But also like, that's a really important question. I'm sure. Someone like you, you're at a level now where you're, you're probably doing a pretty good job of leveraging the assets available to you, but I'm sure you haven't capped out on that.

And I think most of us are actually way behind. How does that fit with the focus? Like, or maybe just broadly, like how has that question enabled you? Speaker A: I don't like— you stay in the details, but there's nothing that I'm currently doing that I could delegate. So it's like, I'm going to read because I like to read, right? That's why the podcast is good because I enjoy the activity of reading itself. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: I prefer to be alone half my waking hours. Yeah. I think we said earlier something about like an event or like people being there.

I was like, oh no, I don't wanna be around people. Like this is not, this is not interesting to me. I don't go to group dinners. I don't do any of this shit. I don't go to sports games. Like I like small intimate gatherings of really smart people and nothing else. Yeah. And so the reading is gonna stay the same. Somebody else gonna You want me to fucking record the podcast? You want me to outsource that? No, the editing, the, the biggest thing people say, and MrBeast told me this, he tells me this all the time.

His favorite podcast is Founders. Um, it's like, remember who introduced you? Yeah. You and somebody else. You and Blake and, I think it was Blake too. And somebody else. There was like 2 or 3 people. I have the drafts. Yeah, that's fine. No, no, that's fine. Um, but I forgot who told him about the pod— who got him listening, but it doesn't matter. So it might've been you, you definitely put us in a group chat, but I, yeah. Yeah. So anyways, um, so the, the biggest thing is like, oh, that person doesn't need to edit if they just sit next to you, if they understand your taste.

Yeah. I just fundamentally disagree. Like I think the value is in the edit. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: I prefer to be alone half my waking hours. Yeah. I think we said earlier something about like an event or like people being there. I was like, oh no, I don't wanna be around people. Like this is not, this is not interesting to me. I don't go to group dinners. I don't do any of this shit. I don't go to sports games. Like I like small intimate gatherings of really smart people and nothing else.

Yeah. And so the reading is gonna stay the same. Somebody else gonna You want me to fucking record the podcast? You want me to outsource that? No, the editing, the, the biggest thing people say, and MrBeast told me this, he tells me this all the time. His favorite podcast is Founders. Um, it's like, remember who introduced you? Yeah. You and somebody else. You and Blake and, I think it was Blake too. And somebody else. There was like 2 or 3 people. I have the drafts. Yeah, that's fine. No, no, that's fine.

Um, but I forgot who told him about the pod— who got him listening, but it doesn't matter. So it might've been you, you definitely put us in a group chat, but I, yeah. Yeah. So anyways, um, so the, the biggest thing is like, oh, that person doesn't need to edit if they just sit next to you, if they understand your taste. Yeah. I just fundamentally disagree. Like I think the value is in the edit. Speaker B: But there are assets that you have that you're not currently using. Do you agree with that?

Speaker A: Oh, for sure. So like one example of this is the, I, I'm, I, I can't force myself to be interested in investing. I just can't. Like, I'm just not interested in it. I'm interested in making a phenomenal world-class product. That's what I think of. Yet I have crazy relationships and access to all these, to all these founders and best investors in the world. Right. And so like, I've done very little angel investing and it's all because like basically I've been pulled into it. And the crazy thing I realized is like, there, you, no one else could even get in that.

Yeah. And they're just like, I like, there's this guy named James from, he does this company called Profound, right? And this was a very interesting way, this might be an interesting story. I spent a lot of time with Kareem, one of the founders of Ramp. And what I like about Kareem is how discontent and dissatisfied he always is. And so he has excessively high bars for products and people and everything else. And so I was at his house for dinner and he's just like railing on all the shit he doesn't like.

And I was like, all right dude, what the fuck do you actually like? Like, is there something like, I don't wanna hear what you don't like. Yeah. Tell me what you do. 'Cause like a great signal, the guy that like nothing's high enough quality. Speaker B: What's above the line. Speaker A: Yeah. And so he was talking about this, the, this company and this founder, and I pull up my phone and I searched the guy's name. It turns out he followed me on Twitter. I was like, oh, I'll follow him.

'Cause like Kareem says this kid's smart. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And then immediately I get a DM. He's like such a fan, a huge fucking fan of the podcast. Are you ever in New York City? I'm like, oh, I'll be there in 2 days. He's like, come by. And so we wind up having this meeting. He tells me this crazy story where he like, I think he had sold his last company, didn't know what to do. He was in that, that trough of like, doesn't like, I don't know what my next thing is.

Lives in New York City, has a big-ass dog, would walk like 20,000, 30,000 steps a day just listening to Founders for Hours. And he's like, you helped me. And now their, their thing is ripping. They raised from like Sequoia and all this crazy stuff. Um, and so he, he goes, hey, I may be over my skis here, But like, do you angel invest? Like the round is closed, but do you want to get in? And I was like, I don't know. Speaker B: Like, I guess, like, I, 'cause I did not, you're saying it's exhaust for you.

Like, that's really all it is. Run off. Speaker A: But the, the reason this is important, because a good friend of mine had somehow found out I knew this guy and he is like, get me in the round. I was like, I, so I text him. He's like, no. So he is like, we don't, there's no other room. Like he doesn't have a pod— Speaker B: no exception is for you. Speaker A: He doesn't have a podcast that I love. And so there's a bunch of different ways to do this where it's like you could take the money that the podcast makes and I could partner with somebody like Jeremy who thinks about it all day long.

Or you could just literally just be, there's a million other things I could be doing around this. Yes. I will never be taking fucking individual meetings. Yes. To decide if I wanna invest in something. This is so stupid for me to, to distract from what I'm doing. But yeah, so that is like one asset. The asset that I have that I'm not utilizing is the relationships that I'm building. From the podcast. Speaker B: If you were to give advice to David in 2017, to maybe like put this in perspective, presumably there's going to be a David in 2029 who could do the same thing.

But maybe even just in the looking back, like what could that David have been doing better aside from maybe simplifying? What assets was he not using? Speaker A: Guess what your biggest asset did you have? Is your differentiated podcast and you put a giant wall in front of it. Speaker B: Fair. That's the easiest answer question ever. Speaker A: Maybe don't do that. How about that? Like the, you know, the amount of people, so Hinky's one of 'em, right? Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: You couldn't even share, like, think about like how many people share it.

How many people have shared the Elon episode this week? It's been crazy. Crazy how many, like, it's such a great episode. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: So, but like, it's crazy. And so like, Hinky, like I've heard from so many people, I think Hinky was spending like I think it was charging $100 a year. He was like buying gift subscriptions like it was candy. Yeah. 'Cause he is like, I can't share your stupid fucking podcast without buying an entire gift subscription, emailing it to them, and then they have to activate the RSS feed.

Yeah. It's just like, what are you doing? Speaker B: Wait, that's the worst part. It's not even the money. It's like, get it. Yeah. Private RSS feed. Good luck. Speaker A: So, so this is the crazy thing. So not only could you see who was listening, you could see if they activated or who subscribed. You could see if they activated. So. I was a huge fan of Invest Like the Best and I saw, I'm not gonna repeat the email address 'cause he probably doesn't want on the podcast, but I knew, I know who that email address is.

I was like, oh shit, I'm a fan of that guy's podcast. That's pretty cool. Speaker B: That's cool. Speaker A: And then I checked for some reason, like a few weeks later, not activated. Speaker B: That's cool. Speaker A: And then I checked for some reason, like a few weeks later, not activated. Speaker B: I was like, oh, brutal. Speaker A: And then eventually he, 'cause he told, yeah, he cracked it. No, he told me the story where he was just like, he heard about it from one person he trusted, then another person.

The second time he heard about it, then he bought the subscription. Then he heard about it again, then he heard about it again. And these are like, people have his number and stuff. They like, goddamn it, now I'll like activate the stupid private RSS feed. And then he starts listening to it. Then he tweeted about it. Speaker B: He started to binge too. Back to Sam's point, like there's a lot of stuff where I'll read one good essay or I was probably like, I think I probably heard the, the Steve Jobs one really early on or some, something.

And you listen and you're like, that's great. But there's something in your brain that doesn't fully click of like, oh my gosh, all the other one. I did this with Patrick. I've told him this, like I listened to like 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 interviews with him and I'm like, man, all of those people are amazing. Speaker A: Yeah. And I did not process it all. Speaker B: And then finally I'm like, like 7 of 'em, I was like, oh, either they're all, they're all amazing, which is kind of true.

Or Patrick is a really amazing person at drawing them out. And so I do find that like, I'm sure your show's the extreme version of this, is that like sometimes you have to like go, go listen to 3 in a row and then you're like, oh my gosh, it's a treasure trove. Speaker A: This is why, um, the, the advice that Anthony Bourdain got when he was a fir— when he released his first book, he met right before his first book came out, he, he met with another successful author who was, you know, way further down the path than me.

And he goes, do you have any advice for me? He goes, yeah, promote, promote, promote, or this all dies. Speaker B: And so somebody, uh, what's the moving audience again? Speaker A: Yeah. Somebody, um, said they have like, uh, notifications on for when I tweet, which is insane. 'Cause I, my phone is on permanent DND, like permanent. You cannot get to me. Like, and, uh, they're like, you tweet a lot. And I'm like, how do you know that? He's like, 'cause I have notifications on for your— I go, yeah, the, the best way to use Twitter is what was shared on one of your episodes that I sent you.

It was like, You just tweet all day long and you read none of it. And so all of my— yeah, exactly. All of my tweets are just me promoting essentially quotes from past episodes and then linking to the episode. And the amount of people that are like, I didn't even know you did an episode on Bob Dylan or XYZ. It's like you have to promote, promote, promote, promote. It's like somebody could listen to 1, 2, 3, but once they listen to 20, 30, 50, they've told so many people. Like you've got to get them further down that.

Speaker B: And so somebody, uh, what's the moving audience again? Speaker A: Yeah. Somebody, um, said they have like, uh, notifications on for when I tweet, which is insane. 'Cause I, my phone is on permanent DND, like permanent. You cannot get to me. Like, and, uh, they're like, you tweet a lot. And I'm like, how do you know that? He's like, 'cause I have notifications on for your— I go, yeah, the, the best way to use Twitter is what was shared on one of your episodes that I sent you. It was like, You just tweet all day long and you read none of it.

And so all of my— yeah, exactly. All of my tweets are just me promoting essentially quotes from past episodes and then linking to the episode. And the amount of people that are like, I didn't even know you did an episode on Bob Dylan or XYZ. It's like you have to promote, promote, promote, promote. It's like somebody could listen to 1, 2, 3, but once they listen to 20, 30, 50, they've told so many people. Like you've got to get them further down that. Speaker B: We talked earlier a lot about it.

Obviously one of the most common recurring themes is storytelling and world building amongst entrepreneurs. I think you referenced the Don Valentine quote, the money flows after the, after the story. There's an idea or a line from Evan Land about the keeper of the language as well. So like a language is part of this, like what makes for Steve Jobs, some of these guys, Elon, whatever, Some of the, what makes for truly, truly great storytelling and how does specific language factor into that? Speaker A: I think the best storytellers are just probably the clearest thinkers.

So like you mentioned Steve Jobs, he's probably the clearest thinker that I've ever come across. And so therefore, if you have clear thinking, you probably have clear, super clear communication. There's actually a book, I think I— Speaker A: I think the best storytellers are just probably the clearest thinkers. So like you mentioned Steve Jobs, he's probably the clearest thinker that I've ever come across. And so therefore, if you have clear thinking, you probably have clear, super clear communication. There's actually a book, I think I— Speaker B: Is clear communication the same as great storytelling though?

Speaker A: No, I think great storytelling is clear. It's like, it's like simplify. So like I think some of the best storytellers, I think it would be hard to argue that the best storytellers in the world aren't like musicians. So if you look at like Tom Petty's lyrics or even Taylor Swift's lyrics, my daughter's just an amazing world builder. Yeah. It's just like, uh, there was this, this, um, song my daughter put me on too, and I just like read, I don't even think it has like a chorus. It's called like L-O-M-L.

Okay. By Taylor Swift. It's like, not love of my life, loss of my life or something like that. And you just like read. It's like 4 minutes long and I'm reading along in the lyrics. I'm like, wow, she told an entire story here with like how many different words? Yeah. Or like, um, I did the, the biography of Dr. Seuss. I forgot his real name. And one of his most successful, you know, the, the guy was like 50 years old and wasn't a success and he winds up selling like 700 million books.

He was at it for so long, but one of his most successful selling books was I think The Cat in the Hat. And he designed within constraints. He's like, can I tell an entire story with using 50 words, 50 different words or less. So not like 50 word, literally you can use, reuse the same word over and over again. Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: But it's only these 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that, that econ— Speaker B: necessity is the mother of all invention. Speaker A: Yeah. That, that economy of like, just like beautiful simplicity of, I think the best stories again, like simple to understand and then therefore like simple to repeat, simple to share.

Um, and I think that's my biggest critique of my, some of my past episodes where it's just like, You're right now I'm under so much fucking stress and I'm working flat out that I'm telling people around me a line from Brad Jacobs' book where it's like, resist the urge to flood the channel with non-essential information. Like there's certain amount of stuff that I do not want to be aware of right now cuz I have way too much stuff in my head. So resist the urge to flood the channel of non-essential information.

Like I, I think I hear it and I'm like, That's a better story, that, that it's a better idea. That's a better podcast. If you, it's always taking away. It's never, ever, ever adding. So that's why I think what is clarity of thought? It's like, it's the constant refinement. And then you're like, well, how did Jobs get like that? Now there is some level of verbal mastery. 'Cause like there's a, one of the first things I've ever written about him was like Steve Jobs at 22. He was like trying to sell the Apple computer at like a computer convention and some like random reporters interviewed him like one minute.

You're like, wow. So there's some level of talent. But then you also combine some natural talent, which you mentioned earlier. Like, are you charismatic? Like, are people, do people wanna talk to you? Do you wanna have dinner with you? Like, then maybe that's a sign that you should be doing things orally, you know, you should be giving speeches or doing podcasts or whatever. So there is like talent. You had some kind of built-in talent and then you worked at it for a long, a long period of time. Where there's an entire book called The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.

I think it's episode 349 of Founders. It might be 350. And it's essentially like how he crafted his storytelling. And it is not just right off the tongue, let it rip. It is repetition over and over again, practicing every single word over and over again. Is there a better way to say it? Can we edit that down? Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: But it's only these 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that, that econ— Speaker B: necessity is the mother of all invention. Speaker A: Yeah. That, that economy of like, just like beautiful simplicity of, I think the best stories again, like simple to understand and then therefore like simple to repeat, simple to share.

Um, and I think that's my biggest critique of my, some of my past episodes where it's just like, You're right now I'm under so much fucking stress and I'm working flat out that I'm telling people around me a line from Brad Jacobs' book where it's like, resist the urge to flood the channel with non-essential information. Like there's certain amount of stuff that I do not want to be aware of right now cuz I have way too much stuff in my head. So resist the urge to flood the channel of non-essential information.

Like I, I think I hear it and I'm like, That's a better story, that, that it's a better idea. That's a better podcast. If you, it's always taking away. It's never, ever, ever adding. So that's why I think what is clarity of thought? It's like, it's the constant refinement. And then you're like, well, how did Jobs get like that? Now there is some level of verbal mastery. 'Cause like there's a, one of the first things I've ever written about him was like Steve Jobs at 22. He was like trying to sell the Apple computer at like a computer convention and some like random reporters interviewed him like one minute.

You're like, wow. So there's some level of talent. But then you also combine some natural talent, which you mentioned earlier. Like, are you charismatic? Like, are people, do people wanna talk to you? Do you wanna have dinner with you? Like, then maybe that's a sign that you should be doing things orally, you know, you should be giving speeches or doing podcasts or whatever. So there is like talent. You had some kind of built-in talent and then you worked at it for a long, a long period of time. Where there's an entire book called The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.

I think it's episode 349 of Founders. It might be 350. And it's essentially like how he crafted his storytelling. And it is not just right off the tongue, let it rip. It is repetition over and over again, practicing every single word over and over again. Is there a better way to say it? Can we edit that down? Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: So, wow. Speaker B: Yeah. And, and it's like a magician almost. It's like on stage he pulls the iPod Nano out of his pocket. Like he's, hmm. There's, um, there's one other piece of this, uh, You say people try to analyze business in a rational way, which is weird because humans are nothing but irrational.

And so obviously a huge part of storytelling too is the emotional part or the feeling part. What, how do, how do great products, founders to the iPhone or whatever, Raising Cane's, defy rationality? Speaker A: So me and Todd just had, Todd Graves from Raising Cane's just had this conversation. He's like anti, like theoretical, anti-intellectual when it comes to business. Okay. It's like very, very simple. That's why he's also obsessed with like like his, you can, he's very easy to understand because he, he has a very interesting, simple organizing principle. He believes in doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else.

Right. And he believes in limiting the amount of details and then making every detail perfect. So for him, it's just like, there's nothing theoretical about this. Like, is this the best chicken? Is this better? Like, what is the response? Did the sales go up? Like how, what's the time? Like he just manages like every element of his business. Like, can we make the coleslaw better? Is the bread fine? Like he just like, he thinks about this as like such like a granular level. And I think all of the iteration and behind the scenes work that goes into it is why it has like a cult-like following.

And so like I was just visiting my brother and sister, they'd never been to Raising Cane's before. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna take you. And we, like, they just opened up Raising Cane's was in like the South for a long time and now it's in Florida. And so we show up and they're like, what the hell's going on here? Because there's the drive-thru is like lined down the block and we can't even get a table inside because we have to wait for somebody to get up. Right. Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And Todd purposely puts his restaurants around what people view as his competitors that he does not view as his competitors. And so there's like, you know, like a Chili's or like a Wendy's. And so I remember looking at the Wendy's across the street, there is a single car in the drive-thru. It's just like all that. So. I don't even know if you can put into words, you can explain. It was just like all the work he has done and the iterative work of making his product better. First of all, like keeping it, saying this is going to be the product.

So all the, all the iteration goes into making that existing product better. Not now it's this product. And so now we're gonna divide our attention to this product over here. That the result of all that, uh, like knowledge and skill and practice has now compounded for 3 decades to now a new person gets this and they're like, what is this? They can't describe the magic. There's a line in, um, Dyson's autobiography that I thought was interesting that I missed the first few times I read it. And he said something like, the magic of a product should never be underestimated.

And he just defines the magic as like how it does what it does, right? It's not like, oh, the vacuum cleaner sucks air out. It's like, there's something magical about the experience when you use like a Dyson vacuum cleaner compared to like a Hoover. It's just, you can't even, I would. I guess it's irrational to— back to your original question, it's like, I don't know what's going on here. I just know these two things are not— they're not giving me the same feeling, the same sensation. Speaker B: What's interesting though is across all three of those, there's actually this combination of— with Jobs and with Keynes, there's so much work and effort and precision and detail and almost like rationality, at the very least, like almost like a scientific level of intensity to make this thing on the other end when revealed, like on the other side of the curtain seems like magic.

Speaker B: What's interesting though is across all three of those, there's actually this combination of— with Jobs and with Keynes, there's so much work and effort and precision and detail and almost like rationality, at the very least, like almost like a scientific level of intensity to make this thing on the other end when revealed, like on the other side of the curtain seems like magic. Speaker A: This is why I always say like Jeff Bezos deserves all the money that he has. It's because like he made a magic button. Like, oh, what is that magic button?

All the complexity behind it. This is the physical world, man. Insane. Speaker B: And so like literally insane. Speaker A: No, it's getting in more insane. So, uh, a friend of mine, I, I, so when I travel, if I don't have a bunch of books with me, I, I read entire books on my, the Kindle app on my iPhone, which is actually an idea I got from Elon. And the problem is, is you're tempted to like jump off the Kindle app and go to like something stupid like TikTok or Twitter.

And so my friend's like, just get a Kindle Paperwhite. And he showed me his, this is like this past weekend. I was like, oh, this is really cool. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: They're like, you know, like the size of my hand or something like that. But it's only, you can only read on it. It's like, you know, it's, it's, they've been, I had the first Kindle when it first came out. It was huge. It was complicated. It was all buttons. They've removed everything. Now it's much more simple. but the point being is like, oh great, okay, I ordered it right away.

It came to my house 4 hours later. Speaker B: It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's really one of those things where you're just like, and we're used to this by the way. One of the, one of the really fascinating things about technology broadly is the goalposts. Like if you showed somebody Google Translate in 1980, they would think you had created like AGI. Speaker B: It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's really one of those things where you're just like, and we're used to this by the way. One of the, one of the really fascinating things about technology broadly is the goalposts.

Like if you showed somebody Google Translate in 1980, they would think you had created like AGI. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: And now we're just, now with ChatGPT-5, it's 2 weeks old and I'm just kind of like bored of it. Speaker A: This is, this is also why I'm anti like, like redlining information fast, or like, I'm gonna listen to all your podcasts on 3x speed, or whatever the case is. Like, that's the point. You need to sit with it longer. I had this thought where I was like, what a miraculous piece of technology a book is.

Because I'm sitting here with Dyson's, you know, paperback book that was published in like 2003. It's one of the first editions. It's like, that book in my hand is 20 years old. It's marked up, but I'm looking at it, it's like these squiggly lines written on a piece of paper that somehow put like like go directly into my brain from another human and I'm able to learn from his collective experience and it's light and I could take it with me and it's good on my eyes. Like it, it's perfect. It is.

That's why it's lasted, you know, how long has books been around? 5,000 years. It's very hard to improve. In fact, Bezos talked about that when he was building the Kindle. So be like, you can't outbook a book. So you gotta come up from a completely different angle than just like, I'm gonna make a slightly better, better book. But like even that, like I just thought it was a beautiful experience of like, like just sitting there with this, staring at the page and sitting with the ideas. Not like, okay, I'm on page 25.

Lemme get to 26. Lemme get to 27. I'm done. There's not a test at the end. That's not the point. It's understanding. And then understanding what you said earlier is like, it's not then if you understand, then you'd actually change your behavior. Speaker B: Hmm. One of your favorite lines is from Michael Jordan. They're deceiving themselves about what the game requires. You say also entrepreneurship is an internal thing. What are most founders deceiving themselves about? Speaker A: The founders that I study on the podcast, almost nothing because they're the best.

Like, right. Speaker B: Again, I think I'm more asking about people towards the beginning of their journey or people today. Speaker A: Yeah. One thing I would say is it, it tied, you said something earlier about like, having a fundamental understanding of yourself. And I think people don't, I think it's very hard to fight against like your innate nature. And sometimes you do it because you want money or you want prestige, you want status, or you're doing all kinds of things. So like you just, your best bet is just like follow your natural curiosity.

And we have a hard time doing that because we're worried about the perceptions of other people. That's what I meant. Speaker B: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: I just like, I just don't think about what other people, I just don't think about other people. I don't know how to describe this. And I had to like zoom out. Like we were walking through the park on the way here and like I had that moment where I like zoom out and realize there's other people around me and I'm like, oh, this is interesting.

Like people, all these people in the park are choosing different ways to live their life. Like I'm choosing to read books and make podcasts. This guy's dancing with no shirt on. This guy's begging for money. This fat guy's eating an ice cream cone. Like all this, like literally the conversation you just had. It's like, oh, like we're all choosing. And then I go back into like, Work on founders, read more books, make more podcasts, find more listeners. Like the stuff that I, I like, I just naturally think about. But, um, the, the answer I would have to your question is something that I believe that I cannot prove is that the reason that the best entrepreneurs almost without a doubt make, have their best work decades into their career.

Obviously they have more experience, they have more net, they have a better network, they have more money, they have more resources. But I also think they just have a fundamental, a much deeper and fundamental understanding of who they are, and they've built a business to reflect that. That business is completely natural to them. And so that's, I think, where a lot of the younger founders are missing. And I listen, I don't, rule number 2 in the Sener family household is mind your own business. Okay? So I don't care what other people do, but sometimes I forget the audience.

So a friend of mine runs a fund and his thesis, uh, on the fund is backing second-time founders. And I don't do many speaking gigs. It has to be like convenient for me or we have to be a friend or something like that. This one was in Miami, so I could drive to it. I, I'm friends with them. That's fine. And so like, I just went up on stage and I just like talked about how stupid it is to sell your company and that like when people walk up to me now and they're like, I sold my company.

I'm like, yeah, sorry to hear that. And like, And then they're just like, he's like, you know who's in the audience? Like every single person in the audience. Speaker B: Literally, that's the whole premise. The whole premise. Speaker A: And I saw one of these guys that was in the audience at this wedding I was at last weekend. And he's like, something, this is funny though. This is like 2 years, a year and a half has passed. He's like, something you said that day is like really rattled my mind. And it was this idea.

It was just like, I think it was a mistake because now he's got a job and he's really an entrepreneur. Right. And so like, how much would you have to pay to, to be, demoted to employee. Like there's no money. I'm not working for you for any money. I don't care what the money is. I'm not working for you. And now he can't come up with a better idea. So he, his mistake that he made was that he sold his best idea. Yeah. I'm not saying you should never sell your company.

Yeah. If you should always be working on your best idea and if you have a better idea, then sell the one and you can get a big bag of money. Good. I like wealth. I'm capitalist as they come. Speaker B: By the way, there's a lot of great entrepreneurs who who had an early win and it's part of what, like the Patrick and John Collison, a great example of this. Their early win is actually what enabled them, maybe not, maybe they could have done it anyway, but like there's a lot of cases where that's actually kind of— Speaker A: So yeah, yeah.

If you're broke as shit, it's gonna be a lot harder. And you know, so my point is like, I think they're, they're interested, the mistake like younger founders make, or I guess earlier, it's like they're interested in a startup. I'm not interested in a startup. I'm interested in your last business. Yeah. I wanna know, is this your last business? Because then we can have really interesting conversations. 'Cause I know you're gonna be doing it forever. You're gonna be investing things that compound. We, we just, we speak the same language. Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: We're like this, like start, scale, sell, scale. And I know we're doing this in a VC's office, for God's sake. And this is our entire business. And like, and good. They can make money and they love it. Speaker B: Totally. Speaker A: We're like this, like start, scale, sell, scale. And I know we're doing this in a VC's office, for God's sake. And this is our entire business. And like, and good. They can make money and they love it. Speaker B: And I love VCs who like to invest in businesses that'll, yeah.

And hold it forever too. Speaker A: Do whatever is interesting to you. I just like, that's not interesting to me. And the pe— and if you really wanna be great at what you do, then like you have to hurt, you have to try to get to your last business as much as, as fast as possible because the longer you're in it, like think about what Michael Dell can explain to you from having 41 years of business, reinventing his business and, and surfing how many different technological waves. Yeah. You know, like think about what's in that guy's head.

Like I, I hung out with his son Zach the, the night before, a few nights ago, right? Yeah. And he has this thing where, you know, he calls it dad terminal. And, you know, instead of like Bloomberg Terminal, you, you log into Bloomberg Terminal, you type in a question, you get some kind of answer, your query that you're looking for. He's like, no, I just call my dad. It's like, hey, I'm having a supply chain issue. Do you have any advice? Yeah, I'm pretty sure Michael Dell knows a thing or two about supply chains.

Um, and yeah, that's, that's the stuff that's interesting to me. And I think a lot of people, you know, there wasn't anything such thing as an entrepreneurship industry where there is now. And there's all these things. So what I would, what I would argue is like, when you're talking to somebody, you're building a relationship with them, you're seeking their advice. You really have to think about their incentives. What did Charlie Munger say? Incentives rule everything around you. Like he says, I'm in the top 5, I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort my entire life, understanding the power of incentives.

And not a year goes by that I don't underestimate the power of incentives. And so I think there's just a lot of people like playing house is what Paul Graham says. It's like they think founders being glamorous or rich or famous and they're just doing it. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Because of all the other stuff where I like people that love the activity for the sake of itself. Steve Jobs was going to make— so Steve Jobs was going to make insanely great products whether he was rich or not. He was compelled to do that.

That's the stuff that's very fascinating to me. So I would just be like, hey, why don't you just do a business based on something that around an activity that you love for the sake of itself. It could be building supply, you could be obsessed with supply chain management. You should be, you could be obsessed with investing. You could be obsessed with reading. I remember telling one of my oldest friends when I started the podcast, I think I'm going to like, like make a living reading books. And they thought it was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard.

And then like 6 years later, like I remember, and we, they were like named the restaurant we were at and where we were standing when this happened. He's like, I can't believe you did this. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. It's like, cause I, that's, think about how much effort and time I put into that because I loved the activity for the sake of itself. Speaker B: I have a bunch of questions we can take quickly, like a, a sort of lightning round. They don't have to be instant, but, okay.

Um, you, uh, I think it's in the Nolan episode, you talked about like how instinct kept coming around, coming up across all these founders. Why do you think instinct and like intuition is such a common theme? Speaker A: I don't know about instinct. I, I think intuition. So my, my, oh, he just died unfortunately. So I was gonna say my, my favorite living novelist was Cormac McCarthy. And he didn't give many interviews throughout his entire life, but he, uh, he did give a few and he was remarkably consistent about what he said.

So like when he writes like Blood Meridian, which is like a masterpiece, it's gonna be probably read 100 years from now, right? And he's like, well, I actually didn't write it. It's like just came from my subconscious and I like let, let that channel open and then my fingers just were like tied directly to my subconscious and like out this, this, this story came, right? And he, the, he says something that was fascinating I'd never heard before. That, you know, people underestimate or underprioritize like their subconscious mind and that their subconscious is actually older than language.

And so like it's survived as we evolved for a reason. Like it's very powerful. We definitely— yeah. Wise. We don't understand it. And so my life is entirely based on intuition. When I was growing up, I thought it was like the value was in like being analytical and like, like numbers-based. And I was like, oh, that's— I don't wanna live that way. It was just like not interesting to me. And so everything I do is like me spending time with you. When somebody just asked me before I came over, he was like, how do you like— do you say yes to every podcast that asks you to be honest?

Like, of course not. But like, I like Jackson. There's just something about like, why? I don't know. And I also think there's weird things where like we keep— like we almost ran into each other in Japan. We're like on the other side of the wall. You didn't know I was in New York. We're on the same street. Like we, the, the universe is like putting us together without us planning. Yeah. And I was just like, my intuition says like, I like this guy and I like, I'm a fan of your podcasts.

Like most podcasts suck, they're terrible. And I think you're good at it and you're good early, which is a sign that like, you know, there's something here. And even like when people ask like, how do you pick what to include in the podcast? Like what do you underline? It's all intuition. I don't, I don't think there's a line that, that again, I mentioned Steph Curry a few times today. I guess he's on my mind for some reason, but It's probably 'cause this clip I keep watching over and over again, they're like, you know, what do you think when you shoot?

And he goes, absolutely nothing. 'Cause it's like, just like the practice over, over time. And then, you know, to me it's almost like a form of intuition. It's like there's just like the subconscious. It's like, it's not, I'm sitting here, let me pause, let me think, oh, where's my elbow? It's like what I'm doing. It's like, I don't know why I got to this page. There's what, 500 words on a, a single piece of out a normal book, I don't know what the number is, those 7 jump out to me, so I'm gonna underline them.

Speaker A: I don't know about instinct. I, I think intuition. So my, my, oh, he just died unfortunately. So I was gonna say my, my favorite living novelist was Cormac McCarthy. And he didn't give many interviews throughout his entire life, but he, uh, he did give a few and he was remarkably consistent about what he said. So like when he writes like Blood Meridian, which is like a masterpiece, it's gonna be probably read 100 years from now, right? And he's like, well, I actually didn't write it. It's like just came from my subconscious and I like let, let that channel open and then my fingers just were like tied directly to my subconscious and like out this, this, this story came, right?

And he, the, he says something that was fascinating I'd never heard before. That, you know, people underestimate or underprioritize like their subconscious mind and that their subconscious is actually older than language. And so like it's survived as we evolved for a reason. Like it's very powerful. We definitely— yeah. Wise. We don't understand it. And so my life is entirely based on intuition. When I was growing up, I thought it was like the value was in like being analytical and like, like numbers-based. And I was like, oh, that's— I don't wanna live that way.

It was just like not interesting to me. And so everything I do is like me spending time with you. When somebody just asked me before I came over, he was like, how do you like— do you say yes to every podcast that asks you to be honest? Like, of course not. But like, I like Jackson. There's just something about like, why? I don't know. And I also think there's weird things where like we keep— like we almost ran into each other in Japan. We're like on the other side of the wall.

You didn't know I was in New York. We're on the same street. Like we, the, the universe is like putting us together without us planning. Yeah. And I was just like, my intuition says like, I like this guy and I like, I'm a fan of your podcasts. Like most podcasts suck, they're terrible. And I think you're good at it and you're good early, which is a sign that like, you know, there's something here. And even like when people ask like, how do you pick what to include in the podcast? Like what do you underline?

It's all intuition. I don't, I don't think there's a line that, that again, I mentioned Steph Curry a few times today. I guess he's on my mind for some reason, but It's probably 'cause this clip I keep watching over and over again, they're like, you know, what do you think when you shoot? And he goes, absolutely nothing. 'Cause it's like, just like the practice over, over time. And then, you know, to me it's almost like a form of intuition. It's like there's just like the subconscious. It's like, it's not, I'm sitting here, let me pause, let me think, oh, where's my elbow?

It's like what I'm doing. It's like, I don't know why I got to this page. There's what, 500 words on a, a single piece of out a normal book, I don't know what the number is, those 7 jump out to me, so I'm gonna underline them. Speaker B: Yep. Speaker A: And then when I read them 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times before I record the podcast, do I still feel that way? Then that should be in there. Like, I don't, there is no other justification than that. And I would just say like, if you think about Steve Jobs, obviously one of the greatest entrepreneurs, he just says that intuition has been far more important to his career than intellect.

And as he got older, he was able to trust his intuition more and more. And that's really the only thing that guides me. I go off like It sounds so 10 years ago, David, like he would hear me say this, it's like, what is wrong with you? It sounds so willy-fu-fu. But it's just like, I go off intuition vibes. Like, how does this, there's some kind of intelligence that I can't even comprehend that I trust and has guided me to this point. I should keep doing that. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You and I think a conversation with Patrick talked about being easy to interface with. How have you gotten better at that? Gotten better at that? Or have you gotten better at that? Speaker A: Yeah. So this is really, again, another, um, another idea from Steve Jobs where easy to interface with, easy to understand. I think ideas and products are, if they're easy to understand, they're easy to spread. So that's what's important. That's why he's like, go back to the clear communication. You understand, like I tend to think in maxims and I spend a lot of time like distilling all the ideas down to maxims.

You know that Chris Williamson episode, like I wrote that outline, it was just, I think 15 or 17 maxims. And I have, I think 150 in like a notebook from that I learned from like just the podcast. And then like you just distill them down so you can remember them and then you carry them with you and then you can creating internal memes. Yeah. And then you can apply them as these situations come up. And so this is something that Daniel Ek told me. He's, again, he's ridiculous. Somehow somebody that, you know, I think the only people that have more paid subscribers than they do, than Spotify does, is Netflix.

And so it's crazy he's built a business he has and he's still, to me, vastly underrated. Speaker B: And he's also, I mean, Gustav as well. Speaker A: He's a killer. Speaker B: Oh my gosh, that guy. Speaker A: I spent 2 and a half, 2 hours, 2 and a half hours in Stockholm recently, like 2 months ago talking to him. So there are whole teams like that. Yeah. And so the reason I bring that up is because he's also very wise and he's like, just, he's like a sniper. He like completely identifies what you're doing wrong.

Or like, he's just like, he inputs ideas into my head probably better than almost anybody else because there's not many of them, but they're very impactful. And he's just very wise for being so young. Cool. You know, we're like similar age and he's just like way wiser than I am. And he said something to me, he's like, you're really easy to understand, so therefore you're easy to help. And I think it's very powerful cuz he's like, you just, Like you only, I know what you care about. Speaker B: So, oh my gosh.

Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: That is one of the most profoundly important ideas, at least in the modern world where there's just so much noise. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: Oh my gosh. That's powerful. Speaker A: And so I think I, I, I easy to interface with. I don't know if I would even say I'm definitely easy to interface with cuz like I think my intensity is like a lot of inviting or, or infectious. Oh, I think it's, some people don't like, like scary to some people. Like, so like Sure.

So like, uh, passion is definitely infectious, right? Enthusiasm. I'm definitely enthusiastic, but I also like very fucking stubborn and like very hard to deal with. Like, this is why I say like, I'm sure Hinky loves me but also hates me at the same time. Well, he's just like very frustrating to deal with, this pigheaded mule of a fucking person. You know, the guy that will literally like, I'll have experiences where like you'll give me an idea, like this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, I'm not doing it. And like, I'm very direct.

I don't have a, filter, and then 6 months later, like, I have this great idea, and you're like, that was my idea that I told you about 6 months ago. Speaker B: I'm sure that happened with Sam. Speaker A: So, um, but the good news is like, you kind of know where you— like, I don't want to act. I don't have like the social graces. And so like, there's no like hidden motive with me. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And I think so that's like, that may be easy to interface with, but I am difficult to deal with.

I don't really— like, we were just at this wedding and like like one of my close friends was there, he's like, yeah, David, he said that we're in a group and I forgot we were deciding what to do or something. And they're like, yeah, but David doesn't roll with the punches very easily. Like, I'm just like very like rigid in how I wanna spend my time and kind of ruthless about that where it's just like, no, I don't want to go spend, you know, 6 hours on a tour or something.

I'd rather like read or whatever the case is. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, I just think distilling down what's important to you in an easy to remember phrase and then repeating that to people will actually like be a benefit because then you'll have something like that where it's like, oh, you're easy to understand, so therefore you're easy to, to help. And then if you're marketing a product, like if your idea's easy to understand, it's easy to spread. Speaker B: Is there a biography that you think most founders would benefit from reading in full?

Speaker A: Yeah. James Dyson's Against the Odds. He wrote two. He wrote one when he is 45 and one when he is 69. The, the, I'm doing, I'm, I just reread both of 'em. I'm packaging them in one episode and that's why the episode's late because like it, the, the outline is, I'm like wrestling an alligator here. It's like way too much information. Yeah. It's like I'm, I could make an episode today and it's going to be complicated and, and annoying to me when I listen to it a year from now.

So I'm like editing, editing, editing, which we never went back to how they're getting, uh, simpler because it's, uh, something I learned from Walt Disney that you need to, animation at that time was so expensive. That he said you have, you're forced to edit before you create. So we can go there in one second. What was the, the thread that we were just on? Speaker B: James Dyson. Speaker A: Oh, so James, so they're both good. The, the, the second one is called Invention: A Life of Learning Through Failure, and you have a much wiser version of him.

But the reason the first one is because if you, excellence is a capacity to take pain, and if you wanna be excellent, like you're gonna have to endure through periods of pain. I have a good friend of mine, he's running a massively successful company. He's like, I cannot believe this. Our first, you know, 5 years we've had no problems. And we just had this conversation, go, oh, that's not gonna stay that way. Like you are going to one day and many times, especially 'cause you wanna do this for your life, you're gonna experience a hell of a lot of pain.

So like, there's no such thing as like, oh, it's just, we started and everything went great. This is not gonna happen. So the reason that book is so important is because It's 90% of it's just him failing year after year after year and him refusing to give up. He is, he's funny as hell in the book. He has a distinct point of view. He has a very unique, I think that's what I think that what I'm cutting away with the episode is not the story of even the, the, the perseverance through struggle, cuz I think I've covered that on episode 25, episode 200, 205, 300.

Those are the 4 episodes I've done on Dyson so far. It's, he's got a very unique philosophy on company building that I think is important to put out there. The way I would describe this is anti-business billionaires, and maybe it's anti-business-as-usual billionaires, but I think anti-business billionaires is better, like branding. And it's people that are so obsessed with the quality of the products that they're making and they retain control. So like that is all they focus on and then they make sure that they retain control of their company over the long term.

So they build the world's best products and they never relinquish control to other people and they wind up with the money anyways. Yeah. Speaker B: The business and the money are just gas for the engine. Speaker A: But it's like, if you can make a product, if you can make the iPhone, you're going to be rich. If you can make Patagonia, started with climbing equipment and then clothing, you are going to be rich. If you can make the Dyson vacuum cleaner, you are going to be rich. It's the, that's why they're anti-business.

'Cause it's like they're not doing 'em for financial reasons. They're not like, okay. This is what the quarter was. How do we enhance shareholder value by 10% over the year? They don't, it's quality over everything. They, I think that's a very important, again, I just told you, it's like, I didn't even know for years how many people were listening to the podcast. I just tried to make the, the best possible thing. And I still do that. Like, I, I'm very glad that the Elon episode is, you know, it was gonna be the most downloaded episode of Founders by, by far.

I don't like, I'm happy with that. It's exciting for a day. but it's just like, I'm gonna go back and do it again and again. And now I'm back struggling with the next one that's fucking, 'cause that one was like 5 days late. Speaker B: Yeah, you're Sisyphus. The Rob, the Rob. Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was like, and it was 5 days late and I was like, I went on TPBN and I was like, then it wasn't sleeping. I looked like shit. And I, I'm close friends with John and Jordy and they're like, what is going on?

I was like, I can't find this Elon episode. I can't find it. It's here, but I can't, yes, I can't find it. Speaker B: I know it's here. It's in the marble. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: I have to, if it's in the marble. Speaker A: Yes. I have to find him. And so I'm going through the exact same thing and I'll go through it again. And again, but the, the fact that it was painful means it'll most likely be better. So on, in the back of Raising Cane's, in their kitchen that the, that the, um, customers never see, there's a great sign here that there's a great sign that says, never sacrifice quality for speed.

And they're fast. He knows, he's like, if you walk up there, it's 2 minutes and 29 seconds. And like, like he has everything dialed in, but he's like, not at the expense of quality. Once we, it's almost like the, the Elon algorithm where you automate at the end. Yeah. You add the speed after, but you not first, the quality's gotta be there. And so that's like, you know, it's a handful of words that have really like helped me through the last few weeks where it's just like, no one's gonna remember if the episode's 5 days late.

They'll remember if it's good or not. Speaker B: I have to, if it's in the marble. Speaker A: Yes. I have to find him. And so I'm going through the exact same thing and I'll go through it again. And again, but the, the fact that it was painful means it'll most likely be better. So on, in the back of Raising Cane's, in their kitchen that the, that the, um, customers never see, there's a great sign here that there's a great sign that says, never sacrifice quality for speed. And they're fast.

He knows, he's like, if you walk up there, it's 2 minutes and 29 seconds. And like, like he has everything dialed in, but he's like, not at the expense of quality. Once we, it's almost like the, the Elon algorithm where you automate at the end. Yeah. You add the speed after, but you not first, the quality's gotta be there. And so that's like, you know, it's a handful of words that have really like helped me through the last few weeks where it's just like, no one's gonna remember if the episode's 5 days late.

They'll remember if it's good or not. Speaker B: Walt Disney, edit before you make animation. Speaker A: So this is how I'm doing. So basically what I used to do is I go through, I highlight, or excuse me, underline with like a ruler. Like I don't do anything sloppy. So it's like a ruler and a pen. And then I have Post-it notes and I write down like whatever comes to mind. It's like, oh, like that's like Henry Ford said that something similar. So like that's how my brain works. And I'll go through the entire book, right?

This was my process for a long time. And then I would go through and read it again. So by the time I sit down to record it, I'd read it like 3 or 4 times. Uh, and then I used to just move through the book in chronological order and then I get to the end and I'm done. Right. And that's the, that, that was the episode. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: And so what I started doing is instead taking out, and then the, the first edit before I did was like, sometimes I would be in the middle of a, um, an episode and it'd get to a page and I'd read that.

I'd be like, oh, that's actually now with the flow of the conversation and where it's gone and whatever he said, I don't need that. So I'm just gonna skip that. So that was like editing. I don't have to edit that out later. I just edit it. It never even, you never hear it into a microphone. And so what I've been doing now is just ruthlessly editing where I take all of my notes and highlights, right? I put 'em into a single document and usually they're like a numbered document, right? So like really great episodes tend to have, you know, maybe like 50 things that I wanna talk to you about.

Like the Michael Ferrero episode that I'm really proud of. Uh, it's on this guy that owns Ferrero Chocolate. It's a privately held company worth $40 billion owned by a single person. And today it's probably worth, you know, he died, so it's probably worth, I don't know, $80 billion still owned by his son, or maybe his two sons. And so that's like, that had 65, 'cause they're numbered, that had 65 things I wanted to talk about. And it was like perfect length. I think it was one of the best thing to give you an indication where I am in that Dyson edit.

I'm at like 180. And so I'm in big trouble. And so basically what I go, what now I'm going back and doing is just like, How much, like what, what do I actually want the episode to be about? And so for Elon, it was like, I don't wanna talk about his dad. I don't wanna talk about politics. I don't wanna talk about Twitter. I wanna talk about the fact that this guy has the best goddamn company building principles. Speaker B: Yes. You ever come across, by the way, you are not tracing the arc of the biography.

Speaker B: Yes. You ever come across, by the way, you are not tracing the arc of the biography. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: Like that is not what you're, no, I'm not, no, I'm not summarizing. Yes. Speaker A: Books that can be summarized are books that are not worth reading. Biographies are worth reading. They nourish your soul. You're an idiot if you're not reading biographies. If all the smartest, most productive people in the world all have doing this activity, what are you gonna do? You're gonna go scroll? Like, you're insane for not doing this.

You don't have to read, you know, a ton, but you should find— you might— maybe it's the same one or a handful that you read over and over again, but you definitely should be doing this. So I think it's one of the highest value activities in the world for sure, outside of, you know, spending time with your family, taking care of your health, and working on, you know, hopefully something that's making the world better, like somebody else's life better. So now essentially what I do is just, it's just The, it's just the ruthless edit before I even record.

And it's just fucking chopping and chopping and chopping. So like the, the Elon episode, the reading was done. The reading took like 4 days. The editing of the outline took like 5. Speaker B: And you had presumably like 180. Speaker A: No, less than that. But just like you're, you're not, not only you're cutting and you're cutting entire parts off, then you're cutting individual words in each sentence. You're rephrasing them so they So it sounds better. So yeah, so it's not just like, it's not just taking out individual like lines or bullet points and it's like rewriting them.

Then it's like organizing them where they should go together. It's like, oh wait, I kind of already said that. That's like another way to say the similar idea. So like we can just cut that and it's just literally like cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. It's the exact same idea that we talked about earlier. It's like, it takes a lot longer to write a shorter letter than it takes a longer one. And then. I was just talking to Andrew Huberman about this because I'm very interested in like the process behind like how you make it.

And he was showing me like he even like videotapes himself by himself talking out the ideas out loud. I go, how often do you talk to yourself? He goes, all the time. I go, I do too. Like I talk out loud constantly. And then, so sometimes it's like me hearing the ideas, like, does that make sense? Do I actually understand what I'm saying? Like, I don't even know if I understand it. And then what I'll do is like, I will start start saying the outline out loud to see how it sounds.

Like, I don't have to read the whole thing. Speaker B: Yep. Speaker A: Um, and then you just get to the point where it's like, okay, there's nothing, there's nothing else to cut here. Like, this is it. And then once you sit down, you record it, and then after, after you hear it, you'll edit even more. Yeah. Speaker B: Yeah. You have to feel it. You have to feel it in your hands almost, or feel it on your tongue, I guess, in this case. Speaker A: Well, it's funny you use the word feel it because I started hand editing the transcripts at the same time I edit, which is a bad idea.

I should do it after I edit. Speaker B: Uh, but I do it as I edit. Speaker A: That's why I describe it. So it takes so forever. Uh, that's, that's the way I describe it. It's like, I can like feel it. Speaker B: This is like literally like feel, 'cause it's a, it's your hand on the stove. It's Elon's thing. It's the same thing. Speaker A: It, it's like a, it's weird because I would never do like another all digital thing again. Like if I did anything else, I'd have to do something physical.

Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Like I think there's just something magical about that. Speaker B: There's a tighter feedback loop. Speaker A: It just not even the feedback, it's just like more interesting. And there's a magic in the fact that I can— Speaker B: we'll talk about durability. Speaker A: Yeah. There's just a magic in the fact that like you can talk into a microphone and anybody over the world can hear it and that's on demand. It's just a miracle to it. But I just, it, it, it's so dissociating. It's like hard where like I actually, I have no other way to describe it other than like, I feel by editing the transcript, I feel it, I touch it like this is, I feel the product that I'm making.

And in a way, when I wasn't doing this, I just didn't have that like sensation. Speaker B: Most of my listeners are in technology in some way or another. You study a wide range of people, some of the great technologists, but lots of other people, including people who make chicken tenders and vacuums. What do you think? Speaker B: Most of my listeners are in technology in some way or another. You study a wide range of people, some of the great technologists, but lots of other people, including people who make chicken tenders and vacuums.

What do you think? Speaker A: Vacuum's technology though. Speaker B: That's true. Speaker A: The world's first dual cyclonic vacuum. You try to do that. Speaker B: No, that's awful. Speaker A: That's patented. Speaker B: Do you think there's anything, um, and you, you at least spend enough time around some tech people to have a sense. Do you, do you think there's anything that tech people in particular could learn from the other types of entrepreneurs? Speaker A: Entrepreneurs you study? I, yeah, I don't, I don't, um, I don't make a distinction between them.

So, but like, you know, Andrew Carnegie, he was a tech company founder. Mm-hmm. Bessemer Steel, like it was a better way to do, like, what is technology? I think the best definition of technology is in Zero to One. It's just a better way to do something, right? It's like, well, one of the reasons that arbitrary distinction. Yeah. One of the reasons that that book was so well received is 'cause it's easy to understand and easy to spread. Right? So he distilled this down to like, it's like, what is actual technology?

It's just a better— there's a great line in the book Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant where like all new technology is just new means to do old ends. Speaker B: Something like that. Speaker A: Yeah. Something like that. Or new ends to old means or whatever the term is. Andrew Carnegie was a technologist. Johnny Rockefeller, obviously oil was technology. Did an episode on Charles Goodyear, vulcanized rubber. That's a technology. Railroads, that was the technology of the day. Yeah, yeah. Telegraphs, AC, electricity. These were all, now they're, they're not thought of as technology, but they were technology in their day.

And you'd argue that they still are. So there's just a lot of lessons you can draw from them. So like, okay, if you're in tech and you're not studying like history, like then why did Bezos get so many ideas? Go listen to the TED Talk that Bezos has from like 25 years ago. And he says the electro— electricity metaphor. For the internet. This is after, remember when the internet was happening, the first boom in the late '90s, they called it an internet gold rush. And he's like, that's a really shitty metaphor.

And he thought of the internet as a thin horizontal enabling layer, much more akin to electricity than to a gold rush. And he goes, it's the same thing. So these thin horizontal enabling layers, once they're invented, they go everywhere. Electricity, once it was invented, it went everywhere. The internet, once it was invented, it went everywhere. Speaker B: Everywhere. Speaker A: He just gave a talk with Aaron Ross Sorkin at DealBook Summit. I did an episode on the interview because it was so good. I think it's called Rare, Jeff Bezos interview.

I don't know the episode number for that one. And he's like, AI is the same thing. It's a thin horizontal enabling layer and it will go everywhere. And he's like, the analogy for AI is fucking electricity. And so the way I would say is like, the one critique I would have is like, I talked to some young technology founders. They don't know anything that went before them. And so there's an old line from like Cicero. It's The man that doesn't understand what happened before he lived goes through life like a baby.

Do you really want to go through life like a baby? Like, and then you have to ask yourself, like, why does Steve Jobs have historical knowledge? He would do a product launch on the Macintosh and talk about how the Macintosh is similar to the work that Alexander Graham Bell was doing in the 1870s. How did he know that? Why did he know that? Why was Jeff Bezos studying a Kiyomori? Why was, why are all these people, the James Dyson books I'm reading now, there's like 17 fucking engineers and designers that he's talking about.

From the guy that started Honda to the guy that designed the Mini to design the guy that built one of the biggest ships in the world in the 1800s and railroads. They're grading, they use the entire world as their classroom. And if you just study, like you can't build upon work that you didn't know exists. So you should have that base of knowledge and then try to build upon it and then let it influence and enhance the work that you're already doing. Speaker B: You talk a lot about, you brought it up with Jeremy earlier, you talk a lot about sort of looking for role models and studying a lot of these people.

And one thing that you've you, you brought up plenty is that many of them actually had kind of terrible personal lives. There's a line from Hans Zimmer that you brought up in the Nolan episode. He says, once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore. You look at yourself through their eyes. As someone who is as fascinated by, and in many ways pursuing greatness as you are, I think you clearly are attuned to this as well. And so I'm curious what, at least today, what you hope your kids someday say about you?

Speaker B: You talk a lot about, you brought it up with Jeremy earlier, you talk a lot about sort of looking for role models and studying a lot of these people. And one thing that you've you, you brought up plenty is that many of them actually had kind of terrible personal lives. There's a line from Hans Zimmer that you brought up in the Nolan episode. He says, once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore. You look at yourself through their eyes. As someone who is as fascinated by, and in many ways pursuing greatness as you are, I think you clearly are attuned to this as well.

And so I'm curious what, at least today, what you hope your kids someday say about you? Speaker A: There should be, I'll give you this clip. We should like, if you want to insert it, it's up to you. It's probably the best thing that I've heard all year. So this guy named Steven Rinella and he's started out as a writer. Now he's got the biggest like outdoor, like podcast in the world. He does this, uh, great like series called Meat Eater on Netflix. But he fundamentally, I think, thinks about as like writer, he's like a real soulful dude.

He's kind of like you. And he's one of these people where it's like, we talked about passion and is infectious energy and enthusiasm is infectious. I would say the most interesting people are the most interested. I am not interested in, like, I don't camp, I don't hunt. Like, I think nature's beautiful, but like, I'm probably never going to do those things. And yet this is what Steve's dedicating his life to. And he's so passionate about it that I would listen to this guy, like, read the phone book. He's just like, I find him very, very fascinating.

And I'm like learning about all this stuff that I may never even experience. 'Cause he's just, his, you can feel his love in it. And what he, you know, obviously hunting is like a dying, is like not growing very fast, I don't think. And like he grew up, his, his dad's generations did it. If you live certain places in America and his dad taught him how to do it, and now he's trying to do that for his own kids. And he's always asked the question, he's just like, well, Well, what if your kids don't like hunting like as much as you do?

And he's like, well, few people do. And he's just like, I don't, you know, I don't care if they don't hunt, if they never hunt. But what I'm trying to show them is like what it means to go through life with like a passion and to like chase after something. Speaker C: The most important things you can demonstrate to your kids is like demonstrate to them what it's like to be passionate about something. If all you ever can bring to the table for your kids is just like this kind of like ambivalence, passivity, well, I guess we'll go down to the park because what else are you supposed to do with a kid?

Later on when they're grown up and they're thinking about like, what is their impression about how you engage with the world? Even if my kids, and they probably won't, I don't know. I remember someone saying like, what if your kids don't like to hunt and fish as much as you do? And I'm like, not many people do, man. Whatever that happens to them, if they don't go at all, they will— when they're— when I'm dead and they're sitting around with their spouses and they're like goofing on their dad, remembering their dad, they're gonna remember someone who was fucking on it.

Do you know what I mean? Who was like driving hard. And they maybe won't like it, but they'll later— they'll laugh about it and they'll probably, uh, begrudgingly, they'll be like, yeah, I learned some shit from that. And it'll be that, like, what you're going to do, like, be fucking tenacious. To me, like, getting them into the outdoors, it's like selfish because that's what I want to do. But it's also, it's also like, well, I'm showing them what it's like to care about something, what it's like to try to excel at it, what it's like to try to like be in it, what it's like to try to do hard little goals.

You know, and, and it's not just to make them be outdoors people. It's just to have them see that, like, that you can— that it's good to go through life fired up, you know, to be like, this is fucking— we're going, man. Yeah, it's windy. It's fucking cold. Let's go. Speaker A: And he's just like, they're going to see after I'm long dead, right? What it means to go through life, you know, chasing after something. And they're gonna say like, I learned a lot from my dad, saw it up close.

Yeah, from his passion, the fact that he didn't— he wasn't apathetic throughout life. This is my issue with, you know, the reason I don't really pay attention to most of the world is because like most people don't have a mission. Most people are just average by default. I'm gonna do an episode of Nick Saban because he's got all these great quotes on this. So he's just like, you know, mediocre people hate high achievers and high achievers hate mediocre And it's normal to be mediocre. You shouldn't be mad at those people.

Like, it's abnormal what you're trying to do. And so what he's trying to show his kids, like, it doesn't matter what you direct this to. You can direct it to whatever you want. He's directing it to hunting and fishing and developing TV and making podcasts. I'm obviously developing into reading and making podcasts. It's like, I don't care what my kids do, but they're gonna damn sure say, like, my dad chased after something. And so, like, this is our— my daughter's old enough And she's like written me notes and like we've, we've seen stuff with this where like she's, I'm just like really impressed with like the person she is.

I took her outta school and took her with me to go meet, and I gotta keep doing this to some of these founders. Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker A: Because I'm like, listen, you get a chance to meet this world famous guy that's worth, you know, not even, it's not even a money thing, but you know, multi-deca billionaires that like for some reason give me hours and hours of their time and you get to be there. Like you're gonna learn way more from 2 hours with this person than all year at school.

And one of the things I'm most proud of is like, she's like, you're extremely driven and obviously like, you know what you want to do. And she, and I also did something with her that I thought was really important cuz like you, they, you can never really tell like what your kids actually like understand, like 13 years old. But I took her to where, so when my dad got outta jail and I was small, we had to live in this like really shitty place in Hialeah, which is like the Cuban part of Miami.

My dad's a Cuban immigrant. He was born in Cuba and my dad had a wife and two kids, but no money and no prospects. And we're living behind a really shitty grocery store in a duplex, in a two-bedroom with my grandmother, his mom, my cousin who was developmentally disabled because her mom, who's my dad's sister, did a bunch of drugs when she was in the womb. And so she's like mentally retarded and like would bang her head on the, on the floor and like drool and like that kind of shit.

So her and the grandmother's in one room and then the other room was me, my mom, and my older brother. And the house is still there. And like my daughter goes to private school. She lives in an insane neighborhood. She has tutors, she has everything. And so her understanding that she's like, oh, shit. Again, she doesn't curse. But she understands, like, you as my father are very different from everybody else in your family. 'Cause she knows, she's met everybody else in the family. She saw where, like, stuff I was doing when I was around your age, like very different experience.

And she also sees me getting up every day. She, she told my wife the other day, 'cause even like when we travel together, like I'm obviously working all the time and she's, And she's like, oh, he, daddy doesn't stop. And so I think like that's the most important thing. I don't care what they direct it at. I would just try to pick a mission and a mission in life should be in service of other people. Money comes naturally as a result of service. So like what I think is the saddest thing is like the progeny of, or descendants of like really wealthy people can, I'm kind of anti-dynasty in most case because this is like they, they dedicate their lives to like drugs and sex and like, think about what Churchill wrote to his son.

Like, you're living a perfectly useless existence. I still love you, but I like you less even more, uh, every, like every year, you know? 'Cause he is like, you should be getting, getting up and getting after it. Mm-hmm. Um, and so yeah, I don't care what they dedicate to. I'm not, I, I'm not gonna try to guide them in any case. Like, oh, you should be a doctor, you should be this. Like, I don't know. I, I wouldn't have listened to direction There's no way anybody could have told me what to do.

I will, you know, I, I have resources now. I have a network. Speaker B: Find your thing. Yeah. Let, buy exposure, help. Let me help you find your thing. Speaker A: Yeah. I will not like give you any knowledge I have. I will, you know, I mean, you have to understand, like, I am obviously very extreme. Like I would quote Cormac McCarthy's The Road every night. So every night when my daughter, and I still do this, I haven't done this in a long time, but, uh, I would go around making sure all the doors and all the windows are locked and then say goodnight to her.

And then I'd quote a line from Cormac McCarthy's book, The Road. The Road, which is supposed to be a, a novel on like a post-apocalyptic thriller. That's not what it is. It's about a relationship between a father and son. That's what it is. And there's a line in there where he tells his son that, I was sent by God, I was sent here by God to protect you, and I will kill anybody that harms you. That's what I would say before my daughter goes to bed, for her to understand, you would never, can never be in trouble with me.

I don't care if you're like, you're drunk at a party or you're in danger. I'm not like, you just call me because I, you will not understand how much I love you until you have your kids. You say I love you to me, you don't even know what that means. It's like, I, more than anybody else, is like the unconditional love that I have for you. I love you more than you love yourself, and I will do that until you die. And so, um, and I would say, also say that to her when I drop her off at school.

Speaker B: I think it says a lot that loving her that much, the thing maybe you want most for her outside of safety and health and these things is to find something that she can really pour herself herself into. Speaker A: Yeah. And if that fits her personality type too. Yeah. Because I under— like Sam Walton has a great line in his biography. He's like, listen, I didn't push my kids too hard because I understood that I was a fairly overactive fellow. That's the line. Well, that's a hell of an understatement, Sam.

You built— like if all of his wealth wasn't given away before it was valuable, because he gave the stock in Walmart before it increased in value and it was concentrated in one person. And I think combined their net worth right now is like $432 billion came from that guy. So like, if they want to be a normal person with a 9 to 5 and they just want to barbecue on the weekends and, you know, I don't, I want them to do whatever they want to do, but I do want them to see an example.

It's like, there is something that's different. That is, you know, a life of passion. And a life that's like, can be painful, but unbelievably fulfilling. This is what I love about these stories that they study so well. And James Dyson's biography, the one I mentioned earlier, does the best job of this. It's like, yeah, it's difficult, but it feels so good. It's the best feeling in the world. I was just talking to Patrick and Jeremy before I came over here about like, what is actually, what do I think about what's important?

And I think for me, it's just like making something that's truly excellent that makes somebody else's life better. That is a feeling better than anything else I've ever experienced. I love it. Speaker A: Yeah. And if that fits her personality type too. Yeah. Because I under— like Sam Walton has a great line in his biography. He's like, listen, I didn't push my kids too hard because I understood that I was a fairly overactive fellow. That's the line. Well, that's a hell of an understatement, Sam. You built— like if all of his wealth wasn't given away before it was valuable, because he gave the stock in Walmart before it increased in value and it was concentrated in one person.

And I think combined their net worth right now is like $432 billion came from that guy. So like, if they want to be a normal person with a 9 to 5 and they just want to barbecue on the weekends and, you know, I don't, I want them to do whatever they want to do, but I do want them to see an example. It's like, there is something that's different. That is, you know, a life of passion. And a life that's like, can be painful, but unbelievably fulfilling. This is what I love about these stories that they study so well.

And James Dyson's biography, the one I mentioned earlier, does the best job of this. It's like, yeah, it's difficult, but it feels so good. It's the best feeling in the world. I was just talking to Patrick and Jeremy before I came over here about like, what is actually, what do I think about what's important? And I think for me, it's just like making something that's truly excellent that makes somebody else's life better. That is a feeling better than anything else I've ever experienced. I love it. Speaker B: David Sennett, thank you very much.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me. Speaker B: David Sennett, thank you very much. Speaker A: Thanks for having me.