Founders - #220 Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

What I learned from reading Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[0:01] Editorial writers around the world groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant. Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not; others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was, however, exactly what he had repeatedly said he was: an agitator of men. And he remained true to his credo to the day he died.[0:43] If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. For nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers.[44:26] Enzo Ferrari was a man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs.[45:08] If they were to survive, it would be thanks to their wits and their ability to play the ancient game of life. Few men understood this game better than Ferrari.[48:49] Enzo Ferrari was born with simple tastes, and even after he became rich and prominent, he retained the ways of a simple, uncluttered man. During the 1930s, when every ounce of his energies and every lira in his pocket were being plowed back into the business, he lived a modest, frugal life.[1:05:50] It is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent.[1:06:13] Ferrari appeared to be happier when he was losing, which jibes with mechanics' observations that the race shop on Monday was more serene following a defeat than a victory. But why? Was not winning the central object of the exercise? Ferrari explained: “There is always something to learn. One never stops learning. Particularly when one is losing. When one loses one knows what has to be done. When one wins one is never sure.”[1:08:08] The source of much of Ferrari's success over the years was not technological brilliance or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing—a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible.[1:15:44] Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple.[1:19:34] His view of racing remained constant; the event itself was essentially meaningless. For him the stimulation came in the planning and preparation, in the creation of the machines, in the  organization of the human beings who would man the team.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast  ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

It was over. A strangely disappointing anti-climax to a life that had spanned most of the history of motorsports. His health had been in severe decline for months, and the end had been expected. While his mind remained quick to the last, the powerful body had long since crumbled under the sheer weight of years. Editorial writers around the world groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant. Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not. Others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was exactly what he had repeatedly said he was, an agitator of men, and he remained true to his credo to the day he died. If there was one essential quality about the man, it was his iron-bound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races

with cars bearing his name. From 1930 onward, for nearly 60 years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense, his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent, at least within the world of motorsports. For that alone, he towered over his peers. Enzo Ferrari, the last of the great automotive titans, was gone, never to be replaced. to start there because this is the third podcast that I've done on Enzo Ferrari. The first two, in case you haven't gone back and listened to them, it's Founders number 97. It's based on that book, Go Like Hell, which is the story about Ford versus Ferrari. And number 98 is the biography. Actually, that's number 98 is the longest biography I've ever read from the podcast. If you don't

include the book of all of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, that biography of Enzo Ferrari is almost a thousand pages long. That's Enzo Ferrari, Power Politics, and the book of all of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. That biography of Enzo Ferrari is almost a thousand pages long. That's Enzo Ferrari, Power Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire. And the reason I wanted to do another book on Enzo, and the reason he's one of my favorite founders and entrepreneurs that I've come across since doing this podcast, is because one of the sentences that the author just wrote here, from 1930 onward, for nearly 60 years, hardly a a day passed when this thought was not the foremost in his mind and that's the thought of his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name so anytime i have the opportunity

to learn from somebody that did the same thing that was singularly singularly i can't even pronounce that word i don't know if i'm talking funny, but I just had dental work done. So my jaw is still, if I do sound funny too, it's just because my jaw is still swollen. But the reason I think that's so interesting is because it's just very rare for somebody to be completely obsessed with the same thing and work on the same thing for nearly six decades. And I think what Enzo Ferrari understood is the same thing that Charlie Munger has talked about, Warren Buffett. It's this trait that a lot of the people, a lot of the entrepreneurs that we study on this podcast know, and it's the fact that knowledge compounds. And if you stay focused on the same thing, keep learning about the same thing for multiple decades, never interrupt the

compounding, you're going to have a unique set of knowledge that no one else does. And that's why I think also the author says he towered over his peers. He was the last of the great automotive titans. And when he's dead, he was never to be replaced again. So I want to go to the beginning of the book. I want to introduce you to this guy named Luigi Cinetti. Actually, you know what, before I do that, I've been getting a lot of messages about gift subscriptions, especially for this time of the year. I recently just switched to a different provider that has more complete feature set for subscription podcasting. But so there's a there's a link in the show notes that you'll find down below. If you click that link, then go in the upper right-hand corner,

you'll say gift a subscription, and then it gives you a very simple set of instructions on how to do that if you want to. And you can give a monthly subscription or a lifetime subscription if you want to. If you're interested in a lifetime subscription, jump on that, though. On January 1st, the price is going to go way up. For the last few months, I've been running this experiment. It's been very popular, but it's definitely not sustainable.

But I do want to give you a few more weeks to take advantage of that so jump on that if that's interesting let me go to Luigi Cinetti now the very the book opens up so Ferrari doesn't die till he's 90 years old and he works till he dies okay and the book opens up with Luigi Cinetti who's a few years younger than than Ferrari they were kind of like friends advers adversaries, partners in a sense. Luigi Chinetti is the one that introduces the Ferrari, like the cars that you can actually sell, a private consumer could buy in America. He's the one that opened up the,

which wound up being a gigantic market for Ferrari. And so the book opens up with Chinetti is driving from Modena, which is Ferrari's hometown, where he spent most of his time, to Paris, and it plays on the radio that Enzo Ferrari had passed away. So in the introduction, there's a great overview of Cinetti's view of Ferrari that I think is helpful to us. Let me go into that.

And he's thinking back of multiple decades that they worked together and really had a fight. Ferrari, he's one of the people I most admire because of his obsessiveness uh his stubbornness the fact that he identified what was most important to him and he went after it with everything he had but he's not necessarily like somebody I'd want to hang out with let's put it that way he's extremely difficult and cantankerous person and really just rather crude but we get we get an idea of that because Giannetti just had these battles with them so it says it had all been an insane aerobatic display of emotion and ego warfare, and he was tired of it all.

They had dueled too long, and if a winner had to be declared, it'd have to be Ferrari. But did he not always win? Did he not always prevail? Sometimes coming off the mat after repeated, bloody knockdowns to land a knockout punch. And that's another admirable characteristic Ferrari had. He had persistence in spades. Ferrari shared the spotlight with no one not even the man who helped create a market for his automobiles larger and more lucrative than anyone could have imagined he came to know Ferrari too well to understand his community the reason I'm reading this section to

you is because of this this this uh I mean I don't want to mince words here. He was extremely, the manipulative personality that Enzo Ferrari had. He described himself as an agitator of men. He was extremely charismatic, and he could convince people to do whatever he wanted them to do. And that was one of his greatest strengths in his career. He came to know Ferrari too well to understand his chameleon-like public persona, his ability to orchestrate the press and the public, to artfully play the lovable, beleaguered, poverty-stricken patriarch one minute, and the ruthless, egomaniacal despot the next.

He had seen the public Ferrari, the regal old Don who oozed respectability, as well as the private Ferrari, the belching, farting, cursing, bragging, hectoring, modernese Paisano who bore his lower class background like a mark on his forehead. He, meaning Cinetti, knew Ferrari as the consummate manipulator of men. He turned on the radio. A newscast was beginning. It was the lead story. In matter of fact tones, a voice announced that earlier that morning, death had come to Enzo Ferrari. Ferrari, dead. It was expected, but somehow it stunned him. This old

warrior, this curmudgeon, this masterful manipulator, this tireless competitor, this overwhelming presence, this imperfect but perpetually fascinating man was finally gone okay so now i want to go to enzo's early life and then i'm going to build up and tell you how he became enzo ferrari because he definitely didn't start out as anything rather like unique no one would have predicted if you see enzo at 20 years old there's no way you're going to predict that he becomes the greatest car manufacturer of all time. And two quick sentences here that give you an idea of who he was as a kid. He hated school.

He simply wanted to be a worker and nothing else. So his dad, they're living in Italy, of course, where he spends all his life, actually. And his dad is going to take him to an automobile race, and this is where he finds the love of his life, something he was completely obsessed with. For Enzo, racing automobiles, racing cars, was always the number one fascination, obsession. He was not really interested. He just accidentally started manufacturing some of the greatest cars the world's ever seen. But the racing always took precedent over that. And he sold cars so he could fund his racing operation. His first contact with automobile racing came when his father took him and his brother to a race.

He was 10 years old. The following year, young Ferrari trekked. So this is his first race. This is his second one. The following year, young Ferrari trekked two miles across open foreign land to watch his second race. Ferrari said, I found these events immensely exciting. And so from a very young age, he identified exactly what he wanted to do. He's eventually going to try to work for car manufacturers and then become a driver, a racing driver himself. But this might be – this is the most important paragraph in the entire description of his early life.

Examinations of his youth supply nothing to indicate any extraordinary talents. This really speaks to the benefit of not interrupt – like the fact that knowledge compounds and don't interrupt that right uh so examinations of his youth supply nothing to indicate any extraordinary talents no glittering undiscovered genius not even the singular talent for leadership and organization that was to blossom later in life enzo ferrari for his first 20 years was simply another italian boy who liked bicycles and car races and football. So when he's 18, something terrible happens. And it says in 1916, Enzo Ferrari had his first close encounter with death, an acquaintance that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

That's a very important sentence, too. Talking about the dozens. I mean, I don't even know how many people, how many drivers die at the very beginning of automobile racing. Not only do tons of the drivers die, but tons of the spectators die. And I'll go into more detail. I went into a lot of detail on that on Founders No. 97, Go Like Hell. It just really surprised me at the beginning of the sport how they had an extremely high tolerance for death.

So he's 18 and so for his first encounter with death and acquaintance that would stay with him for the rest of his life. His father died of pneumonia. The little business, so the little business that his dad had, collapsed and Enzo drifted through a series of menial jobs. As you probably realize from the year they were in, 1916, World War II, excuse me, World War I is happening. So he's got to do a bunch of work. He became a trainee in a small factory manufacturing artillery shells. This was a confusing time for Ferrari. His father was dead, and with the convulsions of the war, plus his lack of serious career goals, he meandered

through his late teens without direction. Then suddenly, shockingly, Dino, this is his older brother, was dead as well. And so this idea that death is an acquaintance that's going to stay with him for the rest of his life. He's 18 years old. His father's dead. His older brother's dead. All that's going to stay with him for the rest of his life. He's 18 years old. His father's dead.

His older brother's dead. All that's left in the family is him and his Ferrari and his mom, Enzo and his mom, rather. Ferrari's eventually going to have a son. He's going to name his son Dino after his brother. His son is going to die what most people think of. He died from muscular dystrophy in his early early 20s so death is a constant companion throughout the life of throughout the extremely long life of enzo ferrari um and his brother died because he was he was in the war so it says uh and they're not entirely sure there's just a bunch of could

have been influenza typhoid fever or any one of the dozen illnesses that ravaged the trenches and camps uh of the world war one combatants And Dino was serving in that war. Ferrari was devastated by the loss of his father and brother. And then right after this, he winds up getting drafted. So then he's got to serve in the Italian army towards the end of World War I. So I'm going to skip over most of his time in the war. There is one thing that he talks about over and over again in his autobiography and other people and other documentaries on him that I've seen repeated is one thing that he talks about over and over again in his autobiography and other people,

in other documentaries on him that I've seen repeated, is the fact that he winds up getting sick, he's sent to a hospital, and one of his memories is the fact that he's left in this dark room on the second floor, and all he can hear all day and all night is the hammering of lids of coffins being pounded into place. And the reason I bring that to your attention is because he's very familiar with death at

extremely early age. So he's like, okay, I don't know how long I'm going to survive. I'm going to live. I need to get on with my life. So he comes out of his service. Luckily, the war ends the next year and he survives. And he's just bound and determined to get the job that he wants and to actually live the life that he wants. He was discharged in 1918 as Europe gasped for breath and men groped to justify the sacrifice of 30 million lives. Ferrari seems to have seized with an epiphany of sorts during this period. He wanted to follow a career in automobiles. And in his autobiography, he describes this period. It's him and his friend get this, it's like a magazine or some kind of publication. It's amazing how often this,

what I'm about to read to you happens in these biographies. So him and his friend are sitting there looking through this, this publication and says they had examined a photograph of Ralph De Palma, the marvelously talented Italian who had moved to America in 1893. And by 1916 had won both the Indianapolis 500 and the Vanderbilt cup. He was believed by many to be the greatest driver in the world. So Ferrari turns to his friend and he says, I will become a race car driver. So he has limited money, no connections. So he goes to, you can really think about his next move is he's trying to get a job at the leading technology company of his day. And it's funny because this is Fiat, which is at the time that that company has been way, it's, I think it's

like 120, 125 years old. So today you don't think of Fiat as the leading technology in the company's day. But in the end of the 1920s, it was. So it says, so he goes to where they're located. He travels. He says he had come to Turin with a single purpose in mind, to gain employment with Fiat. Fiat was an acknowledged leader in the new technology. They're talking about the very, this is the very beginning of the automobile industry. And these, this time in, in, in history, I find extremely interesting. Actually,

there's a parallel between the early automobile industry in Italy and the early automobile industry in America. So I did a multiple part series. It's around founders number 118. And I think it goes all the way to like founders number 130 so this is I read a ton of biographies on all these these the early American automobile founders and pioneers so it's people like Henry Ford, Billy Durant, the founder of General Motors, the Dodge brothers, Henry Leland, the guy that founded Cadillac, Albert Champion, Alfred Sloan, Walter Chrysler, Louis Chevrolet and And there's a number of interesting things. One, they're there at the very birth of what is going to become a gigantic industry,

a global industry, right? And they all knew each other. They're all supporting casts in each other's life stories. And the same thing is going to happen in the early motorsports, this fever for racing that the Italians had. Because as we'll see here, these are the names I'm about to read to you. I'm just telling you now in case I forget this later on in the book. But these are names that we still know and the car companies are still around 100 years later.

So you hear names like Ferrari, Bugatti, Maserati, Lamborghini. They all knew each other. They were all in a relative same area and going after similar goals. And that's just mind-blowing to me. So I'll talk more about Bugatti because what surprised me is I don't remember if I learned this in the other biography on Enzo was the fact that Bugatti was really the blueprint and Maserati, the Maserati brothers to some degree for what Ferrari wanted to do. And it was fascinating that other people had laid out a blueprint for him. And then he winds up surpassing them. So anyways, that just that thought spawned in my mind because in this section of the book, it's talking about, you know, he's going to Fiat because Fiat's the leading technology company of its day.

And it's funny how like that's true then. But it's not how we think of things. That's not how we think of the company now. OK okay so let's go back to this point in his life so he goes okay i'm going to travel all the way to turin i'm going to try to get a job this is not going to go good for him one he doesn't have an experience and two there's a huge influx of unemployed italian males coming home from the war uh so says it was into this exclusive melee that the poorly educated, still unhealthy, totally unqualified Enzo Ferrari poked his nose. It was useless. The post-war job market was glutted with veterans and Ferrari was doomed from the moment he entered. I want to bring this to your attention because this is something, this rejection is something that he holds inside of him

for 50 years. He called it the lowest day of his life. Ferrari wrote of this moment with poignancy. He wandered through the busy streets to a bench in Valentino Park. And then he says, I was alone. My father and brother were no more. Overcome by loneliness and despair, I wept. And so this is the lowest point of his life. He's depressed. He has no resources. He just got shot down. And he's going to reference this because 50 years later, he's going, remember, this is Fiat. Well, I don't know if you know this, actually. I don't remember. Fiat buys Ferrari. And so 50 years after this point, he goes back. And once he sells the company, he sits on that same bench. And he essentially has this like wrong in his mind rectified. So it says this slight by Fiat festered in his brain, creating an anger that blossom with the passage of time. The reason I'm reading this section to you, because anger and revenge are extremely effective motivators of human behavior. And we see, you know, it's definitely a dark side to Enzo for sure. And part of that is the fact that he's got this giant ego and he wants other people

he wants to prove it's very important how other people view him and so he wants to prove hey you made a mistake revenge was a priority within him that would not be subdued and repayment in kind was a debt he swore to fulfill no matter how many years it might take and then from here the book just goes through something that I try to bring to your attention every time is, you know, it's not like he wakes up. I'm a poor 18 year old with no father, no brother on this bench. And overnight, I'm the greatest car manufacturer of all time. Enzo's story is very similar to a lot of these other biographies. You see, what's my next opportunity from here?

And then once you get to that spot, then you look around. OK, what's the next best opportunity? And he just goes from what he pursues each opportunity one step at a time, like just all of us can right and so it says uh he winds up going and seeking it's like okay i want to work in this industry let me go find out where these people hang out and so there's only days after enzo's arrival on turin that he began to display the gritty resourcefulness and powers of persuasion that were to become his trademarks he began to poke into the thriving community of automobile manufacturers drivers mechanics and promoters that had sprung up as satellites to the fiat operation. And so he just does whatever he can.

I just need, I got to get my foot in the door of this industry, and then I'll figure out a better way. The very first job he gets, if you think about it, he hooks up with this car dealer, this guy named Giovanni. And Giovanni hires him because Giovanni is purchasing all the army trucks, like the Italian army trucks. There's a giant surplus. And he's figured, OK, I'll buy these surplus army trucks from the government. I can get them for really cheap. I'll strip them down to the bare chassis. And then he's going to resell the bare chassis to a coachmaker.

That's what they call the cars at this time. I mean, if you look at them, I went and looked at like what the first like Alfa Romeo when Ferrari works there. And you know, they don't look like cars. They're called cars, but they definitely don't look like cars to us today. And so he's like, I'm going to take the I'm going to take these bear truck chassis, and I'm going to ship them to this coachmaker in Milan. And then this coachmaker is going to put passenger car bodies on top of them because a ton of – there's a giant demand for automobiles or these rather primitive automobiles in post-war Italy just like there was in post-war America. So Ferrari is taken as a general handyman and then he's also hired to transport and to drive and get the trucks or the truck chassis up to where they need to go. So it says Ferrari carried Italian. Oh, this was interesting. Ferrari carried Italian driving license number 1363.

So they actually numbered them. That would imply that he's one of the nation's earliest motorists. So he uses this job and then to meet other people. He eventually is going to meet. This is a mentor sorts. So he's just going to get in this job serves a point. Just you can meet other people. He eventually is going to meet, this is a mentor sorts. So he's just going to, again, this job serves a point. So he's going to meet new people. Once he meets new people, they tell him about other opportunities. If he feels that opportunity is better, he's going to jump. So he jumps from opportunity to opportunity. This guy's name is, these Italian words are going to kill me. I can't even pronounce English words correctly. There's no way I'm going to pronounce these Italian names. And they have fantastic names, by the way, are cities. So I'm just going to call this guy Ugo. I have no idea how to pronounce these Italian names, and they have fantastic names, by the way, are cities.

So I'm just going to call this guy Ugo. I have no idea how to pronounce his last name. Ugo is going to be a mentor of sorts to a young Enzo Ferrari. Ugo hires him as a chief test driver for the new automaker. This is, it's CMN. It says the company was embarked on a full-scale campaign to manufacture high-performance vehicles. And as was the universal custom of the day, the factory was entering a variety of races. Ferrari was hired by Ugo to be his assistant.

He had begun his climb up the ladder. And so he couldn't get into Fiat, couldn't get into Alfa Romeo yet, so he starts at the very bottom. CMN is a tiny firm. It's a new firm. And this is just a little bit about the occupational hazards. I thought this paragraph was rather amusing. It says, The tiny CMN firm could not afford to transport its race cars by rail or truck. So Ferrari and Ugo were assigned the job of driving to the race.

So he's got to transport the cars to the race. It was hardly a leisurely tour through the countryside. Ferrari recalled that they drove into a nasty blizzard one day, and they were set upon by a pack of wolves, which had to be dispensed by shots from the pistol that he always carried under his seat. So imagine if one of the occupational hazards of your job is that you might be set upon by a pack of wolves. So we see I'm skipping ahead, obviously going very fast with the book. Ferrari soon left CNM to seek his fortune in other realms of the Italian automobile business and to further his career as a racing driver. So it's another step up.

Shortly thereafter, he began an association with Alfa Romeo. So again, Alfa Romeo, gigantic, successful company of its day. I think it winds up being nationalized by the Italian government. I think Mussolini nationalized it, if I'm not mistaken. Enzo Ferrari began... Mussolini's in his book quite a lot. I'm going to skip over most of those parts. Ferrari began an association with Alfa Romeo that was to last for nearly two decades. This is another important part I want to bring to your attention,

is how long Enzo Ferrari had to be committed to his desire to be successful. He is like 50 years old, something like that, by the time he's able to start a company Ferrari under his own name. As that sentence just hinted, he began an association with Alfa Romeo that was to last for nearly two decades. So this is where he starts to race cars. He's going to become a car salesman as well. And then eventually he's going to run the racing team for Alfa Romeo. I need to give you a bit about his personality though, because this is one of the most important things to learn about him.

And it says, there is no question that by this time, Enzo Ferrari had become a compelling salesman and manipulator. So this section reminds me of something I learned when, you see it a lot, actually, but what comes to my mind is when I read George Lucas's biography. I'm pretty sure this is Founders number 35. So George Lucas was was like many of the founders that we cover. He was obsessed with studying history. He liked to read biographies. He wanted to know how the great people of history thought, right? And it wasn't until he's in his, like, I think he's like 23 years old and he meets Francis Ford Coppola, who I think is like 28 at the time. And Francis Ford Coppola becomes like one of his best friends and mentors.

And he's the first of the independent filmmakers that actually figures a way to break into Hollywood at the time so like what George Lucas was trying to do Steven Spielberg Morton Scorsese another example of all these guys knowing each other at the very beginning which is crazy when you think about the careers uh Brian De Palma was also in the group that they went on to have but he says something in his biography about Coppola and um and based on his his historic biographies, he said Francis could sell ice to Eskimos. He had charisma beyond logic. I can see now what kind of men the great Caesars of history were. Their magnetism.

That applies to Francis Ford Coppola. It definitely applies to Enzo Ferrari. And so I don't think we can overstate the importance of being able to be persuasive, to be able to communicate with other humans, and the impact it's going to have on your work. It reminds me, if you read the biography of Warren Buffett, or any, there's a bunch of them, but he mentions this over and over again. He says like the best investment he ever made was the $100 he spent for the Dale Carnegie public speaking course. And I think that statement speaks volumes. If you don't already have this ability, like he's clearly telling you, hey, find a way to learn.

It's just a skill. Like any other one, you can learn how to do it. Let's get back to this paragraph. What's also surprising is even though he knew he was persuasive, he knew he was able to manipulate. That's the word he's going to use. He does have a little bit of imposter syndrome because he's still this poor, uneducated kid. Despite his obvious powers of persuasion and his sufficiently vivid personality push his ways into the inner sanctums

of the Alfa Romeo test department, Ferrari remained gripped by his lower class bumpkin image. At one point he lamented, I feel so provincial. But that sense of inadequacy was more than compensated for his, this is really like the way to think about this, by his streetwise cunning and a brash ability to deal with the social and professional superiors like a man twice his

age. So he's also doing races. I'm skipping over most of that part because he was, you know, being by his own admission, not a great race car driver, way better at obviously being the agitator of men. But this is the problem that a young Enzo is trying to solve, why he's doing the work at Alfa Romeo. The modest firm of Alfa Romeo is still operating in the minor leagues of the automobile racing business. Chances of their victory in major events seemed a distant hope because they're going against the mighty Fiat, Mercedes, all these other people that have way more resources than they do at this point in history. It was simply too great to even consider high placing in the major Grand Prix events, but Ferrari plunged into his job with typical vigor.

It is around this time, though, that he's going to start making the more money he's ever made in his life, and that's going to come from actual car sales. So it says his aggressive sales tactics permitted him to become an exclusive sales agent for Alfa Romeo Automobiles in this little section of Italy that he's in. I'm going to skip the name. By using his growing reputation as a racing driver, he artfully enhanced the marquee image among the rich clientele in the region. As his financial fortunes in the car business increased, his racing career entered into a severe decline. He's 24 years old. And so as his racing career declines, he does something smart. He realizes that the failure of his one dream, right?

Remember when he looked at his friend when he was like, what, 18, whatever, how old he was, maybe 19? I'm going to be a race car driver. That was his dream, right? But his failure of one dream leads to the discovery of his true talent. It's something that he's going to do for the rest of his life. For all of his attempts at reaching the big time of major league racing, Enzo Ferrari would be doomed to the role of spectator. Yet his stature as an organizer and leader of men would soar to unexpected heights because he was able to strengthen the Alfa Romeo team and aid in propelling it to the very pinnacle of the sport. And so as he's turning around the fortunes of Alfa Romeo, he's introduced to the very real specter of death that this sport produces, which is unbelievable. I think the best

description of that is that little fun book I did on funders numbers 97 go like hell. If it's also, you've seen, um, if you've seen the movie Ford versus Ferrari, uh, with Christian Bale and Matt Damon, Matt Damon plays Carol Shelby. I also did a, um, a podcast on Carol Shelby. Carol Shelby is by far one of the most likable founders I've ever read. And just, there's a bunch of interviews with him on YouTube right before he died. And it's like, I think he's in his 80s. He's just hilarious. I love that guy.

But that's who Matt Damon plays him in that movie, if you haven't seen it. You could also listen to Founders No. 99. That's Carroll Shelby. But so we see that he's just death. How much death is involved in this sport is just unbelievable. This is going to be his mentor, the one that hired him. Ugo spun off of one of the ultra-fast bends and was killed. Ugo was gone.

The man who had brought Ferrari into the sport and given him his first chance to drive was dead. He would be the first of literally dozens of men who would fall around Ferrari, victims of this crudest of sports. So this is where we see that Enzo just really made the smart decision to alter his focus. And he had a talent for recruiting highly talented employees. And so he winds up recruiting two of the best engineers and also drivers. He does this throughout his, I mean, this is his MO, his playbook for his whole life, actually. And what happens is now you have this Alfa romeo team which

is the underdog beating fiat which wasn't supposed to happen and so it says um while ferrari could accept no credit for beating fiat on the track meaning he wasn't driving his contribution to their overall defeat by aiding in the defection of basi and jano these are people he recruited was pivotal following the pair's flight uh the once unbeatable fiat racing department was in shambles their losses prompted fiat to drop racing after the 1924 season. A short-lived return would be made a few years later, but for all intents and purposes, they departed the sport forever. Considering Enzo's deeply rooted sense of honor and his need for revenge, remember this is a firm that would not hire him. One can be sure that this capitulation by the company that had rejected him six years earlier was lustily celebrated by Enzo Ferrari. That just, you know, also popped

into my mind as I'm rereading this. There is so many opportunities that are outside of Enzo's control that he benefits from just by showing up. This idea that Fiat gives up uh cars break down they don't get through immigration enzo was obsessed he was most most uh uh car racing teams at the time would say hey focus on whatever there's all these like different focus on grand prix or focus on this country or focus on this one type of race and enzo's like no i'm gonna if there's a race i'm showing up and so they wouldn't have now that'd be crazy you wouldn't be able to do that you'd have specialized cars and everything else. They would just retrofit really fast.

Like if maybe you had a car, a long endurance race, you need to have a different type of vehicle for that. Maybe you have one that's just going around the same track, like an E500, so you have a car for that. Maybe you have a street race that's a thousand miles, you have a car for that. Enzo would just be like, no, I'm showing up at everything. So this idea, I just realized that it prompted Fiat to drop out.

He wins a lot almost by default, by the fact that he just shows up. I think there's a huge message there. It goes back to what Steve Jobs told us. Half of what separates, his famous quote that I'll never forget and I think it's so important for people to repeat over and over again. Half of what Steve Jobs said, half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the not successful ones is just pure perseverance. Perseverance, persistence, whatever you want to call it, Enzo had that in spades. So now we get to when Enzo is 31 years old. This is going to be the start of the Scuderia Ferrari.

And that word just means racing stable. It's kind of like a joint venture of sorts between Enzo Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. It says with their money and Ferrari's connections and racing expertise, why not pool their talents and form a scooteria? The deal would be simple. A limited partnership would be formed in which the shareholders would set up an operation to buy, race, and perhaps someday build high-performance cars. And so this is what Enzo is going to do for quite a while. It's almost like two decades, something like that, maybe 15 years from this point in the story before he sets out on his own, like he's under his own name, that is. But this section is really about the fact that he

felt triumphant. He gets to return to the city of his birth, and he's now transformed himself at a rather young age from agent and employee to the founder of his own company. Ferrari symbolically viewed the formation of the new Scuderia as a triumphant homecoming to a place that, save for a few racing enthusiasts, had ignored his presence. My return to Modena was kind of a mental revolt, he later wrote. When I went away, I had merely some slight reputation for being a strange... This is hilarious. Listen to how people thought of him before he left away.

Or when he went away, rather. When I went away, I had merely some slight reputation for being a strange young man keen on cars and racing, but did not seem to have any particular capability. So now what is this? This is like 12 years past since that point, right? My return, in order to transform myself from a racing driver and team organizer into a small industrialist, represented an attempt to prove to myself and others that during the 20 years I was with Alfa Romeo not all my reputation was secondhand

and gained by the efforts and skills of other people the time had come for me to see how far I could get on my own efforts now this is what I mentioned earlier that there is always a blueprint in these books they're usually somebody has identified they see somebody that's came before them and they're like i want that and for ferrari maserati brothers were also racing and producing cars under their own name which is what ferrari wants to do but largely his blueprint was bugatti and so here it says if there was ever a prototype operation for what enzo ferrari envisioned for his for the Scuderia it had to be the legendary I don't know how to pronounce his first name but we all know his last name Bugatti this part art listen how they describe Bugatti

this is really interesting because I've heard the car name the car I knew they sell for like a million dollars some crazy like that maybe more um but I didn't know much about the person I should actually see if I can find a biography on him. This part artist, part engineer, part entrepreneur, part sculptor has since 1910 created an automotive fiefdom in a tiny village. The Bugatti estate included a – we talk about a lot the benefit of building your own world within a world, right? That's kind of what company building can be. And then you can also do that to more elements of your life. But check this out. This Bugatti literally made his own world. It sounds fantastic. So he has this little automotive feat in a tiny village.

The Bugatti estate included a small, elegant inn for the entertainment of guests and customers, a stable of thoroughbred horses and the factory itself. His automobiles were and remain a stunning combination of industrial aesthetics and the jeweler's art it looks as if a faberge had somehow been able to motorize an egg and it's the book goes into detail about the character that bugatti was he like dressed in costume and everything it's just hilarious i love seeing people like hey i got one life i'm gonna do whatever i want and i'm gonna really live it bugatti was just one of a bevy of colorful eccentrics just nobles playboys dreamy commoners and hard-eyed egomaniacs who populated the world of european motorsports in the 1930s he certainly stood still about bugatti he certainly stood above the rest in terms of lifestyle

he had created a feudal barony around the spidery machines he manufactured in limited quantities and sold only to those he personally deemed worthy. By contrast, Enzo Ferrari was then still a drab, simple journeyman laboring in a small garage in an Italian backwater. That is such an important point. The example Bugatti was setting did not escape him. Everybody has, there's always a blueprint. Bugatti was Ferrari's blueprint. This is so important. Bugatti was a prototype for success. He was manufacturing cars for the very wealthy and fielding his own team of professional and wealthy amateurs. This is exactly what Ferrari wants to do. Surely if Bugatti could succeed at this,

a similar concept could be developed on a more modest basis for Ferrari. So Ferrari is extremely gifted at running a team, recruiting the best people, provoking them, poking them, motivating them, manipulating them. So he has a fantastic success and this new Ferrari Scuderia, or actually no, Scuderia Ferrari sorry uh it's fantastic successful and so as we've seen before basically what I'm trying to tell you here let me read this to you uh so sales of now they're racing cars and then what happens when you win races you get a ton of publicity people are going to want that car so sales to private customers were thriving and would continue to grow as the Scia success on the racetracks expanded in number and magnitude.

So what hit me now is because since the last time I read biography on Enzo Ferrari, I had read two biographies on Michael Jordan. And I realized Ferrari sold cars and Michael Jordan sells shoes for the same reason. Humans are attracted to winners. And so on this podcast so far, I've mentioned, I don't know, two or three times that Enzo Ferrari is going to go down in history as the greatest car manufacturer of all time. That is also stated in the movie. There's a scene from the movie Ford vs. Ferrari. And I'm going to read the transcript to you right now. And so we're going to have the first character is I,

it's like Henry Ford II's like right hand executive, I forgot his name. So for this, I'm going to call him douche, because that's what he is. And then he's talking to Lee Iacocca. And before Lee Iacocca became super famous and well known, because he winds up taking over the Chrysler Corporation and kind of like bringing it back from the dead. But before he did that, he worked at Ford. And so this is the scene between Douche and Lea Iacocca from the movie Ford vs Ferrari. They're all in a meeting, Henry Ford II sitting there, and the Douche says, in the last three years, you and your marketing team have resided over the worst sales slump in history. Why should Mr. Ford listen to you? That's what Lea Koka says. Because we've been thinking wrong. Ferrari. They have won four out of the last five Le Mans. We need to think

like Ferrari. Now we're in the 1960s. This is the time period it's happening. The douche says, Ferrari makes fewer cars in a year than we do in a day. We spend more on toilet paper than they do on their entire output. You want us to think like them? And so Lee's response is perfect. Enzo Ferrari will go down in history as the greatest car manufacturer of all time. Why? Is it because he built the most cars? No, it's because of what his cars mean. Victory. When Ferrari wins a Le Mans, people want some of that victory. What if the Ford badge meant victory and meant it where it counts, with the first group of 17-year-olds in history with money in their pockets? And so when he says that, Henry Ford II like sits up and starts paying

attention. And so the douche says, this would take decades to develop a race team that's capable of taking out Ferrari. So then Lee walks over to him and throws this folder on the table. And he says Ferrari is bankrupt. Enzo spent every lira, the currency of Italy, he got chasing perfection. You know something? He got there. Now he's broke.

And so that scene, what Lee is also saying at the end where he's like ferrari's bankrupt he spent every dollar chasing perfection this is he's got something in common with other enzo's got in common with other great some of the greatest founders in in history have all similar patterns uh walt disney steve jobs they would spend every every dollar they had improving the product there's a great line in one of Walt Disney's biographies where his brother his brother is the one that's like dealt with the financing of the company and always had to like fight Walt and his crazy perfectionism and his brother's like what is this going to cost he's like I'm innovating I'll tell you what it costs when I'm done there's

just no way that Walt was going to compromise his vision for perfection that's why you see the company he built he built one of the greatest companies in human history. Steve Jobs is the same way. And this is very early. He's in like, I think it was the mid-1980s. Steve Jobs goes to talk to, I think it was Stanford. I can't remember. Most likely it had to be Stanford.

And the business school students are asking him questions and like asking about the stock price. And he like completely waves off their answers. Like, I don't give a shit about the stock price and he like completely waves off their answers like i don't give a shit about the stock price he's like and then he launches into the fact that he's gonna one day he's gonna build a computer that you can hold in your hand um like some kind of comedy almost like the early version like the uh like the ipad he talked about like his passion for making insanely great products he's like no my focus is on making the very best product possible it's not on making the most money. Walt Disney was the same way. Steve Jobs was the same way.

And Enzo Ferrari was the exact same way. So anyways, let me wrap this, tie this back around to what we were talking about in the book. It's the fact that, you know, we talked about Jordan. Like if Jordan didn't win all the championships, if he wasn't regarded as the greatest player of his generation, no one would buy his shoes. And then you fast forward 20 years after he's retired. His shoe brand is doing over $3 billion a year. He gets a 5% royalty of sales. That means Jordan right now, 20 years after he stopped playing the game, is making $150 million a year just from his shoes. And it also ties into the idea of why you should keep, that's the Naval quote,

that you should keep redefining what you do until you're the best in the world at it it's not like the second best player the second best person in the NBA sells you know 10 percent or 20 percent or 50 percent of the shoe volume Jordan gets almost all the profits I just think there's a what I'm trying to say is like all these despair they seem like seemingly disparate ideas if you combine them there's a lot of like information there that's useful to our careers the idea that humans are attracted to the best so they flock to whatever that is it could be the best shoe the best car the best purse it doesn't matter and then if you can somehow identify even if it's just a tiny niche to be the best in whatever field you as you filled your end rather you have these disproportionate returns and part of being the best in what if you're going to be the best in the world or something, you have to be obsessed with it.

Steve Jobs was obsessed with his work. Walt Disney was obsessed with his work. Enzo Ferrari was obsessed with his work. They all produced the best product in their category. So I hope that makes sense. I hope I could tie that together. It's just very obvious when you start reading across all these different biographies. OK, OK.

These people all think differently, but they think differently in the same way. They are more closely aligned with each other than they are with like the average person on the street. I need to go fast forward in the book, though, because I have a ton of highlights, and I'm going to be here all day talking to you about this. This is gonna be like an audiobook, for God's sake. Okay, let's see. This is acting like a champion before he was a champion a formidable individual in complete control of his organization uh so it says the persona of the man who was running the operation was beginning to take shape that would remain consistent throughout his life while still only in his mid-30s ferrari was firmly in control of the operation and given to fits of temper that would descend on the place like summer summer thunderstorms a badly fabricated

part remember they're they're so focused on racing but they're they're they're making cars to fund the racing operation and he you can think of him as the exact opposite of ford right it's very interesting that he even had the negotiation i had a personal thing and so even considered selling to them but the idea you know ford had this this he was a leading if you go and listen to my podcast i don't have any ford like he figured out how to apply mass production techniques to automobiles before anybody else did right and he was better at it than anybody else for is in the opposite spectrum these are art these are handmade products built by italian artisans okay it's not at all

what uh what like it's a complete opposite strategy that henry ford took so it says uh a badly fabricated part uh or the late arrival of a worker would send his temper soaring and strong men scurrying for cover at the same time he could be a model decorum transforming himself into charmed into a charming mater d when the moment demanded it as when a high-born noble or fascist official remember we're in this is italy before world war ii right our fascist official arrived at the scuderia or a wealthy customer expressed interest in spending extra enzo ferrari was on his way to becoming the consummate manager of men this is repeated a hundred times in the book that his greatest skill was the fact that he was able to to manage people to to recruit the

very best talent to manage them to manipulate them to he's not doing the work he's not the engineer he's not the designer he's the agitator of men i can't like i can't repeat that enough okay uh he was uh enzo ferrari was on his way to becoming the consummate manager of men not docile soft-willed men but proud fiercely competitive egocentric men these are drivers we're talking about now whose livelihood if not their very reason for living depended on this most demanding and unforgiving of sports so in between all these highlights there's a lot of people dying uh you know there's some sick uh stories in the book like uh maybe the driver and the driver and like two drivers might die but the

crash like results in the car going into the field into the stand or not even stands they're racing on the road for god's sake um and you know 20 people 20 spectators dying it's it's insane um so it says for the but he's also extremely successful at winning races for the first time since its formation uh ferrari scuderia could be considered at the top level of the business it was able to compete head-to-head with the likes of Bugatti and Maserati. For all the death and acrimony, Enzo Ferrari could look back on the past season with a certain satisfaction. And this is, I double underline this point

because this is, jumps out. If you study Enzo Ferrari, also a very useful trade for us to have, befitting only a man with a diamond hard will to win at all costs. So as you can imagine, if you're traveling all over the world, you got drivers dying, you got these complex machines that you're having to build at all costs. So as you can imagine, if you're traveling all over the world, you got drivers dying, you got these complex machines that you're having to build essentially from scratch.

There's all kinds of moving parts that constantly don't like don't go to things don't go to plan. So this is important, like the important ability to have like the ability to adapt to be flexible to improv, like the ability to for improvisation. These are all very, very common traits in the history of entrepreneurship. Enzo Ferraris are no different i just want to pull out a couple of um sentences here because i thought this was absolutely fantastic so it's discussing like all the stuff that happens and he says if they were to survive it would be thanks to their wits and their ability check this this line out and their ability to play the ancient game of life few men understood this game better than ferrari I just love that idea if they survive it

be thanks to their wits and their ability to play the ancient game of life and if you think about the people that we're studying on the podcast together we're not sitting people that great at school we're sitting people that were great at life I want to go into more about the eccentricities of Enzo Ferrari. He had a lot of weird phobias. Also extremely, I think I have more highlights later on, but this guy was extremely adherent to routine. He had almost the same routine for the last like 60 years of his life. It was remarkable. I don't know if I wanted to live my life that way, but I'm saying his adherence to that.

So it says Ferrari would refuse to fly. He was suspicious of trains and would only travel by automobile. He would not use elevators. He maintained a less than wholly analytical view of life's technical complexities. Now, this section I thought was interesting because you have somebody that worked for both Bugatti and Ferrari, and he gives us some insight here. So it says, now, the Scuderia was a bare-boned, hard-muscled professional racing operation. So he's describing Ferrari at the point he comes in. This immediately became apparent to outsiders like Dreyfus, who later wrote, the difference between being a member

of the Bugatti team and the Ferrari was virtually night and day. With Ferrari, I learned the business of racing, for there was no doubt that he was a businessman. Enzo Ferrari loved racing. Of that, there was no question. It was more than an enthusiast's love, but one tempered with the practical realization that this was a good way to build a nice, profitable empire. I knew that he was going to be a big man one day. Bugatti was a patron. Enzo Ferrari was the boss. Bugatti was imperious. Ferrari was impenetrable. So now he's about to turn 40. I want to give you a description of what I mentioned at the beginning, very beginning of the podcast, something that I

most admire about him is that he just had this singular focus. Now, I don't think like he obviously didn't have a balanced life. So my own personal blueprint, I've told you over again, is at Thorpe founders number 93 or 97, 93, I think, because he identified like a handful of things and was good at all of them and didn't make the same mistakes that a lot of people make where they over-optimize for their work at the expense of their personal life. But I want to read, actually, I'm going to read a quote from that book, Go Like Hell, and then I'm going to go back to this book. It's describing Enzo Ferrari in Go Like Hell.

He worked seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, holidays included. At night, he returned to Modena. He felt extremely emotionally attached to his city. Except for his daily drives to Maranello, where his factory is, he refused to leave Modena for almost any reason. He did not attend races, not even the Italian Grand Prix, one of the world's most famous circuits. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory,

Ferrari told one reporter in 1958, Everything I've done, I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day I want to build a car that's faster than all of them and then I want to die so these kind of statements this is why I describe him as one of history's greatest obsessives uh that's 1958 so this is in the future we're still not there yet this is maybe a decade a decade and a half earlier something like that he's not yet 40, completely focused on work. He lives a simple, no-frills life. So it says, Enzo Ferrari was immersed in the life of a full-time

racing capo, with all of his energies concentrated on the team's competition schedule. Ferrari was still living frugally in a tiny two-bedroom apartment above the factory, or the racing team, actually, the scuderia ferrari was a hard taskmaster he had increasingly limited travel schedule the little family fell into the daily pattern of lower middle class italian life enzo ferrari was born with simple tastes and even after he became rich and prominent he retained the ways of a simple uncluttered man during the 1930s every ounce of his energies and every lira in his pocket was being plowed back into the business he lived a modest frugal life and so you see that

he's completely dedicated to this it is not a job it is a passion is something he loves you can actually tell a lot about people by not only who they admire but who they dislike and so there is a the government of italy gets involved in all kinds of stuff. I'm going to skip over large parts of that in the book. But they wind up putting in place, like these bureaucrats, you can think about them, they're like more like analytical. Enzo had soul in the game.

And so this is a description of the person he hated more than anyone else. And you see, kind of, he views himself as the opposite. The same analytical approach to problems that Gabato, that's the guy he hates, that he hates. This instantly placed him at loggerheads with Enzo Ferrari. A group. So it talks about Enzo and his group. They said how they differed. They were a group without formal training who relied on a mixture of racetrack empiricism and raw instinct to create machines. I'm sorry, this guy's name is Rick Hart. He's saying this guy, Rick Hart, had the same analytical approach as Gabato. So Rick Hart's the guy that he hates. Rick Hart had no abiding passion for motor racing. So Enzo's going to be disgusted by this guy.

He was a pure mechanical engineer by trade and tended to approach each project with a kind of aloof mythology that made him more akin to a surgeon than a grease-stained racing car mechanic. There's like this whole like battle that goes on. It's going to wind up leading to Alfa Romeo buying out most of, buying out Enzo Ferrari. This is also going to lead after the war is over to Enzo creating Ferrari, the company that we know today. Alfa Romeo brought 80% of the scoot area Ferrari. The struggle was long and difficult. After all, Enzo Ferrari was the commodore of Alfa Romeo's Grand Prix racing program. To lose this position had to imply failure, or at least displeasure in the eyes of his superiors. The period of 1935 to 1938 was laden with frustration for a man who wore his, they're describing Enzo, who wore his pride on his sleeve and who for 15 years had assiduously

and successfully curried favor with the company hierarchy. So the author goes on for quite a few pages about this war, this battle between Ferrari and Ricard and all these other people. It's going to force him out but I want to draw your attention to the fact that Enzo knew what his talent was which is another smart move by him I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running my innate talent for stirring up men this is where Enzo Ferrari was at his best immersed in the genesis of a daring new design that he believed would bring victory on the racetrack. As the summer heat of Modena bore down on them, transforming the workshop into a fuming hell of simmering, deafening, maddening motion.

Enzo had just loved chaos. He seemed to gain strength. Each night, the exhausted team would gather in one of the little shops or restaurants around the neighborhood to eat and to muse about their progress. Then they'd fall in bed for a few hours sleep before beginning again at dawn. And so that seven days a week, 12 to 16 hour schedule that he imposed on himself. He also imposed everybody around him. No holidays. I don't he doesn't pay attention to any of that. He doesn't really pay attention to any current affairs, anything. He's just all about racing, like that one singular focus that he maintained from the 1930s until the day he died,

I think in 1988, something like that. So eventually this Rick Hart guy is going to win this battle. This is when Enzo's forced out of Alfa Romeo. Not necessarily a bad thing for him. Enzo's dismissal from Alfa Romeo was clearly a greater blow to his ego than to his bank account. The buyout of the Scuderia and severance payments left him in solid financial shape. So he had a nice little nest egg going and he doesn't really spend money on anything but his cars. He maintained a simple life, still living in a small apartment on the

second floor of the old Scuderia building. Enzo Ferrari could look back on the past 20 years with considerable satisfaction. He had begun with nothing, save for a tiny inheritance from his father, and through hard work and chutzpah, had become a major figure in international motorsports. He was 41 years old. So this is actually still before World War II. I don't know if I misspoke earlier. His severance agreement had stipulated that he could not use the old Scuderia Ferrari name or directly engage in motor racing for four years.

Therefore, Ferrari set to work establishing a custom machine shop. So he uses some of his nest egg to start this other company. He invests substantial capital in equipping the old building with lathes, milling machines, grinders, and shapers. So this is more about his intensity that I was just mentioning. Two race people that want him to build, two guys come to him to build a pair of sports cars for this legendary race. It's called like the Mille, Mille. I've looked up how to pronounce that. That's the best I can do. I'm sorry.

And so he's like, okay, I'll build them. And he says, he reached this, he's like, okay, I'll agree. It was, he reached this decision at a dinner on Christmas Eve in 1939. When most families were together on one of the holiest nights of the year, Enzo Ferrari was conducting business. Christmas Eve was a sacred time reserved for family gatherings and obligatory attendance at church services that Enzo Ferrari would spend such a period with racing associates underscores not only the singular intensity with which he engaged in business but also the hypocrisy of his testimonials of devotion to his wife and son this behavior was hardly unusual for him and others also found him boring ahead with his work on various Easter Sundays Christmases or any other

of the multitude of holidays and feast days that dot the Italian calendar. So fast forwarding, throughout the war, his factory gets bombed by the Allies multiple times. After the war, there's electricity in Italy is scarce. Product, like materials are scarce. And this is the environment he decides, hey, I'm going to start my own company. This is Ferrari. And it says, and this is the reason. So he closes down. Now, you know, many years have passed. He can use that name again. He can get back into racing of concentration once the fighting stopped and so another way to think about that is he knew what his circle of competence was and he was going to

stay within that for the rest of his life i need to point out something here when he's building his first car one of his first cars that's extremely important and it's this idea that you like people think oh i need to innovate. Like, you don't. Like, he was not. Rolls-Royce was the exact same way about what I'm going to read to you. Because I read the biography of the founding engineering genius of Rolls-Royce, Henry Royce. And his method was take an existing product. The Rolls-Royce method is the same method that Enzo Ferrari is using is what I'm trying to tell you. Take an existing product and make every part of it better. So it says no Ferrari ever

built was a glittering example of daring technology. The V12 that they're making right now was one of the very few examples in the history of the company that could be described as remotely revolutionary. This is so important. If Ferrari was so insistent on original ideas, his company would not have got off the ground for it never, ever introduced a new idea. And he describes this perfectly in one sentence. All we wanted to do was build a conventional engine, but one that was outstanding. So again, I think that's really important. Just take an existing product and make every part of it better. So I want to go back to Cianetti, the guy I told you about earlier, that's going to develop the American market,

that proves to be extremely lucrative for Ferrari. And I got to point this out. He's, what, 48 years old at this point in the story. Things are not really going well for his company. Again, post-World War II, there's not a lot of money. There's not a lot of electricity. There's not a lot of products. So they wound up meeting.

He found Enzo Ferrari in the same dingy two-story building. Ferrari was in a bad way. He looked haggard beyond his 48 years. His eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. His hulking frame was slumped behind a desk in the large, unheated office. On that day in the dingy icebox, they spoke of the future. Each tried to conjure up some optimism but it came in brief spurts only to fade into the morass of broken dreams

so chinetti had been in america and so this is what he's like hey let me be your your guy that can bring your products because enzo never visited america he wasn't really interested in it at all he wasn't really interested in anything except his little town and his factory. And so Cinetti plays an extremely important role. Cinetti spoke of his years in America where a war effort had been mounted that by comparison made Italian industrialists look like little potters. So what Cinetti observed and what he's describing is what is the American material output during World War II. I did an entire podcast on this. It's in between, I think, Founders No. 168 and 169. It's a bonus episode.

It's called Freedom's Forge. And I found that book because it was recommended by Patrick Collison. Patrick Collison is the founder and CEO of Stripe. I told you this before. If you go to PatrickCollison.com forward slash fast, Patrick, like most great founders, has this deep historical knowledge, and he collects examples of groups of people doing really hard things really quickly, which, of course, is probably what he's thinking, like building out Stripe, right? Doing something

extremely hard with a group of people really quickly. And so if you want to read the book, I mean, Patrick recommended it. He's got a really interesting mind. And if you want to check out that podcast before you read the book, you'll have a good overview of what's taking place. But this is what Chinetti is about to tell Ferrari. It says, in the rush to spit out millions of airplanes, tanks, trucks, rifles, landing craft, prefabricated buildings, portable bridges, helmets, can— It just goes on and on and on i'm gonna skip over that part okay and god knows what else the american colossus had created miraculous tools of mass production assembly line techniques so ingenious that full-size cargo ships could be built by a man named kaiser he is referencing henry kaiser i did a podcast on him that's founders number 66 the reason you should listen to that is because he built over 100 companies in

his day built a hoover dam he was henry kaiser was as famous in his time as like Elon Musk is today. So it says they were so ingenious that full size cargo ships could be built by a man named Kaiser in less than a week. How, asked Chinetti, could Ferrari hope to compete against this Western industrial might? And so Enzo's not going to because he understood you can't out Ford Ford, right? So you go in the complete opposite direction and why is that an opening for them because chinetti realizes there is a rich upper class whose tastes were european in america that is he had seen them met them and gained their trust they would pay a king's ransom for such elite machines and he luigi chinetti did i pronounce his name wrong earlier luigi luigi chinetti, meant to exploit that naive colonial lust.

Chinetti was a firm, built five cars a year for America, and he would sell them for unseemly amounts of money. Give him the opportunity and he would sell 20 a year. A number on that dank day. This is the whole point of why I'm reading this to you. Because think about how far Ferrari has come. This is now, what, 60, what are we, 70 years after this conversation? I mean, there's a Ferrari dealership right next to my house that has more than 20 Ferraris in there, right? So he's like, Bill, give me 20 a year. I will sell 20 a year. And a number that on that dank day in Modena sounded as astronomical as if they've been discussing General Motors' annual output.

Ferrari agreed. And so the way he's going to sell cars is still the way he, the best way he knows. This is a simple idea, but it's not easy. It's the same thing that Jordan says. Jordan says the marketing I did for my business was on the court. If I won championships, I would sell shoes. If Ferrari wins races, he's going to sell cars. The rules were simple. Build successful racing cars that improve the image of the company and rich men will flock to the door to obtain similar cars with which to play out their fantasies. By announcing the new line of cars, he could expect a flurry of orders from wealthy sportsmen and perhaps an infusion of deposit funds to carry on the work. He did not have a lot of money. This is very similar to early days of Tesla.

They start selling this Roadster. This is for have a lot of money. This is very similar to early days of Tesla. They start selling this Roadster. This is worth, you know, it's for $250,000 or whatever it is. I mean, I guess they still do this to this day with the new Roadster. They take, they were taken deposits of like $50,000, gives the company capital upfront to actually go and build the car. Ferrari's doing that, you know, 70 years ago, whatever it was. So I mentioned earlier that Enzo benefits just because he shows up everywhere and he lets, as long as he survives, he lets his competitors make mistakes. Maserati, they've gotten away now that they started by the Maserati brothers, this other industrialist named like Orsi, he buys it. And this is really what Steve Jobs talked about over and over again on the benefit of focusing on one product.

Maserati didn't learn this lesson and And really, they lose focus and Ferrari does not. And so Maserati goes from building race cars and really fast cars to now they want to develop a grand touring car. Maserati was also going to continue manufacturing machine tools, and then they wanted to make an electric truck, thereby removing itself from direct competition with Ferrari. This alteration of direction by Maserati was the first of a series of tactical errors that would ultimately take their company out of the ranks of a series of tactical errors that would ultimately take their company out of the ranks of the elite automakers. It's all about focus. While for Steve Jobs talks about this over and over again, focus is saying no. Maserati, run by a different

person, is not able to say no. While Ferrari was zeroing in on the tiny world of exotic cars, Maserati was doing just the opposite, expanding in a variety of directions and thereby blurring the focus of the old, much-honored firm. The decision was to reap both long and short-term benefits for Ferrari. I talked about this in the other two Ferrari podcasts as well, that he would constantly limit production, made his products more lusted after, more exclusive. So at this point, they're going on for a while. They've only built 70 cars. Now they're building them by hand, like I mentioned earlier. And the people buying them, it's like the world's elite. So you have prince this person and king this person and emperor this person and shah of this country

and crown prince. I'm just reading you this list. Then you have people like the DuPonts, one of the wealthiest American families at the time. This is who he targeted first. Customers, other wealthy customers, would travel all over the world just to his little factory in Maranello. He'd be given a tour, and the customer's like, I want one. He'd have unsold cars out back.

He's like, oh, I'm sorry, you can't have one. He would just tell him, no, it's going to be, you know, a year, two years. So he did this intentionally. He understood that if you tell somebody no, especially somebody that's wealthy, powerful, used to getting their way, it only makes them desire that object more. So as time goes on, he's still building the company, still focused on racing. We see his explicit goal. Enzo Ferrari had clung to the dream of becoming what he called a grand constructor. He's like, I don't consider myself an industrialist. I'm a constructor. That's

how he described himself. In addition to, and then he got to his goal of being a grand constructor by being an agitator of men. Those are two ideas that are linked together. The classic manufacturer of complete racing cars and high performance road automobiles for a select clientele of elite enthusiasts. That's what he's trying to do. Only a few men in history had achieved such an elevated status, most prominently Bugatti and then – so Bugatti in Italy and Bentley in Europe – or excuse me, in England rather. So this goes back to what's most important to him and the fact I told you he had a strict adherence to this schedule of his. And this is, in my opinion, some of the best writing in the book.

This man, so rooted in time and place that he never slept out of his own bed for the final 40 years of his life. His automobile business was not a means to an end. It was the end, the very essence of his being. In the final analysis, the fast cars, the Grand Prix victory, the factory itself were all secondary to what they stood for. The towering ego of the man whose name they carried, Enzo Ferrari. His personal style was an extreme contrast to the automobiles he created. They were flashy, high-styled, daring, brash, openly outrageous. He was drab, mundane, semi monastic. Ferrari remained a simple man with simple tastes.

In his automobiles, there seemed to be a transference of his powerful ego and the need to express himself artistically. But in personal terms, he was muted and introverted to the point of obsession. And let's go back to what his greatest skill was, and maybe the greatest skill one could possibly have if you want to build a successful organization or team, right? His greatest skill was recruiting talented people. It is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent. This was probably true. And I thought Ferrari had a really counterintuitive point on losing I want to bring to your attention. So there's a writer for the New York Times, this guy named Daly, and he's spending some time with Ferrari.

He says, Daly observed that Ferrari appeared to be happier when he was losing, which jibes with the mechanics, the mechanics working at Ferrari, with the mechanics observation that the race shop on Monday was more serene following a defeat than a victory. But why? Ferrari explained, there is always something to learn. One never stops learning, particularly when one is losing. When one loses, one knows what has to be done. When one wins, one is never sure. So I just want to tell you a little bit about these open road races that they did and that caused a ton of death this is just insane there's a lot more detail in the book i think this gives you a good overview open road races have long been considered too dangerous by most civilized nations and had long since been banned but the mile milia again most likely mispronouncing only gained in popularity among

the italian people estimates of the crowd that turned out to line the route soared to as high as 10 million. Thousands of police and army regulars labored in a futile attempt to keep the mobs of the course. Oh, my goodness. Keep the mobs off the course. But drivers still had to be steeled to drive into packs of fans, moving wobbling walls of flesh that would part like the red sea as they sped through so do you see what's happening there drivers going down the road the fans are on the road and as the cars approach they're on the they like part and hopefully part in time and then some of these

crazy people do stuff like this uh children skidded across the highway and often rode their bicycles on the shoulder strutting young men tried to show their metal by attempting to touch the fenders of the speeding cars could you imagine being so close you think it's safe to be close to a car that's going 120 130 miles an hour it's like hey guys let me touch the fender i wonder if more i would guess that more spectators died than drivers it's just crazy so um i mentioned this earlier, but he just, and there is cons to it, but Enzo had like superhuman levels of stubbornness. So it says, and some of this is just the fact that he succeeded by just showing up.

The source of much of Ferrari's success over the years was not technological brilliance, as I mentioned earlier, or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing, a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible. And like I said earlier, there's just stubbornness to show up no matter what. Some of these races he wins by default because maybe they actually get their cars from Europe to Argentina or something like that, but the driver gets sick or there's an immigration issue or the car breaks down and then Ferrari is there, not supposed to win the race, not expected to win the race. Guess what? I win by default.

Now my greatest competitors had some unknown catastrophic event that prevented them from performing or from being able to race. And guess what? I'm here. So I'm going to do it and I'll get the win. And then obviously you get the prize money, you get the prestige, you get everything else. It's like this virtuous, like flywheel effect. The book also goes into detail about this whole, you know, Ford trying to buy Ferrari,

talked about that in Go Like Hell, talked about that in other places, mentioned earlier in that clip. I just want to go to the end of it because I thought that was funny. It gives you an illustration of enzo ferrari the person the fact that he's obsessed with control and he just was never going to yield that control ferrari opened the conversation with a question that addressed the entire philosophy of how the

new operation would be run by this point ford executives toward the factory they're negotiating for i think several weeks i don't know if like i said earlier if ferrari ever had the intention of selling him he was so proud to be an Italian. I think he just used it as leverage. What's most likely the thought process of, or I guess the description of Enzo's thought process around this time was most likely he was using this as bait for Fiat. He was going to sell the company, but he was going to sell it to an Italian company. He wasn't going to sell it to the Americans.

So after several weeks, he opens up this conversation and he says, it gets the entire philosophy of how the new operation would be run. If I wish to enter cars at Indianapolis and you do not wish me to enter cars in Indianapolis, do we go or do we not go? And the person from Ford leading the negotiation says, you do not go, responded Frey without hesitation. Ferrari stiffened in his chair and said nothing for a moment. Then he stood up and gave Frey an icy glare. It was nice to know you. Frey understood instantly that the negotiations were over. Under no circumstances would Ferrari release control of his racing operations to Ford or to anybody else for that matter?

So Ferrari's notorious, especially because so many of them were dying, never getting close to many of his drivers. There's a hilarious story in the book where this guy, one of his drivers wins a race. It was like the biggest race of the season, brought all kinds of attention and glory to Ferrari. And he said Ferrari had never said anything to him about it. Week weeks go by and they just happen to pass each other in the in like the factory and Ferrari just says two words he says hey champion and the driver's like that's all he ever said to me about it ever now the indication of that also is that Ferrari like General Groves a couple weeks ago when I did that book genius and the general the general and the genius or the genius and the general I don't know which one came first General Groves, a couple of weeks ago when I did that book, The General and the Genius, or The Genius and the General, I don't know which one came first. General Groves, the guy leading the Manhattan Project, would not give out compliments.

They're like, why don't you compliment people when a job is well done? He's like, because it could always be done better. And I think Ferrari thought, it's like, you won, that's what you're supposed to do. For like a decade, right up until they're overtaken by Ford he dominates for a decade so he's like, this is expected but anyways, earlier I was saying you can identify you can learn about a person by saying

by studying who they don't like you can also do that by who they admire this is what Ferrari liked about one of his drivers, Ferrari seemed to genuinely like this moody, but intensely competitive 30 year old like himself. Sutris,

I'm probably pronouncing that incorrectly was self-made a, a school dropout who had liked mechanics before rising or excuse me, who learned mechanics before rising to stardom on motorcycles and then in automobiles. But so again, this is what he likes. He likes the fact that this guy's moody, intensely competitive,

self-made a dropout, one who learned mechanics before rising to start him on motorcycles and then in automobiles both men were utterly single-minded when it came to racing and unlike many of the dilettantes who had driven for the team but had never gotten their hands dirty sutris was prepared to work endless hours just like ferrari in the dyno rooms and engine shops at the factory seeking more power and reliability. He was a racer to his core. So I just want to bring again to your attention this monastic adherence to routine. This guy that he really liked, his name is Scott Scagoletti.

He was one of the designers that made cars that shaped like the Testarossa the 250 GT Spider the California all these other things and so he really liked

the fact that this guy was a craftsman but he had a commoner sense of reality which was how Ferrari thought as well so he says

each Saturday Scaggoletti would receive a phone call well Scaggoletti it was from Ferrari well Scaggoletti what are you what do you what are you doing now? Would be the standard question. The reply was cast in stone. He had no plans. A lunch would then be arranged. It would seem impromptu. But in fact, the same schedule was maintained for over 20 years until Ferrari's health failed in the mid-1980s. So it talks about they'd have this lunch every Saturday. Ferrari would lapse into recollections of his youth, repeating hundreds of times the story of his painful recovery in the Army Hospital and the sound of the coffin nails being struck home on the floor

below. The lunch would feature heavy modernist fare, heavy cream sauces, and would be amply lubricated with champagne. This was classic Ferrari. Habitual, regulated, predictable, and modernist to the core. This was classic Ferrari, habitual, regulated, predictable, and modernized to the core. This was a simple man, seeking simple pleasure, and he found it only within the confines of his

own familiar territory. I mentioned earlier the fact that Ferrari had a very different take on things. He's just like, if there's a race, I don't care what kind or where it's at, we're entering it. You know, now you can't do that. Towards the end of his career, I don't care what kind or where it's at, we're entering it. Now you can't do that. Towards the end of his career, he couldn't do that. So it says part of the problem was Ferrari's insistence on being everywhere at the same time. During this period, he was competing in Formula 1, Formula 2, the Tasman Series, the Can-Am, major sports car endurance races, and all the European Hill Climb Championships. His engineers tried to convince Ferrari that demands were too much,

but this engineer's voice, it was a voice in the wilderness, meaning Ferrari just would not listen to him. I'm not entirely sure why, but when I got to this section, it reminded me of the engineer, the legendary engineer that I covered a few podcasts, like 20 podcasts ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He had a really interesting philosophy because most people was like, okay, if something's not working out, let me try a different attempt. Isambard, Kingdom, Brunel's philosophy, his first thing he would do, first way he would try to solve a problem was to increase the dosage, not change the technique or

try a different attempt. It's like, oh, okay, this isn't working out. I need to do 10 times as much. And so that thought popped into my mind when I got to this section where this guy's like oh okay this isn't working out i need to do 10 times as much and so that thought popped into my mind when i got to this section where this guy's like i'll do formula one i'll do formula two i'll do these hill races and i'll do all i'll do endurance i'll do short i'll do long it doesn't matter i will just increase the dosage i will do it all and so you and i've talked about this over and over again the fact that enzo really had nothing else that was important to him so the idea like he's not gonna retire um the note I left myself on this page is a quote from David Ogilvie. And he said, retirement is fatal.

Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple. So even when he sells his company to Fiat, he still continues to work. He still has complete control of the racing, the racing aspect of the business. He lets them do the car production. This is, let me try to read my note. This is remarkable.

Selling the company to Fiat as an act of revenge. Oh, this is what I mentioned earlier. Okay, so it says, while a tiny entity in the industrial world, his company was giant in terms of prestige. An automobile, they're talking about Ferrari, the view of the brand, the power of the brand, the brand right even though he's not producing i think he's producing 700 cars a year or something at this point it's just not a lot i can't remember exact number but it's it's very small and so it says he's a giant in terms of prestige an automobile an automotive boutique more comparable to coco chanel or cartier or gucci or christian dior than to uh the industrial monolith that was fiat for ferrari it was a simple solution to capitalize his sagging business because he again prestigious business but he

spends all the every money every dollar he makes he puts it back into trying to make a better race car so he's not like he winds up dying wealthy but he's not he doesn't make a ton of money and the success like his son his uh so one of his son dies dino he's got like a bastard kid um and he when his wife dies oh okay so i didn't i'm not like i'm not gonna sit here and talk to you about enzo fari's sex life but the author mentions it like 50 times in the book the guy was just obsessed with his during the day he's obsessed with cars at night he's obsessed with sex he's got like mistresses everywhere all kinds of stuff even when he's 80 like he'll have dinners and they go into detail in the book about like he talks about his sex life it's really rather gross honestly but um he winds up having a son that son to this day still alive is the only heir that he

leaves owns 10 percent of ferrari and it's like a multiple multiple multiple billionaire multi-billionaire excuse me so his son derived most of the financial benefit from ferrari than enzo ferrari did in his life i think he dies with like a net worth of like an hour 30 million something so it's not like he was poor by any means but just like walt disney most of the wealth came after he died so it's saying um for ferrari was a simple solution to capitalize the sagging business. For the owner of Fiat, he was looking for status and respect. The deal was so attractive to Ferrari that he even traveled to Turin to sign the final papers, a city he had not visited in decades. It was also a measure of revenge for the old man.

It gives a hint of Ferrari's mindset. So he talks about going and sitting on the bench, the same bench that he cried when he was 18 or 19 or however old he was. Now he comes back 50 years later. It's like, okay, I closed this loop. I went back and closed this. I got my revenge. The process was set in motion was to wipe out the shame of 1918

when Ferrari was not welcomed by Fiat. Surely Enzo Ferrari had long since forgotten that as a youth, he had been rejected for employment by Fiat some 50 years earlier. Surely he hadn't nursed that bitterness for half a century. And now in his own convoluted way, considered the account settled or had he, he most certainly did. Fiat received 40%.

Enzo retained 49%, which would be ceded to Fiat upon his death. Piero Ferrari would get 10%. and to this day piero still owns 10 i think he actually owns like 10 point i looked it up 10.3 or something like that and so enzo was also famous for never going to see his own races and really you could tell he loved what he did because the simulation was not in the result but it was in the process and i thought this was fascinating let me read this to you for the most part he watched the contest alone the races that is although one associate was occasionally invited to sit in he recalls that ferrari never

showed emotion no matter what the fortunes of his automobiles ferrari simply sat there silent and inert never responding to either victory or defeat his view of racing remained constant the event itself was essentially meaningless. For him, the stimulation came in the planning and preparation in the creation of the machines, in the organization of the human beings who would man the team. He was obsessed with the process. He was in love with the organization, the creation of the cars, not the outcome of the race. Of course, he wants to win the race, but I think that's a really good sign that you're obsessed with the actual journey. That's an interesting idea. I hope I remember.

So like I said earlier, Enzo does this until he dies. There's a great story in the book that is pure Enzo. This is right before he dies. Cinetti goes and visits him. Enzo's mind is still sharp, but his body is betraying him. And they go and they wind up. This is the last time they ever meet. And Chinetti says, may I embrace you?

In silence, Enzo Ferrari opened his arms and the two men hugged, groping perhaps for the life that was slipping away from them. There was a brief display of tears, quickly dabbed, and then business began. They discussed an old Ferrari Formula 2 car. Cianetti agreed to lend the automobile to the proposed Ferrari Museum. He was well aware of the feeding frenzy of Ferrari collectors around the world that had made the car in question worth more than a million dollars. So the car's worth a million dollars. Cianetti's like, no, you know what? I'll give it to you. I'll donate it to your Ferrari museum. But you have to do the following.

And so it says, but for his old friend, he proposed a deal. $40,000 donated to four charities, including the poor children of Marinello. Ferrari balked. He would pay no more than $30,000, not a penny more. Chinetti could not help but be amused. Here was this man, 90 years old, mortally wounded by the passage of time, yet still able, yes, eager to haggle over a few dollars. The old rascal, worth at least 40 million dollars, Chinetti reckoned, intended to go to his reward with

his last lira. The deal. Always the deal. It was classic Ferrari. And that is where I'll leave it. If you want to buy the book, there's a link in the show notes. If you buy the book using the link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to buy a gift subscription, there's also a link down below.

That is 220 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.