Founders - #225 Winston Churchill

Starting point is 00:00:00 In his 90 years, Churchill spent 55 as a member of parliament, 31 years as a minister, and nearly nine years as prime minister. He had been present at or fought in 15 battles, and he's been awarded 14 campaign medals. He had been a prominent figure in the First World War and a dominant one in the Second. He had published nearly 10 million words, more than professional writers in their lifetime, and painted over 500 canvases, more than most professional painters. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, a university chancellor, and won a Nobel Prize. Scores of towns made him an honorary citizen, dozens of universities awarded him honorary degrees, and 13 countries gave him a medal.

Starting point is 00:00:45 How many bottles of champagne he consumed is not recorded, but it may be close to 20,000. He had a large and much-loved family and countless friends. So, Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it, its amplitude, variety, and success on so many fronts. But all can learn from it, especially in five ways. The first lesson is always aim high. As a child, Churchill received no positive encouragement from his father and little from his mother. He was aware of his failure at school, but he still aimed high. Conscious of his ignorance, he set himself

Starting point is 00:01:25 to master English history and to familiarize himself with great chunks of literature. Once his own master, he played to win the top award in the world. Lesson number two is there's no substitute for hard work. The balance he maintained between flat-out work and creative and restorative leisure is worth study by anyone that's holding a top position. He never evaded hard work itself, taking important and dangerous decisions in the course of a 16-hour day. No one ever worked harder than Churchill to make himself a master orator. He worked hard at everything to the best of his ability.

Starting point is 00:02:07 He put tremendous energy into everything. Third, Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster, accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down. His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness and in psychological responses to abject failure, were astounding. He had courage, the most important of all virtues, and its companion, fortitude. These strengths are inborn, but they can also be cultivated, and Churchill worked on them all of his life. In a sense, his whole career was an exercise in how courage can be displayed, reinforced, guarded, and goled out carefully, heightened, and concentrated, and then conveyed to others. Fourth, Churchill wasted an extraordinary small amount of his time and emotional energy on the

Starting point is 00:02:58 meanness of life, recrimination, shifting the blame to others, malice, revenge-seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas. Having fought hard, he washed his hands and went on to the next contest. It is one reason for his success. There is nothing more draining and exhausting than hatred. And last, the absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill's life. His face could light up in the most extraordinary attractive ways as he became suffused with pleasure at an unexpected and welcome event. Joy was a frequent visitor to Churchill's psyche, banishing boredom, despair, discomfort, and pain. He liked to share his joy and give joy he showed his people a love of jokes and was the source of them to many no great leader was ever laughed at or with more than

Starting point is 00:03:55 Churchill he drew his strength from people and imparted it to them in full measure everyone can find comfort and reassurance in his life story. That is an excerpt from the epilogue of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Churchill by Paul Johnson. So I read The Splendid and the Vile, one of the best books I've ever read. I think it's Founders number 187. After I read that book, or I think on that podcast, I said that I had heard that there's over a thousand, I think Churchill is one of the, maybe the person that's written, that's had the most biographies written about him. I heard that there's over a thousand that have been published. And so I got a bunch of book recommendations, biography recommendations on Winston Churchill from listeners. This is one of them. I was shocked that when the book arrived, it's only 166 pages. And so that was immediately intriguing to me. How do you tell the story of one of history's famous, most famous and formidable individuals in just 166 pages? And then I started doing research on the author. And now I found, I love when this happens, because when you find a

Starting point is 00:04:54 new author, you just start ordering all of his books. And I found out that he wrote bestselling biographies on Napoleon, Churchill, Eisenhower, Socrates, and Mozart. And so there's a blurb in the very beginning of the book that I want to read to you real quick. And it says, his name's, the author's name is Paul Johnson. And it says, Johnson can give the reader the definitive sense of having known Churchill, or at least of having hung out with him for a bit. Churchill lets you spend some time in this man's company, and who wouldn't want to do that? That is really key, because I've talked to you about this before.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Like a really great biography, you'll get to the end, and you feel like you know the person. And just like a friend, like a good friend of yours, once you feel like you know the person, you have an idea of how they think and what they would do when you're in a situation that you're faced with. And so what happens over time, you read a bunch of biographies, you build up all these mental models of these great minds in history, and you can use them as tools as you approach the decision. Okay, what would Churchill do here? What would Charlie Munger do here? What would Steve Munger do here? What would Steve Jobs or Edwin Land or somebody like that do here?

Starting point is 00:05:53 So before I jump into the book, I want to go back to this line that Johnson has in the epilogue where he's like, everybody can learn from Churchill's story. So when you read a bunch of biographies, and in our case, there's, what, 230 biographies of entrepreneurs so far that we've gone over for this podcast. Churchill's all over these pages. And I think about what we learned last week with Charles de Gaulle, who said, I ceased being a person. I was more of an idea. And I think that's really—Winston Churchill's an idea in people's mind. And it's this idea that you never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.

Starting point is 00:06:23 And that's one of his most famous quotes. And so there's all these entrepreneurs in the past that had read biographies of Winston Churchill and then used his story, the fact that Churchill faced and had to lead a nation in one of the most gravest points in history, and they use it as strength to not give up. And I'll just give you one example. I did a three-part series back about almost 100 episodes ago on Larry Ellison and everybody knows Oracle now they know you know Larry Ellison has a net worth over 100 billion dollars but they don't know that he almost went bankrupt and so there's a story in one of those biographies where he's very close to the edge his business is going down the drain

Starting point is 00:06:56 he's getting divorced everybody's telling him to give up and he talks about what's what he's reading what's on his bedside and one of them his favorite one of his favorite historical figures was Churchill and at that time the most difficult time in Larry Ellison's life when he's reading, what's on his bedside. And one of them, his favorite, one of his favorite historical figures was Churchill. And at that time, the most difficult time in Larry Ellison's life, when he's about to lose everything, he's actually reading the biography of Churchill and drawing strength to not give up. And so you could think about that point in Larry Ellison's life as a fork in the road. He goes left, it's bankruptcy, it's failure, it's quitting. Who knows what's going to happen in his life?

Starting point is 00:07:22 He goes right, he doesn't give up. He keeps going. And four decades into the future, he's one of the wealthiest and successful people to ever live. And so before I get back into Churchill's life and this book, I want to give you one example of how powerful this can be. There's a media entrepreneur that I read the biography of. I think it's founders number 129. His name is Felix Dennis. The book is called How to Get Rich. One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs shares his secret. It's really the best, better he had an enormous self-belief and belief that, hey, if we don't give up, we are going to win. We will survive. Our entire existence is at stake. And so he was able to impart that tremendous belief on others. And then in turn, that lesson

Starting point is 00:08:15 reverberates throughout history. And that idea of Churchill, that you don't give up, that you have a belief in yourself, that you keep going even when you don't want to, and even when it looks like you're going to fail, is very important. And so Felix picks up on that, and he quotes Churchill a bunch of times in this book. Again, number 129, if you haven't listened to it. I'm going to read this paragraph because it's just, it's fantastic. It's about the importance of belief. And this is what Felix wrote. And he's writing this as he's dying. He has cancer. I think he dies like five years after the book is published, if I'm not mistaken, something like that. So he says, I'm not asking you to be Winston Churchill. None of us could be. But I do ask that you begin right now, right at this very moment,

Starting point is 00:08:54 to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly, do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and worse still, if you believe you can never believe, then by all means, go on reading this book. But take it from me. Your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Okay, so let's go into the book. This is the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:09:21 He says, of all the towering figures of the 20th century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity and also the most likable. It is a joy to write his life and to read about it. None holds more lessons, especially for youth. How to use a difficult childhood, how to seize eagerly on all the opportunities, physical, moral, and intellectual. How to dare greatly, to reinforce success, and to put the inevitable failures behind you. And how, while pursuing, vaulting ambition with energy and relish, to cultivate also friendship, generosity, compassion, and decency. No man provided more public entertainment with his dramatic ups and downs, his noble oratory, his powerful writings

Starting point is 00:10:02 and sayings, his flashes of rage, and his sunbeams of wit. He took a prominent place on the public stage of his country and the world for over 60 years, and it seemed empty with his departure. And this is really, this next sentence, it's also printed on the back of the book, and I think is why Churchill is so worthy of study, and why this is the second book I read on him, but probably, you know, the second of maybe a dozen that I plan to read over my lifetime. So he says, how did one man do so much for so long and so effectively? That's a great question to think about. So let's read that again. How did one man do so much for so long and so effectively?

Starting point is 00:10:40 As a young politician, he found himself sitting at dinner next to the daughter of a chancellor. Responding, this is so fantastic, gives you the idea of his self-belief going back to what felix was just telling us like if you don't believe in yourself no one else is going to that's the very first you have to believe in yourself that's what he's telling us step one right responding to her question he announced we are all worms but i really think i'm a glow worm why did he glow so ardently let us inqu inquire. And so right there, the author is telling us why he's writing the book. This is a, I'll just tell you up front, I love this book. I highly encourage you to buy it. I wish there was more. I told you, it's very distressing to me that

Starting point is 00:11:15 over 98% of all books sell less than 5,000 copies. These authors spend so much time, many years, doing all this research and putting it into a format, distilling these ideas for us that we, it's just like robbery is theft, reading rather, not robbery. So this is the quote. It's reading is not a chore. Reading is theft. It is a robbery. Someone smarter than you had spent 20 years beating their head against the wall, trying to solve the problem that you're dealing with. You can steal that hard won knowledge and make it yours. That is power. And so the reason I bring that up is because if I ever write a book, I left a note to myself later on the book. It's like, if I ever write a book, I want it to be like this. I want it to be, he uses short sentences. He gets to the point.

Starting point is 00:11:53 There's no fluff and it's fun to read. And I think with a book like this, where it's like, okay, this is 166 pages. You can read easily, read it in a weekend. It just makes it more approachable, opens the market up to potential readers. I have friends that even read a lot. And I try to, in fact, I try to get a friend of mine that reads quite a bit to read that Charles de Gaulle book with me. And he's like, I'm not reading an 800-page book. Are you out of your mind? And so I just think there's a market there.

Starting point is 00:12:19 More books should be highly edited. I remember one of my favorite quotes from Churchill in The Splendid and the Vile is he tells his staff that it's slothful not to compress your thoughts. He's like, make your memos and your letters shorter. And I love that. It's slothful not to compress your thoughts. All right. So let's get back into his early life. It says Churchill was capable of tremendous physical and intellectual efforts of high intensity over long periods, often with little sleep. But he also took naps, though.

Starting point is 00:12:43 But he had corresponding powers of relaxation filled with a variety of pleasurable occupations. And he also had the gift of taking short naps when time permitted. A very long time ago, I did a three-part series on Richard Branson because he kept writing, Richard Branson kept writing these like little short autobiographies. And in one of his books, the book called Screw It, Let's Do It. I think this is back in like the 40s of founders. He talks about learning that he was reading that Winston Churchill had took naps. And so he's like, oh, that's a good idea. Like I started copying that idea. And the idea was like you almost have two days when you do that.

Starting point is 00:13:20 You almost have like two days worth of activity fit into one day. So it says, when possible, he spent his mornings in bed, telephoning, dictating, and receiving visitors. In 1946, he was asked, Mr. Churchill, what do you attribute your success in life to? Without pause or hesitation, he replied, conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down. So he didn't have the best parents. his dad died rather they basically ignored him um his dad died he says

Starting point is 00:13:51 winston was only 20 when his father died and was haunted by his tragic final face so what they're talking about there is he used to be a rather like formidable person somewhat i guess not nearly like his son would turn out to be but he had some kind of progressive mental illness towards the end of his life. And they're pretty sure, like at the time, this is the late 1800s. So it went undiagnosed, but they're pretty sure it was like syphilis or they think it was syphilis. It says, so he's 20 years old. His father died and he was haunted by the fact that his dad, you know, turned into a shell of himself, basically. It was a further source of unhappiness for Winston that he had seen so little of his father.

Starting point is 00:14:29 First, his father was so busy, then he was so stricken. He remembered every word of their few personal conversations he had had with them. And then we see the personality of the author, Paul Johnson, shines through in this book. And we see an example of that here. How much Winston inherited from his father, good or bad, is a matter of opinion mine is not much indeed there was little of the churchills in him they were on a whole an unremarkable lot none achieved distinction and they think he might have so churchill suffered from several periods of his life of like depression and there's a there's a family history of that there was a bunch of pathological depression in his father's side of the family so it says winston complained of periodic dark moods which he called the black dog but these were occasioned by actual reverses and were just were soon dispersed by vigorous activity so this idea of being depressed stressed anxious and and eliminating that are mitigating the effects of that with

Starting point is 00:15:21 vigorous physical activity this is an idea an idea that Winston Churchill shares with several other historical figures. Nelson Mandela talks about this in his autobiography. Teddy Roosevelt talks about this over and over again. And so we see Winston Churchill using that idea as well. So it says it was from his mother that Winston derived his salient characteristics, his energy, he was extremely high energy, a love his ambition his intellect his warm feelings his courage and resilience and a huge passion for life in all its aspects and this is just fantastic traits to if you're going to set an example for other people your children included she believed that the sky was the limit that everything was possible that tradition precedence and the quote unquote right way of doing things could

Starting point is 00:16:05 always be ignored when ambition demanded. She loved high risks and did not weep if they did not come off. All of this she transmitted to Winston. And so if you, when you read Churchill's writing, when you hear him speak, he was a master of the English language, which was really surprising when you realize he was not good at formal schooling. This is all the stuff that he taught himself. He was not a boy who did naturally well at school, and his reports were mediocre. His father wrote him off as an academic failure. Winston became not merely adept, but mastery in his use of words, and he loved them.

Starting point is 00:16:42 I definitely do, too. I actually have a—I'll leave a link in the show notes if you're interested, but I have a personal email list that's separate from the podcast. Every book that I read, I just send a, so for every book I read,

Starting point is 00:16:52 I do, I don't know, somewhere between like 15, 100 highlights from each book. The email's like, okay, what if I could pick the 10 best sentences? Sometimes I put a paragraph on there because I thought it was so compelling, but I really try to like

Starting point is 00:17:03 just strip all context down. Let's just celebrate the beautiful language and the fact that you can convey a powerful idea in just a few words. And many of these writers that we're reading these books on are just masters at this. And so if you're interested, you can sign up. It's completely free. There's no ads. There's no shenanigans. It's just, I read a book. And for every book I read, I'm going to send you here are the 10, my 10 top highlights. And again, it's really just a celebration of words. No English statesman has ever loved them more, meaning still talking about his love of language, love of words,

Starting point is 00:17:31 and made more persistent use of them to forward his career and redeem him in time of trouble. Words were also his main source of income throughout his life from the age of 21. Almost from the start, he was unusually well paid. So he winds up being like a war correspondent. And the price they would pay at this point, so we're talking early 1900s,

Starting point is 00:17:50 it would be like the equivalent, like he'd get a couple months assignment and it'd be like the equivalent of like $100,000 or $200,000 you could make in a few months. It was just remarkable. Almost from the start, he was unusually well paid and his books eventually made prodigious sums for himself and his descendants.

Starting point is 00:18:04 There is a mind-blowing stat after World War IIi of the book that he wrote i'll get to that how much i it just shocked me how much money he made off this uh he wrote thousands of articles for newspapers and magazines and over 40 books there can be few boys who made such profitable use of something learned at school in that sense and so that's his whole point where he falls in love he starts reading uh the classics of english literature writing all the time and even though his grades weren't great he did that's where he discovered his love of language and words and so paul makes the point was like well maybe his dad's wrong like they're if you because his dad obviously died so he didn't get to see his son's use of words later on his life and the fact that that was his primary

Starting point is 00:18:43 weapon really and so paul makes the point he's like well in that sense Winston's education contrary to the traditional view was a notable success I always love it when in these stories these famous historical figures their lives intersect this example here so he says no sooner that was he commissioned into the army oh this is something i gotta tell you like he wanted to be famous like that was a goal of his churchill began his plan of campaign to make himself famous there was a war going on in cuba so he signs a contract with this newspaper to go down there and publish his dispatches this is the same time when teddy roosevelt's there so says he was not the only outsider who came to cub for experience. Theodore Roosevelt led a force there.

Starting point is 00:19:26 The two men had a great deal in common, but did not get on. Roosevelt said that young man, Teddy's a little older than Churchill as well, that young man Churchill is not a gentleman. He did not rise to his feet when a lady enters the room. That may be true. Once Churchill was comfortably ensconced in a chair, he was reluctant to rise. Thus, the pattern of his life for the next five years was set. Finding wars, so this is what I meant about he made a great deal of money as a war correspondent. This is his primary occupation when he's in his 20s. Thus, the pattern of his life for the next five years was

Starting point is 00:19:59 set. Finding wars, getting special permission to visit or participate in them, reporting them for newspapers and in book form. So it says in between wars, he wasn't just sitting around being lazy. He says he was not idle while waiting for opportunities. He was conscious of his ignorance of the world and history, right? And begged his mother to send him big, important books. He read everything that he could get his hands on and forgot nothing he read. So he has a series of adventures. The author goes through them really rapidly one of them that he's famous for is this bow boer war bauer war i've

Starting point is 00:20:30 heard this pronounced several different ways he goes there as a reporter as supposed to be a non-combatant but then he's captured and put in a prison of war he was captured made a prisoner war escaped and then had a hazardous journey through the through the boer lines bear bearer lines harvey pronounce it he then went back uh this actually makes him extremely famous back in in britain by the way uh he then went back to the war in earnest showing an extraordinary amount of physical energy we tend to epitomize churchill by his later sedentary existence in youth though he was very hyperactive so he gets back home it says he had achieved the fame he saw it made himself conspicuous his photograph appeared over a hundred times in newspapers in the year 1900 so that means church was about 26 years old at this point in the story and then returned to

Starting point is 00:21:14 london a hero he quickly published two books gave a series of public lectures in britain canada and the united states this is something that made him a ton of money throughout his entire life he was extremely bad with money by the way he would go would go in debt. He would speculate money. He'd buy things on margin, had to be bailed out multiple times. He was terrible at this. In addition, he had a row of medals. I don't understand this part, and the author didn't explain it, but he gets all these medals, but he's just, I guess, I mean, he's not fighting in these wars that they're describing. He's reporting on them. So that part was a little confusing to me.

Starting point is 00:21:47 He had meanwhile taken his first step in politics. In all these rapid developments, he had accumulated a number of critics and even enemies, and a reputation for being brash, arrogant, presumptuous, disobedient, boastful, and a bounder. So bounder was a new word for me. I had to look that up, and that is a dishonorable man. So he's loved and hated like anybody's going to be. On the other hand, he was the best known young man of his generation. So he winds up getting elected to a seat in the House of Commons. He was 26, not a bad going. And it talks about some of his

Starting point is 00:22:21 motivations. He thirsted for office, power, and the chance to make history churchill then and always was a mass of contradictions he loved to be a top dog but he felt for the underdog churchill was never a warmonger as his enemies claimed on the contrary he warned against it just as urgently as he warned against unpreparedness for it that's really important and this is and again i think this is the beneficial to me to read this book uh right after reading that giant biography of de gaulle because even though they start off with like a you know semi liking each other maybe develop a hatred from each other they're all the hatred at least in my interpretation of it because there was so much alike both stubborn both did thought their destiny was to to you know make history and to

Starting point is 00:23:07 play on the grandest scale uh stage both absolutely refused to quit both extremely smart both extremely well read both gifted writers and speakers but the point is there's just a lot of overlap there but this is another thing that they share in common is the fact that they both warned they had i said on the de gaulle podcast de ga had receipts. He told you what was going to happen five years, 10 years before it happened. He wrote it in books. He gave speeches. He sent letters to powerful people. Pay attention to this. Pay attention to this. Churchill did the same thing. And that's one of the most fascinating parts about studying both their lives is that you could be dead on accurate. And the entire world is telling you, no, no, no, you're misreading the situation.

Starting point is 00:23:51 We have nothing to worry about. In the early 1930s and late 1920s, when Churchill's warning about Germany arming up again, saying we need to build up our army, we have to be very careful about this, everybody else is saying, no, actually, let's get rid of our army. Let's just give it, let's turn everything over to the up our army. We have to be very careful about this. Everybody else is saying, no, actually, let's get rid of our army. Let's just give it. Let's turn everything over to the League of Nations. It's just it. That is such a big idea from reading history

Starting point is 00:24:11 is the fact that there are times in history there's like this mass misunderstanding and state of confusion where everybody is reading the situation incorrectly. And when you put forth your view that in time is going to be proven correct they tell you nope you're wrong you don't know what you're talking about they deride you they attack your your personal character and you need people like de gaulle and churchill that just don't give a damn there is nothing that you can say to

Starting point is 00:24:39 churchill or to de gaulle to convince them that hey hey, you should give up. You don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing to worry about. So let's go back to this paragraph to spawn that thought. On the contrary, he warned against it just as urgently as he warned against unpreparedness for it. The two were indivisible, but Churchill was sufficient of a realist to grasp that wars will come no matter what, and that a victorious one however dreadful is preferable to a lost one and then there's just this random sentence here i jotted on this page this is a worthy goal means you're an interesting person it is not easy to classify churchill another thing he hasn't in common with the gold it goes like i don't care about politics i'm not

Starting point is 00:25:22 assigned to any political party i have one aim and that is to deliver France. Very similar to what the author's telling us about Churchill. He was not a party man. That's the truth. He switched parties back and forth. People thought he was just like an opportunist. Definitely was. His loyalty belonged to the national interest and his own. So something I feel, I think uh like a self-critique i have is sometimes i don't talk enough about the supporting cast that these interesting people had throughout history and a lot of in a lot of cases they had extremely supportive spouses and churchill was no different and he wasn't being married his his wife's name is clemmy um so first of all, he had a bunch of other women that he could choose from, some of which were really rich.

Starting point is 00:26:08 They would come on like dowries. But he always put, I love this line, he always put happiness before money. So it says Clemmie, but Clemmie suited. So the author's talking about, you know, he's not just going to marry a woman just for money. But Clemmie suited him and he loved her. He always put happiness before money. Among all the 20th century ruling elites, the Churchills might be judged to have had the most successful marriage. Each was totally faithful to the other.

Starting point is 00:26:31 And Clemmie devoted herself completely to her remarkable husband. She gave him good advice, comforted him in his many career mishaps. That's important. That sentence is double underlined in the book that I hold in my hand. I can't remember the person that said it. It was somebody that I read a book about. And they're like, listen, you'll always remember your successes and not your failures. And to me, what they're telling us is like, take risks. And so it is remarkable. There's many notes I make in this book of how many failures that Churchill had. And that's irrelevant, other than the fact that he learned

Starting point is 00:27:05 from them. Because all you need is one big success. I think that's true for obviously entrepreneurship, you could fail at 10 different businesses. But all it takes is one really good, profitable business that makes you and your family comfortably rich. You only need one. And I think that's a fantastic, it's really an echo of the idea we learned from the founder of Kinko's, Paul Orfala, where he says, school and life don't really mesh well together because in school, the teacher, you have to be good at everything. And he's like, you know, I was called dumb. I was dyslexic. They said I'd be a loser. He got expelled like four times, but he's like, in life, you only have to be good at one thing. And he's like, I didn't know how a copy machine even worked all i knew is i could sell what came out

Starting point is 00:27:47 of it and the fact that i got really good at selling what came out of it i had a wonderfully you know successful life i made enough money that i could you know donate i think 20 million dollars to uc santa barbara and have a building named after me it's just it's it's an interesting thought so it says uh let's go back to this she She comforted him in his many, many being the most important word there, career mishaps, and calmed him down when he was triumphant. And this is just an example of a sentence that tells an entire story. Churchill was never content to be silent or inactive when the opportunity to say or do something interesting presented itself. Another great sentence for you.

Starting point is 00:28:24 He courted danger given the chance. So I fast forwarded quite a bit in the story. He's around 35 years old at this point. This is right before World War I breaks out and he's put ahead like in charge of like the Navy. So it says the Royal, and this is really, I'm bringing this to your attention to give you an idea of his work habits. The Royal Navy was the most complex and widely spread fighting machine on earth. It was dogmatically proud of its ways and determined not to change them. The senior admirals regarded Churchill with horror because he wanted to update them to increase it. This is something like a common theme throughout his entire career.

Starting point is 00:28:59 So says junior officers and petty officers saw him as a hero because he improved their pay and the conditions of the Navy. There were many hundreds of naval establishments and bases in the British Isles and the Mediterranean alone, and Churchill visited every one of them. He looked into everything and everyone. He often worked 18 hours a day and absorbed the new technology of naval warfare with impressive speed. And this is another great sentence. He recognized no limitations to his activities. Not only is he trying to make his own country stronger, but he's also looking around

Starting point is 00:29:30 to see what other people are doing. This is when he starts to get extremely concerned about activities of potential enemies, people that are not enemies today, but may be enemies in the future. So this is where I wrote a rather long note to myself on this page. I'm going to read it to you before I read this section. Like de Gaulle, Churchill saw the threat from Germany a decade or two before anyone else. The lesson here is to identify the weaknesses of your company, find solutions to that weakness, and internal forces inside your company that are trying to make it weaker. So that's the remarkable story about both Churchill and de Gaulle is not only do they have these very formidable external enemies, but they have to fight people on their own team as well. And so luckily in a company, it's easier to eliminate those internal enemies if you're aware of them. It's way easier to do

Starting point is 00:30:14 that than it is at the country level. So it says, Churchill was concerned by the German decision to build large number of U-boats. This is 20 years before World War II. What were they for? The answer was unmistakable. Britain had the largest merchant navy in the world and imported a greater percentage of her food. This is what I meant about you have to identify potential weaknesses of your company that other people can attack. In his case, it's literal starvation is what he's talking about. Britain had the largest merchant navy in the world and imported a greater percentage of her food than any other great power. The German U-boat was a potential war-winning weapon which could starve britain to death the only answer was to build large numbers of u-boat destroyers so churchill just like the

Starting point is 00:30:59 call default aggressive i'm going on the attack i'm not going to just let her sit you i'm not just going to sit around and wait for you to attack me that's not that's not how this is going to work uh this he did so he's building he wants to build all these u-boat destroyers right this he did but at every step in his policies he was opposed by elderly admiral admirals of whom there were a large number occupying key positions he spent as much time battling with them as he did at the actual work of modernizing the Navy. So again, this is where the lessons are not literal in Churchill's life. This is why so many, when so many entrepreneurs quote him and talk about him, they talk about the fact that he inspired them to never give up. But this idea, it's just like, okay, I'm going to

Starting point is 00:31:40 identify weaknesses that other people can attack in my company. I'm going to make them stronger. I'm also going to find people that, and once I put forth a plan where I'm trying, my intention here is to make the company stronger, which is what Churchill's trying to do right on the country level. I need to be wary of the people that attack me and want me to, and for whatever reason, reason's really irrelevant if you think about it, do not want me to gain strength. Anybody that is trying to prioritize weakness

Starting point is 00:32:05 in my company must be eliminated and so Churchill is going to have many many mistakes during World War I I'm not like I mean one that he's lived the Gallipoli campaign he lives with for the rest of his life but here's the this is the important part right because we're about to start World War I so it says when war came Churchill was was ready. He was prepared psychologically and in every way for what he realized would be the biggest conflict in history. So he also talked about that, where people are like, oh, this is something I learned by listening to Hardcore History. Both in World War I and World War II, for some reason, a lot of people thought, oh, it's going to be over really fast. It'd be six months. It'd be a couple months. It's like,

Starting point is 00:32:40 how could you think that? Especially, maybe it's more understandable how you could think that in World War I, but how the hell are you thinking that in World War II after we just saw what happened in World War I? And that's just, again, human nature. We have very short memories. Most people do not listen, do not learn from history. So it says, he was like a man who had long schooled himself for a job and was now told to do it. So he's prepared. This is one of his, like, his superiors. And he says, there is one thing, he's prepared uh this is one of his uh like his um superiors and he says there is one thing

Starting point is 00:33:07 he's describing churchill there is one thing at least they can never take away from you when the war began you had your fleet ready so then it goes into like the detail of how horrendous world war one was just this mass sacrifice of young lives says we says, we must remember that Churchill had warned in speech and print that this would be a catastrophe for humanity. So this is the prime minister's description of Churchill, fantastic qualities to have. He says, he is so resourceful and undismayed. Two of the qualities I like best. And I think even better than that word undismayed is to actually use the actual definition. And that's not discouraged by a setback so being resourceful and then not allowing inevitable setbacks to discourage you these are two fantastic qualities to emulate and so he there's going to be all kinds of mishaps that happen he's going to get blamed for he's going to be demoted but i want to

Starting point is 00:34:00 pull out something that his wife said about him at this time. And the note I left myself is his wife was right. This is the skill Churchill would still possess 20 years in the future when the British needed it most. It was the only time in his life, excuse me, in Churchill's life, that Clemmie Churchill, his wife, made a dramatic appeal on the behalf of her husband. She writes a letter to his superior. Winston may in your eyes and in those with whom he had to work

Starting point is 00:34:26 have faults, but he had the supreme quality which I venture to say very few of your present or future cabinet possesses. The power, the imagination, the deadliness

Starting point is 00:34:40 to fight Germany. So this is where we see one of his first depressive states. He's down and depressed, but he's still defiant. Again, I think these are the traits that even a century after this is happening, people are still drawing strength from. And it's just amazing when you're in this part of the story and really Churchill's life in the whole. It's just amazing how much of an advantage simply not giving up, not quitting, can give you. So it says, so Churchill was out and had to watch, impotent and silent, while the politicians, admirals, and generals compounded their mistakes in the operation

Starting point is 00:35:16 and it ended in an inglorious evacuation. Though an official inquiry eventually exonerated him, at the time, he got the blame. So this is the Gallipoli fiasco. As Theodore Roosevelt once remarked of a financial crisis, When people have lost their money, they strike out unthinkingly, like a wounded snake, at whoever is the most prominent in line of vision. Here it was not money lost, but lives lost, And there was no doubt who was the most prominent. It was the lowest time in Churchill's life.

Starting point is 00:35:48 He was dark, somber, troubled, and defiant. This is what he says. I had pretty well lost everything. He brooded in his inactivity, something he had never experienced before. His wife later said, I thought he would die of grief. And so he's looking for outlets for his depression his grief and his unhappiness and then this is where he picks up his lifelong habit of painting and i didn't know that several of his paintings have been like collected and they go for outrageous prices it says he discovered as other sensible people have

Starting point is 00:36:20 done that painting is not only the best of hobbies but a sure refuge in time of trouble So eventually he's saying, hey, I got to get back in the fight. The war's not over. So at the end of 1915, it says Churchill was determined to go back into the fray. He was given a battalion to command. So now he's going into combat. The experience restored his faith in himself and his faith in winning the war. Churchill's service in the trenches, this is really important, actually. Churchill's service in the trenches served him well in both world wars

Starting point is 00:37:03 because it enabled him to understand the view of the ordinary soldier and officer so again we're thinking about the lessons of churchill in context of business right um well one i got to get back into the fact that he um there's one of my favorite quotes from the gall book what and i think this this talks about this describes what's happening in churchill's life you know he's down defeated but he's still defiant and it says don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat that's a fantastic quote don't turn your back on he who will not accept defeat now this second idea the fact that he was leading a group in the war he's in the trenches he's with them. He has to lead somebody. You have to have the understanding of how they think, how they look at things. So he's far removed. He's in the upper echelon of politics. And yet spending time with ordinary soldiers and officers gives him another form of education. This is very, we see this over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship. The example that came to mind, the one I jotted down when I got to this part of the book is the fact that this is exactly what the founder of UPS did. I think his name was Jim Casey.

Starting point is 00:38:13 That might be like founders number 182 or something like that. But he said he like anytime he would see a UPS truck, he would stop, pull over and instruct his driver to pull over and he'd go and have a conversation with the UPS driver. And he said that he would rather talk to a ups driver any day of the week than some executive at ups because he's like the executives they filter this information maybe they want to kiss my ass whatever the case is but he's like a ups driver just tells me what's exactly on his mind and so he used that as like a form of reconnaissance to know exactly what was going on in his company. And that's just a fundamental idea

Starting point is 00:38:48 that will never go out of fashion. So these systems that they rushed to put in place at the very beginning of the war, think about that over time. It's very natural for any system to get more bureaucratic, more complex. This is something we have to learn to deal with. So many years later, this is towards the end of the war,

Starting point is 00:39:03 he's made the minister of munitions. And it was very interesting. I'm going to relate what Churchill's doing at this point in his life and career with what Sam Walton told us in his fantastic autobiography. So it says, it was a confused ministry, which is now he's put in charge of, which had grown up haphazardly during the war. Think about like the very beginning of a company, like a startup, you're just kind of like trying to build a plane as you learn to fly it, right? Very similar situation, obviously more deadly consequences, having to spin up an apparatus to conduct a successful war. So it says it was a confused ministry which had grown up haphazardly during the war, and it was a maze of duplications, contradictions, and bureaucratic gang warfare.

Starting point is 00:39:48 In a short time of fanatical hard work, Churchill made it simple, logical, and efficient. Who would not want to run a business that was simple, logical, and efficient? So, to note myself, Sam Walton did the same. He knew fighting back complexity and bureaucracy is a never-ending task. Two quotes from the autobiography of Sam Walton I want to bring to your attention. Sam says, if you don't zero in on bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it, period, without even knowing it. So you always, that's the word he's telling us, so you always have to be looking to eliminate it because then you're not going to be simple, logical, and efficient.

Starting point is 00:40:27 And so there's an example in Sam's autobiography. It's like new shipments are coming into the back of every Walmart. They're labeled with a price, and then they're put on the floor. And every so often there's a mistake that's made on the pricing. So some manager came up with an idea and said, okay, now we're going to add a step. They're going to come in the back of the store, they're going to be labeled a price, and then we're going to have these people standing there with these little like electronic scanners, and they're going to scan everyone and make sure that the price is accurate. And Sam would visit his stores and it would drive him crazy. It's like, why are we just doing the job? It's like,

Starting point is 00:41:00 why do we need these people? Like, we should be not adding another layer of complexity and bureaucracy here. We should do the job the correct way the first time. And so Sam says, another quote directly from him, really, it's a pretty simple philosophy. What you have to do is just draw a line in the dirt nature that Sam possessed, if you think about what he's about to tell us. And then know for sure that a year will go by and it will be back across that line. And then you'll have to go do the same thing again. So something Churchill talks about over and over again in his life, he hates communism, thought it was the worst scourge in history. Talks about when Lenin had the Bolshevik group at the end of 1917, murders the Russian czar and his family there I think he said there was like I forgot how many people died he talked about in the book I'm sorry I didn't make that note but he talks about he felt it was like a personal failure not to stop communism when he had the time when he had the chance there's this there's this uh strain of thought that hey if you if you snuffed it out there if you crush Bolshevism Bolsheshevism eventually caused Mussolini and Hitler. Maybe

Starting point is 00:42:06 all the events, the horrible events of World War II never happened. Who knows? But really, I just want to pull out one sentence for you that I think is important, a lesson for me and you to take with us. Churchill was never allowed by his critics to forget that his failed attempt to extinguish communism. But he did not pine himself. I just read the founder of vans the shoe company his autobiography it's founders number 216 he has he the guy drops out i think it's 16 when he's 16 years old and he's writing the book when he's close to 90 right he had multiple decades of career uh just extremely hard worker and he has an entire chapter in that book called Shit Happens. And so in that chapter, he says, listen, he has a very simple formula to use. He says,

Starting point is 00:42:51 shit happens, you acknowledge it, you learn from it, you forget it, and you move on. And I think we see the same exact thing with Churchill. He's like, I'm not going to beat myself. This is a mistake. I will learn from the mistake. I'll acknowledge it, but I'm moving on. I'm not going to sit here and dwell. That does us no good. And so I feel what Churchill did here is very similar to what we learned from Paul Van Doren on Founders No. 216. So there's all these transitions that happen in Churchill's life because the party that he's part of winds up getting sweeped out of power, and then he eventually usually has like a few year absence, and he'll get sweeped out of power and then he'll eventually usually has like a few year absence and he'll get sweeped back in and this happens over and over again really the the the lesson here is that he's kicked back down to the ground again we know churchill's not staying on

Starting point is 00:43:33 the ground that's just not in his in his blood okay so it says uh effectively this ended the coalition government this is the government that at the time uh churchill happened to be a part of during the campaign churchill was in great pain and was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation. In the twinkling of an eye, this is Churchill describing this point of his life, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix. Churchill was once again sent to the bottom and had to face the task of warily climbing the ladder again for the third time in his life. It was not so easy now that he was nearing 50 years old. And so he has a couple of unsuccessful attempts at getting back his seat in government.

Starting point is 00:44:16 So he's like, all right, forget this. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to write another book. Remember, he wrote over 40 books in his lifetime. It says, one of Churchill's strengths was that politics never occupied his whole attention and energies. He had an astonishing range of activities to provide him with relief, exercise, thrills, fun, and not least of all, money. He embarked on his enormous record of the First World War, which he called the world, it's the book called The World Crisis. It made a great deal of money over the years, and more than three quarters of a century later is still in print and still being read. And it's also an example of this idea that we see over and over again that one successful opportunity usually begets more successful but yet unpredictable opportunities.

Starting point is 00:44:53 Its success opened before Churchill an endless vista of publishers' contracts all over the earth for anything that he cared to produce. Somebody recommended me a book that has to do with, I think it's called like Churchill and Champagne or something like that. It's like, I think I'm going to read it because the premise is interesting. It's like identifying all the, his relationship with money and the fact like he would rush to make as much money as possible. And then as soon as he made it, he would spend it all. If Churchill lived well, he never had much cash in his hand or saw his investments rise to a point where he could feel secure for life or even for the next year.

Starting point is 00:45:27 So that's just a little statement about that. That comes up a lot in the book. He loved to spend money on champagne. I mean, they said what? He probably drank 20,000 bottles of champagne. A lot of that being vintage. That's not a cheap habit. But this was hilarious.

Starting point is 00:45:40 He had his own version of PEDs, of performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe I should do this before I sit down and record a podcast. In those days, Churchill often took several whiffs of pure oxygen to lift him before a bout of oratory. And he would travel up to the government house with two canisters of pure oxygen. That's hilarious. That's wild. So he, like I said earlier, he has receipts. He predicted a lot of stuff. He makes tons of mistakes though he cannot there's just impossible to think you're going to be right all the time

Starting point is 00:46:08 and so one thing that he didn't see coming is the fact that this is now in between world war one and world war ii he's like no we don't have nothing to worry about with japan this is says he wrote a letter uh this is to i think this is he might be writing to the prime minister i can't remember who he's writing to but it says, which used long arguments backed by statistics. Look, the numbers say we don't have anything to worry about. What do we have to worry about? To show that there's no need at all to consider a possible war with Japan. This is what he says.

Starting point is 00:46:34 I do not believe that there is the slightest chance of it, meaning the war with Japan, in our lifetimes. The Japanese are our allies. Japan is on the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way. War with Japan is not a possibility. But this is the reason I'm bringing this to your attention, because he owns it. He owns his mistake. He does not pass the buck.

Starting point is 00:46:55 There's nothing worse than somebody who's making excuses. When this happens, he blamed himself. They're talking about when Japan came in and took over Singapore, which was an English territory, I guess, at the time. So it says when this happened, he blamed himself. He never shrank from accepting responsibility when it was just. And then he's just got a bunch of great lines in the book. This is one of them. He called for a premium on effort and a penalty on inertia.

Starting point is 00:47:21 And he certainly practiced what he preached. At this point, he needs to make a bunch of money. He goes and he's writing books and he goes to the electric circuit. Usually when he does this, he goes to America and makes a ton of money. And then we see a tale as old as time. He winds up losing everything because he's buying things on margin. This happens over and over again in financial history. We never learn.

Starting point is 00:47:43 People are still doing this right now in present day. So it says we have really, he's writing a note to his wife. He's like, look, look at all this money I made. This is fantastic. I made all this money with no effort in a short amount of time using margin. Okay. Why do you think this is going to happen? This is 1929. You know what's about to happen. So he says, we have really recovered in a few weeks and we made a small fortune. A month later, all of it has gone. This was the great Wall Street crash. And so he's writing under my he's he's writing another letter under my window. He's in New York at the time. Under my window, a gentleman cast himself down 15 stories and was dashed to pieces. His financial advisor, McGowan, had been investing his funds on margin, something

Starting point is 00:48:21 Churchill did not understand. And so not only did he lose all his money but he had to buy himself out of the mess and he almost has to sell his house uh he's in a really bad spot and then what happens is when you're in a bad spot you're not thinking clearly and so it says his confidence had been shaken and his bruised condition he began to make political mistakes and think about that. How old is he now? This would be, he's in his mid-50s. How terrifying would it be to lose everything?

Starting point is 00:48:52 Not only to go from, in a month's time, to think you built up a small fortune, to now go into, in the blink of an eye, to have a negative net worth at 55, in your mid-50s. That's terrifying. And so he starts writing again. he goes back on the lecture circuit about two years later he's wanting to he almost gets killed i didn't i didn't know this i don't think uh that he wasn't getting hit by a car because he's in new york

Starting point is 00:49:16 crossing the street and the cars come from the other direction as they do in england right churchill found for a moment to have been uh without direction in politics obsessed with the need to make money so he returned to america to lecture and write. He was crossing Fifth Avenue in the dark in New York City, and he looked the wrong way. And he gets hit by a car. He was badly damaged. He was lucky to be alive. He was sent to the hospital and spent a long time there recovering. He was very, very down. He wrote to his wife, I have now in the last two years had three very heavy blows. First, the loss of all that money in the crash. Then the loss of my political position in the conservative party.

Starting point is 00:49:51 And now this terrible physical injury. He was afraid he would never recover from these blows. But this period of, you know, depression, being sad, only lasts a little bit. He realizes he's knocked down, but he has to get up again so it says he went back into the fray shaken but calm and determined to live more dangerously than ever before and to fear even less and so now we enter the point of his life it's very similar to the one with the Gauls and they call it the un this chapter is called the unregarded prophet and this is where he's just realizing before anybody else like what is actually happening now what you're telling me is happening but what i can actually see and this is why over and over again these books like they give examples like

Starting point is 00:50:33 you have to work yourself into a position where you can trust your own judgment that's all you have in life you only have your judgment you cannot copy and just go along with everybody else's dogma now began the hardest period and harshest periods of Churchill's life. He was lucky to have a seat, now he's back in government where he's active, was much loved and had many faithful friends. Otherwise, he might have been distinguished as a politician and became instead a professional writer. He was lucky to have an adoring, wise, and sometimes critical wife and a growing family of children. He was lucky to have Chartwell, this is his estate, his family estate that he almost lost multiple times, which was a personal paradise where he could lick his many wounds.

Starting point is 00:51:10 He was lucky to have his art. He did more paintings this decade. So he did 250 paintings in this decade out of the 500 that survived than in any other. And he was lucky above all that events suddenly gave him a clear vision of what was happening in the world, what would happen unless he prevented it by his amazing gifts and energies. The picture cleared early in 1933 when Adolf Hitler captured power in Germany and immediately set about his own plans to destroy the Treaty of Versailles and make Germany the strongest power in Europe. Churchill had read Mein Kampf and believed it represented Hitler's plain intentions. So did Hitler. This is a crazy quote from Hitler. My program from the first was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles.

Starting point is 00:51:52 I have written it thousands of times. No human being has ever declared or recorded what he wanted more often than me. End of his quote. There was no British response to Hitler's arrival in power. Churchill had already pointed out that the Germans had been breaking the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, which forbade the creation of a large army for some time. But, it says, Hitler merely accelerated the process. Few people had read Mein Kampf. Fewer still believed it.

Starting point is 00:52:22 In government circles, Hitler was seen as a deluded adventurer who would soon be discarded. And the normal of myself here is never underestimate your opponent. This is what they do over and over again. They're like, he's not a problem. We're fine. They make up all these excuses of why he's not a problem. But think about it. What is the benefit of why is never underestimate your opponent a good lesson to learn from history?

Starting point is 00:52:46 Because doing so is all downside and no upside. Why would you do something where there's no benefit to doing it and potential life-ending, company-ending, country-ending catastrophe? It's all downside and no upside. It's silliness. Don't underestimate your opponent. Never. The odds are stacked against his policy. This is what Churchill wants. He wants a strong, rearmed Britain, ready

Starting point is 00:53:10 and able to oppose a strong, rearmed, and vengeful Germany. He did not see himself as a reactionary longing for a past that was gone, but as a prophet of a dangerous future. He said Britain would soon be fighting for his life and he was laughed at. This is less than 10 years earlier. Excuse me, less than 10 years in the future, German planes will be bombing the city of London and other areas in Britain to smithereens. They'll kill over 40,000 civilians.

Starting point is 00:53:46 Just people living their lives, just like whatever city you happen to beithereens. They'll kill over 40,000 civilians, just people living their lives, just like whatever city you happen to be in right now. Imagine just living there. And then because of the ineffective attitude and strategy that your government had, bombs are being dropped on your house, your apartment building, wherever you're living. Think about that. He's saying Britain soon be fighting for his life, and he's laughed at. Now Paul Johnson, the author, gives us this historical context. It was the only period in British history when pacifism became not merely fashionable, but the creed of the majority. Think about that. It's fashionable.

Starting point is 00:54:18 It's what everybody believes in, and it's the exact wrong attitude to have at this point. That is so powerful to sit and contemplate about, right? This is insane. A peace ballot asked the nation, so this is their voting on this, right? To sign up for a motion repudiating national rearmament, which is Churchill's idea, and instead to leave everything to the League of Nations.

Starting point is 00:54:41 It was adopted by 80% of the 10 million votes cast. That gives you an idea of how unpopular Churchill's opinion was at this time. Unpopular and right. And so now these ideas, now these are stupid ideas, right? History proved these to be really stupid and dangerous and deadly ideas. They're trying to export these ideas to other people, to other countries. Anthony Eden for the government said it was British policy to get the French army cut from 694,000 troops to 400,000. Five years after Anthony Eden's stupid idea that he's giving us here, right? Germany will invade France, a weakened France, and run over them in six weeks. Churchill protested strongly. Eden rebuked him for opposing. And then the newspapers attack him too. Look at this stupid warmonger. Churchill's crazy. The house was enraged and in an ugly mood. This is a quote from a newspaper at the time.

Starting point is 00:55:39 The house was enraged and in an ugly mood towards Mr. Churchill. This was the first sign that he had sacrificed the position of popularity he had so painfully acquired in the 20s by good behavior and was now regarded as a nuisance and a troublemaker. Churchill told the House on November 28, 1934, that up to 40,000 Londoners would alone be killed. And he was right in that. He said in the first week. So he's wrong about that. But it's remarkable that, according to what I found, at least 40,000 civilians died in the Battle of Britain from German bombs. So there's a bunch of all the stuff I just read to you.

Starting point is 00:56:12 Let me read the note. Reminds me of Henry Singleton. And right before he died, he gave an interview and he was asked about stock buybacks, which he was a pioneer of. And when he was doing them, no one else was doing them. Right. Then 20 years later, he's about to die. He's not doing them anymore. when he was doing them no one else was doing them right then 20 years later he's about to die he's not doing them anymore everybody else is doing them and so he says if everyone's doing it there must be something wrong and then i just wrote about the idea that you should give up your not you don't want to build up your own strength give it over to some other

Starting point is 00:56:39 entity that doesn't care about you as much as you care about yourself the league of nations which is insane and so i said this is madness britain still stands today and the League of Nations does not. And yet these are, this is who the vast majority is saying, no, no, no, we don't have to worry about it for ourselves. Let's give it to these other people that don't give a shit about us. Popular public opinion could not have been more wrong. That is such a powerful idea. And so Churchill goes back to this. He's laying out all the problems. He says, listen, the Germans and Italians have 800 bombers between them. We have 47. You don't think airfare in the next war, the next inevitable war,

Starting point is 00:57:12 which again people thought wasn't ever going to happen again, that's not going to be a problem. If our enemy, our potential enemy has 800 and we have 47, his speeches were growing more passionate and telling as the danger increased and more and more influential people were saying to him in public or more likely in private that they agreed with him and that's the problem that people are so fearful of speaking out to get criticized so that they're telling him that they're telling him that they agree and they're telling him in private when what he needed is other people to step up with him and say hey this is the problem

Starting point is 00:57:40 that we see this is i'm not some lunatic this is very obvious if you just sit down and think about it. Don't just copy the thoughts and ideas of the people around you where everybody says, okay, 87% of us say, no, no, no, we don't have to do this. Like, here's the problem. Hey, we see this crazy guy over in Germany. Is he or is he not building up the army? Yes? Okay.

Starting point is 00:58:00 Is that not a violation of this treaty that we signed? Yes, it is. What do you think is intended? Did you read his book? Because I read his book. And he lays out. He's not hiding his plan. It's in his book. Did you read it? No, you didn't. Okay. So how the hell, if you didn't read the book, could you think you're well-informed enough to arrive at a conclusion that could potentially cause the end of us as a free country as we know it? How is it possible that humans can make this such a grievous mistake and then be so confident in their ignorance that they castigate and attack the one

Starting point is 00:58:33 person, that one person being Churchill, that is actually looking at the situation clearly? That is a fatal flaw in the human species that will never go away. And that is why the people that are curious about the world around them, people that study history, have a massive, massive advantage over those who do not. So I'm fast forwarding a couple years in the story. He's on this for years talking about this. For the first time in his nearly 40 years, 40 year career, his entire political career rather, Churchill lost lost his opportunism completely. Now, this is a really important point. There's an old maxim that's spread throughout human history.

Starting point is 00:59:11 It says it's darkest before the dawn, right? It's usually the worst time that you could have is right before things turn around. I want to quote Paul Van Doren again, a very wise 90-year-old entrepreneur who wrote this autobiography. He says, opportunity is a strange beast. It commonly appears after a loss. So he's getting depressed. He's like, I cannot, things are getting worse. And yet we're signing the Munich Agreement. We're doing all these dumb things that happened. And then it starts to shift because then people start to realize, oh my God, this Hitler guy is crazy. So it says then slowly, but with gathering speed,

Starting point is 00:59:48 opinion swung against Munich, against Chamberlain. That's Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister that's going to essentially, his opinion was let's appease Hitler. Let's just give him everything he wants, and then he'll leave us alone. And he's going to wind up resigning, and then Churchill takes over. And the whole appeasement policy. And so they wind up Germany. I don't have to replay World War II for you, but Germany invades Poland, France and Britain had guaranteed Poland's safety,

Starting point is 01:00:17 and so they have to declare war, and now it's on. And this is where Churchill is going to become Churchill. Once war was declared, Churchill was invited to accept his old post, he's in the cabinet first, and he wrote, and this is really interesting, the idea that darkness became before dawn, an opportunity, that opportunity is a strange beast. It appears before a loss. This is something, or after a loss, rather, this is something that he was preparing his entire life for. Just like de Gaulle said, he's like, there was never a doubt in my mind that I would not be the leader of France. I just didn't know

Starting point is 01:00:45 like it was going to happen in ways i didn't understand or i couldn't predict so this is what church says a very strong sense of calm came over me after the intense passions and excitements of the last few days i felt a serenity of mind and was conscious of a kind of uplifted detachment from human and personal affairs and this is what paul johnson says this was remarkable considering the problems facing him he's almost not, he's not happy. That's not the right word. But he's like, okay, I know what is at stake. And I want to be the person that's in charge, that is leading.

Starting point is 01:01:13 I'm willing. This is what my entire life, all the events of my life have led up to this moment. And now it's my time to act. And so this is right before Chamberlain decides to resign. Churchill gives this fantastic speech. And the reason it's so important is because these times, these hard times, is when leadership was needed most and Churchill was there. Churchill's speech was the only one made for the government

Starting point is 01:01:36 which showed conviction, hope, and resolution for the future. Chamberlain decided to resign. Churchill got the job. When I was reading this whole section, it made me think that there's all these turning points. And obviously this turning point in the history of Britain is a lot more important and there's a lot more at stake than a turning point in a company. But we think about these lessons and we try to apply them to our day jobs, our professional jobs. And so when I'm reading this, I thought about this fantastic – I've read Phil Knight's autobiography multiple times. I've done, I think, two podcasts on at least um and in shoe dog when the founding of nike right this is the time when they become nike

Starting point is 01:02:10 nike was called blue ribbon sports in case you don't know the details of the history they were reselling other people's shoes and they had this idea it's like hey why don't we make our own phil saw that there was an issue like their supplier was was having all these like he was basically plotting against them and he really and phil's like i'm in a weak position right and so he's like we're selling uh they're like i think they were called the tigers i can't remember but we're selling their shoes right but if they ever yank they say we're not going to sell them to you anymore like our company's over and so eventually happens. But he had done a little bit of preliminary work and trying to build his own brand of Nike. And so he has to gather his

Starting point is 01:02:51 company, right? This is way before Nike is even public. So again, very similar to what I was talking about with Larry Ellison. You have these two paths. Larry gives up, he's bankrupt. He goes left, right? He goes right and he continues on and he's worth $100 billion 40 years in the future. So same with Phil Knight. He could have gave up and then we don't even know who he is. There's no Nike. Something happens, right? And so he's gathering all his employees at this point in the book and he's talking about, listen, we lost our supplier.

Starting point is 01:03:15 They screwed us. We're going to be in a lawsuit with them. We could be going out of business and everybody is depressed. And then this is the speech that Phil Knight gives. Leadership has to transmit hope and that's exactly what churchill's doing where we're on the story and so phil knight says i looked down at the table everyone was sinking slumping forward i looked at johnson johnson was his like crazy this is employee number two at nike it was like he was more passionate about nike than phil knight was so he says i looked at johnson he was more passionate about Nike than maybe even Phil Knight was. So he says, I looked at Johnson.

Starting point is 01:03:45 He was staring at the papers before him and there was something in his face, some quality I'd never seen before. Surrender. Like everyone else in the room, he was giving up. The nation's economy was in a tank. A recession was underway. Gas lines, political gridlock, rising unemployment, Nixon being Nixon, Vietnam. So think of what he's talking about. It's not like we had a beneficial economic climate to launch a brand new brand that no one knows.

Starting point is 01:04:13 And he says, it seemed like the end times. Everyone in the room had already been worrying about how they were going to pay their rent, pay the light bill. Now this. I cleared my throat. So in other words, I said, what I'm trying to say, we've got them right where we want them. And in the story, his employees go crazy. He rallies around them. He's like, we're going to build our own brand. We're not selling other people's products. We're going to manufacture and sell our own product. That is the beginning of Nike. How can you listen to these stories and not be motivated and inspired and want to jump out of your chair i love this there's another one i don't have in front of

Starting point is 01:04:50 me but sam walton starts this uh this chain of stores called like ben franklin it's like a i guess like a franchise this week think about it so his store is so successful that um he made a mistake in his career where he didn't have like he had a bad lease. Right. So the guy that owns the building that he's renting from sees his success. So he's he won't renew Sam's lease. He winds up not renewing Sam's lease and then opening the same store in in the building he owns. And so Sam's in his attorney's office at the time. And his attorney sounds like there's nothing you could do. Like you didn't protect yourself on the lease.

Starting point is 01:05:23 And his attorney says Sam was just sitting there clenching and unclenching his fist. And then he grits his teeth. And he says, no, no, I am not whipped. I found this store. I'll find another good town and another store. Just wait and see. It's the same idea, the same experience. You could give up, say, okay, I made a big mistake.

Starting point is 01:05:42 I'm out of business. I could fall on the ground and maybe go work for somebody else whatever the case is it seems like no i'm not doing that phil knight no i'm not doing that winston churchill no we're not giving up and so this when he's when he's elected uh prime minister at the most important point in british history this is what he says about this tonight this is what he writes in his diary. I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last, I had authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Ten years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms.

Starting point is 01:06:22 My warnings over the past six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated that no one could go against me. I could not be reproached, either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it, and I was sure I would not fail. Therefore, though impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dream. And this is where Churchill becomes Churchill. I go into way more detail in The Splendid and the Vile because that entire book is about this period of time. So if you haven't listened to that, and buy the book. The book is absolutely's like it's one of the most highly rated books i've ever found on

Starting point is 01:07:07 amazon by the way and so he he's immediately he's like okay i know what i'm doing he's got really what's happening is none of myself is believe in yourself you were the leader you worked yourself into this position trust your instincts and go he felt his authority and exercised it he was seen walking up and down the empty captain cabinet room once after a major major firing sacking saying aloud i want them all to feel my power churchill was overwhelmingly admired even loved but also feared and he's also an extremely gifted communicator one of these is not only he riles you up with beautiful language and inspires you to keep going, but he's also really crystal clear. This is something that is extremely important.

Starting point is 01:07:50 All of his orders, without exception, were in writing and were absolutely clear. Then he gives examples of a bunch of speeches. I love this. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. He added in the same speech that his aim was quite simple and clear. Again, clear communication. We can only really rally people around simple, clear instructions. It cannot be complex. It cannot be too long. It's lawful not to compress your thoughts. This is a hell of an example of a way to compress your thoughts. So what is my aim?

Starting point is 01:08:21 They all said I have one aim, and that's to free France, right? This is what Churchill's aim was. Victory at all costs. Victories in spite of all terror. Victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory, there is no survival. Britain was facing extinction as a free country. So there's a bunch of great quotes, and really, I'm going to read this to you. The thought that popped to my mind when I'm reading Churchill's words,

Starting point is 01:08:50 a great leader makes you believe. We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. I mean, this guy. Listen to this.

Starting point is 01:09:25 Men will still say, this was their finest hour. And so Paul Johnson, the author, was alive at this point. He heard the speech. He was living in Britain. And he talks about this, like this, the part about never surrendering rang true. We believed it. We meant it. And it's this idea that you have a great leader that is making, not only does he possess this unbelievable amount of self-belief, but he's able to transmit that self-belief onto you. It's so important. And so there's another thing that I really think is brilliant about Churchill. Obviously, there's a lot of things he did that was brilliant,

Starting point is 01:10:03 but it's really that he was able to identify his most important asset and go all in. And so in his case, like this is obviously an idea we can copy, but in his case, it was the idea is like, well, what's going to win this war, right? It's going to be air power. And so it says he sensed the importance of air power, and he had a speed in grasping the opportunities it offered. So really this section is identify your most important asset and then go all in. It says that Britain used to have the world's largest air force, but it had been grievously neglected in the 20s and early 30s. He made Beaverbrook, I talked about this guy in the Vial 2, he made Beaverbrook his minister for aircraft production and told him to go flat out. By the end of the year, British production of war aircraft, both fighters and bombers, had overtaken Germany in both quantity and quality. For the first time in the war, British technological superiority was established, and Churchill and Beaverbrook put all available

Starting point is 01:11:04 resources behind maintaining and lengthening their lead. So think about that. It's identifying your most important to go all out, right? And multiple times in that thing, it's like, they go flat out, they go, I'm going to go flat out, I'm going to put all my available resources behind this most important idea. And so he explains his thinking why this is so important. He's like, listen, when I look around, when I look around to see how we can win the war, I see that there's only one sure path. We have no continental army which can defeat the enemy military power. So he's talking about Hitler. But there is one thing that will bring him, meaning Hitler, back and bring him down. And that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy

Starting point is 01:11:43 bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. And so we see the same idea. This is the Battle of Britain, right? He survives. This is when they're really on the defense. And he realizes like once the Battle of Britain had in effect made a Nazi invasion possible, right? Because Hitler had the plan for a long time. He's like, I'm going to weaken you up, soften you up by bombing the crap out of you. And then I'm going to land my troops on your shores. And I'm going to weaken you up soften you up by bombing the crap out of you and then i'm going to land my troops on your shores and i'm going to take over your country just like i've taken over the rest of europe this if if and churchill's the only one standing in his way right this is before uh before america has joined into the war once he realizes

Starting point is 01:12:18 that they were like they're they're that um hitler has has postponed indefinitely the ground invasion of Britain. Churchill goes from a defensive standpoint, and he had offense during the Battle of Britain, don't get me wrong, but now it's going to be flat-out offensive. So it says the Battle of Britain had in fact made a Nazi invasion possible. At the same time, Churchill was gearing up to begin the Battle of Germany. So it's like, no, you were attacking me. No, no, now it it's my turn and I'm going to go default aggressive I'm going on the attack which was waged with growing force over the next four and a half years and so another thing that

Starting point is 01:12:53 Churchill does that's really smart is it's he obviously courted uh he figured the largest ally the most powerful ally he could get at this point in history was the Americans right and but he didn't matter like he went after the big fish but he would also go after small small the small ones as well so it says churchill was always on the lookout for allies large or small the note i left myself on this page is estee lauder did the same thing i beg you read estee lauder's autobiography it's like 200 some pages really easy to read she's one of the most formidable entrepreneurs in history and i think people overlook her.

Starting point is 01:13:25 But something she did that was genius, she did, like, things that don't scale, right? That idea at the very beginning of building her company. And one thing I learned from Estee Lauder is that you need to give your full effort always everywhere. And so she says in her autobiography, No community was too small for my attention. My absolutely full efforts. I had ridden, for instance, on a bus six hours to open a small store in Corpus Christi, Texas. That store's clientele was modest in size and economics.

Starting point is 01:14:01 No matter. And if you have an entrepreneur that's willing to ride on a bus for six hours to open a little store because they know word of mouth spreads gradually over time and it compounds, it's gonna be very hard to compete with them. I don't care if it's small now, that's fine. Maybe only getting five customers, 10, 150. But over time, if I give them my full efforts, everyone recruits one or two or three customers and turns to 300. So that 100 goes to 300. And now maybe they all those 300 do another two more. And so it just grows and grows and grows. I just love that. Give full effort always everywhere. That's a hell of a

Starting point is 01:14:35 lesson from Estee Lauder. And so think about this. There's another great example of Churchill that really everything in life is just a matter of perspective and so yeah like he's talking about hey I'm fighting the I'm fighting the Germans we have to deal with this this bastard Hitler these are terrible times but then he's just like but we also have the opportunity to to to snuff out one of the most evil people in history and so he says do not let us speak of darker days let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days. These are great days. Again, the whole point here is switching your perspective.

Starting point is 01:15:09 The greatest days our country has ever lived. And we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us, according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. And so that made me think there's a great paragraph that I read a long time ago. I read Catherine Graham's autobiography. It's called Personal History. And that's a fascinating story because, like, Warren Buffett's in the book. They become friends.

Starting point is 01:15:35 Jeff Bezos is the one that actually recommended reading that book. I think that's how I found it. But there's this conversation because she's alive during this time, and she's talking to her husband. This is before her husband kills himself. And she talks about this is just sucks. Can you believe that we're so unlucky to be alive during Hitler? And her husband had a different perspective.

Starting point is 01:15:54 Same looking at the same thing with different perspective. He says or she says in one exchange between us, I had deplored the fact that we had the bad luck to live in the world with Hitler. To which Phil responded, I don't know. Maybe it's a privilege to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history. I love that idea. Two people looking at the exact same situation, coming at it from different perspectives, and can arrive at vastly different interpretations.

Starting point is 01:16:19 Skipping ahead a little bit, this is towards the end of the world. End of the world. End of the war. America's already in it. Churchill had an uncanny gift for getting priorities right. Churchill's greatest intellectual gift was picking on essentials and concentrating on them. He is not a gambler, but never shrinks from taking a calculated risk if the situation so demands. His whole heart and soul are in this battle. And this is a fantastic, fantastic sentence. And he is an apostle of the offensive. And so the beginning, it talked about that blurb, talked about you really get a sense of knowing Churchill,

Starting point is 01:16:51 that you spent some time with him or reading this book. So an example of something that speaks to him is like his personality. It's the fact that he's extremely witty and he's funny. There's a lot of times I laughed in the book. And so give an example of his wit. So it says his daughter, Sarah, had made an unfortunate marriage to a stand-up comic whom Churchill detested, even after he faded from the scene. Once at a conference in Cairo,

Starting point is 01:17:12 Churchill was recounting his worries to this other guy, this minister, and the minister said, who told him, You're lucky. Things are going well, really. This is towards the end, and it's pretty obvious that they're going to win the war. Things are going well, really. Look at Mussolini. The Italian dictator was nearing the end of his power. Everything was going wrong. His foreign minister, Count Siano, had married Mussolini's daughter and had been accused of treason and had been shot. Churchill reflected on Mussolini's plight and then said, well, at least he had the pleasure of murdering his son-in-law. So something he said after the war, this is right at the end of

Starting point is 01:17:51 the war, but something that's really important. He cultivated powerful relationships that could help his mission. None of that being more important than the relationship he has with FDR. When FDR dies, this is what he says. No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt. And that's something he talked in the De Gaulle book. It's like, you know, I wake up every day. I'm a leader of a powerful, unbroken nation. I wake up every day thinking how I can please Roosevelt. And yet you, De Gaulle, wake up every day and think, how can I like prod or snap my fingers at the french and americans he's like what is wrong with you um this is very end of the war churchill treated the surrender of germany with suitable rhetoric and champagne popping he drank a bottle of his prize 1928

Starting point is 01:18:35 vintage he was relieved by hitler's suicide he had not relished the prospect the prospective task of hanging him one of the most surprising things in the story of Churchill is the fact that the same year that the war ends, his party is voted out of office. I still don't understand this. And so it says Churchill was out, and this is what he said at the time.

Starting point is 01:18:55 This is also something that gives you an idea of his wit and his personality. On the night of May 10th, 1940, at the outset of the mighty battle of Britain, I acquired the chief power in the state, which henceforth I wielded in an ever-growing measure for five years and three months of war. At the end of which time, all our enemies, having surrendered unconditionally,

Starting point is 01:19:12 are being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. His wife's comment was, perhaps it's a blessing in disguise, to which Churchillill replied it appears to be very effectively disguised another main lesson of churchill's life even after the war is that just there's a great quote i think is it shakespeare i can't remember it's like don't go gently into the dark night or go do not go gentle until the good night i think and so it talks about like he was obsessed with having guns and and even like worried about getting killed later in life. And he says, I dread capture more than death. I dread capture more than death and I will go down fighting. And so when he gets kicked out

Starting point is 01:19:55 of office, he's like, oh, I'll go back to writing. The chief activity of the post-war Churchill was writing. This is the main reason his wife was right to say that the 1945 defeat was a blessing in disguise. He had always believed, he said, this is such a great line, words are the only things that last forever. Between 1941 and 1945, he had performed great deeds. Now he needed to write the words to ensure that the deeds were correctly described and so made immortal. And so this is what I referenced earlier. This is wild how much money he made off this. The book is called War Memoirs. It was immensely successful, not least because so much in it was new to the reader, and especially fascinating to those who had lived through the years he described. Indeed, it was one of the most popular and highly rewarded books ever published. The original deal bought Churchill $2.23 million, the equivalent of $50 million today.

Starting point is 01:20:51 He's eventually re-elected and then resigns. I think he's around 80. He lives till 90. I want to quote from his last, he's 79 years old at this point in the story, and this is his last speech. Which way shall we turn to save our lives and the future of the world? It does not matter so much to old people. They're going to die soon anyway. But I find it poignant to look at youth in all its activity, and most of all, to watch little children playing their merry games and wonder what would lie before them if God wearied of mankind. That the day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we had to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never worry, never despair. And this is the end of Churchill's life, but not his story. He celebrated his 90th birthday in November and died the following January.

Starting point is 01:21:53 His final days were painless, without incident. His last words were, But then he added, looking at the faces around his bedside, the journey has been enjoyable and well worth making once. And that is where I'll leave it. Absolutely love this little book. If you've never read a biography of Churchill, I highly recommend picking this up. Super easy to read, really interesting, really entertaining. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. The best way to support founders,

Starting point is 01:22:25 if you have the ability to do so, is to buy gift subscriptions for friends, co-founders, co-workers, whatever the case is. I will leave a link in the show notes to do that. You can buy some for up to a year, a few months, whatever you choose. I do appreciate. That's very, very helpful.

Starting point is 01:22:41 That is 225 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #225 Winston Churchill

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