Founders - #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

Starting point is 00:00:00 America prepared the way for the cult of the entrepreneur. In due course, the public applauded the outstanding steelmaker Andrew Carnegie and the oil man John D. Rockefeller. This new kind of hero was controversial, and it is a fact that throughout history, one person's hero has been another's villain, not only in his own day, but later. The heroes of America's emergence as the world's largest industrial power were clearly

Starting point is 00:00:26 genuine in one sense, since Carnegie's cheap, high-quality steel benefited everybody. Rockefeller's slashing of the price of kerosene by 90% was a godsend, and Ford's cheap, reliable Model T ended the isolation of the farmer. But to others such men were robber barons, or in the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, malfactors of great wealth. People must agree to differ about heroes. I have always had a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth even if it puts them in a minority of one.

Starting point is 00:01:05 I think we appreciate heroism most if we have a tiny speck of it ourselves, which might be fanned into a flame if the wind of opportunity arose. So how do we recognize the heroes and heroines of today? I would distinguish four principal marks. First, by absolute independence of mind, which springs from the ability to think everything through for yourself and to treat whatever is the current consensus on any issue with skepticism. Second, having made up your mind independently to act resolutely and consistently.

Starting point is 00:01:41 Third, to ignore or reject everything the media throws at you, provided you remain convinced you are doing right. Finally, to act with personal courage at all times, regardless of the consequences to yourself. All history teaches that there is no substitute for courage. It is the noblest and best of all qualities, and the one indispensable element in hero because this is the same author. The last episode was on Winston Churchill. I loved this. Churchill's book was the first book of Paul Johnson's that I've ever read. I wound up doing a little bit of research on him. I realized he's written biographies on everybody, like Socrates, Mozart, Eisen Howard, Churchill. He's written a bunch of history books with a collection of historical figures around different classifications.

Starting point is 00:02:50 So he's got one like this one's heroes, he's got creators, he's got intellectuals. And so this book has 13 chapters in it. Each chapter has anywhere from like one to three different historical figures. So the ones I'm going to talk to you about today is George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Winston Churchill, and de Gaulle. And I'm going to do Alexander the Great first, but I want to review what he was saying in the epilogue. I want to give you these four traits that he feels the people that he profiled in the book that were, you know, were separated by time, lived in different countries, yet they all arrived at similar traits. And there's so many notes that happened to myself in this book where it just says great writing, great writing, great writing,

Starting point is 00:03:31 because he's just very to the point. I really appreciate that. I always think ever since I read that book, The Splendid and the Vile, and I love that. That's where I discovered this quote from Churchill where he's like, it's slothful not to compress your thoughts. And I feel that's why I'm going to wind up ordering a bunch of Paul's books because he compresses his thoughts. He analyzes all, he takes in all this information and then gives us the most valuable parts. So let's go through these four, and I edited them down even more. So there are four bullet points of traits that we can emulate in our own mind.

Starting point is 00:04:00 Number one, absolute independence of mind. Think everything through yourself. Treat current consensus with skepticism. Number two, act resolutely and consistently. Number three, ignore the media. Number four, act with personal courage at all times, regardless of the consequences to yourself. Okay, so I want to skip to Alexander the Great. This might be the best chapter name in the entire book. He puts Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar in the same chapter, and the chapter is called Earthshakers. And again, the note I left myself on this page is this is great writing. It's a celebration of words. It's exactly what Churchill was known to do and

Starting point is 00:04:42 de Gaulle. They just loved language. So it says, With Alexander and Caesar, we come to the two principal actors of antiquity who operated in the theater of the entire known world and became prototypes of the heroic character for the next thousand years. This next sentence is crazy. Ready? They carved out vast empires for themselves and hammered their names into the history of the earth. Each was brave, highly intelligent, and almost horrifically self-assured. So he's talking about conquerors, right?

Starting point is 00:05:13 200 plus biographies into reading biographies of entrepreneurs. Each was brave, highly intelligent, and almost horrifically self-assured. The founders that we said in this podcast have those same traits uh whose ambitions knew no bounds uh they were also cruel selfish without scruple and fundamentally unlovable but they were admired inevitably more perhaps than any other two men of their kind they were giant like almost superhuman in every respect and that's actually a really important point that he's making in that entire paragraph is we are studying the most extreme humans that have ever lived. Which means, by definition, their great traits are going to be more extreme than average, but so are their negative traits. And so as I was reading this section, it brought to mind this quote that I discovered a few months ago, maybe a few weeks ago in the book, In the Company of Giants. And it was this interview that Steve Jobs is giving in

Starting point is 00:06:12 1997. And he was asked, what do you think your weaknesses are when it comes to management? And he says, I don't know. That's the least interesting part of his answer, though. This is the most interesting part. People are packaged deals. You take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. And that's one of the amazing things that I discovered about Steve Jobs. I read, what, 10 books on him so far for the podcast, something like that. Watched countless interviews with him. Every time I find something new, there's always useful information that he has in his interviews, in his talks, in his writing that's just useful to future generations of entrepreneurs. Okay, so it says Alexander the Great was a son of a tyrant.

Starting point is 00:06:51 His dad was Philip II, king of Macedonia. Now he's talking about his dad. He was a man of formidable achievements. He was highly creative. He built up a formidable professional administration with the capacity to raise money in vast quantities and to stretch its communication almost indefinitely. He also created a permanent professional army based on the infantry phalanx, which was without equal in its own age. So I'm going to pause there because I'm going to talk about how Philip was murdered.

Starting point is 00:07:22 I want to recommend an episode of a podcast because I learned a lot about Alexander. And I'm eventually going to read a few biographies on him. But if you search for Hardcore History Addendum, this is not Dan Carlin's main hardcore history feed. It's a separate feed. It's episode 9. It came out last year. Or excuse me, it came out almost two years ago now. And it's called Glimpses of Olympias.

Starting point is 00:07:43 And it's a three and a half hour podcast on Alexander's mother but in the beginning I mean if you listen to Dan Carlin's podcast you know this he has to add context before he gets to the story in the beginning he talks a lot about Philip and the early days of Alexander's childhood this is where I learned which I'll get into here in a minute I just it blew my mind that Alexander didn't go to school. He had a tutor. Philip had hired Aristotle to tutor his son one-on-one. It just blew my mind.

Starting point is 00:08:13 But it's a fantastic podcast episode in general. But it's very interesting hearing about this time in history and all the different characters, Philip being a main character in there, Alexander's mom, which we'll get to in a minute, and of course Alexander. So Philip's going to die. And it just said he's a formidable, he had a formidable man, had formidable achievements, built up this one of the greatest armies that has ever existed. And that is Alexander's inheritance. And so this is what the author of this book says it was the most magnificent inheritance

Starting point is 00:08:45 an aspiring world conqueror could possibly hope for and he also inherited philip's ambition and there was zero limit to their ambition and once alexander sets out to conquer he doesn't stop until he dies he does die from a very young age though it says says, so it says, if Alexander's father was a tyrant of genius, his mother Olympia was passionate, ambitious, unscrupulous, and violent. And I don't want to ruin it

Starting point is 00:09:12 in case you listen to the other podcast, but she also has a violent end to her life. Alexander had a sinister parentage. More good writing there. He was well educated.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Philip chose as his son's tutor, Aristotle. Alexander's years under Aristotle formed one of the most intriguing relationships of all antiquity. And so now this description of Aristotle. His sheer knowledge was encyclopedic. He was a born teacher and it is hard to imagine an instructor more qualified to prepare a clever ambitious young prince for world responsibilities. And so now we get an overview of Alexander.

Starting point is 00:09:48 It says, He rose early. His diet was spare. He learned to drink heavily. He did not water his wine, but drank it neat, Macedonian style. He was a superb rider, an audacious hunter, especially of lion. He wrestled, but otherwise did no athletics. He was skilled with the sword and spear and an expert at all forms of arms drills. His trade, so it talks about his trade is violence. This is a crazy statement. His trade from boyhood. He dressed to be seen,

Starting point is 00:10:19 so he's not here to fit in, right? He read Homer all of his life and knew the passages by heart. It was to him a Bible, a guide to heroic morality, a book of etiquette, and a true adventure story. So they're referencing the Iliad and the Odyssey. And then it goes into his mindset. And we're going to see Alexander the Great has like Kanye West levels of self-belief. And the note of myself on this page because it's going to go over a couple pages the mind is a powerful place and what you feed it can affect you in a powerful way so it says Alexander believed he was descended from Hercules this

Starting point is 00:10:56 mythical ancestry which was very real to Alexander had an important impact on his life inspiring him inspiring in him a spirit of emulation and courage and daring, and a longing to perform comparable marvels. Hercules' horrible death also gave him a certain fatalism, which made the risk of death unimportant to him. And let's assume that statement is true. It made the risk of death unimportant to him. Imagine what you can achieve if you had no fear.

Starting point is 00:11:24 And most people, rightfully so, fear death. If you don't fear death, there's very few other things that you could actually fear, right? So what could you achieve if you just did not have fear? Now there's a bunch going on. I have a bunch of highlights on these pages. So it says, this is an astounding story, quite unprecedented, describing Alexander's life story, okay? This is an astounding, astonishing story, quite unprecedented and never again equaled. So like a year or two ago, I bought David Goggins' audiobook, which is called Can't Hurt Me. And he says something that was really interesting. He says, you want to be uncommon amongst uncommon people. That's exactly what the author is telling us about Alexander.

Starting point is 00:12:02 It's, listen, he had an astonishing story. It was unprecedented and never again equaled. And so it goes into everything he accomplished in his very short life. Alexander traveled over 20,000 miles, much of it on foot in difficult mountain and desert terrain. How did he do it? The most important factor, as always with successful statesmen and men of action, was sheer willpower. There is no substitute for will. He had a pre-natural self-confidence and persistence. The feeling that it was right to do what he planned and that he could certainly do it. There is no substitute for will.

Starting point is 00:12:39 And then it goes even deeper into the idea of what you put in your mind is very important. It's a very powerful place because it's going to affect you put in your mind is very important it's a very powerful place because it's going to affect you so then he's like i'm a god alexander began to assume divine honors and to believe that he was the son of a god possibly zeus himself rather than philip his self-confidence was continually reinforcing itself both by success and by imitations of immortality. I read a quote one time that was fantastic, and I think Alexander would agree with it.

Starting point is 00:13:09 He says, at the end of the day, you've got to feel some way. So why not feel unbeatable? Why not feel like the best to ever do it? And so then Paul, what I like about Paul's writing too is he does list form. So he identified ten reasons, ten important factors in Alexander's success. But there were 10 important practical reasons why Alexander succeeded. First, although he inherited a superior military machine,

Starting point is 00:13:32 he continually improved it by intensive training and above all, by leading it. He always marched with the men. He led from the front. And that part, of course, I had to double underline. If you could somehow transcribe every single episode of Founders and then search through, how many times has that come up over and over again in these books, over and over again in these life stories? Leading from the front.

Starting point is 00:13:53 It appears over and over again. Second, his battle leadership had a record written on his body. He was wounded nine times. Four wounds were superficial, but they left interesting scars. Four were serious and one was nearly fatal. When the men grumbled or threatened mutiny, he told them, I've been hit by a sword, a lance, dart, arrow, and a catapult missile. He would strip down and show them his scars.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Third, if need be, he could change his tactics in mid-encounter. That, again, is something very common in the history of entrepreneurships, the idea of optimizing for adaptability, of being flexible, of being able to react to the changing environment that you're operating your company in. Fourth, his battles were well-planned thanks to his thoroughness in getting the best maps and his ability to read them. Fifth, he understood the technology of the day. Sixth, he understood the importance of sea power and used it on a large scale with skill,

Starting point is 00:14:48 which was a form of technology in his day, if you think about it. Seventh, he grasped the vital role played by good, safe harbors. And I think the closest parallel to the history of entrepreneurship with that is making sure that your company's financially strong, that you're not on the edge. You have a giant margin of safety, to use Warren Buffett's words. Eighth, he turned the whole expedition into a continual adventure by stressing camaraderie. His cavalry were his companions. He usually knew them by name. So then Paul talks about, there's a bunch of other people in history like Shakespeare and all these other people that

Starting point is 00:15:20 picked up the same point. And then one example he uses is that Churchill also used this idea of Alexander's. It says Churchill picked up this point for his Battle of Britain with the fighter pilots. He would know them by name. He treated them like his companions. Ninth, there were more material rewards. The booty secured during the conquest was colossal. And so, yeah, in the days of alexander the days of caesar that's how you got rich you went and you killed other people for their stuff uh and number

Starting point is 00:15:51 and finally number 10 alexander thought decided and above all moved swiftly he appreciated the importance of speed in war and the terrifying surprises speed made possible his enemies were nearly always stunned and shocked by his arrival he invented the blitz blitzkrieg and so the importance of speed again another idea that you and i talk about over and over again just want to quote from that book invent and wander uh this is jeff bezos talking about that you can so this quote is from jeff bezos talking about the importance of speeding up and in in this case, you got to make decisions fast, right? You can drive great people. You could drive great people away by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around and after a while, they're like,

Starting point is 00:16:38 look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow. And now he's going to wrap up this section on Alexander, saying he's both a hero and a monster. war and in its most advanced forms. But he had many other interests too. Art, architecture, science, gastronomy, energy, energy sources, and many other curiosities. He poked his nose into everything. This is the positive side. Against this, Alexander's territorial greed, which was insatiable, and his love of war and the actual business of fighting, which was the passion of his life, set the worst possible example for future generations. Many evil and ambitious men And so that is an example of what is in this book. Those highlights all came from about 10 pages. Each person has about 10 to 15 pages where he gives this overview of these people's

Starting point is 00:17:51 lives, which I thought was interesting. I want to jump into Julius Caesar now. Caesar effectively transformed the Roman Republic into an empire. Thereafter, the emperors were all Caesars, the name of the man having become synonymous with world authority and so on the next two pages there's a bunch of different lessons for us here's my summary words are the only things that last forever that's a quote that i learned from paul's other book on churchill uh the the value of clear and simple language and then the idea that you must control the telling of your own story and it gives him more personal traits that we can that caesar had that we can emulate he was energetic he was fast and he was fit and he was also obsessed with the details so says caesar endures in another and important way he was a man of colossal energy

Starting point is 00:18:35 and farsighted cunning he aimed to conquer posterity as well as the world he lived in that is another wild sentence not only he's going to conquer when i'm alive the world i lived in. That is another wild sentence. Not only is he going to conquer when I'm alive, the world I'm in now, but I want to conquer all of history. And he knew that to do this, he must get in his own version of events and in good time. And what better way to do that than to write it yourself? So amid all of his other activities and worries, in camp and in moments of hurried repose, he wrote and wrote and wrote. He finished seven books.

Starting point is 00:19:04 It says his account, I don't know the name of the book, but it says his account of his conquest of Gaul. And he wrote seven books, one covering each year of this battle. He also contrived to produce three books about the civil war that he started and won. These books, written at speed and under pressure, have the supreme merits of simplicity and clarity. And I love that those are supreme merits. I'm glad that Paul wrote that. They have the supreme merits of simplicity and clarity. Caesar's simplicity was deliberate.

Starting point is 00:19:34 He wrote not to show off or to astonish, but to get his point across. And I love this quote by Caesar. I've never heard it before. He said you should avoid an unfamiliar word as a ship avoids a reef. So his works were widely read. And so then he gives us a little bit of background about Caesar's early life. His father died when Caesar was a teenager. And the family was poor anyway.

Starting point is 00:19:58 So Caesar, hugely ambitious, had to do it all himself. He had an obsession with cleanliness. His physique was good and he kept fit. His energy was colossal and he spent his life transmuting it into speed. There's that word again. He thought fast, decided promptly, Jeff Bezos would be proud, right? And above all, was quick to move. His ability to move fast was the key to his success, or was one key to his success, and the despair of his enemies. He was born to soldier. He loved the life of the camp. He also possessed the patience to train his men with infinite care. He said of his men, these legions can tear down the sky. He trained his staff

Starting point is 00:20:39 and senior commanders as meticulously as he trained the legionnaires. And as a result, he could delegate authority with confidence. But he also led from the front. And so that idea that he wanted to move fast, but he had the patience to train. We go back to Sol Price, the most influential retailer that has ever lived. People like Sam Walton, Jim Senegal, the founder of Costco. The guys that founded Home Depot, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, all these people stole ideas from Sol Price. And he famously said, my favorite quote of his is that you train an animal, you teach a human. And so his mentor, because Jim Senegal, founder

Starting point is 00:21:17 of Costco, wound up working for Sol Price. And he said he learned everything that he knows he learned from Sol Price. And he said the same thing when he was giving advice to other company founders. He's like, if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. And this is more about Caesar's early life. This is an insane story. I didn't know the story. So it says Caesar made his way slowly up the official hierarchy. This is the Caesar pirate story. And a reminder that there's just some people that you do not want to mess with. Caesar being one of those people. So it says he's making his way up slowly up the official hierarchy. To further his career, he went to Rhodes to study rhetoric.

Starting point is 00:21:53 And when returning, he was captured by pirates. Caesar raised the money to pay his ransom. Then a further sum with which he equipped a pirate navy, captured the pirates that had kidnapped him, and then crucified them all. Whoa. He was obsessed with war. Of course, he wanted to conquer the world, and he also saw war as a way to get rich. Fighting meant loot.

Starting point is 00:22:17 Caesar was so successful that he returned rich. The conquest of Gaul was the fulcrum of Caesar's life. It made Caesar, in cash released, and then comes back and crucifies his kidnappers, it's highly likely that if you wrote down some words on a piece of paper that say, hey, you can't do this, he's not really going to care. And so we see that with the conquest of Gaul. Because again, he saw that as a way, this is the way I'm going to achieve great wealth. And with great wealth can come great power, which is really what he was after, right? This is a trait that we can copy from him. His approach to difficulty was all problems are solvable. But then he goes back into the fact that he, too, is both a hero and a monster. Yet we have to say that the eight-year conquest of Gaul was, from an ethical viewpoint, one of the great crimes of history.

Starting point is 00:23:17 And that his lessons reverberate throughout downstream of the generations, right? So it says throughout the history of Europe, princes and future kings would be taught about caesar's battles all of which he won in order to learn about war and ruling but these struggles can be seen in the harsh light of gangster criminality as well as the soft glow of historic grandeur and so paul just does a fantastic job about this book he's constantly saying hero, monster, hero, monster. And it's not the case for everybody he profiles. But when you're going to have conquerors and people that are leading nations and engaged in battle, of course, it depends on the perspective. In Caesar's case, if you're a Roman, you think it's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:23:55 If you're Gaul, then you think he's a monster. It's just obviously a matter of perspective like most things in life are. There is no doubt that Caesar was a man of exceptional ability over a huge range of activities among i guess to add to that too because because uh in the book paul talks about it's like it would be fantastic if we didn't have these characters throughout history but the fact that we do have these characters these world conquerors these tyrants in many cases these dictators that have the power of violence behind them the fact that they appear over and over again leads one to believe that this is a fundamental part of human nature that that's not going to change.

Starting point is 00:24:29 So the reason I tell you this is because hopefully if you find this interesting, you read the book, you'll see he's very balanced about this. So he says, there's no doubt that Caesar was a man of exceptional ability over a huge range of activities. Among his qualities listed as foremost, great mental power, energy, steadfastness, a gift for understanding everything under the sun, vitality, and fiery quickness of mind.

Starting point is 00:24:51 Few men have had such a combination of boldness, shrewdness, and wisdom. But if he was the model of kingship for two millennia, which he was, he was also the inspiration for dictators and tyrants. See what I mean about that? Like he's bringing us, he's trying to present as complete a picture as possible He was also the inspiration for dictators and tyrants. See what I mean about that? He's trying to present as complete a picture as possible and then lets you make up your own mind. He doesn't really push forth his opinion too much. So it says, Napoleon, at the height of his power, said,

Starting point is 00:25:20 You should write about the death of Caesar in a worthy manner. It could be the greatest task of your life. Continuing this quote from Napoleon, the world should be shown how happy Caesar would have made it and how much better everything would have been if only he had been given time to bring his sublime plans to fruition. So that's Napoleon's reaction to Caesar being assassinated, right? And then this is where the author comes in. That is one view. Another might ask, how many more would Caesar, had he lived, had killed? Napoleon killed five times as many as Caesar. Mao, another admirer of Caesar, killed 70 million.

Starting point is 00:25:55 These things need to be weighed when we tell the stories of heroes. And that's a point I really appreciate. Because when we're reading these biographies of these great people in history, for our purposes, we're studying people that reach the very top of their profession. So they obviously learned a lot of things on the route to the top of their profession that are beneficial, these ideas that we can use in our work. That's the main point. But we're not trying to idolize these people. In many cases, they're extremely flawed people.

Starting point is 00:26:18 Like Steve Jobs said, you have to take the good with the confused. So I'm going to go to George Washington. And I've had a few people ask me over the years to do a podcast episode. There's a biography on Washington that's highly regarded. I think the author is Ron Chernow. So I will eventually get there. I just don't know when. But this is an overview or an intro to George Washington. Washington was six foot three. That made him enormous in his day. He stood out. This had a powerful influence on his character as a leader of men. He was relaxed, statuesque,

Starting point is 00:26:51 and formidable by nature. He radiated calm and quiet authority. And then we go into the fact that he, what I, I know I left myself on this page is this, he had a great schedule. And then we'll see that Washington had specific knowledge that few others had. And the idea, the importance of gaining specific knowledge in this age of infinite leverage we're in, that was covered from the Almanac and Vival. It's actually Founders No. 191. If you haven't listened to that and I would order the book immediately. It's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:27:22 So it says, this is his schedule. I do not mean he was in any way passive he was a vigorous and active man an early riser about his business all day and by no means intellectually idle he accumulated a library of 800 books so that's really i'm trying to be a vigorous and active person i wake up early i try to be about my business all day and i'm i really don't want to be intellectually idle. I don't think I have 800 books. Maybe I do if you factor in my Kindle. Definitely not 800 physical books though. But I think that's just a fantastic like mini blueprint for you and I. Washington, so this is about his specific knowledge. Washington, this is before he's obviously the first president and plays a

Starting point is 00:28:01 huge important role in the founding of America. So it says, Washington took the obvious course of going into surveying, thus making himself useful to members of his family. And this is what I don't understand. I got to read more about. But they said his members of his family were theoretical owners of hundreds or thousands of acres. Excuse me, hundreds of thousands, not hundreds or thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres. Most of it was unsurveyed.

Starting point is 00:28:23 So it talks about why is this, the knowledge of surveying so important at this point. This proved a value. It taught Washington method, keeping of daily accurate records, map reading and map making, knowledge of the country. At the time of the revolution, so he's gaining this knowledge before the revolution, right? He knew more of America than all but a handful of his fellow revolutionaries. I'm going to pause there because that's a very interesting idea, especially, again, this applies to why I think Naval was so dead on in the fact that collecting or cultivating might be the better word. Cultivating specific knowledge is so important in the age of infinite leverage.

Starting point is 00:29:03 So in Washington's case, he had a very unique set of knowledge that almost nobody else had. He developed it before the opportunity arose where he could use it to his great benefit. Without that knowledge, maybe he doesn't have as much success in the war. We don't know who he is. So that's how important it is, right? But the reason Naval would tell you that this is so important is because let's say there's 10 other people that do exactly what you do, right? In the age of infinite leverage, the gains accrue to the very best. It's not like, okay, there's 10 people doing what I do. All 10 of us are going to split 10% equally, excuse me, of the market. So maybe there's $10 million a year that's spent on whatever

Starting point is 00:29:40 product or service. There's 10 of us, we're each going to get a million dollars a year. That's not how it happens. You'll find one person gets 90 or 95% of all the value. So let's take this idea that we're learning in Paul Johnson's book about Washington, combine it with the one we learned from Naval Ravikant. Now let me quote from what I consider the best talk on YouTube for entrepreneurs. It's called Running Down a Dream. It's by Bill Gurley. I'll link it in the show notes. I'd watch it over and over again. And this is what he says, because he's giving a talk at University of Texas. I think it's MBA students. And he profiles five different people that all approach their craft very similarly. Okay. And so this is one of the and then he talks about like the highlights. He compares the lessons that he learned from these five people and take those lessons and trying to tell us that we can copy this. Right? We can emulate and use these ideas in our craft as we try to get to the top of our profession. And it's very, very similar to what George Washington did in his life, what Naval taught in his, like in the book and in his speeches and tweets and everything else.

Starting point is 00:30:41 And he says, this is Bill Gurley talking, be obsessive about learning in your field. Hone your craft. Constantly understand everything you possibly can about your craft. Consider it an obligation. Hold yourself accountable. Keep learning over time. Study the history. Know the pioneers. This is the punchline right here. Strive to know more than anyone else about your particular craft. You should be the most knowledgeable person. It is possible to gather more information than someone else. And then he's got another great, Bill Gurley's got another great statement here. I'm going to interrupt it though.

Starting point is 00:31:20 I talked about how I heard Bill's words, right? And try to apply it to founders. And I talked about how I heard Bill's words, right? And try to apply it to founders. And I talked about that on founders number 217, when I reread the autobiography of Estee Lauder. So I think at the beginning of that podcast, if you want to hear more about that, about how I'm trying to apply those ideas, Bill's ideas and really Washington's ideas and Naval's ideas to founders, I'm pretty sure it's at the beginning of 217. But what I liked about Bill's talk is he doesn't like, he's not going to let you off easy.

Starting point is 00:31:51 He puts a very high bar. And so he's going to force you to ask yourself questions like, am I doing, am I doing the most I can possibly do? Am I actually living a full life? Am I approaching my profession, my job, my passion with 100% of what I'm capable of? So he says, the good news, if you're going to research something, this is your lucky day. Information is freely available on the internet. The bad news, you have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable person in any subject you want.

Starting point is 00:32:21 The information is right there at your fingertips. And I think later on, he gives the example of like, let's say you want to learn most about there at your fingertips and i think later on he gives the example of like let's say you want to learn most about esports or something like that he's like you should be able to be you know top five i can't remember the exact and i don't know why i didn't don't have them on my notes but going off memory says something like you know within six months if you dedicate this and you're really hustling you should be able to get maybe the top five percent or ten percent and then he says you know within two or three years whatever the time frame was he's like you it's very possible to get to the very top you can be maybe the top 5% or 10%. And then he says, you know, within two or three years, whatever the timeframe was, he's like, you, it's very possible to get to the very top. You can be in the top 1%. And why is being in the top 1% of knowledge, having specific knowledge

Starting point is 00:32:52 so important because we live in the age of infinite leverage and we're not, all the gains are not divided up equally. And so as this project continued, and as I heard Bill's lessons and I'm reading all these books, I was like, okay, I simply will not, I will not allow anyone else to know more about the history of entrepreneurship. I will, and I'm not going to quit. You're going to have to kill me to get me to stop. But I think if I keep going at the pace I'm going, let's say a decade from now, I completely understand it's going to take a very, very long time of being focused on one thing for over working on every day for a very long time to achieve this. I'm not saying it's easy by any means, but I know I will be able to do that.

Starting point is 00:33:26 And two, that is what I'm shooting for. And that is not my idea. That is my synthesis of all these other great minds, their ideas. I'm like, hey, I can use that too. I can gain specific knowledge that's valuable to other people. So I just love, and again,

Starting point is 00:33:39 I didn't even know this book existed before last week. And I love the idea that all of these ideas that we're learning together, they find a way to influence and interlock and affect each other. And that's extremely, extremely exciting. And again, it kind of, there's like this giant flywheel happening. It's like, just, it makes me, as the excitement, like when you discover these ideas, you get more excited. And then this excitement leads to even more motivation. And then you realize, hey, motivation is good, but you also need discipline. And so just use motivation as a way to reinforce the discipline you have and just do it every day for a long period of time.

Starting point is 00:34:11 And as we know, most people quit. And what we just learned from studying Churchill and de Gaulle and all these other people, you have a massive, massive advantage if you just refuse to give up. So let's go back to Washington. This also surprised me. Washington in time became one of the largest landowners in Virginia. I think that this had to do with inheritance though. And one of, this is the surprising part. He was one of half a dozen richest men in America. So then it goes into the fact that he was a general and I wrote down here, he'd make a

Starting point is 00:34:37 great entrepreneur because you see how he approached his, in his case, his work as being a general. As a general, he was primarily a strategic strategist rather than a battle commander he was always outnumbered up to the final showdown at yorktown he had to fight with amateurs against professionals he was always short of weapons uniforms ammunition supplies and responsible officers so he could never afford to force a battle or even often to fight a full-scale defensive one. Yet his strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish. Is that not the traits of the great entrepreneurs? They're outgunned, out-battled. They start with, they have way less resources than whoever they're

Starting point is 00:35:23 competing against. And yet the strategy is clear intelligent absolutely consistent and maintained with an iron will from start to finish he believed he represented the legitimate government of the 13 colonies whose traditional powers britain was trying to usurp so he also believed in his mission it did not matter how many skirmishes or even battles he lost this is what this same section is why i thought he'd be a great entrepreneur it did not matter how many skirmishes or even battles he lost, or how often he had to withdraw or how much territory he had to sacrifice, so long as the army held together.

Starting point is 00:35:49 This is a war of attrition. This is exactly what we were just talking about, the fact that you just have a massive advantage if you don't quit, and that's what he's talking about. I just got to survive. He forced his opponents always to address him as General Washington and treat him as a lawful opponent rather than a rebel. That's more to do with the belief in his mission. Washington fought a war of attrition. It was his belief that provided he and his army remained in the field. All that

Starting point is 00:36:13 counts is survival. The rest is just words. That's what Charles de Gaulle just taught us, right? The financial and human cost of the war to Britain would mount and the will to continue on Britain's part would weaken. I'm still on the same page. I wrote another note to myself. These are founder traits. All this proved to be true. Washington's strategy succeeded, and in due course, at Yorktown, the opportunity arose for a decisive stroke. He seized it eagerly and delivered it with speed, resolution, and complete success he could not have pursued this long-term strategy through many wearisome years without a hard inner core of self-confidence that in turn had to be based on a firm conviction of the justice of his cause and that really i thought of something the other

Starting point is 00:37:01 day because it's talking about you know the fact that he believed his cause was righteous. Like he's giving a lot to his life, a lot of his life over based on that belief, right? There is something that I learned. Like really it's a lesson from the history of entrepreneurship altogether, but I want to use a specific example to illustrate this point to you. It's why you start, we're not talking about in his case like he's fighting for literally for for the survival of his country right or soon to be country um why you start your company matters and it doesn't that reason doesn't have to be complex and so i don't know why this popped into my mind or where it even came from um but in the book

Starting point is 00:37:43 shoe dog phil Knight talks about like, you know, Nike's this gigantic company today. It's one of the best brands ever been created. And he's like, well, listen, I just started Nike because I believe that if everyone got out and ran a few miles every day, then the world would be a better place. And that kind of blew my mind, like this simple idea, this belief. And he really believed this because running was a passion of his. Right. And the very first shoes that Nike, you know, Nike does a lot of stuff now, but they were all it was all running shoes. He sold the first in this case, even before he had his own Nike brand. He would travel throughout the state of Oregon to different track meets and he'd sell sneakers, running shoes, excuse me, out out of his trunk out of the trunk of his car

Starting point is 00:38:25 and so he had that belief he's like listen if like running has been a great and he even talked about which is you know weird now because everybody runs but at this time i think this is the 1960s if i'm not mistaken if i have the time frame correct and he's just like people were thought they you go on and run like something was wrong with you it wasn't like this beloved activity in the sport and people didn't realize the benefits that it provided. And so that idea is just like I am starting this company, and I'm doing this because I sincerely believe that if people go out and they run a few miles every day, the world will be a better place.

Starting point is 00:38:58 And so in my own tiny, small way, I truly believe, like if I could encourage people to read biographies, and we had more people learning from great people of history and then sharing those lessons like the world will definitely be better be a better place. While I'm reading this book on heroes, I was also watching the series on Netflix. It's called like Tyrants or How to Be a Tyrant, something like that. The narrator is actually the actor that played Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. And it's really interesting because the series is interesting. I don't even know if it's that good.

Starting point is 00:39:33 What I liked about it was they compare all the common traits that these tyrants throughout history had to one another, which I thought that was the value in watching the series so they have people like stalin hitler uh the the people the kims the people in north korea gaddafi all these other people but they really pick up on the fact that like it's really almost impossible for humans for a certain segment of humans to resist absolute power and in these cases like they had absolute power they could kill without retribution they wind up having like a harem of you know women they had access to state level of wealth they and then when you have like unrestricted power and you get these really weird over time you get really weird behavior and the reason i bring that up now is because washington resisted that desire for absolute

Starting point is 00:40:22 power and it wasn't at all clear at this time in history like that that could have been a route he took but he wasn't interested in that so it says washington won the war and that is his primary claim to be to heroic status but it is his conduct afterward which is sublime how difficult it is for a successful revolutionary general to extricate himself from political responsibilities or to push ambition firmly down so the king of england picks up on this it is to george the third's credit that he spotted the fresh the fresh element of heroism which washington's victory opened up for him he asked the american-born president of the royal academy benjamin west what will general washington do now

Starting point is 00:41:02 west said he believed he'd go back to his farm. George III said, if he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth. And remember that this is the last paragraph from Washington I'll read to you, but remember the author is British because he's going to talk. He's talking about America here, like Americans talk about America, which is interesting to me. Washington was not only the obvious choice for president, but essentially the only one. He had no alternative but to accept the task unanimously assigned to him by the new nation. And he says, and he did it very well. The United States of America has been fortunate in many ways, especially in the magnificent endowment of nature, but not the least of its blessings was the man who first led it to victory, this is the best sentence of this entire section.

Starting point is 00:41:53 This double achievement is without parallel in history. Now we go to what may be my favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. I read a book on him, a great biography. It's by Doris Kearns. Goodwin is called A Team of Rivals. I may reread it and turn it into an episode of Founders in the Future. But the note of myself is what it means to be a good man. Abraham Lincoln comes high on the list of enduring popular heroes.

Starting point is 00:42:20 There is, I think, one word that explains Lincoln's heroic preeminence in the hearts and minds of so many people. Goodness. He was a good man, on a giant scale. A man who raised goodness into a political principle, into a way of public life, and into a code of government activity. And the fact that he came from nothing and nowhere, had little form of education or parental guidance, had taught himself morality, and made himself a good man entirely by the intelligent cultivation of sound, deep-rooted instincts, makes his character all the more appealing. And so he is going to, Lincoln is

Starting point is 00:42:59 going to share a trait that many historical figures have, the fact that he was self-educated and a master of words. In scrutinizing his his record it is impossible to point to a particular episode and say here he was morally wrong there he was inexcusably weak or in the case or in this case he demeaned himself so this is what i mean about the extremely high bar that lincoln puts for us on how to be a good person all this despite the fact that his life is remarkably well documented and all evidence has been sifted over again and again so this is wild it says there's a public bibliography of all these uh books written about lincoln he says there's 3 958 books on lincoln and thousands more have appeared since this collection was put together because that

Starting point is 00:43:42 collection is 60 years ago and so now he gets into the fact that he was a master of words if ever a statement was a if ever a statesman was a master of words he was perhaps the fact that he was largely self-educated brought him to words with a freshness and sense of discovery so easily lost in the academic pursuit of literary excellence but there is something there excuse me there is nothing but there is nothing naive or primitive about Lincoln's use of English. It's simple, but also extremely sophisticated. He chose words not for their grace or glory, but for their fundamental accuracy and truthfulness. Here is a simple example. Lincoln rose from nothing to the White House through the law. From being a manual laborer in a variety of humble occupations,

Starting point is 00:44:26 he acquired enough book knowledge to set up as a lawyer. He did sufficiently well in his profession to be able to do that, to do what it taught him was an overwhelmingly necessity, to change bad laws by political action. And learning all these skills obviously became, were like the foundational level that allowed him the foundation he built around rather that allowed him to accomplish what he accomplished later on when he was president he became a skilled lawyer lawyer but remained a good man here is a letter

Starting point is 00:44:55 which sums him up and so this is lincoln writing it says dear sir i have just received your check for 25 you must think i am a high-priced man you are too liberal with your money 15 is enough for And so this is going to echo what Steve Jobs told us, that he said that the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. And so it says, Words and the ability to weave them into webs which cling to the memory are extremely important in forwarding political action so it's also important in company building repetition is persuasive and if you go back and listen to like a jeff bezos or steve jobs talk they repeat the same things over and over again they have a handful of ideas and they're they're known so in jeff's case they're referred to by people internally in amazon as jeffisms it's these little

Starting point is 00:45:49 maxims these little ideas that he's trying to transmit to you into your brain repeats them over and over again he's trying to persuade you trying to teach you at the same time but this idea it's like words and the ability to weave them into webs which cling to the memory that's why they're called jeffisms and one of the greatest things, an example of that in Steve Jobs' career, is he would use, what was he trying to accomplish? And this is something he would talk about in 2010 before he died, talk about back, you could read when he was in his 20s and the 80s. And he says, I want to make insanely great products.

Starting point is 00:46:19 Those three words tell Steve Jobs' entire story. Insanely great products. And so I think that's a definite takeaway for all these histories from history's greatest entrepreneurs is that you have to craft the narrative of your mission. And the best person to craft that narrative is the person that founded the company, right? It was even more important in the third quarter of the 19th century in America where most of the population was aggressively literate. I didn't know that. I thought it was the opposite. And they were brought up to read and relish key documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. And so it says this was the way

Starting point is 00:46:52 Lincoln himself was brought up. And he added to the canon two of the first of its documents, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. Entire books have been written on these speeches and their evolution. But it seems to me that the key phrases within them came to Lincoln in intuitive flashes, leaping up, more great writing here, leaping up from a mind that had brooded so long in the nature of political truth and justice and the frailty of man in promoting them, that it was composed of hot coals from which sparks might be emitted at any instant then talked about him as a person he did not let his personal melancholy stop him he was always

Starting point is 00:47:30 active this is something i learned by reading that book he was an untypical hero and that there was a streak of melancholy in his character he suffered from occasional bouts of depression and some historians have even argued that he was a lifelong depressive lincoln was always busy and almost always busy doing things he wanted to do and which were worth doing. He had time for thought and no one thought harder than he did, but no time for brooding. And then I'll wrap up this section with on Lincoln with the fact that he did the right thing even when he could easily avoid it. Lincoln was a strong man and like most men quietly confident of their strength without vanity or he was without vanity or self-consciousness.

Starting point is 00:48:05 There was a little incident towards the end of his life, which to me is full of meaning. After the fall of Richmond, the Confederate capital, on the same day Robert E. Lee finally surrendered, Lincoln went to see his Secretary of State, with whom he often disagreed. And so that's why the book, The Team of Rivals, is so unique. Because he realized that even, he went and staffed his cabinet with people he disagreed with and people from other political parties and he thought their differing points of view would actually make the country stronger this is what it like it's like maybe the least egotistical leader we've ever had uh so it says you know the fall so the war is ending he lincoln went to see his secretary of state with whom he often disagreed and whom he did not particularly like.

Starting point is 00:48:46 Seward had somehow broken both his arms and his jaw. Lincoln found him not only bedridden, but unable to move his head. Without a moment's hesitation, the president stretched out at full length on the bed and, resting on his elbow, brought his face near Seward's. And they held an urgent, whispered conversation on the next steps the administration should take. Then Lincoln talked quietly to the agonized man until he drifted off to sleep. Lincoln could have easily used the excuse of Seward's incapacity to avoid consulting him at all. But that was not his way. He did the right thing, however easily it might have been avoided. Of how many other great men might this be said?

Starting point is 00:49:26 If you do wind up picking up this book, the good thing about this book is you don't have to read it in one sitting. You don't even have to read it in order. You could read a chapter at a time. Say, hey, I want to learn more about, in this case, I'm just fast forward to the chapter on Churchill and the Gaul.

Starting point is 00:49:40 But it's all like this. It's like very compact writing, interesting stories. There's a bunch of people in the book that didn't even know who they were. I think it's a useful tool to have to have in your house to have around you, maybe on your desk or whatever the case to Churchill when he was a young boy. So the generous hero is going to be Churchill and he calls the gull a heroic monster. Let's go to Churchill first. Churchill was the archetype hero of the 20th century and his life was long and full. Most people believed he drank too much, especially of whiskey and brandy, but he sipped the brandy very slowly, and he took his whiskey heavily diluted with water. He never gulped liquor.

Starting point is 00:50:30 So maybe that's how he's able to drink all day long because it's all watered down. As more on his activity levels when he's a young man, Churchill was both very active and a very inactive man. He spent an extraordinary amount of his time in bed. This was not sloth, but method. So he talks about, he asked him a question. The first time I met Churchill, it was in 1946 as a school boy. And I asked him, Churchill, what do you attribute your success in life to? He replied instantly, conservation of energy.

Starting point is 00:50:56 Never stand up when you can sit down and never sit down when you can lie down. Churchill followed his axiom. If possible, he spent the morning in bed, but he was not inactive. He read letters, dictated answers, went through a newspaper, and did a great deal of telephoning. He also received visitors. Churchill's record of activity is unlikely to ever be equaled. Churchill built walls, made lakes, painted over a thousand canvases, made thousands of speeches all over the world, some of the finest ever delivered, and mastered the art of broadcasting in a way that was never that has never been surpassed he is the only member of the house of commons who after sitting in the cabinet commanded an infantry battalion in action he also survived a number of personal and political crises

Starting point is 00:51:33 of great ferocity at one time or another churchill was viciously attacked from every quarter of the political spectrum and part of his fierce activity and the fact that he lived an entire full life, I think has to do with the fact that he was underestimated by his own family from a young age. Next, to energy, Churchill had intelligence. This aspect of his armory for life has generally been underestimated, not least by his parents. So now he's going to give us another example from history. It recalls Lady Mornington's foolish dismissal of her son, the future Duke of Wellington, another highly intelligent man

Starting point is 00:52:05 as food for powder nothing more imagine your mom saying that about you lord randolph which was churchill's father lord randolph and lady randolph disappointed by churchill's poor academic performance thought him fit only for the army and in the army fit only for the cavalry which demanded fewer brains imagine your parents thinking that about you. That's terrible. But Churchill abounded in natural intelligence and was almost entirely self-educated. And this is so important. And this is going to remind me what James Dyson's, James Dyson's gave some of the best

Starting point is 00:52:36 advice. And it sounds crazy. It's like, listen, don't like you might, there's value in being obtuse. So it says, the truth is, Churchill had a fine mind, and the fact that it was an undisciplined and uneducated mind sometimes worked to his advantage. Again, uneducated and formal schooling. He obviously read and wrote and studied a ton on his own.

Starting point is 00:53:00 When I read that section, there's a weird quote, one of the most bizarre quotes I've ever come across in any of these books. And it comes from the first, if you've never read any of the books on founders, this is the first book you should read. It's the one I would recommend the most for entrepreneurs because it's all about us. It's an entire story about insane persistence. And it's how James Dyson struggled for 12 years, built 5,127 prototypes before he found any modicum of success. The 99.999999% of all humans that ever lived would have quit way before James did. And so just reading that book and the fact that it's short, you can read in a weekend, he's funny. Anyways, this is a quote from him.

Starting point is 00:53:37 And so he's talking about, at the end of the book, he's talking about like now running Dyson. Like, what does he do? And his whole thing is like difference for the sake of it, right? I'm not, he's not going to build, if somebody else has already built a product, he's just not going to come up with a me too product, none of that. So he says, encourage employees to be different on principle. This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. What does that mean, Dyson? Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem, which he considers what products are,

Starting point is 00:54:04 right? Products are a solution to the customer's problem. You are just as likely to solve a problem, which he considers what products are, right? Products are a solution to the customer's problem. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse. And I'll get to his punchline first. I want to define that word just so we're on the same page. Obtuse, annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand. And why is James saying be obtuse? And remember, this book is rather old, like 20 years old at that time, or maybe 30 years old. Might be like 35 years old, actually.

Starting point is 00:54:36 There was only 5 billion people on the planet at this point. So he says, be deliberately obtuse because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks and thinking the way they've been taught to think and what he's saying is they're not actually thinking they're just copying and so if you be obtuse and unconventional and determined you're going to derive insights that the people are just thinking in tracks copying what everybody else is doing not doing much thinking at all you're going to arrive at better insights you can use those insights to build better products.

Starting point is 00:55:05 And the idea, the truth is Churchill had a fine mind and the fact that his undisciplined and uneducated mind sometimes worked to his advantage. It's the same idea expressed in vastly different ways. More on Churchill the person, he loved power and sought it greedily always. He was most anxious to possess it in all its plentitude. That's a favorite phrase of his, the fact that he wants to possess power in all its plentitude and was most reluctant to relinquish it. He said that the campaign in Gallipoli was a failure because I did not possess the power to make it a success. And he applied that lesson in the Second World War, insisting that he be invested with sufficient power to direct the war effort.

Starting point is 00:55:43 Really, the war effort effectively, really, it's the same thing that we see over and over again in studying these histories of the company founders and the founders of the company and the companies they create. The best companies are led by a single formidable individual with almost absolute control. You can think of the best companies as benevolent dictatorships. Another example of something that comes up over and over again, people who study history have a massive advantage over those who don't. This is what Paul says about Churchill's love of history. History, to Churchill, was the great teacher,

Starting point is 00:56:14 and he remained under her iron rod all of his life. He was willing to not hold grudges, which I think was another strong attribute of him. Churchill bore rancor at the time, but seldom afterward. He said himself he was not a good hater. The moment victory came, I ceased to hate Germany. And then this is his, it says this was the central maxim of his life. So this is Churchill writing now, okay? In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance.

Starting point is 00:56:37 In victory, magnanimity. In peace, goodwill. So another thing that comes up over and over again, companies should follow suit. You should be the one telling your own story. I think we're seeing a lot of entrepreneurs and companies doing this. They're creating media arms. They're writing. They're making podcasts.

Starting point is 00:56:57 They're getting their met. They realize we have the tools of communication now. We should be the ones telling our own story. In Churchill's day, those tools of communication were speech, giving speech giving speeches and writing books and so it's the same idea and it's just companies should follow suit there's no reason not to take to you to not use this good idea in this book i've drawn attention to the efforts of some great actors in history to get posterity on their side so how do they do that alexander arranged for writers to put his case caesar wrote his commentaries on his wars, but Churchill was by far the most

Starting point is 00:57:25 thorough and successful in ensuring that his tale was told. The work, now it's going to break, this is his most successful book, the one I told you last week that he made like 50 million dollars in today's dollars on, and this is five points about his most successful book. The work has five remarkable characteristics. First, the book was a documentary history as well as a personal memoir. Second, characteristic was size. Thanks to all the documentary element, all the important episodes in the account and many minor ones are described in detail. The third point, by any standards, this was one of the most successful books ever written, both financially and in terms of readership. Fourth, the work was both a personal achievement and a team effort he had an entire he had copy editors

Starting point is 00:58:10 and researchers it's just it was not it was not solely authored by his pen number five and this links up with the first point the work had an impact on how we see the history of the war in its aftermath and it still helps to shape that received history. And so now he moves on to de Gaulle, who he views very differently, for sure. So it says, Churchill's younger contemporary, Charles de Gaulle, was a national hero too, who saved the country twice, first in 1940 from shame, and second in 1958 from civil war. He also gave France the first successful constitution in its history after 12 failed attempts which still serves well uh after half a century so i think

Starting point is 00:58:51 he was interested like my interpretation of the author's um opinion on de gaulle is that his achievements were really not up for debate but he was a flawed person that didn't really like humans. And so this is an overview of de Gaulle. He made a virtue of his singularity and turned it into a philosophy of life. That's also why I think entrepreneurs should study Charles de Gaulle. That fact right there. And I think this was Arthur Rock, one of the first VCs, picked up about Henry Singleton. It's the singular purpose that Henry approached to his building of

Starting point is 00:59:27 his company. As he put it, and this is a quote from de Gaulle now, solitude was my temptation. It became my friend. What else could satisfy anyone who has been face to face with history? So that's why de Gaulle was very much a person of his mind, spent most of his time reading, loved to be alone. So that's what he's referencing there and he also had a a dim view on on he was an elitist he had a dim view on most humans to get close to somebody and he was an extreme character so all these combinations produce this very unique personality in human history to get and this is an example that to get close to somebody was it was seen as a possible source of weakness. He demanded intense loyalty from his followers and usually got it, but he gave none in return.

Starting point is 01:00:09 And so he talks about one of his most dedicated people. It's this guy named Sustel, most likely pronounced incorrectly. And so he says, after Paul had wound up talking to him, he says, after de Gaulle's death, I asked him if this anecdote, he's just referencing an anecdote, can we skip over, was true. He replied, yes, he did say that. He was a terrible man. And this is somebody who's most dedicated to him. This terrible man was an intellectual. By this, I mean he thought ideas were more important than people. And his main dedication of his life is that certain idea of France, right? More particularly, he thought the idea of France infinitely more important than individual Frenchmen whose role in life was simply to work, fight, suffer, and if need be, die for France,

Starting point is 01:00:54 which he was also willing to do, though. You saw how many times he put his life on the line for France. So it talks about, this is Patan, the guy that was his mentor, who they wind up having falling out later in life. So Pétain gets him to give a course of three lectures on leadership at the Military Staff College. And this is why, again, you may not like him as an individual, but he had extensive knowledge on history and useful ideas for this point in France's history. Everyone present at this lecture was senior to de Gaulle, and the lectures were an astonishing display of historical knowledge delivered without a note.

Starting point is 01:01:33 They discussed the nature of the hero in war and in the need on occasion for the hero to disobey foolish or cowardly orders from above. This is like two decades before he does this in real life. He published them later in a book called The Edge of the Sword. And they are an uncanny adumbration of his later role. What are we doing here? Caesar just said to avoid unfamiliar words like a ship avoids a reef. So I had to look up that word. That means to foreshadow.

Starting point is 01:02:03 So he could have just said they are an uncanny foreshadowing of his later role um that that whole section though i think about the fact that hey uh on occasion the hero has to disobey foolish or cowardly orders from above that's why the goal definitely fits into this idea of being a misfit and a rebel because that's he definitely did that later on his life and it really talks about his central like what was his main benefit the role that he played aside the fact that he refused to give up it was his attempt in writing and speeches and studying his whole career to it was his attempt to propagate novel military ideas he was one of the first people to realize that with the mechanizations to think about the technology has changed war forever we

Starting point is 01:02:46 have old generals in place that are using the same playbook that they used in world war one which is all about defense setting up trenches waiting for the people to come over top and then we'll just machine the machine machine gun down one wave after another he's like this doesn't make any sense he realized what the use of tanks of aggressive nature of speed of movement the same thing that hitler winds up copying the ideas of speed, of movement. The same thing that Hitler winds up copying the ideas of de Gaulle and using it. Same thing Patton, General Patton used for the allies, for the Americans as well. It's like, we're not holding anything. We're not digging trenches. We're on the offense all the time. And so this idea is one of the first people to realize,

Starting point is 01:03:19 hey, you're using an outdated playbook that's no longer working. And so again, the attempt to propagate novel ideas. I think that's really interesting working. And so, again, the attempt to propagate novel ideas. I think that's really interesting. De Gaulle was not a warm and friendly man. He was not generous or forgiving or magnanimous. I hate that. I can never pronounce that word. He was quite unlike Churchill in these respects. He was an egoist on a monumental, indeed a superhuman scale.

Starting point is 01:03:41 And this is also, now this is where Paul is going to criticize him a little bit, but this is also what De Gaulle saw as his main benefit. And so that word is a refusal to change one's view or to agree about something. De Gaulle saw that as an asset. He has a quote in that giant 800-page biography I read of him where he says something like, listen, being as weak as I am, this is after the fall of France, right? Being as weak as I am, intransigence is my only weapon. And so it says, essentially, what Paul is telling us here is he's in transness intransigence

Starting point is 01:04:25 personified de gaulle made himself particularly difficult to those in britain who befriended and helped him notably churchill indeed if there was one characteristic even more prominent in de gaulle than his egotism and selfishness it was his ingratitude he saw gratitude as a weakness in general and to a man in his position as a fatal weakness. There was also in de Gaulle a streak of ruthlessness. That is definitely true. There's a situation in that book where there's a potential rival that's being backed by the Americans and the British to lead the Free French. And de Gaulle uses three formulas that I talked about in that de Gaulle podcast.

Starting point is 01:05:08 It was ruthlessness combined with brilliance, combined with being absolutely clear about what he wanted to do. And he winds up making quick work of this guy, not relinquishing the power or his insistence on being the leader of the Free French movement. And yet, even after all the criticism that Paul has about the person he is, really what I'm about to tell you is the fact that de Gaulle kept,

Starting point is 01:05:32 the fact that he isolated himself from other people is what made him more interesting because he's able to derive insights that other people are not coming up with because he's isolated from them. This is very similar to what Singleton did. They talked about, hey, he just sits in his corner office with his Apple II computer and that corner office is a cornucopia of ideas. So if you're just reading all the same stuff as everybody else and just listening to the same stuff and being exposed by the same stuff, it's very hard to come up with unique insights. So this is where Paul just wraps up De Gaulle. He says, yet his views were always

Starting point is 01:06:01 interesting. So a flawed individual, maybe a selfish person, maybe not somebody you want to be friends with, but it is somebody you could learn from. Yet his views were always interesting. So a flawed individual, maybe a selfish person, maybe not somebody you want to be friends with, but it is somebody you could learn from. Yet his views were always interesting, and so he's going to wrap up this entire section. Both Churchill and de Gaulle were old-style national heroes with the limitations of such, but both had a transcendental gift of reflecting upon the process of history.

Starting point is 01:06:27 And that is where I'll leave it. There's about 25 other heroes in the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I'll leave a link in the show notes too. If you want to buy a gift subscription, you can buy, I think, up to a year subscription. You can also do a few months. So if you haven't done that yet and you want to, that's the very best way you can support founders. You have somebody in mind, maybe a friend, coworker, a loved one, send them a few months, send them a year. It's totally up to you. Whatever you choose, I deeply, deeply appreciate it. That is 226 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

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