Founders - #338 Monty Moncrief Texas Oil Billionaire

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1978, Monty Moncrief was 84 years old. He was still very much the patriarch of his clan, the man who made the decisions in his family and in his family's business. Family and business were, in fact, the same thing with him, the desire to found the one being inseparably tied to the desire to found the other. When speaking of his business, he never mentioned himself specifically. He would always say, we signed this deal. We figured out what was best. This is a we kind of business, he explained.

Starting point is 00:00:31 We don't tolerate any of that I stuff around here. In Texas, in the oil business, one sees, as nowhere else, that the ideal of capitalism is the ideal of founding a family and conferring the right of inheritance upon it, passing a legacy on. We're oil men, Monty Moncrief would answer when asked about ranching or about real estate or about anything else. We're oil men meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrief concern. We're 100% family-owned, unincorporated, and independent, and we intend to stay that way. In the world of oil promoters, one sometimes meets with independents who have bought and sold their way through six or seven businesses, who indeed start those businesses with the aim of going public and selling out as soon as possible. To Monty Moncrief, such a strategy

Starting point is 00:01:25 is unimaginable. Moncrief oil is synonymous with himself, his dynasty. Continuity is what his blood demands. He was, at the age of 84, as big and as strong as a bull. He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and truly great. He walked without a stoop and he carried his large frame without a trace of fat. He seemed impervious to age or to changing times. His unquestioning confidence in the worthiness of his enterprise made him seem impervious as well to the doubts and the questions about motives and meanings that inevitably beset the later generations of his family. He kept his faith in the absolute value of building, of progress, of getting things done. When he spoke of his belief in the enterprise of producing oil in America,

Starting point is 00:02:17 one could almost forget that he had made hundreds of millions of dollars doing so. Such benefits sounded almost incidental to the task of settling the land and mining its resources. Perhaps this confidence is what set free the huge energies of this first generation of giants. The stories told about Monty Moncrief all reveal him as tough, canny, given to understatement, a man of action who wastes few words, but can, when he wishes, move mountains. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Wildcatters, a story of Texans, oil, and money, and is written all the way back in 1981 by Sally Helgeson. There's a bunch of characters in this book. They talk about other oil families. But

Starting point is 00:03:05 once I got to that part, that's when I realized, oh, no, no. What I want to talk to you about is Monty Moncrief. And so I think that excerpt gives you and I a good idea on why we should focus on Monty Moncrief and the shadow that, because at the time the book is published, he's still alive, his son is still alive, and his grandson is still alive and so i'm always curious like well what are they up to now so after i read the book started researching to see what i could find out about them and there's a line in the book that i think is very fascinating because it's like why is this guy so interesting to me he reminds me monty moncrief he reminds me of a lot of other people we studied and there's just this random. And it was talking about the fact that his grandson was essentially like measuring his life and his success based on his grandfather,

Starting point is 00:03:52 which I think is honestly a bad idea. But it says the shadow by which Dick Moncrief measured himself was cast by his grandfather, Monty. And I think that word shadow is really important. In fact, I went back and searched Founder's Notes for the word shadow because this sounds very familiar to me. There's two things that are fascinating here that I think you and I should spend some time talking about. And it's one, that an institution

Starting point is 00:04:16 is the lengthened shadow of one man. And so that's from Edwin Land's, one of Edwin Land's biographies, right? So it's not only the founder is the shadow of the company that they found, but you'll also know that's true for Monty for the company he found, but his shadow also looms over his entire family. And Monty's shadow loomed over his entire family while he's alive,

Starting point is 00:04:37 and it still has an effect in present day. I wind up looking up the characters in the book to see what, like if they were still alive. Monty's son winds up living to 101. He passed away relatively recently. Now the whole family is essentially fighting over this fortune, this multiple billion dollar fortune that really stems from the work that the grandfather did 60, 70 years ago. And this usually ends one of two ways.

Starting point is 00:05:00 Most of the time, the future generations cannot obviously live up to the shadow or the example that the founder of the family usually set. So I was thinking of, as I was going through searching founders notes for shadow, came across an idea. When you study J.P. Morgan, you realize, I said this on the multiple J.P. Morgan podcasts that I've made, he's very, you know, obviously an impressive figure, but I found his dad to be even more impressive. And so there's a line from the House of Morgan written by Ron Chernow that talks about this. He says, the Morgans always believe in absolute monarchy. While Junius Morgan lived, that's JP's dad, he ruled the family and the business.

Starting point is 00:05:36 Until Junius died, his massive shadow dominated his son's life. And so I think the importance of the family business aspect of this is really important. So I want to read this section to you because this is what's part of what makes this story unique is the setting in which it takes place and the belief that family is destiny. So it says, what makes Texas different is not so much its money as its blood and its awareness of that blood. Blood lines, human blood lines. In Texas, there's always an awareness of exactly whose blood runs through a man,

Starting point is 00:06:09 man's or woman's veins, and what that blood demands. And so I'm going to pause right there before I continue. His grandson, which we'll talk a little bit about, but there's a lot more detail in the book, and I'd highly recommend getting the book. It was a really fun book to read. But I feel this pressure that he has where it's like, oh, you're Monty's grandson, causes Dick to maybe do things that, like take

Starting point is 00:06:30 risks that were unnecessary because he was trying to not only match what his grandfather did, which is nearly impossible, but also try to go one step further, basically supersede his achievement, which he obviously failed to do. So let's go back to this. You understand the blood that runs through a man or woman's veins and what that blood demands. People in Texas are raised to be what others in their families have been. Family is destiny here. Success is measured by what one achieves beyond what those who went before achieved. Future generations of the family feel the need to surpass them in order, meaning the founders of the family, surpass them in order to prove themselves worthy of their blood. Okay, so with that background, I want to jump into Mani's life. And really, what's fascinating is because he's born in the 1800s, right?

Starting point is 00:07:15 He serves in World War I and comes back and gets into the oil business. And that's a really important decision because he essentially picked an industry or a field where the opportunity before him was really without limit. And that's not what his – that same opportunity was not open to his son and his grandson. And so when I read the stories like this, what I'm – I'm obviously not trying to build an oil company, but I am very interested in finding these areas like where today, like what I want to know is like, today, where is opportunity without limits available today. And I think reading history like this gives you insight into like what these opportunities look like, and what to look for. And so this is a little bit about that. The old bulls in this story, so people like Monty Moncrief, Sid Richardson, there's a bunch of oil, one wound up becoming oil billionaires in the

Starting point is 00:08:05 story. But the old bulls in the story, the giants, the men of Monty Moncrief's generation, came into the oil business in the wild old days of the open frontier. Everywhere they looked, they saw opportunity without limits. The land itself was empty. And so these men built cities upon it, and they founded dynasties. They left behind them a world made in their own image. They gave shape to a business and to a way of life, and their deeds made them legends. The major oil companies, which one day would almost destroy the independents, so think about that as like, they're going to talk about Exxon. Exxon was once an independent, so these giant major oil companies, right? And then the independents are like the startups, or the family-owned businesses. Obviously

Starting point is 00:08:44 the Moncriefs at this time are independents. The major oil companies, which then the independents are like the startups or the family-owned businesses obviously the moncriefs at this time are independents the major oil companies which one day destroyed the independents had not yet consolidated their power those companies were still independents themselves and so they mentioned at this time in the story where monty moncrief is setting out what was going to one day turn into exxon was just this company called humble humble oil and the way people would describe it at the time is like, oh, Humble is just a fly-by-night little rinky-dink company. And so one of the first takeaways there is, okay, if you want to look for opportunities where there's essentially, or industries where there's opportunities without limits, it can already be consolidated. Second thing, as frontiersmen, the old wildcatters had neither the time nor the inclination to question their own purposes

Starting point is 00:09:23 or to agonize about what the future consequences of their efforts might be. They just went out and did whatever there was to be done. Teddy Roosevelt has this famous quote that he took from his dad as his life motto. It's called get action. There's people in the book, their life motto is make action. They're at the very beginning of an industry. So they're going to have to learn by doing. That's another telltale sign that you might be in an industry where it has essentially unlimited opportunity. The second is the opportunity has to be open to or the third, I guess, the opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And so when they're drilling right now, in fact, you know what, let me pull this up real quick. This is one of my favorite lines ever. I think I did another podcast and read another book around a similar time period. In fact,

Starting point is 00:10:09 some of the characters in that, in this book or in that book, it's called The Big Rich. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. What was fascinating is there's a line in the book that I never forgot. And I use it as a metaphor all the time. And they said, the trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil. And my interpretation of that or how I apply it to my own life is like there's essentially an inexhaustible supply of people that want to get the most for doing the least. And there's a lot more competition for things that are easy. And so in my own life, I want to get the most by doing the most.

Starting point is 00:10:41 And so what's fascinating is that that quote was about the oil business, you know, maybe 20 or 30 years in the future from where we're in this book. But at this time, it was very possible for a young wildcatter. And that's why the book is called wildcatters, essentially, just like these little startup oil companies to go out, raise some money and then try to drill some wells. Over time, that ability becomes cost prohibitive. And the only people that are able to drill wells are these giant oil companies like we see today. So at the point at this time, you could buy it at this time, you could try to drill a well, the oil or the gas that you're looking for might be 5000 feet underground, right? So it would cost you it would cost a wildcat or about $20,000 to drill. And in Oklahoma and Texas at the time, there's a ton of oil at only 5,000 feet underneath the ground.

Starting point is 00:11:26 And so that was the advantage that money had. But it says 20 years later, everything near the top is gone. So now you have to go 30,000 feet underground to get the same amount of oil or gas out of there. And the cost goes from $20,000 to $750,000. If I did the math correct, that is 37 times more costs, 37 times more investment required to do similar work. So if you're looking for fields with limitless opportunity, how they look in the very early days is that opportunity has to be open to small teams without a lot of money. And eventually, as that opportunity is exploited, it'll usually just be open to people with a lot more resources, and you'll see the cost of doing

Starting point is 00:12:07 the same things drastically skyrocket. So something that's been on my mind for the last few months since I reread the new version of Poor Charlie's Dominic that Straight Press just republished, the episode's 329, if you want to listen to was uh charlie has this thing that he talks about a lot which is this model of surfing um and he uses it to when he's trying to examine it's like okay well why was sam walton so successful why was les schwab so successful there's a bunch of factors and one of them he says like they had to surf some kind of wave and so as i was reading this book i was like okay well what wave i was looking for the wave I was like, okay, well, what wave? I was looking for the wave. I was like, okay, well, what wave did Mani surf? And I'm going to read this. This is fascinating.

Starting point is 00:12:49 Like why this was available to, basically at this time in history and at this specific place, the fact that he was lucky enough to be born in America, because America is the only country in the world in which the mineral rights underneath the ground, right, in which these wildcatters need to buy or to lease are privately owned. Everywhere else, a state or a crown will hold the title. And so it says, in America, mineral rights must be purchased from thousands of individual landowners. The big companies very naturally preferred to make their deals with a single sheik or

Starting point is 00:13:23 a tyrant or whatever for the country for the wealth of an entire nation instead of dicking around with countless farmers in order to put together a field. And this is the punchline right here. The wildcatters competitive individual way of working was compatible with the private ownership of the land. Okay, so the fact for the fact that America is the only country in the world where such rights are privately owned is the main wave. And then the second thing is the fact that, let's say he buys, you know, 100,000, excuse me, 1,000 acres.

Starting point is 00:13:56 There might be 50, 60, 200 different farmers or landowners that he has to go and negotiate with. And so a larger oil company was like, I'm not going to do that. I'll just go and see if like, let me go, let me go to the Gulf or let me go to Russia. Because if I can sell that one person, or if I can convince that one person to get access to essentially sovereign level assets. And then there's a second thing that Charlie Munger said about surfing that I think one is, is useful to you and I, but also, as you heard Mani in the opening, and I have a bunch of other highlights I'll most likely read to

Starting point is 00:14:31 you, where he was anti-diversification. Remember, they're like, you ask him about cattle or real estate, he's like, we're oil men. His future generations are diversifying in all kinds of assets, and he was very against that. Although, it was good for him not to diversify, but you could argue that it was beneficial for his descendants too, because the oil business vastly changes in his lifetime. But this is what Munger said about it.

Starting point is 00:14:55 Let me pull that up again. It's from Port Charlie's Almanac. In fact, I found my note too that I'm going to read to you. So he says, there's huge advantages for the early bird. So this is Charlie Munger talking about surfing, obviously applicable to way more people and industries than money and oil. There are huge advantages for the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing. When a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go for a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in the shallows. But people get long runs when

Starting point is 00:15:24 they're right on the edge of the wave, whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people. Surfing is very powerful. And then I'm looking at the note that I left myself when I read that in Port Charlie's Almanac. It says, Charlie's surfing model. One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and staying in it. There's a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still. So Mani understood that and was only interested in the oil business for his entire life. Let's go back to this idea of what is a limitless opportunity look like? Limitless opportunity usually found environments with little to no regulation. At the time that Mani starts, there's almost non-existent regulation. By the third generation, it's becoming increasingly difficult.

Starting point is 00:16:12 So this is the difference between what Mani had, which is essentially little to no regulation, and what the third generation is having to deal with. There was an increasing number of bureaucratic considerations governing everything, from the distance a well can be from an old Indian burial ground to the number of portable toilets that must surround a rig site. These regulations continue to increase as government agencies proliferated. I want to continue with 84-year-old Mani Moncrief before we go to his early life, which is actually absolutely incredible. And it's really, again, a main part of the book is the fact that this guy's shadow is

Starting point is 00:16:45 over his entire family. All these oil dynasties are controlled by, you know, this one, what do they call them? Prickly individual. I'll get there in one second. But one of the reasons that their shadow looms so large is because they never exit. He's doing oil deals until he dies. Way past, he's decades past the need to work for money. And so not only are his entire family working in the business that he started, but his physical presence is still there. And so it says, these grandfathers, so these patriarchs of these family dynasties in Texas, rarely abandon the towns where they raise their families,

Starting point is 00:17:20 and they don't venture forth into senior citizen communities in Florida or Arizona. They live where they've always lived, and their daily presence keeps their legends alive. The mystique of grandfather heroes exists partly because the grandfathers play a special in-between role in this land of men that are impossibly hard. All over Texas, the story is the same. My daddy was a tough old bull, but when he told me it was time to quit law school and come to work for him, I did it, even though it was the hardest thing in the world for me. And even though he told me I'd have to run him out of business before I could get my share. That's funny because that's happening in Texas.

Starting point is 00:17:57 Also, I don't think it's exclusive to Texas. When I got to this, then I left myself was, oh, this, this could be, this quote could be from Ted Turner. As you and I learned in episode 327 on Ted Turner's autobiography, you know, he tried to rebel. His dad started that company. It was very successful, one of the largest, I think it was the most successful billboard company in the Southeast.

Starting point is 00:18:16 And, you know, he took off running, but eventually, exactly what they said, you know, he called them. He's like, now's the time. You have to come. And even though Ted wasn't sure, he's like, you know, I'm going to go do this. Back to this book. This is also something that I've noticed, that the entrepreneurs that you and I study

Starting point is 00:18:31 are way more similar to each other than you and I are to maybe like the general population or the population that are not entrepreneurial. Traveling through oil country, one becomes aware of a similarity among the tales told of grandfathers who first subdued the land and claimed its riches. Like mythic heroes, the men of the first generation began to seem interchangeable after a while, like figures cut from the same rough, magnificent fabric. They called them prickly. They said they possessed prickly individuality. That's a great line. They possessed prickly individuality. All the stories seem to be about the same prickly individuality that's a great line they were they possessed prickly individuality all the stories seem to be about the same prickly individual i said i said this over and over it's

Starting point is 00:19:12 like the same personality type that reappears over and over again throughout history different industries different parts of the world different times basically the same shape same shape more description of them these are they are giants are successful predators, acute and astute, tamers of the untamable and defenders of vast treasure. That is a description of Monty Moncrief. Another thing where the second and third generation, they start to love luxury. They're spending, they're making it rain. They're bawling out of control.

Starting point is 00:19:42 They're spending a ton of the family money. Monty was not interested in that. He lives in the same house that he lived in for his entire life. Old Wildcatter's attitudes seem to be much like those of the original cattlemen who preferred their familiar ranch homesteads to the palatial quarters that their heirs built in town. The allegiance is not to pleasure or luxury, but to comforts won by sweat

Starting point is 00:20:03 and handed down with an understanding of the duties that entailed upon them. What drove Mani was achievement, not money, knowing that if I chase achievement, the money comes with it. But it's also about being able to live up to your own ideals. And so at this point in the story, Mani's obviously very, very wealthy. So he winds up knowing a bunch of presidents. And this was a very fascinating insight into him. Monty Moncrief is quick to tell the visitor that Nixon was a weak man, destroyed by his own avarice. He speaks of Lyndon Johnson as a compassionate man, but greedy like Nixon, and much prouder than he. Such judgments are not political, but personal. They are moral

Starting point is 00:20:51 sentences passed upon men who were not large enough to live up to their offices. But at the same time, he still respects them because, for this reason, but to whom a measure of respect is nonetheless owed, simply because they won and held those offices. They exhibit personal pantheons across which fall the shadows of men who shaped American destiny. So I need to explain that a little further. So it's talking about this first generation of frontier settlers, which is what Moncrief was, right? They have a sense of honor even for those who have disgraced themselves because even when a great man falls from grace, there are actions they did before that helped shape America's destiny. Okay, so then the book goes into his early life. I think this is the way, I think I can essentially tell the entire

Starting point is 00:21:35 story in just two sentences. And so this is not a direct quote from Monty Moncrief, but this is my interpretation. If we were able to talk to him, this is what he would say. My dad got to Texas in a covered wagon. I made hundreds of millions of dollars in my lifetime. And so when Monty is a young man, he goes to Europe to fight in World War I. While he's doing that, he actually becomes friends with the son of an Oklahoma oil family. And so after the war, when Monty gets back to America, he decides to head for Oklahoma and he starts working for his friend's family's oil company. And so his first job in the oil industry, he has a job called a landman. So it says he worked first as a landman, as many future independents often did. Landmen do not buy land. Rather, they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner. So this is what I mentioned earlier, how a lot of larger companies, oil companies, like I'm

Starting point is 00:22:31 not doing that. I have to go, you know, negotiate an individual with 50 people, 25 people, 200 people. I just rather go straight to the ruler of the country. So this is how it works. Rather, they lease the right to produce minerals upon it from the land's owner who takes a share. A lease, which is what he's negotiating, right, gives the operator access to that tract of land for five or ten years. If oil is found before the lease expires, the operator may continue to produce it for as long as that well lasts. If not, the mineral rights revert back to the landholder, who then may sell them to the next bidder but if the land proves productive the lease the person that's doing the leasing pays a royalty to the landowner right which is a share of his profits before costs so share of his revenue before costs rather the share

Starting point is 00:23:16 is usually one-eighth and this is this is fascinating the share is usually one-eighth and it is called a royalty because it was once paid to the crown. So after a few years, Monty decides to strike out his own. He wants to work for himself and he's going to go from Oklahoma to West Texas. Now, a huge part of this early industry is like, well, where are they getting the money from? And so there's two interesting sources for funding here. One is the oil industry at this point is completely dependent on the railroad industry. Remember this for later, because there's this huge dispute between two separate oil companies. And wait till you hear the name of the actual governing body.

Starting point is 00:23:53 It's not named after oil. Let me just tell you that. So some of the earliest American oil financiers were actually Easterners, right? These are very far away from the frontier in Oklahoma and Texas. They're actually Easterners who controlled the railroad lines. And then the second source, which was uniquely Texan, is before oil came to Texas, their massive industry was, a lot of the richest families were actually cattle ranchers. So there's this guy named Pappy Wagoner, for example. He was Texas's first billionaire. He obviously made his money in cattle ranching. And then he takes that money and then actually founds a bank. And then he would fund a bunch,

Starting point is 00:24:29 it's kind of like angel investing. If you really think about what's going on here as a billionaire, he's like, okay, I'm willing to go ahead and issue and invest these in these speculative, like oil startups is the way to think about this. And he does it through Fort Worth National Bank, which he founded. And so one of the main things that jumps out is like, okay, well, why would you do that? You have a good job. Like, why would you quit? You move states. And this is this idea where it's like he had unbelievable self-confidence. I don't even know if that's the right word. This, a lot of these early wildcatters, they were default optimistic by far, but they also believed that they were born lucky.

Starting point is 00:25:08 This is not a joke. So he says, Monty Moncrief believed that he had a gift, a special talent for finding oil. He believed that he had been born lucky. When asked why he set himself up as an independent oilman, he said, I'd always had it in my mind to better myself. And to better himself has always been his quest in life and so these wildcatters raise money and they start drilling holes money's first 29

Starting point is 00:25:33 his first 29 wells all come up empty so at the beginning of his career remember he still thinks he's born lucky he was destined to it i have gift. This is the way he's talking about. I have a gift for finding oil. Imagine believing that, right? Quitting your job, moving states, raising money. First 29 times, they're all duds. They start calling him dry hole Monty. That was the situation right before he hits one of the largest oil discoveries ever.

Starting point is 00:26:02 There is actually, let me read this to you. There's a great line I think about all the time in the book, The Fish That Ate the Whale, which is about Sam Zimuri. And it talked about this, essentially he goes and accumulates assets when he does not have the money to do so because he believed if he did not get those assets,

Starting point is 00:26:18 his business in the future wouldn't work out anyways. There is some degree of, for some reason, when I got to this section of the book, I was thinking about this line, this paragraph that's in The Fish That Eat the Whale. So let me read that paragraph to you first, and then we'll get into this incredible discovery that Monty is a young Monty Moncrief. His son is, I think, 11 years old when this is about to happen, but this is the line from The Fish That Eat the Whale. There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall

Starting point is 00:26:54 in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. And so when a real estate trader by the name of B.A. Skipper comes and asks, Monty, if he wants to buy these leases, this is what happens. So B.A. Skipper was trying to unload the leases that he held on 4,000 acres. These 4,000 acres just happen to be near Dad Joyner as well. So Dad Joyner is this guy that sold out to this other guy named H.L. Hunt. H.L. Hunt is in that book I referenced earlier, which is The Big Rich. Dad Joyner's site is the foundation of the H.L. Hunt family dynasty. Should have went to Dad Joyner, but he sold out. I think that's a huge, important thing to remember. So B.A. Skipper comes and he's like, well, I got 4,000

Starting point is 00:27:42 acres. He's under financial pressure. They're kind of near joiners. Well, do you want them? No geological survey had been made in the land, but the acreage was cheap because Skipper hadn't paid off his leases. He had taken them on an open draft from the bank instead, hoping to get rid of them fast and turn a profit by doing so. So there's a bunch of these people where they'll get a lease and essentially they just want to sell paper.

Starting point is 00:28:04 They have no issue. They're not wildcatters they're like oh we got these let's say i paid you know i'm making up the number i paid a thousand for them i will give you my rights for you know 5x they're like short-term you know short-term traders i guess is the way to think about them very different than what uh money was interested in doing them uh money thought it was possible that this site may be sitting on top of the Northeast running trend and on impulse, meaning that it's close to the dad joiner discovery

Starting point is 00:28:29 and an impulse he bought the leases. And he bought the leases even though he didn't have the money. So what does he do? They do this over and over again. They take on partners. To save himself money, he went partners with a man named J.T. Farrell

Starting point is 00:28:43 who worked down the hall from him moncrieff and farrell didn't have enough money to permit them to expand their holdings and undertake the expense of drilling at the same time so they did what independents have always done and then sold off pieces of their enterprise they gave up some of their interest to getty that's getty oil so think about what just happened there ba BA Skipper comes to Monty with an opportunity. Monty's like, okay, I'm going to take another flyer. I've drilled 29 duds. I don't have money for this. What am I going to do? I got to walk down the hall, knock on some doors and see who wants to go in on this deal with me. So now we're 50-50 partners. We're like, all right,

Starting point is 00:29:18 we got the leases. We ain't got no money to drill. What are we going to do here? We'll go to a bigger oil company and say, hey, give us some money to drill. And if it works out, we'll obviously give you some of the interest in a good well. And then I love his relentless optimism here because of the first well that he drills, gush force 18,000 barrels of oil a day. And then his response was hilarious, right? Because it's like, to be delusionally optimistic, you just go from one setback to another setback without any loss of enthusiasm, which I love. And it says like, so, you know, he has all these struggle for years, doesn't have the money, winds up figuring out how to do it. The first well they drill on this other

Starting point is 00:30:00 thing. So this would be what his 30th attempt uh the first well is 18 000 barrels a day and then it says this further convinced him that the good lord must be looking out for him in other words that he was born lucky now what's fascinating is how fast his fortunes change so it says monty and his partner held on to their leases until the end of 1931 if i'm not mistaken they actually hit it i can't find the exact year. I'm pretty sure they hit it that same year. I think they held on to it for a year, maybe two. It was not long, the point, whether it's a year or two years, something like that. It's not a very long time. But the value obviously increases dramatically. And so it says they watched their

Starting point is 00:30:39 worth increase many times over. Finally, they sold out to a larger oil company for two and a half million dollars. That'd be the equivalent of, you know, something like 50 million today. A few years later, the company that bought it for two and a half million sold it for 37 million to Standard Oil. And so a bunch of other people like were like, oh, you know, you sold too early, whatever the case is. But again, this is gonna be the foundation of a which present day is a multi-billion dollar family fortune. So a lot of other wildcatters are like, oh, you sold too early. But I loved what Monty Moncrief said here. He says, in the oil business, there's no what if, there's only what happened. And another interesting thing is one, he sold, so now he doesn't have to worry about any money.

Starting point is 00:31:18 He's going to keep, he's going to be in the same business for the rest of his life. And he's going to keep having a lot of success in that business. But also what was fascinating is because his wealth was based off like this tangible resource, he was able to survive and thrive in the great depression. So it says, unlike the oligarchs in New York, rich Texans were not necessarily forced into diminished circumstances by the depression. Texas fortunes had been built upon the bounty of the earth. This is their words. And the memory of this advantage during a time of crisis has made many Texans mistrustful of paper fortunes ever since. Mistrustful of paper fortunes ever since. Remember that sentence for later on when his grandson is, you know, essentially like peacocking. Like, look what I did on this deal. He's drilling oil for Israel

Starting point is 00:32:03 on like disputed land between israel and egypt in the 1970s and we'll get to there later but his his his uh grandfather wasn't buying it he's like until the money's in the bank it reminds you know what it reminded me of something that sam zell said i think it was an autobiography where you know somebody had said to him during the original dot-com boom in the late 90s it's like sam you know it took you 40 years or something like that to be a billionaire uh what do you think of this guy that you know started his company 18 months ago and he's a billionaire you know it's like 97 or 98 and he goes tell me when he has the money in the bank and i'm pretty sure if i remember the story correctly that the that was always just a paper fortune it wound up uh booming and then busting and then i

Starting point is 00:32:42 think going bankrupt so before i move on i want to go over some of the characteristics of these early wildcatters because I'm choosing to focus on Monty Moncrief. There's a lot of other characters in there, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison. In fact, what brought this book to my attention is I've been doing research. I want to do a podcast on Richard Rainwater, a very influential investor and company builder. And yet there's surprisingly as influential as this person was, there's no biography on him. And so I found this podcast and it's called Rainmakers Podcast. I'll leave a link down below. It turns out Rain, who runs the Rainmakers Podcast, has been listening to founders for a while.

Starting point is 00:33:23 And I sent him a message and he gave me all of his research. I'd recommend listening to that podcast because the level of research that went into it is incredible. I've been trying to find stuff on Richard Rainwater all the time. And Rain just came up with, like his sources are just way better than mine. And one of his sources was this book. And so I immediately ordered all the books on that list. And I started reading this, like, this is actually incredible. And so my interest in this was, I was like, okay, I want to learn more about, because Richard Rainwater, how he got his start was that there's an oil man who ends up becoming, I think, the richest person in the United States for a certain time. He's more like a gambler, though.

Starting point is 00:33:56 He seems such a Richardson. He passes away. His fortune goes to, he didn't have any children. His fortune goes to his nephew. This is the Bass family. And then the Bass family hires Richard Rainwater. And so the podcast I'm telling you about talks about how Richard, I think, turned 50 million of the Bass's money into 5 billion.

Starting point is 00:34:11 But Sid Richardson, just like Monty Moncrief, they were a big belief in luck. In fact, Sid's credo says that he'd always been, his credo had always been that he'd rather be lucky than smart because a lot of smart guys go hungry. Another trait that they had was they were not afraid of debt. This is not advice, by the way, because there's a lot of people that did the exact same thing they did, but did not survive. And so Sid Richardson's, his partner was this guy named Clint Murchison, who's also fascinating. He's in The Big Rich. I highly recommend, I'm going to leave links for this book, but I'd also go back and listen to episode 150. Oh, no, it's not 150, is it?

Starting point is 00:34:47 I don't know why I'm guessing. I can just look it up. It is episode 149, 150 Sam Walton. So 149, I'd listen to that episode, but I'd also read the book. The Big Rich is excellent. I'm going to wind up rereading it and doing another podcast on it in the future because I thought that the book was fantastic. So Clint Murchison's in there as well. They were one time partners with Sid Richardson. And you might find this interesting Clint Murchison's son, it was actually the founder of the Dallas Cowboys. But so what they have in common, they believe in luck, they have an absence of fear of disgrace, as we just saw, like they're failing over and over again, they just keep getting back up and going at it. As we just saw with Monty, he was 0 and 29 and he was still going at it. And 30 was, you know, changed his life and really not only changed his life, but changed the trajectory of many generations of his family. They're also

Starting point is 00:35:34 not scared of having tons of debt. There's a great exchange between Sid Richardson in this and Clint Murchison in the book. And Sid tells Clint, I must be the richest one between us because I owe more money than you do. They've got paper of mine floating all the way to London. Sid believed that, this is crazy, Sid had an attitude that there was no innate shamefulness in going broke or in borrowing as long as there was a reason for it.

Starting point is 00:36:01 They all were delusional optimists. They believed that optimism was the personal quality that nurtures luck. They all were delusional optimists. They believe that optimism was the personal quality that nurtures luck. They hated timidity. They said you cannot, you simply, an oil man simply could not afford to be timid. And then they did not feel the need to apologize for the occasional big losses. They believe that if you were not having big losses, that means you weren't trying enough. And in many many cases they operated in legal like gray areas they built concrete bunkers around wells and hired armed guards to defend their turf from government inspectors they smuggled oil across state borders they operated

Starting point is 00:36:35 unregistered refineries in backwoods they processed crude in excess of what each operator was allowed this is later in the oil industry it says, and they believed in chaos and defiance, and they refused to be controlled. They were not afraid of risk. They said the risk is always there. And then Clint Murchison has a great saying. He says, so the risk is always there. And as Clint Murchison was fond of saying,

Starting point is 00:36:59 after the first hundred million, what the hell? And so what he's talking about there is like after a hundred million dollars, you can have a hundred, at this point you can have a million or a billion the difference in your lifestyle is negligible so you should be going like you should be building businesses going for risk uh in clint's case he was he would spread money all around he would own oil companies railroads cattle ranching obviously his son uh eventually uh started the dallas cowboys but

Starting point is 00:37:23 really this is i guess the punchline for this entire section. They were motivated to found dynasties to which their sons and their sons' sons could succeed. This is more about their mindset. West Texas, where all these guys are operating, was settled by optimism, by pure booster spirit, by the willingness to go on faith and instinct, to believe that hard work and the taking of high risk must inevitably bring reward. Only something as stubborn and unreasoning, remember, this is not like an intellectual thing. In many cases, they're being irrational, and people around them are telling them they are. Only something as stubborn and unreasoning as

Starting point is 00:37:56 faith could have inspired men and women to settle and remain upon this harsh, unyielding land. These Texas wildcatters were optimists without equal. They had to be. This was very fascinating. So keep in mind, Monty gets in the business after World War I. So we're talking late 19-teens, right? In the years before and after the First World War, the U.S. Bureau of Mines had begun issuing a series of pessimistic surveys. They estimated, these are the quote unquote experts saying you're wasting your time here. Why? Because we estimate that 40% of America's petroleum reserves had already been exhausted. That is insane. That is an insane statement. This is over a hundred years ago, right? So a hundred years later than this report by these experts was issued, right? Over a hundred

Starting point is 00:38:39 years later, there's more petroleum produced in America. There's hundreds of thousands of barrels a day in the 1920s. So at that time, and then let me, let me be clear what I'm saying here in the 1920s or 19 teens, when this, this report is issued, it's like, Hey, we've already, we're estimating that you guys have already tapped 40% of America's petroleum reserves. We're already producing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, right? It can't like, we're going to run out a hundred years later, we're producing tens of millions of barrels a day. This is Like we're going to run out. A hundred years later, we're producing tens of millions of barrels a day. This is why I keep bringing up this like irrational optimism

Starting point is 00:39:10 and the belief in luck that they have because like the industry reports like, nope, we're 40% of the way through. And the report concluded, right, that the domestic oil business was not far from dead. West Texas oil men refused to take these reports at their word. And it was a good thing they did because when they start drilling all of these findings, it's going to happen over the next 10, 20 years, right? It was the greatest frontier gold rush of all time. And they make a great point in the book that these discoveries in Texas in, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s, were 10 times the size of the gold strike that brought the 49ers to Northern

Starting point is 00:39:53 California in the 1800s. And I think there's some needed context around this, right? Like, why could you have this default optimism? And it goes back to this theme that I was thinking about as I was reading this book. It's like, okay, let's study this not to like try to start an oil company, but I'm really curious, like where is their opportunity without limits today? And can we derive insights into like what those opportunities look like

Starting point is 00:40:17 and what to look for? And part of this was that these are, there's actually a dual theme here. It's like, these are poor men. Monty Moncrief, when he was doing this, was not a rich man. When his grandson or his son tried to do that, they are rich men. And so I think the benefit that like a Clint Murchison or a Sid Richardson or Monty Moncrief had is the fact that they really,

Starting point is 00:40:41 they could speak as growth as an inevitability because there's nowhere to go but up. They had begun their lives, and a lot of these wildcatters, they'd begun their lives in hovels and had nowhere to go. And so they were willing to sleep in tents. They would, in some cases, they would pitch a tent right next to a derrick, right? And they're out in the open. They describe this environment as ungoverned backlands with a climate that was predictable only in its violence. So you got, you hear the freezing, there's storms, there's mud, then there's heat. And the only thing pushing them through is one,

Starting point is 00:41:14 they're broke and two, they're very optimistic. Such harshness put to the test the willingness of people to put aside all thoughts of present comfort and pleasure and live exclusively upon hopes for the future. This same stern ability to ignore their present circumstances and live upon their hopes. As one descendant of a wildcatter said, my granddaddy was born in a hole in the ground. You can't start life much lower than that. And so I mentioned the surprising role that railroads played in the, not only the growth

Starting point is 00:41:45 of the oil business, but also the regulation of it. So it says growth meant railroads. Some West Texas fields had to be shut down after they were discovered because, so it means they struck oil, because there was no means for hauling barrels of crude out of there to the refineries. And if the discovery was big enough, they would actually be able to influence railroads to lay tracks. So it says they became a bonanza for railroad schemers as much as for wildcatters. So that was that's at the stage, it was very interesting that,

Starting point is 00:42:15 you know, the there's a kind of like symbiotic relationship between independent oil wildcatters like Monty, and these larger companies, like they're kind of doing deals with each other. Their fields are next to each other. They become partners for a little bit, then they break up. If an independent usually is going to eventually sell out, he's going to sell out to a major. So this was fascinating. This was really surprising. And I think it speaks to the influence that railways or railroads had on the early American

Starting point is 00:42:42 oil industry. So independents like Monty Moncrief, they usually are rarely willing to jeopardize their relationship with major companies by taking them before regulatory boards. Monty Moncrief had to do this because he feels that he thought that Humble was decreasing the value of his oil fields because they were draining, essentially like, let's say he was on the outskirts, they on the middle, they were draining things that were not in the middle. And so if an independent wanted to file suit against a major, he would go through the regulatory

Starting point is 00:43:15 board of the oil industry at the time, which was called the Railroad Commission. That was surprising. Again, it's not the oil board oil regulations the railroad commission and in this case this wind up making him over 100 million dollars the railroad commission ordered uh humble to compensate him for his fields they were forced to pay him 100 million dollars along with percentages and residuals on the on those percentages and so it said it was a victory for his dynasty and a means for its perpetuation and there's just a great line in the book about this, you know, because you think you're nuts for, you know, essentially suing a potential partner in the future. You're nuts for doing all, you know, all the behavior that the wildcatters are doing seem nuts at the time.

Starting point is 00:43:57 And it says being crazy is something that majors just don't understand. And being crazy and having imagination is actually a huge asset for the independents. This stat blew my mind. Independent wildcatters find 80% of the oil and gas in America, despite the fact that most of the mineral leases they acquire have been rejected by the big companies. And so when the book ends, Monty's in his 80s and he's still at it. And I think this is a good description of why. Monty Moncrief grew up amid the harshness of a developing frontier land and made hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of his 80-odd years.

Starting point is 00:44:33 He had realized his ambitions in a town that he helped to settle and shape and make grow. He had been able to trace his shadow, leave his mark upon an empty land, and set a standard for those who were to follow. He created a dynasty. For Monty Moncrief, and for men of this pioneer generation, achievement, not refinement, is the measure of all things. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Highly recommend reading the book. If you buy the book using the link in your show notes or available at funderspodcast.com, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. There's only a few limited copies of this. So in case you can't get this, I will also leave a link below to read The Big Rich, which tells a lot of similar stories and is an excellent book. That is 338 books down,

Starting point is 00:45:20 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. Okay, just a few quick things. In fact, a few quick new things before you go. First one was asked for and requested for many, many months. Founders now officially has merch. If you go to shop.founderspodcast.com, or you can just go to founderspodcast.com and click on merch. A few months ago, I did a live show in New York City with my friend, Patrick Christianity from the invest like the best podcast. And we sold for the first time ever, like founders merch, like sweatshirts, hats, people seem to love it. I've been wearing that I have actually took like four of them for myself. And I've been wearing them for the past few months, they are super, super comfortable. I would definitely order the sweatshirt. The hat that we have on there right now, I'm actually going to replace soon with a hat because the

Starting point is 00:46:10 Founders logo on the hat is big. Some people like it. I personally like it if it's a little smaller, but if you happen to like the bigger logo, get the hat soon because eventually they'll be replaced with the hat with the smaller logo. So if you want to buy some Founders merch, go to shop.founderspodcast.com or go to founderspodcast.com and click on merch. And you can do that. The second new thing, and this one is incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:46:32 Me and Patrick are looking for partners. If you are building products, if your company is building a product that makes somebody else's business better, so B2B, and you would be interested in becoming partners with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best. Email partnerships at founderspodcast.com. That is partnerships with an S. Partnerships at founderspodcast.com. Tell us about the company you're building, obviously,

Starting point is 00:46:56 any important links that we need to know, and why you think we would be good partners. So we're able to obviously help with distribution. We're looking for partners that we can actually partner with and then help advertise across both of our podcasts. We can also bring capital and then access to talent as well. And one of the reasons this idea came to mind is because I keep having this experience where whether I'm touring a company because I've been invited to or I'm giving a speech or I meet somebody through like a friend of a friend that listens to the podcast. I keep coming across these unbelievably talented and formidable founders that listen to founders. And in some cases have been listening, like I just met one last week. He's incredible. And he's like, yeah, I've listened to 200 episodes. And so it's very apparent to me that I'm doing something wrong where because

Starting point is 00:47:44 these supremely talented people, there's no mechanism for which for them to like reveal 200 episodes. And so it's very apparent to me that I'm doing something wrong because these supremely talented people, there's no mechanism for them to reveal themselves to me. And that's important to the podcast because supremely talented people usually build supremely impressive products, products that can make your business better. And I would like to use the podcast to essentially highlight founder-led companies from founders that listen to founders that would benefit other listeners of founders. And so Patrick and I don't know what shape this is gonna take yet.

Starting point is 00:48:10 All we know is we have access to a lot of resources. We have very unique assets that no one else probably on the planet has. And if you think you're a right fit, just email partnerships at founderspodcast.com. There'll be more details in the future. I just wanna put that out there for now. So if you're building something and you would want to partner with Patrick and I, email partnerships at founderspodcast.com. And I think you'd be surprised about all the kind of

Starting point is 00:48:34 unexpected benefits that could happen. So this actually just happened because I've told you about this company, Vesto. V as in Victor, E-S-T-O. It's Vesto.com. And I partnered with them for a while. I knew the founder. Two of my close founder friends were both using Vesto to get higher returns on their business's idle cash. And so I was like, oh, this is, I knew Ben. I'd spent a bunch of time with him, went out to dinner with him a bunch of times. And then I had two people I trust and they were both in very opposite situations. One had raised a bunch of venture capital, and so he had a long runway, and he was using Vesto to lengthen his runway.

Starting point is 00:49:11 And the other one had this giant bootstrap business with a bunch of companies, and he was using it to get a higher rate of return than his bank was offering him. And so there's a bunch of people that heard about Vesto from the ads I was doing on the podcast. But what was fascinating, and this is an unexpected benefit, they actually pulled a product out of Vesto that didn't exist and now exists because of that. And this is also the benefit of founder-led calls, sales calls, if you can do that in your company, because Ben was taking all the calls, right?

Starting point is 00:49:42 Explaining, getting to know who the prospects were, explaining the business, explaining why the business exists. He built it from the ground up. He's the person in the best possible position to explain its value to potential customers. He was having a bunch of these conversations. What was fascinating is people that didn't even know each other were asking for the same thing.

Starting point is 00:50:02 They're like, yeah, I have excess cash, and I would like a higher return. Obviously, now the interest rates are higher. But there's this other problem that I really want to find a solution for. And a lot of people have, in many cases, multiple bank accounts spread across multiple banks, in some cases, multiple countries, and in some cases, multiple currencies and multiple entities. And the only solution they could find, and this is what they were asking Ben to build for them,

Starting point is 00:50:29 was, hey, I have to hire somebody, right? They're paying somebody every morning or every day to log into all their accounts. In some cases, there was like 10 to 30 different accounts. Reconcile all the balances. And in some cases, convert the currencies just to figure out how much cash does all my businesses have right at this exact moment. And so as a result of founders in the founder community, in the founders podcast community,

Starting point is 00:50:50 this product now exists. If you have this problem, you can go to Vesto.com V E S T O. Everybody says I slur my words. I know I don't pronounce things correctly. So it's V as in Victor. And obviously I will leave the links in the show notes and the links for everything I talk to talk about is that founders podcast.com. But if you want to see all of your company's financial accounts in one view, Vesto, this this version of Vesto will connect and control all of your global business accounts from one dashboard. And then if you choose to, they can automatically also help you earn higher rates on your business's idle cash. And then when you go to Vesto and schedule demo, you actually talk to Ben. So just make sure that you tell him that David from Founders sent you.

Starting point is 00:51:28 So two more quick things I want to talk to you about. Founders Notes. Founders Notes is the best way, the single best way. First, I think it's the world's greatest notebook for founders, but it's also the best way to support the podcast. I think last week, the Napoleon episode really honed in on the value proposition from just reading and rereading all of my notes and highlights. So what Founders Notes is, is for, what is this now, six years? Since 2018, I've been cataloging all of the notes and all the highlights I've been putting in this app called ReadWise, which allows me to search by book, search by keyword, constantly review my highlights. There's this thing called the highlights feed, which I think is incredible, which is essentially a random generated, it's like a smart Twitter feed. But instead of reading the psychotic delusions of these crazy people that hang out on social media all day, You're reading notes and highlights from history's greatest founders.

Starting point is 00:52:26 And so I went to the team at ReadWise. I was like, hey, people have been asking for a long time to have access to my notes and highlights. Is there any way we can build a product together where we can essentially mirror what I see? So when you subscribe, when you go to Founders Notes, that's Founders with an S, foundersnotes.com, and you subscribe to this,

Starting point is 00:52:42 when you invest in a subscription, you see exactly, you see a direct mirror. You see exactly what I see. This is something that I use every day. This is a product that I could not make the podcast without. It is literally embedded in my workflow. So if you had already had access to Founders Notes, you would have already seen the highlights for the Wildcatters, the book that we just went over, because I'm updating it nearly every single day. And the reason I thought that there was a lot of there's a couple things that people emailed me that really resonated from last week is one, I talked about the fact that it's only for people that are running already successful companies, right? If you're not already

Starting point is 00:53:18 running successful company, though, the people running a successful company are going to get the most value out of founders notes, because they already have a mechanism in which to turn that knowledge that's in the notebook into profit, right? And if you're not, listen to the podcast. I said, like, Founders Notes does not have a free trial because the podcast is the free trial. So if you're not already running a successful company, it doesn't make any sense for you to invest in a subscription.

Starting point is 00:53:43 Just go and listen to the 337 episodes whenever you want, as much as you want, and then use those ideas to build a successful company. Then this is in addition to, but for people that are already running a successful company, then it's a no brainer. You can invest in a year subscription, right? At the end of a year, first of all, there's already, you know, I don't know, something like 20,000 highlights in there. I think the team at ReadWise just sent me my stats page. I think they said there's 24,000 highlights, but I'd have to go back and double check that. But anyways, my point being is like if you would sign up today, in the next year, I'm going to add another, you know, 50 something books and, you know, probably 4,000 or 5,000 highlights.

Starting point is 00:54:24 So the product literally gets better every day. add another, you know, 50 something books and, you know, probably four or 5,000 highlights. So the product literally gets better every day. And then you can decide at the end of the year, did you get value out of it or not? Well, I think, I think it's a no brainer to, to try for at least a year. And the reason I say that I heard from a lot of people that, that, uh, the Napoleon, uh, episode resonated with them and they realized to help them realize the value of, you know, not just listening to the podcast, but really going deep on this and reading and rereading over and over again, because that's Napoleon's own words. He said, read over and over again. He didn't say read once, listen to one episode and then keep it moving. No, he said, read over and over again. The campaigns of Alexander Hannibal, Caesar, Frederick the Great, make them your models.

Starting point is 00:55:03 This is the only way to become a great general to master the secrets of the art of war with your own genius enlightened by this study. I truly believe that if you subscribe to Founders Notes and you read it every day, keep it open to your browser. What I would do is pick a new book every morning, right? And just read the highlights. You can see my notes too.

Starting point is 00:55:21 Search whatever comes to mind. Use the highlights feed, which is, that is a really cool thing. If you can build the habit mind. Use the highlights feed, which is, that is a really cool thing. If you can build the habit of just scrolling the highlights feed, take 10, this is what you should do. Take 10 minutes out of your social media scrolling, right? Just take 10 minutes out of whatever, how much time you're using and use that to read the highlights feed for 10 minutes a day. It's impossible that you're not going to get valuable information that makes your business better if you do that 10 minutes a day for the year.

Starting point is 00:55:45 It's just impossible. It's not even including the crazy thing that I've been testing. And I might just release it soon. It's essentially a founder's GPT. I can't call it that. There's got to be a different name. So I've got to figure out what I'm going to call it. But it's like ChatGPT.

Starting point is 00:56:00 Instead of being trained on the entire internet, it's trained on all my notes and highlights and then now all my transcripts. And it's just, if you've ever heard, you hear it on the podcast, but if you've ever heard me speak in person too, it's this thing where there are being interviewed on a podcast. I don't know what that other person is going to ask me, but everything that I hear is filtered through all the reading and research and the constant rereading my highlights. So like, oh, that reminds me of this. And that reminds me of that. You'll hear me do this over and over again. The founder GPT version does that. And I'm like, it now is making connections that I didn't even think about. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. Now here's the problem. It just like with any kind of these like new, you know, chat models, you know, 80% of it's amazing. And then some of it's

Starting point is 00:56:41 like, that's not, you just made that up. So we got to figure out what to do with that. But that's super exciting. So this idea where it's like, Napoleon said multiple times in his maxims, the importance of this, you know, he says it's profitable to study the campaigns of the great masters. I don't know about you, if you're reading notes and highlights from biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, what is that? That is this, you're studying the campaigns of the great masters. Napoleon's saying that's profitable to do so. He says that all great captains have been diligent students of history. You and I talk about this every week. That's one of the main reoccurring themes in the history of entrepreneurship that

Starting point is 00:57:19 comes up in these biographies over and over again. And then Napoleon says experience must be supplemented by study. No man's personal experience can be so inclusive as to warrant his disregarding the experience of others. Experience must be supplemented by study. During the day, you know, you're busy working on your company, you're building your empire. When you're not doing that, I think listening to founders, reading these biographies, investing in subscription to founder's notes, that's professional research. You are supplementing. You're supplementing your own experience by study. So if you have not yet signed up for it, highly recommend you do.

Starting point is 00:57:51 You go to foundersnotes.com. After you sign up, you'll receive an email. In that email, it goes into detail, that welcoming email. Make sure you read it. It goes into exact detail how I use this on a daily basis. And even this morning, I was going and rereading highlights because one of my favorite books that I've ever read was this,

Starting point is 00:58:18 it's called Hard Drive. It's episode 290. It's a biography of Bill Gates. But what I love about it is like, it's the first like 35 years of his life because it ends at the Microsoft IPO. And I was rereading the highlights because he, young Bill Gates had, there's this line that says like this monomaniacal quality. And essentially what I'm just brainwashing myself to make sure that I don't lose my focus. And so I was reading through the highlights and I was also thinking about this idea that I'm thinking about in my own business, the importance of like uncapped limitless opportunity and his decision to insist on a royalty agreement between him and IBM.

Starting point is 00:58:48 So all these weird things that, you know, I maybe had forgotten or hadn't thought about in a while I'm rereading. And then it gets to this part. It was like, Oh, he consumed biographies, uh,

Starting point is 00:58:57 to understand how the great figures of history thought. And I'm like, Oh, there it is again. Except he was doing that, you know, 30 years ago. No, probably longer than that, years ago but this idea it's like oh this constant rereading and rereading and studying of the great people that came before us and i really do

Starting point is 00:59:16 because i can tell you with my whole heart like i made the product i use the product every day it's it would be impossible for me to endorse uh another product in the world to a greater degree other than, you know, listening to the podcast. So I truly believe it's valuable. If you want to try it out for a year, go to founders, founders notes.com. As always, thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon.

Founders - #338 Monty Moncrief Texas Oil Billionaire

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