Founders - #343 The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: David Ogilvy

Starting point is 00:00:00 This book is about philosophy. It's about ethos, beliefs, and all those things which gentlemen love to yap about. If it's any consolation, though, this book is also about sex, as it's written primarily to address a rather awkward question. Can a $2 billion gorilla like Ogilvy ever be svelte, sultry, and sexy again? The Ogilvy agency of the 1950s and 1960s was far hotter than WK, CB, these are all these other competitors that they're listing at the time, and the rest of them combined. The question is, can we still be gorgeous now that we're several hundred pounds heavier? The answer to our dilemma can be summed up in two pithy words, divine discontent. Decades before advertising prophets were preaching good enough and good enough, Ogilvy was already practicing it. But what did David actually mean

Starting point is 00:00:53 by divine discontent? Here's an interpretation. Don't bow your head. Don't know your place. Defy the gods. Don't sit back. Don't give in. Don't give up. Don't win silver medals. Don't be so easily happy with yourself. Don't be spineless. Don't be gutless. Don't be toadies. Don't go gentle into that good night. And don't ever, ever allow a single scrap of rubbish out of this agency. This handbook will tell us how to make David's divine discontent a habit by the team at Ogilvy & Mather and David Ogilvy. Before jumping back into the book, I'm going to tell you how this unexpected episode came about. I've been spending the last week and a half deep in study on one of my favorite filmmakers. I'm making an episode on him right now.

Starting point is 00:01:57 It's Quentin Tarantino. I get to the end of the book on Tarantino. The epilogue of that book blew my mind. I'm sitting at my desk. I put the book down and on my desk to the left of my computer monitor has been this book. I've read this book, The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness. And you can't even really call it a book. It's 65 pages. You can read it, I don't know, in an hour. And for some reason, I decided to pick it back up. And then I

Starting point is 00:02:19 just, in one sitting, read through the book again. And even though I read it before and I'm obsessed with David Ogilvie, I consider him one of my personal heroes. And I didn't even know who he was until I read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters. And he kept referring to Ogilvie as a genius. And so I was like, I gotta find out who this guy is.

Starting point is 00:02:34 And so I bought every book that I could find on him. And then somebody actually told me, they're like, I'm sure you have every book, but are you gonna do an episode on the eternal pursuit of unhappiness? I was like, what is that? So months ago, I wound up buying this book. So anyways, long story short, I had this idea in my mind.

Starting point is 00:02:47 I was like, oh, I like this book. But, you know, I can't ever do an episode on it. You know, it's too small. And for some reason, after I read it this time, I thought of an idea I learned a long time ago. And this is probably because a main story, the next episode will be obviously on Quentin Tarantino. And what's remarkable about reading this book is, you know, there's all these ideas that Tarantino is finding in like the 1970s that he doesn't use until like the early 2000s. And I finished this book and I think of this idea

Starting point is 00:03:13 I learned about seven or probably seven years ago when I read Danny Meyer. Danny Meyer is a famous New York restaurateur and the founder of Shake Shack. And in Danny's autobiography, he's constantly coming up with like new ideas that no other restaurants have used before. And he has this idea where he would prompt himself with five words because people would say, oh, you can't do that. No restaurant's done that before. And so he would say, whoever wrote the rule, and then he would just say,

Starting point is 00:03:36 whoever wrote the rule, for example, that you can't make a high quality hot dog cart, that it was actually the very first version of what would come into Shake Shack. Shake Shack is now, you know, a four and a half billion dollar company today and started off as a hot dog cart in a park in New York City. And so I realized by refusing to even attempt to do a podcast on this book that I was making up just fake rules. Like whoever wrote the rule that the book has to be, you know, 300 pages for me or 100 pages or whatever it is for me to do an episode on. So I'm going to jump into this book. It was written because it's trying to solve the problem. It's like, what do you do when, you know, it's not a founder-led company anymore, the founder has passed away, but we still want to use his ideas to create, to craft

Starting point is 00:04:13 the company culture, to make sure we're doing the best job possible, the job that David Ogilvie would be proud of. And it starts with this idea, they kept referring to one of my favorite ideas that David Ogilvie had, and he has this idea of divine discontent. And you find this in a lot of top performers. And so he says, we have a habit, this is David Ogilvie speaking now, we have a habit of divine discontent with our performance. It's an anecdote to smugness. So that idea is that you're always slightly discontent with the quality of your work, the quality of your company. You're always constantly trying to prove it. Steve Jobs, you'll see this appear over and over again in the people that you and I study. Steve Jobs has a great quote on this. I'm going to paraphrase, but he says something like,

Starting point is 00:04:51 you know, what do you do when you do something wonderful? Like you just wake up the next day and try to do something wonderful again. That is very similar to the idea that David is trying to teach us with divine discontent. And so they come up with eight habits of highly creative communities and each short chapter is on one of these eight habits. And so they come up with eight habits of highly creative communities. And each short chapter is on one of these eight habits. And so before I jump into the first chapter, I just want to give you the overview that they give us. To the ancient Greeks, a good habit was called a virtue, while a bad habit was known as a vice. Each of these eight habits has a corresponding evil twin. While we work at adopting the eight creative virtues, we have to work equally hard to replace the old patterns of self-defeating behaviors. Why? Because there's an old Latin

Starting point is 00:05:29 proverb that tells us, a nail is driven out by a nail. A habit is overcome by another habit. It is important to note that all these eight habits are required in all of our disciplines and are by no means proprietary to just an advertising agency, meaning it's applicable to any business, any craft, any discipline. These eight habits belong to the whole church. And so it gives you the virtues that they're trying to make sure that every single person up and down the organizational chart is using and the vices that they want you to avoid and how they relate to each other. So I'm going to start with the vices, right, because that's a bad habit,

Starting point is 00:06:04 a habit that you're going to see reoccur more frequently than the good virtue that needs to each other. So I'm going to start with devices, right? Because that's a bad habit, a habit that you're going to see reoccur more frequently than the good virtue that needs to replace it. So companies operate out of fear. We do not want to operate out of fear. We want to operate with courage. Companies optimize for expedience. We want to optimize for idealism. Companies stick to the status quo.

Starting point is 00:06:20 We want to be curious. Most companies are boring. We want to be playful. Most companies have a tyranny of politeness, which means we just lie to each other. We want to have a culture of candor. Most companies are run on cold arithmetic. We are going to optimize for our intuition. Most companies fall into bureaucracy.

Starting point is 00:06:36 We want a culture of free spirit in us. Most people give in and we will persist. So let's take these habits, these cornerstones of good company culture in order. Habit number one is courage. Under each habit at the beginning, there's usually a short quote that illustrates the idea that they're going for. This sounds like Ogilvy, but it doesn't say it was Ogilvy. There's no shortage of brains in the industry. It's the vertebrae column that tends to be missing. When I read that, it made me immediately think of something I read in Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One, episode 278. If you haven't gone back, I think this is the second or third time

Starting point is 00:07:08 I did an episode on that book. Peter says, it's very similar to what they're saying right here about courage. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is an even shorter supply than genius. And the one vice that usually crowds out courage is fear. So they start here. I've been obsessed with Dune and I love how the main character in Dune, Paul, his mother is constantly repeating this like maxim or this affirmation to herself. She says, fear is the mind killer. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is a demon that devours the soul of a company. It diminishes the quality of our imagination. It dulls our appetite for adventure, and it sucks away our youth. Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity. When I got to that line, thought of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. He said this when he was young. He said this when

Starting point is 00:07:55 he was older. When you start doubting yourself, that is very dangerous. The team at Ogilvy says that fear is the enemy of creativity. If fear is our principal adversary, then courage is our chief ally. It is the first of the eight creative habits for a good reason. It is the habit that guarantees all the others. In the absence of courage, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished. That's because anything on the cutting edge needs to be constantly fought for and defended. Ideas are magical, but they're fragile seeds that require protecting. We clearly need a spine and i love the use of the word we there right it's not we me and you it's we as a company

Starting point is 00:08:32 our company needs a spine only with the spine will we stop double guessing and express an opinion and that's very fascinating because founders know that inherently, right? Again, the founder in this case has been dead, I think, 15 years by the time this book is written or something like that. So it says, you know, only with a spine will we stop double guessing and expressing an opinion. That's not even, I don't even think that needs to be said to a founder because a founder's opinion is expressed in the product and company that they built. One of my favorite ways to express that idea or the intent behind that idea came from this random book, one of the 10 or 11 books or whatever it is that I've read on Steve Jobs. And it says, Apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. You saw Steve's opinion in the

Starting point is 00:09:16 products in the company that he built. Only by standing up for what we believe in will we begin to build the most precious commodity in the world, trust. So trust with your customers, trust with the team, right? Then the virtuous cycle begins. Courage leads to trust, which leads to courage, which leads to trust. And upwards and onwards, we go. That idea, I didn't understand until this is like recently, you're talking like maybe two months ago, how important it was. At least I didn't understand explicitly how important trust was. And of course, as usual, Charlie Munger puts that idea into my mind better than almost anybody else, where he said that trust, I talked about this on the episode 329, which is the new version, the updated version of Port Charlie's Almanac. And he said, trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth. And it's the trust that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

Starting point is 00:10:05 established with each other very early on that provided the ground for which everything else that they did in the future was built upon. In fact, there's a great line about this. I'm going to read from Poor Charlie's Almanac. And they talked about the very first time they ever met. And it says, during that dinner, Charlie and Warren realized they shared many ideas. It also became evident to the others at the table that this was going to be a two-way conversation. There was like, I think, four or five other people, and they quickly wound up leaving, and Charlie and Warren talked all night. As the evening progressed, the two young men, Warren was 29 years old at the time and Charlie was 35, became engrossed in a wide-ranging dialogue covering many aspects of business, finance, and history. Where one was

Starting point is 00:10:40 knowledgeable, the other was just as excited to learn. Warren was unenthusiastic about Charlie's continued practice of law. That's candor, right? We're going to talk about candor. Meanwhile, you just met somebody who's like, yeah, the job that you have sucks. You should do what I do. How many people would do that? He said that while law might be a good hobby for Charlie, it was far less promising business than what Warren was doing. Warren's logic helped Charlie to decide to quit law practice at the earliest point he could afford to do so. When Charlie returned to Los Angeles, the conversations continued over the telephone

Starting point is 00:11:06 and lengthy letters, sometimes as long as nine pages. It was evident to both that they were meant to be in business together. There was no, this is the trust part, right? In the last paragraph, I'm going to read to you from this. There was no formal partnership or contractual relationship. There was no formal partnership or contractual relationship. The bond was created by a handshake she thought would be worse than being born blind. She replied, to have sight and no vision. When our dreams are little, we become little people. Our aspiration becomes meeting the next quarter's target and not losing an account.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Remember, I'm pretty sure this book, based on the way it was written, was written for internal use only. I think it's why it's so hard to find. I paid like 80 or $90 for my copy. And when I looked at Amazon this morning, the way it was written, was written for internal use only. I think it's why it's so hard to find. I paid like $80 or $90 for my copy. And when I looked at Amazon this morning, there was only a handful. And I think they started like $95 each. And they're worth every single penny. Go back to one of my favorite lines of Port Charlie's Almanac that he said. There's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. Who cares if the book is $100? You take

Starting point is 00:12:23 one idea that you use in a career and the return is a thousand times that. So it says, you know, when our dreams are little, we become little people. What is a little dream? Meeting next quarter's target and not losing account. In another word, we're afraid. We're playing defense. We need to be on offense. When we focus our life solely on making a buck, it shows a poverty of ambition. Here is David Ogilvie's take on the subject. One of my favorite things that David Ogilvie said tells an entire story here in 10 words. Raise your sights, blaze new trails, compete with the immortals. How great we become depends on the size of our dreams. Let's dream humongous dreams, put on our overalls, and go

Starting point is 00:13:04 out there and build them. And remember, the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. Nice little Steve Jobs reference that they added in there. Habit number three, curiosity. An endless trail of ideas floats in the ether. You will only see them if you're curious. What do most of us do in this dazzling Aladdin's cave? It's like, this is beautiful. What they're referencing there is, it really made me think of D. Hawk, the founder of Visa. He had this great line when he was a much older man.

Starting point is 00:13:32 He said that life is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced, right? So that's very, to me, it relates to what the team at Ogilvy is saying here. Like, we're in this amazing, wonderful world, this dazzling Aladdin's cave. And what do most of us do? We close our eyes. He, and this is what they're going to quote Einstein here. He who no longer pauses to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is good as dead. His eyes are closed. So how do we fix this? For a start, we have to ask stupid questions like a six-year-old does. Once again, Einstein has something to say on this matter. I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted,

Starting point is 00:14:09 he said. I am only very, very curious. I'm going to pause there. One of my favorite episodes I've ever done is on a single episode written or a single essay rather written by Paul Graham. The essay is called and the episode is called How to Do Great Work. It's episode 314. One of my favorite lines in one of my favorite essays that is also in one of my favorite episodes, right, is this. If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle had to reply with a single word, my bet would be on curiosity.

Starting point is 00:14:38 When we've lost the capacity to see the world and everything in it as new, unreasonable, and something that should give rise to astonishment, we have become dim-sighted and stooped with age. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's. I love it. He's got a bunch of great quotes, which is hilarious. I read his autobiography twice. The last episode I did on it's 293, if you want to check that out. But Ray Kroc summed it up nicely when he said, when you're green, we grow. When we're ripe, we rot. That is from a man who found his life's work when he was in his 50s.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Habit number four, playfulness. We are all born children. The trick is to remain one. That is a quote from Picasso. David Ogilvie never entirely grew up. He would heckle in meetings, throw chocolate cakes at dinner parties, and roll down grassy slopes in Brooks Brothers suits.

Starting point is 00:15:26 He told us to develop our eccentricities while we're young so people would not think we've gone crazy as we've gotten older. Like all creative people, David knew that necessity may be the mother of invention, but horseplay is most certainly the father. In the 1960s, the Los Angeles Times asked David how he felt about people going to work in jeans and tennis shoes when the norm of the day was suit and tie for men and a dresser suit for the ladies. This is what David told the paper. I don't care if people come to work in their pajamas as long as they get the work out. The day after the article appeared, an entire department inside of Ogilvy and Mather showed up in pajamas. The office rocked with laughter. David said,

Starting point is 00:16:09 Make it fun to work at your company. Kill grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance and get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom. When people aren't having any fun, they don't produce good work. The idea behind what David Ogilvie is telling us there reminded me of an answer Kobe Bryant gave one time in an interview. And he was asked, like, what is the quality? What is the one quality that all the great ones have, regardless of discipline? And he says, without hesitation, Kobe said, it's love. It's not rocket science to me, man. The quality that we all share is that we love what we do.

Starting point is 00:16:46 We absolutely love it. And it's a pure love. It's not the fame. It's not the money. It's not even the championships. It's loving what we do. And we do it all the time. We study all the time.

Starting point is 00:16:58 And as a result, the championships come. Habit number five, candor. Only dead fish go with the flow. It's another great line. Our job requires us to be brutally honest and totally dedicated to the truth. The tendency to be nice and avoid telling the truth is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature. David warned us about the tyranny of politeness. Again, this is why I'm obsessed with David.

Starting point is 00:17:25 And this is why one of the reasons I'm obsessed with him. And I think it's why Buffett called him a genius. It's the way he's a he's the best writer I've ever read for the podcast by far. And he has this way to brand ideas. So not only they get immediately into your mind, but they stick in there. You will remember them. And he talks about this idea, the tyranny of politeness. That is a great phrase. David warned us about the tyranny of politeness and how we can be too

Starting point is 00:17:50 agreeable for our own good. If we avoid candor, we destroy trust. We only get a spark when the stone and the flint are moving in opposite directions. And so I was thinking about this, it's like we only get a spark in the stone. We only get a spark when the stone and flint are moving in opposite directions. And I was like, oh, we're talking about conflict, inner conflict there. And the quote that came to my mind from there came all the way back from episode 180. This is from Jeff Bezos. I love it. So Jeff said, if I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. I will take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. I will take conflict every time. It always yields

Starting point is 00:18:26 a better result. If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. That is advice from Mr. Bezos to you and I. Habit number six, intuition. This is one of my favorite parts. Dreams, premonitions, gut feelings are all tempts by our unconscious to guide us. We are wiser than we think, and intuition is the art of listening to the guru within us. All of our finest thoughts and best ideas are not the work of the logical mind, but gifts from the unconscious. In a world dominated by quarterly reports and numbers, it's logic that gets all the airtime. But we are in the business of creativity and discovery. Again, talking about intuition, the power of intuition. Steve Jobs talked about this. Intuition is a very powerful thing, he said. More powerful than intellect, in my opinion.

Starting point is 00:19:09 Intuition has had a big impact on my work. That is the end of Steve Jobs' quote on intuition. Now we're going to pick up what David Ogilvie had to say about the importance of using intuition in managing your company and the talent within it. David said, Managing isn't all beer and Skittles. I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principal responsibility, to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work. To be successful, you must, out of necessity, accumulate a group of creative people. This probably means a fairly high percentage of high, strong, brilliant, eccentric, non-conformists. Some of these agencies that he's competing with when he wrote this, let's say 1950s, 1960s, right? Now he's a founder-led agency. He is wiping the floor with a lot of these old

Starting point is 00:19:56 agencies. He's taking business from them. They're creating great work. Why? Because some of these mammoth agencies are now being managed by second-generation caretakers who have floated to the top of their organizations because they were smooth contact men. These kind of caretakers cannot create potent campaigns. Our business needs massive transfusions of talent, and talent is most likely to be found among nonconformist dissenters and rebels. Again, that description, and much more likely, he's not saying this, but it's, I think, implied here, much more likely to be hired by a founder-led company, right? Big companies are not hiring nonconformist dissenters and rebels. And then the team at Ogilvy summarizes this chapter,

Starting point is 00:20:37 which is great. It's the cracked ones. It is the cracked ones, in other words, that let light into the world. Habit number seven, free spiritedness. Rule number one, there are no rules. Rule number two, never forget rule number one. The business of producing ideas is both tedious and terrifying. Most companies fail to grasp the fragility of the idea generation process. The notion that bureaucratic sausage factories, which they're talking about, right? Ogilvy was talking about, if you really think about what just happened, right, from habit to habit right now, he was essentially saying, hey, we're competing as

Starting point is 00:21:14 the second generation caretakers, a second generation caretaker is going to turn into this bureaucratic sausage factory. Now think about this, they're writing this, where they're writing this entire book as a way to try to remind everybody in their organization, in the company, to avoid coming into that. We no longer have the founder. The founder is no longer with us. He's passed on. But ideas are immortal and we can still use them. We've got to figure out systems so we don't turn into what we just competed with and overcame. The notion that bureaucratic sausage factories pumping out fodder for meetings will solve problems is ludicrous. Bureaucracy has no place in an idea's company. They just told you. Maintain free spiritedness. And rule number one is there are no rules. And rule number two is

Starting point is 00:21:56 never forget rule number one. Step inside a free spirited idea centric company and you'll notice that the air itself is different. So again, we call that great company culture. That's not the word that David Ogilvie is going to use. He's going to come up with his own term. Step inside a free spirited, idea-centric company, and you'll notice that the air itself is different. David called this atmosphere. And atmosphere is permission to practice magic. David made the management of these intangibles the principal responsibility of the top man, of himself, right? Inside a company with atmosphere, the people are not servants to the system.

Starting point is 00:22:32 They are alchemists. Let's define alchemists. That is a person who transforms or creates something through a seemingly magical process. What else is left to do but trust the people we work with and set them free? That brings us to habit number eight, persistence. This is how a problem solver goes to work. Dead ends, cabin fevers, blind spots, zigzags, U-turns, roundabouts, and loop-de-loops are all part of the creative process. You see those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters.

Starting point is 00:23:04 That's excellent. You see those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. That's excellent. You see those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. The ride is exhilarating, but one has to have a stomach of titanium. For starters, you're never 100% certain you'll ever get there. And if you even get to your destination, you sometimes wonder why you've ever bothered. Other times, the scenery pleasantly surprises you. Self-doubt comes with the territory. And ignorance, believe it or not, is an asset. Experience and knowledge make us sensible,

Starting point is 00:23:31 predictable, and dull. But if you don't know that you don't know, you're ideally poised for a leap across a chasm. So again, there's a million entrepreneurs that'll tell you, hey, if I knew how hard it was going to be, like they got to the other side of success, right? Build a successful company. Like if I knew how hard it was going to be, like they got to the other side of success, right? Build a successful company. Like if I knew how hard it was going to be, there's no way in hell I would have tried. So that's my interpretation of what they're saying here, that ignorance can be an asset because if you knew how difficult it was going into it,

Starting point is 00:23:53 there's no way that you would actually have done it. You open your eyes wide and you shut them again to see. Ooh, it's a fabulous idea. You do not assume, you look and you look and you look and look, and you look, and you look, and you look. They're writing this. I'm not stuck on. I'm not having an aneurysm here. You look, you look, you look, you look, and you look.

Starting point is 00:24:13 You look at the clouds. You look in the closet. You look at the ceiling. You look in libraries. You look in magazines. You look at old advertising magazines. You look at the Bible. You look in cinemas.

Starting point is 00:24:20 You look in art galleries. You look at people. You look at the edge of your desk. You look in the mirror. You look at your dreams. You look for patterns. You look for the tiniest similarities. You look for microscopic differences. You look under every stone. You look to heaven. You look for bloody anything. After all, discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. You're not proud. You beg. You borrow. You steal. You build on other people's ideas.

Starting point is 00:24:47 Someone was once asked, where do you get your ideas? He replied, I don't. They get me. And you never give in. Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. God is with those who persevere.

Starting point is 00:24:59 Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Before them, obstacles vanish into thin air and mountains crumble into atoms. Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one. That's because great work is never done by temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey men. Now that is a chapter on persistence. I love that line. Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one. Again, still my number one all-time recommendation has not changed after 343 of these books, biographies, autobiographies.

Starting point is 00:25:36 If you could only read one of them, and shame on you if you only read one of them, but if you can only read one of them, my number one recommendation would still be James Dyson's autobiography, Against the Odds. He's written two autobiographies. They're both great. The first one is my top recommendation. It's episode 25, episode 200, episode 300. It'll be episode 400. It'll be episode 500.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Every 100 episodes, I'm going to reread that book again and again and make new episodes on it. It's so important. And one of my favorite lines in that, he says, there is no such thing as a quantum leap. There's only dogged persistence. And in the end, you make it look like a quantum leap. This is the conclusion for this little handbook. So you see, the eight habits are really David Ogilvie's big ideal

Starting point is 00:26:14 broken into practical bite-sized pieces. They are predicated on the principle that it's impossible to improve our reputation before we improve ourselves and meaningless to put our personality ahead of our character. We are what we repeatedly do. We are what we repeatedly do is an Aristotle quote. The reason I know that is because Steve Jobs, right before he died, he said his favorite quote of all time was that quote by Aristotle, where he says, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. So we are what we repeatedly do. Our character is a composite of our habits. They constantly, daily express who we really are. Only if we are eternally

Starting point is 00:26:52 unhappy with compromise. Only if we leave no room for excuses. Only when we show appropriate disdain for expedience and absolute respect for the work. Only when all of us resolve to relentlessly practice these eight habits on every job and every project will we begin to prove that we are not Goliath, but a company of Davids. Never the end. And that is the end of this excellent little book. For the full story, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend buying a copy. I'd buy it, keep it close, keep it on your desk, keep it in your nightstand, read, reread, constantly refer to it. And it'd probably be a good idea as you're building your own company culture to write a little book like this for everybody inside your company as well.

Starting point is 00:27:37 So if you want to buy the book and support the podcast at the same time, I will leave a link down below. The link is available in the show notes on your podcast player and at founderspodcast.com. That is 343 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon. Real quick before you go, if you have access to Founders Notes already, you now have a new feature waiting for you. It is my favorite feature by far.

Starting point is 00:27:57 It is out of private beta and now in public beta. So every single person that has access to Founders Notes already has access to what I am calling Sage. I went through a bunch of different names, but someone who's actually in the private beta gave me the name. He thought it was a better description of what I actually am building because he says Sage has two main definitions. The noun is a profoundly wise person. This refers to someone with a deep understanding of life, accumulated knowledge, and sound judgment. They are often looked to for guidance and advice. And then the adjective is somebody that's wise, discerning, or prudent. This describes someone who shows good judgment and makes well-considered decisions.

Starting point is 00:28:36 Another person said I should call it Charlie after Charlie Munger, which is hilarious because that is exactly who I think of when I hear the word sage. In fact, when you log in, you'll see that Charlie is the icon for the Sage feature. And as you might already know, I was able to have dinner with Charlie Munger. And for three hours, I could ask him any question that I could imagine. And he answered using his 99 years of life and business experience. And a lot of his answers were based on the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of biographies of great people that he read. And Sage is like that.

Starting point is 00:29:08 It automatically searches all of my highlights for every book that I've read for the podcast. It searches every note that I've made on any book that I've read for the podcast. And it searches every single transcript for all the episodes, which means that Sage searches every word that I've ever uttered on the podcast to answer your question. So to review this really quickly, if you sign up for Founder's Notes, which means that Sage searches every word that I've ever uttered on the podcast to answer your question. So to review this really quickly, if you sign up for Founders Notes, which is the best way to support the podcast, you get access to all my notes and highlights for every book, all the transcripts for every episode. You can search all notes, highlights, and transcript by keyword. That gives you the ability to see how all of History's

Starting point is 00:29:42 Greatest Entrepreneurs thought about the same topic like hiring patience obsession monopoly moat incentives frugality those are just some recent examples that i've searched for myself but you can also read all my notes and highlights by book if you choose so you can also read all my notes and highlights on the highlight feed don't worry about remembering all this you're gonna welcome email after you sign up with all the ways that you can use founders notes but the highlight feed is like't worry about remembering all this. You'll get a welcome email after you sign up with all the ways that you can use Founders Notes. But the highlight feed is like a smart Twitter feed. So instead of the random ramblings of these crazy people online, this feed is actually a constant stream of ideas and thoughts from History's Greatest Founders,

Starting point is 00:30:15 and it's presented to you in a random order. I use this feature to remind myself of and review the past lessons that you and I have talked about on the podcast, but also to prompt new thoughts. It's like history's greatest founders talking directly to you every single day. I've talked to multiple people that have replaced like reading the news in the morning and said they're just reading the highlights feed and they like it a lot better. And now in addition to all that, you can have Sage read all the notes and highlights and transcripts for you and give you ideas that you can use in your work based on everything that I've ever covered on the podcast. I will leave a list of some suggested questions

Starting point is 00:30:49 that I and other people that have been in the private data have been using, or private beta rather, have been using, and ones that produced excellent results. Over time, I'm gonna collect the best prompts and questions so there'll be a section where you don't even have to type in your own question. You can just review what other people are asking, which I found very helpful because people have been emailing them to me.

Starting point is 00:31:08 And then the main point that I'm trying to get across to you is what I'm trying to build here. It's like the North Star is over time I want Founders Notes to be this ever-increasing, giant, valuable curriculum and tool that you can use your entire career with the goal of condensing and clarifying the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. You can't use the ideas that you learn on the podcast if you don't remember them, and I think Founders Notes helps you remember them. So you can subscribe on an annual basis if you choose, or you can do a one-time option, which means you get every note, highlight, transcript I have ever done,

Starting point is 00:31:38 and every note, highlight, and transcript I will ever do, plus any new feature that I add. As I add more notes, highlights, features, the price will go up, so make sure you sign up now. And you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com. That is founders with an S, just like the podcast. So it's foundersnotes.com, foundersnotes.com. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Founders - #343 The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: David Ogilvy

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