Founders - #62 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

What I learned from reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. ----[0:01] Why Ben Franklin wrote an autobiography[4:50] Ben Franklin's early education and first job [7:30] starting out in the printing business [11:00] Writing had been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement [16:45] his humble arrival in Philadelphia [25:00] Ben Franklin's time in London [29:00] how the mind of Benjamin Franklin worked [34:30] the opportunity to start your his own business[41:15] industry is virtuous [46:20] Ben understood branding [48:15] Ben Franklin creates the first subscription library [54:30] Ben Franklin's 13 virtues ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, I sit down to write them for you. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with considerable share of felicity I actually had to look that word up, felicity means happiness. The conducing means I made use of my posterity may like to know as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations and therefore fit to be imitated. Okay. So that's the beginning of the book that I want

to talk to you about today, which is the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. And the part I just read to you is actually a letter that he's writing to his son, William. At the time, Ben is in his 60s. And he's kind of explicitly stating the goal of his autobiography, which is in parallel the goal of this podcast. He's saying, hey, I've had a lot of fortunate experiences in my life. I've learned some things. And I'm going to tell you the things I learned so that if you like them, if you find them agreeable, you can actually imitate and adapt into your own life. So if this is your first time listening to Founders, welcome. My name is David. The concept behind this podcast is pretty straightforward. Every week I read a biography or an autobiography of an entrepreneur and I just try to pull out ideas that we can all use in our life. So before we get into the rest of the book, it may seem a little strange that I picked Ben Franklin as a subject for a podcast on entrepreneurship.

But he very much was an entrepreneur. So I always talk about this idea that I think it's very useful to collect ideas because you never know when you're going to use them. Case in point is several years ago, I was listening to or watching this podcast that used to exist. It's called Foundation. It was created by the founder of Dig, Kevin Rose. On the podcast, he actually is interviewing Elon Musk. And he asked Elon the question, you know, you started companies really early. You were really young.

How did you learn business? Like how did you read a lot of business books? And what Elon said, the answer to that question stuck in my mind for several years. And it influenced my decision to start this podcast. And he he says i didn't read very many general business books i like biographies and autobiographies i think those are helpful he's then he talked about uh he said i liked both franklin's autobiography which is the book we're covering today and the biography by isaacson that's walter isaacson the author and uh thenson, the author. And then Elon elaborates what's useful about learning about Ben Franklin. He says he was an entrepreneur.

He started from nothing. He was basically a runaway kid. He created this printing business. He also did science and politics. He's one of the people I most admire. So I knew it was only a matter of time until I would do a podcast on this book. I also did it a long time ago before this podcast was just focused on entrepreneurs. I read Isaacson's book on Ben Franklin and did a podcast on it.

But then I deleted it because I didn't know what direction to go in. So I may wind up rereading that and doing like a Benjamin Franklin part two. But for the meanwhile, the autobiography is a perfectly good tool to use to get some ideas directly from the mind of Ben Franklin. So I'm just going to move through. Some of these are going to be stories. Some of it's just going to be quotes. Like this is just an aphorism on vanity. And he says, most people dislike vanity and others, whatever share they have of it themselves. But I give it a fair quarter whenever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor. So let me read that sentence again he says most people dislike vanity and others whatever share they have of have of it themselves so you know people

don't like you to take pride in your own accomplishments even though we all do that ourselves we just don't want you know to to display it outwardly but i give it fair quarter whenever i meet with it being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor. So he has a little counterintuitive point saying, I understand you don't like this, but I actually think it's beneficial for people to have pride in their accomplishments. So I found that thought interesting. So I'm just going to jump, now I'm going to jump into Ben's early education, his first job, and then memories of his father. And so he says, my elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age,

my father intending to devote me to the service of the church. My early readiness and learning to read, which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read, and the opinion of all his friends that I should certainly make a good i could not read and the opinion of all his friends that should should certainly make a good scholar encouraged him in the purpose of this just a side note ben was the youngest child his father had 17 kids i had risen gradually from so he's talking about once he's in school i had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it but my father altered his first intention, took me from grammar school and sent me to a school for writing and arithmetic.

He did that for a year. And then at 10 years old, I was taken home to assist my father in his business, which was that of a tallow chandler and a soap boiler. So I guess he makes soap and candles. And he says, accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the dripping mold, and the molds for the cast candles, attending the shop, and going out for errands, et cetera, et cetera. I disliked the trade. So before he continues on the fact that he doesn't like the job he's doing, he needs to find a different one. He has some, this is how he's remembering his father many years after his father's passing. He says, I remember well him being frequently visited by

leading people who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice he was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred and frequently chosen as an arbiter arbitrator between contending parties and at his table he liked to have as often as he, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means, he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life. So he likes to have interesting people to have intelligence discussions

over at his house and he wants his kids an audience so they can learn from these discussions. So this is kind of like a mini podcast hundreds of years before they were invented. And so now we're going to learn how what Elon was saying like how did Ben get his start in the printing business and it had to come through several years of dealing with being under the thumb of his brother, which he did not appreciate, which causes him to run away, which Elon was mentioning earlier. But now he's still working for his father. He says, but my dislike to the trade continuing, my father was under apprehension that if he did not find one for me

more agreeable, I should break away and get to sea. So Benjamin Franklin had threatened multiple times that he'd just jump on a boat. They're living in Boston at the time. He'd go to another port and he'd go for a life of adventure. So he says, he therefore sometimes took me to walk with him and see joiners, bricklayers. Now this is just a list of occupations that were in their town. Joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, et cetera, at their work that he might observe my inclination and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land.

So that was his goal. One of his other sons, Josiah, had left to a life on the sea, and he says it caused him great vexation, which means it pissed him off. Okay, so it says, from a child, I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Now, keep in mind, Benjamin Franklin did not have much organized education. He was widely self-taught through just reading and talking to people. He said, my father's little library consisted chiefly of books

in polemic divinity, most of which I read and have since often regarded that at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen my way since it was now resolved

that it should not be a clergyman. Remember, what he's referencing there is his dad originally thought, hey, I'm going to have him, his occupation is going to be one of the church and then he changed routes routes he's like why did i read all these books at a young age it's so much easier to read um i'm reading books on that i'm not going

to use in my life it's basically what he's saying he says this bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer so he already had his uh his older son james was in that profession so in 1717 my brother james returned returned from England with a press and letters to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much better than that of my father, meaning the business. In a little time, I made great proficiency in the business and became a useful hand to my brother. I now had access to some better books. An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often, I sat up in my room reading, the greatest part of the night, when the book was

borrowed in the evening and had to be returned early in the morning lest it should be missed or wanted so he's basically saying he had such a desire to learn that he would forego sleep just because he only had a tiny window in which to read these books um so we're also going to see uh while he's working for james he has um he has entrepreneurial tendencies right from the get-go and And he's very, very young. I don't even think he's a teenager at this point. And then he also talks about something that – and something I've also been noticing with a lot of the notes I've been taking for Founders Notes is these entrepreneurs always talk about like there's some kind of like side thing that benefited them, had like a roundabout benefit later in life. So in one example, like this guy wanted to become an entrepreneur. He had a full-time day job, so he just blogged and blogged and blogged

and started writing about all the stuff he was learning. And then eventually that opened up for him to start a conference, start other businesses, start podcasts, which then kind of just fed into this like virtuous cycle. So Ben Franklin is going to talk a little bit about that here with the power of writing, which basically fundamentally changed his life. It's probably why he's so well-known.

It's based on his writing. First, the entrepreneurial tendencies. He started writing little stories and stuff. He called it wretched stuff, just street ballad- um stories but since his brother was a printer printer and he worked at a printing company he started printing them he said when they were printed he sent me about the town to sell them the first sold wonderfully the event being recent having made great noise this flattered my vanity so this again goes back to that whole

point of vanity where he had a really early initial success selling his books and that made him more confident to go off and do other things. So that's what I think he was mentioning with that quote earlier, that aphorism of vanity. It's like, don't indulge yourself, but understand that you're capable of learning new things. And then when you have a success like this, let it reinforce you to try to do other things, which I think is a good idea. So he says, writing has been of great use to me in the course of my life and was a principal means of my advancement. So at this point, Benjamin Franklin is not only known for writing under his own name, but he wrote under several different pseudonyms.

And so this is the very beginning of this. And so he says, my brother had begun to print a newspaper. It was the second that appeared in America. I remember him being dissuaded by, oh, this is actually really funny. We always talk about how critics, like anytime you're going to create something new, expect to be criticized, expect that people are resistant to change and they don't really know what they're talking about. So that doesn't mean like you can't get good constructive criticism, but just understand that some criticism is unfounded. It's people aren't really looking deeply into things before they comment on it. They're just, you know, babbling away.

So his brother runs into this in 1720 where he wants to, he has this idea. I'm going to start a newspaper there's already one why isn't there a second one and listen to how ridiculous now this criticism is going to be with uh with the uh with our benefit of hindsight i remember him being dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking as as not likely to succeed and the reason why won't succeed one newspaper being in their judgment enough for america so anyways he continues on he doesn't let this criticism bother bother him he starts the the newspaper and benjamin franklin franklin says i was employed to carry the papers through the

streets to the customers so another one of his first jobs is newspaper delivery boy um so some people would write uh little pieces for the paper. They'd put it under the door of the printer and they would read it. And if they thought it was good enough, they'd print it in the newspaper. And a lot of them were written under like fake names. So Ben's like, hey, well, I want to write like my brother's not going to take it seriously. If his little brother has these ideas, let me let me operate under a pseudonym. So he says, I was excited to try my hand among them, but still being a boy and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine,

I contrived to disguise my hand. And writing an anonymous paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printing house. It was found in the morning. And so the next morning, Ben's there when they all find this, and they're all reading and commenting on it. And he says, they read it, commented on it in my hearing, which means he heard it,

and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation. And that, in their different guesses as the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity. So while they're trying to guess who it was, they're just rattling off people that are well-respected. So that gave him even more confidence. He's like, oh, that's nice. I'm kind of in peers with these people.

So this doesn't last long, though, because Ben and James, like James was kind of a jerk to him a little bit. Ben got a lot of attention because of his pretty obvious advanced intellect at such a young age. And there's all these things talked about in the book, but James looked at Ben like an indentured servant. And Ben wasn't the kind of person that wanted to be controlled by anybody. So he's like, I'm out of here. So I sold some of my books to raise a little money and was taking on board privately. He jumps on a ship to New York.

In three days, I found myself in New York, nearly 300 miles from home, a boy of but 17, without the knowledge of any person in the place and with very little money in my pocket. So that's what Elon was talking about. He's a runaway kid. He had to start from nothing. He had literally nothing. But having a trade and supposing myself a pretty good workman, I offered my services to the printer

in the place. So he meets the printer. Printer's like, listen, I don't have any business for you, but I know of somebody in Philadelphia. And he says he could give me no employment having little to do. But he says my son at Philadelphia has lately lost his principal hand. The person working for him died. And if you go over there, I believe he may employ you. So Ben just does just that. He's like, all right, well, I'm not going to stay in New York if there's no work for me. And this is his humble arrival in Philadelphia as he remembers it. He says my first, and this is really interesting arrival in Philadelphia as he remembers it. He says, my first, and this is really interesting

because he's definitely accused of having some vanity of his own, but I would argue that it's probably deserved. So he says, my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was dirty from my journey. My pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings. And I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging.

I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest. I was very hungry. And my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper. So he's just walking the streets trying to get to figure out what's going on in this town. And he says, I went up Market Street as far as 4th Street, passing by the door of Mr. Reed. And then a little twist of fate here. I passed by the door of Mr. Reed, my future wife's father, when she, his future wife, standing at the door saw me and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward and ridiculous

appearance. So he actually meets the governor of the new area he's in. And, well, first of all, let me tell you. So there's two printers in Philadelphia, and he goes to see both of them. The first one that he was told to go was this guy named Bradford. So he says, these two printers I found poorly qualified for their business. Bradford had not been bred to it and was very illiterate. And Keimer, though something of a scholar, was a mere compositor, knowing nothing of press work. So this part's important because he's really identifying what he feels.

He winds up going into business and competing directly with both these guys. And he's kind of telling you his competitive analysis of why eventually he's going to compete with them and why he thinks he's going to win, which he does. So he talks about this is something that's mentioned in the book multiple, multiple times, mentioned in many, many of the books that we've covered so far. And so during this time, he said he was gaining money by my industry, meaning hard work, and frugality. Okay, so now he goes to work for Keimer,

and he's being industrious, he's being frugal, and he's still dedicated to continuous learning, and so people hear about this young guy who's reading all the time. And so he actually meets the governor of the province, and he comes and um and calls on ben he wants to know who this new young man is he says he said i appeared a young man of promising parts and therefore should be encouraged the printers of philadelphia were wretched ones and if i would set up there he made no doubt that i should succeed so he puts this

little kernel of an idea into ben's mind and he also gives him a promise. He proposed my setting up of my business laid before me the probabilities of success. Saying, hey, the printers here kind of suck. You could do better and not only can you do better, but I will help set you up. So now this guy winds up being a liar. But Ben doesn't really hold it against him even though what he does to Ben is kind of messed up. He just says, hey, he doesn't have much means. So since he can't provide means, he provides people hope. But it's false hope. So he says, hey, hey i'm gonna set you

up i'm gonna um i'm going to uh like make sure you you get the credit you need and he says why don't you go to england and pick out all the parts that you need to become a printer and so he's like i'm gonna send you a letter of credit and a few days before the journey he's waiting on it he's like oh no i'm busy i'll send it to you tomorrow then the morning comes and ben's about to depart depart he's like oh i'll send it on the ship um never arrives so um in the meantime though there's just a good example of uh of some great grandmother wisdom here and this happens on the boat toward to England and he befriends this elderly woman a grandmother just be just nice being nice to her and you remember he's

you know very young 17 18 years old this time doesn't know much of the world is now traveling abroad and he there's two young women on the boat that are paying him attention and he's like oh this is, this is great. This is fantastic. But the grandmother pulls him aside and is like, listen, I need to school you on what's going on here, guy. He says, when she saw a daily growing familiarity between me and the two young women, which they appeared to encourage, she took me aside and said, young man, I'm concerned for thee. As thou has no friend with thee and seems not to know much of the world or of the snares you is exposed to. Depend on it.

Those are very bad women. I can see it in their actions. And if you are not on your guard, I'm translating from this old English like the trying to translate in real time for you. But if you're not on your guard, they will draw you into some danger. They are strangers to you, and I advise you in a friendly concern for your welfare to have no acquaintance with them. And so this grandmother wound up being correct. They were trying to set him up to rob him.

They did the same thing for the captain of the ship, and then once they got to England, they were actually caught basically seducing men and stealing their possessions. That's what they were doing. Okay, so skipping ahead a little bit, this is where he learns the dangers of vice, and then he's just got a great quote. Okay, so he runs into his childhood friend Collins.

And when they were growing up, they were two of the most studious young people in the little town they lived in. And they read a bunch of books. They would engage in intellectual debate or just kind of talking over whatever ideas and sharing ideas but now he pops up later on in life and it says but during my absence his name is collins he had acquired a habit of sodding with brandy and i found by his own account and from what i heard from others that he had been drunk every day he had gambled to and lost his money collins wished to be employed in some counting house but whether they discovered his dramming by his breath meaning the fact that he was drunk because it was on his breath or by his behavior he met with no success he continued

lodging and boarding at the same house with me and at my expense so his friend is not only drunk but he has no money can't get a job because he continues to give in to his vices, and is borrowing money liberally from Benjamin. And he says promising repayment as soon as he should be in the business. So they wind up getting into a bit of an argument. They were drunk one day. Ben wasn't drunk, but Collins was drunk. And they were with a group of other people on rowing a boat across the water. And for some reason,

Collins decided that, hey, I don't have to row. You guys have to take care of me. And so this huge argument, because it's, you know, just more crappy, selfish behavior. And Collins decides to take off for the West Indies. And before he leaves, he tells Ben, he left me then, promising to remit me the first money he should receive in order to discharge his debt I never heard from him again so again kind of getting a crash course in in human nature here and then there's this great quote on the very next page and it says there was great difference in persons and discretion did not always accompany years nor was youth always without it so this come the context of this discussion is that

this governor wants to set him up in business even though ben's young his father hears about it and doesn't want ben to do it because he says hey like ben's too young to run a business and the response was well yeah like there's but there's a great difference in the quality of people, and it doesn't always get better with age. Okay, so this is what I was mentioning earlier, where he finds, now he lands in England, and he finds out the governor's unreliable so he realizes hey there's no there's no letters here i don't know how i'm gonna buy

these things i don't have any money so he says i began to doubt his sincerity i found my friend denham and opened up the whole affair to him he let me into keith's character that's the governor's name told me there was not there was not the least probability that he had written any letters for me, that no one who knew him had the smallest dependence on him. And he laughed at the notion of the governor giving me a letter of credit, having, he said, no credit to give. So now Ben's worried. He's like, what should I do? And so his friend says, he advised, his friend, his advice is he advised me to endeavor getting some employment in the way of my business, meaning the printing business, among the printers here. You will improve yourself, and when you return to America, you will set up to greater advantage.

So he does exactly that. He gets a relatively low-paying job. So he finds work and he finds shelter. And the problem was, though, that basically he's used to being frugal and squirreling away and saving money. But the cost of living in London at the time is so expensive and his wages are not keeping up with it and he he says um our expenses he has a friend that we're with him because of our expenses he was actually lending money to another friend i was constantly kept unable to pay my passage so the moral of the story is to lower your cost the more freedom you have um so he says um and then this is how he stumbled. The good thing, though,

is he's not able to save much money during this time. He is gaining experience, but he's gaining a lot of knowledge because there's a library next door or a bookseller next door, rather, that becomes his own personal library. So he said, I made an acquaintance with one Wilcox, a bookseller whose shop was at the next door. And he said, I might i might take read and return any of his books this i steamed a great advantage and i made as much use of it as i could so the reason i keep putting this uh pulling these quotes out is because um you know we have a lot easier today like we carry around the sum of human knowledge in our pockets but i ben talked about one advantage that he had over just regular persons was his desire to constantly improve and to learn about not only to develop more skills for himself but to learn

about the natural world that's why he did experiments in science he made all these different inventions uh all of which he would refuse patent and copyrights on because he thought that now like you should share knowledge freely but i just think it's important. This guy obviously lived an amazing life. And if he's telling you over and over again that, hey, this was a huge advantage to me, a huge advantage to me, I think more of us should take heed. I think I talked about this this week. And I'll talk more about the end how now I have a daily podcast and how to get access to that if you want. But I talked about it on my daily podcast this week i saw i think it was a tweet that says the internet is widening the gap between those that want to learn and those that want to

be entertained um and what i took that to mean is like there's a near limitless supply to learn whatever you want whatever you want to read about whatever you want to listen to podcasts on videos lectures etc um and so some of us are taking advantage of it right most of the people listening to podcasts obviously like these like the one i'm doing is obviously taking advantage of it but the dark side or the downside to that is you could also just entertain yourself to death with just mindless entertainment you just sit there watching crap all day and you could do that forever so you just have to be really careful not you know what like what path you want to choose to me i want to choose the path of people like ben franklin like i want to know more five years from now than i know

today and 50 or 50 years from now that i know today if i'm lucky enough to live that long so um oh so this was uh so he's working with a bunch of english guys at a printing press it's like phys partially physical label labor at the time that's just how the technology worked but i thought this little story was a really good look into how the mind of Ben Franklin worked. So he said, I took to working at the press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I'd been used to in America.

So he wants that physical movement. I drank only water. The other workmen were great guzzlers of beer. They said they drank strong beer. So it says my companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work. So let me read this quote before I get into the rest of the story

so you keep this in mind. Because he has this great idea. He picked up 300 years ago, however long it's been, that we're not really rational creatures. We're rationalizing creatures. So he says, It is so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one

has a mind to do so you're just really justifying your behavior you're going to see that here with this this you know drunk guy um so he says uh i thought it did i thought it was a detestable custom but it was necessary he's supposed to drink strong beer that he may be strong to labor so he's telling ben the reason he's doing this because it makes me strong what are you talking about so he says i in this this is the way ben's mind works though which i find so interesting i endeavor to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion of to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made, meaning he's breaking it down to its material constituents, right?

That there was more flour in a penny worth of bread, and therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. And what do you think the result of that was? He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor, an expense I was free from. And thus, these poor devils

keep themselves always under. All right, so now he has a new job. He gets recruited by this merchant. This guy was from England, went to Pennsylvania. He was basically broke when he arrived in Pennsylvania. He starts a, what today would be like a retail business. He buys things other people made, marks it up a little bit, and then sells it to the end customer, right? And he leaves England in kind of disgrace, not paying his debts. He makes all his money in Philadelphia. Now he's coming back to England. This is where Ben meets him. And he's coming back to pay all of his debts with interest. But he's only stopping there to grab some more stuff from England and go back to Philadelphia to his business. So he decides, hey, like, why don't you come work with me? Like, get out of this printing business and I'll teach you how to be a merchant or what we would

call today, you know, an entrepreneur. And so Ben comments on this. He says he now told me he was about to return to Philadelphia and should carry over a great quantity of goods in order to open a store there. He proposed to take me over as his clerk to keep his books in which he would instruct me, copy his letters and attend the store i now took leave of printing and this is interesting how um like the future is never predictable because uh listen to what ben says here as i thought forever so he thought he was done with the world of printing forever keep in mind obviously that's not true that's how he makes his fortune and was daily employed in my new business going about among the tradesmen to purchase various articles.

And so now he's going around buying all these things with his new boss, and they're about to leave back to America. And Ben is just kind of reflecting on that. He says, thus I spent about 18 months in London. Most part of the time I worked hard on my new business and spent but little upon myself except in seeing plays and in books. But I had picked up some very ingenious acquaintance whose conversation was of great advantage to me and I had read considerably. So he's talking about the guy that he hired. He's like, listen, I, you know, didn't make much progress, you know, I worked a lot, only spent money on plays and books, but now I've actually made an acquaintance that's going to be very helpful to me, and it was, they get back to

Philadelphia, and he says, I respected and loved him, and we might have gone on together very happy, but then this guy gets sick. This happens only like a year after they get back to Philadelphia, a year or two after they get back. And it said the sickness held on to him for a long time and at length carried him off, meaning killed him. The store was then taken into the care of his executors of his will and my employment under him ended. So now he's got to figure out what is going on.

Like what am I going to do? Now I'm back in Philadelphia and he's got to figure out what what is going on like what am i going to do um now i'm back in philadelphia and he's like maybe i should just uh maybe i should just um go back to boston so before he thinks about going back to boston he goes back to work for one of the printers keimer they get in arguments so ben leaves but then they wind up reconciling. But in between this, there's a guy named Meredith that's working with them. And Meredith is actually helpful of getting Ben to stay in Philadelphia. So he says, he dissuaded me

from returning to my native country. It's funny that they call it country. He's talking about the city of Boston, which I began to think of. He reminded me that Keimer was in debt for all he possessed, that his creditors began to think of. He reminded me that Chimer was in debt for all he possessed, that his creditors began to be uneasy, and that he kept his shop miserably.

He sold often without profit for ready money and often trusted without keeping accounts, that he must therefore fail, which would make a vacancy I might profit of. So it says, hey, you know these facts to be true. Kymer doesn't know what he's doing. My father would finance, give us the seed capital we need to start a printing company. And if we become partners.

So Ben and Meredith become partners. He says, the proposal was agreeable and I consented. His father was in town and approved of it. He saw that I had great influence with his son. So he wanted his son to be around Ben because Ben avoided vices, and his son was a drunk, another drunk. So he says, I gave an inventory to the father who carried it to a merchant, and the things were sent for.

The secret was to be kept until they arrived. So they keep working at Chimers, but they're not going to tell them they're going to compete with them until they actually have the equipment um and so during this time there's a bunch of people keimer's also a little jealous of ben because a lot of people come to the printing house and like call on ben and ben has this idea he's like well my mind and i love the way he puts this uh When my daughter sees me reading, I'm going to start saying this. My mind having been much more improved by reading than Keimer's, I suppose it was for that reason my conversations seemed to be more valued.

So he talked in the context that he's getting invited to these dinners or these taverns where people want to talk to him. So next time somebody sees you reading, say, what are you doing? Like, I'm improving my mind. And so one of these guys you know he's basically ben's becoming acquainted with all like the the older like more successful people in philadelphia and one of them tells him and he doesn't know that he's going to set up his own printing company so it's kind of like uh like prophetic but he says i foresee that you will soon work this man out of business and make a fortune in it in Philadelphia. So Kymer

was not very respected. Okay I have a note. This is confusing. Sometimes I leave notes for myself. I don't know what I'm talking about. So I left a note, croakers everywhere, and now I have to read over all my highlights because I have no idea what I'm talking about. So let jump into this so um okay so he's already opened he's already open for business at this time so he says we had scarce opened our our letters and put our press in order before an acquaintance of mine brought a countryman to us whom he had met in the street inquiring for a printer so this random guy was walking around said i need a printer ben's friends like hey send us i'll walk you over there. And this is a really interesting point, or I guess feeling,

I would say. This countryman's five shillings, being our first fruits, meaning the first revenue into the company, and coming so seasonably, meaning when they needed it, gave me more pleasure than any crown I have since earned. So Ben is a very, very, very wealthy person at the time he's writing this, and he's saying that all the money I've stacked does not give me this much pleasure. It's the first bit of money I made when I first started my company. Bless him. I have since earned, so any crown that I've since earned, and the gratitude I felt toward his acquaintance that brought him into this first business

has made me often more ready than perhaps I should otherwise have been to assist young beginners. So that's Ben Franklin saying person, the founder, as opposed to this giant faceless conglomerate, like try to spend money with the individuals because those are the people that need your help, not these giant companies that are usually far away from their actual customers' well-beings. And he's saying that, you know, I've otherwise been able to assist young beginners.

You know, we need more small businesses. We need more entrepreneurship, not less. Speaking for my own country, the wages in this country for the middle class have been stagnant for 40 years. Nobody is coming to save you. Politicians don't care about you. There's nothing they can do. You can only save yourself. That opportunity is through creating a product and selling that product to other people and then repeating it over and over again. So in any ways, I just think what Ben's saying here is extremely important. Any chance you can, you know, support the people that are actually creating stuff that you like. All right, so there are croakers in every country.

Oh, okay, now this makes sense now. So a croaker is just like a critic like a like a jerk like a pessimist so he's going to tell us a story about one so my note croakers ever is now making sense to me there are croakers in every country always boating its ruin such one then lived in philadelphia a person of note an elderly man with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped one day at my door and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me because it was an expensive undertaking and the expense would be lost,

for Philadelphia was a sinking place. The people, already half bankrupt, are near being so. And this is what Ben makes the point. He's like, that's weird. Like, what's up with all these new buildings and the rising of rents then? So being to his certain knowledge false, for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. So when Ben brings this up, he's like, no, that's fake, right? So he says, So there's another example of why you should avoid pessimistic people. They're just not fun to talk to had i known him before i engaged in this business probably i never should have done it this man continued to live in this decaying place and to declaim in the same

strain refusing for many years to buy a house there because all was going to destruction so he doesn't want to buy anything because why would i buy into you know a place that's going bankrupt and at last i had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one house as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking. Okay, so now he's going to talk about how he believes the industry is virtuous. And then we're going to get into knowing the right way to do something by seeing it done the wrong way. So there's people in town that are of the general opinion.

It says general opinion was that it must fail meaning his business there because there's already two printers in the place and then but there's this guy uh dr baird who knew ben and he gives a contrary opinion and this is dr baird's words he says for the uh so he gives him a contrary opinion for the industry of that franklin says he is superior to anything i ever saw of the kind i see him still at work when i go home from the club and he's at work again before his neighbors are out of bed i mentioned this industry the more particularly and the more freely though this has been talking again though it seems to be talking in my own praise so he's saying listen i'm telling you about my industry not just because i'm like uh like self-aggrandizing but because those of my posterity meaning my

descendants who shall read it may know the use of that virtue meaning industry is virtuous when they see its effects in my favor throughout this relation when they see that what industry brought to my life i soon intended to begin a newspaper my hopes of success were founded on this that that the only newspaper printed by bradford at a time was a paltry thing wretchedly managed no way entertaining and yet was profitable to him i therefore thought a good paper would scarcely fail so he sees this guy doesn't even know what he's doing he's making a profit. Like why would we assume that if I make a better product, I can also make a profit?

And then so he says one of our – so he starts in the newspaper and he goes out and he's trying to get subscribers, people to pay for the information that he's printing for them. So it says, our first papers made quite a different appearance from any before in the province. It had a better type. It was better printed and some spirited remarks. And it had spirited remarks of my writing. So he's writing on the dispute that's taking place between some some people in in the local government a governor and an assemblyman so while this dispute's going on uh ben is writing in his own newspaper and he's giving like pithy opinions he calls them spirited remarks but what happened

was that people were like it wasn't bland so people were drawn to it so he said occasion the paper and the manager of it to be much talked of, meaning himself, and in a few weeks brought them all to be our subscribers. So the way he is with his skill with a pen is bringing him more subscribers. But basically he's telling us that he would have been great on Twitter. And it says, seeing now, and he's talking about these subscribers, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, which is very different from Bradford. So another example of what Bradford's messing up on. Bradford was printing out this public information for the address and the contact information for the politicians.

But he messed it up. He said he had printed an address of the House to the governor in a coarse, blundering manner. We reprinted it elegantly and correctly and then sent it to every member, meaning every member of the government. They were sensible of the difference, and then that actually led them to changing. When they needed something printed professionally,

they took the business from Bradford and gave it to Ben. So he's doing well. His printing company is doing well. His newspaper is doing well, but he's almost ruined by debt, and debt is something he talks about at length. I think he mentions it like 10 to 15 times in this book, and this book is rather short. It's 110 pages, paperback version. So he's mentioning every 10 or 11 pages. So he says, but now another difficulty came upon me, which I had never the least reason

to expect. Mr. Meredith's father, which is his business partner, dad who put up the money, who was to have paid for our printing house, according to the expectations given me, according to what I thought, was able to advance only 100 pounds currency, which had been paid, but 100 more was due to the merchant, who grew impatient and sued us. We gave bail, but saw that if the money could not be raised at the time, the suit must come soon to a judgment and execution, and the execution of that judgment means that i would have ruined us as the press and letters would have been sold for

payment perhaps at half the price so um he has two kind friends who agree to lend him the money to get him out from this happening and then meredith realizes hey i'm kind of like useless I'm not good at this skill I want to go back into the country and become a farmer so Ben reincorporates and he's now the sole proprietor of his business and therefore in control and then a story on the page pages a few pages later just kind of tells me that Ben understood branding what we would call branding today. And so he says, in order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be really industrious and frugal, those are the words again, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I dressed plainly. I was seen at no places of idle diversion. To show that I was not above my business,

I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores through the streets on a wheelbarrow. So he's buying them at the store, but then he's pushing them through the street on a wheelbarrow to make it look like he's out delivering papers. Thus being esteemed as industrious, as an industrious thriving young man and paying duly for what I brought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom, meaning they saw I'm doing this and this branding gave him more business. So they solicited my custom and they also proposed supplying me with books, and I went on swimmingly. In the meantime, Chimer's credit and business declining daily, he was at last forced to sell his printing house to satisfy his creditors.

He went to Barbados and there lived some years in very poor circumstances. So now there was three, now there's two. The person that Ben used to work for and they correctly predicted that hey this guy's he's so bad at running business so it's a matter of time till he fails so it's gonna open opportunity for us they want to being correct on that oh and this was actually really fascinating so he's got a ton of achievements right more than we could even list here. But one of the things that he did, which I didn't know, is he created the country's, America's first subscription library. So he says, I used to establish the Philadelphia Public Library, which from a small beginning has now grown to become considerable. At the time I established myself

in Pennsylvania, there was not a good bookseller shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from England. I proposed that we should all bring us, that we should that we should all so he okay first of all let me back up because he has this thing and i love this idea and it's called the junto and it starts off as a small club of different tradesmen from all different backgrounds you know blacksmiths printers writers all kinds of people and he organizes it even though he's like the youngest one. He's like the leader of it. And so it starts off with like a dozen people

and then grows to a lot more than that, to like different clubs all over the country. But basically they just meet. They all read books. They all like have different ideas. They're all trying to continue to learn. And so they meet and then they they discuss the business of the day. So not only are they giving them tips to how they're running their businesses,

because they're all merchants, but they talk about philosophy and science and literature and all these different things. It's also a great product name. I kind of wish I called Founders Notes Junto if I had known this before. So anyways, he already has this going, and he's like, I propose to them, meaning the people in Junto, that we should all bring our books to one room where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, meaning these conversations, and it's fascinating.

You can go online and see uh like the list of questions so before they would talk um they would like have questions that would like basically be meant to spur in the discussion so he says um let's bring all of our books in this year we're uh into one room where we have these conferences um so not only can we consult them in conferences but they could become a common benefit each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he'd wish to read at home. So finding the advantage of this little collection, I propose to render the benefit from books more common, meaning making more accessible to everybody. If this is benefiting us, why won't it? There's no way there's only 12 people that would be benefiting from this. By commencing a public subscription

library. So few, the readers at the time in Philadelphia and the majority of us so poor that was not able without great industry to get to find more than 50 persons, mostly young tradesmen willing to pay down for the purpose, 40 shillings each and then 10 shillings each year. So 40 shillings to get started, 10 shillings each year, and we can all have access to this information. But, you know, we always talk about all big things start small. And this example of that. On this little fund we began. The books were imported.

The library was opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers. And then they had promissory notes to pay double the value if the book wasn't returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns and in other provinces the libraries were augmented by donations reading became fashionable and our people having no public amusements to divert their attention from study became better acquainted with books and in a few years were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries. I thought that was one, surprising, and two, really, really cool. And so it says, this library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study,

for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I would allow myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of any kind, and my industry and my business continued as indefatigable as it was necessary. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier, my original habits of frugality continuing. So when I read that part about, hey, like I just devoted myself to business because I enjoyed it and then I spent my other time reading. First of all, that sounds like a good idea, right? Especially if you enjoy it because then it's going to, it's actually going

to be fun. What some people might feel is laborious it's like fun for you but this whole thing is like you know i did this for a long time but my circumstances however grew daily easier my original habits of frugality continuing this reminds me of a few days a few weeks ago we talked about john bogle the founder of vanguard and he has a great quote and i do realize like what he's talking about there why is ben franklin's life getting easier the more the the every day that he's able to be responsible with his resources which to me is it's really just a definition of frugality right just being responsible um what why is it easier in life as opposed to being harder and it's because just like he's avoiding

i'm going to use john bogle's quote here to illustrate this. This is what frugality avoids. Keep your expenses low for the tyranny of compounding costs can devastate the miracle of compounding returns. Ben Franklin is keeping his compounding costs low so he can enjoy the upside of compounding returns and so a little while longer um this biography was written over i think like a decade and a half i don't have the the actual years in front of me but he wrote it he sat down to write it four different times and so it jumps around a little bit but um and i think the last time it's actually unfinished because the sentence the last sentence is even finished and he dies like a year or two after that. So he never actually completed it.

But the reason I bring that up is because after he's already successful in business and he's kind of venturing out to different things, he has this idea that he wants to be, he's composing a list of virtues. So I just want to go through this list real quick. So he says, it was about this time that I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. So he winds up not, obviously, you know, you can't achieve perfection, but he's very satisfied. Well, I'm jumping ahead. Let me just read you the listimentary spreadsheet that he wrote out, and he would write what days he adhered to these virtues and what days he didn't.

So the names of these virtues with their precepts were, and so he just lists them and he describes them. Number one, temperance. Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation. Two, silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation. Three, order. Let all your things have their places.

Let each part of your business have its time. Number four, resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve. So I guess do what you say you're going to do. Number five, frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing. Number six, industry. Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. I wonder what he would think about social media and the modern distraction we all carry around with us. Seven, sincerity.

Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly. Number eight, justice. Wrong none by doing injuries are omitting the benefits of your duty. Number nine, moderation. Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. Number 10, cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in the body, clothes, or habitation. Number eleven, tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Number twelve, chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or for the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. And number 13, humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. And so he's reflecting now here on, you know, he did this for a long time. He talks about as he got older, sometimes he would track it every day. Sometimes he would, like, he'd go from every day to every week to every month. Sometimes he would, he would like, he'd go from every day to every week to every month. But he says, eventually he just stopped doing it. He says, I never arrived at

the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it. Yet I was by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted to. So when I read that, he's saying, okay, you know, I wanted perfection and realized I couldn't achieve it. But even though I didn't hit my goal, I still felt better and happier than I did it. One of my favorite words of all time is this word called autotelic. And autotelic is just something that has an end or purpose in and of itself. So he was doing this activity for the sake of doing it. Even if you say you have another goal,

like you just enjoyed it so much that you just do it because you want to do it. So I just love that. So now he's just gonna close out a little bit reflecting on what it's like to be 79 years old. And he says, it may be well, my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice,

their ancestor owed the constant felicity of his life down to its 79th year in which it was written. So saying, I'm telling you like the ideas that led me to have a very, very happy and blessed life all the way up until my 79th year, which is how old I am when I'm writing this. What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of the providence, meaning what happens in the rest of my life, I don't know, but it's up to God. But if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness enjoyed ought to help his bearing them with more resignation. And so now he's going to list the stuff that, like what his ingredients for a happy life are. To temperance, he ascribes his long continued health.

To industry and frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune. With all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen and attain for him some degree of reputation among the learned. So going after knowledge, being an interesting person to talk to, that opened up so many different opportunities for him. And he's literally talking to his descendants right now. And that cheerfulness and conversation, which makes his company still sought for and agreeable even to his younger acquaintances. I hope therefore that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit. And again, that's closing out on exactly what we're trying to do here is, hey, I want to learn the ideas you had to have a good life. And like that last sentence says,

if we're able to, that like some of my descendants may follow the example and then reap the benefit of his experience. So if you want to get, read the full story i'd recommend anybody reading this i just think you know 112 pages of straight from the mind of ben franklin's actually a probably a smart thing to read i know the language sounds a little funny to us now but it's really not like you it takes a little longer to read certainly but, but you can put together quite easily what he means. So if you want to do that and support the podcast, if you go to founderspodcast.com and you click, there's in the header, one of the things you can do is click this. It looks like the Amazon logo. I have an Amazon page.

You can also go directly to the URL. It's amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast. So amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast. Or just go to founderspodcast.com and click the link. You'll see not only will you see this book, but you'll see all, I think I put 60 different books that I've done for the podcast so far, whatever that number is. And they're actually in reverse chronological order. So you can kind of, it's like a visual of all the books that I've done for the podcast so far whatever that number is and they're actually in reverse chronological order so you can kind of it's like a visual of all the books that we uh that i've done for the podcast but anyways if you use that link and you buy something from there amazon sends me a small

percentage of sale so um it's a great way to support the podcast um the best way however to support the podcast something i mentioned earlier i should have mentioned the beginning i forgot was that i now have a daily podcast and this is something I stumbled upon by accident because for a long time I've been taking notes just like I take notes for on books of entrepreneurs I take notes of podcasts and a lot of like I've taken a lot of them like I don't know 175 maybe I think I've taken notes on like 175 different founders something like that but anyways so founders notes before that was just just one weekly email with all the notes. It's like the key ideas.

So I take like a, just like I take a book that may take a few hours to read and break it down into like the best ideas that I can cover on an hour or two long podcast. I take a podcast that may be an hour, 90 minutes long, and I break it down into something you can read in about five to six minutes, right? So I was doing that for a while. And the company I use to do subscriptions, to collect the payments, and then deliver the emails and also the archive, which I think is extremely valuable, they added this thing where they wanted an audio feature.

And at first, I was like, why would you do that? And then I started testing it out. I'm like, oh, my God. That means I can do, just like I'm reading? And then I started testing it out. I'm like, oh my God. Like that means I can do, like just like I'm reading my notes and doing this podcast, right? So I'm reading my notes on this Ben Franklin book. That's what you just heard,

the last hour or however long it was. Now every day, so the new thing I'm doing is every weekday at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, you'll receive an email from me, okay? That email will have notes on one specific founder, their best ideas, how they think about their business, how they started their business, how they look at the market, tools they use to run their business, different ideas they have, books they read that were helpful, anything that's useful to, that we want to know, right? And when we want to know and share to a lot of people, but now what I'm doing is every day,

I'm recording these small little versions of founders that are me literally going through my notes and adding other things that come to my mind, just like I do on this podcast. So I didn't change anything. The price is still the same. It's $10 a month or $100 a year. If you want to support this podcast, please subscribe to Founders Notes because just like you saw, I do this entire podcast for free. I don't do any ads. I don't do any, I don't put anything on paywalls. So I need your support to be able to dedicate all the time I'm doing this. And like, you know, these podcasts take a long time. I don't think everybody talks about how much prep they do for podcasts.

I don't think many people read an entire book before they even sit down and record. Like that's a hell of a lot of prep. So, and I'm doing that because one, I enjoy it. And two, I think you learn a lot from it. So if you give value to my work, if you're learning from what I'm doing and all my time, please go right now. Go to founderspodcast.com, and you can click any single – the link for Founders Notes is on every single podcast I've ever done,

and it's included in the header. So it's very easy. And you don't even have to go to the website. You can go into your podcast player, and if you look at the show notes, I put the link at the bottom. So please do that. You'll get a new podcast from me Monday through Friday. And you have access to all my notes, plus all the archives, plus everything else. So I don't know, all the feedback I got this week, I did six this week just to and the and not only that like you can listen to the podcast and people respond directly to that email that goes right to me and a lot of people have

done that and the feedback has been like this is a good idea like they're so you don't even have to you can read it you can read or listen to it but if you the chances are if you like my podcast and you like what i'm doing here it's exactly what i'm doing here but for just a shorter version and every day um and I think it's, you know, again, by you signing up, that allows me the freedom to make these podcasts and make them freely available to everybody all around the world. So please do support there. I think it's, I think you'll like it. And if you can, please do the annual basis. The annual basis helps more. It's actually cheaper. It's like $8 a month. If you're $8 and 30 cents a month, something like that. If you can't do the annual basis, do the,

you know, do the monthly basis, either one, um, that you want to do. Okay. So that will unlock, um, daily podcast for me and the entire archive. Um, let's see what else. Oh, can you do me a favor to, um, if, if you're on Twitter, can you follow the show? It's at Founders Podcasts. You can also follow me at DavidCeneral1. My Twitter is linked on every page of the podcast website if you want to get it there. But at Founders Podcasts, what I'm doing now is I'm just going to be posting what book I'm working on. So you'll see a picture of the book. And then as I go through the book, interesting ideas or quotes that I find from the book, just like that like you're kind of like a behind the scenes of this podcast and if you like some of the stuff I'm posting if you can retweet

it into your network that's a good way to support the podcast too because it kind of spreads like it makes people aware that this podcast exists which is extremely helpful and finally I have a private podcast feed for those people that are nice enough that leave reviews. So every single podcast you listen to, I bet, or close to it, the host will ask you to leave a review. I took that one step further. I'm saying, hey, if you'll leave a review, you take a screenshot of your review, and you send it to me at foundersreviews at gmail.com.

So founders, just like the podcast, foundersreviews at gmail.com. So Founders, just like the podcast, foundersreviews at gmail.com. Yeah, email me the screenshot of your review. I reply back personally with an email that gives you a link directly to my private podcast feed. And if you're on a podcast player like Overcast or Breaker and you don't have the ability to leave a review, they have like a star or heart button that you can press. It changes color after you press it.

Take a screenshot, send it to me, and you'll get access to my private podcast feed. And these are just versions of Founders that I just save for reviewers, people that review. I've done five of them so far. So if you take a minute or two to do this right now, you'll immediately unlock five podcasts that I've done. And then I'm gonna do about one a month moving forward.

So, and that'll automatically update your podcast player just like anything else. And so for a minute or two of your time, you'll get literally, you know, by the time we're done hundreds of hours of work from me. And again, it's just a way for me to incentivize you because leaving reviews and recommending them in these apps like Overcast and Breaker, Apple Podcasts, et cetera, et cetera,

is really, really, really helpful. And it's a way for me as an independent podcaster to kind of level the playing field a little bit against people that have a lot more resources. So anyways, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I will be back next week. And thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for telling your friends.

I will talk to you next week.