Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy - David Senra - In Service of Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.343]

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

My guest today is David Senra, the creator and host of Founders Podcast. With an incredible appetite for biographies, David has delved into the lives of over three hundred entrepreneurs, extracting invaluable wisdom that he shares with his audience each week. Throughout the conversation, we discuss David’s love of podcasts, and what can be gained from studying the lives of not just entrepreneurs, but of athletes and film directors alike. I hope you enjoy this conversation with David Senra. Listen to Founders Podcast Join Colossus live in NYC with Patrick O’Shaughnessy and David Senra on Oct. 19. Our first interview with David, Episode 292: Passion & Pain For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus lets you ramp faster and find answers to critical questions more efficiently than any alternative method. The gold standard for research, the Tegus platform delivers unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly differentiated and reliable insights that can’t be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes (00:02:43) - (First question) - David's journey so far (00:05:13) - Why there are no negative surprises linked to his work (00:07:13) - Being bullish on podcasts (00:13:27) - The importance of storytelling to the entrepreneurial journey  (00:17:43) - The impulse of entrepreneurs who are world-builders  (00:23:03) - The universal trait of successful entrepreneurs  (00:27:43) - What David has learned from filmmakers  (00:31:23) - The dark side of the Type-A personality (00:35:13) - What he has learned from athletes (00:42:27) - The effects of early childhood on success (00:43:48) - Insights gained from conquerors  (00:49:33) - Ranking the importance he places on power, wealth, and fame (00:56:13) - The possibility of episodes on spiritual figures (01:02:17) - How Henry Ford created something bigger than himself (01:05:43) - His thoughts on ‘high agency’ people (01:11:57) - Why David is not afraid to talk about anything publicly (01:16:27) - His favorite line from Game of Thrones

Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest like the best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning at join colossus.com. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of Positive Sum and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy asset management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of positive sum or O'Shaunacy asset management.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of positive sum or Oshonancy asset management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. My guest today is David Senra. I hope David is familiar to many of you by now. His life's work is in service of founders. Every week for the past seven years, he has shared the lessons of history's greatest

entrepreneurs on his podcast called Founders. This time last year, David joined Colossus, and we recorded an episode called Passion and Pain, which has become one of our most popular episodes ever. Today, we look back at what he's learned from the past 50 or so founders he studied over the last 12 months, from Christopher Nolan to Enzo Ferrari to Napoleon. As ever, I hope David inspires you to pursue your life's work. with as much energy as he has. I also want to mention that David and I will be doing our first and probably only live show together

in New York City on October 19th during Tech Week at Webster Hall. Tickets are selling pretty fast, so if you're interested in joining us, you can check out the link in the show notes. Please enjoy this great conversation with David Senra. All right, David, we're exactly one year to the day, just realized this now, from the first time we released an episode together, which we called Passion and Pain, was one of the biggest, the most popular episodes we ever did. In the one year, a lot's happened. I can't believe it's only been one year. I'd love you to begin by just describing what happened in that one year, pre and post and then the experience during the last 12 months. Just to bring everyone in on the story, it's been

such a cool thing to watch from the bleachers for me. And I'm sure it's been incredibly fun for you. I hope it has. Been the best year of my life. I think the thing that sticks up the most is how wrong I was about the good idea I had was like, wait, let me lock myself in a room. Let me recompose Let me follow my natural interests. Let me read biographies of some of the people that achieve the greatest things in the world. And then once a week sit down and record what I learned, what I was most interested about. The bad thing was putting a giant paywall in front of it and severely limiting the actual reach for all these like lessons of stories. And then coming on to Colossus and you helping me in a year, the audience is like 50 times as large as it was. Doing the same amount of work, maybe even more, because I'm still working seven days a week. I'm still completely obsessed with it. but just this idea was like, okay, I knew the information was good, but now it's out in the public, and then you get to actually see how what you're making influences some of the most successful people in the world. And then it opens up, I would say the beauty of podcasts, and you know this firsthand, is that their unique experience generators. And so, like, I go from toiling in relative

obscurity for six years, doing something I'm completely passionate about, and then greatly amplifying. And then I find myself in Charlie Munger's dining room, in Charlie Munger's library. I find myself sitting across eye to eye having a two-hour lunch with Sam Zell. These are things that I didn't ask for. I didn't try to even make happen. They came to me. And so that has been really the, in addition to reading another now 60 books, rereading some of the books that I have read previously, I think this idea is like that I've been hitting on is treating the world as an entire classroom. Conversations I have, the books I read, the podcast I listen to, every single experience that I have, treating that as there's a lesson that can be applied to my work. Because now the audience is so much

larger, there's just, I'm learning at such an accelerated rate. I thought I was learning a lot. And I was in six years, right, in isolation. But then you actually get out and there's so many other ways to learn. And then I'm learning from people in real time and then going back to the books and realizing, oh, these things feed on one another. So I do feel like in the last year, the reason I say it's the best year, my life is one, I found my life's work for sure. Like, I'm going to do this until I die. And two, it just feels good to know that people get value out of something that you put a lot of your life energy into. What has been most surprising on both sides of the ledger, so the most positive surprise and the most negative surprise about now having such a huge number of people that are

listening to this obsession of yours every week? I can't think of anything negative. Nothing. You don't feel distracted in a way you didn't before, in some ways, like a competition for your focus or anything like that? I think I have an unfair advantage over most people is because I spent half the day, complete isolation. Not talking anyway. Just literally having one side of conversations every day. with some of my history's greatest entrepreneurs. And the biggest, I think, juxtaposition or the biggest contrast between how I spend half my time and then pop up into the world is all the people I read about, they have insane levels of focus. And then I pop up and look around what everybody else is doing and no one can focus on anything. And so it would be a colossal waste of my time because I believe

that learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing behavior, right? And so this idea I'm becoming friends with the amen to dead, spend so much time studying them. I can literally have a conversation in my mind. It's like, what would Steve Jobs do if he was in my position? What would Charlie Munger do? What would Sam Zell do? What would Edwin? land do? What would S.A. Lauder do? And they tell me to focus on like, you already know what your path is. We had this conversation last night where you're like, the person I know that wakes up and knows exactly what they want to do. And all I want to do is read books, make podcasts, and then talk to founders. That's it. There's nothing else. I mean, I obviously spend time of my family, take care of my

health, but there is nothing else in that. So I don't really feel distracted because I get the work done first. I'm not going to wake up and be like, hey, let's just hang out. Let's like fritter away. No, I'm going to read. I'm going to make podcasts. I was talking to Matt, the CEO of Colossus, and he has the show on a classic called Making Media, which is hilarious. I was listening to one of his episodes. And he was talking about there's all kinds of stuff when you run a media company, a podcast network. Recording are good enough. Guests fall out, whatever the case is. And he goes, and of course, Senra just shows up and just shows up in the field. Because everything I want out of life, that is the key to everything. As long as I wake up every day, read for a few hours,

which again, I thought everybody was doing. Because I was so isolated, because I don't really pay attention what other people are doing, I try not to. I swear to God, I thought people just read as much as I did. I didn't know that so few people do. Oh, this is so simple. I wake up every day. I read for a few hours and I sit down once a week and tell people what I learned. I will get everything I want out of life if I just do that for an excessive long time. And you're seeing this now with the audience growth. Last month it was the biggest month ever, right? Next month will be bigger in that. It's just compounds and compounds and compounds. It's like I don't even have to look at analytics. I have to look anything. I just wake up, read and keep doing it. There's no distraction for you around

wanting to expand founders into being more than it is? Another thing I didn't understand by myself, right? I may be the most bullish and optimistic person on podcasts in the world. I truly believe, we were talking about this yesterday, like, you're remarkably consistent on this because I really believe it. I think podcasting is a giant technological revolution. I think it's a printing press for the spoken word. I was invited to teach a class at Notre Dame last week, which was recorded and should appear

as a podcast soon. And what I told them, they're 22 years old. I was like, do you understand when I was your age? There's no such thing as a podcast. And right now, you guys have such an unfair advantage. I use an example. I go, you could right now, there's nobody stopping you, right? You can listen to every single episode of Invest Like the Best.

You can read every single transcript of Invest Like the Best. You can read all the books, the people that go on Patrick's show, they'll tell you the books they read, the documentaries. You can do all that. And if you truly do that, there's no other fucking education in the world that is superior to that. The two guys teach in the class are both NBA. students and they listen to both the best like the best and founders. And I asked them because I'm not an MBA, right? I was like, tell me what you had to do to get your MBA. And they explained it's year and a half this and you left that. I go, how much did you read? All the case studies, all the books. And they

told me, I was like, I have founders. I have far surpassed that. It's not one MBA. It's like fucking 10 of them. And that's the unfair advantage. If you are a driven intellectually curious person, type of personality, these are the people listen to your show, these people listen to in mind. We meet them. We're not making content for the average Joe. The average Joe is off doing some other shit. They're watching Mr. Beast videos or whatever. the case is, right? No, for the side, but that's the shit they're into. I don't spend any time doing that. It kills my wife because she's like, watch the show with me. I was like, no. I was like, I want to read books. I want to listen to podcasts. I want to do something else. Or I'll rewatch Game of Thrones

because there's actually less than I can. Seriously, there's actually lessons I can get in there. And so I really do believe. I'm not bullshitting. I believe podcasting is a miracle. The education I described for a young person interested in investing, right? It's free. You don't charge for anybody in all over the world can do this, not just people. And I told them. I was like, it's hilarious that I'm actually teaching a class of Notre Dame. I couldn't even got into Notre Dame. They would have looked at my GPA, my everything else. Like, what is this?

I was working full time in high school. I was like, no. It could not have been a priority. I had to make money. If podcasts existed then, I don't think I would have went to college. Because the amount of learning that I have done on my own, even in the last seven years, I can't think of a better education. To answer your question, let me go back to why.

You can't really tempt me. I don't peek my head up and look at anything else. Nothing on social media, very few other podcasts versus. Yeah. That shit is better than the stuff I'm reading about. These people live lives so remarkable. Somebody wrote a book about them. And you're saying, hey, read this Twitter thread by this 26-year-old who raised a bunch of money

and his company is going to be out of business in two years. No, I'll go reread Henry Ford's biography. I'll go read the 10th book. I've read over 10 books on Steve Jobs. The idea that everybody knows his name, everybody's using his products, and they're still not understanding lessons that he imparted. One of the most lessons, this is tied into focus too. I was thinking about this because I just reread Ed Campbell's book, Creativity.

The difference is the order in which you learn things. has an effect. So I think the first time I read Ed Campbell's book, it'd be like the 30th book on founders I read. I think it's up so like 318 now. So I read 300 books in the interim. And what was fascinating is something I've been thinking about a lot that leads exactly what I think the opportunities that you have, the opportunities that come to me as well is Steve Jobs made it really easy to interface with him. And so when you're saying, hey, what do you want to do? It's like, well, I want to help people learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. That's the tagline of founders. But you stumble on founders in your podcast player. What's the first line? Learn from

history's greatest entrepreneurs. You know, know what's going to happen when you press play. And what was fascinating is Ed Camel tells the story of the first time he missed Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was like 29 years old. He's still Apple because he wanted to buy Graphics Group, which was what turned into Pixar. Graphics Group was owned by George Lucas at the time. Ed Campbell was working for George Lucas. George Lucas goes to a divorce. I don't have to tell the whole story. That divorce and Steve getting kicked out of Apple, right, led Steve to buying Pixar. And in fact, it was interesting. The agreement was he was going to give George Lucas $5 million and agree to reinvest $5 million, right? He went to putting $55,000.

million of his own money into it. And Steve Jobs became a billionaire off Pixar before he did it off Apple, which is a fascinating story. But Ed Camel said something was so fascinating to me that I really try to do my own life. And I think opens up opportunities not just for me, but I think can be widely applicable to other people. And he just says, yeah, you get in a room with Steve. He's like he's so easy to interface with. He doesn't use that words, but that's my interpretation goes, he tells you what's important to him. Make insanely great products. Four words. Do you want to make insanely great products? And come with me. Not great products, not good products, not products ought to sell. The best in the fucking world. Do you want to do that? Then come with me. Easy to interface with me. The reason that

I have unfair advantage and, you know, you played a huge role in this is like I went from being completely anonymous to a world-class network in 12 months is because I'm easy to interface with. Why would Sam Zell ask me? He would listen to the podcast and he's like, I want to meet David. Why? Because I'm easy to interface with. This guy's read 300 biographies of entrepreneurs. The idea that I'm going to spend two hours of my time with him and not learn and him being not interesting to talk to the probability that is zero. And so I really think about this is like, I think this is important inside companies too, because as you know, as you're building the two companies you have, you're telling your stories and you're constantly having to reinforce what

you believe. And that's why the people that do this, Steve Jobs, the Edwin Lanz, the Jeff Bezos's, they all do this. They repeat, they have a certain like handful of principles that they just repeat over and over and over again. They're making it easy for you to interface with them. When Jeff Bezos says, I love when Ravi Gupta was on your show, he's like, Amazon doesn't have 14 principles. They have one. obsess over customers. And so when Jeff Bezos says every single person in Amazon, are you obsessing over your customer or not? You're so easy to interface with. And so I think that's the biggest change. It's like just made myself easier to interface with. It turns out there's a million people just like me and you that are fascinated by this stuff and want to be around other ambitious A players.

One of the things we were talking about last night is a very adjacent topic is the role of storytelling in everything that you've studied. Obviously, you're literally reading life stories. but the use of stories by these entrepreneurs is related to this notion, which I love, of make yourself easy to interface with. I just think that's an incredibly powerful, simple lesson. Say a bit more about the role of storytelling, as you see it, in entrepreneurship, and even in the people you've studied, the athletes, the inventors, the filmmakers. I want to go through all these categories separately, but storytelling large first is something I think you've spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about. Because there's a lot of investors listening. I also think that one of my favorite quotes on this comes from the founder of Sequoia Don Valentine when he nailed it right away. He's like, listen, the art of storytelling is critically important for entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs that come to us cannot tell a story. You have to have the ability because money flows as a result of stories. There's a line in Coco Chanel's biography where they say this explicitly. A lot of people do this implicitly. Like Steve Jobs, excellent storyteller. He's the one that gave me one of my favorite quotes. He says the storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. Go watch his presentations. He's a

masterful of this, right? He's not building a product. What they're doing is they're building an entire world and they want you to become a part of it. And so in Coco Chanel's biography, she says, when my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place. They feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar, but that delights them. They are privileged characters. They don't call them customers. Belenziaga called his customers patrons. They actually create their own language, which I think the best entrepreneurs and investors do in their companies. So he says they feel satisfaction as perhaps they trace vulgar, but that delights them. They are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them, this is a far greater pleasure than ordering

another suit. So I was fascinated because there's always a blueprint, right? People always ask me, like, oh, what book are you going to pick or who do you want to study? It's like, I follow my own interest because if I am interest, right, the most interesting people in the world are the most interested. So if I just go to a bookshelf of all these unread books, right, and it's like, who am I most excited to spend a week going deep and learning about it to tell other people about. One way I keep building on founders like a 400-hour conversation about this entrepreneurship right now, right? And hopefully it's 40,000 hours if I can get there, is I always want to know the people that I respect and admire. Who did they respect and admire? And I was obsessed. I knew nothing about Enzo Ferrari. Nothing.

And yet the single longest book that I've read for the podcast was a thousand-page biography of Enzo Ferrari. And in that book, he's talking about this gentleman named Bugatti. And I was like, oh, I know what a Bugatti is. I woke up in a new Bugatti like that. I love hip-hop. I didn't know their car is $5 million or whatever the case was. But he was talking about everything he had learned from him. And I was like, oh, there's always a blueprint. And so I had just discovered a book through a listener that was published in like 1962, written by his daughter, only available in French and just was recently translated. There's only like a handful of copies, impossible to find. You study Bugatti. You study all these people. He built his own world. He told a story. You're not just buying a car. You're buying a piece of art, a handcrafted piece of art. How he sold his products is like he set up in this little sliver of France and he built his entire world.

So he had his family French estate there where his kids grew up. He had his factory, which to call it a factory is handmade cars. So it's not like a bunch of every machinery. He had his gardens. They called him a feudal baron because a lot of the early Bugatti customers were also early aviators. So they'd fly in their own. He had a meadow next to his factory. A landing strip.

A landing strip. But when you say like you're planning. It's like a right flyer. You and I would not get in this thing. Like, I can't believe this happened. But he would invite you into this story. It's not just like, here, here's the car. Enzo Ferrari did the same thing. Enzo Ferrari set up in Maranello and he would tour the factory personally, right? You would spend time with Bugatti. You would spend time with Ferrari. You'd walk around. He'd tell you about why he's doing this. Where's the materials coming from? No discussion on the price. And then at the end's like, oh, I want one. Okay, you got to have to wait a couple years. And then there's a great story in the Ferrari book where

one of his employees hears him saying that he goes, but Enzo, we have all these unsold inventory behind the factory. He's like a Ferrari has to be desired. Storytelling. It's all storytelling over and over again. I'd love to talk a little bit more about these entrepreneurs that build these literal worlds like Mulsheim where Bugatti is based and Brunella Cucinelli and Solomayo comes to mind, books right behind me. It is fascinating to me that you've studied all these people that built literal places that are worlds that they control down to the two by four, it seems. What is going on with these people that do this slowly over time? What is the...

they literally doing, what do you think that impulse is of this subcategory of entrepreneur that builds a town or a place that you can go? Luxury seems to come up over and over again in this category. I'm fascinated by these literal world builders. I'm glad you used the word impulse. I don't think it's rare. I think it's all the extension of the same things. The reason I'm obsessed with reading some of my favorite genre of biographies are filmmakers, because I consider all entrepreneurs as world builders. To me, all the businesses, I talked about this last time where it's like, all the businesses is an idea that makes somebody else's life better, right? The first first step is what service do I want to do to other people? I think we all want to achieve greatness.

And greatness is just at a fundamental level service of other people in a way that they enjoy and then hopefully you scale it up and you can be of service to more people. That's how I think of what I'm doing is if I keep going out there and doing the best job possible at the podcast and then tell as many people about it as possible and then encourage them to tell other people. I would love millions of people because I truly believe I've already heard thousands of messages, thousands of emails, DMs. These stories will make your life better. They'll make personal life better. On a fundamental it's a level. I think every single entrepreneur, whether they're doing this consciously or not as a world builder, right? Now, what's fascinating is the world building I'm doing is very ephemeral. So you don't

really feel it. I don't ever look at analytics. So the only way I know that it's expanding is one, you see the influx of inbound messages and then I see my podcast host bills. And I'm just like, oh shit, that's a good problem to have though. But what I love is they realize they want a physical location. That is something that I haven't solved that me and you've talked about for a long time. is something I've been struggling for years, what is going to be my version? Because I'm definitely going to copy that idea. You're already starting to copy that idea. You're playing monopoly over here in the real world. For the benefit of the listener, we've built a building dedicated to what we like to do, this concept of life's work and podcasting and investing. And I'm trying

to convince David to come up, join us. The amount of talent that is being pulled into this physical location, and I've been here for a few days, and then the energy that you have. Like, I couldn't sleep last night. I knew we were going to record today, and so I try to get well rested. woke up at 4 in the morning, then I sit in the dark, I do this a lot, this is going to be weird, but I sit in the dark and no input and I just think, right? I've never been able to successfully meditate and do anything. I actually got this idea from Jim Simons. I read his book, and when he had a problem, they'd find him like laying in the dark on a couch in his office. And he's sleeping. He's like, no, he's thinking. He's awake. And so I feel like no sound, no visual. And like,

I do just let my mind go crazy. And so I've already recorded this podcast hours and hours and because I was thinking about all the different weird things, barely wrote anything down. So I don't even know if we'll touch him. But I think the compulsion here is your company is a world that you're building. That has a physical structure and like, yeah, it could be an office and then maybe it expands to multiple locations and then it becomes global or whatever. But this complete integration, this is what Jeff Bezos realized and one of the genius things that he said, he's like, I don't believe in work life balance, I believe in work life harmony. And so if you study Bugatti or Ferrari or George Lucas or any of these people that have built Skywalker Ranch, me and you were talking about this, 4,700 acres. He built

his own world. Let me back up one step. What I love is where they get the proceeds of building their world is betting on themselves first. He bet on himself with American graffiti and then the first Star Wars made so much money. No, I'll make this work. And he's like, oh, now I get the line share those profits and then what you're doing, reinvesting your profits into a physical location that can then feed on your work and it just makes everything you're doing better. I think it's the same impulse. It's like, okay, my company's a world, but I have other parts of me. The funny thing is you'd go visit Bugatti in Molesheim and you'd stay at the end that he owns that you have an appointment. and then all of a sudden, like, you're walking across the field and you see him take off on his horses

because he said when he had a problem to solve, some people go for a walk, some people go work out, some people lay in the dark, whatever the cases. He wrote horses. He's like, this is where all my great ideas come. And then he'd solve the unsolved problem, and then he'd take his horse right to the factory. So I just think they realized that everything feeds on it. You mentioned Cuccinelli. Here's a crazy thing about this world. If you're talking about the world's greatest investors, which you do on your podcast, and I talk about the world's greatest founders on mine, right? they are more alike to each other than they are to the average person. So I read Cuccinelli's book, put it on to the world, I thought it was fascinating. Absolutely loved everything about him. He built

the world. He understood. He's like, I want to have a mission bigger than just selling cashmere. And I'm going to re-invigorate this area that I think there should be money pumped into here. And then I can provide hyping jobs. And then we have cafes and we have the whole world. I would do an episode on his book, put it out there. He sends me a handwritten note thanking me for doing that book. and then does the most Italian shit ever and sends me his own version of olive oil. It's just like the most disorienting thing ever. And then why? Like you study him.

Oh, they all do the same time. They're voracious readers. They're unbelievably curious. They treat the world as their classroom. Every single conversation he has on philosophy in a cafe or a book he reads, he finds a way to apply those ideas, use him as metaphors and strengthen his business. I don't ever fear this. I say this in Jess, but like I'm almost scared people are going to stop listening to founders when they realize I'm just telling. it's the same personality in a different body. I think that's why it resonates, right? Same thing

with the work that you do. We had this conversation with a guest and he's like, that may be an episode on Rockefeller, but that's just how I feel the exact same way. That may be to go back to your original question, like what's the biggest positive is how many shockingly successful people I find listening to your podcast comforting because I'm that too. If these stories are all the same and it's just people in different clothing, whatever phrase you want to use, what is that story who is that person. You had to describe, I have Da Vinci's famous illustration of perfect man or something like that. What is the through line that unites all these people and these stories? We use the term life's work. I think there's lots of ways you can talk about it. How do you think

about who that universal story is, the universal person is? I've been actually thinking a lot about this. I think it's related to that question. There's like this myth that the best entrepreneur is like super young. And then I go and look, I'm like, well, I've read 317. these books. When do they do their best work? Nobody does their best work when they're 20 or 25. They may start it or whatever the case is, but many of the entrepreneurs I most admire got started relatively late in life. There's a great line in Edwin-Land's biography. He says that 30-year-old, he achieved everything he wanted in life except success. There's one of the best entrepreneurs to ever do it. If he was alive today, he'd be kicking all these entrepreneurs' ass up and down

the court, without a doubt. There's very few people that have ever lived like M. S.A. Lauder got started later. Michael Bloomberg got fired. And he's still at it. There's all these examples. I think the through line is, I always say, I wake up with a burning desire to achieve mission success. You have to pick some kind of mission, something to dedicate your life to, and that is always in the service of others, because that's what a product does. A product makes somebody else's life better. The iPhone that Steve Jobs created made billions of people's life better. I was asked this question at Notre Dame last week. They're like, well, what do you say to people? They need motivation to get going. I was like, entrepreneurship's an internal thing. You say

nothing to that person. You move on. There's this great line, actually, somebody said, and I want to make sure I don't get off track to answer your question, though, because it brings so many things to mine where somebody gets it exactly. They're like, hey, I don't want advice. I want stories, reflections, and notes from your life and work. I will naturally extract the advice and tips most relevant to me by reading your stories. And somebody responded, that's Founders Podcasts. There's no prescription here because you're smart enough. I've never been an entrepreneur or an investor that says, tell me what to do. So, you know, no, no, what Christopher Nolan says, me and you were talking about that episode and his insane perspective on life was fascinating, where goes back to this, to use the world

is a classroom. He's like, all these experiences, he's like, I can go to a museum and look at a piece of art. I can watch a film. I can listen to a piece of music. I can read a book. I can have a conversation. All of that is ingredients for my work, and it doesn't work unless you have a foundation which to put it on. So the foundation he has is he knows he's going to make films. So now every single thing, me and you know we're going to make podcasts. So everything I experienced in life, the conversations, the crazy event we went to last night, the conversations we had yesterday, the phone calls will have. All the such is happening is that's just fuel for my work. And that's internal. No one told you to do what you started. No one had to tell me what's due, right? And so the way I

think about it is like, okay, you know you want to do something. You probably don't know what it is. In all cases, you're probably going to have to start multiple businesses, right? And so the reason I think the most interesting part about this and why I think you see the entire arc of a person's life in a biography is so important because you see some of those most smartest, most productive people struggle and they don't know what they want to do. And in many cases, they try something like, oh, I think I want to do that and I don't want to do that. The way I think about the same personality type is, and I have no way to prove this, this is just instinct or intuition-based. I sincerely believe that the reason that people tend to do their greatest work later in life is, yes, the obvious one is I have a lot more experience. They're a lot

smarter. Don Valentine has this great quote where he's like, I love second time entrepreneurs because they failed the first time. Now they know what they didn't know and they can kick the shit. I think he says kick the shit out of the person that hasn't learned yet, right? He says something like that. He said it better, but he has great language. And I actually think this is something that directly that I've learned in the last year. No, I actually think the important ingredient is they took more time to know themselves. And I think the people that get to the top of their professions, their work is a reflection of that person. The line I always say on the podcast is that Apple, Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. And I think Steve knew himself more at 40, much more at 40,

45, then he did it at 21, did it at 30, they did at 35. He's the greatest example because it's like, who the hell Mike Morris has that great book, Return to a Little Kingdom, the updated version. And he's like, there is no other story like his. He's like, when did a founder get kicked to a company that he created, comes back and then goes on the greatest run ever. And then he says, essentially he calls it the second founding, the re-founding. And he goes, and the second time he did, he was alone. So that's my answer. I think what ties them all together is they do the work necessary to get to know who they are and therefore can trust their own judgment. And then Christopher Nolan, his products are his taste. He's telling you, like, this is what I think is good. And if I think

it's good, I can make other people obsess with it as well. I realize that of the Founders episodes, obviously there's so much of it that I haven't listened to every single one. I've listened to a lot, but my highest percentage category is filmmakers. I've listened to every single filmmaker episode that you've done. And in the last year, you did Nolan and James Cameron. You've mentioned Nolan a few times. I'd love to pick apart those two a little bit more. And maybe you could talk about Inception, the movie that Nolan made and how long it took him to make it. And just like James Cameron's whole life is just completely fascinating, really because of what they were able to accomplish. But maybe also for like their personality types. I love to hear what you learned from those two guys in particular.

I am very envious of filmmakers or the people, maybe outside of athletes, I think they probably share this with athletes. But something that I think me and you are trying to help other people do is like as much as we can. If we can tell these stories, we can bring these conversations to light. It's like, everybody's really searching for their life's work. And the bizarre thing about filmmakers is you go back and read Spielberg, Coppola, Cameron, Nolan, George Lucas, every single one I've read so far. And it's like, they knew they wanted to be a filmmaker when they were like a kid kid, like seven, eight, ten, twelve. I didn't know I wanted to be a podcaster back that because the podcast isn't exist. But even if it did exist, there's no way in hell. There's just something remarkable about the fact

that you knew you wanted to do it. And then your entire life is like, oh, yeah, that's a job. Okay, how do I get to that? And so everything in their life, one of the most impressive things about Nolan to bring up to him is people are like, oh, yeah, this is what I mean is I'm very skeptical that anything external helps an entrepreneur. People do what they want to do. We're not what we believe. We are what we do. It's not what we believe. It's just your actions. And people can read that very clearly. What's Christopher Nolan's actions? Well, wanted to be a filmmaker, didn't have any money. No one would fund it. So he gets a job. And he does his first. film records on the weekends every weekend for a year. That's how long it took. Now, if he could do

the full time, if somebody gave him the money, then maybe it does in three months or the case is like, I don't give a shit. This will happen. Did it without permits. Figured out, oh, you got a dog over there. I'll use that dog as a prop. Well, can I sneak in here? They're relentlessly resourceful. And you see that with James Cameron. The James Cameron episode is insane because this also talks about this is the most surprising thing is, right? Where when you do something, right, you don't know what their response is going to be. And I was obsessed with the James Cameron episode and I was making it. I spent an unbelievable amount of time. I was done with the research and normally, I record right away. I spent multiple days. I'm like, no, there's just something weird here that

I want to spend more time with it. I don't know what. I wasn't reading anything new. I was rereading what I already read and just spending time thinking about it. I put that episode out, by far the most critically acclaimed episode I have ever done in my entire life, the amount of messages. And these are super impressive people saying like, this is the best episode. This is the one that I was obsessed with. What I loved about James Cameron is high agency, relentlessly resourceful people I've ever come across. He knew when he was growing up Canada, okay, I want to be a filmmaker. He watched Ridley Scott's 2001 Space Odyssey, which is also the film that inspired Christopher Nolan to become a filmmaker, which is interesting that they shared that they had the same reaction,

even though they didn't know each other. He's living in Canada. His dad gets transferred to Orange County, California. I think he's like 14 years old at the time. What kid that's in high school wants to move high schools, right? And he's like, oh, okay, cool, can we go tomorrow? And his dad's like, why? He's like, because that's closer to Hollywood. And then he goes there and he's like, well, shit, I don't have money for film school. What do I do? USC is the greatest film school. Everybody knew it. That's where attracted. Attracted Lucas, checked Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Scorsese, all these people around that area at the time. And he's like, okay, what am I doing? He's like, well, I'm driving a truck. I'm a fucking truck driver. Okay, so I can't go to film school.

I'm going to some bullshit little community college, but I can go to the library. They'll let anybody in the library. And then he goes and scopes, at the library, and he's like all these graduate level, like, film course dissertations on special effects that are very, like, these esoteric things are very hard to understand. They're on the shelves. Well, I can't take them, but I have a hundred bucks of photocopy. He says, he's like, I gave myself a graduate level degree in filmmaking for $200 in Xerox copies. He would copy that on the weekends, and then at night and on break, when he's driving the truck, he'd read them, and he taught himself. That kind of person's undeniable. It didn't matter. He just happened to

choose film and then ocean exploration, but whatever that personality type, whatever that guy wants to do, he's going to get to top of expression. It's the same thing over and over again. What's the dark side of with these two guys in particular, maybe Cameron in particular, of this way of living? There's an excellent GQ article, a long-form GQ article that Cameron did when Avatar 2 was coming out. And I said this on the episode, but I literally went to sleep every night listening to that over and over again. And that's another thing that I think people, I'm going to come back to that real quick. I just maybe think of something that comes up, because this is why they put people to whatever you do for work. You really need to tell people what

goes into what you do. Because people see the finished result, they don't see what goes into it. And so for every hour of recorded content that I make, there's at least 40 to 50 hours of research and reading into it. And so the fascinating thing about the Cameron thing, and that's the benefit of biographies because you see just decade after decade of practice and everything else. Advertisers like David Ogilvy, Albert Lasker, Colin Hopkins, the people that built the modern advertising agency, that's their principle. I'm just literally stealing it from them and they would use it over and over again. Just people don't know what goes into the product. and the more you tell them, the more value, it becomes more valuable in their eyes because they know what goes into it.

So the GQ article is fessing, though, because I didn't know anything about Cameron other than watching his movies. And you have to read between the lines. And so his fifth wife, what, pause? Pardon me? And then you learn more about him. And I'm like, oh, that personality type. Of course. He is high agency, highly disagreeable, adamant about getting his way.

These are usually bad husbands, bad spouses. There's actually something interesting that just happened really recently. I find Arnold Schwarzenegger so fascinating because I can't find another parallel for his life story. You moved to another country, got famous for working out, became the highest paid movie star, married into their royalty, and then you became governor of a state you can't even pronounce. What just happened here? How did that even happen? And what's fascinating, so I read every single thing that I found about him that he wrote

because he has two autobiographies that he wrote. Then I'm watching the new documentary on Netflix about him. And then I see there's this book called Arnold and Me, written by his live-in girlfriend when he was from like 20 to 26. And you know this, because I've told you, any book I can find, I love biographies. There's a bunch of biographies.

I'm reading one right now about Winston Churchill that ends when Churchill's like 26. I've read biographies at Theodore Roosevelt. Ends at 28. There's a biography of Steve Jobs, ends at 30. There's a biography of Arnold Schwarzenger

ends at 30. This is very fascinating because you see who they were before the rise. And what was hilarious to me was because I am so engrossed into this kind of behavior is normal to me. I was like, oh, I got to order that book.

Read that book. The book is 300 pages of her, being, I don't get it. Why can't I change Arnold to who he is? And I was like, I could tell you from looking at that guy, there is no changing him. So the main message from that episode is that insanely driven people, like an Arnold, like a lot of people you have on your podcast, like everybody I study on my podcast, you either have a supportive spouse or you don't have a spouse. And you see that with Cameron or it's just like, I'm not going to compromise. Maybe this fifth, I think he's been with his fifth wife quite a while. Looks maybe, maybe he's probably mellowed. It's in the 60s now.

But yeah, that's the dark side, that they're so intent on what they're going after that they will do anything to get it. You mentioned Arnold. I'm curious about athletes. Our definition of life's work is a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. You've touched on a lot of these ideas already. Athletes are a really interesting case. In the last year, you've done episodes on Jordan, on Tiger, on Arnold. I think there's one of Mike Tyson coming out. So you've really done pretty deep dives on some of the iconic all-time great athletes. What have you learned from them? I don't know that those four. let's say exactly fit my definition all that well. But it makes me actually question my definition, not the other way around, because it seems as though these guys fall in the same category. We saw Venus Williams play last night. There's lots of athlete examples that seem like there's a lot to learn from them, but they're very different than entrepreneurs or even from filmmakers where the film is sort of like a business, a production. So what have you learned from all the

athletes that you've studied in the last year? Why do you feel consistently drawn back to some of these personality types? What's different about them? I just did an episode on Paul Graham's essay, which I think is one of the best essays I've ever read. It's called How to Do Great Work. He picked up because he's read a ton of biographies. He's seen a bunch of thousands of entrepreneurs up close. They all use what they learn as like metaphors for their work. So I actually think the athlete as a metaphor is the clearest way to describe the part of an entrepreneur. If you get to the end of Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dogs, like, oh, this is all the same dream. It's like entrepreneur, artist, musician, athlete. It's the same personality type, just directed as something else. Now,

I would argue that the people you mentioned like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, especially, I don't consider Mike Tyson an athlete because I think combat sports. The only sport I really pay attention to is MMA. And that is straight up instinctual combat. There's no higher stakes other than war. You're literally going out to do it as much damage as possible. But what they all share is their calling is competitiveness. There's a great line. And to some degree would I think scare other people. That's why I'm glad that so far you asked if like what's the negative about founders. I don't think you could be like a normal person. I think it's going to self-select, right? It's like this one weird guy with this giant head sitting in a room by himself, just a stream

of consciousness for an hour. If somebody said, I take a deep breath and I just spit off fire for like an hour. And I think it's not the easiest thing to listen to because a lot of these stories like the Tiger Woods things where he's just like, I've never found a better feeling than beating everybody else. You're the last person standing. The reason this is so important is because it comes from, you can't understand a person unless you understand what was their early life like, what were their parents like, why are they the way they are? And so the one thing that I received, there's one line that I say over and over again that I learned from Francis Ford Coppola's biography, that I get the most messages by far about. And it says you can always understand the son by the story of his father.

The story of the father is embedded in the sun. That's in every single biography. It's what people resonate the most. It's what I get the most messages about. In the case of Tiger Woods, and I'm going to use Michael Jordan too. Tiger Woods, his dad, engaged in psychological military warfare with him. And so everybody focuses on his dad, which, yes, that's a large part of that biography. What about his mom? Me and you have kids around, Tiger was 11, right? We both have kids around the stage, right? Do you imagine driving your son to a competition?

They're playing golf. This is not like high-stakes shit and saying, hey, no matter what, you keep your foot on their neck. You never let up. It's not just his dad. His mom was like that, too. His mom, after his dad cheated on his mom a bunch, read the book or watch the Tiger documentary on HBO, and they talked about this a lot. And his mom would tell his son, it's like,

oh yeah, your dad is soft. He's like, he forgives. I never forgive. The craziest thing I learned in that biography is that Tiger's parents never got divorced. They stayed married. They separated. So when Tiger's dad dies, it's up to his mom. She had the right to decide the burial. One of the most famous people on the planet and one of the most famous athletes to ever live, his dad is buried in an unmarked grave. That was his mom's decision. What kind of environment was he raised in? And so same with Michael Jordan, super competitive.

His calling is just being ultra competitive, winning, playing zero-sum games, and I have to be there. There's 29 losers and one winner. And I'm going to do everything to make sure I am that one winner, right? And comes from his dad saying, oh, go in the house with the women. You're not one of the boys. You're not one of the men. It's like the story of the father's embedded in the sun. I think the ending to my Jordan podcast, because I do re-listen to my old episodes, I think that's one of the best endings I've ever done because it's like, that's the way the book ends. His dad is dead.

Highly likely that Michael Jordan is better at his job than anybody else has ever been at theirs, right? And at the end, it's like, am I good enough, dad. still in like the dark recesses of his minds like this I'm going to prove to my dad I don't have to go in the house with the man I am good enough and so you can't understand that you can watch documentaries about this you can do also you have to understand what the hell took place in their early life the idea that I'm going to get distracted or I'm going to fumble this opportunity you can look up and down my family street no one is even remotely close to the opportunity that founders can provide for my kids to make sure my kids don't go through what I went through or anybody else my family tree. It's like, I'm not doing this for me. One of the things I love is the Bugatti

biography was like this, Soul Price, who's the most influential retail over all time. I did an episode on him. One of the things that I think drives me is, yes, I'm super competitive. I want to be the best in the world at this very little niche. The narrow niche is like, I want to make the best podcast in the world on history greatest entrepreneurs. I don't get a fuck about anything else. I don't care about business podcasts in general. Investing podcast is like this little niche is all I care about is all I'm going after. And one of the things that drives me is I want my kids to be proud of me. The idea that Bugatti's daughter writes that biography about her father, she was so impressed with the man he was and the work he did. That's the opening of the book.

We want to tell his story. He was a remarkable man. Soul Price. Most influential retail of our time, most people don't know who he is. You know who knows who he is? Jim Sinigal, founder of Costco, knows who he is because that was his mentor. Jeff Bezos knows who he is. Sam Walton says he stole more idea of some Soul Price, anybody else. I do an episode of Soul Price. It is written by Robert Price, which is his son, right? And this is the miracle of podcasting, why I'm never going to get distracted. And I put that episode out, this is the second time I read the book. And Sol's son, who wrote the book, sends me an email, said, you honored our family. That's fucking incredible. So this is what I'm after. The way he ends the book on his father, let me read this excerpt if he don't mind. Again, his grown

son, his grown son writing about his father after he passed away. So was the poster child for the American dream. His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. So was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropists. He celebrated 70 years of marriage, was a good father who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn't get much better than that. It doesn't. He's 100% right. If you get to the end of your life and your kids write that about you, you won. And I don't give a fuck if you have $50 million. Your kids, the people that know you the best, that would know the real you. People can fake all kinds of shit. Your kids know who you are. And they don't want anything

to do with you. You're a failure. I don't get fuck how rich you are. The examples you've given of the story of the son and the father oftentimes are quite dark. And the person that we're talking about who's got a book written about them, the Jordans and the tires of the world, had extremely tough relationships. Are there examples of the opposite where the relationship is more like the one you just described with Sult Price or the one that you're seeking to achieve with your kids? that led to the same sort of excellence that these very tough environments led to. I don't think anyone listening wants to do what Tiger Woods' dad did to Tiger. And yet it produced Tiger.

And lots of people want to be Tiger or someone like him. There was a great line I heard recently from a friend and mentor of mine, which is around the notion of envy. And his beautiful little idea was you are allowed to envy somebody if you envy the entire life. You're not allowed to envy pieces of it. And I think if you read that tiger biography, very few people would walk away and say, actually, yeah, I want that whole package. They want the glory. But if you read what he went through, I don't think anyone would trade places.

At least certainly I wouldn't. So what about the opposite of the virtuous influence of great parentage or early life circumstances that led to kind of greatness that you've studied that I think a lot of people want to achieve that are listening? Sad to say, can't think of a single example. I'm sure there is. Nothing comes to mind right away. I have to go through all my episodes to really think about it, but it comes from like this desire to either prove your father wrong or in the case I'm reading a biography of Churchill. His dad, he was like an aristocrat. Churchill didn't have to do the life he wanted to, but he had that desire. He's like,

I'm not just a son of a successful man or a famous man or a powerful man. I can achieve even higher than him. I haven't finished a book, so I'm not entirely sure if it even gets into his actual view. But from the very beginning, it's like, oh, clearly there's this father-son dynamic here that is pushing him along. Almost I like delusions of grandeur. He talks about knowing he was destined for greatness when he was like a teenager. The way he talks actually motivating for me in a weird way. Unfortunately, I just think in general, negative drives. Like fear or failure, I think is a way more intense drive than love of success.

We say we're chasing average success, and that's what we think we're doing because it's a positive spin. But I think a lot of people are actually just like terrified. I'm terrified to be a failure. Biggest fear I have is that I'm not going to live up to my potential. People could say, oh, yeah, he was a failure. That's way more important than anything else to me. Just to push on maybe the most extreme category related to some of these ideas is the category that I would call conquerors in the craziest sense you might think of like Genghis Khan or something,

but you studied Napoleon. There's business versions of this, probably like someone like Vanderbilt would come to my mind. Who have you studied in the category that I'll call conquerors? And what have you learned about this group of people in the same vein that I asked about athletes? So Alexander the Great Napoleon, I've done a bunch of episodes, I think, on both of them. those are the ones that come to mind at First Conquerors. In a business sense, yeah, I would consider Vanderbilt is up there. I think the robber barons in general

were just more extreme than what we see today or at least the people operating today are probably better at hiding it. And with time might tell, like some of the stuff they did are likely as extreme. The conquering thing is a weird thing to me where I don't even know if I should admit this publicly. So I read this book called The Mind of Napoleon

and it was published in like 1950s. It is just a collection of 300 pages of direct quotes from Napoleon talking directly to you. There's two reasons I study Napoleon and Churchill is I always want to know who influenced them. And if you study the history of entrepreneurship, pre-World War II, all of them are inspired by Napoleon. The longest speech on record that Rockefeller ever gave was about Napoleon and if Napoleon was a businessman, he'd be the greatest businessman that I ever lived. And then after World War II, everybody's inspired by, they're still inspired by Napoleon, but Churchill just appears over and over and over again. So I was like, I have to

understand them to really understand these people. Right. And mine and Napoleon, also because that was interesting because what may be a very important technology in a company is Sam Altman's company, right? And Sam Elton said in 2018, when he was a build open air or whatever, the most important book he read was to mine and Napoleon. So same thing. It's like, I'm not trying to pay attention to any new company now because I'm focused on my own. But that's interesting. Why did he say that? Is there something in that book? Are these things related? And the thing that Napoleon did for me, it's even embarrassing to admit. He says if you die and your name is not known, then your life was useless. Now, I think his was

glory for himself because he said, I had the opportunity to rule the world. Like, who wouldn't? Me, I don't want to rule the world. I don't want that kind of life. But that personality type of Alexander Grape, they don't give a shit if they lived to 30, to 40, to 50. It is more important that they have a chance to be the very top of everything they're doing. Their trade is different. In business, what I love about entrepreneurship is for a vast majority of human history is like the way you built, quote, unquote, wealth is you killed people for it. You stole their land, their women, their cattle, and that's it. There was no market economy. Now, it's all positive some. Me and you, we make podcast, products, whatever is like make people's life better. There's a benefit

to us. I'm not taking anything from anybody else. I'm adding to it. Napoleon really made me realize don't hold yourself back because there is a weird hesitation with me. And so I'm learning, if you think about founders, all founders is my personal curriculum, but it's externalized to the world. I just make it public. I'd be reading these books even if I didn't have a podcast. I just said, hey, let me do this extra step. And then hopefully you can be. benefit from, because I'm going to be obsessively learning and trying to get better because I think you just had our mutual friend Jeremy Giffin on the podcast, which is one of the best episodes of invest like the best I ever heard. And I spent time with Jeremy. And I think the weird thing is

how everybody says he's so smart. And it's kind of annoying that it is in a great way because I do like Jeremy, but like one of the first times I'm going out with him, he's like, I think he called me a deranged college professor, which was hilarious. Good line. Is that biting wit that I think people love him for. We're sitting there and he goes, I'm pretty sure that this whole founders podcast thing is you didn't have any mentors growing up, so you have this insane search for like somebody that could show you the way. And I was like, God damn it, he understood me better than I understood me. And so the Napoleon thing, part of me is obviously introvert. I said to remember myself and I talk, I don't have any guess. Clearly, that dude's an introvert.

I want to spend half my waking hours alone. I desire solitude. But part of it is like, well, this is the craft that I've chosen. I realize there's an inconsistency in me that I didn't understand and Napoleon told me about. And his whole thing was just, you really want glory. Now, I hope that the glory is not glory of David Senra, but glory of the work that I do because I legitimately think the podcast I'm making is changing people's lives, right? And I want to do that. And that's why I said, all the messes I get, get messages every day if the people are nice to you. Thank you for what you're doing, that kind of thing. And it amps you up, gets me out of bed in the morning. But also, it's like, I was being hypocritical and saying, well, yeah, I want to do this, but I still want to preserve my privacy,

or I don't want to put my face on video, all this other stuff. And Napoleon's like, fuck that. You have a gift. See what that gift takes you. But do not hide it under like a bushel or sabotage yourself. All in. You're either in the game or not in the game. And these are not even explicit things that are said.

Again, most of the lessons I'm pulling off are not explicit. Do X, do Y. It's like, oh shit. That line made me think of something else. I am sabotaging myself. And so that book has really pushed me to, I'm willing, if this is my goal, then I'm willing to do everything in, sacrifice of that goal other than the sacrifice my health or sacrifice my family.

I know that's a good idea and an interesting lesson because I think you see it everywhere. You see self-sabotage amongst talented people all the time. There's that interesting idea of the upper limit problem. I can't remember the author who wrote about this right now. But this idea that we all create this fictional ceiling for ourselves. And if we approach it, we self-sabotage to like bring ourselves down. I certainly see that in myself. And it's fascinating that Napoleon is the person that helped you out of it.

We were having this conversation where you even told me. Yeah, there's this great, a very fun party dinner table conversation that I first got from Charlie Songhurst, which is one of the most popular episodes that we ever did. But the very first thing we talk about in the episode is that he likes to have people stack rank, money, power, and fame as their motivators are the things that they would choose. They could stack rank, which was most desirable to them. And I find this to be one of the most interesting and revealing questions you can ask somebody because most people don't answer it accurately.

You ask a couple follow-up questions. You can get people that change their rankings pretty quickly, and I've gotten pretty good at it. It happened because I was surprised at my own ranking, and so anyway, that's the setup for you. I think it is actually helpful. And, again, people that know you well and actually observe you so much easier to see flaws in other people

than it is in ourselves. And so my ranking was money, fame, power, right? Because power to me is now I understand a better definition of power. is like, okay, what you want to happen happens, right? But I always think of power in history. It's always like fucked up things. I don't want people to tell me what to do and I don't want to tell other people what to do, right?

But the ability to make changes in the world. So if you frame it like that, yes, I do want to make changes in the world. I am not ashamed to say the reason I'm obsessed with podcasting is because I think I have a role to play in the formation of a brand new industry. I think I can be a good example. I think I can influence the trajectory. Because you study the history of entrepreneurship, let's say I have a major, right, in the history of entrepreneurship.

Well, then the minor is in new industry creation because a lot of these stories happen. They're just at the right place, right time with some race set skills. And that's where I feel I'm at. I was like, oh, podcasting is going to be a giant industry. It's underpriced. It's way more influential on people I even understand. I'm completely addicted to it. I'm compulsively to have to do it anyway.

So maybe I believe this because of my compulsion. Maybe I'm wrong, right? But the way when I read these stories is don't hide that you feel that way. It's not from an arrogant standpoint. I'm not saying, I am special. I am obsessed with this. I think about a lot more. It's comforting.

Same example as I guess, oh, well, lean into the things that make you extreme. Now, I think this ties to why I do try to put barriers on myself where I say, hey, I'd rather be like an Ed Dorp or Soul Price or Brunella Cuchinelli, the people that had amazing professional success and didn't destroy everything around them. But I also know that my personality type, what I have to be careful with is I see, I think, why this resonates. People see themselves in these other people. It's why it's called founders and not companies. People identify with people and don't identify with organizations. And I know my personality. enough, you have to be very careful here because you could be so obsessed with your goal that you destroy things that you actually love and that you know that people when they get to their life regret doing. It's arrogant for me to think that these people that are, in my opinion, smarter and more accomplished than I am, made mistakes that I'm not prone to make. Let me tie this back to what we were talking about. Well, you're like, no, it's not money, fame power. You're like, no, for you, it's fame, money, power. And the reason I said money at the top is because when you grow up with an absence of it, you realize how powerful money is. When I say money,

it's not money to buy Ferraris, none of that shit. It's to make sure I have control over my environment. I get to spend time who I want, and then my kids are in a safe environment. They're not harmed. That's the main goal. But your point was, well, fame, not because you want to make yourself famous, but because you want to win. And your game is podcasting. And because you have such an insane desire to win, that fame has to be at the top. It's interesting when you do this exercise. My favorite follow-up question is, okay, so you get the thing. you want, what are you going to do with it? The question, what do you want? Is the most powerful, interesting question? And then you have to square that with people's behavior. Is their behavior,

does it show or prove the thing they say they want or not? And very often it's not the case. People's revealed preference or behavior is different than their stated preference or behavior. Anyway, I encourage people to think about this question for themselves and their friends. It's really interesting. I'm curious if you think the people you've studied would have consistent rankings of these three or if they'd be all over the map. The answer is I don't know. I'd have to think about it on an individual basis. It's definitely not money. The thing I'd know for sure, which I think a lot of people misunderstand is they think because done at the highest levels, entrepreneurship creates the greatest financial rewards in the world. The richest people have built companies. They're the wealthiest, right? There's no way you're going to read like James Dyson's biography and be like, oh yeah, he's doing this for money. Really? Vacuum cleaners for 14 years, 5,127 prototypes for money? No, this is not for money. The only people I'm really interested in, I talked about this. Everything comes down to me is products. And the reason everything comes down to products is because products is the way that you express the service you do for other people.

And so that's why it's, well, you're going to get distracted? No, because I love the product that I'm making. All I'm thinking was, when I'm spending 40 hours for one hour of recorded audio, I have to make sure every single minute or every single section of the podcast is this valuable to other people. So I would definitely say money is not going to be the top for them at large. Maybe power is probably ahead of fame, though, because power is changing the world. I had this conversation last time I was up here to visit you was what I wanted to think about is I love the fact that so many people listen to my podcast, some people listen to your podcast. I'm kind of envious to people make physical products. Imagine if Steve Jobs was still alive. And everywhere you go, every single where you

go, the thing that was first took place in your mind is in these people's hands and you see it everywhere. So it's got to be power because he literally changed. And they would think about the most influential entrepreneur. I pick Steve Jobs up there right now in the last like 20 years or whatever. Go back 100 years. It's got to be Henry Ford. His product literally changed the geography of the world that we live in. There's suburbs because of that. There's highways, everything because of this mass production of cars that he figured out before anybody else. What is that like? That's power. To cut at the premise a little bit, I think people when you hear these three have this like very selfish undertone to them. And And obviously, the healthiest drive and motivation would be something different.

And so I just want to offer maybe an antidote to this exercise. There's this guy that I spent a bunch of time studying, his name is Dr. Govinda Van Kataswami, who was an eye doctor who started this hospital called Aravind, I believe, in India, when he was quite old, he had sort of had a full career. And then he spent decades building this hospital that's cured millions of people in India of cataracts. And he has this amazing quote towards the end of his life. He said, intelligence and capability are not enough.

There must be the joy of doing something beautiful. When we grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify ourselves with all that is in the world and there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping. It is ourselves that we are healing. I love that articulation of it. To me, that's what I'm searching for when I listen to some of your episodes. I hear these stories of Tiger or others, I think of my son or my daughter.

I don't want that story for them. I want a great story for them that comes from a place like Govinda laid it out there. That's why I say to build something for others is the middle part of that definition. You can cut through these three motivators, which sound very selfish and get to a higher place. But what's fascinating to me, you're the world expert on this, is that there just are not a lot of Govinda Venkataswamis in history. There definitely are some. You could argue that the world's great religious figures. I'd love you to go study Muhammad, study Jesus, study Buddha.

I would love you to read their stories and do your thing on them because I do wonder, is that the natural next iteration of some of these stories that could be maybe a bit more aspirational than some of the scary life stories you've studied that lead to greatness nonetheless. So it's funny you said that because one of my favorite authors is getting Paul Johnson. What I think people more authors should do is he writes these 200-page biographies. The Churchill one of Churchill one is so good. Yeah, they're excellent. The Churchill episode I did on Paul Johnson's book is one of my favorite episodes I've done and one of my favorite books.

and it's hilarious that you said that because I just downloaded and started reading his biography on Jesus. So I don't know if I'm the right person. You're a right person. This is going to go on an interesting conversation. Goes back to the influences of the best thing about tying the ideas to the life stories of people to develop them. Applies obviously my self-worth. I think I'd be biased because I grew up in the church. In my own business, I don't care what people believe and what they don't believe.

Unfortunately, like my mom was a fundamentalist Christian, where like she got cancer and the kind of churches she was involved in and exposed us to, she didn't seek medical advice. She tried to just pray about it. It's changed me as a person to watch the person that gave birth to you slowly whittle away and refuse hell and then die in one of the most grievous ways possible. I started reading it and I stopped because I'm like, I don't know if I can actually do this. Maybe I will. I think reading these multiple times actually thinking about, and there's a bunch of books that I read and never turn into a podcast, But I wonder if I can actually do that because I do think it's interesting because talking about founder, founder of a religion, founder of a religion, a founder of an organization, founder of nonprofit. I just like people start things from scratch. I think that's very fascinating. But I do want to go back to this idea of service because this is something I also think that entrepreneurs instinctively know. I think outsiders don't. Maybe my favorite maximum from the history of entrepreneurship is money comes natural as a result of service. And people are like, yeah, but they get so rich or whatever the case says.

A lot of people think they're doing it just for money or whatever. I have a different perception. Like, if they're doing it for money, they would have stopped a long time ago. They work for decades after they already have more money than they'll spend. And then I've also experienced this in my own life. And it's obvious in the books. There is some kind of future benefit from this human impulse that's clearly reoccurring. And the fact that a lot of these people wait to the end of the career, they know they're dying. And yet they try to document every single thing that they know for the benefit of future generations. So obviously Sam Walton, right, knows he's dying. He's got cancer all of his body. He knows he's dying.

he's writing that book, who picks up that book and influences him. Jeff Bezos along other people, right? Steve Jobs talked about that. He knew he was dying. He's working with Walter Isaacson to do that. Ingvar Camper, the founder of IKEA. Everybody tried to get him to write a biography. You wouldn't do it. Then his co-writer says, hey, but you should look at this as like service of future generations of entrepreneurs. And so then he does it. He had a seven-decade long career. This happened in my own life, right? Which I didn't know at the time it was happening. And it was a direct result of what's taking place in my life in the last year, where I had lunch with Sam Zell before I had dinner with Charlie Munger. I did the Charlie Munger episode first. Sam Zell

listened to that episode, right? I'd already spent two hours, one-on-one, it was me, him, my friend Rick, conversation is just like the one we're having here, right? And then he listened to that. He's like, I want to do that. He's like, I will fly down to Miami. Let's have dinner. We'll spend a few hours with David, give him more content, and then he could make I had dinner with Sam Zell episode. That dinner was scheduled, right? The day before the dinner, It was canceled. He wasn't traveling because he was sick. Three weeks later, he was dead. And I didn't know he was sick. He obviously knew he was sick. And the reason he was doing it is not because of me. He loved entrepreneurs. And he knew a bunch of entrepreneurs. He listened to my podcast. He traveled all over the fucking world doing this. He just loved doing that. He wasn't making money on it. The guy sitting on billions and billions of dollars. But he loved entrepreneurs. And he benefited from other mentors. There's always a blueprint. There's always a mentor. There's always a helper. And I think that's the biggest thing where I made you laugh yesterday. The way I think about the partnership that we developed. I relate everything to either hip hop or sports or Game of Thrones or something like that. The analogy between me and you is like Dr. Dre signing Eminem.

I'll take it. It's a lifelong Dre superfan. That's what happened because Dr. Dre on his own path had developed an impressive body work, earned the respect of people. And if he says, hey, this guy's good, you should pay attention to him. That holds weight. And so he put the thumb on the scale and launched Eminem. And then what happens? Eminem goes fucking crazy. And he's still doing it. We're still working 9 to 5, still making music 25, 30 years later, which is hopefully my path. I get this message all the time. I hope you never stop podcasting. The only way I ever stop podcasting is of some way I learn how to wrap, because then you have to worry about it because that's the only other job where I'm like, that seems pretty cool.

And then I would do exactly what I'm in him did. He's not doing it for monies. Got more money he could spend. He does it because he loves to and people enjoy the results of his labors. I love this notion of all these stories of people deciding that they can give back and sort to pass the torch through lessons and stories or whatever to the next generation of founders. I used to have this motto, I guess I still do, which is simple, learn, build, share, repeat. Like if you just follow that loop, it works really well for you. We started to think about our favorite episodes being what we call the only episodes, meaning it's somebody that's really hard to convince to come do this, but we get them to and

we're the only one that they've done. And the reason is that exact same idea. These are people that have learned really valuable lessons. And this notion of service and passing it on is lovely. Dr. Ben Kataswami that I mentioned before, his journals, someone found his journals, and there's all these little scribbles in it, and I love these little scribbles. There's some of them that were funny, like, how do we make Aravind more like McDonald's? He was obsessed with McDonald's because it was so efficient, and everyone in the world was like the same process, and he wanted to do that for eye surgeries. But the line that I think about all the time, it sort of haunts me, is how do I become a more perfect instrument?

And he thought about it that way that he was an instrument, nothing more, for this thing that he was building. And I would love to hear about history's founders and what you've learned in the last year about this notion of personal growth is too lame of a title for it. But I like this. How do I become a more perfect instrument? If I'm devoted to something greater than myself, which I think you and I agree that people should be, then the question is, okay, how do I become a more perfect instrument for that thing? who comes to mind when you hear that phrase, somebody that honed themselves as an instrument in devotion to something, creating something greater than themselves for others? I mentioned Henry Ford earlier.

I think he's the greatest example because what's remarkable, I've read, I don't know, five books on them. I'm going to read every single book I can find. And I'm talking about his professional life. His personally is a weirdo. He had one idea. This is something I've been reading about Don Valentine a lot lately. And he's what we teach entrepreneurs, they only have to do a few things well.

People are surprised. Like, if you just do a few things well and do it over a long time and keep getting better at it, that's how you build a fantastic company, right? What I think about him is he literally had one idea. When he was a young man, he's on his 20s when he's trying to do this, then he's in his 30s when he's starting his company. He's just like, I want to make a car for the every man. It's kind of weird that we're building $6,000 cars when the average person makes less than $3 a day. Who's buying these cars? 500 people in the entire country. You can't say he did it for money, even though he's one of the richest people on the planet. By 1919, you know, 100% of Ford Motor Company.

His whole thing was just, it goes back to experience he had in his early life. He hated the toiling of manual labor He started on the farm, and he combined his distaste for the toiling of a typical rural American lifestyle at the time, right, with his innate love of mechanics of all things. He would take things apart. And he's just like, well, can I build machines that relieve human toil? Think about if me and you wanted to travel and there's no car. What do we do? We're walking. You're on a horse. This is a crazy thing also where I think of the reason I try to isolate myself, because I know everybody's going to be influenced by things they take in, right? Which is why I'm so paranoid about the quality of what I'm I put in my podcast because the mind is a powerful place in which you feed it affects it in a powerful way. I want to affect people in a powerful way with good things, good ideas, good stories, anything that can help, especially in their day-to-day work. What's fascinating is you'd be shocked at what people can get used to. I've read about all the early car manufacturers. If you were living in New York City in like 1895, your job could have been. You wake up every morning, say by to your wife and kids, you spend the day cleaning up horse shit and urine all day long. It was like tons and tons of

horse crap on the streets of Manhattan every year and people are like, eh, what do you need this car for? And they were just used to it. This is also where I know it's frustrating dealing with me. My wife tells me the same thing that you tell me and that other people around me tell me. You're like, God damn, I can't get an idea into this guy's head. It takes months and months for him to actually six months to be precise. I do think there's a benefit. Here's going to be an extreme comment that entrepreneurs and investors will understand, but normal people won't. I was like, I truly believe that you should believe that your opinion is more important than any opinion around you. Because I've seen this example over and over again, Henry Ford, stop working. You don't need a car?

Design a faster horse or a better horse carriage or whatever. Every single time somebody creates something new, you have the vast majority, 99% of the people around them saying you shouldn't do that thing. What do you do it? Give up. What's wrong with the status quo? This is part of the brainwashing I'm doing to myself where it's like, yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. If you adapt that belief, everybody's like sometimes you're right when everybody else is wrong and sometimes you're wrong when everybody else is right. But that's the life you choose. This is what I want to do. And so I do think that's actually a good idea. So he was the person that comes to mind because he was so wealthy and he didn't retired and do anything. He's just like, I have this one idea and I want to see this idea coming to

fruition. But I'm sure there's a million examples. When you think of high agency founders, it's a term that describes probably most of the people that you read, but it's a sliding. One of the things we keep talking about is within everywhere, there's power laws, within even in the books that you've read, the 300 people, the top couple people versus the bottom couple is like a mass disparity. And the bottom couple had books written about them. So there's just always these spectrums that I find really interesting. And so I'm curious when it comes to agency, how you think about that term and who comes to mind. And what's the role of agency like? My friend George Mack gave me the definition of what a high-hgency person is. When you're told

no, what's your next response. For these people, it's like, no is just the first step. And then move on to the next. One of the greatest examples of this, I didn't know. There's an excellent book. everybody's read. So what I try to do is I don't want to just read all the books that everybody read. Yeah, Steve Jobs, I'll read The Book. I'll read Titan. Rockefeller will read, I'll read Shudog or something wrong with that. But I think my advantage and edge is like, I find these weird books. No one's read. Many people think they're boring and I think they're fucking riveting. And so I found this book. I went through, I reread Titan because I was obsessed with Rockefeller, right? And then what I do is I go in the bibliography? And in the bibliography, I'm like, what is this other book published 40 years ago? What is this? And I finally this other copy. And it goes into way more detail. In my opinion, it is the best biography of Rockefeller because also there's nothing wrong with Titan. But this one is 250 pages. And it really focuses

on early days of his career. It's episode 254 founders. I think it's called John D. The Founding Father Rockefeller is the book. It's really hard to find. And what was fascinating to me is I forgot how much borrowed money, right? Because Standard Oil, Charlie Munger made this point, where if you go back and look at the businesses of the robber barons built, there's only one that's arrived. Rockefeller. Rockler was currently built the best organization out of anybody. And you go and you read that book and it focuses on how did he start? Standard Oil printed money, right? But at the beginning, it was built on borrowed money. And so he's a line in that book where he's just like, oh, I had to go to every single bank. I raised money as much as I could constantly. And if somebody said no, I didn't care.

All I knew is, now I just go to the next bank. I was one step closer to getting what I want. He took a rejection. That's a high agency person. Took a no as, oh, it's great. One step closer. Now I'm one step closer to the yes. But by far, the highest agency founder that I've ever come across is Samuel Zemory. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read because his life story's incredible. There's only one biography that I know of them, but also the writing. I think the guy's name is Rich Cohen. This book is well known. The Fish A Eat the Whale. I think the Life and Times of America's Banana King, Sam'sa Murray, I think is the subtitle or whatever. And, that's a perfect example. Guy's a Russian immigrant, penniless, uneducated Russian immigrant. I think he starts in Alabama and then eventually supported New Orleans. He's like 19 years old, right? Working job after job. At one time, he was taking care of pig shit. That's what he had to do. He had to support himself and his family that were coming over, right? They were escaping religious persecution. And what I love about him is not only high agency, but something that I try to share as well is, I love these people that see opportunities where other people see nothing. I've told this story before where I was I told one of my oldest friends, you try to build a business that is a perfect representation of you,

is a completely authentic to yours. I don't have any of memories before I was a composer reader. I wonder if I could build a business around reading books. And my friend's like, this is the dumbest thing I ever heard. And then he called me like a year ago. He's like, I can't believe you did this shit. It's incredible. He's at the docks. One of the first multinational companies was actually fruit companies because they're in America, but all the stuff is taking place in Central America, South America and everything else, right? And quick story, I'm not going to regurgitate the entire book. But the bananas that, are riding in two or three days. They can't move fast enough because he's this giant organization. So they just throw them away. He's like, give him to me, I can be fast where you're slow.

And then he builds a business on that. And then he just one step to another. There's two interesting things about him that make him high agency, and I think relate to this. It's something your friend, Graham Duncan, he's got that excellent episode on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And he's talking about when investors are looking for new analysts. It's a lot of feedback. Why did you choose this person? Why are you working with them? One of the best feedbacks he ever got or one of the best heuristics for this. One guy told him he's like, I'm looking for somebody, that scares me. And then Tim laughs. It's the laugh that Tim has all that is excellent. You explain why. He's like, you found the game they want to play and they go with such an obsession. They're inevitable.

You just caught them at the early time. Look for people that I'm afraid that they'll replace me. That's how you know they're good because you should be trying to find people that are better than you, right? And so Andrew Preston is one of the co-founders of the United Fruit Company and he sees another him. He's probably like, I don't know, let's say 40 years old, 50 years old. He sees a 20-year-old, Samson Murray. He's like, what's this? That's me. You don't be. build a big company with a small ego. Now you're smart enough to hide the ego, but yes, they're egocentric, they're type A. They're all the same people. But they're also really, in very valuable ways, humble, humble enough to say, I'm not that special. There's going to be another

me. There were versions of me before me. Of course there's versions of me after me. So it means there's versions of me now. I don't want to compete with another me. I want to partner with another me. And so he winds up buying a part of Sam's a Murray's business. So I think that's fascinating. And it's also fascinating when Andrew Preston dies. The founders are gone. And so now you have The managers take it over. Andrew respected Sam. The other guys that didn't build the fucking company. Didn't. They're like, what's this uneducated? They called him a jobber, fruit jobber. Reason the book is called the fish ate at the world. He had a smaller fruit company and he did the machinations and overthrew the larger one. The fish ate the fucking whale. That's why it's called that. But the reason I say he's the highest agency person too is because that was in 19. Now we fast forward. He's about 32 years old. And where's his fruit being grown? It's in Central America, Guatemala, Honduras. These governments are not really governments. They're like bought and paid for. history of world history is bigger countries, taking advantage of smaller countries, and that's just how it's always been. And so he's been overthrowing governments, essentially saying, hey, I want favorable conditions for my company, and I'm willing to do whatever. I'll pay you if you want

to take the money. If you don't want to take the money, then I'll fund an army and overthrow your government. And so Secretary of State Knox, if I remember it was correctly, calls 32-year-old Samsonbury to Washington for a meeting with him and J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan is at the apex of his powers at this point. That's like me being called to a meeting with like Jeff Bezos or something. And then Jeff saying, hey, cut this out. And we'd be like, oh, cut it out? How about I overthrow the fucking government? And so that's what he does.

JP Morgan and Secretary Knox's like, hey, we have very important business here. This is a U.S. government business, state a hell out of it. And Sam Zemurray's high agency response is, okay, not like, okay, thank you guys. I'll just go back to New Orleans and do it. He's like, no, they funded it in the military. Now, obviously, I'm not encouraging people to overthrow governments, but that was his response. And so he's just the highest agency person ever. Wonderful story.

It's such an incredible book, too, one of the 10 great books or something. What is the lesson that you've clearly seen across these stories that you're most scared to talk about publicly? I hate to answer this with that's a good question, but that is a really good question. I don't know if I'm scared to talk about it anymore. I mean, you listen to the podcast. I do some outlandish on the podcast. My whole thing goes back to why I think podcasting is so special, where Matt Russell, who's the CEO of Colossus, wants me to go on his show making media. And it's like, yeah, I'll go on anytime you want.

Essentially has a show about making a media company. And it's just like, yeah, I guess people consider me making a media company. That's not what I look at it at all. I think podcasting, it's authenticity scaled. It allows me to be me to have a one-on-one conversation with hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously. And so, therefore, I don't have a fucking script. I break the fourth wall. I talk directly to the person.

I have a reaction. Just like you see a great movie, a great piece of art, a great song, a great book. This is not like boring shit to me. I don't make podcasts about books that bore me. I do embarrassing shit on my podcast. You've heard me fucking cry because it reminds me something that happened, right? So does I laugh? Sometimes I throw things on I curse because I can't believe what's going on.

So I really try not to hide my true response because if I want to do this for my entire life, which I clearly do, the only thing I can know I could do forever is be me. I can't put on a show. I probably pay on like an act for a few years, but you can't do it for like, I want to do this forever. Somebody asked me the question, is there anybody in podcasting? Because podcasting is a small industry like you haven't met the, you'd want to meet. The answer is really no other than the obvious answer being Joe Rogan just because one, it's the biggest podcast in the world, but also because it's not a show. It is him. He's got 2,000

episodes or like three hours long. Like if you listen to him, anytime something they try to attack him, he just survives. Because if somebody came to you and said things about me, dude, I've talked to David for a thousand hours. I know how he is. You're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. That's why I think it makes it so powerful is that it is the actual person. It's like I'm not putting on a show, this is who I am. So the answer to your question would be like, there's a dark side to all of humans. You're a big fan of Will and Ariel Durant, just like I am. And like, the lessons of history is one of the book that we share that we both love. And they studied maybe more human behavior than anyone ever. Yeah, right? And they're like, in all ages, men were

dishonest and governments are corrupt is one of the greatest lines from lessons of history. The fact that they say it's like war is just a constant, like humans are virturosis of violence. They engage in this. And so there is always a dark side to people, even good people. The best example of this is Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, who I feel is the greatest podcaster of all time. That's why I have a single person solo history podcast because of him. And he has this great series on the war in Asia between the Japanese and China, everyone. And there's something that I think is going to relate to the question you just asked, where he starts this episode, right? And they're in the Philippines. It's the 1970s or something. And there's a former Japanese soldier hiding in the jungles shooting at

Filipino citizens. And they're like, what is taking place here? And what happened was this guy was indoctrinated that, hey, the Japanese imperial army will never retreat its death or nothing, right? So for 20 years after the war was over, he is still engaging because he cut off from his superiors. He has no communication. He's like, oh, the war must we keep going on. To get him to stop, right? They were throwing in, like, newspapers to show, hey, like, this is the war. He thought it was propaganda. That was all bullshit. To get him to stop, they had to bring in his commanding officer. He's like, I will only listen to my commanding officer, right? The commanding officer, if you know anything, I mean, that war, especially, we're like what the Japanese and the Chinese

did to each other. They mutilated all the bodies. You see this if you've ever seen the series in HBO, the Pacific. But the crazy thing is, the same people that were literally, fight to the death, kill their enemies and then mutilate the bodies, right? They go bring in the commanding officer who was in charge of all this group, who obviously killed tons of people. He finally said, okay, no, we surrendered, it's over. That's how he did. What was the most fascinating part of that story is,

what was that guy doing? 30 years later, after mutilating bodies and killing everybody, he was selling books. You go in the bookstore down the street. Me and you were in yesterday. Imagine us going in there, we see an older, elderly 70-year-old. He was like, hey, how can I help you? And not knowing what he did,

there's a dark side to all of humans. So that is the scary part. I want to focus on being a good person. I try to be a good person. I want to focus on trying to serve other people, but self-interest rules the world. And the dark side is that you can be so preoccupied with what you're trying to achieve, that you light everything around you on fire. What is your favorite line from Game of Thrones that relates back to founders? So it's unfair that you made me choose one of them. I relate. Okay, so this is going to be real fucking nerdy. Okay, so actually this ties into something else I wanted to talk to you about that we haven't touched on it that I've been thinking about a lot lately. You're really great at naming things like maniacs on a mission, life's work, live players, casuals.

And that casual designation, do you have a quick definition? What's the definition of a casual? To me, it's the opposite of serious. I'll relate this back to my point earlier. How do I become a more perfect instrument? Someone who's serious in the way that I like, I like dealing with serious people that are going after something. aggressively with interest, with passion, with a lust for it. And a casual to me is the opposite of that that sort of dabbles. This is the person who wants to get rich with minimal effort or that wants

anything with minimal effort. There's a sort of laziness to it, which I recoil from personally. Try not to cast judgments, but everyone can live however they'd like. I don't want to impose my view on anyone, but that's what I mean by casual. It's sort of the opposite of Dr. V. Okay, so I come across this all the time. Once you put it in my mind, I see it everywhere. It's like what Coco Chanel said. Coco Chanel, one of her famous quotes, was like, it's immoral to play at one's living. She was dead serious about what she was doing. One term I think about this is permanently superficial. So David Ogaby talks about a firm, but he's also building the young men inside the firm. And that was really important to them, which is also building a service that you're building a lot of entrepreneurs. Yeah, they're building a company, but they're also building the young people around them. And he talks about the fact that, listen, getting ahead is you don't have to be the smartest person. Just collect more information. This is the famous Bill Gurley talk that I always reference on the podcast, which is running down a dream. The playbook I'm running to do founders, like, I don't have to be the smartest person. I just have to collect more information about history-scraised founders and anybody else. And I think I'm already doing that. I don't think anybody else's going to catch me. Ties into the Graham Duncan thing because I just do it so much more than anybody else that's got to do.

He's like, listen, if I sign you account to advertising account to show oil company was one of the largest accounts at the time. He's like, this is what I want you to do. This is what I would do if I would read textbooks on oil geology. I would visit your clients' factories. I would study up on all the petroleum products. On Saturday mornings, I want you to go down to the gas station and ask the customer's questions. And he just lays out, all of this is not genius level stuff. This is just effort.

And he goes, most people are far too lazy to do this, so they will remain permanently superficial. And I want to vomit. If anybody ever describe me, I'm trying to be the opposite. So why the hell, David, you bring up Ogilvie and Coco Chanel and casuals when Patrick asked you a question about Game of Thrones? This is how I am about everything. So instead of watching a new show, I'll just rewatch Game of Thrones.

So I told Patrick Gusha, I rewatch Game of Thrones and I take notes about lines I want to remember because I think there's a lot of insight to human nature and fiction. And so what I mean about that is not only do you watch the show, you watch it over and over again, you read all the books, and then you read the encyclopedias, and then I study the family trees, and then I read the prequels, and then I read the novellas. You immerse yourself into this world. It sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but it's like how you do one thing is how you do everything. and there's so many lessons for entrepreneurs in Game of Thrones.

So the three people identify with the most. And I'll explain why you don't have to know Game of Thrones lore to understand this. Time and Lanister, right? He was like the founder of a family. That's the way you think about it. Alena Tyrell and Braun. And so what I would say is, Braun is the one I most personally identify with.

If you've watched Game of Thrones, you know who he is. Watch it again and just pay attention to what Brown does the whole time. And to me, he might be the smartest player in the entire fucking game. And I've never heard anybody else talk about. about this before. They say the obvious one. Taiwan is obviously smart, Terry and all these other people are smart, the Starks, whatever. But Braun starts out, and I'm going to answer your question, because he's the one that says the line that I think, if I had to pick one, it's definitely this one. So, Braun starts out in Flea Bottom. Flee Bottom is your poor as hell. There is literally

feces in the street. You have no education, you don't have any opportunities. You have no network, right? Over the series, like he starts out on Fleet Bottom, and then he ends at the very end, and he owns High Garden. So the example of the modern day equivalent of that is like, let's say you started out with nothing and somehow you took over the third best company in the world. That's the equivalent. I was like, what just happened there? We were talking about intelligence last night. Intelligence is not reading a bunch of books. I'm not smarter because I read more books. The best definition I've ever heard is, first of all, are you smart enough to know what you want to get out of life? And two, the only definition of intelligence matters, did you get it?

Were you smart enough to navigate life? Brom was smart enough to navigate life. And so what happens is he comes in as an ally to this very powerful family called the Lannisters, right? That's where most of his work and opportunity comes from. At the end, there's a civil war between the Lannisters, and the sister in the Lannisters hires him to kill the brothers, even though he used to work for the brothers. And so he shows up in one of the last episodes, and he comes across the two brothers, and he comes in with a crossbow. And they're like, hey, Braun, like, one of our friends coming in this door right now. I'm like, why do you have that gun? He's not going to do anything with the gun? We're friends. And he's explaining, he goes, listen, you told me that if anybody ever tried

to give me to, like, go against you, whatever their price is, I'll pay more. And so he goes, that's what I'm here for. And he's like, well, what's higher than that? And Brian goes, High Garden. So if you don't want me to be on your sister's side, I want High Garden, right? Which is probably, let's say, second. It might be the richest, actually. And one of the brothers says, High Garden will never belong to a cutthroat. Why? Lanisters come from multiple generations. They owned all the gold. Grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, there's nothing changing in this time period. And so it's like, what are you talking about? We come from a rich family. The term for everybody else in the world is Lannister's shit gold. So that's their reputation.

They come from multiple generations of we're the greatest, we're the smartest, we're the best, we are the most powerful. You're a cutthroat. You're from flea bottom. And what he said is something that I see on the podcast all the time. So they say to Braun, High Garden will never belong to a cutthroat. And then he goes, no, who were your ancestors? The ones that made your family rich. Fancy lads and silk, they were fucking cutthroats. That's how all the great fortune started, isn't it with a hard bastard? That is inevitably the Rockefeller family fortune. I just did an episode of the dynasties. I did Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Toyotas, and the Rothschilds. It all was traced back to what he just said cutthroats. Somebody has started from nothing. I call him generational

inflection points. Our mutual friend Sam Hinkie calls them founders of families. It's the same idea. It's so arrogant for an entrepreneur to say, this is what I love about it. Oh, I have an idea that doesn't exist in the world and I'm going to marshal all my resources to make it real. Fundamentally saying, I notice an opportunity and nobody else does. That's a very arrogant thing to say. And yet, the ones that do that change everything. I said to you yesterday, something to the effect of, like, I don't know anybody that is as clear-minded about what they're here to do as you. That's why I love spending time with you and learning from you. Thanks for what you've done for seven years now, something like that. Maybe we'll make this an annual tradition. Since you're covering 60 new books every

year. There's a wealth of new material. So fun to do, round two with you. Thanks for your time. Yeah. Thank you. If you enjoy this episode, check out join colossus.com. There you'll find every episode of this podcast complete with transcripts, show notes, and resources to keep learning. You can also sign up for our newsletter, Colossus Weekly, where we condense episodes to the big ideas, quotations, and more, as well as share the best content we find on the internet every week.