Modern Wisdom - #566 - David Senra - Insights From History's Greatest Thinkers

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

David Senra is a podcaster and a writer. Many of the most important insights you need to learn to improve your life have already been discovered in the past. Thankfully David spends all his time reading biographies of the greatest thinkers, founders, entrepreneurs and inventors from history and has synthesised those lessons so you can remember them too. Expect to learn how Steve Jobs came to think about time, what Kobe Bryant believed about the dangers of success making you soft, how the Rockefellers created their fortune, why crossing the Vanderbilts may result in you being very dead, whether anyone with extreme success managed to master a work-life balance, why you have to start reading Paul Graham's work, David's most recommended books and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out David's Podcast - https://pod.link/founders  Follow David on Twitter - https://twitter.com/FoundersPodcast  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is David Sennra, he's a podcaster and a writer. Many of the most important insights you need to learn to improve your life have already been discovered in the past. Thankfully David spends all his time reading biographies of the greatest thinkers, founders, entrepreneurs and inventors from history and has synthesized those lessons so that you can remember them too. Expect to learn how Steve Jobs came to think about time, what Colby Bryant believed

about the dangers of success making you soft, how the Rockefellers created their fortune, why crossing the Vanderbilt might result in you being very dead, whether anyone with extreme success managed to master a work-life balance, why you have to start reading Paul Graham's work, David's most recommended books, and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... David Sennra. I last night was with one of the first eSports performance coaches. So he is a mental performance coach that is employed by an eSports organization to train their mental athletes as they call them to maximize

their performance. And the stuff that they're doing with these kids is so cool. Taking across all of the stuff that we've seen from physical training now and porting it across into something which is actually I think the most mentally taxing sport that exists because you can move your avatar on the screen significantly quicker than you can move your body, which means that you're basically overclocking your brain. Your brain was meant to move, limited by the pace of your body moving when it comes to reaction times. And what you're doing now is you've managed to overclock the physical world,

and you're now trying to catch up mentally. This guy was fat, thanksgiving dinner, noted out with this guy for like two and a half hours it was brilliant. That industry is very fascinating. Do you know Blake Robbins by chance? No. Okay, Blake Robbins, he's a venture capitalist,

he's over at Benjamin Park now, but he actually incubated 40 thieves that that esports team and the brand and everything else. But his focus and why he's been invited to take part in one of maybe you know maybe the most prestigious or one of the most prestigious venture capital firms that are relatively young age. I think Blake's like late 20s wherever he says he's obsessed with the edge of the internet and he has this great line that has actually taught me a lot that everything is a game. And his point is, is like, if you look at gaming as an industry,

it's bigger than music, movies, and a bunch of other things combined. So I do think, like, it doesn't surprise me that they're at the cutting edge. Of course, they're going to have some kind of performance coaches. I think everybody does. Like, almost all the top performers have somebody that they actually want to bring in. In fact, I just reread. So I've done, I've probably done, I don't know, 10 or 12, by a biography at episodes on Steve Jobs. And then not only do I reread, like I read every single book

you can find about them, and then I would reread my favorite ones and then make episodes every new time because the words of the patient will change, but like everything that you've learned since the last time you read it has changed, right? And then I would map out in the book all of the people that he was inspired by because none of these ideas are new. And I went up mapping it out and I did like a low bonus episode called Steve Jobs and his heroes. And it just traces I've done 39 episodes on Steve Jobs and the people he actually mentions where there's Da Vinci Alexander Grimbell at Winlan, the founders of HP, all these people that influenced the way he thinks about his work and something Steve

did on the second time he went to Apple, right? The time where he created all that value because if you think about it, he's kicked out of Apple, spends 13 years in the wilderness from age 30 to 43, comes back. And essentially, the way I think about it is Apple apples in terminal decline, it's almost bankrupt, right? It's running out of money. They pay $500 million for next. And you could think about it. They paid half a billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs and they got the deal with fucking

lifetime, right? Fast forward, you know, now what it worked 20 years later, it's the most valuable company in the world worth like $2.4 trillion. But what he realized was it was very helpful. And I actually heard a bunch of episodes, you referenced me and you both share an admiration for Charlie Munger. He's like one of my personal heroes and he says this. He's like the role that he plays with Buffett.

It's like it's very useful to have somebody else to organize your thoughts with professionally. That's the role that he plays with Buffett. So what Steve did is he hired this guy and he didn't had no official role inside of Apple. So he'd fly down, he lived in Seattle, he'd fly down to Cupertino on Sunday night. I think he would spend from Monday to Wednesday. All he would do is shadow Steve. He could not say he had no authority inside of the company. He's just, he's with Steve all the

time. And when they have a minute that have lunch together or they pull him to the side, they have one-on-one conversations. And it's that same thing. It's like, you might not call it a coach, but it's somebody that is not a part of your company, right? Doesn't technically work for you, but is very hopeful to bounce ideas off of and to like organize your thoughts. So, whether you call it a coach, performance coach, you know, a friend, a confidant, I think that you see that idea over and over and over again.

Does that story about Marcus Aralius as he was walking through the streets of Rome? He would pay another guy as all of the small folk with throwing flowers at him and saying, you're amazing, you're this sort of God emperor was so glad that you're here and the empire was flourishing. And there's this guy walking behind him just whispering in his ear, you are only a man, you are only a man.

So you could imagine if you were able to bring somebody back down to earth like that, but also have that as a confidant, someone you can bounce ideas off just how powerful that would be I've noticed since moving from Having a business partner in my last company to now doing the podcast where it's me at the sort of top of the tree doing it on my own I do miss being able to speak to someone and just go dude. I've got this I've got this idea. Am I being a dickhead? Like is this is this a good idea? And you go, yeah, of course it isn't. I knew it was.

Thank you. I knew it was. I knew it was a good idea. I just needed someone to externalize, like to just blow off all of that extra kind of mental energy and just cut through the noise. One of the guys that I've heard you talk about a good bit and I keep on hearing about him from people that I respect a lot, but I don't know much about him is Paul Graham. What do I need to know about Paul Graham? So Paul Graham, I just spent the last like three weeks inside of his mind because he's

got, you can read all of his essays online for free at Paulgram.com and he's been writing for you know over two decades. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine, my friend Patrick who runs the Invest Like the Best Podcast. And we were talking about that because every single, as far as influential writing for technology startup founders, it's like, Paul Graham's essays. I'm talking about the last 15, 20 years. It's like, Paul Graham's essays, Jeff Bezos's, shareholder letters, which are fantastic. I read multiple times, and then Peter Teel's book, zero to one. And so I spent the last three weeks I read, I did three separate episodes on Paul Graham's essays and I was like, you know what, I'm going to reread zero to one. I think this is the third time

I read it. But in the view of how is this relate to what Paul Graham, like how he thinks. And the thing that I think relates to what you and I do is he has this idea, in fact, the collection of his essays is you can buy the book, it's called hackers and painters. And he's like at the very top levels, there's no like painting by numbers, right? A lot of the best things are, I hate to use this word art because that's not the way I think about when I make a podcast, I think of like it's a craft. And it's like I'm actually making something, but it's not science and it's not art. There is like a form of taste to it, right? And so he's like the best painters of that way,

the best computer software, like the best programmers of that way, because he's a programmer. He says like the best musicians of that way. I think podcasts are the exact same thing, where there's this great, I just, I watched your appearance of Joe Morgan Experience, which is fantastic, by the way, you did a good job. Thank you.

And it was fascinating because Spotify, before they tried to do that deal with Rogan, this came out, the person that I've read her name, but the woman that was in charge of this is like, well, is there a way for us to say, like, can we replace Joe? There's no one who has an audience, has size, right? But can we replace him with like maybe five that are similar

and like, we'll kind of package it up and it's like replaces them. And so they ran this test and like, no, we have to back up the truck and like there's only one Joe Rogan. And so if you would even ask Joe, like, why is your podcast so popular, right? Or like, he's, he's, he's going to have a hard way describing because he's like, I'm just being me. I'm following my natural interest. And one thing that I always say in this release of program too is like the most interesting people are the most interested, right like I'm obsessed by four interest happen to be entrepreneurship reading history and podcasts right and some people always like hey what are your favorite podcasts and they're surprised by one of my favorite podcasts is this podcast called

meat eater and this is guy named Steve Rinella right it is an outdoor hunting podcast I don't hunt I have nothing against it like maybe I will one day right But the point was it's like I've read all Steve's books. He is deeply interested. He has dedicated his entire life to the outdoors and conservation and the his way of life and his his level of detail he's able to talk about in the passion is just infections. So it's like I'm not even into what you're into, but I just find the fact that you're so into it, interesting, so now I'm interested. Dude, my housemate Zach is the most infectious person when it comes to energy, so you know the, is it motocross?

What's the thing that Colin McCray used to do, rally cross, where these guys are flying down dirt tracks at a hundred miles an hour and they've got the co-pilot with them, and there's people that go out to take photos and then they'll usually have a little bit of a crew with them and they'll be these special spots along the track, presumably ones that are maybe a little bit more safe, not at the corner of Ben's on the outside of them and stuff like that. And these guys will have gone, it'll be the middle of the night, it'll be pissing cold,

it'll be raining and they'll stand there be raining, and they'll stand there to see ming, and these dudes just are like, and they're looking each other, they'll lose their shit, and Zack likes to watch that to gas him up before a training session, like he just gets so infected by other people loving their shit. This guy, the esports guy, last night, same thing. Fucking loves his shit. Couldn't tell me anything about like, Valorant or fucking Rocket League or League of Legends or any of this stuff, but he loves his craft.

And that gassed me up to hear him be so passionate, gassed me up. So that ties into what is the main theme across multiple decades? Because like, Paul Graham starts out as a computer programmer, right, starts his company called VioWeb in the late 1990s. Like, two months, or two years later, sells it to Yahoo for like $50 million, right?

And he's like, well, now I got money for the first time in my life, what should I do? He's like, I should learn how to invest. It starts this thing called Y-commoner, Y-commoner, you know, is the most prestigious startup school version of like, if there was a college branch for ownership, which is impossible to ever have one, it would look a lot more like Y-commoner or anything else.

That invests in thousands of companies, winds up becoming a billionaire off of this. And his entire theme relates to this, is like, who are you as a person? What are you naturally interested in? Jeff Bezos is a great line where he's like, we don't pick our passions, they pick us, right? So Paul starts as like who are,

as a part, like what are you into? He's like, I'm really into painting. I'm really into computers. I like reading. He has like this deep historical knowledge of, you know, English history and everything else. And so he's like, you start really into painting. I'm really into computers. I like reading. He has this deep historical knowledge of English history and everything else. And so you start with who you are, then what do you actually want to do?

How do you find an essay that changed my life that I recommend everybody reads is how to do what you love? And first of all, find out who you are, then find out what do you actually love to do, find a way to do what you love, but make sure that it's valuable to other people, right? And if you're making something people want, whether it's a podcast, a software program, a service, whatever it is, and you really love to do it, you'll be really good at it, and if you're really good at it, you'll do it for a long period of time, and if you're really good at something you do for a long period of time, that's a high likelihood of getting wealthy.

And so that is the main theme, that is why I think it doesn't matter whether you're working inside a company or you're not sure whether you're a podcaster, it doesn't matter. It's like I would read, I'd find programs essays and read the ones, I find the ones that you like and then read them over and over again because they think they're extremely powerful. His clarity of thought and the clarity of writing is second to none. There was a internal Apple meeting with Tim Cook and someone asked Tim about whether it should feel like hard work when you do something that you love. And one of my friends was at this internal meeting and he told me what Tim said in response, he said, you'll have to work harder than you ever have before in your life, but the tools will feel light in your hands.

Yes, so fucking cool. Think about if you ask anybody who has the most drive or who's like the hardest work you've ever seen and then one name will pop up over Never again. It's Michael Jordan, right and I read Knowledge I read Michael's autobiography driven from within but I read this like 700 page biography Which changed my fucking life and it's called Michael Jordan the the life, I think, by Roland Lassenby. And what was so fascinating is Michael, even says, it's like, everybody talks about how my work ethic and how hard, how hard a worker I was. They didn't understand it. It was all plate of me. Like, me, I've heard you speak enough, where me and you also share love for the, the philosophy

and the thinking of the Valrava Khan. In fact, our mutual friend, the way we connect is Eric Jurenson. And Eric's book, The Omnitak and the Vault, is like, I give that away. I think I may have bought that more copies of that as like somebody to give away than almost any other book that I could think of. And especially for somebody that doesn't know what to do. They're like, man, I'm struggling.

I don't know what direction I take in life is like read the Omnitak and the Vault. And so the Vault has this idea. It's like fine work that feels like play. That's also in Paul Graham's essays and you see it again in Michael Jordan. So it's like wait a minute. Like maybe no ball was influenced by Paul Graham but Michael Jordan sure it's how it wasn't. And yet he arrived at that same conclusion. He's just like I'm the lazy's and you would see this in his childhood. They're like man we couldn't get this guy to clean the kitchen. He couldn't his homework, but when it came to playing sports baseball first and then basketball

You couldn't he would never get off the field and then he'd realize oh where am I week? Then he'd go find he's like, oh, I need to live weights or I need to work on my endurance Oh, I need to find a coach that can actually teach me and he's just an absolute sponch because it felt like playtam And that's the whole thing. It's like It's very difficult to get really world-class go back to the Joverman. It's just like, what are his, what are the things that he's obsessed with, right? He's obsessed with and they all interconnect if you think about it. It's like he was doing UFC commentary for free when it was nothing, you know. I wish somebody would write a biography a day in a white because that's a fascinating story that needs to be told. It's like

you you you buy this company so that's almost going to a business for $2 million. You blow it up, make it a worldwide sport, sell it to ESPN for $4 billion something like that. And then you ask them, well, you're ever going to quit. He's just like, I love what I do. I travel the world. I stayed the best restaurants. I eat it. I stayed at the best hotels, eat the best restaurants, and watch the best fights in the world. He's like, I'm not even working. Like, there is nothing to quit. Like, this is, there's nothing I'd rather do than this. And so, I think that's like, you picked up on like, that's the key. It's like, if you really want to be great at something,

you have to do it for a long time. And if you don't really love to do it, you're not going to do it for a long time. There was this story I heard about Steffi Graff, German tennis player, like, Savant, when she was still playing. And as a kid, they did an assessment of motivation and of technical skill. And some people were coming in high on one and low on the other and so on and so forth. Steffi Graf came back as 10 out of 10

on both. So what you have with this person is not only someone who has the raw talent to be able to beat you, but they're going to continue outworking you and to them it's not even going to feel like work. When it feels tried to talk about this now, right? No one can beat you at being you. It's very difficult to beat someone that's having fun. How many times do we need to drill this on? But perhaps one more time. It's an important lesson. I have something interesting to say about that because this is something that I discovered. Fundamentally, I should up. Like for the podcast so far, I've read, you know, close to 300 biographies of history's greatest

entrepreneurs, right, to even get on founder's podcast, you have to be so good at your job. Somebody wrote a fucking book about it. Like that's an insanely high bar. Maybe the highest bar that you could possibly have, right? And so everybody thinks it's like, these people must know something we don't, right? It's like, must be super complicated or something. It's like, no, And so everybody thinks it's like, these people must know something we don't. It's like, must be super complicated or something.

It's like, no, no, it's like, they identify the basics, right? They identify a handful of things that are important to them. And they repeat them from decade after fucking decade. Jeff Bezos is a great example of this, right? You can think about it. Like Jeff Bezos mastered what it means to run a high-growth technology company on the internet before there were example of this, right? You can think about it, like Jeff Bezos mastered what it means to run a high growth technology company on the internet before there were any playbooks, right? Like he essentially wrote the fucking playbook

when he started in 97. How many people started an intercom in 1997? They're still going today. He wins by endurance. Let me actually show you something real quick because it's just going to tie into it because I forget. But this is my lock screen, right?

That is a cover of Ernest Shackleton. This is a fantastic book written by Alfred Lansing, called Endurance, right? I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it.

I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it.

I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. Something I've noticed from sitting in a fucking room by myself for four years seven days a week reading Every single day of my fucking life. I read a biography of an entrepreneur for hours That's the first thing I do after I wake up I wake up workout and then I read for every for hours as long as I do that for That's my life. I'll get whatever I want out of my life because then I package up what I learn and I put it on a podcast for other people to to benefit from

Right, and so what I noticed about these people is just like, go back to Jeff Bezos example, it's like, he has, they call them Jeffisms. He has, it's not like he needs to remember 25, 30 different things, right? It's a handful of principles that are very important that he's gonna repeat over and over and over again for decades.

So I don't, I understand people say, oh, it's tried to say, do what you love or it's tried to say that you have to have endurance and try to, it's like, no, these are the fundamentals. There's a great conversation that happens between, so I've done, I don't know, two podcasts on Michael Jordan, I've done like two or three on Kobe Bryant, I just read another 600 page biography of Copa Bryant, right? That one of the last interviews Kobe did, right? This is so fucking important to understand, because you see this in every single domain. One of the last interviews he did right before he died, he talks about that he was on the phone with Michael Jordan, right?

And he's like, Michael, he's like, he's watching, unfortunately, the daughter that passed away with him in the helicopter crash. He's like, man, I don't really like what their coaches are teaching me. He's like, they're teaching all these 12 year old kids, like all this fancy shit. He's like, you know, spin moves and all this other stuff. And he's like, I'm pretty sure I didn't learn this when I was, you know, when I was playing. So I was like, let me call Michael

and see what he says, right? So he call, he's calling a Michael. He's like, he's like, hey man, you know, it's explained the story. I think they're teaching his kids way too much fancy stuff. They're not focusing on just mastering the fundamentals on a deep fucking level. And the way to do that is repetition

over and over and over again for a long time. And he's like, Michael, what are you saying? He goes long time. And he's like, Michael, what do you think he goes? He goes, he's like, Michael, what were you learning? What were you doing in basketball when you were 12? And Michael goes, dude, I was playing baseball. And then Kobe says, I'm pretty sure he's being interviewed by Alex Rodriguez, the famous basketball player. He goes, think about that.

And his point being, he's like, the greatest basketball player to ever live, hadn't even picked up a fucking ball yet your 12 year old does not need to know these spin moves and also the fancy shit Focus on the fundamentals and they do that for on a deep fundamental level for decade after decade I want to go back to this idea that you and I both share an admiration and love for Charlie Munger. He has this great thing We say hey master the big ideas and all these domains So he has this thing. He says, they carry most of the freight. I think it's the term he uses. He inspired me to be like, what am I learning from doing

this rather unusual work that I do? It's like, my version is like, time carries most of the weight. I just heard, or I saw a tweet that you said where it's like, you've been doing this podcast 500 and some fucking episodes, right? First of all, you know, as I do, and we don't have to get into the business podcasting because I'll never shut up about it because I'm completely obsessed. But like, everybody's like, oh, it's too late to start a podcast.

There's millions of them. And then you actually look at the data and it's just like how many of them are producing, how many of them, basically how many of them are still producing to this day, have done more than 10 episodes and haven't fucking quit. And it's like a couple hundred thousand. And so my whole point is like, imagine being able to go back on the internet when there's only a couple hundred thousand blogs or a couple hundred thousand websites. And you're telling me it's too fucking late.

What are you talking about? That's insane because everybody quits at everything. And the reason I was so interested is like, not only do I respect Eric Dorgens' opinion a lot, and I find him extremely sharp and articulate person, but he's like, Chris is the real deal, but I can see that you're the real deal because it's like, this dude has done something 500 fucking times. How many people have done that?

And then you had said something, he's like, I'm grinding away, grinding it really good in my craft. And I want to talk about this conversation that you had with somebody else I admire, George Mack, which I didn't know his name was George McGill until you said something. I haven't fallen on Twitter for years.

And we've been DM'ing this stuff because he listens to founders too, but another sharp guy. But the point I was making is just like, you made the point. I've been grinding, grinding, grinding. And yet this is something I also talked about on the podcast. It's like, you have to stay in the game long enough to get lucky because there's an opportunity, right? That's going to happen. You're five, six, seven. You cannot comprehend in your one, two, three. This is very similar to what Jocco said in your conversation. He's like, I don't have five year plan.

Guess what? The way Jocco talks about the fact that he's optimizes for flexibility and optionality is how all of the best entrepreneurs that have ever lived. They talk the exact same way. You think that's the case? They have this sort of emergence outcome in life. There is.

I don't know about an emerging outcome, but they definitely optimize for option out of so there's a sky uh... i don't want to lose the thread real quick let me talk to you about hundred single ten minute but how i like what you said it's like that one opportunity that you had to grind away effort years and years and you never probably predicted to happen but once that happens i think you said you had more downloads and like you know

a week or whatever then all the years combined that's a perfect fucking example of stay in the game long enough to get lucky. There's a million fucking examples like that in the History of Entrepreneurship. You just have to go and read old books to find them. So let me go back to this optionality person. So what I'll do is when I find somebody

that's very interesting to me, right? I, what you'll be shocked is, is like, how almost none of their ideas are unique to them, right? So like, I'm obsessed with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I read all the Warren Buffett shareholder letters. I read all the biographies I could find about both Warren Buff and Charlie Munger. And when they say, hey, go study this person and they do because they're both obsessive

readers. They're both biography nuts. Charlie Munger has probably read more biographies than me, but I'll think I'll catch them because I got 60 years, you know, he's got a 60 years. But they, what's fascinating is like you find all these great people buried in history. And we can talk about why don't, don't worry about your legacy and all that stuff

because it's a lot of it's fake. You would imagine how so few people actually go back and we could talk about some examples in the history of entrepreneurship, but what's fascinating is like Charlie Motors, one of the wisest people alive, right? And he's like, hey, the smartest person I ever met with this guy named Henry Singleton,

I'm like, what the fuck? And he's like, his, the smartest person I ever met with this guy named Henry Singleton, I'm like, what the fuck? And he's like, his returns were, he's like utterly ridiculous, you know how Charlie talks. Then Warren Buffett's like, you guys need to go back and read about Henry Singleton. He built a conglomerate, very similar to Berkshire, but like 20 years earlier, right? And they're like, Warren says, hey, it's a crime

that American business schools don't study this guy So wait a minute let's pause right there. You have how many people on the planet have studied more entrepreneurs and more businesses than Warren Buffett a Tiny he might you know have studied more in a way else and this and he's telling you yo This is the guy goal fucking pay attention to this guy and then he says some shit like hey if you add up the top 100 business school graduates attention to this guy. And then he says some shit like, Hey, if you add up the top 100 business school graduates, NBA graduates, ever, their record and then compiled the record together, it still be inferior to Henry Singleton. So then you go and you read, there's not a lot of material on Singleton, but I read everything I could find. And I didn't, a podcast on this book called The Outsiders, which is one of the very few books that profiles what made Singleton

so it so interesting and I absolutely flip my shit because all the ideas that I thought were buffets a lot of them came from singleton and to me that's inspiring because it's like I don't I can I can thrive and be wildly successful and I don't need one single original idea of my own I just need to master what what what some of the best people in history have already figured out for me and then you can pick up the book and in, you know, 10, 15, 20 hours, you get the distillation of a career and lessons they had to figure out over 40, 50 years. That's absolutely insane.

So Henry Singleton's like, listen, he has got this famous quote. He's like, you know, everybody has a lot of, especially in the 1960s, the 70s. There was a theory that you need like a five year plan, a ten-year plan. You need to have all these projections He's like the world is so much more complex than that He's like and we have so little control over outside things So he's like I like to steer the boat every day He's like my only plan. You know what his fucking plan was same plan as Jaco I'm gonna show up every day go to work

And I'm gonna steer the boat a little bit like in one direction and I'll go and I'll try something and if it works I'll do what Jaco said I'll do more of it. Oh, go to work, and I'm going to steer the boat a little bit, like in one direction. And I'll go and I'll try something, and if it works, I'll do what Jock is at. I'll do more of it. Oh, it didn't work, I'll stop doing that. That's fine. And I love what he made, the point he made on your episode, which is fantastic, which was, hey, if you asked me six years ago

what my five-year plan was, he's like, I didn't have a podcast. And then all the stuff, he's like, he podcast blows up, he sells all these books. Now they're returning into movies. He's got his manufacturing company. He's, yesterday, yesterday I came back just for this by the way. I was out of town for Thanksgiving and I was like, sorry, I'm leaving. I have to go record Chris tomorrow. And so all the way I had to do is like, four and a half of our drive

yesterday. And I'm just slamming Jocco goes because all the Starbucks are closed on Thanksgiving day. Jocco goes in the gym, man. I would really, really impressed with them. The only things that are open or the wall was. And Jocco has made a huge influence on Thanksgiving day. I would really, really impressed with them. The only things that are open are the wall was and Jaco has made a huge influence on my life and I'm not an interesting person. I'm a stressor person all day long. But I was like, fuck monster, you've never done anything for me. It's like Jaco's given me hundreds of hours of fantastic content.

I don't read a lot of books that are not biographies, but his book Extreme Ownership is the best single best book on leadership that I've ever read. And I was like, I'm loading up on Jocco Goes, so I'm just slamming them down as I went by. But yeah, so what I saw with Jocco, I saw even Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger saying the same thing. He's like, we don't have a master plan. He's like, we're gonna, the opportunities are gonna come in. A lot of them we can't predict. We're gonna say, hey, do we want to pursue this opportunity or not? And why I think that's reassuring to people is that I struggled. I was one of those people that didn't have a very good plan.

If you say what you want written on your obituary, what, where would you like to see yourself in 25 years? That's something I've always struggled with. And yet because I came from a productivity efficiency background, at least when I first started to show that was one of the things that I was obsessed with, I always felt like I know a little bit of a fraud because I didn't have that as it was laid out. And I think that you're right.

Understanding principles and allowing things to be directed from there each day, one step at a time, permits you to have enough opportunity to take advantage of good opportunities when they come to you, but it is important to have the principles. I think without an understanding of what it is that I need to be doing, consistency, enthusiasm, discipline, ensuring that I fall, I continue doing the good stuff, whatever the things are that facilitate your performance, those need to continue.

But you don't necessarily need to have the plan all the way out. So when it comes to looking at all of the guys and girls that you've studied from history, what are the most common threads in terms of personality types, the ways that they show up that all of the high performers have had? So it's not, it's funny because I've been approached

by a couple of publishers and like, hey, why don't you write a book on like the top 10 traits? I'm like, fuck you. Like, if you think about it, the world is much more complex than that, and what we're doing, right? Like a podcast as a business, it's a form of entrepreneurship.

Like entrepreneurship done at the highest levels yields the greatest financial results in the world, right? There is no formula possible. So the way I look at it is the same way where like when I just read this 600 page biography of Kobe Bryant, like you would go to his house at like 17 years old and like you'd open the closet and be VHS tapes of Michael Jordan,

of all these magic Johnson, all these other people. His girlfriend is high school girlfriend in that book, is gives its interview. And she's like, what was the like to date Kobe Bryant in high school? She's like, well, a lot of Saturday nights at his house watching tapes of Michael Jordan. Right. So the way I think about it is like reading biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs is one, all of history's greatest entrepreneurs did this. The more biographies you read, the more you realize people live lives in a more remarkable, somebody wrote a book about them, all read biographies. You can read other things and you should read other things, but

I don't think you can have a complete human life without reading biographies consistently. The way I always say is like, people like how should I use Fountain of Spark S because now there's like over 400 hours and like I add to a constantly, it's like listen to an episode, find one book that you like read one biography a month, right? This is like the minimum like requirement in my opinion. Read one biography a month and then listen to two episodes a week. That means after a year, you would have downloaded key insights and lessons from 100 different

history skaters for years every year. And then you've got to go deeper because my episodes are only an hour, maybe 90 minutes. It's like these books take me for every one hour of audio that I create. I'm reading at least 20 hours. This is not a fucking game to me. I take this dead seriously, just like the history of the greatest entrepreneurs do. So one thing I would say, like one traits, like that a lot of them have is the importance of practice. And so there's this maximum that I repeat over and over again, that the public praises people for what they practice in private. The public

praises people for what they practice in private. I repeat that to me over and over again. And I mentioned earlier, I was like, how, why did this guy say that reading a biography of Michael Jordan changes life? Like, what the hell does it like, that sounds silly to me? Like, how could that possibly be true? And there's this one story in there there that thought was so fucking remarkable because it talks about the difference even at the highest level So to get into the NBA there's like what 400 NBA players total right out of millions of kids that want to do it And I maybe have tempted to do it then you get to like the all-star and maybe you have the you know 24 now the 400 down to 24 Then in 1992 Jordan is invited to play on the dream team in the Olympics right he uh so now you have 12 like you can't get higher than where he's at and he was thinking about not doing it because he's like I've been in the playoffs

We were in a championships. He's winning every single word. He could possibly have he's at the top of his game But he's like I'm going to do it even though my body's beat up Because these are the best basketball players in the world Right, and I want to see their practice happens So the main the reason I say that business that book changed my life is because Jordan says he'd rather miss a game than mispractice and so he gets there and I get goosebumps I already have goosebumps about because I know where the stories can end and he gets there And he sees the practice habits of the other people in the dream team which they are at the top of their class of their profession but he's

winning more championships than them. He's had his accolades are just better than he's at he's the very top and he said something that fucking changed my life and he said that they were deceiving themselves about what the game required. And so that from there how I apply as my work is like I'm going to work in the podcast 70s week. I'm going to read a biography for hours and hours every morning. When I'm done, I store all of my highlights and my notes in this app called Readwise. I have over 20,000

highlights and notes from all the books I read. And so what's my second half of my day is fucking practice, which is now rereading. It's not good enough that I read a book a year and a half ago. That's not fucking good enough to you. You're asking people to spend an hour and a half of their time with you in their ear. So I have to make sure that I am not only, like I have to live this stuff every single day. I was just invited to speak at a company. It's a private investment company.

It's a 93 years old. The CEO of the company is a social founders. They have $250 billion fastest-under management. And the CEO, me and him, got on gonna zoom beforehand, they're having a company offsite with like 40 to 60 other partners. And he's like, hey, do we want an outline or whatever the case is? I go, I'm perpetually prepared. I promise you, I will show up.

You can ask me whatever the fuck you want. And I will know it backwards and forwards. And he's like, why? And I explain my, like, I go, I got this idea for Michael Jordan. And then I'm not fucking playing basketball over here. I'm making podcasts and reading books, but the principle is the same thing.

So let me tie this to one of history's guys. I'm sure it's Sam Walton, right? If you think about how fucking crazy Sam Walton story is, that dude started out in retail when he was like in his early 20s, right? Doesn't hit it for like 25 years. He was like 44 when he found a Walmart, right? But he wasn't like Lollie Gaggin. He was like working at different forms of retail. He was just having to go through that experimentation. The time carries most weight thing, right? And so he had this idea for Walmart. He was underfinanced. And his idea was, hey, all the big retailers in the big cities, I'm going to see if I can build these stores that are far out in rural America, right? Towns of 8,000, 10,000, 15,000 people,

right? I'm going to pick cheap real estate and I'm only going to the communal price. The thesis behind Walmart, which if you think about this, the thesis was proved correct. As a result of this, his thesis has been proven correct. He generated one of the largest fortunes the world has ever seen. His fucking kids are still like, if you combine all of Walmart's kids, like his descendants into, he split it up, right? But if it was like one person, they'd be the of the if not the richest person in the world right and that idea came from this is like well I think there's an opportunity here that no one else is pursuing I have an hypothesis let me test it

he didn't have money he goes to it was a this thing called Ben Franklin stores which is I might be getting the name of the company wrong but it was essentially like early franchise headquarters that would franchise you could buy retail franchises from them and which is, I might be getting the name of the company wrong, but it was essentially like early franchise, headquarters that would franchise, you could buy retail franchises from them and Sam was running one of those. And he pitched them on the deal. And they're like, no, no, we don't wanna do this. That was a Friday.

The next day, the guy that told him no goes to his local came art, right? Just to go shopping for whatever, because came art was a good giant company. And he hears this voice, he's like, what the fuck, why is that voice on so familiar? And it's Sam Walton in there, in K. Mar with his new book,

which he would go, Sam Walton winning more, his version of practice is going in more retail stores than anybody in history. His kids talk about this. He's like, it doesn't matter if we're in Europe on vacation,

we're any vacation. He's like, we have to stop and dad has to look at his stores every day. And so this guy that had just turned him down from one of the best opportunities, which turns into Walmart, right? So he fucked this up. He just said no to the best opportunity of his life. Sees Sam Walton talking to me, he's like, okay, how do you guys do inventory? Okay, why is this price this way? Taking notes on a Saturday morning.

That's his version of professional practice. And I saw somebody treat about this and they're like imagine competing with Sam Walton. And so the way I look at it is like when you're reading these biographies, when you're picking up these ideas, you might read a 400 page book or you might listen to an hour and a half of my podcast pick out one or two ideas, but those ideas will stick with you forever. And then you can figure out how that applies to your actual craft. No one goes back to the Henry Singleton thing. You mentioned something I wanted to jump on where it's just like, none of this works if you don't work yourself in a position to trust your own judgment.

As a podcaster, as an entrepreneur, as an investor, who obviously have these the people I make, my podcast fork primarily, right? If you can't trust your own judgment, you were just saying you used to have a business partner, now you can top it heap. It's what you'll also see. Paul Graham talks about it's like founders,

talk, they realize like other founders outside their company and Paul talks about the Sessies have a more of an understanding of what they're going through than their employees. They can't talk to their employees really. You also have, you and I have a GIF where the easiest way to make friends is to have a podcast and then you listen to other people's podcasts and now you're friends. So like you can talk to other people. So those are just some of the ideas. I don't want to keep ramming, but those are just some of the ideas that appear over and

over again. It's like the importance of practice. It's like the unbelievable amount of dedication jaco said that on his podcast It's like how many I heard him say something on an Instagram live one time that just made me laugh and you know He's like looking at his phone like reading the questions and like how many hours a week do you work? He goes all of them It's that kind of thing because even if they're not physically, even if Sam Wands not physically working at his business, he's thinking about it. That is a form of work. So that to me is obsession. And obsession is not necessarily a bad thing. I would have said one of the most common threads that I've seen amongst high performers that I've had in the show is obsession. You could argue that that might be compulsion by a different lens.

Do you think on average that the people that you've studied from history were happier than the average person? That is a great question. I think for a large percentage of them, happiness is besides the point. So this is, we can say question though. That's not a question though. Go ahead, good. Say the question is, on average, do you think the people that you studied from

history were happier than the average person? Yes. This is the reason why even if they're not over. First of all, I think you were talking about this with Ryan Holiday, which is like there is no evolutionary point to be satisfied or to be happy. There's like a finish line, which I think is a big mistake. People are always like the hedonic treadmill. It's like people are always chasing after something

they get it and they don't understand why they're not content. So it's like something that I don't even worry about anymore. I just do what I want to do every day. And it's like, I know I'm always gonna attend or 20% of my life is always gonna be discontent somehow, you know. As a driven person trying to build a of my life is always going to be discontent somehow.

As a driven person trying to build a business, if you were content, you wouldn't do anything. The reason I would say they might be happier though is because a lot of people think entrepreneurs are motivated by money, right? And the money obviously, Jeff Faisos likes this $200 million. Probably feels really good, right? But it's very clear. It's like they're motivated by control and independence. They want control on how they spend their time. Like, business building is world building, right? You're able to build a world

within your world. Like in your, in your, in your and I case, right? We get to choose what we're going to do when we wake up tomorrow. You get to choose who you speak to. You get to choose. You have complete control over people around you. I have friends, man, that even if they like their job, they hate some of their coworkers. Imagine how unnatural that is from an evolutionary perspective, to spend half of your waking time around people you dislike or don't trust. Like, so, to that degree, I think because they have control

and they, in the same one, in the case, is like, I had fun. You know, that's one of my favorite quotes of this, is like, most people don't enjoy what they do. Like, I really enjoyed it. And he wrote those words when he knew he was dying of cancer. He can't see all over his body. He knew he was dying. And he's looking back, he's like, no, I would,

there's very few things that would change. The ending of Phil Knight's founder of Nike, he has a fantastic autobiography of his shoe dog. What it was crazy is that talks about like, he has this dream, right? Of, he has this goal he wants to do, and this idea he wants to do. And then that book, every chapter of the year,

goes in chronological order, and then ends with the IPO of Nike. And the crazy thing is this guy overnight, you know, now he's worth $175 million overnight. He's like, this is amazing. And then he gets in the book. He's like, what do I wish? He goes, oh my God.

I wish I could do it again. Like, I wish I could go back and literally redo this. And now he's writing those words as a 70 year old man. He knows like there is no time for that. That's not gonna happen. So yeah, they may be happier than the average person because they have more autonomy and control over what they're doing.

But these are not like, I don't even know if it's possible for many of them to be, quote unquote, happy. Yeah, I can. So the common, like the answer that I would usually give when people ask about high performers, I had the performance coach Michael Jivey, who was the guy that looked after Felix Baumgartner's psychological training for him to jump from the edge of space. I had him on the show.

And Felix was struggling. He had claustrophobia when he got inside of this suit and it was pressure. Michael was brought in to coach him back out of that. And I asked Michael on average, do you think that the highest performers in the world are happier or more miserable? And his opinion was that they're more miserable. And the reason that he gave was that a lot of people that are high performers are driven by a sense of insufficiency, that they're looking to achieve success in the outside world to fill a void which is inside of them. And that is a common thread that I've seen with people that I have spoken to, that I've worked with, that I've been around. But I'm also perfectly open to hearing from you, someone that's been exposed to

tens of thousands of hours of intimate connection with some of the most smart and successful people from history, that that might not be the case. I do think a lot about whether people are sacrificing the thing that they want in order to achieve the thing which is supposed to get the thing they want. So for instance, a lot of people would consider that being successful might make them happy

and in order to be successful, they will sacrifice happiness in the short term. And you go, okay, so you have an equation here where if all that you do is remove success from both sides, i.e. the strive, what you're left with is just happiness. And it's that story about the fisherman, the guy that goes down to the fisherman, and he says, you could build this up into a business, and then if you built a business so big, all that you would be able to do would be a fish all day. And he goes, well, that's what I do right now. And I do wonder how many

people at the fishermen, sorry, at the business when you're going to see the fishermen, looking at him and saying, look, there is there is a void inside of me that can be filled by success in the outside world and the successful ultimately lead to happiness. The problem is that we look at the modern world through such a narrow band, a narrow domain of competence. You saw this with who's the dude that did Fire Festival? Oh, the one with the jail? Yeah, him, that guy, anyway. The only reason that people don't like that guy

into hilarious stories is because the event didn't succeed. If he'd had different weather, if he'd had different beds, if he'd managed to get the tents to look even remotely okay, he would have been hailed as the greatest event promoter of the last few decades, right? It would be the greatest thing since Woodstock. The only difference is that he didn't get the outcome that he expected. Well hang on a second, people aren't pointing the finger at him because he didn't get the

outcome when it failed. They're pointing at him for these unethical business practices in the lead up to it. So what that suggests is that the ends always justify the means to people. Do you understand where I'm coming from here? I do. Yeah. Yeah, really, really interesting. I always think about that five festival guy, who's name I can't remember.

And I would say one thing that is a little different with the people that I study is a lot of people have like a means to an end, right? So the great benefit, like one of my favorite things that I get to do is like, refreshing is like, so I spend a lot of my time having one side of conversations with dead entrepreneurs, because I prefer to study dead entrepreneurs. I really don't focus on entrepreneurs now,

but then those lessons attract people building modern day founders. And so then I get to meet them through the podcast and become friends with them. And the ones that are the most successful are it's like, there's no means, like for me. It's like podcasting is not a means to an end. It is the end.

The idea that like anybody in the world, like there's podcasting an open protocol. It essentially gives you the ability to have an on-demand radio show, right? About anything that you want, that anybody can ask that you could talk, about anything that you want that anybody can ask that you could talk about whatever you want, and that anybody can access all over the world. Like, that, there's nothing better to me. Like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,

and that idea, it's like, they're, I always say, like, they're going to have to pry the microphone from my cold dead hands. You're out of your fucking mind if you think, I'm going to, like, I'm never going to stop doing this. And what the people that I admire the most is like they found what they wanted to do. Sam Walthan, I just mentioned him, right? Another one of my entrepreneur heroes, Enzo Ferrari. Okay. Everybody knows Ferrari, the brand, right? Very few people know Enzo, the actual person.

Now, as an individual person, don't like him at all. He was misogynistic, didn't really, didn't care He had, this is what he chose to do for his life. And as a result, anytime you see a brand that has been around for a long time that usually stands for high quality, whether it's like Ferrari, the founding engineer of Rolls-Royce, or something like that, he's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it.

He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be able to do it. He's not going to be chose to do for his life. And as a result, anytime you see a brand that has been around for a long time that you see stands for high quality, whether it's like Ferrari, the founding engineer of Rolls Royce, same thing. Apple, you always have, you could, Estee Lauder, Coco Chanel, you trace Sam Walton, you trace it back to like this one obsessive founder, right?

That was, yeah, that was doing things not for it was it was like yes they wanted to get wealthy and they all got wealthy but they made way they went decades after they kept working decades after they needed money and in case like Coco Chanel Coco Chanel worked she died was she was like 87 she was working on her last she was still working on her latest like like her latest fashion show I've heard her latest fashion show, her latest fashion line, the year thing, I forgot what they call. S.A. Lotter worked on her company till she died. Sam Waltem worked on his company till she died.

Steve Jobs, same thing. Is there something sad about that, though, that a lot of these people have got families, you know, they could have spent more time with their kids, they could have spent more time connecting with the people that they care about? This is my concern with unfettered, complete blue sky ambition and ruthlessness that it, I worry that it sets a trend for people to believe that they need to go searching outside of simple lives, simple lives in order to achieve something that they will fulfill them when what it is that they're looking for is right in front of them.

Like these people who are unbelievable ambitious, they're very obsessed. And what that leads them to do is to engineer a life which allows them to manifest that obsession. And it may be one of the greatest things for this particular person to go and do. Ends of Ferrari may have been built to create cars, probably was. But would his life in retrospect have been better had he have spent more time with his kids? Would his kids' lives have been better had he had spent more time with his children? I don't know if he had kids. My point being, like, looking at it through the lens of how do I maximize impact in the world, whether it be legacy, whether it be growth, whether it be money, and it's

often not just the cash, as you've said, it's people continue after that. And you go, okay, well, like, what are you doing this for? You're doing this in pursuit of the pursuit itself. Cool. Great. Is that all that there is to life? Is a bigger question. So out of every single person that I've ever studied, they have all over optimized a professional life

at the detriment of their personal life. By far, there is one loan exception to this. It is episode 222, it's this guy named Ed Thorpe. He is the title and the fucking podcast I made is My Blueprint for Life, right? And he's got a fantastic autobiography. I recommend everybody read it. It's called A man for all markets

The scene to lab wrote the forward and you can actually read the forward for free on the seams website, which is Fantastic and he outlines why at Thorpe is so unique now. I have to preface this at Thorpe is a genius way smarter than I am by far Way smarter than all ever be I could read 10,000 books on every be smart as I got right so what at Thorpe realizes, when enough was enough. So he identified a handful of things that were really important. He's like, I wanna get wealthy, right? I wanna have work that's intellectually stimulating. I wanna be a good father, I wanna be a good husband, and I wanna take care of my health, and I wanna have fun.

I wanna treat life like the adventure it is. There, Tim Ferriss just is this fantastic. He's still alive, right? You can go, Tim Ferriss did a two-part interview with Ed Thorpe right? You can go Tim Ferriss at a two-part interview with Ed Thorpe recently. You can listen to it, but I recommend seeing it on YouTube because let's start with the health thing,

which I know you're into as well, right? I sent that video to a ton of people. I was like, tell me how old you think that guy in that video is. And he was like, I don't know, 65? I was like, he's 90. He's 90. And so what the genius in Ed Thorpe is like, he had a few simple systems and

simple rules to guide his entire life. So he got into physical fitness when he was a really young man. I think he was in college, right, which is extremely rare, you know, 60 something 70 years ago. And what he realized, he's like, every hour I spend in the working out is one less day I'll spend in the hospital at the end of my life. And he dedicated himself to eating healthy, to taking care of of his physical fitness and that's why he looks to what he does. He has actually a simple system I I use in that book where he gets up every morning, obviously go to the bathroom and then he weighs himself. And the reason he does that is like it's impossible for me to like he has tight food feedback loops for everything. He's just like you're going to know when oh it's like I lost go pounds I can eat a little more today, or oh, I can have that dessert or whatever.

It's like a very simple feedback loop, right? He was the inventor of the first quantitative hedge fund, okay? He would turn down after he got independently wealthy and it was all like something that he found intellectuals is simulating. He had unbelievable amounts of business opportunities to come to the door and his whole point is like Even if I'm not a billionaire. I have hundreds of millions of dollars. I have this giant house in Newport Beach, California, right? I have more money than I'll ever spend. Why would I take time away from my raising my sons? spending time with my wife Having fun to go chase more money. Something's wrong with me if i'm doing that now if i happen to be

uh... until she stimulated and i find when i'm doing fun that i'll go do that but it was like invest in oil tankers or something is like i don't care shit about any of that uh... he writes the book after his wife died of cancer and he talks about it they were made for fifty years he's like we spent he's i went home every day and had lunch with my wife he's like i worked forty hours a week right like he was not a compulsive workaholic, like a Steve Jobs or an Enzo for our area or Jeff Bezos, whatever

case it is. He has great relationships with his sons and he might have a daughter too. And now they're kids where the founder of IKEA, right, which is a fascinating story. It's called his name is Ingvar Camperad. He started a key when he's like 14. We're talking to it's like 87, right? And he has a line in his autobiography that fucking gives me the chills. And this is something I have two kids, so I'm not fucking this up. And he says he goes, I sacrificed a relationship with my three sons. I missed my three sons growing up to build IKEA. And he's like, don't do this.

And he says a line, he goes childhood does not allow itself to be reconquered. That is a very common mistake at the end of a lot of these autobiographies. And biography is like, I miss my kid's childhood and you can't get that back and I fucked that up, right? Let me go back to Ed Dorpen. I want to tell you about the Skydlaire Miller who wrote a book that I think everybody should read. It's called Driven, an autobiography.

He was the richest entrepreneur in Utah, had a 30,000 square foot house overlooking Utah, 93 different companies. He's writing the book as he's dying and he's like, my life is a cautionary tale. I didn't have fun. I didn't take care of my health. He only Utah jazz. Go look up Larry Miller, Utah jazz. You see this obese man sitting there on one of those scooters or whatever, like the people

can't live on. Like a little rascal. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to run down what he said too, because I think that's valuable even if people don't read the book. Let's go back to Adorp. So then he builds this wonderful business, right? He meets, he lives with a life adventure.

He winds up having dinner or he has dinner. They're both in their late 30s with a 38 year old Warren Buffett, right? He has dinner, leaves the dinner. They want to be friends. He leaves the dinner, turns to his wife, and he goes, he's going to be the richest man on America one day. Imagine being able, like, every season's more in buff analysis, like this old guy,

you know, kind of, child beer, whatever, eating, fucking, diet coke, and McDonald's, and stuff. But like, I always, like, what I always do is like, when I'm studying somebody, it's like, I'll write in a book, it's like, I wanna know when were they born, and then as I work my way through the book, I look at the years, I was like, how was that person?

What were they thinking when they were 25? I'm in my late 30s, like, what were they doing when they were my age? It's like we know the older version of them, but it's the younger version that built their empire. It's like, what did that person look like? You can see what Warren looked like when he was hit hair. He had glasses, he dressed nicely.

He looked, he was like a sharp looking dude, Charlie Munger II. He winds up being the first LP in Citadel, which is like one of the largest funds in the world. So my point is like the guy had all these interesting, he built the world's first wearable computer with Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. He adored invented card counting for blackjack when you know ones and zeros and all that stuff. He's the one that invented a system right to book in the 1960s called Be the Dealers sells millions of copies.

This is my blueprint because it's like yeah, he was smart as hell. He made a lot of money, but he was good. He was a good friend. He was a good father. He was a good husband. He took care of his health. And then he had fun. You wouldn't believe how many of these people get to the end of your life. And he's like, oh, shit. I didn't make any time for fun. And that's not how I think it was like, DeHawk is a founder of Visa. He just passed away. I think it was like, D-Hawk is a founder of Visa, he just passed away, I think it was 93 years old, a very wise person. He turned his back, he created Visa, ran it for like 15 years, and it's like, I don't wanna do this anymore.

I don't give a shit about money, and he goes and like works the land. He wake up in the morning, at five in the morning, right, he was obsessed with reading and writing, like almost all these people are, and would write a thousand words, then he'd go out and spend his day working the land. Physically, restoring the health of the land he bought is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

So he says something with fantastic. He's like, life is a magical honesty to be experienced. And that's where I don't, I hope people realize, like when you read these books, yes, you celebrate their accomplishments, but the reason that you need to read biographies over business books is the human element that gets to the end and they'll tell you don't do this. What's the price of the page for that? Yes, and so we go to Larry Miller, driven, it's called Driven An Autobiography by Larry Miller, right?

And this guy, you know, raised and fucked up situation. He's like, he's getting a fight with his mom and his mom didn't know how to deal with him, so she'd call the cops. She put her son in jail over and over and over again. Then eventually kicks him out, right? And so he's got no education, no skill set. He is working in as in a parts department of a car dealership. I think he's like 25 or maybe 30 years old and he just fucking snaps. And he's like, he had a fanatical desire to achieve something. And so then he just starts working literally. He's like, if my eyes are open, I'm working. Right?

Wines up building over the next 30 years, doesn't take care of his health as all. Uh, he said, if you live in Utah, it'd be impossible. Not to, uh, it was impossible for an average Utah citizen to not spend money on one of his businesses. So he had car dealerships and movie theaters and the Utah Jazz and all this stuff, right? Didn't take care of his health, didn't know his kids, didn't know his wife, gets to the Amazon life. It's like they're having to cut off his fingers and his hands because it's poor circulation.

He's like obese, really discussing. He's writing the book as a cautionary tale, right? And he says, listen, if I could do it all over again, I would have stopped. I would still try to get rich, but I would have know, maybe instead of making you know hundreds of millions maybe makes 10 million or 20 million Where the case is but the most devastating part is like if I could do it all over again I wouldn't have missed my my kids growing up and I would have had fun and I'm like What is the point of living in a 30,000 square foot house owning a fucking NBA team and you didn't even have fun

Then hit the co-author he dies in the middle of the book, right? As he's trying to write this book, his co-author is interviewing his wife and she says the most devastating thing that if my family said about this me, about me, I don't care if I have a billion dollars, I'm a fucking failure. And she goes, I miss him, but it's not like he was here when he was alive anyways. Dude. Yeah, so that's the power when you read a book like that, you get to the end. It's like, I'm not going out like that. You either have the, but let's go back to our mutual love for Charlie Munger.

He says, he quotes Cicero, where he's like a man that doesn't know what took place before him. It goes to life like a baby. He's like, if you don't learn, if you are only capable of learning to your own experience, which most of humans are, right, it's very hard to learn to the experience of other people. It's like, you're going to have a rough go at life. You will not have a great life. What you would probably be able to do would be learn from the experience of other people

that are similar to your sort of age cohort, right? Like you're going to be around most of your friends. Oh, what did you do? Oh, I tried this thing with my business. I tried this new strategy for getting up early in the morning. I went to bed and took this supplement, did whatever. You don't get to do what people who have got to the end of life and then subjectively looked back and told you, this is what I would have done. If in retrospect, I had lived a life worth living. That's what you're optimizing for. I think there's a really, really strong case to be made.

A good life is one which in retrospect you're glad that you lived. There is some elements of that that you miss off, particularly the hedonic stuff. Like you don't embrace more hedonic pleasure in retrospect, and yet it does provide you pleasure in the moment, and that's a little bit of a paradox. Or maybe a dichotomy to be managed rather than a paradox to be solved as homo as he says, but I think that especially if you're the sort of person that's listening to this show that listens to your show, you're going to be a bit more ruminative, you're going to do introspection, you're going to consider, why am I here, am I adding value? You need to optimize your life to be one which in retrospect you feel good about because not only will that probably be things that are good for you both in the moment and in future, but in the future it's like a gift that you

give yourself. You get to accumulate all of these senses and feelings of goodwill and of achievement in a holistic, organic, ecological view, its wholesale, right? It's everything. It's not just this narrow domain, it's everything. And that's why it's so important to be able to have a clear view of your life, because I wonder how many of these people, maybe some of them in the autobiographies, are still retreating to their own inner citadel, which is, I am happy that I achieved this much. I am happy that the business did all of these things because the temptation to open up the lid of looking at what they may be missed would be so catastrophic,

especially as you're perhaps a bit more frail at the end of your life, would destroy them. I'm glad you brought that up because one of my favorite ideas that I've ever come across from any book and it ties to the last part of your sentence there was Jeff Bezos has this thing called the Regret Minimization Framework,

which is like this nerdy way to just describe how can you get to the end of your life with the least amount of regrets possible, right? And so he is in, people like don't, like they know, I think it should be obvious that Jeff's super smart, but he's like genius level smart. And so even way before he started Amazon, he's working for this quantitative hedge fund in New York City called D.E. Shaw All right, yeah, I think I can't remember if the guy the founders D. Shaw the actual fund is D. Shaw

But anyways, it's run by this like quantitative brilliant billionaire, right? Jeff is making a ton of money. He's got this beautiful apartment in Manhattan And he sees he's doing research for something. He sees that how fast the internet's growing. This is like the mid-19 is like 95 96. He's like, oh my god. He's like, things don't grow this fast. Like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I want to take part of this. And so he can't get this idea out of his mind. And but all the external thing is like, no, Jeff, you're already successful. Like, like, if you can't leave now, what about your bonus? And so he's like, he goes to his boss and they go for a long walk in Central Park for

like two or three hours because his boss is trying to talk him out of not quitting. Because the code name for what turns into Amazon inside the hedge fund was called the everything store. Like that is why the biography by Brad Stone is called the everything store. And so Jeff, Jeff's like, I think I want to take a risk, quit a job while I can still do this and like try to play a role in what I feel is going to be a life, like an earth changing time, which is like the birth of the internet, which obviously is changed our entire life. The idea of me and you even connecting could not have happened without the

internet, right? And so they take a long walk, he's like, and his boss like, you know, you stay here, you're going to be rich, you have this big bonus, big bonus and he's like I'm gonna go home and sleep on this And he says the he's like I struggle with this decision until I figured out the regret minimization framework He's like 27 or 28 year old Jeff Bezos is not capable of making decision This is this decision, but 80 year old Jeff Bezos is capable of making decision So he should he should try to view his life looking back and he's like when you're on your deathbed in your 80s or hopefully 90s or whatever it is, you're surrounded by the ones you love, you're going to be telling yourself the story of your life. And that person is not going to say they're not going to give two shits that you that you quit your job and you don't get your quarterly

bonus, right? But what they would give a shit is like you had a chance to play a role in the birth of the internet, right? The way Jeff thinks about internet is the way I think about podcasting. I think like you also as well. It's like, like we're at the very beginning of the industry. We have a role to play here. Like, this is amazing. I don't want to do anything else to focus on this.

And so he goes once you make, once you look at it in that, and that, once I looked at it in that framework, he's like, it was, the decision was easy. He's like, jump, try to do it. If you try and fail, 80-year-old you's like, it was, the decision was easy. He's like, jump, try to do it. If you try and fail, 80 year old Jews, like, good. At least you got off your ass, you took a goddamn risk. For once in your life, good. Try again, but 80 year old Jews, like, oh, you were comfortable. Like, you were young and smart and had,

he had no kids at the time. He wasn't even married yet. I think they eventually got married because she, Mackenzie, he winds up quitting and driving cross country with him. Now, how does that tie with what you just said? Because that makes sense, right? But then what happens? He, he starts out with his wife, his wife knew him before he was Jeff Bezos of Amazon. She helps him build the company. That's why she got this huge divorce settlement. But now you fast forward,

he's one of the richest people in the world. He's an empire builder, complete like alpha nerd, right? Genius guy. Then he lets his family fall apart. Now you and I will never know. Like maybe he's like, hey, I don't care. I just want to sleep around. Now I can get the best women in the world or whatever. Maybe that is what makes him happy.

I don't know. But I would love to, in like these quiet moments, does he regret destroying his marriage or not? That would be a great question to ask. The price that people pay to achieve the things that everybody else desires is a question that endlessly fascinates me. I'm always thinking about it. I'm always thinking about it. Let's go to the other end of the scale. So we've spoken there about some examples of people that have tried to create more holistic views of success. Who are some of the most ruthless, ambitious, just stone-cold killers that you've studied? Steve Jobs, to me, is the greatest entrepreneur to ever give it. And like, a lot of this is

subjective, like, but if you had a Mount Rushmore of history as such winners, he's got to be it. He's like, I think you can't have four other people on there that's not him, right? And the sad part about the fact that he was, I just like the quality of his thinking, the clarity of his thinking, the fact that he started the company, the first sale Apple ever made was made barefoot. Like he walks into the bite shop in Palo Alto, or maybe Menlo Park, here I remember exactly what it was, and he makes apples for a sale. He doesn't have shoes on.

He doesn't take baths. He was completely like an inner scorecard person. There's this idea that I learned from reading this book called The Snowball, which is like a most well-known biography of Warren Buffett. And he talks about, he's like, it's very hard to have a happy life if you have an outer scorecard as opposed to an inner scorecard. So what does that mean? And he compares his growing up here, real bad, really stupid as mom, who is all outer scorecard, and yet his dad was his hero, all inner scorecard.

And what inner scorecard means is like, you're doing what you want to do based on how you feel about it, right? Not his mom would make decisions. Should I do, if I do this, what will other people think? And so I also like the writing of Tim Urban from way but why? And he really helped crystallize this. He has this post called like the mammoth

or something like that. But essentially it just proves it's like, the idea that other people are thinking much is a myth. People think about themselves. And he has these little stick drugs. And it's like, in our mind, it's like we're in the center. And all these people are looking and pointing at us, right? And then he goes, this is what you think, and this is what happens.

Like, you're still in the center, but everybody's like looking at their phone or they're worried about other stuff, right? And so to me, it's a very, very freeing. And so he said, his dad made decisions based on how he truly thought. He didn't care what the outside world thought, which I think is extremely, like I think is extremely important, and i think it is a skill to develop and his his his it destroyed like his relationship with his mom the fact that she wanted to him to make decisions based on like what will other people think he's like he didn't want to go to college which was crazy to time because his dad was

a congressman everything and he's already owning businesses he only like a farm he had a bunch of stocks this is like a young one buffy's like, he's like read 100 books on investing, he's like, what else am I gonna learn? And so they want to make him go to school, whatever case is. But what I like about Steve is like, Steve is all in his score card.

He's like, he had one obsession. I'm going to make insanely great products. That is a term that he says, insanely great products. He says that when he's like 20, says that when he's 30, 40, says it right before he dies. That's how he describes the iPad, the way before he dies.

And so what I respect about him is it's like, how the hell do you make great world class products in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, 2000s, and then 2010 right before he died, right? But what sad is, I respect him for what he did professionally, but he says in this biography that he's working on as he knows he's dying with Walter Isaacson. And at the end, I recommend even if you haven't, even if you don't want to read the whole book, is this giant read the last page, the last chapter, or maybe last two

chapters where he describes his legacy. So it's like why he did what he did. And then he describes why he's spending hits some of his final days working on a book. And he said something that was devastating to me He's like I wasn't around much and I want my kids to know why I did this And so like that completely he's his ruthlessness was not hey, I'm gonna be the richest person in cemetery He doesn't give two shits about that He's like I'm gonna make world-class products, right? And I'm gonna spend all of my time and energy on my world- products. And as a result, he's stuck. Where is that time coming from? Time is coming from taking care

of his health, spending time with his wife and his kids. Maybe he spent time with his wife. I have a bad part. I don't know. But like he definitely missed out on, you know, some part of his kids life. You looked at the Vanderbilt as well, right? Especially some of the some of the super early ones. I thought about them when it came to ruthlessness. Okay. So this is fantastic. So what I thought about them when it came to ruthlessness. Okay, so this is fantastic. So what I love about what I think is inspiring about the history of entrepreneurship setting it is like there was a Steve Jobs for Steve Jobs, right? His name was Edwin Land. He was the founder of Polaroid. When you hear Steve describe all of his ideas, like, I am going to build a technology company at the intersection of technology and labor arts,

Steve would use that. He put a sign with those, the intersection of technology and labor arts. Steve would use that, he put a sign with those, the intersection on all of his Apple product releases, right? That's not his idea. That he literally took that from Edwin Land. He talked about this guy as my hero. Edwin Land was 70 when Steve Jobs met him. Steve was in his 20s. He talked about how important Edwin Land was, was 1980. And as he's dying, he's still talking about the fact that Edwin Landwin was his hero. Now, you brought up the Vanderbiltz. Everybody's like, I get a lot of questions like,

okay, there's a Steve Jobs for a C jobs, there was a Warren Buffett for a Warren Buffett, that's really reassuring, right? There's an Elon Musk before an Elon Musk, right? The equivalent to Cornelius Vanderbilt, when you get back in like the Robert Baron era, right? And I'm about to reread this book because it's so fucking crazy.

There is no modern day entrepreneurial equivalent of a Cornelius Vanderbilt, okay? Who I would compare him with is Vladimir Putin, okay? Why do I say that? Because if you could have converted all of Vanderbilt's assets at the time of his death to cash. He would have controlled one out of every $20 American dollars in circulation. That is fucking crazy. Bezos, everybody at the top of the list, is on a relative basis on how much currency was actually worth of time.

No one's fucking close to that, right? He had sovereign level, state level wealth, just like Putin controls. It's like, oh, it's like, it's not my money. Okay. You're controlling everybody. But also because like, you know, maybe Microsoft, Bill Gates and C. jobs might fight it out. Bill Gates and the founder of Google, they might sue each other, they might argue, they might say bad things about each other, right? If you mess with Cornelius Vanderbilt on a business level, he would try to fucking kill you. That

is not hyperbolic. He literally did. There's this great book called Tycoons War. And it's about this guy. I think his name is William Walker. And William Walker was also a very social person. Like by the time he was like 18 or 20, he graduated, he had his like master's degree, law degree, and it was a doctor. Like, you know, when he's crazy geniuses, winds up taking over a part of Mexico when he was like in his early 20s. Like they would, the people just lived crazier lives back then. Anyways, William Walker also overthrew the government, I think it was Nicaragua, and he becomes president of Nicaragua, right? And at the time Vanderbilt had, he was building these new businesses where the gold rush was

going on. And so a lot of people in the East Coast wanted to find a way to get to the West Coast. And so you need to go to like the Panama Canal or you go around like the South America. And so Vanderbilt figured out a way to cut through Central America, through like ships, then donkeys, and then trains, and all those other crazy shit. But it saved like a ton of time. So he was making a lot of money doing this. Some of his ships during this project just happened to be in The waters of Nicaragua, right? So William Walker is like, hey, uh, I own this country now

Those ships are technically mine and so he made the drastic mistake of confiscating property That came from a cleanly available cleanly is vendors like uneducated like maybe six great education, maybe not even that, right? He came up on the docks in his first business, like they literally would solve business with fists. He would beat the shit out of other people compete with it. This is a hard dude growing up in an unbelievably tough environment. Now he's one of the wealthiest people in the world and you just picked a fight. There's a line in the book that says William Walker wasn't afraid.

He's like, William Walker wasn't afraid of other people He wasn't like other people who was afraid of Cornelius Vanderbilt when he should have been so Cornelius is like, okay You took my stuff. That's my stuff. I'm not gonna sue you. He has this famous quiz I'm not gonna sue you the laws to to move to slow. I'll just ruin you and so he goes to the secretary of state America. He's like, hey, we got to kill this guy. I want you sent troops down there They're like no, no, we're to kill this guy. I want to send troops down there. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, he goes to Britain. Same thing. Like the highest level of government, which is a funny story I can tell you about Henry Flagler, which is a John DeRocco fellow about how like, this is a great line from Will Durant and Will and Area Durant who've spent their entire life

studying human history. And in this book called Lessons of History, they say a great line where it's like, in every age, governments have been corrupt and men have been dishonest. It doesn't matter what time period it's always. And the government corruption and the collusion with a lot of re-churchpreneurs is constant as well, so it still happens to the state. So anyways, long story short, he hires private mercenaries, some soldiers from Americans, soldiers from Britain, uh... britain to go after to get this guy they wind up overflowing throwing at his

temporary government taking them out to the beach blindfolding them and killing them that's the vanderbilt that's the the level of the robber baren's like there's a violent aspect of it but there's also a they just think way larger they were not into competition all this was a comp they like combination so let me give example you know that the brand moat moat shundan So they just think way larger. They were not into competition. All this was a combination.

So let me give an example. You know the brand Moat, Moat, Shandon, the champagne. Well, thank you. So the owners of that company, they go to JP Morgan and there's a problem with somebody in another competitor in the industry, right? And so JP Morgan maybe say, okay, maybe I need to buy the competitor because they're decreasing my profits wherever. Champagne

can only be called champagne if it's manufactured in that specific region of France, right? I think that's where it is. JP Morgan's response is just buy up the whole region. The level that these guys bought at is just like, you know, now it's like, oh, I got to buy all my competitors. Like, no, JP is like, I'm just going to own everything. Every single business is in this region is now mine. It's like that kind of level of grandiosity that you just don't really see anymore. That's ruthless. I suppose I wonder how much business has been nerfed a little bit.

It's certainly, revenge of the nerds is something that people throw around a lot of the moment, but the business world is optimized for people that have got very, very high IQs, high conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and all that they do is obsess over one thing for a very, very long period of time. And that's where he competitive advantage comes from. There's this meme that I absolutely love, it's this sort of broad guy, maybe late 20s and he stood at the front of a bedbath and beyond. And he's like pretty big sort of built dude and he's got this kind of crap shirt and tie on that you would have if you worked at a

bedbath and beyond. And there's a thought bubble coming out of his head that says 5,000 years ago I would have been a proud warrior. Okay, I'm so I'm so glad you said this. So one of the craziest books I ever read was this book called Hard Drive, Bill Gates in the Building of Microsoft Empire, right? And the reason it's a fantastic book, because it covers the first 35 years of Bill Gates life, right, up until the Microsoft IPO. And to me, Bill Gates now is like, everybody thinks of him as like the slant of his, he's like, that's like his big thing, and he wants you to, you know, cure malaria and spend all

time doing whatever weird shit that he does, right? But again, I just mentioned earlier, it's like, I'm not interested in that version of book. I want to know who built his giant fucking empire and his giant wealth. And that dude was psychotic. Complete psychopath didn't take one single day off in his 20s, literally only thought about selling more software. Microsoft was the first software company in the existence

that's sort of billion dollars worth of software in a year. Now that there's millions of companies that are tons of companies that do that, but I made the point in the podcast that I made about that, where I realized that also had been a big fan of Dan Carlin who I think is like the world's greatest podcaster, his Wrath of the Con series. I've listed it over and over again.

I've read a bunch of books on Ginghis Khan, even though I pronounce it incorrectly and I made the point like I've started studying like I had just been finished reading about Genghis and Bill Gates and I'm like, oh, this is the same personality type like if he was alive 8,000 years ago he'd be on horseback trying to chop your fucking head off because that's how you built wealth back then It was very Bill Gates has got Genghis Khan Energy. No, but even like an appalling, like a diminutive person that knows how to control other people. I called Bill Gates in that podcast, it's Genghis Khan in a Mr. Rogers costume.

He dresses like Mr. Rogers, he's like, his fucking little weird nerd, but he's completely ruthless. There's two stories I wanna tell you about Bill Gates that are in that book, where he's completely ruthless. There's two stories I want to tell you about Bill Gates that are in that book where he's having a dispute when he's 21 years old, right? He is writing software for this guy in New Mexico. They're about to move, they're about to move what turns into Microsoft into Seattle. He's like, I want to break away from this agreement that I have with this guy where I'm only writing software for his hobbyist computer.

He's like, I'm going to write software for every computer in the world. And so Bill Gates is like, I have to fight this guy if I'm going to be able to do that. And obviously he needed to win that because that was one step in his eventual monopoly. And so this guy is much older in Bill Gates. He's like in his mid 30s, but he's realized this guy Bill Gates is fucking savage. Like this is unbelievable. And so while this lawsuit is going through, his company, the guy that Bill Gates is fighting is sold to this company called Pertech. And Pertech is like, I'm not worried. I'm going

to do this acquisition. I'm not worried about this lawsuit because I looked at this guy. It's like, what's this 21 year old shaggy fucking kid going to do? We're going to destroy him. And the guy's name is Ed Roberts and Ed Roberts warned him. He's like, no, no, I've been dealing with Bill Gates for a few years. He goes, he said it was like a FDR saying he could handle Stalin. It's just like, you have no idea what's about to happen to you. And sure enough, Bill Gates winds up running them over, winning the lawsuit. And they were just completely unprepared for his level of ruthlessness and genius. There's another example where Bill Gates had encyclopedic knowledge about every single other software company

in the computer industry. He could tell you who the CEO is, what the revenue was last year, what their projects are working on, right? And his whole thing is to got him in trouble with the US Department of Justice because some of the stuff wind up putting emails and in documentation is this like,

we didn't, when he lost, like let's say, Microsoft's competing for a $100,000 contract and another company. He's like, if that other company wins, he would tell his employees, it's like, you didn't lose me a hundred thousand. You lost me two hundred thousand and he'd go fucking ape shit because he's like, we lost a hundred thousand and they gained a hundred thousand. So that's a two hundred thousand dollar loss.

So his whole thing is like, I want to destroy every single person in my industry because I want him to be an appalling. And so there was this guy named Philippe Khan, I think is his name. And you know, he knew Bill Gates was gunning for him, but he didn't have any idea, like, to the degree that they were actually targeting him, because a lot of this stuff is secret. So Philippe goes to a computer conference, right? Seize Bill Gates in the corner, sitting in a chair by himself, looking at something. So Philippe goes over because, you know, they may be competing, they may be enemies, but

they still, like, talk to each other. He goes over and he discovers that Bill Gates is sitting there, staring at a picture of him. So the reason I say it's the same personality type is because now wealth is, in many cases, it's like positive sum, right? Like, you create a new podcast, that podcast is a new podcast, and you can't just say, you know, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you're a new, you. So the reason I say it's the same personality type is because now wealth is, in many cases, it's like positive sum, right? Like you create a new podcast, that podcast brings in revenue, you're not taking that money from anybody else, you're adding something to the world.

Back in gang is Khan's time, and really before the invention of the market economy, it's like, no, it's like, it was land, it was resources, it was, I'm obsessed with this studying like the history of the American West, right? Like Empire or the Summer Moon and like all these books of like the Commanders and everything else. It's like, why were the Commanders so rich? Because the way they did wealth was horses. Well, where did they get horses?

They went and went to where you were, killed you, took your horses, your women and everything else. So what we concerted wealth was like finite. And you had to, unfortunately unfortunate like in for most of human issues like we were just it was zero some game like there could only be one winner. So that same personality that Vanderbilt type that JP Morgan type, Bezos, he's clearly an empire builder. Clearly it just so happens he's born at a time where he can do it without I shouldn't

even say taking away from other people because he's destroyed a much further company. He's just like Rockefeller did, but you know what I mean like he can add something to the world and not have to kill you for the wealth. Yes, without having to kill a bunch of people, perhaps, or at least directly kill a bunch of people. God, this is the second order of facts of whatever Bezos system with Amazon probably dig fairly deep. You mentioned a Jocco earlier on. Yeah. One of his big things is dealing with discomfort and doing hard things. What have you learned from founders about the ability to deal with discomfort?

There's a bunch of maxims. The reason I think I'm so into Charlie Munger and Naval Ravicon is they, I think you're very limited. People can remember certain things. To transfer lessons throughout human history, it's like a story. Remember things in stories, and remember things in maxims. I try to break things down to the aphorism and Maxim level. The my favorite Maxim that I've read in any of these fucking books throughout the history of entrepreneurship came from the founder

four seasons. This guy named Isadour Sharp. And he said, excellence is the capacity to take pain. Like, and every single story, there is none. You're not going to find, and this is why I think it's so important for people to understand, like, the founder's journey sounds a lot like the hero's journey. It's like nothing's new under the sun, right? And so, he wrote this fantastic book called Four Seasons, My Business Philosophy,

It's his autobiography, and he starts out, he's just working in construction with his dad, like, it's an absolutely fantastic book, and he has this idea of like building the world's first collection of five-star only hotel chain. Guys still alive, this is going to be funny. He sold his business to some guy, one of the kings of Saudi Arabia and Bill Gates. So, Ty just to the Bill Gates and buyer-building thing.

You don't have enough money, Bill? Why are you buying the four seasons of Bill? What the hell is wrong with you these guys are relentless uh... you'll just talked about the fact that he he heard that um... bill gates had like a five hundred million dollar short position on test like a few years ago it's like what is wrong with you bill like this is what i said like he'd be on horseback because gangus didn't stop he just like i'll just you know i'll just uh... i'll just keep going till i get to europe until like i hit the other c um... so anyways uh... keep going until I get to Europe until I hit the other C. So anyways, is he has a thing where it's just like, he transitions from working construction and like building

maybe individual houses to like his first business or whatever he says, that Bill talks about like the amount of emotional stress that you're going to be under. His wife has a great thing in the book where she'd wake up at like three in the morning and she'd find her husband with like arms behind his head just looking up at the ceiling trying to like deal with like fuck I have this big problem. I don't where am I going to get the money.

How are we going to do this? And so he realizes like it's supposed to be difficult. Jeff Bezos has another great line. He's like we're trying to create something special, something we can tell our grandpa, something we can be proud of, that we can tell our grandchildren about. Those things are not meant to be easy. Anything that comes easy is almost worthless. So that's where I was like, resident with Jocco, Jocco's my alarm clock, dude.

Like I wake up every morning and a Jocco's like, get to the gym because you can buy his, he's got a spoken word, album on iTunes called Psychological Warfare. And I was playing it in the car with my wife the other day because I work seven days a week, but the reason I do that is because I have a balance of spending time with my family, taking care of my health and working, and I can't fit that in money through Friday,

or also I won't have, like, there'd be some days where all I do is work, so I find it better to spread it out over seven days, and then you can actually balance everything, like the adorpting. But I was playing and I was like, Jocco has this thing where he's like, this is an everyday thing. he has like there's no Monday

or this is a Saturday's that he's just hilarious person but the answer question there's no book that I've ever read where it's like oh this person had an idea to build a business they started doing business it went great and a story it's like oh I want to do this. I take one step forward, three steps back. Oh, damn, that hurt. And in fact, have you seen this, the greatest illustration of this comes in like the first few minutes. There's this documentary on HBO.

You know who Tony Hawk is, the professional skater? Yeah. Have you seen the documentary yet? No. I think you'll like it, especially because I think you're going to find a parallel with the journey you've been on and building your podcast where it shows Tony practicing trying to do the 920 to invent that new move and skating, right? And it starts out and he goes up in the ramp and falls down.

He's like, oh, gets back up. Then tries again, falls down, gets back up. Then he falls down again. Now he stays down a little longer. Now he's like, breathe in, have he said, oh, breathe in, he's like, do I want to do this? Like, gets back up then he falls down again now he stays down a little longer now. He's like breathe and heavy He's like oh Breathe things like do I want to do this like gets back up this goes on for like three or four or five minutes to one point We like he falls in a yelps in physical pain. He's like ah like like you broke a fucking rib or something, right? He's down for a long time

Gets back up and I watched that and by the time I saw that I had read like you know 250 biography I'm like oh that's what's in the books. It's you're going to be experiencing pain. Most people quit. Why do I have a shackle to know my phone by endurance We conquer it is supposed to be painful going into that. So the number one book recommendation I have is James Dyson has two Autobiographies right he just wrote a new another one that was published. That's not that's a fact I read read that book too. It's great.

That's not the book. His first autobiography that came out at the time, Dyson only had, it was still only the UK, and he only had one product which was his cyclone vacuum. Now he's built his empire, like one of the most valuable, probably a whole company's in the world, right? But the reason I recommend that book is because it's 14 years of pain and struggle and this weird guy that refuses to quit. He opens up the bag on the Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner.

It does not understand why the suction doesn't work when he's like 32 maybe and by the time he is holding in his hand a vacuum cleaner. He owns completely that is up to his standards that he can now start selling. He's like 44, 45. It's 14 years of struggling. And that entire book you can read in a weekend. First of all, he's funny. There's a lot of good ideas on how to build a business in there.

But the value to me is like, how many times he goes from his carriage house into, after an entire day of, he built 5127 prototypes before he got it right. Who the fuck would do that? Who would do 500 podcasts before they get a monster break? Right, it's the same fucking thing over and over again. And so, but he's like, listen, I could say that, it's easy to say, determination is important.

Persistence is important. It's another thing to go into your house, covered in suit, crying your fucking eyes out, as an adult man with a wife and two kids to support, with now a second fucking mortgage on my house that is tied to my business. And if I fail, we don't have a fucking house.

That is a different level of pain tolerance. And what happens? He sticks to it. There's been plenty of people that did that and failed. You have to be aware of survival survives, but what happens now you fast forward, right? He has this great thing Now you fast forward and he owns a hundred percent of Dyson it makes somewhere between Reportedly two to three to four billion dollars a profit. Is it private private? So he owns a hundred percent of it

Fuck off. I'm still private And you know this because it's from the UK where he had this invention called the ball barrel where he's like, fuck, this is way earlier in his career. It's also a story in the book where instead of like having a wheel, it's a ball and it like she doesn't get stuck when you're doing gardening and stuff. And he goes and does the photo shoot at some giant, you know, you guys have these estates and mansions and I don't even know what the, they're not even fucking mansions. They're estates in the UK or whatever. And he's like 20 years ago, I rented,

like I paid to take pictures of this product that I made here and he goes, now I just bought this shit, there's mine now. Like, but again, that he, like he suffered through 14 years. How many people would absolutely quit? And this is like why it's important. I know that you've spoken to the guys that work with Jack Butcher on his podcast, I don't think Jack was there.

And Jack's got that super, super famous graph, which is you are here, right? And it's- The best. Talking about that famous illustration that had been around for years and years of these two guys digging, and they're both digging along together trying to get toward diamonds. And one of them gives up just before he's about to hit the diamonds, and the other guy's still enthusiastic. Survivor ship bias is an interesting thing.

Reason being that it is limited by the people that didn't give up. Or it's always in reference to the people that decided not to give up. The survivors are the ones that do that. And for all of the people that the Michael Jordan's of the world, there's that story of him saying, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And he's 11 years old or something. And he says, I want to be an MBA star. And the career advisor to 11 year old. Kobe. Kobe. Kobe says you can't do this. Like, maybe you should pick something else. Maybe you should be more realistic.

That's a one in a million shot. And he says, I'm going to be that one in a million, right? The people who do not make it to that stage are the ones that can't dig into consistency. You don't know if consistency will get you there, but you can be guaranteed that if you are not consistent, you will not get there. Yes. And given that, the fact that And given that the fact that survivorship bias is an easy get out of jail free card for a lot of people to use when they see success that seems improbable and they are concerned that that sets a bad standard for people moving forward. But you don't know what the point is that almost everybody else gets to at which everybody wants to quit. There's this stat you mentioned earlier on about podcasting, 90% of podcasts don't make it past

episode three, and of the 10% that do, 90% don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcast episodes, you're in the top percentile of all podcasters ever in history. That's all it takes. So what does that tell you? Well, it tells you that there is a degree of discomfort

or something, there is some sort of challenge that is faced by almost everybody, or by everybody, that a very, very small number of people can get over. So is it survivorship bias to look at shows that are successful and say, well, you know, that's highly improbable? And you go, well, is it, or is it just that there is a

particular hurdle which tactically you need to get past? And once you do, you're broken out into this unbelievably vast open space with relatively few competitors. I think it's a quote that I learned from you about your mediocrity as my opportunity. Yeah. This is the way, like, I fucking hate when people bring that up you about your mediocrity is my opportunity? Yeah. This is the way, like, I fucking hate when people bring that up because a lot of people

will respond to like some post, like if I say, hey, most of all my social media channels are just like repurposing highlights. It's like, I don't have a lot of opinion. My opinions are relevant. It's like, hey, this, my good friend said this about this, you might find it valuable, right? The founder of Dunkin' Donuts said this, you might find it valuable. That's all educational content.

Even if they never listen to the podcast, my goal with all of those social media channels is like, oh, you'll learn something. And hopefully you check out my podcast if you don't, that's cool. I'm finally, you just learning, like, these little, like me repurposing these 20,000 highlights I have. And a lot of this stuff is just like, survival should buy us. And I don't want to paint with a broad brush because obviously it's a real thing. It's just like, to me, that's like a loser mentality.

It's like, I'm going to figure this out no matter what. And all either fucking die. Like, I'm going to do this, or I'm going to die trying. Like, I have found something I love so much and that I will reverse engineer. Just like what Dyson did. Dyson's like, okay, it's like, you take these things in little steps, you're not a fucking idiot, dude.

Like, there's a more opportunity out there than anybody could possibly imagine. So Dice is like, well why don't, why do bags get clogged? This is fucking weird. She's like, well maybe I'll figure out like, and he was working on something else, he realized, oh, I can use the cyclone.

And he's like, well, how do I make cyclone? I don't know how to make cyclone. So then I'll figure out how to make cyclone. Then once I solve that, okay. Now how do I sell my vacuum cleaner? Do I license it? He went down licensing. Oh, the licensing doesn't work.

Oh, maybe I have to do it myself. Do I need a partner? Okay, a tech-on-parter. Partnership didn't work. Okay, I'll do it myself. It's like break things down to smaller components and then just figure it out. For me and you, it's very simple.

It's like, all of our time is broken down into. We make the podcast. And then all of the other time, it's like, we just have to make people aware of its existence. And then the podcast will convert them themselves. When people find founders like, what the fuck is going on here? Why is this fucking guy with this giant head reading all these biographies? It's like, then they start listening. Then they listen to one. Then they listen to two. Then they listen to 40. And by the time they get to 30, 40,

50 episodes, it is impossible for them to not tell other people about it. And guess what? The best market for a new startup is a group of like-minded people concentrated together that no one else is serving. Well guess what? What? You're a founder. I'm a founder. Who do you know?

You know a ton of other fucking entrepreneurs and founders. And so if you find someone who's like, hey, this is valuable for my work or I learned something from Chris's podcast, you don't shut up about it. Just like if I see a great movie or a great CD or a not showing my age, a great track on Spotify or whatever, it's like I send it to our funny TikTok. It's natural to share people. So it's like for us, it's very whatever. It's like, I send it to our funny TikTok. It's natural to share people. So it's like, for us, it's very simple. It's like, I'm going to stay in the game.

I'm going to try to, like, you go back. I thought your early podcast was still great. But I guarantee if you go back to like episode 100, you're probably like, oh, you're like, I'm so much better because I do the same thing. I'll get messages about like, I listen to episode 50 last time. Like, please don't. Please, please, please, though.

But they don't, you know what I mean? But that's also a good thing that Paul Graham talks about. It's like the great thing about painting is the painter's leave like a progression so you can see the gradual or fineman over time. And very few other domains show that, right? But podcasting does, go watch, I was listening to Joe Rogan,

my friend Eric put me on a Joe Rogan back in like 2010 because he was into UFC. Like come over my house and watch this podcast. And he was like, what the fuck is a podcast? And then it'd be Joe sitting on his couch, his white couch with Brian Redban and there'd be like snow and shit. Like it was on you stream. It wasn't, I mean, we were not listening on Apple podcasts.

I mean, this is probably 2009 actually. But my point is like, then go see, compare Joe episode two are, you know, 50 with episode 2000. And this is the, I'm going to go back to the survivor ship virus and I want to talk about something else real quick that just popped up. I just finished reading rereading Peter T.O. 0 to 1. And his whole thing is like, he has a definitive worldview. He's like, you're not a fucking lottery ticket. You have control and master over the world. You have to go out and like you could have, if you plan and drive to things,

you can actually change the world, which is all entrepreneurs understand. Steve Jobs said the same thing. He's like, once you realize that everything around you was built by people no smarter than you. Like you can make your own things that other people interact with. You can literally change and poke the world

and something changed on the other side. You'll never be the same, but there's people what I realize that there's so many people that don't believe that They think life is something that happens to them and so what Peter's feels as in that book he quotes this Emerson quote Shallow men believe in luck strong men believe in cause and effect Yes, you have to stay in the game long enough to get lucky But you know how you get lucky by part of preparing all time by showing up every day for fucking years. My podcast just like yours has grown unbelievably. Like the rate of growth in 2022 has been fucking crazy. But what people didn't see is like me sitting in a room

by myself for four years every day before that. That's what I love what Kanye said on his, and I'm not talking about what the fuck he is now or anything else, right? But on his first album, he says, he's like lock yourself in a room for for every big if I beat today every day for three summers I deserve to do these numbers that's it is it's something he's like I've been making beats since I was 12 you didn't know who the fuck I was to since I was I sold my beat to Jay Z when I was 24 you didn't see the 12 years the time that you're hanging out with friends

You're going to parties is like I'm making beats and I'm rapping on beats There's a fantastic if you want to talk about the founders journey the heroes journey. Let's call it the founders journey The first two episodes of genius, which is the Kanye West documentary on Netflix skipped the third episode It's useless, but those first two he had to wear with all to be followed around when he was 2021 22 23 by a fucking camera crew as he's trying to break into the industry. That shit that you see in this first and I played on my computer over and over again because I feel like I'm in that same spot.

It's like I've been, I was in my, I was in my, this fucking booth that you see me in, this soundproof booth, reading every day. I was making five beats a day for three summers. It's like now I just broke in, now see what I'm going to do with this. I'm not, I'm going gonna put my phone on the gas, I'm gonna take every opportunity I can, I'm gonna keep working as much as I possibly can. And I, because I believe in cause and effect,

I'm going to do the work necessary, so I become lucky. And I don't give a shit about, oh, this podcast, did it for a year or two, and then quit, that's a relevance to me, because I'm not quitting. A family friend of mine, My brother-in-law is best friend, right? They're like, hey, I know David's in the podcasting. I started my own

podcast. I'd love to be able to pick his brain about it. And because he's a family friend, I was like, yeah, I'll talk to you whatever. He's like a nice guy. So I went up talking to him and he's telling me about like, he started this podcast and he's like, oh man, I did some episodes and then I stopped. And he was talking about weird stuff where he'd like have all his guests travel to like a professional recording studio Right, it's like you first of all you know any that like like just you need rap straps reps Arnold Schwarzenegger's things like everything is wraps, right? And then I talked to him. We're talking for a while and then I found a way to win This is like I don't know maybe 10 15 minutes of the coverage you can't remember, but I was like how many episodes have you done? He's like six

I was like call me back when you hit a hundred click the fuck are we talking about I literally told him I was like, how many episodes have you done? He's like, six. I was like, call me back when you hit a hundred. Click. What the fuck are we talking about? I literally told him, I was like, we have nothing to talk about. You've done six. The arrogance, and he's not an arrogant kid. The arrogance that you think you could do something six times and be good at it.

Why hasn't the world delivered me what I deserve? It's crazy. And this is a nice smart kid, right? I'm not like in something, but I was a pro. Do fucking hundred and then we'll talk. I think the reason the reason that people have those points of view is because they don't see behind the scenes what's gone on. You know, you look at the Rogan with the several hundred million dollars Spotify deal and all of the plays and all of the accolades and all that stuff. And you think, well, yeah, like I know he's done for a long time, but like now, surely there's a way to shortcut. I can get to where he is or somewhere close to

that in less time. And there are people, there are people that have had shortcuts to achieving that. Brendan Shaw is someone that gets accused of being one of the people that kind of got a huge jump because of how much time he got from Rogan. I think maybe, but is that really going to be your growth strategy to hope to be plucked out of obscurity? I'm not convinced that that's going to be a replicable way to do things. One thing that a lot of people have probably got in their minds is trying to understand your progressive summarization technique. You're reading a lot of books, your recall is good. High level, what is the process that you think is best for people to go through if they want to retain the important things from the books that they read?

I think this actually ties together. Jerry Seinfeld has this great interview with Harvard Business Review and they're like, hey, you kind of micromanaged everything. And could you, maybe instead of doing a show for nine years, you could have done it for a lot longer and you can get burned out. Maybe you should have hired McKinsey to help you. And he's like, who's McKinsey? And I go, it's a consulting firm. He's like, are they funny? He's like, no, they're not funny. He's like, then I don't need them. He's like, who's McKinsey? And I go, it's a consulting firm. He's like, are they funny? And he's like, no, they're not funny. He's like, then I don't need them.

He's like, the hard way is the right way. He's like, I go, he's, him and Larry wrote every single word. They picked every, all the actors, they did everything. Right? He's like, that's the only way I know how to work. And so my process is very similar to that. The way I related to Joe Rogan is like, if you think about Joe Rogan's built an empire

with his fucking mouth, with his mouth, and everything he does, it looks easy. People are like, oh, it's just like three hours of you know, shooting a shit with your friends. It's not easy, as you know, right? And if you think it was like, everything that he's interested in, like it's all these forms of practice.

It's like, he's obsessed with UFC, and he's been a commentator for 20 years, that's his mouth. He's had to be like, he's using, he's learning how to break down what he's seeing and make it interesting for the listener and the viewer, right? He's obsessed with comedy. He's been doing comedy for 30 fucking years. Same thing. How many reps has that guy put in on the microphone to make it look easy when he goes in front of now 25,000 people, right? Same thing as broadcast Episode 1900 looks easy because you didn't see the decade before. So I believe in the hard way.

So this is our mutual friend Eric Jorgensen. We have a lot of funny conversations because he just cannot believe. He's like, so who added your podcast? I do. Why the hell is it like everything I do, no more content. I'm really glad that you brought up Jorgensen, because I was at the bachelor party a couple of months ago. And obviously he's missed a leverage, right?

He's missed a scale. He's missed a, missed a outsource. And I think that both me and you have strategies when it comes to the way that we do our project that makes him feel nauseous, frankly. Yes. And so his whole thing is like, David, you should only be fine. This is an air super smart. The reason I like him is because not only is a good writer, but what is rare is how articulate he is.

But you probably interviewed a bunch of writers. He's able to be articulate and write really well, which I think we're just gonna see. This guy's gonna blow up, I think his idea, what he's doing with all these versions of the Almanac and everything, that guy's gonna sell fucked on a books. I wish I could invest in him. If I could invest in him, I would. Yeah, and everything, like, that guy's gonna sell fucked on a book's. I wish I could invest in him. If I could invest in him, I would.

Yeah. And so he heard, I told him this too, where, okay, so my process is crazy, but there's a reason for it. So one of the things I love is that I have an unfair advantage. Kanye said, like, oh, I have an unfair advantage because I hear my beats first, right? And my unfair advantage is like, I read the books first. And all I do is like, I'm having one side of conversations with history, history, history, I have an unfair advantage because I hear my beats first, right? And my unfair advantage is I read the books first.

And all I do is I'm having one side of conversations with history-grade entrepreneurs and all they do is tell me their best ideas. And then I can apply them to podcasting and put them through my view of the world and my own unique spin on things, right? And so one thing I learned is it gave me more confidence that my way is the way that's right for me.

Its Mozart was obviously very gifted, starts creating music when he's like three years old, dies a little bit young, but he was like psychopathic just like Michael Jordan was in his form of practice. And he would practice more, it's funny, you think of A-players, but there's a difference between the top 1% and then the top 0 1%. Mozart's clearly at the top 0 1%, which is almost a different world from the top one percent. And so he practiced way more than anybody else.

And as a result, he had physical attributes that his competitors lacked. And it's like he had insane left hand strength from playing certain instruments. And then what happens is there's these trends in music back then, just like trends now, where there was this instrument, I think it's called like a viola. It's not a violin, it's like something called like a viola, right? It comes extremely popular. And what he realized, he had like a decade or two decades of practice where his left hand is so much stronger and therefore capable of making music with this instrument that the his competitors that did not put in that time and practice lacked. And so by the time they're like, hey, I want to jump on this

trend. Okay, well, you're 10 years behind and you're never going to, you couldn't catch Mozart. So my version of that is I read the books, right? I read physical books. If I did Kindle, it'd be so much faster, but I have a love affair with like that. There's a romance to physical books for me. It's the first books I read when I was, you know, five or six years old. So I had I sit down with a book with a pen, a ruler, posted notes and scissors. Like I'm fucking doing arts and crafts over here. And I just, I read the book. I start reading the page, I read in chronological

order. And then whatever I don't think about it, it's like all instinct. What jumps out? What it like sometimes I'll highlight almost everything on page. Sometimes I'll go fucking 20 pages with nothing. It's what speaks to me. And then I highlight it. And then I write down on a post-signature. What comes to mind first? It could be like an interpretation of that. Oh, that may be think of this thing. So that's another thing. Like I don't think of, I know we have to, we have to separate things into episodes. But to me, it's like founders is one giant 400 hour conversation

on the history of entrepreneurship that I'm just gonna keep out of you. Like, when I do an episode on, I'm doing an episode, the book I was reading this morning is called, What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett. This guy built up this giant diamond and jewelry business and then sold to Warren Buff in the 1990s. That episode, it comes out, it's not just gonna be on that. It's going to be on how he thinks.

It's relates to what Steve Jobs said or this other person said here or whatever the case is. So I read, go to the book, make my highlights, right? Then the night before I sit down to record, I reread all the highlights again. Not the whole book, but literally reread my highlights and the notes. So that's the second time I've read them, right? Then I sit down in the morning, me and you were talking about before we started recording. I like to record my brain is so much dumber than afternates. It's remarkable. It's remarkable how dumb I am.

But in the morning, it feels like when I'm in a field of sharpest, I sit down and go through. And the way I, the podcast, the set up is like, hey, what if you could meet up with your friend who reads a lot? And once a week, he just tells you the shit he learned this week. So I talk, you've heard the podcast, like I talked directly to the person. There is no fourth wall. It's like, I picture literally a fucking friend sitting in front of me and we just talk

just like that. So now that's the third time through. Then I edit all the podcast myself. And there's not a lot editing. It's like, it's just like, maybe I'll get up to go to the bathroom or like, oh, that parts boring and the second part, so I'll just cut that out. But it's very straightforward because it's like, there's no production. It's just me, maybe I'll get up to go to the bathroom or like, oh, that part's boring and the second part, so I'll just cut that out. But it's very straightforward because it's like, there's no production.

It's just me, one human talking to another. So that's the fourth time I've heard the highlights. Then I take out this app called ReadWise and I take pictures on the iOS app of you can take pictures of a page of a book and it'll automatically turn the text, like do the text recognition. You have to like fix a few things, but I put all those highlights into Readwise and I type in my notes.

So that's the fifth fucking time. By the time I'm done with the book, I've read my highlights five times. And then my second half of the day, which today I haven't done because we're recording the afternoon, is I'll spend a few hours just rereading like the iOS app on Readwise has this thing. You pull it up, it's called highlights, highlights feed. It looks like I'll show it to the camera, I don't know if it's going to pull up, but it looks like a Twitter feed, but instead of tweets, it's how about highlights from past books and my notes on the book. And then what I'll do is I'll use that.

I got this idea from Michael Bloomberg actually because he repurposed the information that his unique information that his business collected, which is selling the subscriptions of the financial data and then repurposed that information into media content and his media empire. And then that would then fuel subscriptions to his, you know, his $25,000 seat, whatever thing. So that's when people see tweets, our stuff on LinkedIn.

That's all coming from a ReadWise app. Then I'll fill myself in this booth that you're looking at right now, reading those highlights and putting them on TikTok and stuff like that. And so it all funnels back to, and again, it's a former practice. So now, by the time I'll probably record

maybe Sunday morning, maybe Monday morning, depends on how long it takes me to read the book. But by the time I sit down, everything about the say is informed by the book I read, but also all my practice that I've done the previous six or seven days. And so my whole thing is like I'm terrified of wasting anybody's time. And so that level of preparation, one,

I think it's extremely rare, especially in the entrepreneurial domain. I don't think, I'm not saying this as an arrogant thing, it's like, I release a podcast every week, I did 66 last year, actually, I don't think anybody else is building a podcast exclusively focused on founders that does more preparation than I do that releases as fast as I do. And so I'm obsessed with just building the warm buff thing, building that the longer this goes on, the more difficult I am going to be to compete in the future. Because I think of these as not, it's an obsession that happens to be a podcast, or

a session disguises the podcast that happens to be a business. And so being smart is like, how do I, again, you know this, because you have 500 fucking 60 fucking episodes. It's like, it's going to be very hard for you to replicate what you've been building up and all this shit that you're learning that then informs the conversation you have in the future with somebody saying, hey, I'm going to, you know, I like what Chris does. I'm going to jump in and try to be head to head with them.

Good fucking luck, buddy. Dude, I'm really impressed with what you're doing. I think it's great. I think that teaching people through stories, especially stories from history, some of my favorite modes of learning, Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, You know, these guys have made absolute monster careers out of being historians masquerading as philosophers. And it's a very cool way to approach it. So let's wind this one up. Before you go, three books that you most often gift to people. gift to people well okay so the most often that a gift to people would be uh...

uh... against the odds and autobiography by james dyson it is was published you know twenty something years ago it is now hard to find it's out of print it is somewhat expensive i have a friend that just bought it repaid a hundred dollars it's fucking worth a hundred dollars worth way more than that those are hard to find i give uh... air jordan saysensen's the Omnacken of all a lot, a lot. Um, there's a fantastic book called The River of Doubt, which is a biography on Teddy Roosevelt, but it focuses on him, his

life after he lost the last presidential election. Teddy's one of my personal heroes as well, his approach to life. Um, in fact, I'm I'm about to do, I've just bought Edmund Morris's three-part biography of Teddy Roosevelt at 3,000 pages. I have to read on Teddy, which I'm looking for too. But anyways, this river of doubt, it's about the capacity to take pain, endurance, treating life like the adventure it is. He goes and says, hey, I need to, like anytime he went to something rough in life, he looked for his motto is get action. And he's like, I need to the physical emotional pain I have is only alleviated through physical action. Right. And so he's like, I'm going to go down to the Amazon and I'm going to map out a tributary of this river that no one's ever completed. And he almost dies. And it's just the writing is

absolutely fantastic. Two other books and a yes or three, but one of the best books, if you can find it, I don't give this as a gift to a lot, because it's hard to find. Estee Lauder wrote one of the best autobiographies that you can ever find, a complete obsessive. Her, I'm using her playbook a lot in the way I'm building founders, and like she's just obsessed over customers,

did things at Dinnat scale. She writes the book, she dies, the company is still a private family company. And now it's doing like $18 billion of revenue. It's called a success story. Bias Day Lauder, really hard to find, but you can read it in a weekend full of just useful information. And then I would add one other book, you have to read a biography of Steve Jobs, in my

opinion, I've read everyone that's available, the best one. If you only had to read one, it's called Becoming Steve Jobs, the evolution of a reckless upstart to a visionary leader, I think is the title. And that's a shorter version, you get a full sense of who he is in like 300 pages. Dude, I love it. Well, should people go if they want to check out the stuff you do? Founders podcast by David Center and any podcast player that's basically it I put my entire all of my life energy into that one vehicle and I'd be thrilled if you guys try to test it out. Dude, thank you. Oh, thank you. I'm super happy that I got a chance to meet you and to be

connected. I really appreciate that. Yeah, no problem. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,