David Senra
Appearances
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So I wanted to do some that I absolutely loved and where there was actually an acquired founders overlap. And the very first recommendation would be the new Stripe Press edition of Poor Charlie's Almanac that just happened to be published a week after he passed away. There's something on the back.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
There's a quote from Charlie Munger, and he says there's an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business science and elsewhere. Number one, take a simple, basic idea, and two, take it very seriously. And so I really feel that you and I are taking Charlie's advice to heart. We're just taking a very simple idea of learning from history, and then we take it very, very seriously.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And then the idea that we got to spend time with him in his very last year, I don't take that lightly. To the degree that I can, and you guys definitely did it with your excellent interview with him. It's like I really think being a steward of his ideas and trying to push it forward to past generations so they're not forgotten is a very important part of my mission.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
This book is almost impossible to find. So it's The Dream of Salomeo, My Life, and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cuccinelli. And I had to have him on my list out of the 330 entrepreneurs that I've studied for the podcast so far. It's shocking how many of them
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
made the mistake of over-optimizing for their professional success at the detriment to their personal life, their relationships, and their happiness. And Brunello, along with Sol Price and Ed Thorpe, is really up there with how I want to pattern my own life.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he says, I've always been firmly convinced that in order to successfully stand out, you need to focus on one single project representing the dream of your life. And then it just speaks to the first class person that he is and the first class organization that he runs. The podcast comes out. It became very popular. Him and his team listened to it. And they send me a handwritten note.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
I've never felt paper that's more luxurious than this. And then they do the most Italian thing ever. They send me a bottle of their Cuccinelli olive oil. So again, he's very thoughtful. It's very obvious when you read the book. And you can tell by the way he's running the company that he's paying attention to everything.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Okay. So number three and number four are actually related. You find these weird, hard to find books. And so this is one of them where it's like it blew my mind that the fact that In the 1980s, the richest American was somebody that no one ever heard of. And so there's only one book on him. And it's this book called The Invisible Billionaire, Daniel Ludwig.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
It's a biography of Daniel Ludwig written by Jerry Shields. And the book starts off saying that this photographer located the richest man in the world and no photographs have ever been taken of him. I'm like, what are you talking about? And then you learn that Daniel was just excessively focused on just his work. He had no other hobbies besides physical fitness and building his business.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he did that till, again, till he died. And what I love about it is you just find somebody that is completely focused on doing the best job possible for his customers and for his own sense of satisfaction of building a business. that he is proud of and that is operating. The way I would describe his approach to his business, it's like an artist painting a canvas.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So number four is the taste of luxury. You got to pronounce his name. Bernard Arnault. Can you just pronounce the whole thing? I butchered all the French names in this episode.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Okay, so this is on the list, one, because I highly suspect he might be the best entrepreneur on the planet that's still operating and running his company right now.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And if you think about the fact that he knows everything down from the tiniest details, which there's crazy stories about this, to the big strategy, to the capital allocation decisions, I don't know if there's another more talented entrepreneur than him. His relentless dedication to really pay attention to every aspect of his business is something that I'm trying to do for mine.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
But the acquired episode on LVMH is one of the best episodes of any podcast I've ever heard. Not just acquired, any podcast. It's incredible. I can't tell you how many people I sent that to, how many times I listened to it. And then you were kind enough, we were together at your house in San Francisco, and you were kind enough to give me this book, which allowed me to do the podcast.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Because at the time, you had a copy that you spent several hundred dollars on. And then if I wanted to order the book, the book was like, I think $3,000. Yeah, nuts. I think the important thing is identifying an opportunity that no one else sees. There's this great writer, Cedric Chin, that I really like.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he actually wrote something about Mark Leonard is that the foundation of a great career is based on finding an earned secret and exploiting it for multiple decades. And the reason this book is so amazing was because it ends and Bernard is 42 years old. Yeah, it ends at the beginning.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he is saying, hey, these luxury brands, they're kind of hard to compete with because if you are to have one, it's usually, you know, 50, 100 years old. And then everybody from the outside is telling him, this is a quote, I remember people telling me, it does not make sense to put together so many of these brands, but it was a success. It was a recognized success.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And for the last 10 years, every competitor is trying to imitate. And so the book ends and he's calling his shot. He's like, hey, these seem to be good assets. I'm just going to keep buying them and then just keep compounding. And then you fast forward 30 years later and he's the richest man in the world.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So this is Soul Price Retail Revolutionary written by his son, Robert Price. This is another acquired founders crossover. And the episode I made on Soul Price, I titled purposely the most influential retailer to ever live.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Because if you look at the people who are on record saying they benefit from ideas from him, Sam Walton, Jim Senegal, Jeff Bezos, Bernie Marcus, it's like it all stems from this guy. So really the reason I picked this is one, It's a perfect crossover for your guys' excellent Costco episode.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
But this goes back to finding people that you admire, not just for their business success, but their success in life. Imagine that your son, after you pass away, writes a biography. on your life. And this is one of the last paragraphs. If you don't mind, let me just go ahead and read this whole paragraph. Sol was a poster child for the American dream.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. Sol was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became an exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropist, and he celebrated 70 years of marriage. He was a good father. who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn't get much better than that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
People used to say like, if you love what you do, you do it for free. And I was like, wait, no, no, there's a different level. If you love what you do, they couldn't pay you to stop. And when I realized like how much money would you have had to give Steve Jobs to not work at Apple? The answer is there is no, it was not, you couldn't pay him.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Oh, AI, for sure. I'm always very skeptical of everybody rushing into trends. I think the mimetic nature of humans is something that's been well-documented. It's obvious if you just open your eyes. And so I kind of resisted it, and then I started using it. I'm like, oh, this is absolutely incredible. And so now... I'm in, I use different AI apps every single day.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I built my own to keep track of all the other stuff. So again, the other idea, we'll come back to that. The other idea about finding a simple idea and take it seriously, that's a great Charlie Munger quote. There's also one that's related where he says, we often find the winning system in business goes ridiculously far, minimizing and or maximizing one or a few variables.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so I think in our trade, same situation. It's like I take, if you look at like my note taking, how I organize my highlights, the bookshelf behind me is literally, if you start in that upper left-hand corner, the books are all organized in episode, in order by episode number.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Good. I feel like we're doing podcasts all the time like this. We just never record any of our conversations.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I take, like I go ridiculously far, in this case, maximizing one or a few variables, which is like organizing the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs. And that is like this flywheel effect where it's like, when I did the Todd Graves episode, like for example, because I have all this information organized, I can pull it up and summarize it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then I also spend hours every day rereading past highlights. I'm able to do an episode on Todd Graves, but then I made a list of all the other founders I compared him to in that episode.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So it was Rockefeller, David Ogilvie, Steve Jobs, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, Phil Knight, founder of Nike, Peter Thiel, Harry Snyder, founder of In-N-Out, Sam Walton, the Red Bull guy, James Dyson, Daniel Ludwig, who's the invisible billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, Henry Ford. And so that's another example of like, of, you know, maximizing one or a few variables.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
In this sense, it's like the one variables I'm maximizing. It's not good enough for me to make an episode about something because we forget as humans, we forget that we forget. I go back and reread a book that I've read four times and I still forget, forgot certain parts of it. I'll go listen to a podcast I did five years ago. It's like, oh, I forgot about all that. So we forget that we forget.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so, um, the, this is where now, if you actually look at my consumption habits, you know, I'm using Claude every day. I'm using open AI every day. The deep researcher feature from open AI is the, the jump from Google to the first, you know, chat GPT, uh, uh, That jump was huge, and then I feel OpenAI's deep research feature is as large from the normal AI chatbots to that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's freaking incredible. I've been using it to make episodes, and literally the lines that people will give back to me
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
not they're not even the books they're from open as deep research uh so i use i i subscribe to them all i built my own obviously called sage i use that every day i use perplexity every day i use claude i use open ai um i can't think of any other ones but like that was that's a truly unique technology yeah are you using it at all to make in your research uh i'm not using it very much in my research you're using in your day-to-day life
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think you should. It's so important. Most people, what they do is as they age, this is why technology is like a young man's game. My friend Ravi Gupta wrote this great essay called AI or Die. And his whole point is these tools are so wonderful for people like you and I in general, for super productive people. You force yourself to spend a few hours every week learning how to use this.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I listen to these AI podcasts to get ideas. And I even think it'd be a good idea. Bill Gates had this idea where he do these think weeks and this has come up on the books a few times where it's like, you got to get, you got to get away from your day to day. And he would bring like, you know, bag of books and he'd sit in like a cabin or something. I can't remember where he went.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And he would just no internet, no nothing, just read and think for like a week or two straight, maybe a week. I think I'm going to start doing that. But not just reading is like literally trying to consume and make myself get good at using these tools because so much of the value extraction is dependent because we're in early stages.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So much of the value extraction is dependent on the person on how you're able to prom on how to be able to use them. It's not like just picking up your iPhone. My dad can barely read, right? But he has an iPhone and he has one, he literally doesn't use email or anything else, but he has one app on his phone, it's TikTok.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Because TikTok doesn't ask anything from the user, just to scroll and like, and it'll serve everything up. AI is not, it's the opposite. You've got to learn how to extract information
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
all the power that it has out and the only way to do that is to literally treat it like a you know part-time job or like a course like imagine if you went back to your friend mba just like okay i'm gonna do an hour class every night on just learning how to use ai do you um use it at all to structure your notes or your thoughts or you just use it for research
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So not to structure my notes or thoughts. So I have an AI trained on... I have an AI that just... The only thing you can use it to search is all of my notes, all of my highlights, and all of my transcripts. And that alone is nuts. So right now I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 of... 15 of, it's called Sage, up 15 tabs in my browser.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so like, I use it a lot when I'm reading too. Or like, I'll be on a conversation with a friend of mine who's usually a founder. Actually, I don't talk to anybody that's not a founder. And they'll just say something or they'll have a question and I'm like, I'll prompt Sage because of this. Or like, let me give an example. I just used the, I just made the Todd Graves episode.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And this is the unfair advantage. This is why like, I told, me and you have talked about this over and over again, podcasting is like one of the most valuable tools to learn that history's ever, that humans have ever made. And they're some of the most under, they're still misunderstood, widely misunderstood. People that are outside of podcasting don't realize how powerful they are.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so therefore, anything I can keep doing to keep getting to the top of my profession, Like every hour I can spend getting better at podcasting or understanding in a deeper level is better than, you know, 10 hours working on something new. And I think what I've done here is like just this, I have an unfair advantage against other podcasters and just keep fucking compounding.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so I'm sitting here thinking about Todd Graves. I'm like, man, this guy is so much like the In-N-Out founder. It's essentially what, I feel like Todd Graves is Harry Snyder, who's the founder of In-N-Out reincarnated. Except they're separated by like, you know, 50 years. Todd Graves founded Raising Cane's, I think, in 1996. In-N-Out was founded in 1948.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so I just asked, because I've done deep episodes on Harry Snyder, I asked Sage, can you give me the most important ideas from Harry Snyder and how he built In-N-Out? And within...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
15 seconds it's like a complete list of all the innovations he made like you know everybody has gone through a drive-thru and spoken at a at a at a speaker right hey what do you want i'm at mcdonald's i want a big mac harry snyder was the one that invented that right i forgot that i did the episode i forgot that so like it just goes through all the stuff he did how he was different from his competitors and it's probably 600 words so it doesn't take that long to read
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
maybe 800 words, you know? But it immediately reminded me of all the main ideas from that. So yeah, I think, I told you before, if you organize, even if you don't, I happen to, people ask for my notes and highlights so much, so actually, this stuff actually turned into a product and like an extension of the podcast.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But even if you don't do that, I think you should definitely, think of all the reading and research you're doing. Like, yeah, you should have it all. And I can connect you with the people that can build this for you too. But I would have, I would be layering an AI assistant on top of all your research, and I think every professional is going to do that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I think you're going to be able to buy or subscribe to the AI assistance from other professionals, because I'm already proving this. There's thousands of people that pay to get access to Siege.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
That was your problem.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, basically. Now, Todd, some of these episodes are different. where like Todd Graves, there's no book. So what I did is I took, he's got two in-depth podcast interviews. So I was like, okay, well, I'll just turn these into, I'll get the transcripts and essentially make a miniature book. And I went through the transcripts just like I did for a book, right? The process is always the same.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I don't, Like, one of the most boring things... This is actually... We can talk about, too. I think the best analogy for podcasters is actually filmmakers. Because you mentioned, like, oh, being open with, like, your process or, like, we share a bunch of information. It's just, like... It doesn't...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like I did like six episodes on all these filmmakers, like the greatest filmmakers, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron. And what you realize, like a lot of these people knew each other and they would help each other because at the end of the day, it's like people like, oh, has Ben a competitor?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I was like, no, he's not a competitor because you can just like in the same way that you could go watch Steven Spielberg's Jaws one week and go watch George Lucas's Star Wars next week. Doesn't affect Steven Spielberg at all. So I don't understand. Like, most of the podcasts I know are very positive. Some there's one or two that are kind of weirdly competitive.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And, you know, they have bad reputations and they are getting smoked by the other people. So, yeah, I think if you have something, especially in the world and what we do is like, if I give you information and you make a better podcast to me, then you deserve to win. I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't bother me at all.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I want to win because I want to make the best product possible regardless of what anybody else is doing. So one thing I learned from Tarantino, though, of all these filmmakers, is he's like, it doesn't make any sense to do everything in perfectly chronological order. Think about how he makes his movies. He's like, no one tells stories that way. No one says, hey, Ben, tell me about your life.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
You're like, well, I was born on January 1st and then I went to kindergarten. It's like, no, you jump around. You talk about the fact when you met your wife, the time you had your first kid, talk about the relationship you had when maybe your dad taught you how to ride a bike. It's not chronological. And so I don't feel the need to organize and to go through what I want to talk about.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And another thing is I'm not trying to summarize a book. I'm trying to say, hey, I spent 40 hours reading about this interesting person. Here's the most interesting parts to me. And you're smart. You want to know the whole story. You can pick up the book. I link to it in the show notes. But yeah, that's really all it is. The process is more taste and intuition than anything else. The
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'll give you $2 trillion, Steve, but you can't ever work on an Apple. You can't build a product in. He'd say, no, he's not doing, that's not what he's doing. He liked hitting the ball. He liked making great products, the best part, some of the best products in the world. And he did that until he died. Um, so yeah, I think that's, uh, yeah, there's all kinds of people.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
all the episode are, all the end result is like, this was most interesting to me. And the thing that's changed over the last two years is now I spend one to two days in between when I'm done reading to when I sit down to record. And all that is, is cutting. It's like I may have had 50 things that I thought were interesting and you just read and reread and read and reread.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then you're like, ah, no, no, don't need that. And then just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. This is an idea I got from Walt Disney. And I don't even know if it was conscious, but he talked about it was so expensive to animate back then that you had to do the edit before you did the drawing. And I was like, that's a really good idea.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So I edit, you know, I still edit it after I record too, but most of the edit happens before I record.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Um, you're how, like, you're pretty religious, right? You go to church every week. How long? Every week. So I grew up like fundamentalist Christian, like, uh, to the point where like my mom, when she got cancer, like she tried to like, her first thing was like trying to pray it away. And when I mean fundamentalist Christian, I mean, like, there's a guy named, like, Benny Hinn.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think it's heavily influenced because Tarantino has always been my favorite filmmaker. And if you look at like, go watch Pulp Fiction. It's like five main scenes. There's huge chunks not missing, but you're, you'll put it together. You're like, you, you, if they're going to listen to founders or how to take over the world, I don't think you have a bunch of idiots listening to you.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's just too, it's like, there's so many other options for people that are like dullards. You know, I'm not making a pod. People always like, I'm not making it for the mass population. I have no interest in, like, I'm trying to make, I'm trying to make the best podcast for the best people in the world. That's literally what I'm doing.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so those kinds of people, it's like, dude, they can read between the lines. They'll fill shit in. They're smart. You don't have to like hold their hand.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Smart enough to get it. People are... They vastly overestimate how much information people can retain, right? And so there's a great example of this in one of the books I read on Steve Jobs, where mostly he knew an ad should have a singular focus. The homepage of Apple would have a singular focus. All their advertising, they would pick one feature and stick on it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And every once in a while, he would deviate from that. And he's like, okay, for this ad, I want us to list five reasons. And the guy that was running...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
he's like one of the best advertising agency founders of course if Steve wanted to use him that would have to be the way it is and he goes Steve let me show you something he rolls up five pieces of paper and he goes and he throws five balls of paper at him and Steve catches none he goes that's a bad ad now he crumples up one piece of paper throws it at Steve Steve catches it he goes that's a good ad they're going to listen to an hour long how to take over the world
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
or an hour long founders, and they're going to remember one or two things. And this line about like breaking things down into like how to, what do I actually remember? I remember I love aphorisms. I'm obsessed with maxims, right? There's a maxim on my computer screen that I'm looking at right now. It says, do one thing relentlessly. There's no explanation needed.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's just like, reminder, four words, I know exactly what to do now, right? And I can use as a principle to guide my behavior. But even the idea of why this is important came from another aphorism where David Ogilvie says, you can't save souls in an empty church.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He was, like, famous in, like, the 80s and 90s. And he'd be one of these preachers where, like, you'd go to him and, you know, he'd, like, blow on you or, like, hit you in the head and say, like, you're cured of cancer. So they're pretty, like, in my opinion, like, extreme.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so when he was selling advertising for some of the best brands in the world, he's like, you have to make them entertaining and memorable because you can't save souls in an empty church. We can sit there and we can educate for all that we want. You think about all these professors that they're, they're, they're, they're great like history professors, but then they get in a podcast.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like, why is nobody listening to my podcast? And I, and I've talked to some of these people and I listened to it. I was like, cause your podcast is fucking boring. You didn't understand that they're sitting in your class, not because they're not there to learn necessarily, right? They're like, you have like a captive audience. There's all these weird reasons people go to college.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's the degree, it's the insurance, their parents made them, whatever the case is. Podcast is fully opt-in. You can't save souls in an empty church. Ogilvy is just like, they have to, it has to be entertaining. It has to be fun. It doesn't mean dumbed down. You don't have to dumb it down. You just make it interesting. Yeah.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Our business is different. Like, let's say you're... some of the most valuable companies in the world outside of like energy, right? It's like B2B SaaS. Like if you look at like who wants to advertise on founders or invest like the best, like these giant companies because like some of the most valuable companies in the world, you know, they're selling to businesses.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Facebook sells to businesses, Google, Microsoft, you know, Salesforce, all of them, Oracle. So, If me and you were competing, you need a database provider, and Oracle loses that contract to somebody else, that is a zero-sum game. You're not going to have two database providers. You're not going to have two whatever the case. In many cases, you're going to pick one.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So in that case, you should be secretive if you have an edge. That is a zero-sum game. For us, it isn't like that. Very few people listen to one podcast. And I actually, I think I had like, just because I've heard this anecdotally, we were at one of these events where these like old rich guys would come up to me and they literally like, I don't listen to, I didn't even know what a podcast was.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I only listen to yours, but there's, that's like the tiniest percentage of like podcast listeners. Most of them listen to, you know, a bunch of them. So it doesn't take anything away from me. Now, if you're like a Rockefeller and you want to acquire every single one of your competitors and one of your smaller competitors gets that acquisition that you don't, then That's a bad thing for you.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like, you can't let that happen. And so that's why, you know, he shrouds himself in secrecy. He had all these... You've read all the books that I've read. Like, I love the idea. It's like... fuck these Rockefeller guys. I'm not selling to Standard Oil. I'm going to sell to you because we have to stand up against them, not realizing that he secretly owned that company too. The best.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But, like, the benefit of that is, like, I essentially was forced to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday for, like, most of my childhood. Yeah. And what I think the, I think the best description of founders I've ever heard is like that it's church for entrepreneurs. It's like when you go, you're obviously Mormon. I grew up Christian. It's not like you guys go to church on Saturdays or Sundays.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The greatest entrepreneur of all time is obviously Rockefeller. I don't even know why people debate that. I can't think of anything... I can't make somebody listen to a podcast where it's like, here's the features of my product. You know, it's almost like picking a podcast, like picking a friend.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like if I asked who your best friend is, you're going to say like, what do you like about your best friend, Ben? And you're going to like, oh, he's smart and he's intelligent and he's thoughtful. And I'm like, yeah, but this guy's smart, intelligent, thoughtful. Why isn't he your best friend? It's, it's a, it's more of like a messy, like human, like emotional relationship.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
That's not when, like, you know, I like this bottle of water. I don't have a relationship. I drink Mountain Valley nonstop. Like, I don't know who, like, just like, this is the brand of water that I like. So this is the one that has won my loyalty. Podcast is not the same thing as that. I'm trying to think of, is there a secret I don't tell any other podcasters?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Most of it is like, they just won't do it anyways. Like, you know, it's like, everybody wants to compete with Todd Grace. Well, are you going to do the same thing for 30 years? Right there, you knocked out 99.9999999% of humans. They just cannot do that. I went on Greg Eisenberg's podcast recently. He says, how do I do what you do? I'm like, what do you mean?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's just like, you have this recall of everything you learn and there's no script in front of you. You're just coming off the top of your head. I was like, I do one thing. You do 10.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
not going to do that it's like people cannot there's something that is you know in my personality where i like i like simplicity i like doing the same thing all the time uh that you know is i didn't even understand it's very rare uh for humans so uh no i could give away all my secrets and one people still won't do it in podcasting and two i i do think like
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
power laws rule everything around us podcasting is obviously the same thing there's like four 350,000 active podcasts right now meaning that they've updated at least one episode in the last month and you know probably 98 of them are bad 98 of them are bad uh like this is happening have you been paying attention what's happening with tbp tbpm with john coogan jordy hayes yeah uh-huh so um
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I've been talking to John about podcasting for a few years. I've been trying to help him as much as possible. I thought he was a very talented person. He just had the wrong format. I tried to get him on Colossus. I've done a bunch of stuff. And so I've been talking to him majority every step of the way throughout this whole thing. And now it's funny because it's absolutely ripping and blowing up.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And everybody's trying to analyze, like, why is it? And they make these lists. And it's just like...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
there's one one guy made a list of like one through five reasons tvpn is working and i was one two five is they're talented everything that you just said is derivative of the fact that they're actually talented and so like i talked to a bunch of other podcasters and they're like hey can you help me my podcast is not growing and i listen to it i'm like let me ask you a question they're like what i go when you're at dinner are people captivated by your presence
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like, are they? Are they like, do they find you genuinely interesting? Right? And they're like, not necessarily. And I'm like, yeah. I was like, dude, podcast is straight energy transmission. It's like, one, you either need to be super charismatic, right? Like Joe Rogan, whether you like him or not, like he's a gift. He built an empire, a giant empire with his mouth. I don't care.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's Saturday, right? Sundays. Okay. It's not like this Sunday, the preacher is going to be like, okay, enough of the Bible. Like we're going to move on to another book or we're going to talk about this other guy. And so I think if you actually look through, like, I'm very interested in things that last a long time.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It doesn't matter to me if you like him or not. This is like unbelievably great conversationalist, undoubtedly, right? The idea you can have three, the people see that, they're like, I could do that. No, you can't. It's so difficult. Right. So you either have, like, your great conversations, you have this, like, you know, people find you interesting, or you're just super obsessed.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The most interesting people in the world are the most interested. This is where, like, me and you could play. Where it's just like, I will just go out and collect more information about this topic, this very focused topic, than anybody else in the world.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, 100%. And then they're also smart enough. They think like, I told you, the biggest problem with most podcasters, they think like podcasters and not entrepreneurs. You're an entrepreneur. It's like, this is your product. And they, Jordy texted me about this the other day.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Me and him and John were talking about this where he's just like, there's already people trying to copy them, which they don't understand. You know, people try to copy like what we do. It's like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast about books. You think it's about the books. It's just like, you're missing the point.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And Jordy's like, the good news is if you want to compete with us, you have to quit your job. Like literally, Jordy called me at like 5.30 in the morning, his time. They're obviously in California and I'm in Miami. I'm like, 8.30, it's ringing. I'm like, what the hell are you calling me at 5.30 in the morning? He's like, I'm driving to the office. Like they take their shit very seriously.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
They are streaming 15 hours a week, three hours a day, five days a week. To do that, you literally have to quit your job. So, yeah, those guys are going to, you know, they're already blowing up. They're just going to continue. It's going to be the Sherman march to the sea. And it's obvious. Like, I was the one that actually sold their presenting sponsor was Ramp.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Most of the people that you and I read about, it's not like, oh, they had a new idea and they changed professions every year. No, like they had an idea and they did it for a very, very long time. And I think if you look at things throughout human history that last a long time, you can actually draw a lot of lessons from it. So like, you know, countries last longer than companies, right?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And obviously, you know that I do, like, I really help out on essentially Ramp's podcast advertising. And the deal was, like, they had no really small audience this time, almost none. And the deal was, like, substantial. And I was like, and Ramp's really cool. I'm really close to the founders. Yeah. And so most of the time they're just like, pull the trigger. And there's a little like debate.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm like, I'm telling you, no fucking debate. This thing's going to, it's going to take off. I promise you. And Eric, the CEO and founder called me the other day. He's like, I can't believe this. Because like what looked like an expensive deal will now look like a great deal because of the growth and the fact that every single clip has the ramp up.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
yellow logo in the upper right hand corner they're doing ramp ads every like it's just it's it's blown up i was like i told you like it was obvious most podcasters aren't they don't take it seriously most of them are not talented and like these guys have a they're they're they're gifted in both of those domains and they also think like entrepreneurs so they think about the marketing and the branding of their podcast they think about how to get in front of most people like it's just it's perfect i'm so happy what's been happening with them
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
No. I love Naval Ravikant, the book that our mutual friend, I don't know, are you friends with Eric? You met Eric Jorgensen. He's another tall guy with a deep voice like you. So yeah, the Almanac of Naval is like one of the best books I've ever read as far as like changed the way I approach my career. And there's something he says in there.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's like, you know, there's 8 billion people on the planet. I think there should be 8 billion founders. That's probably the only thing I disagree with him on is like, there's just no way that'll ever happen. Absolutely not. No, I think there's a deep desire for,
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Do you meet people like Noah? No, those people don't last. So like you mentioned Novak Djokovic, who's like, I really love his crazy philosophy and everything else. And there's a great article that he did in the Financial Times in 2018 that I found from this guy named Graham Duncan. And he says, you know, like they're, they ask him like, how much longer can you do this? Like at this level.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And at the time you only had like, I don't know, four or six majors. Now he has the most in the world. And he's like, I can carry on at this level for a very long time. Cause I like hitting the ball. And the follow-ups are, what do you mean? It's like, well, there's some tennis players that are playing. They're not playing for the right reasons. They don't actually just like hitting the ball.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But religions last longer than countries. So why do religions persist and endure? And I think a lot of it is, one, they usually have some kind of sacred text, like a book that they read from or they constantly revisit. They obviously have a leader. And then they gather together at certain frequencies with like-minded people.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And he's like, he's like, can you tell? He's like, yeah, I can tell. I don't judge, but like, you can definitely tell their, their motivation is, is wrong. And so I think that same thing with founders. To me, it doesn't matter other people's motivations. I try to mind my own business. Rule number two in the center of family is mind your own business. That's why I teach my kids.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think a lot of people get in it because they want to make money. And some people, if they just care about getting rich, you can do it. But the people that last the longest amount of time, the people that you've read a bunch of these biographies of the founders, they didn't stop when they were independently wealthy. They just like the act. The analogy I have there is they like hitting the ball.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And if you like hitting the ball, like the example I would use, I remember where I was specifically. I was with my wife at this place called Harry's Pizzeria next to the design district. I don't think it's there anymore. And I had this like epiphany, right? And this is the problem of being obsessed with what you're doing. It's like you're supposed to be on a date and I'm thinking about founders.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And... And I remember realizing, I was like, oh wait, I'm wrong. People used to say like, if you love what you do, you do it for free. And I was like, wait, no, no, there's a different level. If you love what you do, they couldn't pay you to stop. And when I realized like how much money would you have had to give Steve Jobs to not work at Apple?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The answer is there is no, it was not, you couldn't pay him. I'll give you $2 trillion, Steve, but you can't ever work on an Apple. You can't build a product in. He'd say, no, he's not doing, that's not what he's doing. He liked hitting the ball. He liked making great products, the best part, some of the best products in the world. And he did that until he died.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Um, so yeah, I think that's, uh, yeah, there's all kinds of people. Some people just don't give a shit. They're like, Hey, this is a good way of fast way of the wealth creation. I'm going to start a scale sell. And then they peace out. Um, but I think the greatest founders, the people that are like, they're doing it for other reasons.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Maintain situational awareness. Too many people are out in public, not paying attention to their surroundings. Just just pay attention to what's going on. So like my daughter does really good situational awareness.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
We were just in New York and like she was walking in front of me and you could tell it's like, hey, that guy over there with no shirt on yelling at himself and there's snow on the ground.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
go to the right like she avoided them she just she understands what's going on you hear these crazy stories where people get pushed in front of the subway and stuff my kids wouldn't that would never happen my kids they know stand back to the wall don't let anybody behind you maintain situation awareness we do this all the time like i've been like this forever like if you're in a restaurant practical rules but if you stay in a restaurant i'm always facing the door like no you just know what's good like you have to know what's going on around you um and so yeah i teach my kids this
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think they're all... So if you think about the definition of an entrepreneur, it's like somebody who has ideas and does them. I think like they're... It's not that you have to like start a company. It's like the same personality type. Like if, you know, the market economy is what? You're talking about 200 years old, 250 years old. Like people are always like, oh, do this episode.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
This guy lived like 500 years ago. It's like, there's really no like market economy. So it's kind of hard to like draw lessons from there. But like if like Rockefeller was alive today, right? Who did Rockefeller most admire?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I think there's actually a lot of analogies there that you can draw and put to companies. So What you hit on is absolutely right. The things that most excite me is not necessarily novelty, even though that does occur every once in a while.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
napoleon and that's like rockefeller didn't talk about anybody he would not shut up about napoleon that meant if rockefeller was born you know 200 years earlier highly likely he's like taking over country how to take over the world style than he is like building the the world's most valuable you know oil company um so yeah i've done i don't even know like you know uh let's see i've done a
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
A bunch of athletes.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, I would say more of an inventor, if you really think about it. Think about Thomas Edison. I've done a bunch of episodes with Thomas Edison. He invented four or five things. He didn't work on one thing his whole life. but he was always inventing. So I think of that as like, Buffett is the greatest financial genius in history, but he didn't work on one company.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He had like, everything's in Berkshire, but inside of Berkshire, you have all these other things. I feel like a Da Vinci's like that, an Edison's like that. It's like the act of what they're doing, which in Buffett's case is like turning a pile of money into a bigger pile of money, right? Da Vinci's case, he's like inventing all the things, drawing, making some of the greatest paintings.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Edison is like, Edison was way more commercial in the sense that he says a sale is proof of utility. He doesn't want to invent anything that won't sell. His career is rather consistent. He was just working on different things, but the theme that runs throughout all this is that he was inventing the whole time.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's these ideas that people that didn't know each other, that lived at different times, lived in different parts of the earth, and worked in different industries, all arrived at the same conclusion through experience. So yeah, I would say that I still find... I find, like, interesting applications. So, like, let me give you an example.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Do I... I'm trying to think if I've read anybody about that's normal or well-adjusted. I don't think, like... I don't think there's... One thing that's related to this is I don't think being a psycho or an asshole is a prerequisite for success. Rockefeller is the perfect example of this. Never said an unkind word to people that worked for him for decades.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
One time they ever saw him lose his temper. Very polite. No, I don't think... I wouldn't call it any, I don't feel, I mean, you think I'm a well-adjusted person? I don't think I am. Like, you know me pretty well. I think you're a well-adjusted person.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, so, yeah, I just, yeah. So, I mean, I think everybody you read about and everybody I read about is like, they're just outliers. They're like completely, they deviate so far from the norm. They can, they look like a different species to me than like just some random person you'd bump into, you know? Yeah. I think that you can have massive success with consistency over intensity.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
If you can consistently do the same, build your business and let it compound for four or five decades, you don't have to burn everything. I think you could have a great marriage, you could have good friends, you could take care of your health and still be wildly successful too. Now, a lot of them don't do that because what you just described with Edison, they are completely addicted.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
This is one thing I'm worried about in the sense that I like... working on my podcast and building my business and getting better at what I'm doing. And there's very few other things that I like to do more than that. And if I don't watch myself, you know, I can mess up all different other areas of my life where like, I know I want to have like,
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I just did this episode on this guy named Todd Graves, who's the founder of Raising Gains, which seems like a weird thing for me to cover. Other than, like, everybody always asks me, like, who are my favorite living entrepreneurs since I studied debt entrepreneurs? And I keep bringing up Todd Graves. I'm like, who the hell is Todd Graves?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
a lot of memories when I get older and good relationships and friendships and everything else. So like, I'm very, you know, aware of that and kind of try to put guardrails on myself.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Uh, out in public, almost never. Um, if I'm at like, it depends on where I'm at. Like if I'm at like Capitol camp or if I'm at like, I'm, If I'm in New York, very rare, once or twice on just random street, right? Once or twice per day? No, like I was just up in New York. I probably got recognized once or twice in like five days or something like that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And again, most of them are just like, love what you do, shake hands. And they're literally like, they're cool. Now I'm doing way more videos, so that may change. But like, yeah, my goal is to never be like, I'm first of all, very introverted in general. I love one of my favorite things to do is like be able to walk around the city and like think.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So I would never want to like get so my face so well known that I can't do that anymore. That'd be very bad for my life, I think. But no, I would say I don't ever think of myself as being famous at all. And I think it's unhealthy if you start thinking about these things. And the only time I ever notice that people react to me differently is if I'm at a gathering of entrepreneurs and investors.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's the only time.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Have people tried? No. Like, smaller publications. It was the New York Times. It was the Wall Street Journal. Like, literally, you couldn't get a better, if you're a business podcaster, it couldn't be a better write-up than the one that Ben and David, they did for, in the Wall Street Journal. It's excellent. No, there's been, like, technology publications, stuff like that. Yeah.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But again, my thing is like super more, it's like more narrowly focused. I mean, it's called founders. Like, yeah. Even if you think like, like there's a ton of business owners in, in, you know, America and in the world, but like, it's not, it's, it's never going to be like wide. This is not like Mr. Beast widespread. Like, right.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's like he's a guy with a $10 billion chicken finger dream. But, like, all companies need to figure out a way, like, how do you finance a company at the beginning, right? Now, his application is very unusual. Like, he went and worked shift work as a boilermaker, working 95-hour weeks for five to six weeks at a time, fixing things in refineries.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah. But again, I don't think about that. This is the best thing is the fact that like I, all I did was for eight years, I trapped myself in a room and read and followed my own national interest. And then I, you know, expose that to the world, but I don't, Like, I feel the same.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So a good friend of mine actually pulled me aside the other day because what has been happening recently is there's some people that, like, I've heard really grotesque. One of them went viral. Like, grotesque stories about how they treated other people. Like, that dude, like, I'm reading that story. I'm like, that guy's a... that guy's a dick. Like, this is crazy.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Some people are like, Hey, this is a good way of fast way of the wealth creation. I'm going to start a scale sell. And then they peace out. Um, but I think the greatest founders, the people that are like, they're doing it for other reasons. I'm going to show you how great I am. This was our finest hour.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then I found out who the person is. I'm like, that guy is so nice to me. He's like, not even nice, but like sweet as can be. I was like shocked. I was like, he's like nothing. And this kept happening. And one of my smartest friends, he pulled me aside. He's like, I don't think you understand. He goes, what? He goes, everybody's going to be nice to you. And I was like, why?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And he said, it's very similar stuff that you said. And I was like, I don't feel that way. Like I never, ever think about anything. I don't think this is a negative side. There's a bad side to focus. So I think I have the one of my assets, like extreme levels of focus. But I also kind of like don't think about other people and not in like a mean way. I don't think I've ever been mean to you.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like we talk all the time, whatever Keith says. But literally, I don't think of the external world. I just like burrow into my own world. I love this maximum. It says mute the world and then build your own. That's what I'm trying to do. Like, uh, I'm going to go on TBPN later on and they want to talk about, uh, Nvidia or Nvidia. And I was like, I don't know anything about them.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
They're like, you did a podcast on it. I go, no, no, I did a podcast on the founder. Like, I don't know any, like, I don't listen to news or press reports. I can talk about the founder all day long and he like how he was raised and how he thinks about his company and everything else. But like, I don't know anything that's going on in the world.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I just assume if there's a war or there's a pandemic, that shit will come to me, right? But other than that, I don't know. It's shocking. I remember going on vacation with a friend of mine, and he's like, watch this video. And they mentioned this guy in this video. It was a clip from Lex Freeman. I go, who's that? And he looked at me. He's just like, I forgot who it was. It was like...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
somebody high up in like the Russian government. I was like, I don't know. I've never heard that name before. I don't know who this is. And it's like, everybody's talking about this guy. I was like, I don't know. So again, I, I, like, I don't ever think about it. I think it's unhealthy to think about it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think I should just, you should just literally try to focus on making a product that makes somebody else's life better and just do that for as long as possible.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Then from there, he learns from his other boilermakers, hey, you make a lot of money if you're willing to risk your life and you go up to Alaska and work the summer on these boats where people are falling over and dying. If you survive, you'll make a bunch of money. He lived in a tent to do that. That's a new application. Then he saves up his own money.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
No, no.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
once I pass something, I don't think about it. Like I, so it's funny, like this will happen. Like, uh, Somebody will bring up something and it'll randomly make me think of a memory from, I don't know, years ago. And I'll tell a story. Or I'll be like, oh, that's kind of like this thing that happened in the past.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And my wife, who's known me for, I don't know, 15 or 18 years or something, she's like, I never heard that before. I was like, I don't like thinking about... I study history. I don't like thinking about my own history. I don't like thinking about the past. Once something ends, I just keep moving on. I don't think about it. Yeah, so I don't have nostalgia. I actually went to a basketball game
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
over Christmas and I was like all they do is jack up threes now like I don't like this game I don't miss anything no man I just like my mission I like my mission like that's really it my mission my friends my family like there's nothing else in life other than that your health it's really interesting to me I did an episode recently on Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly said about him he's fundamentally not an introspective person
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
You know, this is, this is the weird, like I don't have many controversial takes and I would say like, I like our corner of the internet because like we're just history nerds and we read books and like, I don't think I'm controversial at all. You know, I'm not trying to be intentionally provocative.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think like, I know you can get a lot of attention online like that, but it's like the shittiest attention. It's like, my entire life is organized to keep me away from like large groups of people. This is like, you're just absolutely looking at what I'm doing. It's like, I don't, my friend, we were just in New York. He's like, let's go on the subway. He's like, absolutely not.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And this is like, he's like, the car is an hour long. I don't, I don't care. Like I was raised around such bad people inside of my family and other people around us. Like I don't, I've seen enough of that. I I'm working. Everything I do is to get me away and to be able to control who, how I spend my time, who has access to me. Nothing gets better in my life.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Then he scrounges up some startup money from his bookie and this boilermaker named Wild Bill. So, like, The idea is the same, right? You need to figure out how to finance your company that you want to start. Sometimes it'll be the customers, the bank loans, venture capitalists, whatever cases. This guy's like, hey, I'm going to risk my life.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
This is why I don't go to basketball games. They're like 20,000 other. I just, I'm not interested in that. I'd rather be reading and with a small group of people. Um, And so one of the most controversial, weirdly controversial takes that people like, I don't even know why they get upset. It's just like weird thing to get upset about is the fact that it's obvious what you just said.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
History's greatest founders, low to none introspection. Not just low, none. And what I mean is there's a lot, there may be a lot of introspection, but once they find what they want to do, there's not a lot of dilly-dallying. Sam Walton did not wake up every morning like, I wonder what I'm going to do today. No, he knew. He's like, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to solve some problems.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm going to make Walmart a little better. And I'm going to keep doing that. And then I'm going to hunt some quail in the afternoon, maybe hit some tennis balls, fly my plane, look for and try to build another store. Just do that over and over and over again and go to church on Sundays, spend time with my family. And that was his entire life.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The problem is like modern humans, they're afraid of commitment. Because the act of committing is not just that you're committing to one thing, it's you're saying no to everything else. People want this excessive amount of optionality. It's like, I'm not looking around like, what should I do for a living? I'm going to do podcasting until I have a fucking voice. that's all I care about.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Um, so I don't wake up like, what should I do today? This is like, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm going to read, I'm going to make podcasts, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to keep doing what I do and do this forever. And that's like thinking about all this other stuff. Like, are you going to get recognized to do? What about this? It's like, I don't care. Like, I don't know.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm just going to keep doing this. And if that happens and I'll come up with some kind of solution to it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But this is why me and you have talked privately. It's like, Ben, what's all these other distractions? You're launching this agency and you're doing this other podcast. It's like, dude, do you understand how rare it is? The only person that can answer that question is you. Nobody can help you Figure out what you should do in life. It's like you just either know it or you don't.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And sometimes you have hints that maybe people are still unsure about it. But one thing I told you is like, dude, the idea that you could even make a podcast and be good at podcasting is such a rare skill, like unbelievably rare. Think about how millions of people have attempted it. Most of those millions have quit already.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm going to live in a tent and then I'm going to borrow money from a bookie. So I would say mostly I feel like I'm just telling the same story over and over again every week through a different personality. And that's what makes it powerful.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
There's only 350,000 of them still going and 99% are never going to go anywhere. And you've already cracked this thing. If you love it, I would just keep pushing as much as possible. The question is, is this the thing that you want to do? And it's normal to waffle. Some people waffle like, oh, I should start a company or I should do this other thing.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's like, the only person that can answer that question is you. And I find reading life stories very helpful because then I think of like, oh, I feel that way. Oh, I'm like that. Like, oh, cool. And like, I'm almost like watching game tape on how they live their life.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then now I can adjust my life when I go out and play the game of life tomorrow by this little tweak based on what I just learned yesterday. It's kind of cool.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, so I am obsessed with... So it's very different. Think about in the entrepreneurship. There's an entrepreneurship ecosystem now, which never existed, especially when I was younger. And so now it's heavily dominated. Most of the media that founders and entrepreneurs consume is actually created by investors, which is a weird dynamic there because they don't always have the same...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Your interests aren't always aligned. And what I'm obsessed with is not like the public company CEO. That's cool. I think Jeff Bezos is one of the greatest living entrepreneurs. What he built in Amazon, fucking incredible. I feel I'm one of the few people maybe on the planet that feel he deserves all the wealth that he's created.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He created a magic button that I can press and anything that I want shows up in my house in a day or two later. I'm tuning all the other businesses, the cloud computing, everything else he's done. He's built one of the most complicated computers Difficult businesses that have ever existed. And he did it better than anybody else by a long shot.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I'm glad he has, whatever he has, $200 billion, whatever. What I feel is, for me, would be the apex of entrepreneurship is like a privately held, 100% owned business, right? Like a James Dyson. So the answer to your question is like, did you... The idea that he owns 100% of his business, he doesn't have to answer to a board. He doesn't have any shareholders to answer to.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He answers to his customers and his employees. And he builds what are the best products in the world in his category. So for me, that looks a lot like what I'm trying to do on a much smaller scale. And then you take away from how big these businesses get. Michael Bloomberg's the same way. The founder of Red Bull, he only owned 49% of Red Bull, but he turned down...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
multiple acquisition offers where his 49% would have given him $20 billion, you know, because he had complete control. He didn't want to go public, didn't want a board of directors, didn't want all that other stuff. And then some of these businesses can grow. Like the people, some of the entrepreneurs I most admire, I meet and they're like hidden. They'll never write a book.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
They won't do anything. And they're like family held companies. And when you get close to them and I've visited them, I've gone to their off sites, I've gone to their offices, I've gone to their warehouses and they look like they built entire worlds, like entire worlds. They have, you know, they control everything. It's just fascinating.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then some of these businesses, like there's all these reports and you can never really know. But from what I hear on good, a good account, like think about James Ice and he's like 75, 76 years old, owns a hundred percent of his business. I've heard, and I don't know if this is true, that he's been pulling, you know, 5 billion a year out in dividends.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And if you look, there's hints because he owns more sheep than anybody in the world. He's the largest green pea producer. You've run out of things to invest in when your business is throwing up billions and billions of dollars. It's like me and you taking a paycheck of $5 billion a year, year after year after year after year after year.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I know somebody that controls a large base of capital, and their base of capital is getting so big that they keep having to to buy bigger and bigger companies, right? To move the needle. And from what I heard is they approached to see if Dyson was open to selling. And just to paraphrase, this is not a direct quote, but I thought it was hilarious.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The response to, would you be interested in selling is, fuck you, this is a family heirloom. And so it's just like, I deeply admire that, where he's just like, I'm not doing it for money. I'm not doing it so I can sell this and have the biggest, you know, I already have more money than I know what to do with. Like, what am I going to do with more money?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And this is where, like, you can have a single podcast, a single book, or sometimes a single conversation to change your mind, where Sam Zell, the two hours I got to spend with Sam Zell, literally, more than any conversation I've ever had in my life, including the one I had with Munger. Changed my life more than anything because that was his point.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's just like, at a certain level, you know, and he was not, he was very wealthy, but he wasn't like the richest person in the world, but he had already run out of things to spend money on to the point where like he was making money faster and he could give it away. And his whole point was just like, the things that you own tend to start to own you. He's like, I have a place in Chicago.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I have a compound in Malibu that he spends 38 weekends a year at, right? And then everything else he just rents, right? He's like, it's somebody else's problem. And he goes, there's only one true luxury in life. And he's like, David tried to get to private jet money.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And his whole thing was like, the only thing that's true luxury for him was the fact that he used his private jet like three hours a day. So who knows what you might even spend like 10 million a year flying. But 10 million years seems like a lot of money. But not when you have $10 billion. He's just never going to come close to that. So again, at those kind of levels, what's the difference?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Do you believe that?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So I think it's really smart to take the advice. Have you ever flown private before? Yeah. Okay. Like twice. Okay. Yeah. It's like, it's like completely different. Uh, like it's not twice as good. It's not 10 times as good. Yeah. It's a hundred times as good.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So my whole thing is like, I'm not like, I'm not going to do things that I don't want to, I don't, I'm not going to like let people entice me. There's a great piece of advice in Chuck Eager, the guy that broke the sound barrier in his biography that I read like four years ago. I still remember. He's like, His obsession was just flying and pilots.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He liked to fly and he liked to hang out with pilots. One thing I'm very proud of myself is I never let them tempt me with promises of more money or status or prestige to do something I don't want to do. My point is, I think, if I look at it from an entrepreneur, yeah, podcasting is one of the most undervalued assets in the world. I think I'm going to keep getting better at it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm going to build better businesses around it. And I think there's going to be multiple billionaire podcasters. I've been talking about this for years. And some people say you're fucking crazy. And then they see some of the numbers that Rogan makes and they're like, oh, maybe it's not that crazy. It's just like, it's not even has nothing to do with podcasting.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's like, if you would have said there's going to be multiple billionaire podcasters, People are like, no, you're crazy. Now there's a ton of them. You know, you see billionaire YouTubers. No, it's never gonna happen. Yes, there's gonna be a ton of them. Like, it's just everything. Billionaire athletes. Of course it's like that. It was just obvious to me sooner than it was to other people.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So like... yeah like out of the things that i would want to spend money on to build wealth on yeah private i don't even have to own my private plane the funny thing is how much money is private jet money that's well it depends like if you're sam zell like he's like i'm not again i think uh my goal as like some people literally have like they wake up with a burning desire to go to an airport
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
and get on a plane. I'm not one of those people. I prefer when I spend my summers in California, I like those kind of trips. You fly, you stay there for two months, and you actually live there. I hate these short trips. Yeah, these short trips. There's a guy on Twitter named Preston Holland that can tell you all about this.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
My point being is people can figure out the economics or whatever they want and how to do it on their own. My point being is I think the larger thing here is optimizing for money after a certain level. Your life is literally just how you spend your time. Let me finish with that. I know a ton of people that fly private that are fucking miserable. So it's obviously not the solution.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
That was your dream. I would say that to somebody, a few people have said that to me since the episode came out. It's like, Todd, all that means to me is like Todd Graves is ahead of most of humanity because most of humanity doesn't even have a dream. I don't care that his dream is chicken fingers. I just care that he has a dream and he has a purpose and he's identified that purpose.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's made a commitment to it. And he also, and for him, he, he believes is a God given mission. So he's giving a lot of money away to like charity to help people. Like, so chicken fingers, like I'm really good at this. I can make a lot of money at this and then I can use that money to help people. That makes perfect sense to me.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I don't have that same opinion. I think that we're obviously influenced by the circumstances we're born into. How many people are starting new countries right now? I think that same kind of personality, depending on where they're born, same thing with Rockefeller. Rockefeller was born in 1830, came of age around the Civil War. There's a bunch of the robber barons who were born in the 1830s.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
There's something very special and dynamic about the U.S. economy that they took advantage of then. And you place them 200 years before and yeah, let's go back 700 years and they might be more like Genghis Khan.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
than they are you know entrepreneurs i just think like dude how many people are starting cities and how many people are starting countries now nobody nobody but that's what i'm saying yeah we got to get back we got to take over the world david that's yeah you must return return no i say all i care about is like for somebody like that he's like literally he's in his like and people say oh it's unhealthy whatever the case is like i don't know
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
it brings me a little bit of joy. I don't, I'm not going to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you know, but like, I like the chicken fingers and he made my life, you know, a little bit better in that 15 minutes than I'm eating his and dunking his chicken fingers in the cane sauce. Like I, I like stuff like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with him.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
What was the, I love the episode you did on Horatio. What's his last name? Nelson. Yeah, it was so good. And especially when he's just like, this is my time to die. I'm not going anywhere. I love the ending. This is something you and I talk about a bunch.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The wealthiest woman in the world when she's alive, when you get that part. Not just very wealthy. The deal that she has where she gets like 2% or 5% of all the gross profits or gross sales, it would be the equivalent if somebody came to you and said, Ben, I'm going to
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
uh pay you 300 million dollars a year and in our contract i have to take care of every single one of your living expenses i've never seen there's some crazy deals that's one of the craziest deals in history yeah although of course always is resentful of her coco chanel number five deal where she's getting 10 of the of what is the greatest product of her lifetime
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
One of the greatest products of all time. In terms of cost per ounce, it's pretty crazy.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I remember when we were together in Austin, it was like me, one night it was like me, you and like Cliff Weitzman and we were talking about podcasting. And we're talking about your podcast a lot. And then, you know, I had a bunch of like thoughts. And then I said, wait a minute, how many episodes have you done? And it was like 90. I was like, there's nothing to talk about.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
No, definitely. You get access in a different way now. Think about the power that a person like Bezos wields. He's got unlimited money. No, he's got no. Political influence. Absolutely. Like it's not the same. Like you're not going to be like a dictator, like a like a Putin kind of character without that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But like in terms of if you're living in a free society, like the amount of power that you can wield through building one of the world's largest companies is like unbelievable. Kind of, but he's so restrained by social strictures.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like nobody, I had 90 episodes. Nobody was listening to my podcast. I have 391, I think now, because some of them aren't numbered. And it is just, I've tried to overwhelm people with it. And even though I'm eight years in, Like, let me give you an example. I'm really like kind of nutty about this where I just got invited to like this fancy invite only investor conference. Like 15 people there.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It depends on what he does with the money. I don't know. I'm taking Todd Graves' life over that.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Listen, I think the problem that people have that I apparently don't is they're like, that person's like X. I'm not like X, so therefore I don't understand that. And my point is like, yeah, I don't want to build a chicken finger dream restaurant.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
but I'm just glad that he found something that he's so interested in and he finds it like addicting and fascinating and he's trying to do be the best he can at it it's like irrelevant to me what people choose you know just like I didn't want to be a basketball player I don't want to be a public company CEO there's all these other things I don't want to do
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like,
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
why is this guy addicted to podcasts well like that it's the same exact thing of you saying their opinion of me is the same as yours opinion of todd and my point is just like it's not the actual like activity i'm just glad i don't care what people get obsessed with or what they want to do i'm just glad that they have some kind of purpose for their life see and i i do care because i just taught if you're listening to this this is what i want to message
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Right. And more than half the people had listened to founders or whatever. But I found the people that didn't listen to founders and I hunted them down. And literally I would go and talk to them and I'm like, hey, let me see your phone. And I would, and our friend, our mutual friend, Patrick O'Shaughnessy was there. And this happened a few times where he made a comment at the conference.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
How do you, so then how do you apply that to your own like life and work? The way I apply it is that like, I guess my better question, does that belief actually change the way that you go about building like your life? Yes, absolutely.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
They do have that aesthetic judgment. It's a product. Jobs has this quote that can't... I mean, I can get... completely accurate but directionally correct is the point of companies only exist so we can build products. And profits only exist so the company continues to exist to build the product. I wouldn't build companies unless I wanted to build products.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And those are also the founders that I love. I just did this clip. I just hired this guy that does my clips now. And the first clip he did was excellent. It's titled Anti-Business Billionaires. And it's Yvonne Chouinard from Patagonia, James Dyson, Steve Jobs. And it's just like, they're so obsessed with the quality of their product. And that is the first and most important thing.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So like, let's say people have tried to actually hire me like to work or run their company or whatever. And it's just like, no, that's a money decision. I'm like literally trying to build a beautiful product. I don't know if we were recording or not, but why won't Outsource the editing? I don't think I'll ever Outsource the editing. Why do the things that I want to do?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I want to build the best product in my category for the most successful and productive people in the world. That is how I think about founders. That is what I'm trying to do. I would rather do that and make way less money than be hired as a CEO at your company for 15 times or 100 times the money.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Because I also think, something I talked about in that clip is like, if you actually build a great product and make somebody else's life better and you retain control, you'll get the money anyways.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Somebody asked me the other day, they're like, what is the font of Founders? I go, I have no idea. I created it in five minutes and I paid $5 to export a high-res version out of an Apple.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yes. Everything I do is just off my personal taste. I don't think there's any other way to do it. What am I going to do? Remember when you were... I want you to finish your thought in one second, but I remember you were...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
starting to put like music into some of your episodes and you're like hey read this like thread what what uh what should i do here and it's like one guy's like i love the music the next tweet underneath it's like i hate the music it's like what should you do here is what you should have been doing the whole time which is like make what you like because like they're every single person you put something on the world they're gonna be feeling love exactly like it and and like the exact opposite
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And it's just like, I just, everything's personal taste. I went through, I was like, this looks good. Boom, done. And then people are like, well, what else? What other process? I'm like, there is no other process.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I listened to the episode before I go, it goes out. If I like it, it's going out.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So what about, what point were you making about being Spartan though?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But it's more than putting thought into it. You could think about something for a few hours, a few days. Your taste and intuition is molded over your lifetime. Yeah. And some of this stuff, you won't even be able to understand because it's in your subconscious. I love what Cormac McCarthy's point where he swore. You say he's my favorite living novelist. He just died.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But if you just read The Road or read Blood Marini, he's obviously better than everybody else. And his whole thing was like, yeah, it all comes from my subconscious. And he's like, subconscious is actually older than language. And that's where he felt it came from. And so, yeah, it's not about not thinking about it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But again, you think about it for a day or two, it's like that's nothing compared to the... your entire life you've been molded and your, your things you can't even explain. There's no language for why you believe some of the things you do or why you like the, some of the things you do. Somebody said at one time I had to look up cause I didn't eat sushi at the time.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Uh, they said it was, is it sashimi? What is it called?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
you're the type of sushi yeah so it's a they call it sashimi style podcasting that's very good yeah the fact that i don't have any uh like there's no intro music there's no anything there's just me fucking ripping through the book at 2x speed so you're talking about intuition leads me like it reminds me of there's a phrase used by a lot of artists poets around um
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I would literally grab the guy's phone and you'd show up and I'm like, oh, here it is. It's on Spotify now. Follow. It doesn't matter what the episode is. You might not know who it is. When it pops up, just press play. Listen on one and a half speed.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I, so I had, there's this idea, there's this guy named Jim Simons who built this, the most successful fund of all time called Renaissance. Renaissance Technology, the fund I think was called the Medallion Fund. He just passed away. He made more money than anybody else in investing by a long shot. And, because it's really like trading more than investing. And his biography is very fascinating.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'll probably redo it now that he passed away and it's like been a few years since I read it. But one of the things that, one of the ideas that I got from that is, uh, he used to, people would walk into the office and there'd be like, he'd be laying on his couch. The lights were off and his eyes are closed. And I thought he was sleeping. He wasn't sleeping. He was thinking.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And he had this insight that if you like, don't have any sound, like you have no input. Right. So I don't meditate. I don't really pray. Uh, you know, I don't go to church or anything like that, but like, What I do do is I will make sure that like my eyes are closed, whether I have a sleep mask on or I just close my eyes and I'm awake and I don't have, I can't hear anything. I can't see anything.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then I just kind of like just see what is going on in my mind, you know? And it's just like, there's this weird thing. It's like all this computations happening in the background. And sometimes I'll actually fall asleep because it's relaxing. So that's a bad part. But a lot of times I don't. And it might be just doing this for like 30 minutes, right?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And there's just some kind of insight that was buried deep in my subconscious that I didn't give my brain enough time to open it up and think. I also walk, like if you look at my steps, it's probably like 15,000 steps a day, 20,000 steps a day. And half the time, it's just walking. Nothing. Sometimes I listen to podcasts. Sometimes I'm making phone calls.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But other times, I'm just walking and letting my brain just... No input. And I think the problem is we're all addicted to these screens. People say no one reads anymore. Well, you're reading, but you're reading captions and tweet-sized stuff all day long. It's just too much information. I desire to live in an analog world.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
That means in 40 minutes, you'll be able to listen to a whole episode that this guy spent 40 years building his company and I spent 40 hours reading and you can listen to it in 40 minutes. So I do think, I believe in that. Just the constant pressure, constant promoting. If you're proud of what you're doing, and I'm very proud of what I'm doing, I have no problem you know, telling people about it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Going back to the filmmakers I draw inspiration from, Christopher Nolan doesn't have an email address, doesn't have a cell phone. goes to a city, will ask for directions, won't even use GPS. Like, this is a very analog world. And, you know, that's why I always read, like, it'd be way faster if I read, like, Kindle books.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Although a lot of the books that you cover on the podcast are in a Kindle version. But, like, I just would rather have, like, a physical book, just focus on that, nothing else. And I think I do want to get to the point where it's like, I don't want to look at any of these, I don't want to stare at screens all day. I want to read books outside and go for walks and, like, think about what's going on.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So, I don't know if you'd call that, like, spiritual or whatever, it's just like letting, making sure that there's this open communication my subconscious to, like, my active mind and making sure that, like, you know, you leave that open. Obviously, long showers. One of the reasons, like, swim laps, same thing.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It's like you can't – I guess now there's, like, headphones you can listen to, but it's just, like, you're just your head and your movement. And you don't have to think about anything because it's just, like, you know how to instinctively swim.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, well, it's like there's an interpretation that is subconscious. It's like when I read something and I'm like, oh, that spawned this other thought. I didn't like consciously like, let's think about this one sentence. And now let's see. It's not like a sort of process. you know, it's just like, Oh, this is not, it happens naturally. Um, and so, yeah.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I wouldn't say like, I don't know if I'm necessarily like inspired all the time. Like, um, like I'll watch and read the same stuff. Like I listened to the same songs, the same videos and stuff like that. I love like watching the last dance on Michael Jordan, defying ones, which is one of my favorite documentaries, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. So I'll rewatch things and play them in the background.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I guess that's a form of inspiration, but it's, it's much more of like a, like a just a day in day out kind of like access to interesting information that, that spawns other thoughts.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And, you know, and the way you do that is like, it's a very noisy world. Like, so I'll tweet constantly. I will post constantly. I will repost things because dude, I repost episodes. I guarantee you now because you have more followers, more people listen to your podcast than ever.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Eating chicken fingers. They're like, why have you not sold your company for billions? He goes, because God made me great at chicken fingers so I can help people. And so like you agree with him, but then you criticize him wrongfully, I might add. It was like, I don't know why, You're being so mean to these people. I'm not trying to be mean.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
One of my favorite things that Napoleon said that I believe, he says, destiny must be fulfilled. That is my chief doctrine. I believe that before I record, and I haven't done this in a while, but for a few years, I listened to the same song over and over again before I record to get like, amped up and it's by this rapper named NF and the title is called Destiny.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And it's like, I believe that I was meant to do what I'm doing. Like this is, I was mad. Like it's the right, I think I'm the right person, the right time with the right set of skills. And I thought about this the other day where it's just like, I would have been so fucked if I was born 20 years earlier. Like podcasting didn't exist. Like there was some movie.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Oh, my son had never, my son's obsessed with dinosaurs and he just turned five. And so I was like, let's watch Jurassic Park, right? Because I was like, I loved this movie when I was a kid. I watched it over and over again. I didn't realize how scary it might be for a five-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was thinking about this. The movie came out in 93.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I'm like, I thought about this yesterday. I was just like, dude, I'm so lucky. An extra 20 years earlier, there was no podcast in 93. If I wanted to be... Essentially, you'd have to go on the radio, you'd have to go to a building and ask them to put you on so people can hear you speak. There were so many gatekeepers, it would never happen.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'm so lucky to be built or to be to be born at this time. So yeah, I feel like this is my destiny. I think like, people think it's like some for a long time never bought me people like thought it was like low status. And I remember somebody telling me that like, You have a level, you're a level 10 talent chasing a level four opportunity.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And I was just like, you're fucking completely wrong about this. Like they're so powerful. And then now you think about all the people, like the, the very.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
If you have a great episode, it's a line from David Overy where he's like, you're not advertising to standing army or advertising to moving parade. I just put up this episode, this episode by Chung Ju Young, who's the founder of Hyundai. I think it's like episode like 117. I did it like five years ago. Every week somebody would reach out to me about listening to that episode.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
successful and influential and uh you know powerful people listen to founders and it's like they're giving me an hour of their time you know how valuable that is it's like the opposite of what you thought it was and it's because i actually chased my natural drift i followed my natural drift i didn't do it because i thought that was going to be the outcome i did it because i was genuinely interested in it and i was willing for people to say like this is a stupid fucking idea david and be like no it's not stupid to me it's not stupid to me so like i like it i'm going to keep doing it um so i actually do think it's like my destiny and it's like i think we we um
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Have you ever read Robert Caro's biographies of LBJ? I haven't yet. Oh, my God. You're the perfect person to do... Who was the guy? There is a... So... There is a podcast. It's in the book. The books are excellent. I think there should only be, there's only one person alive that should be allowed to write an 800-page biography, and his name is Robert Caro. So most of them are just way too long.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So there's a guy named W. Leo Daniel, okay? Yeah. And W. Leo Daniel is essentially kind of like Trump before Trump in a way. And the way the way this is tied to like podcasting is he became unbelievably successful because he had like 90 percent market share in the Florida Hill Country or Texas Hill Country for radio. So he had this he essentially became excessively famous radio.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
as a radio person, right? And then he's making all this money advertising on radio. And then he realizes, hey, I should own my own radio show. So he starts his own radio show that he owns. And he goes, instead of advertising, most of the people at home during that time were like housewives. And what did all housewives need? They bought flour, cooking flour.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so he's like, I made all this money for this flour company. I'm just going to start my own show. And then I'm just going to do my own flour. And he winds up building this huge fortune, like $40 million back way long time ago. And it was just unbelievable. And he's like, okay, well, what am I going to do with this power next? And they're like, he's going to run for governor.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And people make fun of him. Remember when all that... You did the clips at the beginning of your Trump episode where they're like, Trump's going to run. Please run. We would love it. Please do this. Exact same response. And exactly what happened with Trump was like...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
people would go out and they're like, wait a minute, all these rallies, political rallies, you have his competition that has 1,000 people and W. Leo Daniels has 10,000 people. Exactly what was going on with Trump. Same exact thing. So then he wins the governorship, which is hilarious, and then he moves his radio show and he's broadcasting live from the Texas governor's office.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then again, what is he going to do with this? What do I do next? Then he goes and runs for Senate against the young LBJ and beats LBJ too. So... The point being is like I was naturally interested in podcasting. I thought it was interesting. I thought they were beneficial educational tools. And then I started to realize like how influential they would be.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I was like, oh, that's kind of weird. Like that one really resonated. So I spent a few hours re-editing it, cutting it and doing everything else and then republishing it. And then now a ton of people listen to it that didn't, didn't, you know, go 300 episodes back in my back catalog and find it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then what happens is we just had this election where they call it the podcast election. And the Trump I talked to people in the Trump campaign before this. They knew they were calling it the podcast election before any but year a year before anybody else was.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And if you look at like the, the amount of free, you know, attention he got compared to the democratic, the person that, you know, his competitor, it's like, you can just pull the public numbers. It's just absolutely insane. Um, so yeah, I think like, so when I, when I say, Hey, I think podcasting is my destiny.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think like, you know, I have a chance to like be one of the best people in the world at it. I'm personally obsessed with it. Uh, I think for a long time, people thought that was a very odd. I'm sure still people hearing me say this thing's a little odd. I think it's,
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It'll be as obvious as it is to me today to other people, you know, five, 10 years from now, if not already, based on what should happen.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Never, never, never. Um, no, because again, like my whole thing, uh, one, I think you just have way more influence. Like I think the, you, you nailed it earlier. It's just like, there's certain people. I don't think fame is the right actual way to describe it. So like I did this episode on Oprah, which I was actually really proud of. I think it was a good episode.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And this is something that she understood is, you know, she was on air five days a week, uh, Same people were watching her for years. And they're like, you know, I could have – she mentions this. So she talks about parasocial relationships. And she's like, I can have, like, an A-list actor. I can have Brad Pitt on the Oprah Winfrey show. And I see how people react to him.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like, they're like, oh, my God, I love you, everything else, right? But they don't actually know him because he's, like, an actor. They know who he is and who he looks like, but, like, he plays a different role and he's, like – you know, essentially on screen, very distant from them, you know, every few years, playing, acting as somebody else, reading, saying words written by other people.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Where with Oprah, they would come up to her like, so good to see you. Do you want to come over to my house for lunch?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
this is like the relationships like they don't I see how they act with A-list celebrities they don't act like that with me it's completely different and so like I actually think you would have more influence outside of it I also think that especially if this was like so I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack all the time I think it's like excellent I love hip hop I like history and everything else and that would be different if you're like the opportunity to create something from scratch like a founder
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So yeah, I just, I'm shameless about, you know, promoting my work because I think without a doubt, I know if people listen to it and they apply the lessons, like it will make their life better.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I'd be very interested in that. To take over as governor or president or whatever the case is, you're like running something that was built by somebody else. It's like being a CEO of a 200-year-old company. There's way better people at that than I am, than I ever will be. I like starting shit from brand new. I like having control. I like being like the creator of it, not running something.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
You know, I told you, people have asked me literally the CEO position of a company. They started. This is like never tempting at all.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Great.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I love Sanders. Out of the two of us, it's obvious who should be the one that's in political office.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yep.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Your four were Endurance, excellent book. I read that. Wright Brothers, excellent book. Educational Bodybuilder, the first 114 pages of that. Yeah, exactly. Those are excellent. And then The Right Stuff. So for, this is a really good question. So for, let's do this. Let me make it very specific. Not like, let me say, what are the four books that I'd want my son to read? Yeah. Great.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So, Against the Odds by James Dyson, because that book is all perseverance. It's, you know, the 14 years of struggle, 5,127 prototypes. Yeah. just being stubborn about what you want out of life and just not willing to... What was the line you said earlier about Americans over... Americans... They don't solve their problems, they overwhelm them.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I think that's a great example, even though Jen Dyson's not American. So that would be up there. I think the Wright brothers would also be one of my picks because one... If you really think about it, it's like they were able to, through ingenuity and unbelievable, like the lightness resourcefulness, they solved one of the longest standing human problems ever. You knew this.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like for thousands of years, humans have been writing about and trying to figure out how to fly. And. Even during, and it was really, you know, a ton of people were, the book does a great job of explaining, it's like a ton of people were doing exactly what the Wright brothers were trying to do as well. But they were way better funded.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
They had some of the most famous scientists and engineers on their team. And the Wright brothers came out and were the first ones to do it. And they did it with like $1,500 of profits from like their bicycle shop, which is just like unbelievable. You know, arguably the most resourceful people that have ever lived. So I'd have Wright Brothers. I would have Against the Odds.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Reading. Just reading. Like I have a very weird, think of an odd personality in the I'd be fine if half of my conscious life, the time that I'm awake, I could spend completely alone. And if I'm alone, it's like I'm very curious in general. So I love to read and love to learn. I don't know. I like to understand things. I want to have a better understanding of the world.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I mean endurance is a good one just because I do think like by endurance we conquer is one of the best mottos I've ever heard for a long time for years on my lock screen it was a it was a picture of Ernest Shackleton with that beard where he's just covered and crusted in ice yeah so I think like again but I think against the odds kind of gets that don't give up on your dream so I'm not going to use that slot but that was you picked really good ones
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
It speaks to, again, that you have a talent for this and that you should just be working on your podcast night and day. You should be making babies, which you're already doing because you're about to have your fourth kid. And you should be working on your podcast. And then you're still working out or you're injured.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, because last time I saw you, you were in phenomenal shape. So you got a podcast, baby making, health. There's nothing else that you need to do. Okay, so Gensiads by James Dyson, Wright Brothers.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
um i'm going to mention the carl book the the second in his series on lyndon johnson uh the means to ascent um it really talks about like have you ever read robert carl's book called work or goes into how he does his process no uh-uh i would love that there's a phenomenal story from that book i'm gonna read it to you real quick
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
um so the reason i'd put that up there is because i mean the whole series is excellent i i think masters of senate is probably the one i like the least in in the the series but lbj's i'm really big on personal mottos and so lbj's um personal motto was do everything and you will win yeah do everything and you'll win.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Very similar to, to Napoleon when he says, you know, all the events hang on the, like the, the, the tiniest, uh, like little detail or whatever. And like most people, and I forgot the exact, uh, way he says it. Like most people don't actually seize like the opportunity that's in front of them.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, I think I'm obviously, I study people for a living, and so I think people are powerful, the best ones change everything. Napoleon's version of this is, he says, in war, men are nothing, and a man is everything. One man is everything, yeah. One man is everything. So the line I was looking for is, Napoleon says, all great events hang by a single thread.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity. The less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. So LBJ's version of that is, if you do everything, you'll win, and in means of assent, goes into exactly what he was willing to do. And in some cases, like...
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
lack of scruples like he's very like you know people call him corrupt or dishonest or whatever the case is I think there's a obviously I'm not trying to get my son to be that way but I think there's it just explains that there's a lot of people that are out there like that and if you can channel that in a positive direction that's great but also you have to be very careful because other people will do that to you so it's like there's an offensive element to it that I want to be in a more positive direction and then also a defensive element that I'd want him to be aware of like the world that he inhabits especially if I'm not here anymore
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So, there's a great line in the, in, in Lyndon, in Robert Carr's book, Work, which is, again, talks about his process of, you know, being the greatest living biographer, but also talks about his two people he's dedicated his life to studying, which is Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. And he talked about, he was interviewing all these people.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And, you know, Lyndon Johnson's born in unbelievable poverty in the Texas Hill Country. And he gets to, as a young man, he's probably in his early 20s, something like that. And he gets to the position of power where he wants to be or where he eventually going. He's just working in Washington, D.C. He has no power yet. and they were talking about, I'm just going to read this to you.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He goes, I wasn't fully understanding what these people were telling me about the depth of Lyndon Johnson's determination. That is really why I'd want my son to read the book, because it describes the depth of his determination, how determined you can be.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
About the frantic urgency, the desperation to get ahead and to get ahead fast, and that the passions and the ambitions that he brought, and about the passions and ambitions he brought to Washington, strong though they were, were somehow intensified by the fact that he was finally there in the place where he'd always wanted to be. This is how I feel about podcasting. This is
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And then I'm really looking for information that can help me prosper in the world and make my life better. And the reason I know the information that I share on the podcast is beneficial because it's made my life better. So I figure, oh, if I just sit down and record it, it's an act of service to other people and it'll make their lives better.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
If you listen to the episode I did on this book, on Robert Caro's work, if you want to listen to this after we talk, it's not about Lyndon Johnson. I realized that's about me. That podcast is about me. Just using Lyndon Johnson as a way to tell that story. So he says, I wanted to show the contrast between what he was coming from, the poverty, the insecurity, and what he was trying for.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so what would happen is, one of Lyndon Johnson's people that's working in the office with him would see him every morning just running, full fled, like 5.30 in the morning. And I'm going to read this section to you real quick. She goes, as Lyndon Johnson came up Capitol Hill in the morning, he would be running No one else was running, okay? He's not out for a jog.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's in a fucking suit, okay? The woman who worked with him coming to work in the morning would see this gangling figure running awkwardly, arms flapping, past the long row of columns on his way to the house office building. At first, because it was winter and she knew that he only owned a thin top coat, she thought he was running because he was cold. But in spring, the weather turned warm.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And still, whenever she saw Lyndon Johnson coming up Capitol Hill, he would be running. Well, of course he was running. From the land of dog-run cabins to this, everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever hoped for was there. It's a beautiful writing. And it's like, and that's just an excerpt from the book. The entire section is incredible.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And so I think, again, Lyndon Johnson, in many ways, a very flawed person. I would not want my son to turn out like him, but I think reading about his life story and understanding the levels of determination would be good. So, so far I have Against the Odds, Means of Ascent, Wright Brothers, fourth book that I want my son to read. Lessons of History, Will and Eric Durant. Very good.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Biography, 100-page biography of the human species written by the greatest, when were they alive, 20th century historians?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Yeah, dedicated 50 years of their life literally just talking about what human nature is, what our history is, and then they did this ridiculous goal, which they even said was ridiculous when they did it, but it turned out beautifully, to essentially summarize what they spent half a century learning.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But no, I don't have a lot of passions by any means other than I really like to work. I get annoyed, like I'm about to go on vacation. I'm kind of annoyed about it. I'm kind of going against my will. And if people knew what the vacation was, they'd be like, this is incredible. But it's like the time away from podcasting. But at the same time, my kids are excited. My wife's excited.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And, uh, yeah, I think reading that book and rereading it over and over again is unbelievably important. Have you read the, or even any book within the bigger series?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
uh the last one uh napoleon the eight it's not the last one it's like the the 10th or 11th age of napoleon the age of napoleon yeah no i have in fact i i got somebody had shipped it to me and there wasn't a note and it was just like the entire it was like the heaviest thing ever i found out later on who did it but it's like not even a note here this is incredible but yeah i have every single one of those books in the living room well david thanks so much for taking the time i really do i appreciate it is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
No, we should do this every once in a while. I enjoyed it.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Good luck to you and your wife, man. God bless you and the new baby. Just, again, super happy for you and super, super envious.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But yeah, it's just working, podcasting, reading. And I really like, like building my business. Like it's, it's addicting. It's fun. It's what I'm going to do. I mentioned this in the Todd Graves episode I just did where, you know, Todd was talking about, he's been doing the same business for 30 years. He owns 90% of his business. It's worth at least $10 million.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
He's been offered billions of dollars. He's just like, I'm on a God given mission. Like I'll never sell. and they're like, are you worried? If you think about it, in the QSR, fast food restaurants, all corporate-owned, all the founders are gone. So he's like, who are you competing against? He's like, non-founder-led companies. Mercenaries, not missionaries. They're run by accountants.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And his point was like, he was asked, who do you fear? And he's like, I fear the young guy that has the same fire that I do that is coming directly at me. And his point was like, that's fine. I'm all for competition. But if you're going to do that, just know this is my life. You better get up early. You better go to bed late. You better be working every day. And I mentioned the podcast.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
I recorded that on a Sunday. I was laughing because I'm doing the outline and I just happened to look at the clock. And it was 9.05 p.m. on a Saturday night. And, like, I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do, which is, like, work on the podcast.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
No, he never uses the word chicken strips.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
So James Dyson, who I am completely obsessed with, I've done four episodes on. Every 100 episodes, I'm rereading his first autobiography. So I'm about to come up on episode 400. That'll be James Dyson's autobiography because I think it's really important to reread books again. We kind of spoke to the influence of religion. And I think revisiting the same ideas over and over again is really good.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
But he makes that point in his first autobiography. He's just like, well, listen, if you could just improve an existing product, the good news is you don't have to invent the market. Now, inventing the market is a phenomenal way to build a monopoly. You literally can define and create the category that your product operates in. It's just extremely rare and really hard.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And his whole point was just like, there were vacuum cleaners forever before I started. And he wound up just making the world's best vacuum cleaner. And even now, like, am I ever going to buy another vacuum cleaner that's not Dyson as long as he's alive? No. And it's like, you can buy a vacuum cleaner on Amazon for like 30 bucks. I think it'd be like 600 for mine or 500.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And it literally is the best one in the world. Um, and I think like the, the, the insight there is exactly what you described, where it's like, dude, go to all these fast, like fast foods been around forever, you know, multiple, multiple decades. Uh, shortly, it appears shortly after the invention of the car. And it's like. Go to McDonald's and eat their chicken and go to Gray's and Cane's.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Just tell me the difference. And I just introduced my brother and sister who never had it before. I was just visiting them. And I was like, have you guys ever had Gray's and Cane's? Like, no, what's that? And I was like, dude, we got to go. And I went and the store that I went to just opened up and it's completely packed. It's like they have a cult-like following.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
And he positions all his stores around competitors. So across the street, Wendy's. Not a single fucking person in the drive-thru at Wendy's. And you have 200 people trying to get into the Raising Cane's across the street. And again, I think this is just people aren't paying enough attention. It's just like, what do you use in your daily life if you're looking for a business idea?
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Like, what do you use in your daily life? Like, this sucks. Guess what? There's no chance in hell that you're the only person on the planet that also thinks this thing sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How to Take Over the World
“You Couldn’t Pay Me to Stop” — David Senra on Obsession and Great Founders
Well, maybe I'm just not a fried chicken guy because there's nothing I can tell you that I'm like, oh. Yeah, okay. Some people don't like fried chicken, but if people eat fried chicken, it's going to be one or two on the list.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And we can go through the level of commitment that he had to make that dream real, right? And you can make fun of the fact that he has a mission, but it's like he's already ahead of most of humanity that is alive today and has ever lived. Most people don't have a mission.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
There's a great example of this in Steve Jobs that he was heavily criticized in the early of his career because he would make the inside of the computer that you couldn't even open up Beautiful. And people are like, you're wasting your time. It wasn't a waste of time to him.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I truly believe, like I'm obsessed and we've talked about this all the time. Like, you know, I get literally emails. They're like, why do you quote Munger in every single episode? And it's just like, cause all I do is listen to this, what I thought this brilliant guy, his advice. And I just did it. Like I always say, learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And there's been a handful of times where I meet people, I read a book, I have a conversation where literally my behavior, my behavior has changed. The trajectory of my life has changed. The way he was able to describe things to me, he's just like, there's a bunch of examples where he's, and he's like, you know, he knows everything about business history.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He had 60 years of experience and he would share forever. freely with everybody. And he's like, occasionally we find scaling down and upping the intensity, you get an advantage. That sounds like Todd Graves to me. He's like, oh, you have, my competitors have 10 things on the menu. I have one.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You can get three chicken fingers, four chicken fingers, six chicken fingers, and you want chicken sandwich? Here's two buns, and that's it. And then find a simple idea and take it seriously is another mongerism. And then what he realized when he analyzed Costco, where he's like, oftentimes in business, we find the winning system goes ridiculously far.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That's the most important two words in this sentence. Ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables. I think it was Ken Griffin talked about this. I've seen this with a bunch of investors. We talked about this with Richard Rainwater before. Jay Pritzker was like this, Sam Zell was like this, because we'll tie this to investing.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's like, if you bring them a deal and there's like seven different things that have to go right, like the chance of every single one going right is very, very small.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so like, I love what Richard Rainwater would do, where it's like, you bring me your idea on one piece of paper, you write it on one piece of paper, explain to me in simple words, and then at the end, just tell me how much of your own money you're putting in. And then I'll decide if I'm going to do this. This guy was one of the best dealmakers, you know, investors of all time.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You see it over and over again. Sam Zell told me when I got to meet him, it's also in his autobiography. He's like, Jay Pritzker was the most brilliant financial mind I've ever come across. He was like an older brother to Sam. He was like 20 years older. And his whole point was like, I'd come to him when I was younger and bring him like, okay, there's like six things we have to do.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And Jay would look at it. He's like, no, one. If you nail that, everything else will either work out, it will either live or die off of that. Go back to when in the huge mania in, you know, with 2020, 21, all this huge tech bubble where Sam Zell goes on CNBC, he's like, WeWork's going to zero. Like, no, not going to work. And it was like at all times high.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Maslow's spending in like $20 billion, whatever the case is. And it was like asset price liability mismatch or whatever the word. He's like, nope, this guy in 1972 did this, failed. 82, this other guy did it. This is the company, failed. Why? Because there's only one thing that's important and an app doesn't fucking solve that. You're not paying attention.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so when I look at Todd Graves, the reason I wanted to do that episode is one, I just saw a clip. This is what I mean about learning is not memorizing information. Learning is you changing behavior. I talk to a lot of people and they're like, I love your podcast. And some of them become friends with, and I see the decisions they're making their business.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like, oh, you don't, you're listening and you're just wasting your time because you're not actually applying the lessons. Take what they did and what they said and see if that works in your business and then actually change it. And so I saw a clip and it was a clip, I think on TikTok, where Todd Graves was being interviewed on a comedian's podcast, Theo Vaughn.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he was talking about, he's like, I've been a big believer in always doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else. And then they kept cutting the clip, you know, it's probably 45 seconds. And he talked about, he even got down to the minutiae of, How simple is my menu? How easy can I make it to select what the customer wants?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Okay, so that customer is now going to take five seconds to decide. I go to Raising Cane's, I know exactly what I'm getting, right? As opposed to go to McDonald's or another competitor's. Now it's, instead of a 10 second order, it's a 40 second order. That may make not a big difference when you're having, you know, a hundred orders a day and you have one store. He's got 800 now.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It makes a huge difference. And he just immediately understood. And so when I, this is how, because I fucking brainwashed myself about this, I don't think of Todd Graves when I hear that. I'm like, oh, that's like Rockefeller going over to one of his employees who was soldering, closing up oil cans and says, how many drops of solder do you use? And the guy's like, 40. Have you ever tried less?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Try 38. Okay, I tried 38. It leaked. Okay, try 39. Oh, 39, it works. So we were wasting one drop of solder, which might not make a shit of difference when the business is, you know, making a couple thousand. That business went up scaling 10, 20, 30x. Makes a huge difference. All of these people, they're obsessed with their business. They're in the details.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Another thing that Todd Graves said that was very fascinating, he's like, I had all these experts tell him, hey, Like you should delegate. And he has the funny sign. He goes, delegate? What does that word even mean? He goes, what kind of word is that? Right? Because he was literally being interviewed in one of the podcasts I use as a source material to make mine.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he's, again, this happened, you know, in the last few months, maybe a year ago. And he stops the interview to look at the Instagram reel because they just had an event. I think they were like throwing a Super Bowl party or something like that. And he's like, I'm going to watch it before it goes out. I don't think of Todd Graves. I think of Steve Jobs.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Every Wednesday, having a three-hour meeting in Apple, reviewing every single ad that goes out. Nothing went out of Apple. Not a billboard in Missouri, not a what's on their landing page without Steve looking at it. There's a guy that wrote the book called, I think it's called Insanely Simple. I think his name is Ken Siegel, if I'm correct about that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He was running, he was the ad executive for the marketing company, the ad company that Steve was using. And he said, Steve would call me at midnight and we'd have to talk for an hour about a single word. That's obsession. That's loving what you do. That's taking what you do very seriously. I don't care if it's building computers, if it's making a podcast, if it's making chicken fingers.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I just love people that take what they do seriously.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You can change the name of a podcast. I can log into my podcast host and change founders to whatever I want. Whatever. You can't change the URL slug for the RSS feed for the first name you picked. And the first name I picked for founders was telling you from day one. Back in 2016, the name of the podcast was called Autotelic.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Autotelic, the definition of that is an activity done for the sake of itself. I was telling you from the rip, I don't care if nobody listens. I need to do this. I got some advice the other day, and they're like, this reminded me of Ted Graves. Henry Ford has the exact same thing about experts, people outside of your business try to give you advice. And this is why I read Twitter.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'm like, these people, sorry, I'm not going to read that tweet. I'll just listen to what Steve Jobs said. He probably has better advice than this random fucking guy on Twitter. And so somebody goes, hey, I have a great idea for you. Have you ever thought about hiring other people to read the books for you? Like, that's not what I'm doing it for. I'm not taking the easy way.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The hard, I love what Jerry Seinfeld said, the hard way is the right way. And so I told them a story. And this is the line that, this is my response to this. And this is a line that I say, it's like, you don't work all your life to do what you love to not do it. And all I know is that person doesn't have a mission. They don't have a love. That's fine. Most people never do.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But I don't go around giving advice to people about what they should be doing. It's the weird thing where the source of this advice comes from. And I remember reading about Charles Schultz, the guy. I was a fucking kid. And I'd read. Charlie Brown and Peanuts. Every Christmas we'd watch Charlie Brown's Christmas. Yeah, so I think he came out in the 1960s.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so I was like, oh, I'm going to read his biography. And then you read it and it's like crazy. It's like the guy ran, I'm going to, these are approximately right. He ran the comic strip for like, let's say 40 or 50 years. He drew, drew, came up with the idea,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
penciled everything drew anything every single strip over 50 years i think it was 17 000 different individual ones that he did uh he had already had one plan so when he dies this is the last no one can ever take it over when i die this is what you put out like when i die this is the last one that's ever published and people would go through it if i remember correctly living somewhere in california to come to our studio at the time he's a much older man he's like 67 years old and they're like
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Well, who's doing this? He's like, what do you mean who's doing this? He's like, me. And these people touring the street couldn't wrap their head. Like, well, could you hire somebody else to do it so then you could take a vacation or you could take some time off? And that was his line. He's like, you couldn't understand why they were asking him that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he's like, but you don't work your entire life to do what you love to not do it. That's why I think thinking a long time, you know, most of this is trial and error. Some people find what they love to do really early. Like I think of Kobe Bryant, the episodes are done on him. He's 12 years old. He would tell you, I'm going to be the best basketball player of all time.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
No one finds what they love to do at 12. I'm working on this Michael Dell episode right now. You could see from 12 years old, the guy was a moneymaker, he's obsessed with computers. There's a part in the story that's great where he takes apart an IBM and he has this realization. He says, wait a minute, IBM's selling the computer, but they don't make any of the components.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And you just see as a little kid, it's like, hmm, there might be an opportunity here that he's going to pursue later on. And then he gets in trouble in class because he's not paying attention to class, he's just reading computer magazines. He's telling you. what his life is going to be. You just have to listen. And every single person has something like that. They just don't fucking listen.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
They don't listen to themselves.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
like a weight off your shoulders that like, I can't describe it. And then from there, that doesn't mean like, oh, I wake up, you know, that's like, I'm kind of a tortured person. Like, so there was a clip of me on another podcast. I just went out and the person's like, you know, the podcast is good. If the host looks sleep deprived, I'm like, that's as good as I can look. Okay.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Cause that's like my sleep score on my eight sleep right now is like 60. Like it's not, I'm not doing well because I am completely obsessed with what I'm doing. And I, you know, it's weird. Like people keep telling me, it's like, Like you shouldn't be obsessed with this like low status. I was like, you're wrong. I don't- It's high status now. Yeah, but I don't even hear it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Cause I'm like, I know exactly who I am and I know exactly what I want to do. And we talk about this. We have mutual friends that like, they're kind of so obsessed to their detriment about like, what will somebody else think of me? Or like, if I do X, well, like I'm worried about the public perception or what my friends will think of me. I don't think about that at all. There's a great line.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The reason that- Like people are surprised with some of the people that I want to meet that are still living. And so I have like, you know, a list. And in the top three of that list is a guy named Jimmy Iovine. Me and you share a love for that Defiant Ones. Defiant Ones documentary, Last Dance, Defiant Ones. Like those are the best documentaries. I watch them over and over again.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And Jimmy Iovine has this great line. He's just like, when you're running after something, he goes, they do this great editing job where it shows horses on a racetrack. And it goes back and forth between that and Jimmy. And Jimmy's like, you know why they put fucking blinders on those horses? And he goes, because if they look left or right, they'll miss a step. And humans should have that too.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
When you're chasing after something, don't look left, don't look right, go. And that's why I wake up every day. We talked about this when we did that live show in New York City. It was obvious if you read the books that the great entrepreneurs, once they find what they love to do, low to zero introspection. Now, they think deeply about their business, but they wake up every morning.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
They're not wondering, like, what should I do today? They know exactly what they're doing. And to find that, for me to know I'm going to wake up and do this for as long as I have a voice, I have eyes, like, hopefully I have life. Like, that's an unbelievable belief. Now... because it's your mission and because I'm also super competitive and kind of a little crazy.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Our mutual friend, Daniel Eck, has the greatest line he told me. He's just like, one of the reasons I like you so much is because you're like an LLM trained on history's greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned up. It's like, yeah, obviously like some people are not going to like that and that's fine. Then you, you kind of torture.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I did this episode on Jensen Wong and he has a great thing where he doesn't like to fire people. He's like, I'd rather to torture them into greatness. And then you realize when you, how he goes about his life, he actually tortured himself into greatness. You know, even this is in recent few years, they tell a great story. Blowout quarter. Company's doing incredible.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he walks into the meeting and goes, every morning I wake up, look at myself in the mirror and say, why do you suck so much?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
They're all like this. They're all like this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That's not why I did it though. Because that's what I believe them to be. I like... I appreciate that you thought it was click-baity. I'm not trying to click-bait anybody. Although Todd Graves and his $10 billion chicken finger dream is probably good. That's a banger episode. What I mean by anti, and it really should be anti-business as usual billionaires. And again, I mind my own business.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I don't care. If people say, I want to wake up and all I'm going to do is take a pile of money and make it into a bigger pile of money and they love it, cool. I have no opinion what you're doing. The people I most admire, the people that I'm trying to powder myself off of, is these people where it's like they're so obsessed about the product quality, right? And there's three people in that video.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's Yvon Chouinard, James Dyson, and Steve Jobs, right? One guy's making outdoor equipment, one guy's making high technology, and one guy's making fucking vacuum cleaners, okay? But there's the exact same approach where it's like the reasons company exists, and Jobs has said this multiple times, where the only reason to start a company is because of the product, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then like you, so the company needs to assemble all the resources, but the product is, we exist to make the product. And then of course you, he talks about profitability a lot because the profits allow you to keep making the product. Everything starts from the product.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So everything I do, the reason I still do every single social media post, the reason I answer all my emails, the reason I don't have an assistant, the reason I don't have an editor is because I'm trying to make the world's best product. I feel my podcast is a handmade product. artisanal, but it just happens to be like technology and infinite leverage.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You know, same amount of work is going to go into it if one person listens or 10 million people listen. And I'm trying to build what drives me and I think annoys most of the people that are around me because I can be like pretty fucking stubborn about this is that I want to make the best product in the world based on what I like for the best people in the world.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The very first time we talked, you kind of, and this is when I had like, I think like 3000 people listening back then. And you kind of nailed it on our first talk. You're like, oh, you built it. Like you're going to win by default. You built this polling mechanism in the founder ecosystem. Like by the time people try to do it now, they're going to try to catch, they'll never be able to catch you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But I, it's really important to me as a competitive person that I build the best product for the best people in the world. I am not interested. I've told this story before. I know Mr. Beast, Jimmy, he's been very nice to me. He tweets about the podcast. It's very nice. He's invited me to go to his headquarters and he's like, you can use our studio to record here. We'll help you with the script.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Jimmy, there's no script. We'll give you data analytics people. I don't even know how many fucking people listen to the podcast. I don't look at analytics. I build what I want for me. So the reason I have to edit it is because when this is done, I listen to it, it's the Stephen King thing. I am not just the writer, I am the first reader. That's what Stephen King said.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Quentin Tarantino says, people are like, when you make a movie, do you have an audience of mine? He's like, yeah, me, I'm making it for me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I've been thinking about this recently and it applies specifically to the fact that I'm covering people that build companies. And what I realized is like, I've never been around impressive people in my entire life, right? We talked about this the very first time I was on your podcast. No one in my family even graduated high school, much less college.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So it's like, I never saw examples of great people. And then you add to the fact that my father, like I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant, I grew up meeting people that risked their lives and came over here on a raft And it's like kind of weird. Hey, like you have, like we both have kids. We love them more than life itself. Like I would die for my kids. Everybody would die for their kids.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And it's like things were so bad in your country that you risked your 14-year-old son's life and put him on a boat Like how bad does it have to be? And I'm like, well, let's go to the Miami beach. How many people, how many Americans are getting on a raft and going, that's a one way trip.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So that tells you something is very special about where we live and very, very bad about where they're coming from. And when I realized it's like not being, not being an educated family, parents never having money, like being terrified, growing up terrified, being a loser. It's like entrepreneurship is a miracle. Capitalism is a miracle.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Where I meet some of these other people, where they're like, they might be the son or the grandson of somebody really wealthy, and you'll find like a weird high correlation for like, almost like socialistic like perspectives. And I was like, this is so crazy to me. Just like my wife's from Columbia. Like no one, no one in South America is like that made it to America.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's like, no, I want to go back there. Like you don't even understand what you have. And so now what I realized about this is like one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is yeah, I like to read. the most unbroken hobby I've ever had. Yeah, I legitimately think podcasts are miracles. We were at this conference together and you said something really funny.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You walk over and every time I'm at another table and I'm like, most of the people will listen to the podcast, but if not, I would grab their phone. You saw me installing it and you had a quip. You're like, I wish I could find a way to make money for David's ability to turn every conversation back to podcasting. It's like 14 really successful capital allocators and me.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I don't even know what the hell I was doing there. The root cause is like, I really believe entrepreneurship is a miracle. The fact that anybody could say, hey, I have an idea that makes somebody else's life better. Because that's the best, that's all business is. Business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better. No one can stop me from doing it to delivering value to other people.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then if I deliver the more value I deliver to the higher number of people that generates wealth. What? Imagine going back to, you know, I might do this episode on Genghis Khan, like the 1100s and saying like, you could be the richest person in the world and you could, you invented a button and you know, press that button and anything is delivered to that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Or like any other, Sam Walton, I told the story. I was in Miami Beach Marine on a friend's boat. And I was like, that boat's huge, who owns that boat? And I look it up, it's like Sam Walton's niece. And I'm like, this guy, I had like this great experience. I'm looking at this giant boat, it's probably, I don't know, $300 million, some crazy number like that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I'm like, and it came from your uncle just realizing, hey, if I just deliver everyday low prices, again, another simple idea taken very seriously, everyday low prices. No one's going to beat us on pricing. So how do you work backwards from that idea? There's all kinds of technologies, there's logistics, there's talent. All those other stuff is very difficult.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The idea is simple, but the implementation is very difficult. And look what you can generate. And people shit on Walmart. I had to shop at Walmart when I grew up. Like I'm not shopping there now, but like they did a service for my family and for millions of people. It's like they destroyed Main Street businesses. It's like we couldn't afford to not shop at Walmart. It's a miracle that he gave.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And what's the byproduct of that? By making, I don't know, how many people do you think shop at Walmart? Billions by now? That's a lot. Billions. Everyone at some point. Yeah. He deserves that money. Good. I'm glad he got that money.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I don't even know if I can, I have a good answer to that question. Other than there is something that I think is And two other lines from Monger. Again, I go back to him where it's like, he says intense interest in any subject is necessary for like to master it. He has a better line. I'm messing that up. And then he says, follow your natural drift.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You know, we talk about this all the time where when I describe you to other people, I'm like, well, you have to understand Patrick is doing invest like the best episodes all day long, every day, like 10 times a day. He just doesn't record them. He's just naturally curious. He will, he just want, he's curious around other people in the way that I am frankly not, right? I'm interested in books.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I don't, I can't like deal with, you know, people. It's why I work alone in general. Like obviously I have a handful of very close people, but. I just think, I don't know why. There's a great line. So I just did this Ken and Griffin episode and I made the point in the episode I think is really important is like, I'm not interested in timely. I'm interested in timeless.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so there's no book on Ken. There's a bunch of great stories spread throughout the internet that I use as source material. And then I listened to every single thing I could find, all these talks. And most of the interviews he does is like, what do people want to know? What do What do you think about the market? What do you think about this president?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But I did find, like he had this hour long talk at Yale, highly recommend listening to it, where it's like more like almost like an oral biography, like more timeless principles. And then I transcribed that. And then, you know, I listened to, I don't know, 30 other hours of him talking. And I'd maybe only made like five or 10 other notes, something small, but something he said is very fascinating.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He's like, for reasons I don't quite understand, since I was in the third grade, I've been obsessed with the stock market. How does it work? How do you make money? What are the problems you can solve? And that line, for reasons I don't understand, I truly believe that Jeff Bezos nailed it when he said, you don't pick your passions, your passions choose you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You don't choose your passions, your passions choose you. I was not like, you know, at five years old wondering like, what's a good hobby for self-development in my future? Maybe I should read. I just read. I told you the first time we talked. Like my mom, before she died, she said, I would read the back of cereal boxes. I have no idea.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so all I do is like, I'm just intensely interested in everything that I'm learning. And then I like the craftsmanship. I heard, there's an idea that Ken has that, again, I think is an entire reason that Founders is valuable. There's a podcast. He says, you really, you want to know what's going on in your business.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You want to study your competitors, but you really should be grabbing ideas from other businesses far afield from your industry. And he told this story about a way to mitigate his risk. And he got an idea from Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco and Citadel, very different businesses, right? What was the idea? Okay, so I'll explain this. Make sure I don't forget that because I'm in the middle of the weave.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So he uses the term, I think they were like a B player in risk. They weren't doing well in risk. And he was still in Chicago at the time. And he goes and visits Saudi Aramco and he sees this giant screen on a wall in their headquarters there. And it's like 30 feet long, 10 feet wide.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And it has all the most important data, not like a hundred things, but like where the ships are, how many barrels of oil we're producing, like the handful of metrics. And they just look at it all day. Yeah, their distillation. Exactly. What's going to happen? Like you look at it all day, like then you're going to improve it, right? And he's like, oh, what if we took all the important risk metrics
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
metrics and put a giant wall in our headquarters. And he said it took him from like, you know, a B player to like one of the best in their field. And his whole advice was like, you really need to be taking ideas that are far afield of like your own industry. And you know, that's what you do when you read a book. Like, I'm not going to build Walmart. I'm not going to build Ferrari.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'm not building Apple. I'm building my podcast. But there's all these ideas that I can take from them. So as I've exposed myself to that, I just find like little ideas that I can use in the craftsmanship of the product. And one of the main ideas goes back to your question about the anti-billion dollar anti-business billionaires. The reason I say, and I do this same book over and over again.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So I've done an episode 25, episode 200, episode 300, and it'll be episode 400. It's James Dyson's first autobiography called Against the Odds. It took him 14 years, 5,127 prototypes until he got the world's first cyclonic vacuum cleaner that he owned 100% of that was up to his standards. And so all I'm trying to figure out is just like, can I make something that I would listen to?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I don't know any other way. And so last week I actually had to republish an old episode, which is still a great episode. But the reason was because I read a book where I found the person I did not like and I don't want to spend any time in his mind. So I'm not going to make an episode on him because not only did I have to finish reading the book, which I threw across the fucking room, but...
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
then I have to spend another, you know, probably this one together. If it's the one I think, yes. And then I spent another 30, then I just spent another 30 hours making the podcast. And this is like, I don't, I don't want to be like this person. I'm looking for role models because I didn't have any when I grew up. And then I read a fabulous book.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I mean, you both read a Pappy land by Wright Thompson. Excellent writing writer too. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. But I couldn't figure out how to make an episode on it because it's about a family business. It's really about a family. And it's really about the relationship between a father and son. And I'm very interested in that relationship.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I think it's the most powerful relationship in the world, which I got heckled at one of our live shows when I said that. Why'd you get heckled? I don't remember. They were just like, cause I said it was the most, it's, it's not discounting the relationship between a father and a daughter or mother and daughter.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's just like, it's clearly something that pops up in these biographies over and over again, all the time. And he, and Wright has, Wright Thompson has great writing about, you know, relationship that the grandson had with the father and the father with the, there's a lot of family dynamics. Excellent book.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But I was like, this isn't good enough than the book was, but I can't make anything good enough. So I'm not putting anything out. Nothing.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You have a great line on this. Like you talk to way more people than I do. And I'll ask you about like, oh, is this person, this person reached out and you're like, oh no, he's a casual. Again, I don't care what people do because they're, I know, because I study fucking people's lives for a living.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like so much of what shapes you is like, happens when you're so young and you can't even describe why you're interested in what you're interested in. But I think the only thing that bothers me is like, There's a great line that I mentioned in the Ovitz episode that mediocrity is invisible until passion shows up and exposes it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so much of the people that you meet, so many of the products that you deal with, so many of the people, it's just like they're casual. They have a casual affectation about them that I find personally disgusting. And I'm not, again, it's not like I grow on judging people. It's going to make me sound like a terrible human being.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's just like, it's a way for me to filter who I want to spend time with. And my favorite people to spend time with, like they're all, they all work in vastly different things, but they take what they do so seriously. And it's not a selfish thing. They're making something that they feel makes somebody else's life better. So the only thing I could think of is like, I don't like the casualness.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then I'm not a fan, personally, of the over-financialization of business. I think a lot of people aren't starting companies. They're creating financial instruments, which is fine. But I think you're going to realize these kind of people just don't have enough experience and they haven't read enough biographies to realize you think what you want is money, but what you really want is meaning.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You're going to get the money, and then you're going to be like, why am I so unhappy? Because you're human, and this happens over and over again. That doesn't mean people don't like money, and that obviously solves a lot of benefits, but you're going to feel a lot better.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Well, now we have like a giant mirror into everybody else's life we never had like this way. Like think of like one good thing about decentralization of media is like there's no gatekeepers. That's also the bad thing in the sense of like now there's somebody just put me onto crazy rich Asians of TikTok. And it is some of the most- I haven't caught that one. Oh, we should, I'll send you some clips.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And it's some of the most disgusting behavior. Like one lady is, I guess her parents own, she lives in California, but her parents own one of the largest like cloud computing companies in China. Another one is like some giant, maybe even like, government collusion in Singapore or something like that. But it's like all the videos, all the videos are just straight consumption.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's look what I got, me and my, and they do this thing where it's like, me and my mom went shopping today and we spent 25,000 at Van Cleef and then we bought a Herme thing and we did this. And it's just like, this is disgusting behavior because you shouldn't take pride in what you consume. That doesn't take skill or talent. You should take pride in what you built.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That is the most selfish thing you could possibly do. And I'm not, like, dude, like, I'm building, the goal here is to, you know, to change the trajectory of my entire family tree. I'm going to build generational wealth, not so my kids can do that shit. That'll never happen. But to try to teach them, it's like, man, the wealth came because you made somebody else's life better.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You dedicated, it's a selfless act, even if you love it. And this idea that like we are, so I understand that. It's like, so then young people see that and they're like, oh, that I need to figure out how to make money.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I was like this, like I was so embarrassed when I was younger that I had to like how much I had to work or like I didn't have a car or like all this other stuff that happened to me. I remember being deeply, deeply embarrassed. And then switching from embarrassment to like, almost like relentless self-belief that like I am better than that person.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like I remember going, there was this kid that lived close, like went to the same school as me. It was a public high school. But I remember the crazy story I heard where like, I think, and again, this was like, it's funny when you think of wealth, but like his dad owned like, I don't know, like a hundred dominoes or something. But I just remember they used to take a helicopter to lunch.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I'm like, what? And I remember him bragging about the car. His dad bought him like 120,000 car. He'd park in front of the country club, which obviously I would never even be able to get into the country club. And I remember flipping and I was like, I'm better than that kid. Like I'm smarter than him. I work harder. Like I'm going to fuck him up.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And it turned into like this competitive, like I will prove to you that like you, what was handed to you, I will get myself. And there was like some kind of weird drive behind that. But so when I see people like that, where it's just like, you're glorifying the wrong thing.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Where like, if you think about, there's this great talk that Steve Jobs gave when he came back to Apple and he's talking about, Apple spends all this money on marketing, you would never know it. It sucks, all your marketing sucks. And he's like, who are the best, what is the best example of marketing? And he talked about Nike. And he's like, what does Nike do?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He doesn't even talk about like, the shoe has a bunch of, six bubbles or whatever. They glorify great athletes. They glorify great achievement. And so that's why he did the crazy ones ad.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so I think that is like, to some degree, what I'm trying to do is like, the reason I make these clips on the anti-business billionaires, the reason I spend so much time talking about these people and the craftsmanship and talk about this guy that is literally a craftsmanship with his chicken fingers is because to some degree, I want to celebrate these people saying, hey, I'm going to dedicate my life to building the best possible product I can and to make somebody else's life better.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I'll talk all day long about that and not about the fact that, you know, I'm building a yacht or I'm doing all this other stuff. Like, you can have all these things, but, like, what are you actually proud of? You're not proud of your consumption. Anybody can go to the store and buy that. Not everybody can build a truly great product.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Again, I'd go back to those three, Yvon Chouinard, James Dyson, and Steve Jobs. I think they have all these lessons in that. Yvon Chouinard calls it nonfiction marketing. He's like, if you have a shit product, like you have to like dress it up. You have to put, you have to have a mascot. You have to hire these expensive advertising companies. You know, you have to make up all this stuff.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's all fiction. But if you just, in his thing, he didn't even want to be a billionaire. He just like, hey, I'm going to, again, he built the product for himself. He was a mountaineer. He was, he spends all his time outdoors. He fishes, he mountain, he skis, he climbs mountains. He does all these super risky sports. All the gear I'm using sucks. I'm going to make the gear that I use.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And guess what? If I make the best gear, then everybody's like, where'd you get that? Oh, that's good too. And it takes- His best friend. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that'll compound again, if you don't sell after five years or four years or do anything that puts in jeopardy the durability of your company. And so I think about James Dyson, he has this great line and I'll paraphrase, but-
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
How he wants to spend his time, he wants to invent. He wants to be as close as possible to the design of the product, the manufacturing of the product. He will be on the line of the product, even in his 70s, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But what he realized is like, after he's done making the product, he's the one that went around the world and sold the product because he's like, the creator is the only person that can explain what went into the process of the thinking behind it. And then with his full heart, he said something like that, with the full heart and complete belief in what he's saying,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
foisted upon other people at a high price. Because he knows, hey, yeah, you can go and buy a vacuum cleaner for $40 or $600. Guess what? In my house, I have a Dyson. It's the best vacuum cleaner. It just is. And I'm asking you to pay 10x for what you can get anywhere else. Why? And I can tell you what went into it. The blood, sweat, and tears. I kind of reject this like,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
purely rational like the way people like they they try to analyze business in a rational way which is weird to me because humans are nothing but irrational and they give money for reasons they can't describe and some of this like why would somebody pay you know i love this this thing that uh you see with like enzo ferrari you guys did a great post about this when you did a ferrari episode and it showed like the racetrack the test track and they're like there's a test track and then
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Literally, Enzo Ferrari's house, he built the racetrack around his house. It's just like, why do people come from all over the world to meet this guy and to buy a car that is 10 times, 20, 30 times more expensive than just another car that could go fast? There's a story behind it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I think that's where like you see the people that love the product so much, they put so much of their life's energy into it that then they can explain very clearly why it's valuable. The reason I'm not trying to be like obnoxious when I ask people to listen to the podcast and they don't, I tell them to take out their phone.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I heard this great thing and this is another idea I got from Paul Graham. We said in the early days of Stripe, they called it the Collison installation, where they're like, oh, the other YC companies are like, hey, I'd love to use Stripe. And they'd be like, oh, great, give me your laptop. And they would install it right then. And so I saw that idea, great idea.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'm going to do the center installation. And so I've done this over and over. I don't even know, I probably installed it, I don't know, not joking, like 500 times. Like, oh, this is going to be the best day you've ever had. You're going to look back on this day. Unbelievable what this podcast is going to do for your career. Here, follow right there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like, I think the James Cameron episode is the best episode ever done. Maybe the Red Bull episode, maybe the chicken fingered episode. But like, I can tell you that with a straight face and not feel shameful or shameless or whatever the term is there about doing that because I believe in it. It took a lot of fucking work to make that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I know the lessons are good because that guy told you they're good.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
This is another, again, like, it's like, you know me well enough. I'm getting hot. So you know me well enough. It's just like, I'm not like, somebody could offer me, like, come run my company or like pay me more money. Like, there's just no way I would do that. Like, I'm not doing, there's other ulterior motives for it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And one, like, if you're really smart, you can find a way to build a good business. It's almost anything. It's not what you do. It's how you do it. With Dietrich's messages, it's like, His whole thing, one, the story is crazy because at the time I did that episode, there's no biographies in English. So like, this is also what drives me insane.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
In everything, you should be thinking about differentiation. The reason I started a solo podcast right, on history podcast in 2016 is because in 2016, I thought there was way too many, I can't go interview entrepreneurs. Everybody's already doing that, right? And there's obviously something I didn't understand. There's always room for great, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But I didn't, I have this natural inclination I've had my entire life to like go in the other direction that other people are doing. So I knew it was differentiated. And the, what I, what I love about the episodes I love the most is like, there's not even a book about it. You have to like make the content for the episode.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So I had to translate or a friend of mine translated that biography from German. So first of all, I was like, Oh good. Like how many people have done an episode on this guy based on this book? Well, if you haven't spoke German, none. Right. So, and then you, you realize the story is just like, you know, He was working for a bunch of CPG companies, traveling to Asia. He's jet lagged all the time.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He winds up finding the Red Bull, but it's in a different language. It's like 15 cents or whatever the case is. He's like, oh, this works. And there's really no like energy drink category. So he helps create the category and then masters a category and then realizes you have a lot of like, you really need to raise the price.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then even the way he looked at things where he's like, oh, we're a marketing conglomerate. So we're going to outsource everything else but marketing. it's like everybody's talking about content to commerce and all this other stuff today. It's like, this is not, nothing is new. You just haven't read enough history. Like you want to look at the best content to commerce right there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then what does he do? He optimizes for, he did not want to have a board of directors. He did not want to be in the public stock market. He didn't want to be answerable to anybody. The guy, I mean, the guy wasn't married. Like you can just look at it. People will give you hints about what's important to them. Just look, read between the lines.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And you clearly see, he doesn't like people telling him what to do. He has a ton of fun. He's also crazy. He likes to like, even well into his seventies, he was like taking risky sports, mountain biking. He had, he was like flying his own planes, racing his own cars. He was like the Red Bull, like the brand of Red Bull was him.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then you get to the point where him and his partner, they each own 49% of the company. They put $500,000 in each. Then they had a small bank loan and every single thing from the growth from there was out of profits. How many people essentially can bootstrap? If me, if somebody gave, if me and you have a business right now, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You're going to put in half a million, I'll put in half a million. We're going to get a small bank loan. You know, hardwood, the unlikely outcome that you and I build a business that's worth 40 or 50 or $60 billion, right? You know how hard that is? How the hell did he do that? There's a great line by Charlie Munger.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He says, one of my favorite ways, one of my favorite ways to knowledge is finding an extreme example and asking what the hell happened here? You know, and you're like, in my case, it's like people. It's like. What? There's a guy, there's some Austrian guy that owns Red Bull that is turning down his, he turned on multiple offers where he would have made 20 billion for his 49%.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He's paying himself 500 to 800 million a year. He's so private that he buys the magazine that's trying to write a story about him. Like there's a guy that is trying to write an unauthorized biography of him, goes to his mom's house. Dietrich finds the guy and says, if you don't leave my mom alone, I'm going to pay a Russian guy to break your knees, your kneecaps. It's like, what is happening here?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Who is this person? And I think that's really important because all it does is like completely pops off the top of your head about what is possible in life. The reason I'm obsessed with these maniacs on missions, these super driven people, the opposite of casual people is because it's like they stretch what I believe is possible. Let me give you a perfect example.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
There's this reoccurring theme on the podcast. It's in all these biographies. And the shorthand I have for this is how bad do you want it? And I just came across an example of this with Ken Griffin. The reason I did the Ken Griffin episode, even though there's not a biography on him, I think there's one that's like crappy and it's like two stars on Amazon.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So, you know, there's people writing, it's probably like ChatGPT wrote it or something, or the old version of ChatGPT. The new version, actually, that Deep Research can write. The Deep Research, hey, I use Deep Research every day. It's really good. He talks about when he was 33 years old and Ron Broseau. John Arnold tells a story on Twitter. And it goes viral on Twitter. And that's how I found it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That's what sparked me because I keep hearing about Canada. Once I read that, I was like, this is a founder's guy, have to do it. And Enron blows up spectacularly in 2001. The day it blows up, Ken charters a Gulfstream jet, sends like 16 people down to Houston, interviews every single person in the Enron energy, like the commodity business.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The way I think about this is like, by the end of this year, I would have studied, read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, right? I'm like eight years into the project. And if I was forced to distill that down to one word, the word would be focus.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Everyone finds out how they made money, what their competitors were, what worked, what didn't work, right? Then he finds the head trainer, which is John Arnold. And John Arnold's like, Ken's assistant calls. He's like, hey, Ken wants to talk to you. Would you talk to him? He's like, listen, I'm not open for a job right now. I'm trying to close the books, but I respect what Ken has built.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So I will talk to him. Okay, I'm headed to Aspen for an event right now. When I'm back in Houston, tell Ken I will take his phone call. Hangs up. Assistant calls back a few minutes later. Ken is willing to fly to where you are. If he flies to Aspen today, will you meet with him? He said, yeah. How bad do you want it?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And Ken's point that he makes, I don't think that's in the Twitter post, but he tells that same story in the conversation with Yale. He goes, I hired all the best people at Enron, and since then, we've made about $30 billion trading commodities. How bad do you want it? Most people are like, oh, I'll wait till next week. I'll catch you in a couple days. He's like, I'm coming today. 33 years old.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You always see the true interest is revealed early. He was doing stuff like that. When long-term capital management blew up in 98, he was 30 years old. He went and visited those guys. What do you want to know? You guys didn't lose control of your business until over 90% of your equity. How the hell did you keep it after like 30%, 40%, 50%? How is that possible? And then what happened?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That was in 1998, he was 30. In 2008, when he was 40, he lost 50% of his equity. And he says, what I learned from those conversations, I used 10 years later to keep Citadel in business.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And the reason I think that pops out is because the way I look at this, and I've told you this before, we've talked about this a bunch. I feel that when you read a biography of somebody, or an autobiography is even a better example of this, I feel you get to have a one-sided conversation with somebody. Right. Obviously, if I do a monologue podcast, I like to talk. And so I can't talk.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Yeah, there's a great line. I did this clip in this video called overpay for talent because you can't really overpay for talent. And Brad Jacobs in his book, you know, he talks about that over and over again. We, me and you went to his house and he talked about, he told us like numbers he was paying for talent. Like, you know, it would shock you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Mr. Beast's video editors, like this 22 year old, the main kid, 22 or 24 year old kid. Like if you knew what he paid him, like you see this over and over again. Why? Because the example in the video is like, well, you know, did Apple really need Next? No, they needed Steve Jobs.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So they paid half a billion dollars to rehire the guy they needed, and he produced, you know, whatever return on that money. Like, they got a deal on getting him back. The reason I think people don't do it is, one, I don't think— Everything we describe, and I do, I think there's like a limit to like the actual application.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I guess these ideas you can scale down and scale up, but like there's just not that many talented people in every... And they're really hard to find. They take a long time to usually convince. They're usually really, really expensive. And in many cases, they're working for themselves. So there's not an abundance of people. But this just happened with me and you talked about this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Your new editor-in-chief just wrote that Neil Maida piece. And how did you find him? You found he wrote the best Palmer Lucky, and Palmer Lucky's- The best profile, period. Yeah, and the best, and Palmer Lucky's like, he's got a lot of coverage. He does great interviews and everything. He's wildly entertaining. And yet this guy wrote the best piece on him. Jeremy. So it's very simple.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Jeremy Stern. Thank you. It's very simple. It's like, oh- This is what Munger told our mutual friend, Brent. He's like, how do you find CEOs? I just find somebody who did a great job at being a CEO. I said, do that, but for me. And then Brent's like, what about hiring for potential? And Munger's like, I don't do that. Like, I don't do that. I just find the great guy in time to come over here.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So you just did this. You're like, hey, that guy's really good. What's the chance that he's only able to write one good possible? Yeah. Like you don't get that good without, there's a skill there, you know?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so I have gone through, I realized I wasn't even taking my own advice because I would use like all these people when you, there's like inside baseball, this, like when you see all these podcasts that have all these clips, they're outsourced. Clip farms. Yeah. They're like, they're like all the pitches, like it's so cheap. And I even use some that my friends recommended. And I'm like,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
These are terrible. And I found a guy and we met him together and he is really young and really gifted. His name is Maxim. He is my opinion, one of the best short form editors in the world. Shout out Blake Robbins for- For connecting us. It took me a while, a few months to do this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Only works because he's obsessed with the podcast and he was like in the audience and he's predisposed and he's already listening to it anyways. And I was like, do that for me. And then he tells me the price and the price is like six times 6x what other people pay. And I said, done. Where do I send the wire? And then what happens?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So I'm just forced to sit there and listen. And I feel that person is telling me, you know, the most important parts of their life, their 40, 50, 60 year career. Then I go online, you know, and we live in this very modern environment. I open up Instagram. I look at TikTok, look at X. And it's like, oh, the exact opposite of
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The clips are coming out and the person that's doing your video right now, all these people we meet, they're like, these are the best podcast clips. And then we, I mean, you've talked like, what's the management? There is no management. Like, I bought your taste. It's like, I already know you're great because I watch your videos and like, this is incredible.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's like hiring Tarantino and be like, I have some feedback for you. No, you should shut up. That's Tarantino. This happens to me where like, I get emails and the subject line, feedback on the podcast. Don't even read it. Write it in the garbage. You link me to a podcast that you have made that is even in the same category, and then I will listen. But again, you think I'm making it for you.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'm making it for me. The act of publishing it makes it an act of service, but I made it for me first. So I can't do what you want me to do because I'm not making it for you. I'm making it for me. I have to be satisfied first.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so the answer to your question is like one, even me who every single episode is like overpaid for talent, find the best people, never ever forget the dynamic range of humans. You know, Steve Jobs says, you know, the best person is not 100 times better, not twice as good. They're 100 times and 1,000 times better, which is obviously true. Think about the best investors.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like, you know, that profile you did on Neil Maeda. Like, I don't know. How many other investors in the world are better than him? It's not 10,000. Whatever the number is, it's a small number, especially if you say the same age group. Now, what, five, two, one? I don't know. But that's the, and that's so hard to actually find the person.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
In this case, it came because somebody else that's really good at spotting talent told me and you about this guy. And maybe I probably wouldn't have found him if it wasn't for that. So these things take a lot of time. And then what I would say is just like, if you're not, you have to actually act yourself. I think having a, I have a basic intolerance for people
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
for mediocrity, for not being completely obsessed with what you're doing. And so that weeds out most of humanity anyways. And then what I do is like, I have this great maximum where it's like, you should limit, you should limit the amount of details and then make every detail perfect. And so for me, it's like, I don't need a bunch, I don't need anybody to edit, I don't need anybody to make it.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
The only thing I can't do is I'll never be a video editor like him. So I can't, it's not like I have to go out and hire. I don't want to put myself in a position where my business only works if I find like the 15 best people in the world. That's not the game I'm playing.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I literally have no friends that aren't entrepreneurs. but I just can't talk to anybody that's not an entrepreneur. What I always tell them, they're like, yeah, I started this company and it's like software company. And they're like, all right, I got to go and like raise a bunch of money. I was like, you should take a look at like what Larry Ellison did, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
What this person did their whole career and what I've just spent 40 hours doing is this. It's like, let's not focus on something for 40 years or five decades or even 40 hours. Let's focus on it for four seconds. We were on the walk over here.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
You listen to the podcast, right? You told me you listened to those episodes. What did they do? They raised money? No, they sold the product. They started selling the product before the product was made. Well, maybe you should go out and see if you can get like other ways to do this. Um, it's shocking to me how the default is.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I must go out and convince other people that are not my customers to give me money. And sometimes you have to, like, there's nothing, I'm not against, I'm not anti-raising money. I'm anti-wastefulness.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And the, what the, the, the, the point that Todd Graves makes in the episode is like, listen, man, a lot of these PE guys come in and they try to buy you out and everything else is just like, why do you think they want your equity? Yeah. Because it's very valuable. So it doesn't mean you can't change, you know, exchange money for equity.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Sometimes you have to do it, but you should be very, very careful. And he came up with, like, think about this. This is how bad do you want it? And I'm doing the Michael Dell episode. I'm almost positive Michael Dell, his initial starter capital for Dell was $1,000.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I have to double check, because I've already listened to the book three times, I've read it, I'm going through it again, so I could in my memory. And I'm pretty sure when he went public, he owned like 70% of Dell. It's not my opinion. I would just go, how does Larry Ellison own so much of Oracle? Like, where did the funding come from Microsoft? What about Apple? Like, what did they do?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like, they obviously raise money, they go public, they do all this other stuff. Just like, think about that. And do you have to do that? This is a really important decision. You should not be casual about what you're doing. So Todd Graves, chicken finger, right? How many people are you going to criticize this guy for being put on this earth by God to make the world's best chicken fingers?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I love them. Fried chicken outside of like, I like fried chicken. Like, I like it. I don't know what to tell you. I try not to eat it because I get fat immediately, but I like fried chicken. I've eaten a lot of fried chicken. I like his fried chicken. I think it's the best. So what did he do? He's like, listen, I went to a bank.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He goes, the idea for Raising Cane's was a paper in business school at LSU. And he got the worst grade in class, which is funny because FedEx, Fred Smith, got a bad grade. Phil Knight, Nike, bad grade. maybe we shouldn't have professors judging business plans. Maybe this is kind of stupid, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So Todd Graves goes, I bought, he goes to Office Depot, buys a briefcase, you know, like the little shitty one with like the zero, zero, zero. I put the brief, so I buy a $99 suit. I buy a briefcase. I put the business school paper that I got a bad grade on in the briefcase. And I go down to the bank and they're like, Dude, you're not in a position to loan you money.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I mentioned the point where I was like, maybe the best thing for me to do, because where I do is like what I get joy is just literally like I like to spend about half my life or the time that I'm awake alone. And most of that is reading. I get a lot of joy out of that. And then the way I feel after I read a good book or even make an episode that I'm proud of.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And one of the reasons was you have no experience. They told him you should work in the industry for 10 years, even though he'd already worked through it in college. But you want to just make chicken fingers where your industry is going in the opposite direction. And this is where I got really pissed off in the episode. I was induced into a state of rage.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
They said, Todd, obviously this is not going to work out because look what McDonald's is doing. They're going after variety. There's salads. There's all this other stuff on the menu. There's milkshakes. You just have chicken fingers. Like what is wrong with you? And my point was like that shame on that person at the bank, because again, nothing we're doing is new. Go back to 1948.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Look up this guy named Harry Snyder who founded this company called In-N-Out. All Todd Graves did, if you look at what he did, he's like, oh, I'll just do In-N-Out, but for chicken fingers. It's the exact same story, except he started earlier and is now, I think when Harry Snyder passed away, he only had like 17 restaurants and Todd Stone Chargers Company's got 800 and something.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so that part really frustrated me, because it's like, there's already historical equivalent of this succeeding beyond your wildest dreams. In-N-Out probably wasn't an LSU, the guy didn't know, maybe there was no internet back then, whatever the case is. I'm not being overly harsh on this. So then what's Todd left to do? You're not gonna loan me any money. What do I do?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I guess I'll just give up. Most people just stop right there. Okay, I will work for 10 years. These guys are right. I'm some young, stupid college kid. They're in fancy suits in a nice office. They know what they're talking about. History clearly sees that that, in many cases, is not the case. So then what do you do? He's like, okay. these oil companies hire boilermakers.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And what happens is if a refinery goes down, every day that thing is down, that's very expensive to them. So boilermakers come through and they either like update the equipment or fix the equipment. And so if you're willing to work 95 hour weeks in grotesque environments in physical labor, you can make so much money working a hundred hours a week for like five weeks at a time.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Then he meets, so he makes a ton of money. He saves up tens of thousands of dollars doing that. Then one of the Boilermakers named Wild Bill, who's also one of his investors, which I love, he got the money from, saving money from Boilermaking, right? Then he got, then they tell him, hey, you can go up and do commercial fishing in Alaska.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
At the time Todd is doing this, I'm like much younger watching Deadliest Catch. He was on, like the show is being filmed when he's doing this. And so, yeah, you may fall overboard and die, but if you don't, you're gonna make, you know, 50 grand in two months as a 20-year-old kid. And he lived in a tent. He lived in a tent. He ate nothing but ramen noodles. He risked his life, right, on the boat.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He went to the Boilermaker. Then he comes back The Boilermakers give him a little bit of money. Like, you keep talking about chicken fingers. You're fucking crazy. I will give you a little bit of money. Then he had a bookie. Guess what? My bookie has a lot of cash. He has a cash business. This guy does not have a bank account.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
So then he invested, and that's how he got the money to do his first store. And then from there, he's like, okay, well, how do I do store two, store three, store four? The first 28 stores after this was financed in a very unique way, which he says, this worked out for me. Do not do what I'm about to tell you to do. They're all geographically concentrated in Louisiana. right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And so he would go and he said, he called them angel investors. They're not angel investors. So he goes, so I have two chicken finger stores. I'm going to open a third. I don't have any money, right? Banks are still not giving me money, right? But these things start cash flowing right away. So I go to you, I go, dude, give me 200 grand.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then the way I feel like when I go online, I'm like, oh, these are like the complete opposite. They're the contrast. One is feeds my soul and one is good for me and one is the opposite. And so I told you, I was like, maybe what I should do is just like not read online at all and just post all day long about the stuff I'm reading.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'll give you a one page contract, personally liable, not the company, personally liable. And I will pay, guarantee you a 15% return on this 200 grand. And you say, okay. You don't, you give me the 200 grand. I put the 200 grand in the bank. The bank now will lend me that like, oh, you have $200,000 equity. I'll lend you 800 grand on top of that million, whatever the number is on top of that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I start to store. And what happens? Well, day one, there's gonna be some people buying chicken. So cashflow happens right away. I pay my rent 30 days later, I pay payroll two weeks later, and I pay all my supplies net 30 or net 60. And so it works as long as people come in and start buying chicken fingers. And so he's like, I was rolling. I was balling out of control.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He gets all the way up to 28 stores doing this. Leverage to the, yeah, exactly. Leverage to the hilts. And then Hurricane Katrina comes through and goes, whoop, there goes all of your restaurants. And so then he's like, oh my God, I'm going to lose everything. And then what happens? He turns the pandemic, he does this, and this is what great entrepreneurs and investors do.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
They find opportunity in catastrophe, right? And so he's like, listen, guys, we have to open up. One, you guys want a paycheck, right? Two, every single other restaurant in Louisiana is closed, so people need to eat. Three, if we don't, I'm done. There's nothing like, I need to make money. He winds up being the first restaurant to open after Hurricane Katrina.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He had like 90 days, something like 60 to 90 days to himself. So what happens? You live in Louisiana. Maybe you never tried Raising Cane's. Guess what? Now you try it now. Oh, this is really good. And now you're a fan and you tell other people and it keeps compounding. Same thing with the pandemic. What happened? All the restaurants were closed. But the government said, food is essential, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
An essential business, but it has to be in the drive-thru. He went from doing something like, I don't know, let's say $2 billion or let's say $1 billion a year in 2020 to like $5 billion in 2024. Yeah, so taking something that's terrible and turning it into an actual opportunity. So that's like pretty creative way to finance something. And his whole point is just like, yeah, or you could go.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like use it as a tool instead of a giant distraction where I think a lot of people, like it's just completely destroying their ability to focus. And I think it's related to maybe why you asked me the question is like, I'm very reluctant to like have an opinion on, like when you listen to the podcast or when we have conversations or we're on the phone,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
How bad do you want it? How bad do you want it? And just think through what you're doing. Because his whole point was he saw a bunch of other people. They raised money. And we know people that this has happened to. They don't have control. And his thing was he was not optimizing for money. He was, if it's your dream, the first thing, the most important thing is survival, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's to make sure that they can't take your company away from you. Steve Jobs, again, founders talk about this all now, like this is something new. Steve Jobs said in like the 80s, victory in our industry is spelled survival. You go back and talk about like, people think like, he was unbelievable.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He said his line, he said something like, you pay attention to the nickels because the nickels turn into quarters. And he says when, and he's like, at the beginning of Apple, we paid attention to all of our costs. We watched what we were doing. We bought intelligently. He would call up his suppliers and haggle the hell out of them. And obviously he's probably the best salesman ever lived.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And then when he started next, he's like, oh, I didn't do it anymore because I'm rich and I don't need to. And I have Ross Perot writing fat checks and I'm on, I'm famous. And he stopped doing it. He's like, we got to get back to the basics. We have to be very creative and pay attention to this.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
That's a good question. I don't know if I ever thought about it. So my definition for entrepreneur has always been like somebody has ideas and does them. And I think the reason I'm interested, we have this thing called like, the shorthand called like founder mentality.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And the reason I profile not only just like founders, but investors and athletes and filmmakers and people like Napoleon and Churchill, Um, is because what they did is like, they saw something missing in the world. It could be leadership.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And like, you think about Winston Churchill post-World War II or during World War II, it could be, you know, uh, a nonprofit, it could be a product, it could be a company, it could be a service. And they're like, this thing should exist. And like, I'm going to make it, uh, come to life.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And the way I'm going to do this, like I'm going to direct my energy on creating this thing from nothing and making it real. And I still think like, again, you know this, cause like you have small kids and especially when they're really small, they have a different kind of intelligence where everything to them was a wonder. And so they're constantly like, why is that? Why is that?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
My son's in this age right now. It's just why, why, why, why, why? And sometimes it can get frustrating, but it's also like kind of brilliant. It's like on the midwit meme, it's like all the way to the left, but like really actually brilliant. And I don't think I ever get over the fact that you can have an idea that you don't even know where it comes from. Maybe it comes from your subconscious.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Maybe it comes from a dream. Maybe it comes from God, whatever you call it. And that idea just starts as an idea. It's like, oh, and then that goes from your mind into real life. And the version of this is like, it's a little disorienting. To this day where I just sat in a room by myself reading and then I spoke into a microphone not knowing what was going to happen.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
If something comes up, it's like, well, you know, Steve Jobs would say, do this, or David Ogilvie did this, or Buffett looked at it this way, or Munger looked at it this way. It's not like David thinks you should do this. Because I don't really have an opinion on what other people should do. I just think of like how I want to run my life.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And like that made something real, that act of creation. And it's the thing I'm most proud of. The fact that like I was talking to a friend of mine, we went on a walk right before I flew up here to meet you. And I was like, I think the thing I'm most proud of in my life is like I grinded for five and a half years with like no visible like progress and I didn't give up.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And like, I don't know if I'd do that today. I don't know if I would do that today. And I look back, I'm like, you were making a lot of stupid decisions along this way, but like, that is a really good decision. That you just, something told you, you can't explain, you couldn't predict, that like, just keep going. Like, you will figure it out, you have the self-belief, keep going.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And now I'm thinking maybe I should actually like be a little more vocal about, hey, it's kind of weird that the people that were literally the best at what they did in their life We're completely focused. We're not in this huge rush. They obviously work very fast, but they're not like, they didn't have goals.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like when I'm seeing a lot online, it's like, we're the fastest company ever to X revenue. It's just like, they didn't talk that way. Like Sam Walton did not talk that way. Coco Chanel did not talk that way. Enzo Ferrari, they understood they found something they love to do and did it for an incredibly long time. And so I talked about this where I get to meet a lot of great entrepreneurs and
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And my favorite entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs I've been the most impressed with, they're all over the age of 70, like all of them. It was like, who's the young entrepreneur you admire?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I was like, I don't even know any of their names because I'm so focused on this person has spent five decades thinking deeply about what they're doing and the stuff they can convey to you over like a dinner, a phone call, a conversation. Um, I just, I don't find that anywhere else.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I think that's a complete byproduct of the fact that they were able to focus on something for many, many decades, which is completely, uh, I would say opposite of most of human nature. I think that is why it's valuable because it's so rare for people to be able to do that. Why does that interest you?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Time is the best filter. Time is the only filter that I trust. You know, most of the people I cover are dead. If they're not dead, their career, they're at the end of their career, they're an older, wiser person and they're passing on these lessons, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And I remember people, I got a lot of pushback when FTX was taking off and all these people were telling me, you gotta do an episode on SPF, this guy's a genius, he's the fastest person to like a $35 billion net worth or whatever the number was. And so I was like, oh, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe they're right.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And we got to talk about Todd Graves in the episode I just did, because I'm really proud of it. I think when people ask me- It's my favorite episode now. Yeah, when people ask me who's my favorite living entrepreneur, they expect me to say a tech entrepreneur. It's like, no, a guy that owns Raising Cane's. They're like, what are you talking about?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He owns 90% of a business that he started in college. He's been doing it for 30 years. The business is worth at least $10 million. It's growing at 30% a year. And he refuses to sell. What would be the opposite of that, right? The slow grind to really perfecting what you're doing before you try to like just scale it up.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
There's a great line, I think, in Nick Sleep's partnership letters, which I just did. And he's like, we just don't understand why we go to these companies that are losing money and they want to figure out how to get bigger. And so lose more money. And he's not talking about like an Amazon where you actually have to do that. SPF, I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'm wrong.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Like maybe these people are right. And the reason I thought about Todd Graves, because there's so many people in his career, which we'll get to, that said, no, you're doing it wrong. And he's, and when he was younger, he's like, damn, they're like experts. They're smarter. They're like older than me. Like, and he started to doubt himself for a little bit.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he's like, wait, no, they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. And so I was really resistant to the SPF thing. So I started listening to all these podcasts on them. And then when he does podcasts, he would like multitask. Which my personal hero is Charlie Munger. I think he's the wisest person I've ever come across, the wisest person I've ever talked to. And what does he say?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He's like, you're going to get half-assed effort. That's not an exact quote. Like if you multitask, he just, he single tasks. Like I'm just focused on whatever's in front of me. He has this great quote that I put up that went viral. And it's like obvious. And he's like, I didn't succeed in life because of intelligence. I succeeded because I had a long attention span.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And that's what I'm so interested in to go back to your point. But then I started watching these SPF podcasts and no disrespect, I'm sure he's a nice guy. I'm not trying to insult him, but he's like, I've been on a bunch of podcasts. I've never played fucking video games while I'm doing anything. Yeah. It's like, this is so, first of all, it's kind of disrespectful. It's like a human level.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It's like, you don't even deserve my full attention. You know what? My phone's not here. Like we're like just having this conversation. But then, so I said, okay, well, maybe there's interesting ideas here. And then he explains what he was doing. And then I heard him say something. And immediately he said this. He's like, well, I actually think no one ever has to read a book.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And he talks about like, he doesn't read books. Books are stupid. Should just be a blog post. And I was like, oh, there's no way I'm doing. What's the chance that this young kid, right?
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
he arrived at a conclusion that for the last 5,000 years of humanity, you have all these people talking about how valuable it is to write down the lessons from the people that came before us and to pick up that book and read the lessons. And this guy comes along and says, no, no, just disregard that mass of humanity. That's not a valuable activity.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I'm sorry, I'm going to take Munger over SPF every day. And I'm so glad I didn't do the episode. Because imagine if I had in the Founders Back catalog, a podcast on history's greatest entrepreneur, and it's a guy that, you know,
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
One, they just, I think great anything takes time. Like a great business takes time. You can be phenomenal. If you look in the early days of Amazon, obviously Jeff was really gifted. He's really smart. He was doing a lot of smart things even before he started Amazon.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But if you look at how good he was and how great the business was a decade to three decades in, I always say this quote, and I think it's dead right. It's fascinating that everybody in technology has read Zero to One, right? If you're only going to read one book, probably that would be the one to read. I think it's excellent.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But they missed the part of what he says in there where he's like, hey, there's a big problem with technology companies is they optimize for growth at the expense of durability.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But if you look at when do these giant companies, and he said tech companies, but you see this in all these companies, Raising Cane's is another example, where they actually make more money three, four, five, six decades into the future. All the real money is out there. So therefore, if you're optimizing for growth at the expense of durability, you're never going to get to the real rewards.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
And the reason you do that is because growth you can track and durability you cannot. And I just did this episode on Ken Griffin and what's fascinating is he's founded Citadel, I think 35 years ago. And I think he founded Citadel of Securities 23 years ago. And he just said, we've had the most, the best financial years of our entire life in the last four years.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
He's 30 years, 30 years into that business is the best time he's had. And he's, you know, hopefully he keeps compounding that.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I think what this really comes down to, like you're kind of hitting at this. I think this is why, even though I'm not an investor, I do like your framing of like trying to back people that it's their life's work. I am very interested in people that have a mission and I don't know why.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
It took me 32 years to find my mission, another five and a half to make it to where it can actually support my family. And then, you know, now I realize like, oh, this is it. This is the thing I'm doing. I want to tie into something I read yesterday. You guys actually made this great profile on Neil. Yeah. And what I would say is. There's a lot of good quotes in there.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I feel like I should do like a miniature, like episode bonus episode on that one. He gave this analogy of like, um, of the helicopter. It's like, most people are like doing due diligence on a company or whatever. And they're at like 8,000 feet and they maybe go, they'll hover down to 5,000 feet. And they're like, Oh, we did our job. They're like, no, no.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Neil lands the helicopter, then gets out of the helicopter, then goes underneath the helicopter and then puts his hands in the dirt. And I read that. I don't think of any entrepreneur living, I think, oh, that's Walt Disney. That's Steve Jobs. That's Estee Lauder. That's all the people that I admire. That's Todd Graves. It sounds like I heard stories.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
I was just at this dinner last weekend for somebody that knows Ken. And they asked what episode I'm working on. I was like, oh, I'm working on an episode of Ken Griffin. And they were telling stories that were very similar to that, paying attention to even the tiniest corner of the business you wouldn't even think he's paying attention to.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But he's sitting there and talk to the person responsible for three straight hours to make sure it's being done. I just like people that take what they're doing seriously. The feedback on the Tigress episode, it's absolutely ripping.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
But the only negative feedback is like, I can't, because he says in the episode that he believes that God put him on earth to be good at chicken fingers to help people. So he can make a lot of money and he does a lot of like charitable work. And people are like, you know, they think they're smarter. Too obsessed with chicken fingers. They think they're smarter than him.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David Senra - The Focused Few - [Invest Like the Best, EP.422]
Essentially what they're saying is like, have you built a $10 billion company? Have you done that? Are you the best in your profession? Are you the top of your craft? It doesn't matter what the craft is. At least he has a mission. You may laugh at his mission. You think it's ridiculous. But one, I know he believes it for a fact, or he's the world's greatest actor for three decades, right?
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Did you hear me say when I was asked, who is the podcaster's podcaster? The underground one that all of us listen to. It's you. Yes.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah. It's a shame because...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
One of the things that this can incentivize people to do is to track the low points and track the journey in the beginning sufficiently so that you always have this sort of stake that you've planted in the ground to say, you know that famous photo of Jeff and he's in front of the handwritten Amazon sign and it's like CRT monitors and old school style keyboards and stuff. Everything's beige.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Why is that photo important? Because most of Amazon's inception photos is bereft of the 4K behind-the-scenes footage that you would like to have now. You look at somebody like Chris Bumstead, best bodybuilder in the world, ex, I guess, he just retired a few weeks ago. He has been tracking his journey from... for over 10 years on YouTube.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So when it comes to him, people can look at this person and the envy, I think you're able to dampen that down. You're able to ameliorate it because you can show people the difficult times. If you were able to see Jeff Bezos at his worst, Elon Musk at his worst, Dyson at his worst, whoever, Trader Joe at his worst, if you could see those guys when they were really in the shit,
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I think far fewer people would think that they did not deserve the success that they get on the other side. The issue people have is that looks like it came easy. Therefore, they don't deserve it. I didn't have something come easy. Yep. Therefore, I should take it from them.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. You probably want to know what's happening inside of your body, but getting your blood work comprehensively analyzed can cost thousands, which is why I partnered with Function.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
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Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
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Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Dr. Andrew Huberman is their scientific advisor, and Dr. Mark Hyman is their chief medical officer, so you can trust that the data and insights you receive are scientifically sound and reliable.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Right now, you can discover where your health stands and take action with Function's expert health assessments by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Thank you. Yeah, dude.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
He's swimming downstream.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
yeah it makes it makes life so much easier he's swimming downstream the partner that he picked uh compensates for his shortcomings and accounts for them and helps him to be a better person so does mine yes that's my wife yeah uh you know that i i keep fucking harping on about it this michelangelo effect thing two people they make each other better to be better for each other and for themselves and together they are positive some more than they could have been apart etc and uh
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
stop that thing that made me so attracted to you it's actually kind of getting in the way of the comfort that i want to get yeah so true i mean uh homos he's got some thing where he says um the cheerleader should not be telling the quarterback to get off the field when it's in the final play of the game. Uh, and you know, that can switch.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I'm sure there's times when you need to step up and be the cheerleader for your wife, uh, not in the podcasting world, but in all sorts of other stuff. And you're like, Hey, uh, There you go. Stadium floor. Crack on. I'm here to support you.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Never pissed anyone off.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, was on the speaking circuit. It's 10th year anniversary of Essentialism next month. And he's done speaking for forever. And he didn't want to miss his kids, but he also wanted to build a life that his kids would be able to benefit from.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Why... Why is that the case? Is it just that achieving anything that is excellent requires you to negotiate with a world that's going to push up against you? And that means that you're going to end up feeling discomfort. Therefore, the capacity to deal with pain is important.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So he's sort of caught between a rock and a hard place because being away from his kids is the very thing that facilitates the life he wants to give them. So he just put in a request. Part of his rider was a second ticket, business class, and a second hotel room. And he took one of his kids with him every time that he did a talk. So his kids got to travel the world with him.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
God, I don't know if the internet's ready for that. There'll be a new one coming up soon. Anyway, today I want to go through a bunch of lessons. You spend your entire time studying history's greatest founders, greatest leaders, thinkers, and I want you to go through some broad buckets of lessons that you've taken away from them. So we're going to do 15 today. Okay. First one.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Number three, there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. History's greatest entrepreneurs all learned from history's greatest entrepreneurs.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Relationships run the world. Trusted personal networks may be the most valuable asset in the world.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
There's a quote from Tim Cook at Apple where he says, people say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I found that to be a total crock of shit. At Apple, you will work harder than you ever have before, but the tools will feel light in your hands.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Go ahead. Just that there's an additional element in there, which suggests you need to also be able to display value in some way. You need to be able to have, yes, you can build a relationship with somebody, but the analogy of the peak suggests to me that you stand alone atop a mountain of your own. You have done a thing which enables you. It unlocks that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
It's a zipped file. People, this is a... Because of the way that I learn as well, which is the same, essentializing, right? Taking large concept into memorable mantra, maxim, aphorism, whatever it is. It can feel like quote pawning, right? Which is fine. And I don't actually mind all that much. But that's the sticky thing that stays in the back of your mind.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And if you're not going to be able to remember the entirety of a book, but you can remember... Do less, but better. That's the concept of essentialism, right? Do less, but better. How awesome. That's really lovely. Do less, but better. It's like from a German saying. You go, right.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Single-ordinating, single-direction.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Oracle. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With NetSuite, you reduce IT costs because NetSuite lives in the cloud with no hardware required and accessed from anywhere.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems because you've got one unified business management suite, and you're improving efficiency by bringing all of your major business processes into one platform. Over 37,000 companies have already made the move. NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So right now, you can get that by following the link in the show notes below or heading to netsuite.com slash modern. That's netsuite.com slash modern. So when I think about a lot of the people that ended up working for me in one form or another in nightlife, on the podcast... so many of them started off working for free.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Dean, the guy that's still with me now, that's edited 2000 videos that have gone out, every single one of them, creative director now, maybe the best podcast editor on the planet, arguably, I would say so. He did the first two, three years for free. He came and did the first shoot for free. Now we were friends or whatever, but he was a working professional photographer and videographer.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
But he was like, I think there's something here. I'm just going to do it and let's see what happens. It's like, Offer, offer, offer, give, give, give. And just to round out what you were saying before about the sort of essentializing the fact that mantras and maxims are a useful win-zip tool to then unlock this file downstream from it.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Andre Gide, Nobel Prize winner, everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah, you've got like Mungarian grift. All right. You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. A desire to not end up like your father is a powerful source of extreme drive.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
All of your accomplishments. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Well, think about it that way. Like it is an odd thing for you to be an outlier, for you to know that you're an outlier, for you to kind of want to bestow the benefits of outlierness on your kids. But if you're that much of an outlier, hopefully some smarts have come along with you. And if you're that smart, you'll know what regression to the mean is.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And if you are way out on the tail of this thing, Where do you think your kids are going to be? They're going to move back toward the center. That's how it works. Yes. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So I get- Just to interject, I need to interject. No, go ahead. Isn't it interesting though that, The thing that gives you such a sense of contentment and meaning in the world is your pursuit of something difficult, is this insatiable, unstoppable drive to go and do this thing. And what you're trying to bestow on your kids is equanimity and peace and enoughness.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
If I went to you and said, I'm a super intelligent AI and I can go in and I can change your source code and I can get rid of your need to do the drive. You can be as happy in a hammock as you are in a podcast studio, as you are reading a biography. I don't think that you would take that deal.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So even though my first proposal was, you know, don't try and expect your kids to be as much of an outlier as you are, tails go back to the middle, they don't go further out to the tails. But on the flip side of that too, what if your kids are made of the same stuff as you and...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Throwing some fuel onto that furnace would be maybe the best blessing because, wow, I'm made of the same stuff that dad is and dad gets me and dad taught me how to handle and control this huge stallion that I've got that I'm trying to, you know what I mean? We've got this sort of really interesting... Easy for a fucking non-father to say.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Did you ever hear me tell Rogan about the region beta paradox? That thing. So it's just an idea about where you get stuck in comfortably numb in the middle. Things aren't too bad. They're not that good. But because they're not that bad, you don't have the motivation to go make them better. It's a well-known psychological state. And I came up with...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
colliery of it which is the reverse region beta paradox being in an aggressively terrible working cadence or environment but having such a tolerance for discomfort that you can endure it for a lifetime lower resilience less stubborn people would snap and have to find a way to change but not you you're the David Goggins of working hard who's going to carry the workload you are forever and that thing is it's a blessing and a curse because it allows people to maybe continue moving when they actually should
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
In other news, this episode is brought to you by AG1. It's important to me that the supplements I take are of the highest quality, and that is why for over three years now, I've been taking AG1. They conduct relentless testing to set the standard for purity and potency. Everything that they make is the highest quality. It's NSF certified, meaning that even Olympic athletes can use it.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And they've updated the recipe 52 times over the last decade as new research and sourcing has come in. I'm massively focused on gut health at the moment and AG1's ingredients are insanely heavily researched for efficacy and quality. And I love the fact that they've got pro and prebiotics plus digestive enzymes to help support my gut. Best of all, there is a 90-day money-back guarantee.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So you can buy it and try it every single day for 89 days. And if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. You can get that 90-day money-back guarantee and try AG1 with a year's free supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drinkag1.com slash wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash wisdom.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I wonder, you know, I've spoken to 850 people, whatever, on the show, maybe with doubles like 750, something like that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And I would say that on average, high performers are driven, 90% of them, 95% of them are driven by a sense of insufficiency, not a perfectly balanced desire to enact their logos forward and be the best version of them that they can be simply for the flourishing that comes along with it. Most people don't have that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
most people are trying to fill a void they're looking for validation they want the world to see them as useful because they've never felt like they were loved they want someone to tell them like they're enough so they're going to make themselves so much more than enough that they have they have this undeniable stack of mountain of evidence that they were the thing not the thing that they feared that they were and um i just get the sense that it is a balance between happiness and success
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
But given that most people try to become happy by being successful, unhappy people try to use success to achieve happiness. If you can just shortcut it and go straight to happiness, which it sounds like you're trying to teach your kids to do, and much of this is genetic in any case. It's like, hey, here's a roll of the dice. There's 50% of your psychological disposition. Like, good luck.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I hope you're ready. But yeah, if you can do what you can from a rearing perspective, You're safe. You're validated. I love you if you win, and I love you if you lose. As long as you try, here's some principles that you should do that are scalable, that are blah, blah, blah.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I think the success thing, especially the people that listen to this podcast, the people that listen to yours, are the kinds of people that have buried themselves. being that breakwater, being that circuit breaker of intergenerational trauma of one kind or another.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And if that's you, if you've prostrated yourself on the domino lineage of your ancestors and you've just like, no, you've Samsoned this entire thing together. That's what it's like, right? He's holding these pillars up. That's you and your intergenerational problems. If you've done that, first off, bravo. Secondly,
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You have got the skills, you have got the gifts, you have got the insights, you have got the lessons, you have probably got the resources that your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents couldn't have even imagined existed. Not only because we're in a world that offers you that opportunity and education and so on and so forth, but because you were the outlier.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And that's why you listen to shows like yours and shows like this, because you are an outlier. Among outliers, right? You can't overestimate how normal the normies are. Go out in the street. Like I served normal people at my nightlife business. They're fucking fantastic.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
They're not riven with this sense that you have that for the most part is probably pathological and you would be significantly better off if you didn't have. But what does it allow you to do? It allows you to push yourself into places that other people won't go. So can you take on that pain? Can you take on, like we said in the very beginning, can you take on that burden, shoulder that burden?
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Pass on what's good. Try to hold on to the stuff that you wish didn't go. And then use the fruits of that labor, the lessons, the resources, the insights. Give that and be like, it was me that did the thing. I accumulated the stuff. I passed it on to my kids. And they got most of the benefits structurally of what I did. with as few of the pathologies emotionally of what caused that to happen.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
pivot to something else. But if you know that the idea is right, I guess that that's a competitive advantage.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Excellence is the capacity to take pain. Persevering through pain is mandatory.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And I'm going to try to like... I wonder whether... This could totally just be availability bias because of the people that I look up to and that I surround myself with. But I'm really hopeful for the next generation that maybe they have more of those. Maybe that 90 to 95 actually gets closer to 70 or 80 because the proliferation of people trying to make themselves better.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
If Founders is Church for Entrepreneurs, then Modern Wisdom is church for people who want to make their lives better. I'm curious. I have the sense that I'm built for more, and I'm interested in finding out if that's true. And I don't know.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I don't get how so much of this stuff, even if you only take fucking 0.1% of the things that you're exposed to, and you're a little bit discerning about what's good and what's not good, You are, this is what I said before about the difference between a parents and grandparents and a great grandparents generation and ours. You are orders of magnitude better constructed, better informed.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
That's Alex's definition, too.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You should hang with him. I'd love to see you two talk.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You're living in it.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah. Yeah. Behavioral genetics is like the physics of the way that people show up and there's no changing that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Wild that you've got such shit railways now.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah, fascinating. What is that? Fascinating. Yeah, you've got this split test. You've got the same father. You've got the same environment, but a totally different outcome. This is why so much, a woman called Nancy Etkoff, and she's probably the leading twins researcher on the planet.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And between her and Robert Plowman, you realize just how squirrely life can become, even when you share the same environment, when you grow up in the same environment. Genes matter a lot, man. I was going to tell you about this a little bit later on. I did a genetic test, so I had a full genome sequence done.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And as a part of that, the organization, they're able to compare you to the population at mass, and they can say this is one copy of this SNP, or two copies of this SNP is 20% of the population have got that, 6% of the population have got it when it's both, and they do it for everything. And this is related to this. This is related to dopamine. This is related to drive.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
This is related to obsession. This is a risk for alcohol. This is a risk for Alzheimer's or whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. And I need to go back and go through it properly before I start talking about it fully on the show. But I want to introduce you to the same company because I want you to get it done because it taught me so much about myself. So many of the things that I thought...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
were cultivated virtues. Um, what it's very much being is like unbelievably fertile ground. I've thrown a bit of water on and it's just like, oh, you were going to be this way. Now you could have been this way for drugs or alcohol or, or, you know, any other kind of obsession, but you were going to be obsessed.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
There was no way there was no way that I was going to grow up and not be obsessed about something. Did they identify why your forearms are so huge? That actually isn't available.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
It's just the forearms. You know what the other thing is? When I do these fucking live shows, the Q&As live are just the same. I shake someone's hand, I'm doing a meet and greet, and they're like, dude, they really are big in real life. They don't even refer to the forearm. They're like, they really are. Bro, you need merch. Just a picture of your forearms. Forearms. All right.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Actions express priority. We are only what we do, not what we say we are.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
What about – What about Elon? Because he strikes me as somebody that's just got a pretty high pain tolerance.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So, yes, and I love this, but- The issue is that it can become difficult to work out where the boundaries of that stop. How much should you care about the things that you do? I'm not sure, but the answer probably isn't as much as possible all the time about everything. You can't be, perfect example of this, and the solution is deliberate de-optimization, right?
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So it's choosing in advance what you're going to suck at. These are insights from Oliver Berkman, who's fantastic. One of my friends told me about deliberate deoptimization strategy that he was using. I asked him for an example. He said, well, I fly a lot.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And if I had the right number of different credit cards and I had all my points tied in and I made sure that I use them the best way and I had, you know, a wallet this big, I would be able to maximize my points. But I just, it's not a sufficiently high priority. I have other things that are higher up. So I just, I'm going to let that one slide. That's just going to be an L for me.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Could I be more optimized? Yeah, I could. But look, it works. Now, are you going to do that in your highest calling? Am I going to do that when I'm trying to book a guest on the show or we're trying to set up the lighting or we're fighting for a great location or whatever? No. No, that's an area that I need to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
The problem that the insecure overachiever has, that the type A person with a type B problem has, is not knowing where the boundaries of their obsession should stop because it can't be everything. Oh, I agree with that. It can't be everything. And if it is everything, the things that it really should be for will suffer and you will feel it and you will feel miserable.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
We broke the entire show, this whole thing, all of the different machinery and the bits and pieces behind it, how the growth happens and what I feel fulfilled by and what makes the world a better place and what grows the revenue and all the rest of the things. We broke all of that down. And it's one, two, three, four. It's four things. But because of your next lesson, I'm not going to say them.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
But there's four things. It's four things. That's it. Should we? Oh, I've heard that TikTok's prioritizing. videos that are over 90 seconds long. So maybe we should be, is it one of those four things? No, it's not. Well, what if we repurp, because we can do a cross promo. It's not one of the four things. Yeah. It's only four things that make an impact on everything.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
In other news, this episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge brands like Gymshark and Allbirds and... Newtonic. They are the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Look, you do not want to learn to code to start your business.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You don't want to learn how to build a website or how to do inventory management or web hosting or to design stuff. You want to get all of that out of the way so you can get on with what you're here to do, which is to build and sell cool stuff. That's what Shopify helps you do. And that's why we use them for Newtonic. They're literally your no excuses business partner.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
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Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
That's shopify.com slash modern wisdom to grow your business now, no matter what stage you're in. Bad boys move in silence. When you find an edge, shut up about it. Talking invites competition. Competition destroys profits. So I grew up listening to hip hop.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
What was that thing about, uh, sorry, I wrote you such a long letter. If I only had more time, I could have written you a shorter one.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Belief comes before ability. The external world has this backwards. The belief that you can do something is a prerequisite for trying.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
So I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure what direction you were going in with that because one reading of that sounds fantastic, and I wholeheartedly disagree, but the one from the outside world I think is absolutely bang on. So the reason that I disagree, if you were to say belief comes before ability as in self-belief, I wrote an essay this week about it, so I'm going to read it to you.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
An Ode to People Who Don't Believe in Themselves. What comes first, belief or action? Do you need to believe that you can do a thing before you do it? Fake it until you make it is one option, but incredibly hard if you're introspective or have low self-belief and high standards. So what about make it until you fake it? Here are some lessons I've learned.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You can believe you're not worthy of a thing and still attain it. You can be adamant that your efforts are going to go badly and still succeed. You can grip and grasp and fear and it ruin the enjoyment and be totally unwarranted and things still go well. You can have no self-belief and show up anyway and still win. You can want more for yourself without knowing exactly what that looks like.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You can doubt the process, question your talent, be uncertain that you're making progress, disparage your accomplishments, permanently feel like you're not working hard enough, no matter how hard you work, never give yourself a break, fail to fully feel gratitude, be terrified of never reaching your goals, and still end up in a place that your 20-year-old self could not imagine you'd ever get to.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Self-belief is overrated. Generate evidence.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Because I was swimming downstream.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about self-belief because I believe that the thing that I'm doing right now is of value to the world and the world just as yet hasn't recognized that. It's like an interesting pivot on self-belief. The belief, I know that I can make it I have never had, I've never had ever, ever.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I am the best avatar for somebody that is permanently looking at his feet going, how the fuck am I stood here? Like, how did this happen? Very much. Don't believe that you're worthy of a thing. Still attained it. Disparage your accomplishments, but still get them.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
uh grip grasp fear ruin the enjoyment all of that all of that like the entire for me journey up until probably only the last two years basically moving to america was sort of riven with self-doubt and uncertainty and am i even is am i even doing this right like but i enjoyed the thing that i was doing and i knew that i was good at that thing
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
but I didn't know that there was going to be some outcome. So I think it's what is the sort of self-belief directed at in a way, directed at the outcome of, I know that I can do this thing well and I enjoy it all day. Directed at this is going to reach something that some portion of people will accuse of being success. Never really once.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah. Much bigger, much bigger mountain of evidence. Yeah. Good point. After a while, if imposter syndrome continues to persist, even though you keep disproving it,
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I'm about to step out on stage in front of three and a half thousand people in London. I just came back from Oz, 5,000 people. Yeah. Other side of the planet. Yeah. And no, not anymore. But that, like, I need to really write this out because I haven't yet. I'm just such a fucking poster boy for somebody that would have abiding imposter syndrome. Like, very...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
uncertain very unsure of himself of his place in the world a need for validation a desire to be seen as competent like all of the things you know just like the fucking ingredients to make a really beautiful imposter syndrome casserole and um
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
it's dropped away and it's gone and it's not gone through any weird combination of mindset changes and and sort of conscious reframing uh it's gone because it's been crushed under a fucking neutron star worth weight of evidence yeah i'm like i just can't i can't keep
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
holding on to a belief that things are going to go badly or that i'm not good enough or that i don't have the talent or that even though i feel like i'm working hard i know that i should be working infinitely harder because i'm just like how many times you want to roll the dice and it come up six six six like over and over and over and over again and um
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Yeah, I just, I really want to write it out because I think that there's a lot of people who have a level of self-doubt so great that they struggle to even connect with like an inspirational story because it feels like it's a different... I agree completely.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
That's the key. Dude, I've realized this over the last couple of years. We don't fall in love with other people who are perfect. We fall in love with other people. who we see ourselves in their flaws. And there's been a few times on the show or going out for dinner and meeting people or whatever. Like, huh, I, this person's, you know, really smart or really interesting or really insightful. And
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I just don't care. And I have nothing to talk to them about. And I realized it's that I can't find hucks in their shortcomings that I can latch on to. That either I'm not... I'm unable to see them for some reason. They're being hidden. They're incentivized to hide them. They don't align with the way that I see the world, perhaps. Cultural differences, stuff like that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
But yeah, what we really, really resonate with is somebody else who has...
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
a shortcoming that we see ourselves in you see a little version of yourself in chris bumstead when he cries on stage or when he's uncertain about whether or not he's going to win you see a little bit of yourself in kobe when he snaps his achilles and he's unsure about where he's going but then he pulls himself back around you know like whoever it is like you see your and that i think is um is reassuring to a lot of people it's certainly reassuring to me when i realized that
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
The most interesting person in the room, in fact, this was born out of our trip to Miami for George's birthday. The most interesting person in the room isn't the most interesting person in the room. It's the person who makes everybody else feel like they're the most interesting person in the room. So you don't need to worry about not being charismatic.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
You just need to make other people feel charismatic. I called it inverse charisma. You know that story. It was Winston Churchill's wife who went to go and see the two different American presidents. She said, I sat down with one of them and... After a dinner, being next to him, I left feeling like he was the smartest person in the world. I sat down a couple of months later with his opponent.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
And after that dinner, I left feeling like I was the smartest person in the world. Like, who do you want to be? I want to be the sort of person that makes other people feel like the smartest person in the world. And the beautiful thing about this idea is that so many people want to be liked and charismatic, but feel like they don't have any charisma or likability. You don't need to.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
It's not about you. It's about what you do to other people. And that is so much easier. If you're just, you don't need to be interesting. You just need to be fucking interested in somebody else.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
By endurance, we conquer. Time carries most of the weight. It is hard to beat someone who never stops. Oh, this is, I feel Hormosi would say something like that too.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
What's that thing about Buffett made some obscene percentage of his entire net worth after 65?
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
If you know your business from A to Z, there is no problem you can't solve. The best entrepreneurs stay in the details of their business.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
The public praises people for what they practice in private. There is no such thing as an overnight success. Every great act is built on years of practice no one sees.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I love it. I mean, it's cliche to say it takes 10 years to become an overnight success.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Self-pity has no utility. If you live long enough, bad things will happen to you. Your goal is to use the bad in life in a constructive fashion.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
how does he keep going? He has fucking malaria and meningitis at the same time.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
The good ones know more. The top talent in every industry has gathered more information than most people would find reasonable.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
It is interesting. So much of the stuff that we're talking about today is going beyond the reasonable. There is a bar that lots of people get to. Tolerance for pain, endurance, amount of time persisting doing a thing.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Amount of talent that somebody has prepared. And it's just a case of going orders of magnitude past that.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Money comes naturally as a result of service. A business is just an idea that makes someone else's life better.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. Business is problems. The best companies are just effective problem-solving machines.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
If you love what you do, the only exit strategy is death. Retirement can be fatal.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
What about retirement can be fatal?
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Well, thinking about it through an evolutionary lens, you're useful. Yes. What are the signals that the world's giving you? You're moving toward a goal. You're useful. People need you. You contribute. Yeah. And yeah, the evidence is there.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Dude, I love what you do. I said it at the start. I said it on the Q&A. I think Founders is a podcast that everybody should go and listen to. It's not a cadence that's going to actually eat into your modern wisdom time because you can only get one out a week. So you've got to read all of the books. Bro, you're great. You're great. I really appreciate you as a friend.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
I appreciate everything that you do. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with the stuff that you get on Twitter.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Until next time, man.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
It's the reason that people at the top get paid more because they have more levels of input coming in. Anybody that's in the C-suite, that's good in the C-suite, is basically just a very complex, high-level problem-solving algorithm. But they can just – the number of inputs that they're able to see and the way that they can triage top-down and prioritize what the most – and weight.
Modern Wisdom
#878 - David Senra - 15 Harsh Truths From History’s Greatest Founders
Their weighting is appropriate because of experience and maybe taste or talent or whatever, insight. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, I think you're right. I think that the best companies just solve problems.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The reason I run a solo history podcast is because I think the best podcaster I've ever loved is Dan Carlin from Harger History. And so for like fucking years before I did my own podcast, I would fall asleep listening to Dan every night. Almost every night I still fall asleep listening to Dan Carlin. And so I just fell in love. I think there should be way more monologue podcasts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And this is, you know, probably in the 70s or something, like a long time ago. So even $1,500, a lot more money even back then. And his wife's like, why are you spending all this money? And his response was great. He goes, because he gives me energy. And again, I think that is a very real thing. Our mutual friend, George Mack, has this idea of, he calls it sofa friends and treadmill friends.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like, pay attention to the energy that you get when you're in an act room with your friends. Some people are like, oh my God, go home. You need to lay into the sofa and just recover. And other people, you want to go home and you want to run on the treadmill. You want to run through walls.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I think being around like a Warren Buffett, Tony Robbins, I felt that way when I had dinner with Daniel Ek. I feel that way when I get to meet a lot of these people. It's like, oh, there's like levels to this. And I have so much more to learn and so much more room for improvement. And it just fucking excited me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah, I would get out of sofa towns as much as possible. I almost, I mean, I think Miami Beach to some degree is a sofa town, especially because I don't party. Like, it's like, I don't want to go out. Like, I just want to work. I want to spend time. I want to take care of my health, spend time with family and work. That's all I'm interested in. And I almost left before COVID.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then after COVID, we had a huge influx of like way more talented people. A lot of them have since returned. They went back to LA or San Francisco or New York. But the people that stayed were good enough where the network was like, oh, I'd stay here just for the network alone. But I, you know, go to New York every month. I spend a lot of time in California.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he's going to sit down and he records it little by little. So he'll record, you know, little segments over half a year, nine months, and then stitches them all together. And I was like, that's, that's incredible. But the, the benefit he had is he was on, he was on the radio for like 20 years or 15 years or whatever it was a long time before podcasts. He started his podcast in 2005. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like I would, I just talked to, there's this really talented guy. Do you know Blake Robbins?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He was at Benchmark. Totally. He's really good at like finding these like obscure, like people on the internet. Yeah. And he put me and my friend Patrick onto this guy named Maxim. And I think he found him when he only had like a couple thousand followers or something like that. Maxim now has like a million followers. It's by Maximize on- Yeah, I follow him. Yeah, he's the best.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I got to spend time with him in New York City because-
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
he said the only podcast he listened to is founders and so if you look at maximus videos a lot of them are ideas from the podcast i was like dude can you make some videos for me please seriously he's going to but um he's like like it's a you can look at his working like this guy's a fucking world-class talent and we wind up spending a few hours together in new york and he was thinking about it's like should i move from england and i was like how old are you he's like 23 hey you got any kids no i
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You married? He's like, no. I go, you better get your ass over here immediately. Like, absolutely. To be super talented, 23 years old, no attachments. I even told him like, hey, like I will guarantee you a contract for two years to cover your living expenses. If you just make videos for us and you want to build your own company or whatever the case is, like, don't worry about that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I don't even think he needs to do that because I think his side business is successful enough that he doesn't need that. But for that, it's like no brainer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Now, that's different from what I did. I literally just like locked myself in a room. Like, you know, the Kanye line where it's like, travel yourself in this three, make it five beats a day for three summers. Like that is how you get good at anything. This is, so in the background, I'm obviously kind of a psycho where,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
in the background during work, I just play the last dance that Michael Jordan documentary over and over again. So like my wife walked in and like, sometimes I'll switch it up. It'll be like, Defiant Ones is another really great documentary. Cause you just see the work ethic of like a Jimmy Iovine, of a Dr. Dre, of a Bruce Springsteen, of anybody that's good at anything. It just takes so much time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And that's why like, I would say if you want to be world-class anything, like you really don't have that much competition. Like the very top, you know, half of a percentile, you know, is very competitive, but the average person on the streets is never even going to attempt it. And even if they do attempt, they quit at everything. Where like Maxim had, he had his huge growth.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like, no matter what, I have to make a video a day. And he just made a video about the fact that he made a video a day and he shows his follower count and all the crazy shit that happened to him when he just committed to the daily practice of getting better at his craft. So even for him, even if before he was good, I would still get around and try to get access to these people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And if you can't access them. So like I started the very first episode of founders in September, 2016 was Ashley Vance's book on Elon Musk. It was the very first one. And part of that was because I was watching this, this guy named Kevin Rose. You remember Dave?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Okay. So, um, Kevin Rose had like one of this world-class video podcast in 2012 called Foundation.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like the quality of the shoot was incredible. The guests were fucking incredible. Like I thought he was really good at it. And he interviews Elon when they're on the Tesla, they're at Tesla. I think the only Tesla on the market, they stopped making the Roadster. And I think they had just started producing the Model S. I want to get a little bit of context.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Cause I lived on YouTube. I don't even know if he was uploading to YouTube. He had to be uploading to YouTube, but like the website, it was like foundation.kr or something. It was like, it was like the fucking website was incredible.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I wonder like the alternate reality where he never stopped, kept doing it, you know, like it's just, he'd have a decade of practice before not realizing how valuable a great podcast can be, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah, but you jumped around a lot, which is like podcast compound. You know what I mean? Like if you look at- Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah. But if he kept going, they would have. So I think there's another conversation we can have too about one of the most important ideas I've come across in the books is like the importance of being easy to interface with, which I think Steve Jobs is world-class at. Oh, they're all really good at, but he was probably the best there was.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
But the reason I started with the Ashley Vance biography of Elon, this goes back to Maxim or any really talented person that's got to figure out what to do is like, If you can't act, if you can't move to a world-class city, you don't have any money or you don't have a network. It's like Kevin asked fucking Elon. He's just like, you moved from Canada. You didn't know anybody in California.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like, who was your mentor? He's like, I didn't have a mentor. He goes, I read, he's like, did you read business books to learn how to build your fucking first company? He's like, no, I don't read business books. I read biographies and, this is what Elon says, I read biographies and autobiographies. I think they're helpful.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then he goes on and lists, you know, Ben Franklin, every single person who ever built the rocket, Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, all these other people. And I was like, and he goes, I think that's a way to find mentors in historical context. That's the sentence that Elon said. I was like, oh, that's a really good idea. And I was like, I should read more biographies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so I started reading biographies. I'm like, these things are pretty fucking great. They're very useful. You can download Toby Luque has this great line. where he says that biographies or books in general are the closest thing you'll come to finding a cheat code in real life because you can download the entire learnings of somebody's, you know, multi-decade long career in a few hours.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's exactly what Elon was doing. And then when you read more biographies, you realize that every person that lived a life so remarkable, somebody wrote a book about them, all read biographies. It's like this weird ongoing chain of, hey, let's use learning from history as a form of leverage, find ideas from somebody else's experience I can use in my life to kind of get me to where I want to go.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So, yeah, that's what I would do. It's like, if I was a young kid, I'd tell this to my own daughter. My son's too young for this. It's just like, I probably bought her... I don't fucking know, 30, 40 of these little young biographies. It's called, um, little people, big dreams. They're in every single bookstore that I've ever gone into.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Um, and it's, you know, every single person, Taylor Swift, Coco Chanel, Walt Disney, everybody. And it's a biography that now she's getting a little too old for them. But when she was young, I was just having her read all these biographies. Like you could do whatever you want to do. Startup idea for you. Startup. Well, it's funny. We talked about founders for kids.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So we talked about Sam Poirier before. That's literally like the reason I knew he would text back fast is because we're working on a project for founders for kids. It's actually going to be like more like comic book-esque because Sam's life was changed because when he was a young boy, his dad would read him like kid versions of biographies about great Frenchmen. And they were very specific.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
They had to be great people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
that were that were either living in france or living in montreal which i thought was funny he's like and it inspired him to become an entrepreneur and then led him to the deal fellowship and you know kind of can change the trajectory of a young kid's life and i was like i don't know if it's probably a shit business but it's a great service to the world it would be like really cool um so the first one we're working on we'll see if it's good is uh a kid's version of rockefeller's biography i'm surprised it's not a kid's version of celine dion but
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah. I don't, you've got to figure out who else we're going to do. No, no one, Sam would probably be Napoleon.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So do you want to talk podcast startup ideas?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
As many as you can. Like, I don't know what your day-to-day life is. Do you like audio books? Yeah. How do you like to read?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So I feel like there's no reason you can't read, listen to one audio book a week.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I agree with that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah, I have a rational love affair with physical books. My workflow for the podcast is literally twice as long because I insist on reading physical books than if I read Kindle versions. Also, I read a lot of old books that there are no fucking audio. There is nothing besides the physical book. There's no Kindle, there's no audio, nothing. but it's the way of reading I fell in love with.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And like, for me, I actually think there's an important part where like, I feel we live in a society where it's like over, everything's like over-optimized and like, way too much prioritization spent on like efficiency and like speeding things up. We actually think spending longer with the material makes my output better.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like instead of, I'm not trying to take what's going to take me 40 hours, usually for every one hour of audio that I produce, it takes about 40 hours of reading and research. People are like, well, you can do summaries, you can do all this other stuff and make it to 20. It's like, yeah, but then it'd be...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
more than half worse because it's the fact I spent so much time with the material that then I can then turn around and teach it or explain it in a useful way to somebody else. So I have this line that I stole from Jerry Seinfeld that the hard way is the right way. And so I use that for like, you know, I sit there when I, when you look at how I go through these books,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
looks like I'm doing goddamn arts and crafts. Like I sit down with a pen, a ruler, a post-it note, scissors. Like I'm literally doing like an art project into these books. But I think forcing myself to slow down and spend more time with the material and then doing that every day for eight years actually makes, that compounds and like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
doing it, you don't see what you miss out by taking like the shorter route. And I think actually taking like a longer time, but I'm one of these people that's just like, I have, you know, I think 600 physical books in my house, but I also have like 300 on the Kindle. Like I'll read whatever, I don't care.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I actually saw another idea from Elon where he said that he read entire books because he travels so much on the Kindle app on the iPhone. I was like, that can't work. And I started using it. I was like, that shit works. Like, especially when you're traveling, it's like so much easier than carrying a book with you or whatever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
But I also think that I'm one of the rare people think audio, listening to audiobook is reading. People are like, it's not reading. It's like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
the same thing it's getting the ideas from the book into your head i don't care how you do it but yeah i mean if you can't do a biography a week do one a month like it depends on what your schedule is and what like what you have going on but think about it's like the average person young person especially for like all the people in the room you guys probably are exercising five hours a week even if it's like walking running lifting weights whatever you're doing okay five hours of audiobook 20 hours there's two books a month right there
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then 24 this year, you know, just 48 the next year, go back and also I think it's smart idea to go back and like re-listen and reread things, especially like we forget that we forget. And so like I'll go and there's some books, James Dyson's autobiography is a great example. I've read it four times. It's episode 25, 200, 205, and 300.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Read it. And then every time I'm like, I forgot that part or like something has happened in my life or I learned something else that then changes the meaning or my interpretation of the words on the page. So I'm a huge proponent of that. But yeah, I think everybody, like I am an evangelist for reading biographies. I just think it's so fucking smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Have you ever seen what my library looks like?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So Patrick tweeted that out. It's in order by episode number starting in the top left-hand corner. So everywhere... where my hand is before that I've read for the podcast. Everything after that is yet to be read, but it's not like the, the unread books are not in order. I don't know what I'm going to read next week until I just like pick it up that week.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I don't know because I didn't understand that I just have a shockingly long attention span. And I think having a long attention span is going to get more valuable in the world. Because I do think because of the tools we use every day, it's shrinking. There's a great line that Charlie Munger said where he's just like, I didn't succeed because of intelligence.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I succeeded because I had a long attention span. And I'm working on an episode on Jensen Wong right now. And what's remarkable is like, this guy's been in love with Nvidia and building Nvidia and running Nvidia for three decades. And he's like more interested in it today than he's ever been. It's like, that's the definition of a long attention span. Um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I get invited sometimes to give these talks at these conferences. And most of them, in fact, especially if you have to travel because I have young kids, I was like, no. I don't care what the price is. It's like missing one day of my four-year-old's life right now is like missing like 100 days. Because these early years are so important. So I'm very hesitant to do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
But I've done a few locally there in Miami. I'm like, oh, fuck it. I can just drive over here. I'll do it. I'll do it for free. I don't even care. And one of the funny ones was... It was a conference run by a friend of mine who I really like and it's for post-exit founders. And essentially my talk was just like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
When people walk up to me and they're like, or text me or call me, like I sold my company. I always say the same thing. I'm like, sorry to hear that. Like your goal, especially if it's not your life's work, right? I think your goal in life is to find what you are uniquely created to do. And it should be an active service for other human beings.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
One of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship comes from Henry Ford, where he said, money comes naturally as a result of service, okay? What I can't stand is entrepreneurs that are like, I'll get emails that are like, hey, I want to build like a $100 billion company. There's like some kind of fucking number attached. And then I'll ask them like, who are your entrepreneur heroes?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And they're like, Steve Jobs or whatever. It's like, you think Steve Jobs started Apple because he thought he was going to build a $3 trillion company? It's like your motivation is wrong for this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so what I think is happening is like, people have much shorter attention spans and you're also reflecting that in the fact that there is now such thing as an entrepreneurial industry, which did not exist when we were younger, right? This is something that's relatively new.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Most of it is funded obviously, like you look at the incentive structure in all forms of media, most of it's funded from VC. Like if you think about all the media that founders are consuming, it's like created by and funded by VCs. It's really fucking weird. It's fucking weird to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so like, I don't have advice other than if you have a short attention span, that probably is a good indicator that you're not, you haven't found what you should be working on because I can sit there and read a fascinating, like I just told you I finished reading before we started recording. Or maybe I didn't, maybe I was talking about on the phone on the way over.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I think it's a huge opportunity.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
No, I think I said this to you. I just finished reading. There's a secret biography written by Michael Moritz of Don Valentine that's passed around in Sequoia and Sequoia founders have it too. I'll tell you, it's only, like, I sat there and read the whole fucking thing. Like, I had to, it was so entertaining, I didn't want to go to sleep.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I wasn't like, oh, let me read one page, let me go scroll Twitter, let me read one page, go to scroll TikTok. It's like, this shit is fucking incredible. And I think that, you know, a lot of the best founders, like, I don't think Steve Jobs, when he was working at Apple, was like, you know, worried about what else was going on other than what he was working on at Apple. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So I think the anecdote to a short attention span is like literally find, like taking some time to yourself and figuring out like, what is authentic to you? What is natural to you? What are you actually interested in? And trying to do Munger's advice is like, what are you intensely interested in? And then do that for money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And at the beginning, you might not make any money, but anything that you're interested in, there's probably millions of people that are interested in that as well. Like I remember when I first started the podcast, People are like, you can't do an entrepreneurship podcast. This is 2016. First they said, it's too late to do a podcast, which is fucking hilarious.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so I was like, I don't think that's true. They're like, why? I go, there's 750,000 podcasts in the Apple directory right now. 250,000 of them are active. Humans quit at everything all the time. And even you fast forward to now, I'm close to the human lab guys. They just sent me data.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Even now, that's what eight years later, there's like only like 333,000, 330,000 podcasts that have uploaded a new episode in the last month. That is tiny. But back then they're like, one, it's too late. You've already missed the boat. Two, entrepreneurship is a niche subject. And I'm like, okay. That just doesn't make any sense to me. I go, how many people own businesses, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
There's a business owner to me, entrepreneur, like business owners. So my idea was like, how many people own a business, speak English and are connected to the internet? And you run the numbers, it's like 140 million people. Like you grab less than 1% of them and you have a phenomenally successful business. Like, wait, this is not a niche subject.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And now it turns out, like, if you look at what 11 Labs is doing, what Spotify is doing, what YouTube's doing, My calculation was way off because it's not just English speaking people. At the platform level, they're going to, you're going to be in Brazil. You're going to love founders. It's going to know that you speak Portuguese and you're going to hear me speaking fucking Portuguese.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah, so I don't have a good answer other than like find something where you don't have a short attention span. You ever seen a fucking kid play video games? Do they do it for two minutes and put it down? No, they play forever. They just haven't found something they're actually interested in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
What would you listen to back then? It'd be Dan Carlin.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I thought it was actually like fishing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Fish is a wildly profitable. There's a fascinating business story too.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
One of the early ones I got into too were Bill Burr, the comedian. So he was so early that the way he recorded his podcast is you would call a phone number and you would leave a voicemail. And there's a service that changed the voicemail
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I think there's an interesting, the fish story brought something else to mind where I'm always interested in, especially for the people that build businesses that are essentially complete opposite of the way everybody else in their industry does. I think there's like a lot of insight there. There's two examples.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I remember reading, there's this blog that was run by this guy in San Francisco who actually just started following on Twitter. It turns out he listens to founders. It's called Priceonomics. Do you remember this? It sounds familiar. They would publish their blog in a book And one of the blogs they would do is they'd find these like weird, you know, things about economics.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And one of them was the economics of fish where it's like, they don't have any top 10 hits. You know, they make almost, I think they gave away a lot of their music for free before people were doing that. Yet they were making like 140 million a year in tour revenue at like a decent margin, like unbelievable amount of money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so I just did an episode last year, maybe a year and a half ago on Jimmy Buffett. And I think it's right after he died. And the reason I had the idea to do that is because if you look, there's like these lists they make of, you know, top wealthiest people in whatever industry. And I remember looking one time at the top wealthiest musicians. It's everybody you would expect, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like, you know, everybody in the list. And then you get down here. It's like number seven. It's like Jimmy Buffett. It's like, what the fuck? It's like not like Rihanna has hits, you know, U2 or whoever, like all these people, Bruce Springsteen, like it makes perfect sense why they're on this list. How the hell did Jimmy Buffett get on the list? So that made it be like really fascinating.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
into an mp3 player they would take that mp3 and then upload it for you so he would literally his early podcast he's just calling a number he's just rambling into a voicemail and that's converted into a podcast It's incredible. I really do feel it's an absolute miracle. And I still feel this to this day where it's like, it doesn't matter what in the world that you're interested in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's very similar situation to Phish where it's like, essentially he started like what I would consider like a traveling cult and the way he was able to compound He made his money on tour, right? So if you're on tour, it doesn't matter where you chart on the billboard. It just matters. Like when you come to Austin, Texas in May every year, can you sell the amount of tickets you want?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then he was doing it so long that his audience would compound. So you'd be going there now. And then 10 years from now, you're bringing your 10 year old with you. And then your 10 year old is bringing, you know, now your 10 year old's 25 and going without you or whatever the case is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And there was also a very fascinating way that he would make money is essentially he made the vast majority of his money through licensing. Right. And so as his...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
audience age and they were you know they were just like him he was in the keys he liked to drink all the time they like to party they don't like to work they don't except he had a fierce work ethic right so everybody else in his audience didn't like to work he worked all the time and so he winds up making like seven i forgot the numbers are in the podcast it's like so you fast forward 15 20 years
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Again, don't, you know, find what you're meant to do. And then just time carries most of the weight. Like do not interrupt the compounding. Time carries most of the weight. That's so important. And all these entrepreneurs are jumping around or just missing all the monies in the future.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So you fast forward 15, 20 years, he's making like 75 million a year in his pocket, just from the license agreements, right? Not including the equity value. So when he passed away, he gave the equity he had in his company to his wife, I think it was like another $1.7 billion, right? It was 1.7 billion equity, but the guy's been pocketing 50 million plus year after year for a decade and a half.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I just love that idea. It's like, he saw what everybody else did. He's like, well, I can't make money like Bono. I can't make money like Bruce Springsteen. I can't make money like Rihanna. I can do it my way. There's like, the biggest thing is like, there's, it's not, it's never like what you do. It's how you do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like you could find people that make a ton of money in music, ton of money in podcasting, ton of money in media, ton of money in clothing, ton of whatever it is. ton of money, realtors. There's like all these different ways to make money. It's like not what you do, it's how you do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I'm fascinated by the people that are just like find their own weird route in and just, again, compound it for decades like he did. It's a fascinating story. And the idea of Phish, I read that blog post probably when you went to that fucking show, like 2005. We're talking about 20 years later. Are they still touring?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So like how much money have they made since then? They've probably been touring for what, 40 years? Yeah. I just watched the defiant ones, which is one of my, arguably my all time favorite documentary. And there's footage in there. I was thinking about this and I might do an episode of Bruce Springsteen because of that. And they're showing footage when he's 1975, he's doing born to run.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he has this crazy work ethic that he's still known to this day. And I'm like, wait a minute, 75, like I'm bad at math, but that I think that's like 50 years ago. It's like the guy just sold 80,000 tickets in Italy, like a few weeks ago, a few months ago. It's incredible. It's incredible.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You can find, we were just talking about before we started recording about like, what the hell do you do? Like I have two kids, like what is schooling and what is education in the world of chat GPT? Like my 12 year old daughter is just using chat GPT for everything. And the school is just acting like this doesn't exist.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
life yeah i mean they're not going to write they don't write biographies that people have balanced life so it's like there is a selection bias here so i can tell you like my stated preference and then if you look at like my revealed preference it's probably different so i would always said like in many cases the people i read about it's like cautionary tales because like exactly what you said they pursue professional achievement to the detriment of every single thing else health
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
family, spouses, kids, friendships, like it can get pretty crazy. And there's one guy named Ed Thorpe, it's episode 222 of Founders. And he's, to me, the one that came the closest to like master life. And I think the subtitle of that episode was like my personal blueprint. because he, first of all, lived a remarkable life. He's still alive to this day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like 91 in phenomenal shape, still super intelligent. He started the first quantitative hedge fund, built the world's first wearable computer with Claude Shannon. You know, you ever play blackjack?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You know how counting cards works?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You've heard of it? That system was invented by Ed Thorpe in the 60s, and then he wrote a book about the system called Beat the Dealer. He sold millions of copies. He was the first LP in Citadel. A 19-year-old Ken Griffin comes to... Ed Dorp's house after Ed had closed his hedge fund, gives him all the files. It's like, this is what we were doing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then at the beginning of Citadel, Ken runs that playbook. Remarkable story. Uh, winds up having dinner, uh, with a 37 year old Warren Buffett. They walk outside the car. He tells his wife, Hey, I think that guy's going to be the richest person in the world. One day winds up starting to buy, acquire Berkshire Hathaway stock at like $600 a share or something back then. So like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Phenomenal shape, great father. His kids still love him to this day. His wife passed away from cancer like 10 years ago. They were happily married forever. Once he had more money he could spend, he stopped trading money for time, even though he was really good at making money. He's like, what the hell am I going to do with it anyways?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Very rare to have like that pullback and that discipline to have it. So if you look at that, it's like he had a balance of work that just filled him like intellectually stimulating. He enjoyed it, made his unborn great grandkids rich. Phenomenal husband, phenomenal father, top 1% in physical shape, and also fucking had fun and lived an adventure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
In fact, Nassim Taleb wrote the foreword of that book. And they said that his autobiography reads like a thriller because it does. It's like that guy had a credible life story. So that is my stated preference. If you look at how I spend my time, it's like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
almost all on the podcast like my kids were just on uh winter break right and i was like oh they're not in school i'm gonna spend a ton of time with them and i got to last night was the last night of the break and i was like oh i fucked this up like i spent we went on walks took it to the park went out to eat did all this other stuff went to the beach but i did not
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And the idea is like what I try to teach her is like, obviously like she's kind of forced to listen to podcasts in the car and audio books. And my thing with her is like, I don't care what you're interested in. It's like anything you're interested in, just search the directory.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
spend nearly it's been half the time i thought i was going to spend with them um so yeah i don't i just think there's a certain personality type that reappears over and over again and um and that personality type seems to like be fine they're they're addicted to what they do they love what they do and they have a hard time putting barriers on it um i just mentioned the defiant ones if you watch part four of the defiant ones um
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Jimmy Iovine's wife and Dr. Dre's wife were like, it's really hard to be married to people like this. Jimmy was already divorced by the time the documentary ends. Dr. Dre's like, oh, you know, we're not, we kind of made it out. And then you find out the documentary ends and they get divorced a few years later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So I, obviously there's no solution to this because every single person I study is smarter, more productive than me. And they didn't figure it out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So, okay. For me, it's maddening repetition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I got to go to Charlie Munger's house and have dinner with him before he died for three hours. Okay. Charlie is, like, I consider the wisest person I've ever come across. Like, and before I met him. And he's also the one that said you should read biographies. He's read hundreds of biographies. He's read more biographies than me. Now, I'll be able to catch him because he died. Right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So, like, I will eventually pass him because I started earlier and I just had such a copy of him. But...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
this is the scary thing about him because anybody at 99 is going to have some level of cognitive decline doesn't matter who the fuck you are right it's gonna be some level of cognitive decline i sat in his library so you start the first the night starts in his library for like the first hour and a half then we move to his dining room have dinner so first of all i'm sitting there and charlie was a legit hero of mine i read every single book about him i read all the books he told he said that he read
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You're going to find some absolute nut that is dedicated like their entire lives to teaching about whatever subject matter you're into. And they've done it in many cases for decades. you know, a decade, half a decade, there's hundreds of hours you can consume all on demand and you can go as deep as you want. Like that is a miracle.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I watched all the AGM videos on YouTube and I'm sitting there in his library and I'm looking at it. I'm like, that's fucking Charlie Munger. Like I had an out-of-body experience. I was like, what is happening? How is this my life? I sat in a room by myself for years, reading books, talking into a microphone by myself. Somehow that got me invited here. This is bizarre.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so my friend who invited me, Andrew Wilkinson, so this is going on. He had met him a bunch. Him and Chris had met him a bunch. And they're talking for like five or 10 minutes. I'm just like, what the fuck is going on? I could not believe this. And then Andrew looks at me. He's like, Like, jump in. Like, what are you doing? You've got to say something.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then I snap out of it, and I look behind Charlie's head, and I see all these books that he had recommended that I read. So then I just started lighting them up with questions. One, that kind of freaked me out because Charlie was, like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
partially blind and so you know he's paying attention to you because he turns his head towards you and then he has to look through his bifocals so he goes like this and he's looking down at you so now you know there's no like you're not guessing who he's paying attention to and so then I'm like try the fucking mongers looking at me like what is happening here so I started lighting him up with questions on these books right
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Dude, he knew everything. He could name the company, their partners, what their revenue was, what industry they were in. And I even asked him, I was like, dude, did you just reread this? He's like, no, I haven't read the book in 15 years. After we got done talking, I was like, Charlie, can I go through? I asked him, I was like, can I go through your library? He's like, yes. Very, very polite.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he was very polite. So I pull books off the shelves. It gets even worse. There's no notes in them. So it's like every once, every like 150 pages, you'll see like some random like name written in pencil. But like I mark things up, I highlight them. I add them to a giant database. I reread them. Charlie had a remarkable memory. I don't, for me, it's all work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's like everything I'm telling you about is just like, I go back to the same episodes. I'll like re-listen to my old episodes again. I'll reread, I reread highlights. I reread highlights every single day. you know, for years, I'll like, I get bored and I get frustrated because I can't find any new podcasts to listen to. So I'll listen to old episodes of mine, like over and over again.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like, oh shit, I did that four years ago. I forgot about that. I just did this with this guy named Chun Joong Young. And I spent like a few hours re-editing it. at the time I was recording like a shitty $100 microphone in like my kitchen. I didn't know anything. I did this episode probably five or six years ago. Now you can run it through Descript. They use their AI, their studio sound.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It sounds fucking perfect, right? And so- what I do. I spent like half of my day going back and rereading all my highlights from Chung Joon Young's autobiography. He's the founder of Hyundai. It's the most inspiring autobiography I've ever read. He grew up so poor he had to eat tree bark to survive. He dies the richest person in Korea. Fucking remarkable life story. But...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like I remember my mom taking me and dropping me off at the public library when I was a kid because we didn't have any money. I remember going to Barnes and Nobles and sitting there because they would let you read. It's like, you know how hard it was to get information as like some young, you know, smart kid, which, you know, my daughter definitely is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
the reason I would be able to quote that even now is because I just finished rereading it and just finished re listening to it. So it's not like if it, well, you just said you have a good memory. You tell my wife that she'd be like, she'd laugh at you. She's like, no, he does. Like you missed my anniversary. No, it's just, it's just work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And it's just, it's another idea I took from Charlie Munger where he's like, you need to find a simple idea and take it seriously. And he says, you can get outsized business success. He's like, many times in business we find that the winning system goes ridiculously far in maximizing or minimizing one or a handful of variables. And so my idea was like, once you start reading biographies,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
From the very first biography I read for the podcast was Elon Musk. It's like, oh, all these guys read biographies. So that's an indication like Elon Musk, whether you hate him for his politics or anything else, seems like he's pretty fucking smart. And then you read Walt Disney. Walt Disney's reading biographies. Thomas Edison is reading every single biography in the Detroit library.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I'm not as smart as Thomas Edison. I'll just fucking copy what this guy does. And so then I was like, oh, so... All of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs studied History's Greatest Entrepreneurs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
What if I just build literally the world's best podcast that does that and then do it every single day, seven days a week for eight years and then just keep doing it and then keep making it better and better and better. I think I told you I'm doing this episode on Jensen Wong and one of his things that he told in a video is like, we have to do things that other people cannot do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so my version of a moat, right? Which another idea, I don't have any original ideas. I just, like copy what I find in the books. So Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger says, your company should have a moat. I'm like, okay, the podcast is a podcast, but it's also a business and my life works. Like what's my moat?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
My moat's like every single episode you listen to today, it's not like the Jensen Wong episode I'm recording this week. It's not just gonna be about Jensen. It's gonna be how Jensen was like Steve Jobs, how he was like Edmund Land, how he was like Alexander Graham Bell, how he was like Ed Thorpe, all these other people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So to catch, to be able to compete with me, you have to read 375 books to get to where I am now. but I'm not going to stop. So in my opinion, it's like the game's already over. As long as I don't stop, I just, I have to make sure that what I like, what I thought of, and I probably figured this out a few years ago.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's like, I'm just going to like, I'm going to have a really, really small, but valuable niche. And that's, if you want to learn from history, then you're going to go to this podcast. Anybody does anything else outside of that, none of my business. You jump in here, I'm going to compete very ferociously with you. And I'm going to beat you to death because I take this very fucking seriously.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's just like, you don't even know what you have that's in front of you. And then if podcast isn't the way you learn, that's fine. Read. If reading's not the way you learn, watch videos. It's like there's world-class education everywhere. It's just absolutely crazy. So yeah, I still to this day don't ever like take it for granted.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
so this is another idea that i didn't even that wasn't even mine really um so i've become friends with jared kushner through the podcast and he's a very sharp and fascinating guy i highly recommend listening to the episode he did with lex friedman and once he just did with my friend patrick shaughnessy and really his idea was just like you have one of the world's most valuable audiences he's like i know all the elite people in the world they're all listening to you uh you're the best in the world at what you do he's like his whole thing and the
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
that he's constantly reinforcing. He's like constant refinement of association, constant refinement of association. And he's like inventory destroys value. So just getting in front of the audience you have is excessively valuable to any company. He's like, so take your time picking partners. And then when you do pick partners, you know, this is what you do. You have...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
two long-term partners, you're on two-year contracts with them, right? It's finite. It's like, I just did this with RAMP. So I got to know the founders of Ramp. I think they are the best in the category. I spent a ton of time with them. Two of them are in Miami. So I'm with them a couple of times a week. And I have been for a long time, way before we considered working together.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I was like, these guys are fucking geniuses. I think they have the best technical talent in their industry by far. And I think the technical talent is just going to win. Like the gap between them and everybody else is just going to keep expanding because of that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Um, and so like you just do large instead of selling like most people sell on like a cpm basis We were talking about that right before we got here or right before we started recording. There is no cpm It's just like you know who's in the audience Uh one of the founders how this deal came about or this partnership came about It's because one of the founders was talking to me one day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like I know 10 to 15 billionaires personally That listen to your podcast He's like, this is not normal at all. He's like, what's the chance? I know all the billionaires that are in your audience, like fucking zero. That is just impossible. You know how, what is their hourly, what is the hourly, what is an hour of their time worth, right? What would people pay to get an hour of their time?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And they give it to you for free. Like that is very unusual.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then you become friends with them, which is even wilder. But the idea was, hey, essentially, you know, most, let's back up. Business podcasts, it's like bizarre world. It does not, you can't think of it as like a normal podcast. So let me explain how normal podcasts work. operate, you know, you'll have a ton of ad partners. Hopefully you're vetting them and you're not just like taking anybody.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I still can't believe that anybody, like no one gave you permission to start this podcast. It was like, I'm going to start it one day. You're going to upload it. And then people all over the world get to enjoy it. That's fucking crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Right. But even like if you're heavily vetted, like human lab guys, they have eight to 10 advertising partners on a yearly basis. They have over a hundred on their waiting list. Right. They vet the hell out of them. and they'll like rotate who's in the podcast. And usually sold on like some kind of CPM basis. Now Huberman's like the male Oprah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So like, you're gonna pay a higher CPM because he's gonna, if he says he uses your product, his people will buy the product. I know how much he like, he can move vast amounts of products. That's why he has a huge waiting list. I'm not, I don't want, one, I work by myself. I don't have an assistant. I don't have a researcher. I don't have anybody. It's just me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so therefore, like any time taken, like for me to do ad sales takes time away from making the podcast. I have to be very careful to take time away from making the podcast. So Jared's idea of, hey, just grab, you know, you have dozens of people that want to advertise in your podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
pick the two best ones that you feel most comfortable with, the most, like that makes most sense for your audience. Like RAMP is a perfect example. It's like, what does RAMP do? RAMP, like it's cost control.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The biggest, the idea, the difference between the people I said in the podcast with like how most entrepreneurs are taught today, it's like every single great entrepreneur is obsessed with controlling costs. And they have been for hundreds of years. So it's like perfect partnership there. And so the idea is like you pick,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You have like two of those long-term partnerships and you can add in a couple other ones to experiment or if you want to do that. And then you just go to them month 12, you start developing relationships with other people. You take it real slow. You vet their product. You build relationship with them. Like I have people that want to advertise on the podcast. Like I don't know the founder.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I will never advertise anything where I haven't talked to. I have to, I have to build a relationship with the founder. Like the podcast is called founders for God's sake. And so you start building relationships and you go to your existing partners six months before your contract expires and say, hey, I have X, Y, Z. This is what they're interested in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Do you want, like, do you want to continue the partnership? Do you want to modify it? What do you want to do? But essentially just like you pick, I think of them much more as like brand partnerships, like the way like Nike would be with like Tiger Woods. And I think that's going to be very, way more common than even podcast ads on normal podcasts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I talked to a bunch of the biggest podcast advertisers in the world and become friends with the founders of these companies. And so, cause I want like a God level view of the entire industry. And they were even saying like for a lot of the early days of the podcast, it's like a lot of direct response.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I think one, a lot of the direct response advertisers, they've noticed the efficacy of podcast ads because they're saturating the whole ecosystem has greatly declined. And a lot of podcasters are, I think you're just going to see a lot more brand advertising in general. And so that's what I'm much more interested. It's much more like a partnership. We do events together.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's a friend of mine.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I consult, I advise on marketing. I help them. place ads on other podcasts. Like it's much more of like, you're getting me on the team and everybody in my network is like, I will try to help you as much as I can.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
What are you interested in?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The easiest way to get started is like, who do you most admire? When I say, who do you most admire? Give me a list of three or four names that come to mind right away. Living or dead?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You can't give a fuck what anybody else says.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So I just talked to Josh like last week and he listens to Founders a lot. He told me he finds it very comforting because he's a very, very, very unbelievably polite. If you do any kind of reference check on him, it's like, it's not an act. It's like, he's like old school polite, but he's also a grinder, which I love and just completely obsessed with every single aspect of his business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And what he said about listening to Founders is that, it's comforting to realize that he's not the only one. They're all like this. If you want to be great, they're all very similar. What I would say is like, so Zuckerberg right there, I'll give you a book recommendation. When he was, before he started Facebook, he's at Harvard.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He goes and watches Bill Gates speak because he looked up to Bill Gates. So read Hard Drive. Have you read Hard Drive? Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. One of the best fucking books. I've read it twice. I have two episodes on it. This is how I know my memory's not that great. I don't remember the episode number on the last one. Just search.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And if you search in Founders, always listen to the second episode I did on them because I get a lot better with time. But there's the first one, read hard drive. It's one of the best biographies I've ever read. It covers the first 35 years of Bill Gates' life up until the IPO of Microsoft and right after. And there's crazy fucking stats in that book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like for example, Microsoft's the first software business in history to sell more than a billion dollars of software. Might've been the first pure software company in history. The first 30, this is why I always bitch and yell at my founder friends because they hire all these fucking people that are not doing actual work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I go, dude, I just had a walk with a friend of mine in Miami Beach because he's like raising all this money. I said, no, no, you sell before you have a product. He goes, what are you talking about? I go, Bill Gates sold before he had a product. Steve Jobs sold before he had a product. Larry Ellison sold before he had a product. Do you need three other examples besides that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The first 30 employees of Microsoft, 28 programmers sold. Bill Gates, secretary and assistant, and Bill Gates. And Bill was doing all the sales. It was all founder-led sales. They were unbelievably profitable. That is the biggest bootstrap business of all time. It fucking drives me insane. We're like, oh, they raised VC. The year before they went public, which was maybe 1976.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Can you double check to see if I'm right about this? They were doing 140 million a year in revenue and 39 million a year profit. They sold a million shares for $995,000 a couple months before the IPO. That's a fucking venture-backed, that's not a venture-backed company. They wanted the guy's expertise and they wanted to incentivize him for that. 1976, boom. 1986, yeah, there you go.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
They started in 1976. Sorry about that. Apple, I think, was founded the same year. So there's your first biography to read. Jared Kushner, read his fucking book, Breaking History. It's incredible. The life experiences that the guy has had. And then he will talk about reading The Art of War. He'll talk about reading Theodore Roosevelt. Every single book, books are made out of books, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
They will lead you You just name three people you're interested in, you probably have fucking 10 more. Pick up one of the books, the biography of them or a book they recommend. And then in that book, they will then recommend other biographies of the person or other people they admire. And so what I'll do is I'll map out every single person. Like I became interested in Charlie Munger.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So I go and read everything on Charlie Munger, but then I also read everything that he read. And then what you do is you go and you go in the bibliography of the books and then you'll discover, like there's a Bill Gates biography, Right. In that biography, there'll be other biographies of Bill Gates or important people in there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then you go and get that book and you just go on and on and on and on. You take it very seriously. You start mapping this out and you have a very fun. You can read, you know, five books on a person and maybe another five books on people they admire. And you have a good idea of how they think. And that's really what I'm trying to go after.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's like in many cases, like what would Munger do like in my situation? And it's very simple. It's like, what do you intentionally, I've mentioned it multiple times. What are you intentionally interested in? Do that for work. Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Just all kinds of ideas, maximize, minimize, or go out of your way to minimize or maximize one or a handful of variables.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
This is the other, you mentioned the business model of founders too. It's like, I didn't know shit about shit when it comes to finance. And so now what do you have? You have a business that has cash flow, right? What are you going to do with the money? And so now I literally get to have access to some of the greatest financial minds. I'm like, what would you do? They become friends.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then, so another extension of this weird business is like, they say, hey, you should look at this investment or you should look at this or you should do that. It's like, now I have another form of education where it's like, I don't know any of this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
other than like and i've been interested like the episode i just put out on heady green she was the single biggest individual financier in the world when she was alive she she was so rich she bailed out the city of new york herself she ran her own money like how did she do that what did she invest in what advice did she have i'm very interested in learning how to do this because it's such you can have like a one-man berkshire hathaway but founders it starts with founders like okay then what do you do now
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then you have this unfair advantage. Then you start building relationships with the founders that listen to your podcast. And a lot of them want you involved where they don't even want your money. They just start giving you stock.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
No, he would tell you to learn exactly what he would, I think I would do, I'm doing what he did, which is he didn't know anything about investing. He was an attorney. So they set aside a certain amount of his time a day. At that time, I think it was the first hour of every day. He sold back to himself to learn real estate investing and then investing in stock.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And then he winds up becoming friends with all the people, like Buffett and all the other people. It wasn't just Buffett though. I talked to Charlie about this at his house. Because his whole point was the book I gave him, I was able to give him a book because he has two busts in his house. It's Lee Kuan Yew and Ben Franklin.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And if you go to Charlie Munger's library, he's got every single biography of Ben Franklin you could find. And somehow I was able to give him a biography of Franklin he didn't have. And it was this book called Franklin in Washington. He didn't read the book, but he fucking knew everything in the book already.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he was just like, yeah, one of the things that Ben Franklin did was he sought out a young George. This is what the book is about. Ben Franklin is 48 years old. He's the most famous person in the colonies. He reads George Washington is fighting the Native Americans with the British when he's 21 years old. He winds up seeing one of the best British generals get absolutely killed and massacred.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Because he was taking basically the playbook that worked in Europe and tried to fight the Native Americans with it, which is not going to work, right? And so a young George Washington writes in a journal about his experience. It's one that's being published in all the newspapers throughout America. Ben Franklin reads it. He's like, this guy's fucking smart. He has information I need.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I need to get to him. And so they start, he reaches out to him, he starts building a relationship that they wind up having up until, they weave in and out of each other's lives up until 40, seven, 30 years later, something like that when Franklin dies. And Munger's advice to me was like exactly what Ben did. He went out of his way to build relationships with other talented people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like, that's exactly what we did. And he goes, everybody knows about me and Warren. It wasn't just me and Warren. It was all these guys. We built a seamless web of deserved trust and we did deals together forever. And the sad thing was most of them, by the time I met Charlie, had already passed on besides him and Warren. But I think that's, he would be like, you need to learn stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You can't outsource it. He let other people run his money. This is why Hedy Green was so interesting to me. I love people that run their own, like the idea of running our own money is fascinating. And I don't, I'm uniquely unfit to manage institutional money. I don't have that personality. A good friend of mine was mentored by Sam Zell. And I just did another episode on Sam Zell.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he's like, come over to my house the night before. I'll tell you all these stories from Sam. You can put it in your episode. And one of that was just like, Sam was too wild and crazy and would say crazy shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So he can't, he's like, he was, he said something like he was constitutionally unfit to run institution, to manage institutional money, which is a nice way of saying Sam's a fucking crazy guy. But I think Munger's point was like, he only let one other person run the one other outsider managed Munger family money. That was a Lilo.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he said in nine, nine, once in 95 years, he gave money to an extra, to an outside person. He said, can Lilo. And he has a fascinating story with this, where he's like, I read Barron's magazine for 40 years, for 50 years. I found one idea I could act on in that 50 years of reading that magazine. Um, I made 40 million. No, I made $80 million on that. Charlie speaking.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Charlie's like, I made $80 million on that deal. Then I gave that 80 million and Leeloo, I gave the 80 million to Leeloo and Leeloo turned it into 400 million. So he goes, so I made 400 million by reading Barron's magazine for 50 years and giving that money to Leeloo. So he's very, very, you know, selective and he's like, you have to learn yourself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
If you, most other podcasts will like, they'll have like a consensus, this is the best episode. There is no consensus. It's like, depends, there's 375 of them as of today. Actually 391, because I have 16 that are not numbered. I checked that today, so that's not memory. I literally checked it today. So I have 16 bonus episodes that are not numbered.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
But yeah, I just think like the obvious thing is find, one, if you already know you're interested in somebody like Bill Gates, what I would do is I would search Bill Gates and I would listen to that. And in the episodes, I'm going to reference other episodes. And so it's like, oh, this is like Ed Thorpe or this is like Edwin Land or whoever it was. And so in every single episode, it'll be,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
like a pathway to other episodes. And then I think the thing I'm most interested in, Sam Poirier, who we referenced a few times, the first time I had dinner with him, he was in town for the Teal Fellowship meetup and he skipped it to have dinner with me, which I thought was very like nice of him.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he says the product market fit of your podcast is not the Steve Jobs episodes or the Alexander Graham Bell or the Thomas Edison or the Walt Disney. He's like, it's the guys I've never fucking heard of that are remarkable. Like one of my favorite ones is episode 292. Can you check this for me? Daniel Ludwig, the invisible billionaire. I might be wrong on that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He was the richest person in the world. I got it right? Okay. 292, Daniel Ludwig, invisible billionaire. He was the richest person in the world and no one knew his name. He paid a PR agency to keep his name out of the papers. And it's just like, that book was written, it was published in 1980, 1980 something. It's just like, this guy lived a remarkable life. No one knows who he was.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I wound up randomly picking up a book, probably a used bookstore, reading about him. And now you get to know that he existed and learn from him and read the book. It's remarkable.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
There's, is there two episodes? So Brad was a huge fan of founders.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So he's like my LinkedIn reply guy. It's hilarious. And three 30, three, three, seven. No, no, that's the breakfast of Brad Jacobs. There's another one. Yeah. It's called how to make a few billion dollars. You see what episode number that is. So I can talk about this publicly because Jared said it on the conversation you had with Patrick.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's very fucking nice to say this and I don't, I don't deserve it. 335, so I was off by four. He talks about this on Patrick's podcast. He's like, he heard about Brad Jacobs while listening to that episode, goes to meet him. They hit it off. He hears about Brad's idea for his new company, XPO, I think it's called. He winds up investing $150 million to joining the board.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So Brad is another person where it's like the amount of information that's in that guy's head is scary. He's 68 years old, the most energetic person. I just went to his house. 68 years old, the most energetic person I've ever been around. And just relentless note taker, relentless reader, relentless podcaster in his book. how to make a few billion dollars.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You got to read the section on the research he does before he invests. It's fucking incredible. Absolutely incredible. The amount of information he collects.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Thanks for inviting me. Sorry, we didn't do any startup ideas. I don't have any besides do a podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I think I read every single biography I can find on Larry Ellison. And I find him an infinitely fascinating person. In fact, a friend of mine was at dinner with Elon Musk a few months ago in Palm Beach right before the election. And everybody at dinner, you can imagine, was just lighting Elon up with questions. And he was asked, like, who's his mentor, who he turns to for advice.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And he's like, the person I ask, I admire the most. He used different words. He's like, Larry Ellison. He's just like, he's like, Larry Ellison is fucking awesome. I don't know. Did you see the leaked text messages that between Larry Ellison and Elon that came out recently? I saw it, but I didn't go deep in it. So I didn't either. I just saw one that was hilarious where Elon texts him.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's like, hey, are you in for, I'm raising money to buy Twitter. Are you in? He's like, yeah, of course. He's like, I'm not going to hold you to anything, Larry, but like, do you know the amount? And he's like, I don't know, a billion, whatever you want. And Elon's like, I appreciate it, but like, I think you should at least do 2 billion. And I think-
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
He's a phenomenal storyteller.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I think somebody said something one time, one of the best tweets I ever read was that they said newspapers were a fad. The village storyteller is as old as language. And now the campfire is 6 billion people connected to the internet. And for Dan, his download numbers are nuts. He's only talked about it a few times.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So in one of Larry's biographies, he talks about the fact that he thinks, especially for technology companies, that names are actually really important. And I always think about this. So it was funny, you know, because I knew that the podcast is about startup ideas. And so I was talking to a friend on my drive over here. I was like, well, it's very nice for Greg to invite me on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
But like my startup idea is like whatever you're doing, if you love it, just do it until you die. So like don't start anything new. Just like keep doing what you're doing forever. Like if you think about the people I study, it's like they just find something and they usually do it for decades. Um, but I do think, uh, the startup idea I would have is like around podcasts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like I, I think a lot about like the open space and podcasting. Um, my friend, Eric Glyman, who's the co-founder and CEO of ramp. I just gave him this book that a friend of mine gave me. I gave me extra copies for it. It's the guy that, uh, It's the guy that did like, what's the chicken company? It's like Tyson Chicken. I'm going to pull up this excerpt because I think it's really important.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Jamie, pull up. Yeah, do we have a Jamie here? I'll find out the exact excerpt. And I'm just going to read this to you. because I think it's a good way to find startup ideas, because it's like, what do you think about as soon as your eyes open, and what are you thinking about before you go to bed? The name of the book is called, Tough Man, Tender Chicken.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Can you tell me the company that he started? Tough Man, Tender Chicken is the book. So it's Purdue? Okay. So there's a great line that my friend Eric tweeted out. I want to read to you real quick. And they wanted to start a line. They want to start selling hot dogs. And so he's asked, he's like, Frank, how's the chicken hot dog thing going? And he goes, it's too early to tell.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The guy goes, what do you mean? He goes, I haven't been able to find my Mr. Hot Dog. And he goes, what do you mean you're Mr. Hot Dog? And this guy that's writing the book, Tough Man, Tender Chicken, responds. He goes, there's a guy who gets to bed thinking about chicken hot dogs. And then the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up is chicken hot dogs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And so his whole point is like, you have to find your chicken hot dog, your hot dog guy, right? And so for my version, I was like, podcasts. Um, and so when I think of like new podcasts to start one, I actually think you should spend a lot of time based on the story you just said, thinking about the goddamn name, right? I lucked into founders. I think it's a very good name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I think you're not going to click on founders. Like, well, I wonder what this is about. You have an idea what it was about. And then the first five words in the description is gives you the value proposition, which is learned from history's greatest entrepreneur. The two other names that I heard that I think are even better than that are Ben Wilson's How to Take Over the World, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
The value prop is in the title. And then Patrick O'Shaughnessy's Invest Like the Best. And I think naming, like think about what you want the podcast to be, but also thinking about the name is really, really important because you're just infinitely scrolling.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I think there's like a lot of like, if you think about how much information that we're all reading or consuming on a daily basis, like how much time are you giving into every single tweet or every single video? It's like seconds. And so the name has to like jump out at you where it's like startup ideas. I wonder what that's about. I fucking know what it's about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
My guess would be his audience size for some of his bigger things were probably like 10 to 15 million people, I would guess. Because I remember one time he said that, he never mentioned downloads, he's like, My last episode got like 19 million downloads. I was like, that's insane. But then he said that there was a glitch and it was double counted.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
It's about startup ideas, how to find them, to generate them, to maybe hear another guest sharing one that you could possibly do. So I actually think that's really smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Yeah. And the ones that we were talking about earlier, how I don't think about it's media. I think about it's like, it's a way to be your authentic self. I think it's podcasting is building relationships at scale. And I think there's something to the fact that, you know, most of the biggest podcasts in the world, they don't have a name other than the person's name.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Like that's a lot harder to grow, especially if you're not famous or if you're not known. But once you have that audience, it's like they're really attached to you. I remember I had dinner with Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, who's been like a massive supporter and absolutely love. And we were talking about, it was like over a four-hour conversation. He was telling me the history of Spotify.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Daniel's fucking brilliant, as you can imagine. Super polite, but also like you could tell that he's really intense. And he was talking about how one of the most stressful times of building Spotify is when... Yeah, that controversy. You know, they just signed Rogan to this massive deal. He's making this huge bet on podcasting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And there's this huge cancellation campaign that happens in Rogan's for a few weeks. And Daniel's like, you know, very stressed about this. And he's like, and then his subscriber count over the few weeks went up. He added 2 million new subscribers. And I was like, of course.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
Because if you listen to Rogan or anybody else and you've heard him talk for a thousand, in his case, I bet you he's a large percentage of his fans, that heard him speak for over a thousand hours. There's nothing that a two minute clip on the mainstream media can tell you about the guy that you've heard talk for a thousand hours. There's no form of education that could take place.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You know who he is because you've heard him speak for so long. So I think there's actually this, I don't think it was intentional, but this wisdom of just naming these shows after yourself. Again, accruing that audience is a lot harder, but once you get it, it's like they're there for you for a very long time, if not forever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I talked about this, where it's like, it's very bizarre. Like, okay. I almost said Shopify. They always do the joke that Spotify and Shopify, and then they kind of look alike. You have a founder and CEO who's been running the company for 18 years, right? It's worth over $100 billion. He's only 41 or something like that? And yet he's still... somehow underrated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
So even if it's double count, it's 9 million people. And yeah, I just think he's a phenomenal storyteller. And then the way he does the podcast is crazy because I've listened to interviews on this where I thought, again, it sounds like it's, I thought it was scripted. And it's like, no, he's going to read 30 books, right? He's going to spend half a year doing that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I just think every single person... So I get to meet a lot of remarkable people as a result of the podcast. And... Almost all of them, it's not the same personality type, but it's the same kind of archetype over and over again. They're just like unbelievably intense and dedicated to their work. And so that's it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
I just left the conversation was just like, I thought I was pretty intense and I thought I was working a lot. And I'm like, he makes me look like nothing. So it's like, I just left there. It's like with a lot of motivation. Right before we started recording, you had another guest here that was really big on Tony Robbins and like spending a lot of money to spend time with him.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
And I know some people- $250,000 per year. Well, like I know some people could be like, oh, that's bullshit or whatever the case is. But this idea, I don't think, I think, and the way somebody makes you feel and the energy transfer that occurs between two people is like actually underrated. And this isn't some like willy foo foo nonsense shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
I Met Charlie Munger and Discovered How Billionaires Really Think
You go back and read old biographies of Warren Buffett and way before he was known. There was this thing where like, there would be like the small groups that get together every year. And I remember in one of the books, there was this guy's wife that was like bitching at him because he had spent like $1,500 to travel to like Omaha.