#333 Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac Founder: Dietrich Mateschitz

24:15And so when sales didn't take off, he did something that was really smart. He invested some of that money instead of in advertising at the very beginning, he actually made more of his product and he would bring it and deliver it to places by pallet and let people try it and drink it free of charge. This is very similar to one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time is Estee Lauder. And in the early days of her company, which she also started when she was 40, I just realized that now, she actually took money out of her advertising budget and instead made more of her product to give away. And this is what she said about that.

24:47You give people a product to try. If they like it, it's quality, then they buy it. They haven't been lured in by an advertisement, but convinced by the product itself. We took the money we had planned to use on advertising and invested instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our product. It was so simple that our competitors sneered when they heard what they were doing. Today, they're all copying us. And so Mattischt knew he needed more money. He went to a bunch of banks. They all said no. Only one. There was a small private bank. Oh, my goodness. Spangler. I'm butchering these words.

25:18But this bank called, I'm going to call it Spangler, was the only one to actually believe in the product and the concept behind it. And so they actually lent him money. Now, this is another main theme that's repeated over and over again. Massachusetts is excessively loyal. And so to this day, that is the only banking house that Red Bull used in that country. This is where they get the early start. Red Bull started to flourish when bartenders and nightclub operators were convinced that it was a suitable new component for mixed drinks. the energy drink was sometimes referred to as poor man's cocaine.

25:52So this spreading in night clubs and bars actually gives them their initial traction. The first year they sell about several, it's a several hundred thousand cans were sold in the first year. The next year, that number goes to 1 .2 million. And then the year after, so year three, they're at 1 .7 million. So they're growing, but they're not, you know, growing crazy fast. They're also spending a ton. This is when they really start putting a lot of their money. I think it's something like over 30 % of their gross revenue they spend on advertising. At the beginning, it was even more than that. But the remarkable thing is they hit their break -even point in year three, and they've been profitable every single year since then.

26:30And so there's three ideas that he's going to go into here. One, that he was all in. He had that burn the boats mentality. He wanted to go high end from the start, and he knew that there was no market for this, so he had to create one. And so he talked about the great personal risk that he did in starting a company. He says, if things had gone wrong, I'd be sleeping under a bridge today. And so he talks about his decision to have a high -priced product, plus use a lot of that revenue from people spending more money on it to actually reinvest into advertising. Red Bull was to become very expensive, and it was a new product for which there was not even a market yet.

27:02So it was necessary to create demand first. Potential customers had to be explained why they now desperately needed Red Bull, which they had not even known existed before. And so one of the things that he does that's very unique that I don't know if I've heard before is he hires an advertising firm from the very beginning. It calls him his former study buddy. So I'm assuming that this is his friend from college, this guy named Kastner. At this time, Kastner was already a founder of an advertising agency called Kastner and Partner. So Kastner is going to play a very important role because he's the guy that comes up with the slogan, Red Bull gives you wings.

27:36Now here's, I think, a testament to how unique Massachusetts is. He doesn't have any money, but he's also a perfectionist. And so he keeps turning down over and over and over again, all the different marketing and advertising campaigns that they're trying to come up with. And you're like, well, how could he be doing that, David? He has no money. All this time is going by. I think it's like a year and a half that they're working on this. So they finally figure out the positioning and the actual initial launch of the marketing and advertising. And so he actually paid for this initial work with labor.

28:05He had no money, so he actually helps out in the agency as a freelance employee just to pay for the marketing advertising that the advertising agency that his friend started is doing on behalf of Red Bull. Another important point. Everybody's telling him it was a bad idea. His friend immediately recognized its potential, and he said, if this is pursued consistently, this idea will lead to success. So again, Mesh is very self -confident, has a ton of, as you can imagine, has a ton of self -confidence in himself and the idea that he's doing. But it is very helpful for other people, especially people that you trust and admire.

28:40Because he said he says that Kastner was a very clever fellow and he knew that he was a perfectionist like me. And so you have somebody like that, that you know is smart, that you admire, you trust their judgment. They're like, no, you know, everybody else might be telling you this bad idea. But if you pursue this consistently, you give it like it will lead to success. And so Kastner was talking about this time. He's like, listen, the birth of this campaign was not easy because for a year and a half, he's just rejecting every single suggestion that I have. I think they went through 50 different, you know, ways to either slogans or ways to market it.

29:13Mastis rejects every single one of them. But Kastner understood his friend. He says he wants the absolute best. He believed in his product to the end of his days. And so even after 50 failed attempts, they're having this conversation where they're like, well, anyway, the drinks Red Bull becomes damn strong. So that's the conversation they're having. That's how they were thinking about it. It's like, well, you drink it and you become strong. Like, what's the right tagline or motto for that? And in the middle of the night, Castor has the idea that Red Bull gives you wings. And so he calls Masters in the middle of the night and immediately Masters is like, yep, that's it.

29:45So it was a, the fact that that was a good idea was immediately obvious to both of them. The thing about how crazy that is, you're fighting for a year and a half, going through 50 things. He calls you, you hear it, you're like, yep, that's it, let's go. And so now they had the branding and the tagline. They wanted the advertising to be, this is the traits that they were looking for. They wanted it to be self -ironic, non -conformist, smart, and rebellious. And their point was that that's how they viewed their own personality. And so they're like, we're going to put a lot of our own personality into this.

30:11And so now they're up and running. Five years, they're still in, just in that small single market in Austria. Five years in, then they expand to Hungary. That's the second market that they open up. And then they start adding market after market after market in Europe. Now, this part was a bit confusing to me, but it seems that the formation of the European Union was one of the waves he surfed. If you listen to episode 329 on Port Charlie's Almanac, there's something fascinating that Charlie Munger would talk about that because several times in the book, he will analyze like outside success. And he's trying to teach people like, well, what would account for the success of like a Les Schwab or Sam Walton?

30:47And he goes through and one of the ideas that he has, he says, surfing is a very important model to understand. And so it seems like this brand new formation of the European Union was one of the waves that Massachusetts surfed because if a product is approved to be sold in one European Union country, it is automatically approved in another one. So it says Berlin, remember he's trying to get in Germany, finally allowed Red Bull for the German market as well. This made Massachusetts one of the first big EU beneficiaries. The approval was only possible through a detour. Red Bull managed to get approved in Great Britain.

31:24Great Britain was not in their sights at that time, but an EU law laid tracks for approval in Germany. And so practically the next day, Red Bull set out to conquer the market in which it actually wanted to settle down. So it's talking about Germany. Now, here's the crazy thing. Way before they launched in Germany, there was a black market. People were selling cans of Red Bull on the black market. So let's go back to this idea that I've seen a bunch of times, but the one that comes to mind most, is most top of mind right now, because I just covered Christian Dior's autobiography, and he talks about this, is that rumors and innuendo, you have to think about them as great free propaganda.

31:59And so Christian Dior says, the relative secrecy in which I chose to work, sounds a lot like Massachusetts, right? The relative secrecy in which I chose to work aroused a positive whispering campaign, which was excellent free propaganda. Gossip, malicious rumors are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world. That is the end of Christian Dior's quote. This is what this book says about it. And again, I have to like rewrite this because the translation is kind of funny, but there was a thriving black market for Red Bull in Germany long before it was approved. Remember it's banned and people are flocking to it.

32:35So they're actually, people are making money by smuggling it in from Austria into Germany. And so all that does is increase the desire for it because now you're drinking something that's, oh my God, this is illegal. And it actually made it more charming because it's like more forbidden. So this is the foundation of like this cult -like following that Red Bull had at the very beginning. And it is in Germany where they're spreading these rumors that the drink contains an extract from bull testicles. There was also a rumor that it was secretly enriched with amphetamines. Remember, this is spreading in like clubs and bars and stuff like that.

33:08And it says the company did nothing to counter these bizarre rumors. And again, I want to repeat that excellent quote that he had. As Mastersitz once lectured, the most dangerous thing for a branded product is low interest. Then they get approved, right? In the first three months of a legal market presence, they sell 33 million cans in Germany alone. This idea is not new to you and I, right? This idea is like if something's banned, it's all it is is free propaganda. It's free advertising. It's going to drastically increase the amount of demand. And if you remember on the Michael Jordan episodes and also on the Nike episodes, when the NBA banned the original Jordan shoe, at the very beginning, Nike's like, oh, hopefully we're going to sell like, I think it was like $4 million or no, I think it's $3 million by the fourth year.

33:52And then the NBA bans the shoe and they make a smart decision like, just keep wearing it, Michael, we'll pay the fine. And so instead of hitting, I think, $3 million by the fourth year, they did $125 or $126 million the first year. And so Masters does something that he does for his entire career. He really pushes the pace. They launch in Germany and his marketing budget, right? So right now, the entire revenue of the company at this time, where we are in the story, they're doing 70 million euros at that time. They're in a few different markets. He sets the marketing budget for Germany at 10%, just that one market, more than 10%, to 7 .5 million euros for that year.

34:32And then I learned something that was actually surprising because you go look like Red Bull essentially just has Red Bull. They might have like different versions, right? But they essentially sell one thing. In the book, there's all kinds of examples. Like they have this coffee and this cola line. But in the early days, you could tell that he's learning from his mistakes and eventually goes and really puts like all of his energy behind one arrow because let's see, he's a couple years into the company. It's in 1989. He comes out with this drink. It's a lemonade drink called the Red rooster, which is like maple and lemon syrup.

35:06It sounds disgusting, by the way. But they launch it and just complete flop. And I went and searched all the other drinks that are mentioned in the book that were still in operation and none of them seem to be in operation today. So I think he's obviously learned from his mistakes. Like, well, Red Bull has this power law outcome. It's really silly for us to like try to introduce anything else. We should just stick with that and put all our energy and money behind the one thing that we know is, you know, a smashing success. And so this is where they just start hitting new markets after new markets.

35:36By 1997, they're opening new markets, which are new countries, nearly on a monthly basis. And every time they hit a new market, sales just keeps like, now you just see this is like huge spike in sales on the graph. And then he also launches in America. It was very fascinating. So he actually launches in one state he serves. He's like, well, I think it's working in Europe. It should work in America. And so he just launched in California as a way to test a single market before expanding nationwide. He'll mention multiple times the fact that he hates banks and is very afraid of debt. And so most of the growth is just fueled from actual the profits the company's making.

36:14And so he's able to do something that's very rare, which he's able to control costs and maintain financial discipline, even when they're making a lot of profits. And he preaches that to his employees over and over again. His employees have to argue and justify the expenditure of the smallest amounts even at the same time that the company's annual record profits were being produced. And so as I was reading how he interacts with his employees, there's something, if you listen to the Anna Wintour episode I did on episode 326, I said, if Anna had a tagline, it would be, I have to make sure things are being done right.

36:46I feel Mattress was the same exact way. And sorry if I'm mispronouncing his name. When he died, there was a bunch of different reports. I went on YouTube to try to figure out how to pronounce his last name. And they're all like European press reports. So they all pronounce it differently. But anyways, this idea, it's like, well, the role he's making, you know, he talks about the fact that he's a control freak. He's a perfectionist. He's going to make sure things are being done right. And so former employees are saying there's always a great deal of pressure to perform. One can make a mistake, but you can only make the same mistake once.

37:16So he expects a lot, but he also provides a lot. He pays salaries that are above industry average. And in addition, this is wild. Every Red Bull employee from the secretary to the board has a company car. past employees repeat the same thing, that he is extremely loyal. They describe him as a gentleman. They say, if you've helped him once, he will never forget it. And there's also some bizarre things. When I got to this part, this is the note I left myself when I read this part. I go, because he's talking about, you know, it has a cult -like following outside. And then you get the idea that there's a cult -like following inside.

37:52And I wrote to myself, am I reading this right? They drink special water only available internally. And so at these internal company events, they drink this thing called Luna Aqua, which is mineral water that is allegedly only drawn at the full moon. And they say it's advertised that it supposedly awakens the spirits of life. And so they serve it to Red Bull employees and then a bunch of Red Bull athletes or anybody in like the Red Bull family. And I think it might be served at Red Bull events as well. And so there's this great quote in this section that I think applies to this. Cult brands have their own laws.

38:28Otherwise, they would not be cultish. And again, to you and I, when we describe something as cult, that's not a pejorative. This is a very positive thing. A lot of the greatest companies in the world, a lot of the greatest brands, you could describe them as a cult -like following. And Red Bull definitely has that. A lot of the culture and the ideas of Red Bull, it's just really the founder's personality writ large. The accepted code of conduct for Red Bull people is set by Massachusetts himself. He is a fine and elegant person who values a cultured tone of conversation and good manners. You're supposed to hold doors open for the ladies and you do not get drunk in public.

39:01Red Bull is Massachusetts and Massachusetts is Red Bull is a quote from a former employee. And so let's go into this idea that he views Red Bull as a marketing conglomerate. Again, marketing is our core competency. We're going to outsource everything else. Red Bull has no production facilities or warehouses. Many large corporations outsource their marketing and advertising activity. Red Bull consistently took the opposite approach. It outsourced production and distribution and takes care of sales and advertising itself. Basically, Red Bull is just a large marketing machine. Production, bottling, and delivery, which require simple manual labor, are outsourced.

39:37Now, this also speaks to being a gentleman, being more like an old school way of approaching things. The main relation, so when he's outsourcing all the bottling and the production, right? His main bottler relationship was sealed with a handshake. The bottler is this family business that has been around for over 100 years. He meets with the head of that company, right? It's in German. I'm not even going to try to pronounce it. They agreed to produce Red Bull on a handshake. That was in 1987. And they still have this collaboration. This is what, 40 years? How many? Yeah, about 40 years. He says, we are hopelessly loyal to each other.

40:18Mastersitz once described his, that's how he described his relationship with his bottling partner. For Dietrich Mastersitz, a handshake among men is still worth something. So Charlie Munger said something that was excellent. There's actually two, he said this in, Charlie Munger said this in this interview that he did with the release of the republication of Poor Charlie Zamanak. It's on the Invest Like the Best podcast feed. If you haven't listened to it, I keep talking about this. It's so important. It was released December 5th, 2023. It is Invest Like the Best, episode 355. It is John Collison, co -founder of Stripe, interviewing Charlie Munger.

40:54In that podcast, which I've listened to, I think, four times already, Charlie Munger says something that's fascinating. He says, trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth. He is constantly trying to maneuver. In his whole life, he maneuvered himself into a high, I think he calls it a seamless web of deserved trust, where it's like, in some cases, we just have a handshake or an agreement. We don't even have a contract. And there's another great Invest Like the Best episode on Rolex. It's on the founding of Rolex. And the founder of Rolex did this exact same thing. One of his important suppliers, I can't remember what part of the watch they produced for him, but they had a handshake deal, no paperwork at all, that lasted 70 years.

41:36So again, I think this all ties to the great way that Charlie described that, that trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth. this is the trust that Mattashitz had with his main bottler. And if you really stop and analyze everything else, the way he's, he set up his business. It's like, well, why would he do that? Well, this asset light approach frees up funds for marketing. He was building a marketing conglomerate from the very beginning. He understood that at the very beginning, he's going to outsource anything that's not his core competency. Something else you see that he thinks like a marketer.

42:08So if you remember, uh, James Dyson had this great realization from trial and error in his career. And he says, you should, if you're making a physical product, make your product look different from the start. Talked about it at a huge advantage, right? He's distributing his vacuum cleaner at the same place. Everyone else buys vacuum cleaners. You go to a store. He said, you'd see like a line of like, let's say five vacuum cleaners. You see four that look like very similar. And then a fifth one is like, what the heck is that? It doesn't mean you're going to buy it, but you're again, indifference is the enemy to the inventor, right?

42:38He's like, you might not buy my vacuum cleaner, but you're sure as hell going to notice it. And Matt just did the same thing where he made the can. I think everybody's seen what a Red Bull can looks like. No other can look like that back then. Now, some have copied this, but he made that tall, slim can with the intention of looking different and standing out from every single other thing that would be on the same shelf. And one hilarious little story is Red Bull has its own private aircraft fleet. It's called the Flying Bulls. They use them for a bunch of events. The can holders in those planes only hold cans the size of Red Bull.

43:12I thought that was cool. I also thought it was cool when asked, he was asked, like, why he did that. And Dietrich said, everything is marketing. Let's go back to this focus that he has. He puts all of his energy behind, you know, one arrow. I sell Red Bull. I sell energy drink called Red Bull in a can. Might have a couple different variations, but I don't do anything else but that. And so as the brand got more and more popular, he got assaulted with all these offers. They're like, hey, let's license it. We can make Red Bull gummy bears and we can make Red Bull underwear and Red Bull perfume. And he said no to every single one.

43:48He does not want to use the Red Bull brand for anything else but to sell the actual energy drink, to sell cans of Red Bull. All marketing is just made to sell more energy drinks. And so I found this fact in a couple different places. It's insane to me. Like, I can't believe this is true. So he talks about the fact like he hates banks. He does not like debt. He's aiming for fun and for durability over every single thing else. And so his motto, it says absolutely no debts to a bank. And he has stuck to that since the founding of the company. Only in the second year of Red Bull did it accept minor bank financing, which we talked about earlier, that he's still loyal to them.

44:29But the company says that they only spend what they've already earned. And so all the growth and expansion has been funded, self -funded. And this is the crazy part. To not go into debt, there were no dividend payouts of Red Bull until 1999. 1999. So you're talking for the first, what, 15 years of the company, he essentially just lived off of his own salary as the managing director of the corporation and that all the profits had flowed back into expansion. And so how many people would have been able to do that? 15 years, you're just making, I'm sure the salary is great, but nothing like, I mean, why is it paying off?

45:10Because then in the 2000s and the next for like 20 years of his life, he's paying himself. I've seen all kinds of reports. He made $100 million this year. He made $165 million this year. He made $400 million that year. He made $700 million this year. His son inherited, after his dad died, his part of Red Bull. And his son's dividend this year was $615 million. So that is a crazy, crazy dedication to no dividends for 15 years, living off your salary, and then plowing everything back into expansion. And then by that time, the company is so valuable that you essentially just are living on unlimited money.

45:44And when he talks about this, I think you get insights onto why that was so important to him. If you really think about it, I think it was Warren Buffett said, it was either Warren Buffett or Charles de Gaulle, but to win, you must first survive. And so the way he's operating his company, what he's saying here without saying is like we're never going to do anything that could potentially compromise our survival. And here's a quote from him. I have been raised on the motto that one does not incur debt. We at Red Bull spend the money that we've earned, not that we might earn someday. We never want to endanger the existence of the company, not even for a second.

46:17And so this constant expansion is something, another theme that just flows through this entire story. I love General George Patton's speech to the Third Army. I listened to it to hype myself up. I don't know. I've probably listened to it hundreds of times. But there's something that he says, that Patton says to his soldiers in that speech when they're about to fight the Germans that I think is very similar to how Machetez kept, it says that he kept his empire constantly in motion, that he was constantly trying to grow and expand it. And so Patton tells his army, or his soldiers, that I don't want to get any messages saying that I'm holding my position.

46:55We're not holding a goddamn thing. We are advancing constantly. And when I'm getting to this section about the fact that the Red Bull empire, you know, through the founder, is he's constantly keeping that empire constantly in motion. For some reason, that quote from Pat popped in my mind goes back to this idea that Red Bull, as viewed from the founder's lens, is a marketing conglomerate. His economic empire is a marketing conglomerate, and hence the entire activity of Red Bull is to be seen against the background of marketing. All corporate projects like Formula One, football, air races, media serve the core business, which is the sale of the energy drink.

47:33And he was way, way ahead of his time on this. Economics, especially in the consumer goods industry, he said, is essentially a battle for attention. Red Bull throws more material into this battle than all of its competitors, focusing primarily on sports and increasingly on culture in recent history. No other company spends nearly as much money on advertising and marketing, meaning other company in the same market. And something that he picked up too was the importance of differentiation. He says, you learn this in the first semester of marketing that you have to differentiate yourself. Consumers want the original, not the copy.

48:04So he even applies that not only to his product, but also to the way he markets, like all these media events and these crazy things. So these outrageous and unique events, like the guy jumping from space, if you think about like why that's so smart, an outrageous and unique event will get covered for free in other media. So essentially he, this is multiplying his advertising and marketing spend for free. And so some of the things that they spend money on, it says about half of the marketing budget is spent on unusual, unusual sports as running in the Himalayas, skydiving over the English Channel, surfing on the Amazon, or mountain biking in a mine.

48:38That's crazy. These events may not attract too many spectators since they don't take place around the corner, meaning in person. But due to their extravagance, they attract interest from numerous media outlets and thus reach a larger audience. And so even his approach to sports sponsorship, right? You would think, okay, you can go to any sports event. you see, you know, this beer's advertising and this company's advertising. He buys. So he has bought his Formula One teams, his football teams. The crazy thing is when he starts, he's essentially what he's saying is like, hey, I don't want to just sponsor.

49:08I want to own. And then I want to rename it to the company. So his soccer teams, they rename the teams, the Red Bulls. So that is their actual name. And then the logo on the jerseys is the Red Bull logo. And this is what he says about it. Our philosophy and sports sponsorship is not to run around with a suitcase full of money and buy advertising space. We don't want to be like Marlboro on the Ferrari, but we want to be integrated into the sport. That's why we own an F1 team. We want overall responsibility and to make our own difference. He calls F1 a very important marketing tool. And then he makes sure that all of his marketing and all the events and all the stuff that he's investing in, he has a very symbiotic relationship with other media, like other larger distribution forms of media.

49:54So what they'll do is like they put, they control everything, right? They put up the money for the event. They make the event. Then they make sure that they never relinquish media rights to every event. So as a result, they've produced hundreds and hundreds of hours of material every year from like TV shows, radio stations, print. And then they'll go to other TV broadcasters, other radio stations, other newspapers and magazines and they will give them their content for free. And so when they put on the Red Bull Air Race, the Red Bull Air Race World Series, that content that Red Bull made and owned, they gave it to over 70 different television stations all over the world and said, hey, we put all this money into this.

50:38Here's something that people that you can't get anywhere else, that your customers will find, your watchers or listeners or whatever, your audience will find interesting. Here, we don't want anything for it. You just play it for free. And because the media outlets don't have to pay to produce that material, they jump all over it. So again, a very clever way to just multiply his advertising and marketing spend. And so I mentioned earlier that he has developed his own company building philosophy, one that is very unique to him. And so he talks about the fact that even though he went to school for business, he just doesn't really believe a lot of the stuff that he was taught.

51:07And so it says Massachusetts has amassed his wealth despite, or perhaps precisely because he's at odds with some basic business principles. If someone says to him that the primary goal of a company is to maximize profit, he simply declares that to be incorrect. He thinks longer term and more broadly than his competitors. I just don't believe everything I learned at business school. He has repeatedly said he never tires of emphasizing that money was never his main motivation for starting his own company. Rather, the driving forces were longing for freedom and independence as well as finding joy in the work.

51:42This is why you don't retire, right? If you love what you do, you're obviously making a bunch of money in it. You're free and you have complete independence to control what you work on, who's around you. There's nothing better than that. Our motto, going back to a quote from him, our motto is the journey is the destination. I don't want to go to the summit to stand at the top, but to do the climb up. One of the great, one of this maximum I have saved on my phone, this great line I think about all the time and I try to apply it to my work. I love the climb. I don't care where the summit is. you don't last 40 years into the same business if that's not true for you it is true for mashton he's like i don't care i'm having fun i'm free i'm independent and i get joy from the work and i think in addition to all that i think one thing that helped the longevity is the fact that he decided to move originally the company was headquarters in a bigger city called salzburg and he winds up moving the headquarters to this tiny village that i can't even pronounce and it only has 1500 inhabitants it's like almost all red bull uh the local like uh governing like the local politician said that if it wasn't for uh red bull the place would be impoverished and i think it's like one of the richest uh communities in austria and so he actually moves uh the company headquarters to this little tiny village this is very similar uh to the idea like if you listen to the podcast i did on the founder of bugatti he did this exact same thing that's episode 316 Brunello Cuccinelli.

53:06You know, it was a huge, again, Bugatti did his business for, until he died. Brunello Cuccinelli's still alive, but he's been doing his business for like 45 years. That's episode 289. This idea is like, okay, you're controlling the product that you work on. You're controlling who's, like, who works in the company. But you should also put a lot of time and emphasis, like, where you're actually doing your work. And I'm fascinated by these people that actually build, like, physical manifestations. Almost like their entire, like, building their own, like, miniature world inside of the world. I guess George Lucas did the same thing with Skywalker Ranch.

53:37But we see this idea again with Mattashitz. This little community is on this picturesque lake in some word I can't pronounce. And he said they asked why he moved it there. And his answer was simple. The aim was to create a more pleasant working atmosphere. Now, there was one funny thing I have to add, though, because people are having these rumors about why he did this. And it goes back to the fact that he's secretive and likes to control this environment. It also said that he wanted to build a network of underground tunnels so he could move from building to building without being seen. And then more about the fact that his business is kind of like his personality writ large.

54:15He stays incredibly fit. He loves extreme sports, aviation, riding his motorcycle. And he constantly talks about he refuses to ever get married. I'll tell you this funny sentence on that. They call him the top bull, which is hilarious. I don't know if that's just, it's the German translation in English. I hope not. I hope they actually call him the top bull because I thought it was funny. The top bull takes care of his body, keeps fit, and is in amazingly good shape for someone almost 70 years old. He says, everything that gives me pleasure in life is connected with a certain physical fitness and a physical well -being.

54:46And so it is pure selfishness that I do something for my fitness. I like going to the mountain. I like skiing. I like sailing. I like riding my motorbike. Like everything I do is connected with a with physical agility, motor skills, dexterity, strength and stamina. In order to enjoy it outdoors, I need the indoor program. So he's saying his dedication to physical fitness to be able to perform well in the outdoors. He has to be dedicated to his gym routine, his workout routine. And it says he is a he is a declared opponent to the marital state. He was never married his entire life, just has his one son.

55:22And what I love most about him is that he was true to his authentic self to the very, very end. One thing he's categorically ruled out again and again, exiting the company in the form of selling his shares. I hardly even allow this question, he said. We could have done it a dozen times already. Our view on this has not changed. We neither have the desire to do so, nor is there a need. And this is the one exception. Of course, one can never say never for a strategic minority stakes. sometimes they can be helpful and indeed make sense. Mattis has also consistently and categorically ruled out a stock market listing.

55:59A sale or an IPO is not even remotely tempting. And when asked if he's going to retire, he answered, I'm having more fun than ever. And that is where I'll leave it. I will leave a link below to the German version in case you happen to speak German. I'll also leave some links to some longer form profiles written about Dietrich in The Economist and in Bloomberg in case you want to do any further reading. That is 333 books down, 1 ,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that. I had a lot of fun researching and reading and learning about Mattashitz, and I think there's a bunch of ideas in his approach to company building.

56:45and really just the way he lived his life that are going to stick with me. So I want to tell you about two things and they're really related. So one, I want to give you an update on Founders Notes. Founders Notes, I really feel, is the world's most valuable notebook for founders. And I can say that because I've been compiling and adding to it and editing it nearly every single day for the last five years. And if you think about the story about how Founders Notes came to be, one, it's the best possible way you can support the podcast and yourself. So if you haven't subscribed and haven't invested in a subscription yet, highly recommend you do.

57:16You can click on the link in the show notes or you can just go to foundersnotes .com. Everything I'd ever do, because I'm about to tell you about a conference called Founders Only, always has the S, just like the podcast. Founders Podcast, Founders Notes, and now we have the Founders Only conference. But I think these two things are related to why I'm doing an in -person conference that is targeted on, the mission is to build real relationships between founders. I've seen the difference in my own life of creating these relationships with founders. In fact, I'll just basically I'll just tell you about both of these at one time.

57:52I was I've had this idea for a long time and I'll tell you how it relates to founders notes, too. But I wind up having a conversation was very fascinating with a guy who was his job. He was hired by a bunch. He was hired by a family office. So, you know, a very wealthy family office in Texas. And his job was to introduce and do these in -person events for other people in other family offices. And the reason they put so much time and energy and resources behind that was he had a great line. He said, because relationship between these two people, like these two investor or founder types, they produce nonlinear returns.

58:33You and I have talked about this idea over and over again because they're in all the books. and I've put a maxim to it that relationships run the world. This is something that I had the pleasure of speaking to both Sam Zell and Charlie Munger in person and this is something, they said it in different ways but the same idea was behind it that invest heavily in the relationships, build a seamless web of trust, find the most talented people you possibly can and work with them because relationships run the world. And so if you think about how Founders Notes came to be is I didn't, I started building a relationship with one of the co -founders of Readwise.

59:10His name is Tristan. And it's because Tristan sent me a DM. He was listening to the podcast all the way back in 2019, realized that I was kind of psychopathically reading. And he's like, hey, I built an app that makes it really easy for you to store your notes and highlights. So then you can search them and you can recall them and they have all these interesting features. You might want to check it out. And I didn't even know what it was. And then I immediately started using it. I became not only a super user, but they told me that I was their best salesman unintentionally because I would go on all these other podcasts and I'd be like, this is the best app I pay for.

59:50I use it every day. I've become friends with Morgan Housel, who's obviously one of the bestselling authors of the last decade. He wrote Psychology of Money and then he just released a new book. and I should do a podcast as a new book too. It's called Same as Ever. And a main theme is that human nature just repeats. But anyways, Morgan had heard me on a podcast describe Readwise as a smart Twitter feed. And so he winds up signing up using it and he's like, oh, that's exactly what it is. And so anyways, over the years, I've been adding to this. I have over 20 ,000 highlights in Readwise that I can search, I can constantly reference.

1:00:27And what happened was I kept having people ask me over and over again, how do I get access to your notes and all your highlights and everything else that you have. And so I wind up, because I had a relationship with Tristan, this is going to relate to the conference, this will all make sense in a minute. And so because I had a relationship with Tristan, I contacted him. I was like, hey, I think we have an opportunity to work on a project together. And the result of that project is Founders Notes, which again, I think is the world's most valuable notebook for founders because what you see when you sign up for Founders Notes, you see exactly what I see.

1:00:55You have an exact replica of my Readwise. And so what that allows you to do is you can search every single one of my highlights by book, by keyword. I just did this yesterday because I was like, man, I'm becoming even more obsessed with making founders podcasts and finding other ways to teach and share these lessons. And I was like, am I going crazy? And I obviously know I'm not because obsession. I mean, this is every single person in the podcast that we cover was obsessed with what they were doing. And I just decided, let me just go through. And I started reading highlights just by searching the term obsession.

1:01:30I was like, oh, Anna Winter was obsessed. Christian Dior talks about their obsession. Bill Gates talks about his obsession. The founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, talks about becoming obsessed with his work. Napoleon, Christopher Nolan, James Dyson, Leonardo da Vinci, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Estee Lauder, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mike Ovitz. And so it just reinforces this idea that if you want to get to the top of your profession, which I definitely do, you know, obsession is a prerequisite. So that's one of the main ways when you get access, you'll see the first thing you do is search your highlights.

1:02:04You can also do this thing called the highlight feed. That is what Morgan Housel called the smart Twitter feed with the highlight feed is it's going to show you a random thing about like any kind of really social network. It just shows you like a piece of contact after another. Instead of, you know, the ramblings of these crazy people on the internet, it's highlights and notes from all the different books and founders that we covered. So I just clicked on it. I see something here from Jeff Bezos, from David Ogilvie, some of Yvonne Chouinard. It's like history's greatest founders talking to directly to you every single day.

1:02:38And so that's why I say it's like, if you have access to this, whether you already have access or you want to subscribe now, keep it up in your browser. I never X out of it unless I do it by accident. So you can do the highlights feed. You can then go by books and search and, you know, and then actually read. Let's say you just want all the highlights from an individual book. That's what you want to read that day. And then the other feature is favorites, which what that means is when I go, so I reread my highlights every day. And as I do this, I'm constantly favoriting the ones I like. So I have, you know, 700, 800, something like that favorites right now.

1:03:11That number will constantly go up and it's updated because I'm doing this constantly. And so you can see what I'm reading and you can see what I I feel is like even highlight is special in one way, right? And then now I'm saying, oh, I've reread these highlights, and this is something even more special, something I want to remember. So anyways, that is a general overview. What I wanted to update you on is there's two features that I haven't discussed. One is, and we're going to make this, I just talked to the team at Readwise yesterday. We're going to make this more obvious. When you subscribe and if you go under billing, you can actually invite and give access to one other person for free.

1:03:45So let's say you want to give it access to a co -founder, a very important person on your team. You can do that for free. This is available by default. If you already have a Founders Notes subscription, you can do this as well. So every single subscription comes with an additional one for free. The second thing, and then I want to get onto the conference because I think it's really important. And we only have 60 days. So I got to move on that. I didn't want to talk about features before they're released, but I've had so many people. There's a lot of AI founders that have reached out that have already subscribed and want to help on this, but this is already in development.

1:04:17There's going to be a Founders GPT version. I should begin testing it myself in the next week or two, and you'll be able to actually communicate, ask questions, and use that chat format, which is becoming extremely, extremely popular. And so the important point is if you sign up now, as I keep adding features and obviously keep adding more and more data to it, the price will go up. The point is, if you sign up now, you're locked in at that price. So all the additional improvements that I do and all the additional features that I do, you don't ever have to pay any additional money. If you're already running a successful company and you already understand the importance of constantly being in touch with the knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs, and you want an easy way to reference their ideas, to search through them, to find ideas that you can apply to your own company, then I would encourage you to test it out for a year.

1:05:05you'll have access to the world's most valuable notebook for founders. And I really do believe the value that you'll get will be incredible because I use the product every day and I get incredible value from it myself. So relationships. This is another thing that people have requested a lot over the years. They want to meet other founders that listen to founders. One of my favorite quotes from Paul Graham, and he's got a lot of great quotes, but he talks about the importance of being around other ambitious people. And so he says ambitious people are rare. So if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers.

1:05:39When you take people like this, they're very ambitious, and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age. So for the last several months, I've been kicking around this idea, like what would a Founders Conference look like? First of all, it's called Founders Only. You can go to foundersonly .com to apply. You can see the dates. It is happening in Austin, Texas, March 12th through the 14th. It is going to be limited to 150 people.

1:06:13I rented out an entire venue. It is a private venue, not available to the public. I spent a few days there before. I absolutely loved it. Once you get past the guard -gated gate, you never have to leave again. So all you have to do is get yourself to Austin, Texas, and then every single thing else is taken care of, accommodations, food, the entire event. You literally never have to leave the compound. So that's Austin, Texas, March 12th through the 14th. So a little over 60 days from now, it is going to be limited to 150 people. You have to be a founder of a company, CEOs with founder mentality are welcome to.

1:06:50It should be unlike any other conference that you've ever been to because my stated goal, the mission statement, the North Star is to help other founders build relationships with other founders to that end. That's why I've limited it to just 150 people. That's why I chose the venue where it's at. It is also why before the conference, I'm going to talk to every single attendee, every single person one -on -one. I want to gain an understanding of who you are, what your business is about, and what is important to you. And then I'm literally building a founder map. And that way I can literally match founders together who I think should know each other.

1:07:25I think this is incredibly important. That's why I'm going to dedicate so much of my time to doing this. I am the only one doing this. I have a world -class events team behind me that are taking care of all logistics, but I'm the one matching all the founders individually myself. And obviously I will be there the entire time. I will get there before anybody else does. And I will be the last person to leave. I think this is going to be incredibly important because I've seen it in my own life that before I had these relationships and the network I have to after it's not even remotely the same relationships really do run the world.

1:07:53And I want to help other founders build relationships with other great founders. If you are interested, if you're willing to travel to Austin, Texas and be there from March 12th through the 14th, go to foundersonly .com. I will obviously leave a link in the show notes as well. foundersonly .com. And do so as soon as you can, because this is limited to just 150 people. Okay. So that's it. Go to foundersonly .com, founders with an S, go to foundersonly .com if you want to attend the conference and build relationships with other founders, and then go to foundersnotes .com to get access to the world's most valuable notebook for founders.

1:08:27As always, thank you for listening and I'll talk to you again soon.