#339 Joseph Duveen: Robber Baron Art Dealer

24:32That should tell you that it's deeply embedded in our human nature, which I'll get to later on. I want to give you an example of one of my favorite maxims comes from Ted Turner, actually came from Ted Turner's dad. early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise. And so what would happen is because Duveen, there was all these unintended positive externalities that came from Duveen constantly outbidding everybody and, you know, he's hellbent on controlling supply. One way you have to do that is sometimes you have to pay more than you think it's worth. And so he was paying crazy prices.

25:06They were so crazy that they were covered. They were newsworthy. So he's got essentially unlimited free advertising because he buys, let's say he spends, I'm going to give you like three examples that spread throughout the 1920s that are covered in the Herald Tribune, which essentially they function as free advertising for him. And so this is like an example. Sir Joseph DeVine, the art dealer, has bought a Rembrandt for $410 ,000. That's $410 ,000 in 1926. One of the highest prices ever paid. And then listen to this next line. I interrupted the sentence for you. Listen to this. So highest price ever paid.

25:41And this this Rembrandt had been in the possession of the family for 200 years. Highest price ever paid and unbelievably scarce. The opportunity to buy this comes up only once every 200 years. Do you want to act? And if you act, you have to act now. Another example, Sir Joseph Veen, the international art dealer, bought in London yesterday the entire collection. He does this all the time. He'll buy one -off pieces if they're the best or whatever. He'll buy entire collections, and then he'll just store them. Again, controlling supply. The entire collection of 120 Italian of the old masters belonging to this very wealthy European or noble European.

26:21This entire collection will be brought to New York. The purchase price was $3 million in 1927. And then not only did his, when he bought merchandise, right and supply it was covered but when he sold it was also covered this is again early to bed early rise work like hell and advertise andrew mellon right this is the the son of judge mellon who is the patriarch of the mellon family dynasty but at this time not only is he very wealthy he's also the secretary of the treasury of the united states and so now you have duveen's name associated with literally the best people in the world not only are they richest in some cases they hold the highest, like some of the highest government positions.

27:06So it says Andrew Mellon, the secretary of treasury of the United States has purchased from Duveen for $970 ,000. A painting doesn't even matter what the painting is. Here's again, the scarcity, the time aspect of it, right? The painting bears Raphael's signature and the date 1508. And so to other people, it felt like he was overpaying. He understood that his entire business only works if he has, if you can control supply he has access to literally the best and the most desired art of all the world. And so this is an example of what he would do to make sure that he didn't miss out, right? It's not like, oh, if I don't win this auction, you know, there's a second thing that's kind of like this.

27:44It's like either, it's zero sum. One winner, everybody else loses. The circumstances attending Deveen's purchase of this painting called The Pinky in 1926 illustrate his tenacity in the fight he made to establish his preeminence among the art dealers of the world. From the beginning, Deveen felt that his educational mission was twofold. Number one, to teach millionaire American collectors what the great works of art were. And two, to teach them that they could only get those works of art through him. So number one, I sell the best and I'm the only one that has them, right? And so there's this other rival dealer that's like, hey, I'm going to bid on Pinky too.

28:22And so what does Duveen do? Duveen goes to, this is an art auction that is being run by Christie's and he goes to the manager of Christie's and he doesn't even show up. He doesn't have to show up for the bidding. He just tells the guy, he's like, I have an unlimited bid. Whatever your highest bid is, I will pay more. So by default, he has to be the winner. And this is what he said about this. Deveen admitted that the price he had paid was steep, but he repeated his cardinal dictum. When you pay high for the priceless, you're getting it cheap. Another saying of his endlessly repeated to his American clients was, you can get all the paintings you want at $50 ,000 a piece.

29:01That is easy. But to get paintings at a quarter of a million dollars a piece, that takes doing. And then he would go out of his way to stroke and to encourage FOMO, the fear of missing out. He offers this deal to Andrew Mellon. Andrew's like, oh, I'm not interested. The next day he calls up H .E. Huntington. Huntington built a bunch of railroads. He offers it to him, Huntington buys. And then once it's in many cases, once they sell or excuse me, once the like the Huntington's or Rubberians buy, they rarely sell. And so even many decades later, when this piece is being written, it's still hanging that that painting was still hanging hanging in the Huntington mansion in California.

29:43And even that worked in Duveen's favor because Mellon heard that, oh, the next day somebody else bought what I said I wasn't interested in. What if I had changed my mind? Now I can't get it. It stuck. So then the next time that Duveen has something that he thinks Mellon is interested in, it causes Mellon to act faster. Mellon did not make the same mistake again. Duveen offers him a painting by Romney. It is the highest price ever paid for Romney. Duveen offered it to him and Mellon immediately bought it. multiple times it talks about that Duveen was aiming for monopoly on purpose. There's a great line where it says monopoly by Peter Thiel in Zero to One, where he says monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors.

30:26This is what it sounds like if you have a monopoly. There had never before been anyone like Duveen, the exalted middleman, and he practically monopolized his field. 95 of the 115 paintings in the Mellon collection, right? Which gets donated to the public, which I'll talk about why he did this. It was also a genius move in a little bit. Came to Mellon through Duveen. Mellon, think about that. At this point, Andrew Mellon, one of the largest art collectors in the United States. He might not be the largest, but he's on the short list. He might be the fifth, might be the second, might be the 10th.

31:04He certainly, sure as hell, is not the 100th, right? So one of the largest art collectors in America at the time, 95 of the 115 paintings in his collection came from Duveen. That is, he aimed for Monopoly and he hit his target. Another fascinating thing that I've already mentioned, but it's very obvious when you read about and you start studying Joseph Duveen, it's like, okay, this guy is super clever. And what makes him even more clever, right? So it talks about that he enjoyed having the stupid side of his character emphasized in public dinner parties. He'd bring up his mistakes. Most people, they're kind of embarrassed by their failures, embarrassed by their mistakes.

31:41They would hide it. They're being ashamed of it. He wouldn't hide his mistakes. He'd bring them up himself. And this is the line why. Since he enjoyed having the stupid side of his character emphasized, it constituted a disguise for his cleverness. That's how you know somebody's even more clever, the fact that they understand that it's clever to conceal your cleverness. And another thing that clever founders do is they're focused. Listen to this line that comes a couple of pages later. He was interested in practically nothing except his business. If you think about the layers in which this guy goes, it's impossible to arrive at the conclusions and come up with the ideas that Duveen had, right?

32:17I'm a huge believer that it is not what you do, but it is how you do it. There is a ton of art dealers that don't make any money. And there's a handful, one or two or three that became billionaires. It's not what you do. It's how you do it. And this idea of crazy focus and just thinking about your business longer and harder than anybody else does, you're going to get so deep down that curve that you're going to come up with ideas that other people in the same field that remain permanently superficial will never have. Certain men are endowed with the faculty of concentrating on their own affairs to the exclusion of what's going on elsewhere.

32:51Duveen was that kind of man. Going back to this idea of how important it was, this information network that he built up slowly over time, right compounds and value becomes one of his greatest assets uh later in his life how valuable it is is that henry clay frick is one of his biggest clients right and one of the richest people on the planet now and yet duveen is the expert in his field so he hears about all the great assets before anybody else does and so he's having like a launch in a conversation with henry clay frick and frick brings up he's like man i lost that painting i was on the trail of a very great painting.

33:23It's this thing called St. James Park or something like that. And Duveen's response to Frick was excellent. He goes, oh, Mr. Frick, I bought that painting. When you want a great painting, you must come to me because you know I get the first chance at all of them. Remember, he repeats this over and over again. You can only get the best through me. Ignore these competitors. Come straight to me. You will get the best every time. And the greatest way to condense and clarify that idea, in my opinion, is the line, monopoly was his method. Monopoly was his method. And I think all these ideas work together to help him build his monopoly.

34:02The fact that he was focused on it, he was only interested in his business. There's this line about the detail that he paid attention to. And I think there's a great story that illustrate, you know, monopoly was his method. Duveen displayed that scrupulous attention to detail that has distinguished the careers of other celebrated generals. So obviously something you and I have talked about multiple times with the most recent on the two weeks ago on the episode of Napoleon's strategies and maxims. And so an example of that, it goes back to this information network, right? He knew every, he built relationships and paid people to give him information.

34:38And the reason, and I'm going to actually explain, I'm going to explain the story first, and then we'll go into how and like, who are the people that he paid, but this is the reason why. So he would, the way that most people are getting back and forth between Europe and America at this point, right, it's on these transatlantic ships. So he becomes friends with all the deckhands on the ships and he pays them a lot of money. In many cases, hundreds of dollars, like he'll tip them, you know, hundreds of dollars and it's way more than they make. And in return, they make sure because they're setting up and they're deciding where everybody's going to sit on the deck and they put they what they do because devine devine has built relations with them finds out they have valuable information pays them for that information pays them for their service in in like an excessive amount more so than anybody else is paying them right in return he gets seated and set up next to a bunch of american millionaires that are going you know back and forth through europe this is another example of what i meant And he has all these like fabricated, fabricated coincidences.

35:43And so here's an example of that. And so it says among the American millionaires that Deveen met through the deck hands, the deck stewards, was Alexander Smith Cochran, who was a like a carpet baron. So they meet on a boat that's sailing to Europe and they just start chatting. Cochran happened to mention that he would like someday to see the Buckingham Palace and all these other European palaces. Deveen said casually that he would be delighted to take him through both places. When they got to England, Cochran found himself strolling through the two palaces. They seemed as accessible to Duveen as the lobby of a hotel.

36:16While he was showing Cochran the royal art, Duveen spoke warmly of Queen Mary and told Cochran what a high regard he had for her and her taste in art. He never mentioned that he had things he considered as good as hers in his own galleries. In fact, he never mentioned his galleries at all. When they parted, Cochran felt a certain obligation to Duveen, a healthy respect for his connections and a sharp curiosity about why a stranger should be so kind. They met again in New York and Duveen took him to see the wonderful Duveens hanging in the private houses of some of his clients, but he did not tell them that they were Duveens.

36:53Again, he neglected to mention his great New York gallery. This display of benevolence went on for three years until finally Cochran could not stand it any longer and broke down lord devine i would like to see some of your things his back to the wall that's hilarious his back to the wall devine took cochran to his gallery he could not spare any paintings they were all unreserved see what he just did there sorry they're scarce they're rare they're i have you know listen i'm the only one that has these but they're spoken for uh you know there's a line this is like enzo ferrari we talked about this multiple times on the three episodes i did on enzo ferrari people like americans who come to italy rich americans come to italy they tour the Ferrari factory.

37:32He's like, I must have one. And it's just like, yeah, of course, you know, maybe next year, maybe six months from now or whatever the case is. And then the American would leave and Enzo Ferrari's employees would come up to him like, we have an, we have a parking lot full of unsold Ferraris. Why did you do that? And he's like, cause Ferraris must never, they must be desired. They must be desired. Duveen's doing the exact same thing. It's like, okay, listen, I can't spare any paintings. They're all on reserve, but you know what? I do have these other art objects, these other sculptures. You can buy that.

38:00Cochran spent $5 million. So from developing this information network, right, playing that long game, might have cost him a couple hundred dollars in tips. Three years later, that turns into a five million dollar sale. That is absolutely nuts. So let's go back. Let's go back to what he was building because I jumped ahead in the story. So this is what he does. It says that he had an unusual spirit of friendliness and he let it shine by building relationships with some. Sometimes people are directly involved in the art world. Sometimes they're very indirectly. So this is like all the people that are like all the staff that work for a lot of these art collectors.

38:38So he'd build relationships with critics, with museum directors, with restorers. He's going to make one guy very wealthy. You know, you have very old art. You need somebody that's very delicate, very talented. They restore it. Architects, decorators and servants. He becomes very generous with the staff and the servants. And in turn, they would give Duveen all the gossip that they hear when people visit their home. And so in one case, right, there's a butler that is working in the Fifth Avenue house of this, one of Duveen's most important clients. Over the course of their relationship, Duveen gives him $100 ,000.

39:15What is the result, right? Right. He said, not only this butler, but all these other servants, they developed a feeling that it was only fair to transmit to their generous nobleman. That's Duveen, any information that might interest him. And this is nuts. So now he's going to lead to more sales. He has an understanding of a deeper. So he has a deeper understanding of the person. What's interesting to them, what's going on in their life. Right. It's going to lead to more sales. But again, Duveen is one of the most competitive people you're ever going to come across. He wants monopoly. So that means, therefore, you cannot buy from other people.

39:45so he winds up getting he winds up knowing when rival dealers are going to make appointments with some of his people like uh henry clay frick or melon or anybody else right and he just happens to show up so it says rival deal when right when this is hilarious when rival dealers would show up to offer works uh of art they found that they could never see the client alone whenever they dropped in duveen was already there and so here's another example of this idea that you and i talked about a few weeks ago on episode 335 on Brad Jacobs' book, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, overpay for talent because it's nearly impossible to overpay for talent.

40:24And so Duveen had a conviction that anyone who worked for him, high or low, should be compensated in a manner commensurate with the dignity of the association with him, right? I am the best in the world. Everybody associated with me has to be the best and they should be paid like the best. He finds his main restore. So the people that have to take these very old paintings, you know, spruce them up, for lack of a better word. There is this guy named Stephen Pachetto. Pachetto was Duveen's main restorer, right? He's moving so much product. As Duveen's business grows, so does Pachetto's, and this is the end result.

40:57When Pachetto died in 1949 at the age of 61, he was himself a wealthy man. Such was the trade as Duveen practiced it, that even a restorer who worked for Duveen could leave a fortune. Now, a large part of this profile is the founding of something that still is available actually to us today. It's the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D .C., which was established in 1937. You can go there to this day and visit it for free. Over three million people a year do just that. That is an idea from Joseph Duveen. So I'm actually going to read the summary about the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D .C.

41:39that is in the book 48 Laws of Power, because essentially it describes like, okay, later in his career, Duveen is running into a problem, right? He's got to solve a problem. All the problems that come up in his life, he figures like, okay, this is just an opportunity that will help me sell more art. And so if you really analyze the career of Duveen, everything he did was an answer to this question or to this problem. Like, how can I solve this problem so I can sell more art? And what he did was genius, and it's the creation of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D .C. The art dealer Joseph Duveen was once confronted with a terrible problem.

42:19The millionaires who had paid so dearly for Duveen's paintings were running out of wall space, and with inheritance taxes getting even higher, it seemed unlikely that they would keep buying. The solution was the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D .C., which Duveen helped create in 1937 by getting Andrew Mellon to donate his collection to it. The National Gallery was the perfect front for Duveen. In one gesture, his clients avoided taxes, cleared wall space for new purchases, and reduced the numbers of paintings on the market, maintaining the upward pressure on their prices. all this while the donors created the appearance of being public benefactors that happened in 1937 it goes back to this these prefabricated coincidences that you see throughout because they weren't coincidences right they were very intentional and deliberate of how the one that duveen did throughout his entire career but also in how he met uh andrew mellon and then andrew mellon becomes one of his biggest clients right that happened uh what would be 16 years earlier in 1921.

43:25Listen to this from the same book. In 1921, Andrew Mellon was visiting London and staying in a suite at the Claridge Hotel. Duveen had been targeting him for a while. He wanted him as a client, right? Duveen booked himself into the suite just below Mellon's. He had arranged, Duveen had also arranged for his valet to befriend Mellon's valet. Mellon's valet told Duve's valet, who then told Duveen that Mellon was about to go downstairs and ring for the lift. So the elevator, right? Seconds later, Duveen entered the lift and behold, there was Mellon. How do you do, Mr. Mellon? Said Duveen. Remember how he was just striking up these conversations on the deck of the boat going back and forth between Europe and America?

44:04He's doing the exact same thing here, but now he's doing it in an elevator in a very nice hotel in London. So he says, how do you do, Mr. Mellon? Duveen said, introducing himself. I'm on my way to the National Gallery to look at some pictures, to look at some paintings, right? How uncanny. That was precisely where Mellon was headed, and Duveen knew it. And so Duveen was able to accompany him. He knew Mellon's taste inside and out because he studies everybody. And while the two men wandered through the museum, he dazzled Mellon with his knowledge. Once again, quite uncannily, they seemed to have remarkably similar tastes.

44:34Mellon was pleasantly surprised. Duveen was charming and agreeable and clearly had exquisite taste. That is the beginning of their relationship, right? lasts for 20 years until Duveen's death, contributes untold revenue to Duveen's business, and then also culminates with the opening and the founding of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D .C. Absolutely incredible. This guy was absolutely incredible. I want to go back to this idea, which I mentioned earlier, and now I found my note. So human nature is constant. Studying history is like watching game tape on human nature. These examples are why Charlie Munger spent so much time speaking about and teaching about the psychology of human misjudgment.

45:16And so why did I write that to myself? I get to this. This is what I meant earlier. Like these guys, it's not like these tendencies in human nature, right? Only work on dullards, right? These are some of the most smartest, most sophisticated people on the planet, much smarter and more sophisticated than me by far. And yet it works on them. So that's why I want to know about them. And what am I talking about? So there is this, one of the richest people in America at the time is this guy named S .H. Kress. So he owned a chain. He built a giant retail fortune. So retail department stores, you know, a century before Sam Walton.

45:51Think about him like that. OK. And there's another guy that you and I've talked about in the past, which is Henry Goldman of Goldman Sachs. Right. And so he's Henry Goldman actually loses his sight and becomes partially or maybe completely blind. And he decides to sell off his entire collection of art. And so he goes and offers it first to his contemporary and his, I don't know if they're friends, but, you know, peer or something like that, colleague, Kress. But Goldman loves to move fast. And so he offers it to Kress and the guy brokering the deal between them says, hey, if Kress wants this, tell him that he's got to do it in a hurry.

46:30It's got to be decided this afternoon. And Kress is like, oh, is it like it has to be done today? Like, is he having liquidity problems? Is he broke? What's going on? And he's like, no, he just wants to get has nothing to do with insolvency. He just wants to sell this. He wants to do this fast. He doesn't want to waste any time. And so he tells him, hold Goldman off. Like, I'm going to think about it. Hold him off. He keeps repeating, hold him off, hold him off. But as you already know, by now, Duveen does not wait around for anything. And so once he hears about this, he's like, forget that. I'm not waiting and he buys the entire collection immediately.

47:00And then this is where what I meant about the psychology of human misjudgment, right? So he got, Crest gets the offer, says, no, wait, wait, let me think about it. Duveen doesn't, he acts, buys it. Now it's the exact same collection. It's the exact same collection. But a collection that belongs to Duveen was not a collection that belonged to Goldman, even when it's the same collection. So you think about this, it's just the same thing happened with Gagosian. Same thing happens, you know, every day. You and and influence by brands. Brand is like magic. Duveen is a brand and therefore can increase the price.

47:34It's the same exact thing. I could be offered the same product. It could be the exact same product. One of them's, you know, random brand name. The other ones say like an Apple or something like that. And it's proven over and again, we will pay more for the brand, even if it's the exact same thing. And that's exactly what happens here because Duveen buys the same collection. Doesn't change anything about it. It actually changes like the way it's presented. then goes and shows it to Kress and he goes around. Remember what Mellon said, these pictures look better when you're here. He's enthusiastic.

48:03He's saying, this is the best this and this is the greatest that and look what this is. It's so rare. And something Duveen knew, he says once a collector had his heart set on a picture, it irritates him to have other people discourage him from buying it because Kress has a professional advisor saying, you know, this is the exact same thing. Like this is how crazy these psychological tendencies are, right? These are like very smart, accomplished people. They have people saying, you're not, you're acting irrational. then instead of them saying you're right they get mad at the person that's telling him the act irrationally and so what he does crest bought the picture and all the others had he bought the pictures directly from goldman he would have saved millions of dollars that's insane he would have saved millions of dollars but we wouldn't have had the warm feelings of owning a lot of duveen's duveen was a brand the exact same collection in goldman's hands transferred to duveen that same exact collection is now worth millions and millions of dollars more, where you have one of the most advanced entrepreneurs of that time willing to pay millions and millions of dollars more because it's now no longer the Goldman collection.

49:03It is a Duveen collection. And this happened over and over again in Duveen's business, and it still happens today. How did it come about that the great money men of this era gradually came to accept Duveen's simple, unworldly view that art was more important than money. Duveen had taught them the idea that art was priceless, and when you pay for the infinite with the finite, you are indeed getting a bargain. His clients felt better when they paid a lot. That's something that Munger repeats over and over again in Port Charlie's Almanac, the fact that price is a signal, high price is a signal for high quality.

49:39They felt better. They felt better when they paid a lot. It gave them the assurance of acquiring rarity. A rival dealer of Duveen, so a lesser dealer, had bought a bust for $22 ,000. The dealer needed money and offered it for $25 ,000, thinking that it would tempt his customer into a quick purchase. The customer was turned off. The moderateness of the price was fatal. The moderateness of the price was fatal. Find me a better one, he said. Duveen would have asked a quarter of a million dollars and got it. The same thing happened when another dealer offered a room, so an entire room, all the furniture, all the bus, all the paintings, right?

50:25A dealer offered a room to William Randolph Hearst for $50 ,000. Hearst spurned it. Duveen offered it to him later. Deveen offered it to Hearst later for $200 ,000 and Hearst bought it with gratitude. A dealer tried to sell him a rug for $15 ,000. He was used to paying $60 ,000 for a clock and $100 ,000 for necklaces and was suspicious of anything that you could get for a mere $15 ,000. Get me something better was his response. And Deveen didn't just get his client something better. he got them the best. Duveen built his entire business around the best. And that is where I'll leave it. Highly recommend reading both pieces, and I'll also link to the 48 Laws of Power.

51:16You'll find all those links down below, and they're all available at founderspodcast .com. That is 339 books down, 1 ,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. If you think about it, the episode that you just heard is a great illustration of this this quote that is in this book on Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanac, where it says that there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. Because just like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett talk about in that book, actually, how much they read biographies, how much time they spend reading history and using history, learning from history as a form of leverage, you know, Larry Gagosian, who starts his career, you know, 40 years after Joseph DeVine dies by his own admission, reads every single biography that he could get his hands on about Joseph DeVine, and essentially patterns his career.

52:00They are remarkably similar when you read about both of them. And Gagosian's privately held company is rumored to be doing over a billion dollars a year in revenue. And so a few weeks ago, when Napoleon told you and I that it is profitable to study the campaigns of the great masters, I think Gagosian would agree, obviously Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett would agree, and most of the people that you and I talk about on this podcast, they talk over and over again. I've given you a thousand examples like that. But I really liked what Napoleon said, that he thought it was important to read over and over and over again, Not just read once, not just listen to one podcast episode, but read over and over again the campaigns of the greats.

52:34And so what I'm trying to build with Founders Notes is really an echo of this idea that Napoleon talked about, that history must be critically analyzed to discover why successes were obtained and why defeats were inflicted, and that the teaching of strategies built around history. So I'm going to, something that, well, first of all, the entire idea from Founders Notes came from making Founders Podcasts, right? For years, since 2018, I've been putting every single highlight of the books I read and every single note on the highlights into this app called Readwise. I've been obsessed with it. I talk about it over again.

53:09I use it to make the podcast. I've said before I couldn't make the podcast without it. That's not true. I could make the podcast without it. The podcast would be half as good. I don't know, three quarters as good as it is because of this constant repetition of these ideas. When you hear me in all these episodes, like, oh, that is like this, and this person thought like this, and oh, this is very similar to episode 127 or whatever that is, that comes from this constant rereading what Napoleon said, read over and over again the campaigns of the great masters. And so the very idea to even build a product around this came because so many people for years were saying, hey, I would love to have access to your notes and highlights.

53:49I want access to your notes and highlights. How can we do that? How can we do that? And for years, I said, no, no, no, no. finally reached out to the founders of Readwise, both fans of the podcast. And I was like, hey, I want to build a product where people can see exactly what I see. So if you sign up at foundersnotes .com, you will see my entire notebook. I really do truly believe with every bone in my body is the most valuable notebook in the world for founders because I don't think anyone else has been as psychopathically obsessed with this idea. I've been sitting in a room essentially by myself for eight years, reading hundreds of thousands of pages and trying to document everything I learn.

54:23Take that personal curriculum and externalize it to the world, and that is Founders Podcast. And what I consider Founders Podcast is, Founders Podcast is essentially a free trial, right, for Founders Notes. Founders Notes takes everything that you and I are learning on the podcast and just takes it to another level. And so as I'm still in the early days of developing this, I've only been developing for a few months, I've purposely kept the price lower, if you really think about it, because it's built only for people that are already running successful companies. You know, I say this over and over again, do not invest in subscription unless you're already running a successful company.

54:57The price should be immaterial to you. As far as the value that you get, the price is missing a couple zeros. Now, as I continue to build out different features, obviously the price will go up in the future. But for now, if you obviously, if you sign up now, you're locked in, the price stays the same. You essentially get all the future, you get all the future features. There we go. Future features for free. I am also doing something for the first time ever, which I mentioned at the beginning, because I'm just a big believer, like Michael Jordan said, that successful people listen. Those that don't listen don't last long.

55:27And I have a bunch of people saying, hey, I would love a one -time option. So for a limited time, I'm going to test this out. My plan is to make heavy, heavy investments. I think Founders Notes can be this giant platform. The way I view it, over time, I think it'll be an ever -increasing, giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. I think it's the platform and the business that will continue to allow me to make and distribute the podcast for free for the rest of my life. And so I'm not just stopping where it is now, even though I will continue to add my notes and highlights to it forever because it's embedded in my workflow.

56:01Like if you already have a subscription to Founders Notes and you already know this, you've had all my notes and highlights on the episode I just did way before the episode comes out because I have to use it to make the episode. It is embedded in my workflow. So that'll never stop as long as I'm doing the podcast, right? And so the ability to read all of my notes, all of my highlights, to search by keyword, to go to the actual books. You can read it. And some people are doing this every day. I'm getting a bunch of messages where they're almost like reading it like the morning newspaper. They'll go and pick a different book every day.

56:32They'll read the notes and highlights. Some cases they wind up buying the book because they want more context. They go back and re -listen to the episodes. It's really fascinating how people are using it so far. Because again, the way to think about it is just an ever -increasing, giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. The podcast tries to do that. And the magic of the podcast is it does that when your eyes are busy, right? When you're driving, when you're commuting, when you're working out, when you're walking, whatever the case is.

56:57Founders Notes is for when your eyes are not busy. It's this continuation of this, again, ever -increasing, giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. And so I've already been building out other features. So what I want to try to do is because I want to maintain, I want to keep investing more and more time and money into this thing. I'm going to test out something that was requested by a lot of people right so for a limited time a one -time payment option then I'm going to use that money that comes in and then reinvest into more features because so right now I have two screens up uh I know you can't see this but I have two screens so I have founders notice as is right now right where you can search your highlights when you sign up you have this big box at the top so search highlights anything that you can think of a name an idea a keyword it goes in there highlight feed which is this what Morgan Housel of a friend of mine and also the author of Psychology of Money calls the smart Twitter feed.

57:52Actually, he heard me say that, and then he started using it, and he said that is what it is. So the highlight feed is essentially like a smart Twitter feed because it gives you a random – it presents highlights and notes from all of everything that I have in the database, but in a random order. So I just press on it, and it shows me the first thing is a highlight note from the autobiography of Christian Dior. The next one is the autobiography of Sam Zell. Then you have Ed Catmull's autobiography, the founder of Pixar. Then you have the book I did on Christopher Nolan. Then you have Mark Twain, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Walt Disney, the Dynasty book, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Greatest Families I did a few months ago.

58:36Tiger Woods, James Dyson, Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren again. this is uh warren buffett that that's munger this is a guy that sold his company to buffett this is van eva bush it goes on and on i think you get the idea um and so what that does is like the i feel the highlight speed is like a prompt for your own thinking right it's like okay i there's nothing i really want to search today i don't really want to uh there's not a specific book i have in mind let me see if i can just prompt my own thinking and just scroll through there and see what comes to mind you can also do the books you click on books that's pretty obvious like it's i think self -explanatory.

59:10It's going to have all the books by the title. Some of them have, you know, handful of highlights. Some have a bunch. You can usually take five, 10 minutes at the most to read all my notes and highlights on a specific book. Now, the other screen I have up is, well, like I just said, I'm not stopping there. And so the other screen I have up is a feature that I've been testing for a while where it's a chat interface. So instead of searching by keywords, you just say, like today, what I was searching, it's like, because I've been testing it nonstop. Tell me about Edwin Land. Why was he important?

59:38And what did he do? And the connections that it makes, it pulled 50 different highlights. Oh, I forgot to mention that the transcripts for every single episode. It's also, you can search through that as well, which is incredible. But it pulled 50 different highlights, right, to answer this question. And it gives me like nine to ten bullet points. And then so I'm using it as I do research for the podcast, constantly testing it. But I'm also like asking questions. Like, hey, I'm having trouble deciding if I should sell my company or not. What advice do you have that will help me make this decision?

1:00:10Then it gives you a bunch of interesting ideas. And I said, hey, have any of history's greatest founders regretted selling their company? And then it continues on, pulling and then synthesizing dozens of highlights and gives you an idea of the different perspectives. So in this case, it gives me an idea from Michael Bloomberg, from Ted Turner, from the founder of Trader Joe's, from Henry Singleton, from Jack Ma, from Warren Buffett. all that from me just asking, hey, have any of history's greatest founders regretted selling their company? And if you use any of these new AI platforms, you know, it's like an idiot savant.

1:00:44You know, maybe half the time it's an idiot and the other half the time it's a savant. But this is only going to get better and better. And even right now in its current incarnation, it's already making connections that I even missed. So I'm testing this every day. It'll be out to every single person has a subscription for two founders notes relatively soon, you know, maybe a few weeks, something like that. But I'm not stopping there. I really want to organize around this idea that this is an ever -increasing, giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders.

1:01:13And so I'm already building out resources where maybe you don't want to search at all. This is something I want. So everything I'm describing is something I want. So I was like, hey, I want a collection of ideas organized by theme across every book and episode. So instead of learning by person, right, or me searching for something or even having a chat interface, give me one page, two pages, three pages of how all of history's greatest founders thought about topics like marketing, recruiting, distribution, management. How did they hire? How did they fire? This is going to take an unbelievably long time to do.

1:01:45It's going to require a lot of investment. I'm obviously going to hire several people to help me with this. But I wanted to give you a little sneak peek because again, I always think about one, I've already demonstrated over and over again, like the collective intelligence that is in for like the audience of the people listening to founders is incredible. And so that advantage that I have of being able to tap into that becomes your advantage because then it's like positive feedback loop. I get great ideas and then I apply them to founder's notes and you benefit as well. So hopefully that made sense.

1:02:15I swear, I was like, I'm going to sit down instead of talking about this for like 30 minutes or whatever. I don't even know how long I've been talking. I know sometimes at the end of episodes, I go, you know, I kind of go off the rails a little bit. I swear, I was like, I'm going to sit down and, you know, two minutes just tell them, hey, hey, you have a lifetime option now or a one -time option now. If you want this, here's how to get it. Really simple. And then I wind up going, I'm fascinated by this stuff. I'm just fascinated. I was kind of like a skeptic a little bit. And then I start like an AI skeptic.

1:02:48And then I realized, oh, no. The connections that, the benefit that I have, I have this weird thing where it's like, because I'm so enmeshed in all of this and I read and reread every day and I have for almost eight years, these connections just come tumbling out of my mouth you hear it if i go on other people's podcasts you hear it on this podcast you hear it if you've ever spoken to me in person and it's like oh everybody's gonna have this and it makes me excited because it only makes my ability to make the podcast better and again just organize it's like hey i want to be really easy to interface with if you follow me on social media by the way please if you don't already david center at linkedin at founders podcast everywhere else uh everything like i'm gonna be easy to face with.

1:03:26It's like, you're going to follow these accounts or you're going to listen to this podcast because you want to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. That's it. And you know, I don't have to belabor that point. You're smart enough to understand why that's so important to do. And all I can think about is like, this is going to be a giant platform. Right now, founders and co -founders and some executives and a bunch of investors are using it. I think entire companies are going to use this. And so if that mission sounds interesting to you and you want to help, a really easy way to help sign up either for an annual subscription or one time.

1:03:57And you can do that at foundersnotes .com. That is founders with an S. Foundersnotes .com. Obviously, everything I talk about is at founderspodcast .com too. So you can go through there. But foundersnotes .com. Thank you very much. I've been talking too much. I'll talk to you very soon.