A conversation on focus and finding your life's work

26:04And this is why I read Twitter. I'm like, these people, sorry, I'm not going to read that tweet. I'll just listen to what Steve Jobs said. He probably has better advice than this random fucking guy on Twitter. And so somebody goes, hey, I have a great idea for you. Have you ever thought about hiring other people to read the books for you?

26:25like that's not what i'm doing it for i'm not taking the easy way the heart i love what jerry said the hard way is the right way and so i told them a story and this is the line that this is my response to this and this is a line that i say it's like you don't work all your life to do what you love to not do it and all i know is that person doesn't have a mission they don't have a love they're not that's fine i most people never do but i don't go around it's the people about what they should be doing it's it's the weird thing where the source of this advice comes from and i remember reading about charles schultz the guy i was a fucking kid and i'd read charlie brown and peanuts every christmas we'd watch charlie brown's uh christmas yeah so i think he came out in the 1960s and so i was like i'm gonna read his biography and then you read it and it's like crazy he's like the guy ran you know i'm gonna these are approximately right he ran the uh the comic ship for like let's say 40 or 50 years he drew drew came up with the idea penciled everything drew everything every single strip over 50 years i think it was 17 000 different individual ones that he did uh he had already had one planned so when he dies this is the last no one can ever take it over when i die this is what you put out like when i die this is the last one that's ever published and people would go through it if i remember correctly living somewhere in california to come to our studio at the time he's a much older man he's like 67 years old and they're like well who's doing this he's like what do you mean who's doing this he's like me and they couldn't these people touring the street couldn't wrap their head like well could you hire somebody else to do it so then you could take a like a vacation or you could take some time off and that was his line he's like you couldn't understand why they were asking him that and he's like but you don't work your entire life to do what you love to not do it that's why i think thinking a long time you Most of this is trial and error.

28:12Some people find what they love to do really early. I think of Kobe Bryant, the episodes I've done on him. He's 12 years old. He would tell you, I'm going to be the best basketball player of all time. No one finds what they love to do at 12. I'm working on this Michael Dell episode right now. You could see from 12 years old, the guy was a moneymaker, he's obsessed with computers. There's a part in the story that's great where he takes apart an IBM and he has this realization. He says, wait a minute, IBM's selling the computer, but they don't make any of the components. And you just see as a little kid, there might be an opportunity here that he's going to pursue later on.

28:38and he gets in trouble in class because he's not paying attention to class. He's just reading computer magazines. He's telling you what his life is going to be. You just have to listen. And every single person has something like that. They just don't fucking listen. They don't listen to themselves. What does it feel like when you find it? Because you said earlier you were 32 before you kind of stumbled on it. And then five years after that, was it like actually the full -time thing that you could do to earn a living and much more? what what was the change in feeling of what does it feel like to do the thing that you love to you unbelievable relief like a weight off your shoulders that like i can't describe it um and then from there that doesn't mean like oh now i wake up you know that's like i'm kind of a tortured person like so there was a clip of me on another podcast just went out and the person's like you know the podcast is good if the podcast the host looks sleep deprived i'm like that's as As good as I can look.

29:34Okay. Cause that's like my sleep score on my eight sleep right now is like 60. It's not, I'm not doing well because I am completely obsessed with what I'm doing. And I, you know, it's weird. Like people keep telling me, it's like, you shouldn't be obsessed with this. Like low status. I was like, you're wrong. I don't. Time status now. I don't even hear it. Cause I'm like, I know exactly who I am and I know exactly what I want to do. And we talk about this. We have mutual friends that like, they're kind of so obsessed to their detriment about like what will somebody else think of me or like if i do x well like i'm worried about the public perception or what my friends will think me i don't think about that at all there's a great line the reason that uh like people are surprised with some of the people that i want to meet that are still living and so i have like you know a list and in the top three of that list is getting jimmy iveen we mean you share a love for that defiant ones defiant ones documentary last dance defiant like those are the best documentaries i watch them over and over again and jimmy nivine has this great line he's just like when you're running after something he goes they do this great editing job where it shows horses on a racetrack and it goes back and forth between that and jimmy and jimmy's like you know why they put fucking blinders on those horses and uh he goes he goes because if they look left or right they'll miss a step and humans should have that too when you're chasing after something don't look left don't look right go and that's why it's like i wake up every day We talked about this when we did that live show in New York City.

31:00It's obvious if you read the books that the great entrepreneurs, once they find what they have, they love to do, low to zero introspection. Now they think deeply about their business, but they wake up every morning. They're not wondering, what should I do today? They know exactly what they're doing. And to find that, for me to know I'm going to wake up and do this for as long as I have a voice, I have eyes, like hopefully I have life. Like that's an unbelievable relief. Now, because it's your mission and because I'm also super competitive and kind of a little crazy uh our mutual friend daniel ak has the greatest the greatest line he told me he's just like one of the reasons i like you so much is because you're like uh an llm trained on history's greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned it's like yeah obviously like some people are not gonna like that and that's fine then you you kind of torture i did this episode on jensen wong and he has a great thing where he doesn't like to fire people he's like i'd rather to torture them into greatness and then you realize when you how he goes about his life.

31:53He actually tortured himself into greatness. You know, even this is in recent few years, they tell a great story. Blowout quarter. Company's doing incredible. And he walks into the meeting and he goes, every morning I wake up, look myself in the mirror and say, why do you suck so much? We've heard that a few times from some exceptional people. They're all like this. They're all like this. Say one click more about this anti -business, you call that anti -business billionaire so that I would get lots of these on Instagram or whatever. That's not why I did it though. Because that's what I believe them to be.

32:28I like, I appreciate that you thought it was clickbaity. I'm not trying to clickbait anybody. Although, although Todd Graves and his $10 billion chicken finger dream is probably good. That's a banger episode. What I mean by anti, and it really should be anti -business as usual billionaires. Okay. So, and again, I mind my own business. I don't care if people say, I want to wake up and all I'm going to do is take a pile of money and make it into a bigger pile of money and they love it. cool. I have no opinion what you're doing. The people I most admire, the people that I'm trying to powder myself off of is these people where it's like they have so they're so obsessed about the product quality.

33:04Right. What? And there's three people in that video. It's Yvonne Chouinard, James Dyson and Steve Jobs. Right. One guy's making outdoor equipment. One guy's making high technology and one guy's making fucking vacuum cleaners. OK, but there's the exact same approach where it's like the the reasons company exists and Jobs has said this multiple times. where the only reason to start a company is because the product. And then like you, so the company needs to assemble all the resources, but the product is, we exist to make the product. And then of course, he talks about profitability a lot because the profits allow you to keep making the product.

33:36Everything starts from the product. So everything I do, the reason I still do every single social media post, the reason I answer all my emails, the reason I don't have an assistant, the reason I don't have an editor is because I'm trying to make the world's best product. I feel my podcast is a handmade artisanal, but it just happens to be like technology and infinite leverage. You know, the same amount of work is going to go into it if one person listens or 10 million people listen. And I'm trying to build what drives me and I think annoys most of the people that are around me because I can be like pretty fucking stubborn about this.

34:09Is that I want to make the best product in the world based on what I like for the best people in the world. the very first time we talked you kind of and this is when i had like i think like 3 000 people listening back then and you kind of nailed it on our first talk you're like oh you you built it like you're going to win by default you built this pulling mechanism in the founder ecosystem like by the time people try to do it now they're going to try to cat they'll never be able to catch you but i it's really important to me as a competitive person that i build the best product for the best people in the world i am not interested i've told this story before i know mr beast jimmy's he's been very nice to me.

34:45He tweets about the podcast. It's very nice. He's invited me to go to like his headquarters and he's like, you can use our studio record here. We'll help you with the script. Jimmy's, there's no script. We'll give you data analytics people. I don't even know how many fucking people listen to the podcast. I don't look at analytics. I build what I want for me. So the reason I have to edit it is because when this is done, I listen to it. It's the Stephen King thing. I am not just the writer. I am the first reader. That's what Stephen King said. Quentin Tarantino says, when I, people are like, when you make a movie, do you have an audience of mine?

35:15He's like, yeah, me. I'm making it for me. What is your own measure of good or great for your own product? That I like it. But why? Like, what is it about whatever that episode was or the Todd Graves episode or, like, if I stack ranked, there are 50 most recent episodes based on the quality, your own perception of their quality. What's different about number one versus number 40? like what's more true in number one than number 40 like what is the measure of goodness i've been thinking about this recently and um it it applies specifically to the fact that i'm covering people that build companies and what i realized is like i've never been around impressive people in my entire life right we talked about this the very first time i was on your podcast no one in my family even graduated high school much as college so it's like i never saw examples of great people and then you add to the fact that my father like i'm the son of a cuban immigrant i grew up meeting people that risked their lives and came over here on a raft.

36:09And it's like kind of weird. Hey, like you, you have like, we both have kids. We love them more than life itself. Like I would die for my kids. Everybody would die for their kids. And it's like, things were so bad in your country that you risked your 14 year old son's life and put them on a boat. Like how bad does have to be? And I'm like, well, let's go to the Miami beach. How many people, how many Americans are getting on a raft and going, that's a one way trip. So that tells you something is very special about where we live and very, very bad about where they're coming from. And what I realized is like not being, not being an educated family, parents never having money, being terrified, growing up terrified, being a loser.

36:45It's like entrepreneurship is a miracle. Capitalism is a miracle where I meet some of these other people where they're like, they might be the son or the grandson of somebody really wealthy. And you'll find like a weird high correlation for like almost like socialistic, uh, like perspectives. And I was like, this is so crazy to me. Just like my wife's from Columbia. Like no one, no one in South America is like that made it to America is like, no, I want to go back there. Like you don't even understand what you have. And so now what I realized about this is like one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is, yeah, I like to read the most unbroken hobby I've ever had.

37:20Yeah. I legitimately think podcasts are miracles. You, we were at this conference together and you said something really funny. You walk over and every time I'm at another table and I'm, I'm like, most of the people will listen to the podcast, but if not, I would grab their phone and you saw me installing you had a quip, you're like, I wish I could find a way to make money for David's ability to turn every conversation back to podcasting. It's like 14 really successful capital allocators and me. I don't even know what the hell I was doing there. The root cause is like, I really believe entrepreneurship is a miracle.

37:47The fact that anybody could say, hey, I have an idea that makes somebody else's life better. Because that's the best, that's all business is. Business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better. No one can stop me from doing it to delivering value to other people and then if i deliver the more value i deliver to the higher number of people that generates wealth what imagine going back to you know i might do this episode on genghis khan like the 1100s and saying like you could be the richest person in the world and you could you invented a button and you know you press that button and anything is delivered to that or like any other sam walton i told the story i was in my beach marine on a friend's boat and i was like that boat's huge who owns that boat and i look it up it's like sam walton's niece and i'm like this guy i had like this this great experience i'm looking at this giant boat it's probably i don't know 300 million dollars some crazy number like that and i'm like and it came from your uncle just realizing hey uh if i just deliver everyday low prices again another simple idea taken very seriously uh everyday low prices no one's going to beat us on pricing so how do you work backwards from that idea.

38:49There's all kinds of technologies, logistics, there's challenge, all this other stuff is very difficult. The idea is simple, but the implementation is very difficult. And look what you can generate. And people shit on Walmart. I had to shop at Walmart when I grew up. Like, I'm not shopping there now, but like, it did a service for my family. And for millions of people, it's like, they destroyed mainstream businesses. It's like, we couldn't afford to not shop at Walmart. It's a miracle that he gave. And what's the byproduct of that? by making, I don't know how many people do you think shop at Walmart?

39:18Billions by now? A lot. Billions. Everyone at some point? Yeah. He deserves that money. Good. I'm glad he got that money. I mean, he wrote a lot in his books about the relationship between simplicity and mastery. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's the theme of our conversation. Like it shows up over and over and over and over again. That conference you're referencing with the capital allocators, you know, you said, I don't know why I'm there. Well, I know why you were there. Like I wanted you to go because I had a theory, which was correct, which is that the people there were going to be more interested in you and your project than, you know, the next guy's like latest great investment.

39:50And I think the reason for that is that everyone recognizes a truth in this basic message of the power of finding one's mission and then pursuing it forever. And I would just love to hear you riff a little bit on what that has taken for you in the last, I guess we met in 2022 so called three and a half four years ago something like that in that period of time which is when this thing has really taken off what are your drops of you know glue or like what are the things that you've done had to do to make this thing better because i just want to keep bringing this point to life that like once you find the thing what kinds of things does it then take to make the thing great so what have those things been for the last you know four years i I don't even know if I can, I have a good answer to that question.

40:41Other than there is something that I think is two other lines for Monger. Again, I go back to him where it's like, he says, intense interest in any subject is necessary for like to master it. He has a better line. I'm messing that up. And then he says, follow your natural drift. You know, we talk about this all the time where when I describe you to other people, I'm like, well, you have to understand Patrick is doing a best, like the best episodes all day long, every day, like 10 times a day. He just doesn't record them. He's just naturally curious. He will, he just want, he's curious around other people in the way that I am frankly not.

41:11Right. I'm interested in books. I don't, I can't like deal with, you know, people. It's why I work alone in general. Like obviously I have a handful of very close people, but I just think, I don't know why there's a great line. So I just did this Ken and Griffin episode and I made the point in the episode I think is really important is like, I'm not interested in timely. I'm interested in timeless. And so there's no book on Ken. There's a bunch of great stories spread throughout the internet that I use, the source material. And then I listened to every single thing I could find, all these talks.

41:39And most of the interviews he does is like, what do people want to know? What do you think about the market? What do you think about this president? But I did find, like, he had this hour -long talk at Yale. Highly recommend listening to it. Where it's like more like almost like an oral biography, like more timeless principles. And then I transcribed that. And then, you know, I listened to, I don't know, 30 other hours of him talking. And I maybe only made like five or 10 other notes, something small. But something he said is very fascinating. He's like, for reasons I don't quite understand. Since I was in the third grade, I've been obsessed with the stock market.

42:11How does it work? How do you make money? What are these problems you can solve? In that line, for reasons I don't understand. I truly believe that Jeff Bezos nailed it when he said, you don't pick your passions, your passions choose you. You don't choose your passions, your passions choose you. I was not like, you know, at five years old wondering like, what's a good hobby for self -development in my future? Maybe I should read. I just read. I told you the first time we talked, like my mom, before she died, she said I would read the back of cereal boxes. I have no idea. And so all I do is like I'm just intensely interested in everything that I'm learning.

42:46And then I like the craftsmanship. I heard there's an idea that Ken has that, again, I think is an entire reason that Founders is valuable. It's a podcast. He says you really want to know what's going on in your business. You want to sell your competitors. But you really should be grabbing ideas from other businesses far afield from your industry. And he told the story about a way to mitigate his risk. And he got an idea from Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco and Citadel, very different businesses, right? What was the idea? Okay, so I'll explain this. Make sure I don't forget that because I'm in the middle of the weave.

43:18So he uses the term, I think they were like a B player in risk. They weren't doing well in risk. And he was still in Chicago at the time. And he goes and visits Saudi Aramco. And he sees this giant screen on a wall in their headquarters there. And it's like 30 feet long, 10 feet wide. And it has all the most important data. Not like 100 things, but like where the ships are, how many barrels of oil we're producing, like the handful of metrics. And they just look at it all day. Yeah, they're distillation. Exactly. What's going to happen? Like you look at it all day, like then you're going to improve it.

43:48Right? And he's like, oh, what if we took all the important risk metrics and put a giant wall in our headquarters? And he said he took them from like, you know, a B player to like one of the best in their field. and his whole advice was like you really need to be taking ideas that are far afield of like your own industry and you know that's what you do when you read a book like i'm not going to build walmart i'm not going to build ferrari i'm not building apple i'm building my podcast but there's all these ideas that i can take from them so as i've exposed myself to that i just find like little ideas that i can use in the craftsmanship of the product and one of the main ideas goes back to your question about the anti -billion anti -business billionaires the reason i say and i do this same book over and over again.

44:26So I've done it on episode 25, episode 200, episode 300, and it'll be episode 400. It's James Dyson's first autobiography called Against the Odds. It took him 14 years, 5 ,127 prototypes, until he got the world's first cyclonic vacuum cleaner that he owned 100 % of that was up to his standards. And so all I'm trying to figure out is just like, can I make something that I would listen to? I don't know any other way. And so last week, I actually had to republish an old episode, which is still a great episode. But the reason was because I read a book where I found the person I did not like, and I don't want to spend any time in his mind, so I'm not going to make an episode on him.

45:03Because not only did I have to finish reading the book, which I threw across the fucking room, but then I have to spend another, you know, probably 30. You're reading this one together, if it's the one I think. Yes, and then I spent another 30 hours making the podcast. I don't want to be like this person. I'm looking for role models because I didn't have any when I grew up. And then I read a fabulous book that me and you both read, Pappy Land by Wright Thompson. Excellent writing. Great writer, too. Unbelievable. But I couldn't figure out how to make an episode on it because it's really, like, it's about a family business.

45:32It's really about a family. It's really about the relationship between a father and son. And I'm very interested in that relationship. I think it's the most powerful relationship in the world, which I got heckled at one of our live shows when I said that. Why did you get heckled? I don't remember. They were just because I said it was the most. It's not discounting the relationship between a father and a daughter or mother and daughter. It's just like, it's clearly something that pops up in these biographies over and over again, all the time. And Wright Thompson has great writing about, you know, relationship that the grandson had with the father and the father with the, it was just a lot of family dynamics.

46:01Excellent book. But I was like, this isn't good enough. The book was, but I can't make anything good enough. So I'm not putting anything out. Nothing. I'm not going to put out something I wouldn't listen to. One of my favorite things that happens with you is someone will say something that just bothers you. and sets you off and gets you going on this stream of lessons that we're talking about today that you've learned that you've shared with people what other things that you see people do bother you the most in business you have a great line on this like you talk to way more people i do and i'll ask you about like oh is this person this person reached out and you're like oh no he's a casual again i don't care what people do because they're i know because i study fucking people's lives for a living.

46:43Like so much of what shapes you is like happens when you're so young and you can't even describe why you're interested in what you're interested in. But I think the only thing that bothers me is like, there's a great line, uh, that I mentioned in the Ovitz episode that, uh, mediocrity is, mediocrity is invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. And so much of the people that you meet, so many of the products that you deal with, so many of the people, It's just like they're casual. They have a casual affectation about them that I find personally disgusting. And I'm not, again, it's not like a ground judging people.

47:17It's going to make me sound like a terrible human being. It's just like, it's a way for me to filter who I want to spend time with. And my favorite people to spend time with, like they're all, they all work in vastly different things, but they take what they do so seriously. And it's not a selfish thing. They're making something that they feel makes somebody else's life better. So the only thing I can think of is like, I don't like the casualness. And then I'm not a fan personally of like the over financialization of business. I think a lot of people aren't starting companies. They're creating financial instruments, which is fine.

47:51But I think you're going to realize like just these kind of people just don't have enough experience and they haven't read enough biographies or realize like you think what you want is money, but what you really want is meaning. You're going to get the money and then you're going to be like, why am I so unhappy? because you're human and this happens over and over again. That doesn't mean people don't like money and that obviously solves a lot of benefits, but you're gonna feel a lot better. If you think about the reasons that people sell a business, typically it's either because they have a chance to make a tremendous amount of money or some amount of money, or it's because they're tired of the thing, of the business, therefore of the product, of the whole endeavor.

48:27Why do you think that the money thing has become, I would think about it as like a false idol or something, Like it has become the unit of interest, of obsession, of showing off, of status, of all this kind of stuff. What's your theory for why this seems to have inflected like so crazily in the last couple of years? Well, now we have like a giant mirror into everybody else's life. We never had like this way. Like think of like one good thing about decentralization of media is like there's no gatekeepers. That's also the bad thing in the sense of like now there's somebody just put me onto crazy rich Asians of TikTok.

49:02and it is some of the most i haven't caught that one oh we should i'll send you some clips and um and it's some of the most disgusting behavior like one lady uh is i guess her parents own she lives in california but her parents own one of the largest like cloud computing companies in china another one is like some giant maybe even like uh government collusion in singapore or something like that. But it's like all the videos, all the videos are just straight consumption. It's look what I got. Me and my, and they do this thing where it's like me and my mom went shopping today and we spent 25 ,000 at Van Cleef and then we bought a Hermé thing and we did this.

49:40And it's just like, this is disgusting behavior because you shouldn't take pride in what you consume. That doesn't take skill or talent. You should take pride in what you built. That is the most selfish thing you could possibly do. And I'm not a guest, like dude, like I'm building the goal here is to you know to change the trajectory of my entire family tree I'm going to build generational wealth not so my kids can do that shit that'll never happen but to try to teach them it's like man the wealth came because you made somebody else's life better you dedicate it it's a it's a selfless act even if you love it and this idea that like we are so I understand that it's like so then young people see that and they're like oh that I need to figure out how to make money.

50:22And I was like this, like, I was so embarrassed when I was younger that I had to like, how much I had to work or like, I didn't have a car or like all this other stuff that happened to me. I remember being deeply, deeply embarrassed and then switching from embarrassment to like, almost, uh, like relentless self -belief that like, I am better than that person. Like I remember going, there was this kid that lived close to like, went to the same school as me. It was a public high school, but I remember the crazy story I heard where like, I think he and again this was like it's funny when you think of wealth but like his dad owned like I don't know like 100 dominoes or something but I just remember they used to take a helicopter to lunch and I'm like what and I remember him bragging about the car his dad bought him like 120 ,000 car he'd park in front of the country club which obviously I would never even be able to get into the country club and I remember flipping and I was like I'm better than that kid like I'm smarter than him I work harder like I'm gonna fuck him up and it turned into like this competitive like i will prove to you that like you what was handed to you i will get myself um and there was like some kind of weird drive behind that but so when i see people like that where it's just like you're glorifying the wrong thing we're like if you think about there's this great talk that steve jobs gave when he came back to apple and he's talking about apple spends all this money on marketing you would never know it it sucks all your marketing sucks he's like who are the best what is the best example of marketing and he talked about nike and he's like what does nike do he doesn't talk about like the shoe is has a bunch of six bubbles or whatever they They glorify great athletes.

51:50They glorify great achievement. And so that's why he did the crazy ones ad. And so I think that it's like, to some degree, what I'm trying to do is like the reason I make these clips on the anti -business billionaires, the reason I spend so much time talking about these people and the craftsmanship and talk about this guy that is literally a craftsmanship with his chicken fingers is because I, to some degree, I'm like, I want to celebrate these people saying, hey, I'm going to dedicate my life to building the best possible product I can and to make somebody else's life better. And I'll talk all day long about that and not about the fact that, you know, I'm building a yacht or I'm doing all this other stuff.

52:25Like, you can have all these things, but, like, what are you actually proud of? You're not proud of your consumption. What are you proud of? Anybody can go to the store and buy that. Not everybody can build a truly great product. Why are the people that are doing it that way so much better at marketing than like if you read a marketing book and, you know, tried to go market your product or had some marketing person at your company in charge of how the world hears about you? I'm thinking about the Red Bull founder, Estee Lauder. Like this seems to Steve Jobs, of course. This shows up over and over again that not only is the ability to create an incredible product.

52:59God, I love that line of mediocrity is invisible until passion shows up to. It exposes it. To expose it. Such a, oh, I won't forget that one. But the same thing seems to happen. So that's the product side. The same thing seems to happen from all these same people on the marketing side. What is the flame there that's behind that? Like why, what have you learned about that side of business studying all these people where they're not only responsible for the product, but also for how the world engages with it and hears about it? Again, I'd go back to those three, Yvonne Chouinard, James Dyson, and Steve Jobs.

53:31I think they have all these lessons in that. Yvan Chouinard calls it nonfiction marketing. He's like, if you have a shit product, like you have to like dress it up. You have to put, you have to have a mascot. You have to hire these expensive advertising companies. You know, you have to make up all this stuff. It's all fiction. But if you just, in his thing, he didn't even want to be a billionaire. He just like, hey, I'm going to, again, he built a product for himself. He was a mountaineer. He was, he spends all his time outdoors. He fishes, he skis, he climbs mountains. He does all these super risky sports.

54:03All the gear I'm using sucks. I'm going to make the gear that I use. And guess what? If I make the best gear, then everybody's like, where'd you get that? Oh, that's good too. And it takes - His best friend. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that'll compound, again, if you don't sell after five years or four years or do anything that puts in jeopardy the durability of your company. And so I think about James Dyson. He has this great line, and I'll paraphrase. But how he wants to spend his time, he wants to invent. He wants to be as close as possible to the design of the product, the manufacturing of the product.

54:31he will be on the line of the product even in the 70s right but what he realized is like after he's done making the product he's the one that went around the world and sold the product because he's like the creator is the only person that can explain what went into the process of the thinking behind it and then with his full heart he's something like that with the full heart and complete belief in what he's saying foisted upon other people at a high price because he knows hey yeah this you can go and buy a vacuum cleaner for 40 bucks or 600 guess what my house i have a dyson it's the best vacuum cleaner it just is and i'm asking you to pay 10x for you can get you know anywhere else why and i can tell you what went into it the blood sweat and tears i kind of reject this like purely rational like the way people like they they try to analyze business in a rational way which is weird to me because humans are nothing but irrational and they give money for reasons they can't describe.

55:25And some of this, like, why would somebody pay? You know, I love this, this thing that, uh, you see with like Enzo Ferrari, you guys did a great post about this when you did a Ferrari episode and it showed like the racetrack, the test track. And they're like, there's a test track. And then literally Enzo Ferrari's house, he built the racetrack around his house. Right. It's just like, why do people come from all over the world to meet this guy, right? And to buy a car that, you know, is a hundred times, 10 times, 20, 30 times more expensive than just another car that could go fast. There's a story behind it.

55:59And I think that's where like you see the people that love the product so much, they put so much of their life's energy into it that then they can explain very clearly why it's valuable. The reason I'm not trying to be like obnoxious when I ask people to listen to the podcast. And if they don't, I tell them to take out their phone. I heard this great thing. And this is another idea I got from Paul Graham. We said in the early days of Stripe, they call it the Collison installation where they're like, oh, the other YC companies are like, I'd love their new Stripe. And they'd be like, oh, great. Give me your laptop.

56:27And they would install it right then. And so I saw that idea. Great idea. I'm going to do this center installation. And so I've done this over and over. I don't even know. I probably installed it. I don't know. Not joking, like 500 times. Like, oh, this is going to be the best day you've ever had. You're going to look back on this day. Unbelievable what this podcast is going to do for your career here. Follow right there. Like I think this James Cameron episode is the best episode I've ever done. Maybe the Red Bull episode, maybe the chicken finger episode. But like I can tell you that with a straight face and not feel shameful or shameless or whatever the term is there about doing that because I believe in it.

56:58It took a lot of fucking work to make that. And I know the lessons are good because that guy told you they're good. What is it about the Red Bull story? It's so unique. It's so different it's one of my favorites that you've ever done so this is another again like it's like you you know me well i'm getting hot um so you know me well enough it's just like i'm not like somebody could offer me like come run my company or like pay me more money like there's just no way i would do that like i'm not doing there's other ulterior motives for it and one like if you're really smart you can find a way to build a good business almost anything it's not what you do it's how you do it.

57:37With Dietrich Metz, it's like his whole thing, one, the story is crazy because at the time I did that episode, there's no biographies in English. So like, this is also what drives me insane. In everything, you should be thinking about differentiation. The reason I started a solo podcast, right, on History Podcast in 2016 is because in 2016, I thought there was way too many, I can't go interview entrepreneurs. Everybody's already doing that, right? And there's obviously something I didn't understand. There's always room for great, right? But I did, I have this natural inclination I've had my entire life to like go in the other direction that other people are doing.

58:09So I knew it was differentiated. And the, what I, what I love about the episodes I love the most is like, there's not even a book about it. You have to like make the content for the episode. So I had to translate or a friend of mine translated that biography from German. So first of all, I was like, Oh good. Like how many people have done an episode on this guy based on this book? Well, if you haven't spoke German, none. Right. Right. So and then you realize the story is just like, you know, he was working for a bunch of CPG companies traveling to Asia. He's jet lagged all time. He he winds up finding the Red Bull, but it's in a different language.

58:43It's like 15 cents or whatever the case is. He's like, oh, this works. And there's really no like energy drink category. So he helps create the category and then masters a category and then realizes you have a lot of like you really need to raise the price. and even the way he looked at things where he's like, oh, we're a marketing conglomerate, so we're going to outsource everything else but marketing. It's like everybody's talking about content to commerce and all this other stuff today. It's like, nothing is new. You just haven't read enough history. You want to look at the best content to commerce?

59:09Right there. And then what does he do? He optimizes for, he did not want to have a board of directors. He did not want to be in the public stock market. He didn't want to be answerable to anybody. The guy, I mean, the guy wasn't married. Just look at it. People will give you hints about what's important to them. Just look, read between the lines. And you clearly see he doesn't like people telling him what to do. He has a ton of fun. He's also crazy. He likes to like even well into his 70s. He was like taking risky sports, mountain biking. He was like flying his own planes, racing his own cars.

59:36He was like the Red Bull. Like the brand of Red Bull was him. And then you get to the point where him and his partner, they each own 49 % of the company. They put $500 ,000 in each. Then they had a small bank loan. And every single thing from the growth from there was out of profits. How many people essentially can bootstrap? if me if somebody gave if me and you have a business right now right you're gonna put in half a million i'll put in half a million we're gonna get a small bank loan you know how hard the unlikely outcome that you and i build a business that's worth 40 or 50 or 60 billion dollars you know how hard that is how the hell did he do that there's a great line by charlie munger when he says one of my favorite ways one of my favorite ways to knowledge is finding an extreme example and asking what the hell happened here you know and and you're like in my case it's like people it's like what there's a guy there's some austrian guy that owns red bull that is turning down his he turned on multiple offers where he would have made 20 billion for his 49 he's paying himself 500 to 800 million a year uh he's so private that he buys the magazine that's trying to write a story about him like there's a guy that is trying to write an unauthorized biography of him goes to his mom's house detritus finds the guy and says if you don't leave my mom alone i'm gonna i'm gonna pay a russian guy to break your knees your kneecaps it's like what is happening here who is this person and i think that's really important because all it does is like completely pops off the top of your head about what is possible in life the reason i'm obsessed with these maniacs on emissions these super driven people these the opposite of casual people is because it's like they stretch what i believe is possible let me give you a perfect example there's um i there's this reoccurring theme on the podcast that's in all these biographies And the shorthand I have for this is how bad do you want it?

1:01:19And I just came across an example of this with Ken Griffin. The reason I did the Ken Griffin episode, even though there's not a biography on him, I think there's one that's like crappy and it's like two stars on Amazon. So, you know, there's people writing, it's probably like ChatGPT wrote it or something. Or the old version of ChatGPT. The new version, actually, the deep research can write. The deep research, hey, I use deep research every day. It's really good. He talks about when he was 33 years old and Ron blows up. John Arnold tells a story on Twitter and it goes viral on Twitter. And that's how I found it.

1:01:47That's what sparked me because I keep hearing about Ken. I was like, once I read that, I was like, this is a founder's guy. Have to do it. And Enron blows up spectacularly in 2001. The day it blows up, Ken Charter's Gulfstream jet sends like 16 people down to Houston, interviews every single person in the Enron energy, like the commodity business. Everyone finds out how they made money, what their competitors were, What worked? What didn't work, right? Then he finds the head trainer, which is John Arnold. And John Arnold's like, Ken's assistant calls. He's like, hey, Ken wants to talk to you. Would you talk to him?

1:02:20He's like, listen, I'm not open for a job right now. I'm trying to close the books, but I respect what Ken has built. So I will talk to him. Okay. I'm headed to Aspen for an event right now. When I'm back in Houston, tell Ken I will take his phone call. Hangs up. Assistant calls back a few minutes later. Ken is willing to fly to where you are. if he flies to Aspen today, will you meet with him? He said, yeah. How bad do you want it? And Ken's point that he makes, I don't think that's in the Twitter post, but he tells that same story in the conversation with Yale. He goes, I hired all the best people at Enron.

1:02:52And since then we've made about $30 billion trading commodities. How bad do you want it? Most people are like, oh, I'll wait till next week. I'll catch you a couple of days. He's like, I'm coming today. 33 years old. You always see the true interest is revealed early. He was doing stuff like that. When long -term capital management blew up in 98, he was 30 years old. He went and visited those guys. What do you want to know? You guys didn't lose control of your business until over 90 % of your equity. How the hell did you keep it after like 30%, 40%, 50 %? How is that possible? And then what happened?

1:03:27That was in 1998. He was 30. In 2008, when he was 40, he lost 50 % of his equity. And he says, what I learned from those conversations, I used 10 years later to keep Citadel in business. I asked sort of the marketing version of this question. like the nonfiction marketing, like if you believe so deeply in the thing, it actually becomes easier to sell the $600 vacuum versus the $40 one. What about on the talent side? I know you've learned a lot from Brad Jacobs and other people about the power of hiring the very best people. Everybody says that, like, of course, you should have the best people.

1:03:56Everybody says it, but they don't do it. But they don't do it. So like, why don't they do it? What do true founders, in your sense of the word, do differently in the same question I asked about marketing, but for talent? Yeah, there's a great line. I did this clip in this video called Overpay for Talent because you can't really overpay for talent. And Brad Jacobs in his book, you know, he talks about that over and over again. Me and you went to his house and he talked about, he told us like numbers he was paying for talent. Like, you know, it would shock you. Mr. Beast's video editor is like this 22 -year -old, the main kid, 22 or 24 -year -old kid.

1:04:25Like, if you know what he paid him, like, you see this over and over again. Why? Because the example in the video is like, well, you know, did Apple really need Next? No, they need to see jobs. So they paid 500, they paid half a billion dollars to rehire the guy they shouldn't, they needed. And he produced, you know, whatever return on that money. Like they got a deal on getting him back. The reason I think people don't do it is one, I don't think everything we describe and I do, I think there's like a limit to like the actual application. I guess these ideas you can scale down and scale up, but like there's just not that many talented people in every field.

1:05:02And they're really hard to find. They take a long time to usually convince. They're usually really, really expensive. And in many cases, they're working for themselves. So like they're not like there's not like an abundance of people. But this just happened with me and you talked about this. Your new editor in chief just wrote that Neil made a piece. And how did you find him? You found he wrote the best Palmer Lucky and Palmer Lucky's. The best profile, period. Yeah. And the best and Palmer Lucky's like, he's got a lot of coverage. He does great interviews and everything. He's wildly entertaining.

1:05:34And yet this guy wrote the best piece on him. Jeremy Stern. So it's very simple. Jeremy Stern. Thank you. It's very simple. It's like, oh, this is what Munger told our mutual friend Brent. He's like, how do you find CEOs? I just find somebody did a great job at being a CEO. I said, do that. But for me. And then Brent's like, what about hiring for potential? and Munger's like, I don't do that. I don't do that. I just find the great guy and tell him to come over here. So you just did this. You're like, hey, that guy's really good. What's the chance that he's only able to write one good possible?

1:06:05Yeah. Like you don't get that good without there's a skill there, you know? And so I have gone through, I realized I wasn't even taking my own advice because I would use like all these people when there's like inside baseball this, like when you see all these podcasts that have all these clips, they're outsourced. Clip farms. Yeah, they're like, they're like all the pitch is like, it's so cheap. And I even use some that my friends recommended. And I'm like, these are terrible. And I found a guy and we met him together. And he is really young and really gifted. His name is Maxim. He is, in my opinion, one of the best short form editors in the world.

1:06:41Shout out Blake Robbins for. For connecting us. It took me a while, a few months to do this. Only works because he's obsessed with the podcast. And he was like in the audience and he's predisposed. and he's already listening to it anyways. And I was like, do that for me. And then he tells me the price. And the price is like six times, six X what other people pay. And I said, done. Where do I send the wire? And then what happens? The clips are coming out and the person that's doing your video right now, all these people with me, they're like, these are the best podcast clips. And then we, I mean, you've talked like, what's the management?

1:07:15There is no management. Like I bought your taste. It's like, I know, I already know you're great because I watch your videos and like, this is incredible. It's like hiring Tarantino and be like, I have some feedback for you. No, we should shut up. That's Tarantino. This happens to me where like I get emails and the subject line, feedback on the podcast. Don't even read it, write in the garbage. You link me to a podcast that you have made that is even in the same category. And then I will listen. But again, you think I'm making it for you. I'm making it for me. The act of publishing it makes it an act of service, but I made it for me first.

1:07:49so I can't do what you want me to do because I'm not making it for you. I'm making it for me. I have to be satisfied first. And so the answer to your question is like, one, even me who every single episode is like overpay for talent, find the best people, never, ever forget the dynamic range of humans. You know, Steve Jobs says, you know, the best person is not a hundred times better, not twice as good. They're a hundred times, a thousand times better, which is obviously true. Think about the best investors. Like, you know, that profile you did on Neil Mehta, like, I don't know, how many other investors in the world are better than him?

1:08:19It's not 10 ,000. Whatever the number is, it's a small number, especially if you say the same age group. Now, what, five, two, one? I don't know. But that's so hard to actually find the person. In this case, it came because somebody else that's really good at spotting talent told me and you about this guy. And maybe I probably wouldn't have found him if it wasn't for that. So these things take a lot of time. And then what I would say is just like, if you're not, you have to actually act yourself. So I think having a, I have a basic intolerance for casualness, for mediocrity, for not being completely obsessed with what you're doing.

1:08:58And so that weeds out most of humanity anyways. And then what I do is like I have this great maxim where it's like you should limit the amount of details and then make every detail perfect. And so for me, it's like I don't need a bunch. I don't need anybody to edit. I don't need anybody to make it. The only thing I can't do is I'll never be a video editor like him. So I can't, it's not like I have to go out and hire. I don't want to put myself in a position where my business only works if I find like the 15 best people in the world. That's not the game I'm playing. I love the answers on product, on marketing and on talent.

1:09:25Maybe the last one is on capital. Is there anything that you've seen the people that you've studied do different or especially well when it comes to attracting the right sources and partnerships on the capital side specifically? Raising money, doing clever deals, clever financing. Is there any dimension there that's worth exploring? This is where I'm starting to get in trouble too. I literally have no friends that aren't entrepreneurs. But I just can't talk to anybody that's not an entrepreneur. What I always tell them, they're like, yeah, I started this company and it's like a software company.

1:09:57And they're like, all right, I got to go and raise a bunch of money. I was like, you should take a look at what Larry Ellison did and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. You listen to the podcast, right? You told me you listen to those episodes. What did they do? They raised money? No, they sold the product. They started selling the product before the product was made. well maybe you should go out and see if you can get like other ways to do this um it's shocking to me how the default is i must go out and convince other people that are not my customers to give me money and sometimes you have to like there's nothing i'm not against i'm not anti -raising money i'm anti -wastefulness and the what the the the point that todd graves makes in the episode is like listen man a lot of these pe guys come in and they try to buy you out and everything else is like, why do you think they want your equity?

1:10:39Because it's very valuable. So it doesn't mean you can't change, you know, exchange money for equity. Sometimes you have to do it, but you should be very, very careful. And he came up with, like, think about this. This way, how bad do you want it? And I'm doing the Michael Dell episode. I'm almost positive Michael Dell, his initial starter capital for Dell was $1 ,000. I have to double check because I've already listened to the book three times. I've read it, I'm going through it again. So I couldn't remember me. And I'm pretty sure when he went public, he only 70 % of Dell. It's not my opinion.

1:11:07I would just go, how does Larry Ellison own so much of Oracle? Like, where did the funding come from Microsoft? What about Apple? Like, what did they do? Like, they obviously raise money. They go public, do all this other stuff. Just like, think about that. And do you have to do that? This is a really important decision. You should not be casual about what you're doing. So Todd Graves, chicken finger, right? How many people are going to criticize this guy for being put on this earth by God to make the world's best chicken fingers? And I love them. Fried chicken outside of like, I like fried chicken.

1:11:36Like, I like it. I don't know what to tell you. I try not to eat it because I get fat immediately, but I like fried chicken. I've eaten a lot of fried chicken. I like his fried chicken. I think it's the best. So what did he do? He's like, listen, I went to a bank. He goes, the idea for Raising Cane's was a paper in business school, LSU. And he got the worst grade in class, which is funny because FedEx, Fred Smith, got a bad grade. Phil Knight, Nike, bad grade. Maybe we shouldn't have professors judging business plans. Maybe this is kind of stupid, right? So Todd Graves goes, I bought, he goes to Office Depot, buys a briefcase, you know, like the little shitty one with like the zero, zero, zero.

1:12:16Like I put the brief, so I buy a $99 suit. I buy a briefcase. I put the business school paper that I got a bad grade on in the briefcase. I go down to the bank and they're like, dude, you're not in a position to loan you money. And one of the reasons was you have no experience. They sold him you should work in the industry for 10 years, even though he'd already worked through it in college. But you want to just make chicken fingers where your industry is going in the opposite direction. And this is where I got really pissed off in the episode. I was induced into a state of rage. They said, Todd, obviously this is not going to work out because look what McDonald's is doing.

1:12:50They're going after variety. There's salads. There's all this other stuff on the menu. There's milkshakes. You just have chicken fingers. Like, what is wrong with you? And my point was, like, that shame on that person at the bank because, again, nothing we're doing is new. Go back to 1948. Look up this guy named Harry Snyder who founded this company called In -N -Out. All Todd Graves did, if you look at what he did, he's like, oh, I'll just do In -N -Out, but for Chicken Fingers. It's the exact same story, except he started earlier and is now, I think when Harry Snyder passed away, he only had like 17 restaurants.

1:13:20And, you know, Todd's done charging his company. He's got 800 and something. And so, like, that part, like, really frustrated me because it's like there's already a historical equivalent of this succeeding beyond, like, your wildest dreams. In -N -Out probably wasn't an LSU. the guy didn't know maybe there was no internet back then whatever the case is like i'm not like being overly harsh on this so then what's todd left to do you're not going to loan me any money what do i do i guess i'll just give up that's what most people just stop right there right oh okay i will work for 10 years these guys are right i'm some young stupid college kid they're they're in fancy suits and a nice office like they know what they're talking about history clearly sees that that in many cases is not the case so then what do you do he's like okay uh these oil companies hire boilermakers.

1:14:04And what happens is if a refinery goes down every day that thing is down, that's very expensive to them. So boilermakers come through and they either like update the equipment or fix the equipment. And so if you're willing to work 95 hour weeks in grotesque environments in physical labor, you can make so much money working a hundred hours a week for like five weeks at a time. Then he meets, so he makes a ton of money. He saves up a couple of tens of thousands of dollars doing that. Then one of the boilermakers named Wild Bill, who's also one of his investors, which I love. He got the money from saving money from boilermaking, right?

1:14:35Then he got, then they tell him, hey, you can go up and do commercial fishing in Alaska. At the time Todd is doing this, I'm like much younger watching Deadliest Catch. He was on like the show is being filmed when he's doing this. And so, yeah, you may fall overboard and die, but if you don't, you're going to make, you know, 50 grand in two months as a 20 year old kid. And he lived in a tent. He lived in a tent. He ate nothing but ramen noodles. He risked his life, right, on the boat. He went to the Boilermaker. Then he comes back. The Boilermakers give him a little bit of money. Like, you keep talking about chicken fingers.

1:15:09You're fucking crazy. I will give you a little bit of money. Then he had a bookie. Guess what? My bookie has a lot of cash. He has a cash business. This guy does not have a bank account. So then he invested. And that's how he got the money to do his first store. And then from there, he's like, okay, well, how do I do store two, store three, store four. The first 28 stores after this was financed in a very unique way, which he says, this worked out for me. Do not do what I'm about to tell you to do. They're all geographically concentrated in Louisiana. Right. And so he would go and he said, he called them angel investors.

1:15:39They're not angel investors. So he goes, so I have two chicken finger stores. I'm going to open the third. I don't have any money. Right. Banks still don't give me money. Right. But these things start cash flowing right away. So I go to you. I go, dude, give me 200 grand. I'll give you a one page contract, personally liable, not the company, personally liable. And I will pay, guarantee you a 15 % return on this 200 grand. And you say, okay, you don't, you give me the 200 grand. I put the 200 grand in the bank. The bank now will lend me that like, oh, you have $200 ,000 equity. I'll lend you 800 grand on top of that million, whatever the number is on top of that.

1:16:11And I start the store. And what happens? Well, day one, there's going to be some people buying chicken. So cashflow happens right away. I pay my rent 30 days later. I pay payroll two days, two weeks later, and I pay all my supplies net, you know, net 30 or net 60. And so it works as long as people come in and start buying chicken fingers. And so he's like, I was rolling. I was balling out of control. He gets to all the way up to 28 stores doing this leverage to the, is it? Yeah, exactly. Um, leverage to the hilts. And then Hurricane Katrina comes through and goes, there goes all of your restaurants.

1:16:46And so then he's like, oh my God, I'm going to lose everything. And then what happens? he turns the pandemic he does this and this is what great entrepreneurs investors do they took they find opportunity and catastrophe right and so he's like listen guys we have to open up one you guys want a paycheck right two no every single other restaurant in louisiana is closed so people need to eat uh three if we don't i'm done there's nothing like i i i need to make money he winds up being the first restaurant to open after hurricane katrina he had like a he had like 90 days something like 60 to 90 days to himself.

1:17:22So what happens? You live in Louisiana. Maybe you never tried Raising Cane's. Guess what? Now you try it now. Oh, this is really good. And now you're a fan and you tell other people and it keeps compounding. Same thing with the pandemic. What happened? All the restaurants are closed. But the government said, food is essential, right? An essential business, but it has to be in the drive -thru. He went from doing something like, I don't know, let's say $2 billion or let's say a billion dollars a year in 2020 to like five, and like 2024. Yeah. So taking, you know, something that's terrible and turning it into an actual opportunity.

1:17:53So that's like pretty creative way to finance something. And his whole point is just like, yeah, or you could go. How bad do you want it? How bad do you want it? And just think through what you're doing. Because his whole point was he saw a bunch of other people that they raised money. And we know people that this has happened to. They don't have control. And his thing was he was not optimizing for money. He was, if it's your dream, the first thing, the most important thing is survival. it's to make sure that they can't take your company away from you steve jobs again this people founders talk about this all now like this is something new steve jobs said in like the 80s victory in our industry is spelled survival you go back and talk about like people think like he was unbelievable he was he said he has this line he says something like you pay attention to the nickels because the nickels turned into quarters and he says when and when he's like at the beginning of apple we paid attention to all of our costs we watched what we were doing We bought intelligently.

1:18:46He would call up his suppliers and had well the hell out of them. And he obviously is probably the best husband ever lived. And then when he started next, he's like, oh, I didn't do it anymore because I'm rich and I don't need to. And I have Ross Perot writing fat checks and I'm on. I'm famous. And he stopped doing it. He's like, we got to get back to the basics. We have to be very creative and pay attention to this. We started our conversation talking about focus. to conclude it can you just define after all this study what the the word founder means to you it's a good question i don't know if i ever thought about it um the way i so my definition for entrepreneur has always been like somebody has ideas and does them and i think when the reason i'm interested um we have this thing called like a shorthand called like founder mentality and there's the reason i i profile not only just like founders but investors and athletes and filmmakers and people like napoleon and churchill um is because what they did is like they saw something missing in the world it could be leadership and like think about winston churchill post -world or during world war ii it could be you know a non -profit it could be a product it could be a company it could be a service and they're like this thing should exist and like i'm going to make it come to life.

1:20:03And the way I'm going to do this, like I'm going to direct my energy on creating this thing from nothing and making it real. And I still think like, again, you know this because like you have small kids and especially when they're really small, they have a different kind of intelligence where everything to them was a wonder. And so they're constantly like, why is that? Why is that? My son's in this age right now. It's just why, why, why, why, why, why. And sometimes it can get frustrating, but it's also like kind of brilliant. It's like on the midwip meme, it's like all the way to the left, but like really actually brilliant.

1:20:36And I don't think I ever get over the fact that you can have an idea that you don't even know where it comes from. Maybe it comes from your subconscious, maybe it comes from a dream, maybe it comes from God, whatever you call it. And that idea just starts as an idea. It's like, oh, and then that goes from your mind into real life. And the version of this is like, it's a little disorienting to this day where I just sat in a room by myself reading and then I spoke into a microphone not knowing what was going to happen and like that made something real that act of creation and it's the thing I'm most proud of the fact that like I was talking to a friend of mine we went on a walk uh right before I flew up here to to meet you and I was like I think the thing I'm most proud of in my life is like I grinded for five and a half years with like no visible like progress and I didn't give up.

1:21:26And like, I don't know if I'd do that today. I don't know if I would do that today. And I look back, I'm like, you were making a lot of stupid decisions along this way. But like, that is a really good decision that you just, something told you, you can't explain, you didn't, couldn't predict that like, just keep going. Like you will figure it out. You have the self -belief, keep going. It's a wonderful closing thought. So cool to think about everything you've done the last i guess eight years now nine years now i love how you close your thing by saying you know 400 books down a thousand to go there's always a thousand to go wonderful closing sentiment thanks for doing this with me