David Senra - In Service of Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.343]

20:30I couldn't sleep last night. I knew we were going to record today, and so I tried to get well-rested. Woke up at four in the morning. Then I sit in the dark. I do this a lot. This is going to be weird, but I sit in the dark and no input. And I just think, right. I've never been able to successfully meditate into anything. I actually got this idea from Jim Simons. I read his book. And when he had a problem, they'd find him like laying in the dark on a couch in his office. And they're like, is he sleeping? He's like, no, he's thinking. He's awake. And so I feel like no sound, no visual. And like, I do just let my mind go crazy.

20:55And so I've already recorded this podcast hours and hours and hours because I was thinking about all the different weird things, barely wrote anything down. So I don't even know if we'll touch him. But I think the compulsion here is your company is a world that you're building that has a physical structure and like, yeah, it could be an office and then maybe it expands to multiple locations and then it becomes global or whatever. But this complete integration, this is what Jeff Bezos realized in one of the genius things that he said. He's like, I don't believe in work-life balance. I believe in work-life harmony.

21:19And so if you study Bugatti or Ferrari or George Lucas or any of these people that have built Skywalker Ranch, me and you were talking about this 4 ,700 acres, he built his own world. Let me back up one step. what I love is where they get the proceeds of building their own world is betting on themselves first. He bet on himself with American Graffiti and then the first Star Wars made so much money. No, I'll make this work. And he's like, oh, now I get the lion's share of those profits. And then what you're doing, reinvesting your profits into a physical location that can then feed on your work and it just makes everything you're doing better.

21:48I think it's the same impulse. It's like, okay, my company's a world, but I have other parts of me. The funny thing is you'd go visit Bugatti in Molesheim and you'd stay at the inn that he owns, that you have an appointment. And then all of a sudden, like you're walking across the field and you see him take off on his horses because he said when he had a problem to solve, some people go for a walk, some people go work out, some people lay in the dark, whatever the case is, he rode horses. He's like, this is where all my great ideas come. And then he'd solve the unsolved problem. And then he'd take his horse right to the factory.

22:16So I just think they realized that everything feeds on it. You mentioned Cuccinelli. Here's the crazy thing about this world. If you're talking about the world's greatest investors, which you do on your podcast. I talk about the world's greatest founders of mine, right? They are more alike to each other than they are to the average person. So I read Cuccinelli's book, put it out into the world. I thought it was fascinating. Absolutely loved everything about him. He built the world. He understood. He's like, I want to have a mission bigger than just selling cashmere. And I'm going to reinvigorate this area that I think there should be money pumped into here.

22:45And then I can provide high paying jobs. And then we have cafes and we have the whole world. I would do an episode on his book, put it out there. He sends me a handwritten written note thanking me for doing that book and then does the most Italian shit ever and sends me his own version of olive oil. It's just like the most disorienting thing ever. And then why? Like you study him. Oh, they all did the same thing. They're voracious readers. They're unbelievably curious. They treat the world as their classroom. Every single conversation he has on philosophy in a cafe or a book he reads, he finds a way to apply those ideas, use them as metaphors, and strengthen his business.

23:18I don't ever fear this. I say this in jest, but I'm almost scared People are going to stop listening to founders when they realize I'm just telling. It's the same personality and a different body. I think that's why it resonates, right? Same thing with the work that you do. We had this conversation with a guest and he's like, that may be an episode on Rockefeller, but that's just how I feel the exact same way. That may be to go back to your original question, like what's the biggest positive is how many shockingly successful people I find listening to your podcast comforting because I'm that too.

23:47If these stories are all the same and it's just people in different clothings, whatever phrase you want to use, what is that story? Who is that person? You had to describe, I have Da Vinci's famous illustration of perfect man or something like that. What is the through line that unites all these people and these stories? We use the term life's work. I think there's lots of ways you can talk about it. How do you think about who that universal story is, the universal person is? I've been actually thinking a lot about this. I think it's related to that question. There's like this myth that the best entrepreneur is like super young.

24:20And then I go and look, I'm like, well, I've read 317 of these books. When do they do their best work? Nobody does their best work when they're 20 or 25. They may start it or whatever the case is. But many of the entrepreneurs I most admire got started relatively late in life. There's a great line in Edward Lane's biography. He says at 38 years old, he achieved everything he wanted in life except success. He's one of the best entrepreneurs to ever do it. If he was alive today, he'd be kicking all these entrepreneurs' ass up and down the court, without a doubt. There's very few people that have ever lived like him.

24:45Estee Lauder got started later. Michael still at it. There's all these examples. I think the through line is, I always say, I wake up with a burning desire to achieve mission success. You have to pick some kind of mission, something to dedicate your life to. And that is always in the service of others because that's what a product does. A product makes somebody else's life better. The iPhone that Steve Jobs created made billions of people's life better. I was asked this question at Notre Dame last week. They're like, well, what do you say to people? They need motivation to get going. I was like, entrepreneurship's an internal thing.

25:13You say nothing to that person. You move on. There's this great line, actually, somebody said, and I want to make sure I don't get off track to answer your question though, because it brings so many things to mind where somebody gets it exactly. They're like, Hey, I don't want advice. I want stories, reflections, and notes from your life and work. I will naturally extract the advice and tips most relevant to me by reading your stories. And somebody responded, that's Founders Podcast. There's no prescription here because you're smart enough. I've never met an entrepreneur or an investor that says, tell me what to do.

25:41So you know what Christopher Nolan says, me and you were talking about that episode in his insane perspective on life was fascinating, where goes back to this, use the world as a classroom. He's like, all these experiences, he's like, I can go to a museum and look at a piece of art. I can watch a film. I can listen to a piece of music. I can read a book. I can have a conversation. All of that is ingredients for my work. And it doesn't work unless you have a foundation which to put it on. So the foundation he has is he knows he's going to make films. So now every single thing, me and you know, we're going to make podcasts.

26:09So everything I experienced in life, the conversations, the crazy event we went to last night, The conversations we had yesterday, the phone calls we'll have, all the stuff that's happening is that's just fuel for my work. And that's internal. No one told you to do what you started. No one had to tell me what to do, right? And so the way I think about it is like, okay, you know you want to do something. You probably don't know what it is. In all cases, you're probably going to have to start multiple businesses, right? And so the reason I think the most interesting part about this and why I think you see the entire arc of a person's life in a biography is so important because you see some of those smartest, most productive people struggle and they don't know what they want to do.

26:43And in many cases, they try something like, oh, I think I want to do that and I don't want to do that. The way I think about the same personality type is, and I have no way to prove this, this is just instinct or intuition based. I sincerely believe that the reason that people tend to do their greatest work later in life is yes, the obvious one is they have a lot more experience. They're a lot smarter. Don Valentine has this great quote where he's like, I love second time entrepreneurs because they failed the first time. Now they know what they didn't know and now they can kick the shit. I think he says, kick the shit out of the person that hasn't learned yet, right?

27:15He says something like that. He said it better, but he has great language. And I actually think this is something that directly that I've learned in the last year. No, I actually think the important ingredient is they took more time to know themselves. And I think the people that get to the top of their professions, their work is a reflection of that person. The line I always say on the podcast is that Apple Steve Jobs with 10 ,000 lives. And I think Steve knew himself more at 40, much more at 40, 45 than he did at 21, did he did at 30, did he did at 35. He's the greatest example because it's like, who the hell?

27:45Mike Morris has that great book, Return to the Little Kingdom, the updated version. And he's like, there is no other story like this. He's like, when did a founder get kicked out of a company that he created, comes back and then goes on the greatest run ever. And then he says, essentially he calls it the second founding, the refounding. And he goes, and the second time he did it, he was alone. So that's my answer. I think what ties them all together is they do the work necessary to get to know who they are and therefore can trust their own judgment. And then Christopher Nolan, his products are his taste.

28:11He's telling you like, this is what I think is good. And if I think it's good, I can make other people obsessed with it as well. I realized that of the founders episodes, obviously there's so much of it that I haven't listened to every single one. I've listened to a lot, but my highest percentage category is filmmakers. I've listened to every single filmmaker episode that you've done. And in the last year, you did Nolan and James Cameron. You've mentioned Nolan a few times. I'd love to pick apart those two a little bit more. And maybe you could talk about Inception, the movie that Nolan made and how long it took him to make it.

28:39And just like James Cameron's whole life is just completely fascinating, really because of what they were able to accomplish, but maybe also for like their personality types. I'd love to hear what you learned from those two guys in particular. I am very envious of filmmakers or other people, maybe outside of athletes. I think they probably you are trying to help other people do is like as much as we can. If we can tell these stories, we can bring these conversations to light. It's like everybody's really searching for their life's work. And the bizarre thing about filmmakers is you go back and read Spielberg, Coppola, Cameron, Nolan, George Lucas, every single one I've read so far.

29:16And it's like, they knew they wanted to be a filmmaker when they were like a kid kid, like seven, eight, 10, 12. I didn't know I wanted to be a podcaster back then because the podcast didn't exist. But even if it did exist, there's no way in hell. There's just something remarkable about the fact that you knew you wanted to do it. And then your entire life is like, oh yeah, that's a job. Okay. How do I get to that? And so everything in their life, one of the most impressive things about Nolan to bring up to him is people are like, oh yeah, this is what I mean is I'm very skeptical that anything external helps an entrepreneur.

29:47People do what they want to do. We're not what we believe. We are what we do. It's not what we say. It's not what we believe. It's just your actions. And people can read that very clearly. What's Christopher Nolan's actions? Well, wanted to be a filmmaker, didn't have any money. No one would fund it. So he gets a job and he does his first film, records on the weekends, every weekend for a year. That's how long it took. Now, if he could do the full time, if somebody gave him the money, then maybe he does in three months where the case is like, I don't give a shit. This will happen. Did it without permits.

30:11Figured out, oh, you got a dog over there. I'll use that dog as a prop. Well, can I sneak in here? Like they're relentlessly resourceful. And you see that with James Cameron. The James Cameron episode is insane because this also talks about, this is the most surprising thing is, right? Where when you do something, right, you don't know what the response is going to be. And I was obsessed with the James Cameron episode and I was making it. I spent an unbelievable amount of time. I was done with the research and normally I record right away. I spent multiple days. I'm like, no, there's just something weird here that I want to spend more time with it.

30:41I don't know what, I wasn't reading anything new. I was rereading what I already read and just spending time I'm thinking about it. I put that episode out, by far the most critically acclaimed episode I have ever done in my entire life, the amount of messages. And these are super impressive people saying like, this is the best episode. This is the one that I was obsessed with. What I loved about James Cameron is high agency, relentlessly resourceful people I've ever come across. He knew when he was growing up in Canada, okay, I want to be a filmmaker. He watched Ridley Scott's 2001 Space Odyssey, which is also the film that inspired Christopher Nolan to become a filmmaker, which is interesting that they shared that they had the same reaction, even though they didn't know each other.

31:16He's living in Canada. His dad gets transferred to Orange County, California. I think he's like 14 years old at the time. What kid that's in high school wants to move high schools, right? And he's like, oh, okay, cool. Can we go tomorrow? And his dad's like, why? He's like, because that's closer to Hollywood. And then he goes there and he's like, well, shit, I don't have money for film school. What do I do? USC is the greatest film school. Everybody knew it. That's where it attracted. It attracted Lucas, attracted Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Scorsese, all these people around that area at the time.

31:42And he's like, okay, what am I doing? He's like, I'm driving a truck. I'm a fucking truck driver. Okay. So I can't go to film school. I'm going to some bullshit little community college, but I go to the library. Don't let anybody in the library. And then he goes and scopes out the library. And he's like all these graduate level, like film course dissertations on special effects that are very like these esoteric things are very hard to understand. They're on the shelves. Well, I can't take them, but I have a hundred bucks to photocopy. And he says, he's like, I gave myself a graduate level degree in filmmaking for$200 in Xerox copies.

32:10He would copy that on the weekends. And then at night and on break, when he's driving in the truck, he'd read them and he taught himself. That kind of person's undeniable. It didn't matter. He just happened to choose film and then ocean exploration. But whatever that personality type, whatever that guy wants to do, he's going to get to the top of his profession. It's the same thing over and over again. What's the dark side of, with these two guys in particular, maybe Cameron in particular, of this way of living? There's an excellent GQ article, a long form GQ article that Cameron did when Avatar 2 was coming out.

32:38And I said this on the episode, but I literally went to sleep every night listening to that over and over again. And that's another thing that I think people, I'm going to come back to that real quick. It just made me think of something that comes up because this is why they put a couple to whatever you do for work. You really need to tell people what goes into what you do because people see the finished result. They don't see what goes into it. And so for every hour of recorded content that I make, there's at least 40 to 50 hours of research and reading into it. And so the fascinating thing about the Cameron thing, and that's the benefit of biographies because you see just decade after decade of practice and everything else.

33:11advertisers like David Ogilvie, Albert Lasker, Claude Hopkins, the people that built the modern advertising agency, that's their principle. I'm just literally stealing it from them. And they would use it over and over again. Just people don't know what goes into the product. And the more you tell them, the more value, it becomes more valuable in their eyes because they know what goes into it. So the GQ article is fascinating though, because I didn't know anything about Cameron other than watching his movies. And you have to read between the lines. And so his fifth wife, what pause, pardon me. And then you learn more about him.

33:36And I'm like, oh, that personality type. Of course, he is high agency, highly disagreeable, adamant about getting his way. These are usually bad husbands, bad spouses. There's actually something interesting that just happened very recently. I find Arnold Schwarzenegger so fascinating because I can't find another parallel for his life story. You moved to another country, got famous for working out, became the highest paid movie star, married into their royalty, and then you became governor of a state you can't even pronounce. What just happened here? How did that even happen? And what's fascinating, so I read every single thing that I found about him that he wrote because he has two autobiographies that he wrote.

34:11Then I'm watching a new documentary on Netflix about him. And then I see there's this book called Arnold and Me written by his live-in girlfriend when he was from like 20 to 26. And you know this because I've told you, any book I can find, I love biographies. There's a bunch of biographies. I'm reading one right now about Winston Churchill that ends when Churchill's like 26. I've read biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, ends at 28. There's a biography of Steve Jobs, ends at 30. There's a biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It ends at 30. This is very fascinating because you see who they were before the rise.

34:40And what was hilarious to me was because I am so engrossed into this kind of behavior is normal to me. I was like, oh, I got to order that book. Read that book. The book is 300 pages of her being, I don't get it. Why can't I change Arnold to who he is? And I was like, I could tell you from looking at that guy, there is no changing him. So the main message from that episode is that insanely driven people, like an Arnold, like a lot of people you have on your podcast, like everybody I study on my podcast, you either have a supportive spouse or you don't have a spouse. And you see that with Cameron, where it's just like, I'm not going to compromise.

35:09Maybe this fifth, I think he's been with his fifth wife quite a while. Looks maybe, maybe he's probably mellowed. He's in the 60s now. But yeah, that's the dark side, that they're so intent on what they're going after that they will do anything to get it. You mentioned Arnold. I'm curious about athletes. Our definition of life's work is a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. You've touched on a lot of these ideas already. Athletes are a really interesting case. In the last year, You've done episodes on Jordan, on Tiger, on Arnold. I think there's one on Mike Tyson coming out.

35:37So you've really done pretty deep dives on some of the iconic all-time great athletes. What have you learned from them? I don't know that those four, let's say, exactly fit my definition all that well, but it makes me actually question my definition, not the other way around, because it seems as though these guys fall in the same category. We saw Venus Williams play last night. There's lots of athlete examples that seem like there's a lot to learn from them, but they're very different than entrepreneurs or even from filmmakers where the film is sort of like a business, a production. So what have you learned from all the athletes that you've studied in the last year?

36:11Why do you feel consistently drawn back to some of these personality types? What's different about them? I just did an episode on Paul Graham's essay, which I think is one of the best essays I've ever read. It's called How to Do Great Work. He picked up because he's read a ton of biographies. He's seen a bunch of thousands of entrepreneurs up close. They all use what they learn is like metaphors for their work. So I actually think the athlete as a metaphor is the clearest way to describe the part of an entrepreneur. If you get to the end of Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dogs, like, oh, this is all the same dream.

36:38It's like entrepreneur, artist, musician, athlete. It's the same personality type, just directed at something else. Now, I would argue that the people you mentioned, like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, especially, I don't consider Mike Tyson an athlete because I think combat sports, the only sport I really pay attention to is MMA. And that is straight up instinctual combat. There's no higher stakes other than war. You're literally going out to do it as much damage as possible. But what they all share is their calling is competitiveness. There's a great line. And to some degree, I think scare other people.

37:09That's why I'm glad that so far you asked if like, what's the negative about founders? I don't think you could be like a normal person. I think it's going to self-select, right? It's like this one weird guy with this giant head sitting in a room by himself, just a stream of consciousness for an hour. If somebody said, I take a deep breath and I just spit hot fire for like an hour. And I think it's not the easiest thing to listen to because a lot of these stories, like the Tiger Woods things where he's just like, I've never found a better feeling than beating everybody else. You're the last person standing.

37:37The reason this is so important is because it comes from, you can't understand a person unless you understand what was their early life like? What were their parents like? Why are they the way they are? And so the one thing that I have received, there's one line that I say over and over again that I learned from Francis Ford Coppola's biography that I get the most messages by far about. And it says, you can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. That's in every single biography. It's what people resonate the most. It's what I get the most messages about.

38:04In the case of Tiger Woods, and I'm going to use Michael Jordan too, Tiger Woods is his dad engaged in psychological military warfare with him. And so everybody focused on his dad, which yes, that's a large part of that biography. What about his mom? me and you have kids around tiger was 11 right we both have kids around this age right you imagine driving your son to a competition they're playing golf this is not like high stakes shit and saying hey no matter what you keep your foot on their neck you never let up it's not just his dad his mom was like that too his mom after his dad cheated on his mom a bunch read the book or watch the tiger documentary on hbo and they talked about this a lot and his mom would tell his son It's like, oh yeah, your dad is soft.

38:45He's like, he forgives. I never forgive. The craziest thing I learned in that biography is that Tiger's parents never got divorced. They stayed married, they separated. So when Tiger's dad dies, it's up to his mom. She had the right to decide the burial. One of the most famous people on the planet and one of the most famous athletes to ever live, his dad is buried in an unmarked grave. That was his mom's decision. What kind of environment was he raised in? And so same with Michael Jordan, super competitive. His calling is just being ultra competitive, winning, playing zero sum games. And I have to be there.

39:19There's 29 losers and one winner, and I'm going to do everything to make sure I'm that one winner. Right. And comes from his dad saying, Oh, go in the house with the women. You're not one of the boys. You're not one of the men. It's like the story of the father's embedded in the son. I think the ending to my Jordan podcast, cause I do re-listen to my old episodes. I think that's one of the best endings I've ever done because it's like, that's the way the book ends. His dad is dead. Highly likely that Michael Jordan is better at his job than anybody else has ever been at theirs. Right. And at the end, it's like, am I good enough now, dad?

39:49Still in like the dark recesses of his mind, it's like this, I'm going to prove to my dad, I don't have to go in the house with the women. I am good enough. And so you can't understand that. You can watch documentaries about this. You can do all this. You have to understand what the hell took place in their early life. The idea that I'm going to get distracted or I'm going to fumble this opportunity. You can look up and down my family tree. No one is even remotely close to the opportunity that founders can provide for my kids to make sure my kids don't go through what I went through or anybody else in my family tree.

40:21It's like, I'm not doing this for me. One of the things I love is the Bugatti biography was like this. Sol Price, who's the most influential retailer of all time, I did an episode on him. One of the things that I think drives me is, yes, I'm super competitive. I want to be the best in the world at this very little niche, the narrow niche is like, I want to make the best podcast in the world on history, education, entrepreneurs. I don't give a fuck about anything else. I don't care about business podcasts in general, investing podcasts is like this little niche is all I care about. It's all I'm going after.

40:48And one of the things that drives me is I want my kids to be proud of me. The idea that Bugatti's daughter writes that biography about her father. She was so impressed with the man he was and the work he did. That's the opening of the book. We want to tell his story. He was a remarkable man. Soul Price, most influential retailer of our time. Most people don't know who he is. You know who knows who he is? Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco, knows who he is because that was his mentor. Jeff Bezos knows who he is. Sam Walton says he stole more ideas from Soul Price than anybody else. I do an episode on Soul Price.

41:17It is written by Robert Price, which is his son, right? And this is the miracle of podcasting, why I'm never going to get distracted. And I put that episode out. This is the second time I read the book. And Soul's son, who wrote the book, sends me an email. Said, you honored our family. That's fucking incredible. So this is what I'm after. The way he ends the book on his father. Let me read this excerpt if you don't mind. Again, his grown son, his grown son writing about his father after he passed away. Sol was the poster child for the American dream. His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village.

41:47Sol was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropist. He celebrated 70 years of marriage, was a good father who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. it doesn't get much better than that. It doesn't. It's 100 % right. If you get to the end of your life and your kids write that about you, you won. And I don't give a fuck if you have$50 billion. Your kids, the people that know you the best, that know the real you, people can fake all kinds of shit. Your kids know who you are and they don't want anything to do with you.

42:19You're a failure. I don't give a fuck how rich you are. The examples you've given of the story of the son and the father, oftentimes they're quite dark. And the person that we're talking about, who's got a book written about them, the Jordans and the Tigers of the world, had extremely tough relationships. Are there examples of the opposite where the relationship is more like the one you just described with Saul Price or the one that you're seeking to achieve with your kids that led to the same sort of excellence that these very tough environments led to? I don't think anyone listening wants to do what Tiger Woods' dad did to Tiger, and yet it produced Tiger.

42:56And lots of people want to be Tiger or someone like him. There was a great line I heard recently from a friend and mentor of mine, which is around the notion of envy. And his beautiful little idea was you are allowed to envy somebody if you envy the entire life. You're not allowed to envy pieces of it. And I think if you read that Tiger biography, very few people would walk away and say, actually, yeah, I want that whole package. They want the glory. But if you read what he went through, I don't think anyone would uptrade places. At least certainly I wouldn't. So what about the opposite of the virtuous influence of great parentage or early life circumstances that led to kind of greatness that you've studied that I think a lot of people want to achieve that are listening.

43:35Sad to say, I can't think of a single example. I'm sure there is. Nothing comes to mind right away. I have to go through all my episodes to really think about it, but it comes from this desire to either prove your father wrong, or in the case I'm reading a biography of Churchill, his dad, he was like an aristocrat. Churchill didn't have to do the life he wanted to, But he had that desire. He's like, I'm not just a son of a successful man or a famous man or a powerful man. I can achieve even higher than him. I haven't finished the book, so I'm not entirely sure if it even gets into his actual view.

44:03But from the very beginning, it's like, oh, clearly there's this father-son dynamic here that is pushing him along. Almost like delusions of grandeur. He talks about knowing he was destined for greatness when he was a teenager. The way he talks is actually motivating for me in a weird way. Unfortunately, I just think in general, negative drives. Fear of failure, I think, is a way more intense drive than love of success. We say we're chasing out for success, and that's what we think we're doing because it's a positive spin. But I think a lot of people are actually just terrified. I'm terrified to be a failure.

44:31Biggest fear I have is that I'm not going to live up to my potential. People could say, yeah, he was a failure. That's way more important than anything else to me. Just to push on maybe the most extreme category related to some of these ideas is the category that I would call conquerors. In the craziest sense, you might think of like Genghis Khan or something, but you studied Napoleon. There's business versions of this, probably like someone like Vanderbilt would come to my mind. Who have you studied in the category that I'll call conquerors? And what have you learned about this group of people in the same vein that I asked about athletes?

45:01So Alexander the Great, Napoleon, I've done a bunch of episodes, I think on both of them. Those are the ones that come to mind at first conquerors. In a business sense, yeah, I would consider Vanderbilt is up there. I think the robber barons in general were just more extreme than what we see today, or at least the people operating today are probably better at hiding it. And with time might tell, like some of the stuff that they did are likely as extreme. The conquering thing is a weird thing to me where I don't even know if like I should admit this publicly. So I read this book called The Mind of Napoleon and it was published in like 1950s.

45:34It is just a collection of 300 pages of direct quotes from Napoleon talking directly to you. There's two reasons I study Napoleon and Churchill is I always want to know who influenced them. And if you study the history of entrepreneurship pre-World War II, all of them are inspired by Napoleon. The longest speech on record that Rockefeller ever gave was about Napoleon. And if Napoleon was a businessman, he'd be the greatest businessman that ever lived. And then after World War II, everybody's inspired by, they're still inspired by Napoleon, but Churchill just appears over and over and over again.

46:02So I was like, I have to understand them to really understand these people. Reminded Napoleon also because I thought that was interesting because what may be a very important technology and company is Sam Altman's company, right? And Sam Altman said in 2018, when he was starting to build open AI or whatever, the most important book he read was The Mind of Napoleon. So same thing. I was like, I'm not trying to pay attention to any new company now because I'm focused on my own, but that's interesting. Why did he say that? Is there something in that book? Are these things related? And the thing that Napoleon did for me, it's even embarrassing to admit.

46:33He says, if you die and your name is not known, then your life was useless. Now, I think his was glory for himself because he said, I had the opportunity to rule the world. Who wouldn't? Me. I don't want to rule the world. I don't want that kind of life. But that personality type, the Alexander Grape, they don't give a shit if they live to 30, to 40, to 50. It is more important that they have a chance to be the very top of everything they're doing. Their trade is different. In business, what I love about entrepreneurship is for a vast majority of human history, is like the way you built quote unquote wealth is you killed people for it.

47:02You stole their land, their women, their cattle, and that's it. There was no market economy. Now it's all positive sum. Me and you, we make podcasts, products, whatever. It's like make people's lives better. There's a benefit to us. I'm not taking anything from anybody else. I'm adding to it. Napoleon really made me realize, don't hold yourself back because there is a weird hesitation with me. And so I'm learning, if you think about founders, all founders is my personal curriculum, but it's externalized to the world. I just make it public. I'd be reading these books even if I didn't have a podcast.

47:30I just said, hey, let me do this extra step. And then hopefully you can benefit from it because I'm going to be obsessively learning and trying to get better. Because I think you just had our mutual friend, Jeremy Giffen on the podcast, which is one of the best episodes of Invest Like the best I ever heard. And I spent time with Jeremy and I think the weird thing is how everybody says he's so smart. And it's kind of annoying that it is in a great way because I do like Jeremy, but like one of the first times I hung out with him, he's like, I think you're a, he called me a deranged college professor, which was hilarious.

47:57is that biting wit that I think people love him for. We're sitting there and he goes, I'm pretty sure that this whole founders podcasting is you didn't have any mentors growing up. So you have this insane search for like somebody that could show you the way. And I was like, God damn it. He understood me better than I understood me. And so the Napoleon thing, part of me is obviously introvert. I sit in a room by myself and I talk. I don't have any guests. Clearly that dude's an introvert. I want to spend half my waking hours alone. I desire solitude but part of it is like well this is the craft that I've chosen I realized there's an inconsistency in me that I didn't understand and Napoleon told me about and his whole thing was just you really want glory now I hope that the glory is not glory of David Senra but glory of the work that I do because I legitimately think the podcast I'm making is changing people's lives right and I want to do that and that's why I said all the messages I get give messages every day if the people are nice to you thank you for what you're doing.

48:49That kind of thing. And it amps you up, gets me out of bed in the morning. But also it's like, I was being hypocritical and saying, well, yeah, I want to do this, but I still want to preserve my privacy or I don't want to put my face on video, all this other stuff. And Napoleon's like, fuck that. You have a gift, see where that gift takes you, but do not hide it under like a bushel or sabotage yourself all in. You're either in the game or not in the game. And these are not even explicit things that are said. Again, most of the lessons I'm pulling off are not explicit. to do X, do Y. It's like, oh shit, that line made me think of something else.

49:22I am sabotaging myself. And so that book has really pushed me to, I'm willing, if this is my goal, then I'm willing to do everything in sacrifice of that goal other than the sacrifice of my health or sacrifice my family. I know that's a good idea and an interesting lesson because I think you see it everywhere. You see self-sabotage amongst talented people all the time. There's that interesting idea of the upper limit problem. I can't remember the author who wrote about this right now, but this idea that we all create this fictional ceiling for ourselves. And if we approach it, we self-sabotage to like bring ourselves down.

49:54I certainly see that in myself. And it's fascinating that Napoleon is the person that helped you out of it. We were having this conversation where you even told me. Yeah, there's this great, very fun party dinner table conversation that I first got from Charlie Songhurst, which is one of the most popular episodes that we ever did. But the very first thing we talk about in the episode is that he likes to have people stack rank money, power, and fame as their motivators of the things that they would choose. They could stack rank, which was most desirable to them. And I find this to be one of the most interesting and revealing questions you can ask somebody because most people don't answer it accurately.

50:31You ask a couple follow-up questions, you can get people to change their rankings pretty quickly. And I've gotten pretty good at it. It happened because I was surprised at my own ranking. And so anyway, that's the setup for you. I think it is actually helpful. And again, people that know you well, and actually observe you so much easier to see flaws in other people than it is in ourselves. And so my ranking was money, fame, power, right? Because power to me is now I understand a better definition of power is like, okay, what you want to happen happens, right? But I always think of power in history.

51:01It's always like fucked up things. I don't want people to tell me what to do. And I don't want to tell other people what to do, right? But the ability to make changes in the the world. So if you frame it like that, yes, I do want to make changes in the world. I am not ashamed to say the reason I'm obsessed with podcasting is because I think I have a role to play in the formation of a brand new industry. I think I can be a good example. I think I can influence the trajectory because you study the history of entrepreneurship. Let's say I have a major in the history of entrepreneurship. Well, then the minor is in new industry creation because a lot of these stories happen and they're just at the right place, right time with some right set of skills.

51:31And that's where I feel like I'm at. I was like, oh, podcasting is going to be a giant industry. It's underpriced. It's way more influential than people even understand. I'm completely addicted to it. I'm compulsively have to do it anyway. So maybe I believe this because of my compulsion. Maybe I'm wrong, right? But the way when I read these stories is don't hide that you feel that way. It's not from an arrogant standpoint. I'm not saying I'm special. It's just, I am obsessed with this. I think about it a lot more. It's comforting. Same example as I guess, oh, well, lean into the things that make you extreme.

51:58Now, I think this ties to why I do try to put barriers on myself where I say, hey, I'd rather be like an Ed Thorpe or Sol Price or Brunello Cuccinelli, the people that had amazing professional success and didn't destroy everything around them. But I also know that my personality type, what I have to be careful with is I see, I think, why this resonates. People see themselves in these other people. It's why it's called founders and not companies. People identify with people and identify with organizations. And I know my personality enough, you have to be very careful here because you could be so obsessed with your goal that you destroy things that you actually love and that you know that people when they get to their life regret doing.

52:35It's arrogant for me to think that these people that are, in my opinion, smarter, more accomplished than I am made mistakes that I'm not prone to make. Let me tie this back to what we were talking about. Well, you're like, no, it's not money, fame, power. You're like, no, for you, it's fame, money, power. And the reason I said money at the top is because when you grow up with an absence of it, you realize how powerful money is. When I say money, it's not money to buy Ferraris, none of that shit. It's to make sure I have control over my environment. I get to spend time who I want. And then my kids are in a safe environment.

53:04They're not harmed. That's the main goal. But your point was, well, fame, not because you want to make yourself famous, but because you want to win and your game is podcasting. And because you have such an insane desire to win, that fame has to be at the top. It's interesting when you do this exercise, my favorite follow-up question is, okay, so you get the thing you want. What are you going to do with it? The question, what do you want, is the most powerful, interesting question. And then you have to square that with people's behavior. Is their behavior, does it show or prove the thing they say they want or not?

53:34And very often it's not the case. People's revealed preference or behavior is different than their stated preference or behavior. Anyway, I encourage people to think about this question for themselves and their friends. It's really interesting. I'm curious if you think the people you've studied would have consistent rankings of these three or if they'd be all over the map. The answer to the question is I don't know. I'd have to think about it on an individual basis. It's definitely not money. The thing I know for sure, which I think a lot of people misunderstand is they think because done at the highest levels of entrepreneurship creates the greatest financial rewards in the world, the richest people have built companies, they're the wealthiest, right?

54:09There's no way you're going to read like James Dyson's biography and be like, he's doing this for money. Really? Vacuum cleaners for 14 years, 5 ,127 prototypes for money? No, this is not for money. The only people I'm really interested in, I talked about this, everything comes down to me as products. And the reason everything comes down to products is because products is the way that you express the service you do for other people. And so that's why it's, well, are you going to get distracted? No, because I love the product that I'm making. All I'm thinking was when I'm spending 40 hours for one hour of recorded audio, I have to make sure every single minute or every single section of the podcast is as valuable to other people.

54:39So I would definitely say money is not going to be the top for them at large. Maybe power is probably ahead of fame though, because power is changing the world. I had this conversation last time I was up here to visit you was what I wanted to think about is I love the fact that so many people listen to my podcast, so many people listen to your podcast. I'm kind of envious that people make physical products. Imagine if Steve Jobs was still alive and everywhere you go, every single way you go, the thing that was first took place in your mind is in these people's hands and you see it everywhere. So it's got to be power because he literally changed.

55:16And I think about the most influential entrepreneur. I'd put Steve Jobs up there right now, or in the last 20 years or whatever, go back 100 years, it's got to be Henry Ford. His product literally changed the geography of the world that we live in. There's suburbs because of that. There's highways, everything because of this mass production of cars that he figured out before anybody else. What is that like? That's power. To cut at the premise a little bit, I think people, when you hear these three, they have this very selfish undertone to them. And obviously, the healthiest drive and motivation would be something different.

55:46And so I just want to offer maybe an antidote to this exercise. There's this guy that I spent a bunch of time studying. His name is Dr. Govinda Venkataswamy, who was an eye doctor who started this hospital called Aravind, I believe, in India when he was quite old. He had sort of like had a full career. And then he spent decades building this hospital that's cured millions of people in India of cataracts. And he has this amazing quote towards the end of his life. He said, intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful. When we grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify ourselves with all that is in the world and there is no exploitation.

56:21It is ourselves we are helping. It is ourselves that we are healing. I love that articulation of it. To me, that's what I'm searching for when I listen to some of your episodes. I hear these stories of Tiger or others. I think of my son or my daughter. I don't want that story for them. I want a great story for them that comes from a place like Govinda laid it out there. That's why I say to build something for others is the middle part of that definition. You can cut through these three motivators, which sound very selfish and get to a higher place. But what's fascinating to me, you're the world expert on this, is that there just are not a lot of Govindavan Katta Swamis in history.

56:57There definitely are some. You could argue that the world's great religious figures. I'd love you to go study Muhammad, study Jesus, study Buddha. I would love you to read their stories and do your thing on them because I do wonder, is that the natural next iteration of some of these stories that could be maybe a bit more aspirational than some of the scary life stories you've studied that lead to greatness nonetheless. So it's funny you said that because one of my favorite authors is again, Paul Johnson. What I think people more authors should do is he writes these 200 page biographies. Oh, that's so good.

57:27The Churchill one is so good. Yeah, they're excellent. The Churchill episode I did on Paul Johnson's book is one of my favorite episodes I've done and one of my favorite books. And it's hilarious that you said that because I just downloaded and started reading his biography on Jesus. So I don't know if I'm the right person. You're a right person. This is going to go on an interesting conversation. Goes back to the influences of the best thing about tying the ideas to the life stories of people that developed them. Applies to obviously myself, whereas I think I'd be biased because I grew up in the church.

57:58In my own business, I don't care what people believe and what they don't believe. Unfortunately, my mom was a fundamentalist Christian where she got cancer and the kind of churches she was involved in and exposed us to, she didn't seek medical advice. She tried to just pray about it. It's changed me as a person to watch the person that gave birth to you slowly whittle away and refuse hell and then die in one of the most grievous ways possible. I started reading it and I stopped because I'm like, I don't know if I can actually do this. Maybe I will. I think reading these multiple times, actually thinking about, and there's a bunch of books that I read and never turn into podcasts, but I wonder if I can actually do that because I do think it's interesting because talking about founder, founder of a religion, That's fascinating.

58:36I don't care. I just like founders. That could be a founder of a company, a founder of an idea, a founder of religion, a founder of an organization, founder of a nonprofit. I just like people to start things from scratch. I think that's very fascinating. But I do want to go back to this idea of service because this is something I also think that entrepreneurs instinctively know and I think outsiders don't. Maybe my favorite maxim from the history of entrepreneurship is money comes naturally as a result of service. And people are like, yeah, but they get so rich or whatever the case is. A lot of people think they're doing it just for money or whatever.

59:02I have a different perception. If they're doing it for money, they would have stopped a long time ago. They work for decades after they already have more money than they'll spend. And then I've also experienced this in my own life. And it's obvious in the books, there is some kind of future generations benefit from this human impulse that's clearly reoccurring. And the fact that a lot of these people wait to the end of the career, they know they're dying, and yet they try to document every single thing that they know for the benefit of future generations. So obviously Sam Walton, right? Knows he's dying.

59:29He's got cancer all over his body. He knows he's dying when he's writing that book. Who picks up that book and influences him? Jeff Bezos along other people, right? Steve Jobs talked about that. He knew he was dying. He's working with Walter Isaacson to do that. Ingvar Kampra, the founder of IKEA. Everybody tried to get him to write a biography. He wouldn't do it. Then his co-writer says, hey, but you should look at this as like service of future generations of entrepreneurs. And so then he does it. He had a seven decade long career. This happened in my own life, right? Which I didn't know at the time it was happening.

59:54And it was a direct result of what's taken place in my life in the last year, where I had lunch with Sam Zell before I had dinner with Charlie Munger. I did the Charlie monger episode first. Sam Zell listened to that episode, right? I'd already spent two hours, one-on-one with me, him, my friend, Rick, conversation just like the one we're having here, right? And then he listened to that. He's like, I want to do that. He's like, I will fly down to Miami. Let's have dinner. We'll spend a few hours with David, give him more content. And then he can make, I had dinner with Sam Zell episode. That dinner was scheduled, right?

1:00:27The day before the dinner, it was canceled. He wasn't traveling because he was sick. Three weeks later, he was dead. And I didn't know he was sick. He obviously knew he was sick. And the reason he was doing it is not because of me. He loved entrepreneurs. And he knew a bunch of entrepreneurs listening to my podcast. He traveled all over the fucking world doing this. He just loved doing that. He wasn't making money on it. The guy had to sit on billions and billions of dollars. But he loved entrepreneurs. And he benefited from other mentors. There is always a blueprint. There's always a mentor. There's always a helper.

1:00:54And I think that's the biggest thing where it's like, I made you laugh yesterday. The way I think about the partnership that we developed, I relate everything to either hip hop or sports or Game of Thrones or something like that. The analogy between me and you is like Dr. Dre signing Eminem. I'll take it as a lifelong Dre super fan. That's what happened because Dr. Dre on his own path had developed an impressive body work, earned the respect of people. And if he says, hey, this guy's good, you should pay attention to him. That holds weight. And so he put the thumb on the scale and launched Eminem.

1:01:23And then what happens? Eminem goes fucking crazy and he's still doing it. We're still working nine to five, still making music 25, 30 years later, which which is hopefully my path. I get this message all the time. I hope you never stop podcasting. The only way I ever stop podcasting is if some way I learn how to rap, because then you have to worry about it, because that's the only other job where I'm like, that seems pretty cool. And then I would do exactly what Eminem did. He's not doing it for money. He's got more money he could spend. He does it because he loves to, and people enjoy the results of his labors.

1:01:48I love this notion of all these stories of people deciding that they can give back and sort of pass the torch through lessons and stories or whatever to the next generation of founders. I used to have this motto, I guess I still do, which is simple, learn, build, share, repeat. Like if you just follow that loop, it works really well for you. We started to think about our favorite episodes being what we call the only episodes, meaning it's somebody that's really hard to convince to come do this, but we get them to, and we're the only one that they've done. And the reason is that exact same idea.

1:02:17These are people that have learned really valuable lessons. And this notion of service and passing it on is lovely. Dr. Benkata Swami that I mentioned before, his journal, someone found his journals and there's all these little scribbles in it. And I love these little scribbles. There's some of them that are funny. Like how do we make Aravind more like McDonald's? He was obsessed with McDonald's because it was so efficient and everyone in the world, it was like the same process. And he wanted to do that for eye surgeries. But the line that I think about all the time, it sort of haunts me is how do I become a more perfect instrument?

1:02:48And he thought about it that way, that he was an instrument, nothing more, for this thing that he was building. And I would love to hear about history's founders and what you've learned in the last year about this notion of personal growth is too lame of a title for it. But I like this, how do I become a more perfect instrument if I'm devoted to something greater than myself, which I think you and I agree that people should be, then the question is, okay, how do I become a more perfect instrument for that thing? who comes to mind when you hear that phrase somebody that honed themselves as an instrument in devotion to something creating something greater than themselves for others i mentioned henry ford earlier i think he's the greatest example because what's remarkable i've read i don't know five books on him i'm going to read every single book i can find and i'm talking about his professional life his personal is a weirdo he had one idea this is something i've been reading about don valentine a lot lately and he's what we teach entrepreneurs they only have to do a few things well people are surprised like if you just do a few things well and do it over a long time and keep getting better at it.

1:03:48That's how you build a fantastic company, right? What I think about him is he literally had one idea. When he was a young man, he's in his 20s when he's trying to do this. Then he's in his 30s when he's starting his company. He's just like, I want to make a car for the everyman. It's kind of weird that we're building$6 ,000 cars when the average person makes less than$3 a day. Who's buying these cars? 500 people in the entire country. You can't say he did it for money, even though he's one of the richest people on the planet. By 1919, you're not 100 % a Ford Motor Company. His whole thing was just, it goes back to experience this in his early life, he hated the toiling of manual labor.

1:04:18He started on the farm and he combined his distaste for the toiling of a typical rural American lifestyle at the time, right? With his innate love of mechanics of all things, he would take things apart. And he's just like, well, can I build machines that relieve human toil? Think about if me and you wanted to travel and there's no car, what do we do? We're walking, you're on a horse. This is a crazy thing also where I think of the reason I try to isolate myself, because I know everybody's going to be influenced by things they take in, right? Which is why I'm so paranoid about the quality of what I put in my podcast, because the mind is a powerful place in which you feed affection in a powerful way, right?

1:04:51I want to affect people in a powerful way with good things, good ideas, good stories, anything that can help, especially their day-to-day work. What's fascinating is you'd be shocked at what people can get used to. I've read about all the early car manufacturers. If you were living in New York City in like 1895, your job could have been you wake up every morning, say bye to your wife and kids, you spend the day cleaning up horse shit and urine all day long. It was like tons and tons of horse crap on the streets of Manhattan every year. And people are like, what do you need this car for? And they were just used to it.

1:05:22This is also where I know it's frustrating dealing with me. My wife tells me the same thing that you tell me and that other people around me tell you. You're like, God damn, I can't get an idea into this guy's head. It takes months and months for him to actually - Six months to be precise. I do think there's a benefit. Here's going to be an extreme comment that entrepreneurs and investors will understand, but normal people won't. I was like, I truly believe that you should believe that your opinion is more important than any opinion around you. Because I've seen this example over and over again.

1:05:50Henry Ford, stop working. You don't need a car. Design a faster horse or a better horse carriage or whatever. Every single time somebody creates something new, you have the vast majority, 99 % of the people around them saying you shouldn't do that thing. What are you doing? Give up. What's wrong with the status quo? This is part of the brainwashing I'm doing to myself where it's like, yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. If you adapt that belief. Everybody's like, sometimes you're right when everybody else is wrong. And sometimes you're wrong when everybody else is right. But that's the life you choose.

1:06:14This is what I want to do. And so I do think that's actually a good idea. So he was the person that comes to mind because he was so wealthy and he didn't retire and do anything. He's just like, I have this one idea and I want to see this idea come into fruition. But I'm sure there's a million examples. When you think of high agency founders, it's a term that describes probably most of the people that you've read, but it's a sliding scale. One of the things we keep talking about is within everywhere there's power laws. Within even the books that you've read, the 300 people, the top couple people versus the bottom couple, it's like a mass disparity.

1:06:44And the bottom couple had books written about them. So there's just always these spectrums that I find really interesting. And so I'm curious when it comes to agency, how you think about that term and who comes to mind? And what's the role of agency like? My friend, George Mack, gave me the definition of what a high-agency person is. When you're told no, what's your next response? For these people, it's like no is just the first step and then move on to the next. One of the greatest examples of this. I didn't know. There's an excellent book. Everybody's read. So what I try to do is I don't want to just read all the books that everybody read.

1:07:11Yeah, the Steve Jobs, I'll read the book, I'll read Titan, Rockefeller, I'll read, I'll read Shoe Dog, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think my advantage and edge is like, I find these weird books, no one's read. Many people think they're boring and I think they're fucking riveting. And so I found this book. I went through, I reread Titan because I was obsessed with Rockefeller, right? And then what I do is I go in the bibliography and in the bibliography, I'm like, what is this other book published 40 years ago. What is this? And I find like this other copy and it goes into way more detail.

1:07:37In my opinion, it is the best biography of Rockefeller because also there's nothing wrong with Titan, but this one is 250 pages and it really focuses on early days of his career. It's episode 254 founders. I think it's called John D. The Founding Father of Rockefeller is the book. It's really hard to find. And what was fascinating to me is I forgot how much borrowed money, right? Because Standard Oil, Charlie Munger made this point where he's like, if you go back and look at the businesses the robber barons built, there's only one that's arrived, Rockefeller. Rockefeller has currently built the best organization out of anybody.

1:08:09And you go and you read that book and it focuses on how did he start? Standard or printed money, right? But at the beginning, it was built on borrowed money. And so he has a line in that book where he's just like, oh, I had to go to every single bank. I raised money as much as I could constantly. And if somebody said, no, I didn't care. All I knew is now I just go to the next bank. I was one step closer to getting what I want. He took a rejection. That's a high agency person. Took a no as, oh, that's great. One step closer. Now I'm one step closer to the yes. But by far the highest agency founder that I've ever come across is Samuel Zamuri.

1:08:43It's one of my favorite books I've ever read because his life story is incredible. There's only one biography that I know of him, but also the writing. I think the guy's name is Rich Cohen. This book is well-known. The Fish That Ate the Whale. I think The Life and Times of America's Banana King, Sam Zamuri, I think is the subtitle or whatever. And that's a perfect example. Guy's a Russian immigrant, penniless, uneducated Russian immigrant. I think he starts in Alabama and then eventually supported New Orleans. He's like 19 years old, right? Working job after job. At one time he was taking care of pig shit.

1:09:09That's what he had to do. He had to support himself and his family that were coming over, right? They were escaping religious persecution. And what I love about him is not only his high agency, but something that I try to share as well is I love these people that see opportunities where other people see nothing. I've told this story before where I was like, man, I told one of my oldest friends, you try to build a business that is a perfect representation of you. It's completely authentic to yours. I don't have any memories before I was a compulsive reader. I wonder if I could build a business around reading books.

1:09:36And my friend's like, this is the dumbest thing I ever heard. And then he called me like a year ago. He's like, I can't believe you did this shit. It's incredible. He's at the docks. One of the first multinational companies was actually fruit companies because they're in America, but all the stuff is taking place in Central America, South America, and everything else, right? And quick story, I'm not going to regurgitate the entire book, but the bananas that are rotting in two or three days, they can't move fast enough because it's this giant organization. So they just throw them away. He's like, give them to me.

1:10:00I can be fast where you're slow. And then he builds a business on that. And then he just one step to another. And there's two interesting things about him that make him high agency. And I think relate to this is something your friend, Graham Duncan, he's got that excellent episode on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And he's talking about when investors are looking for new analysts. It's a lot of feedback. Why did you choose this person? Why are you working with them? One of the best feedbacks he ever got, or one of the best heuristics for this, one guy told him, he's like, I'm looking for somebody that scares me.

1:10:26And then Tim laughs. It's the laugh that Tim has that is excellent. He explained why. He's just like, you found the game they want to play and they go with such an obsession. They're inevitable. You just caught them at the early time. Look for people that I'm afraid that they'll replace me. That's how you know they're good because you should be trying to find people that are better than you, right? And so Andrew Preston is one of the co-founders of the United Fruit Company. And he sees another him. He's probably like, I don't know, let's say 40 years old, 50 years old. He sees a 20-year-old Sam Zemur.

1:10:52He's like, what's this? That's me. You don't build a big company with a small ego. Now you're smart enough to hide the ego, but they're, yes, they're egocentric, they're type A, they're all the same people, but they're also really in very valuable ways, humble, humble enough to say, I'm not that special. There's going to be another me. There were versions of me before me. Of course, there's versions of me after me. So that means there's versions of me now. I don't want to compete with another me. I want to partner with another me. And so he winds up buying a part of Sam Sam Murray's business. So I think that's fascinating.

1:11:21And it's also fascinating when Andrew Preston dies, the founders are gone. And so now you have the managers take it over. Andrew respected Sam. The other guys that didn't build the fucking company didn't. They're like, what's this uneducated, they called him a jobber, fruit jobber. The reason the book is called The Fish ate the whales. He had a smaller fruit company and he did the machinations and overthrew the larger one. The fish ate the fucking whale. That's why it's called that. But the reason I say he's the highest agency person too is because that was him at 19. Now we fast forward, he's about 32 years old.

1:11:48And where's his fruit being grown? It's in Central America, Guatemala, Honduras. These governments are not really governments. They're like bought and paid for. World history is bigger countries taking advantage of smaller countries. And that's just how it's always been. And so he's been overthrowing governments, essentially saying, hey, I want favorable conditions for my company, and I'm willing to do whatever. I'll pay you if you want to take the money. If you don't want to take the money, then I'll fund an army and overthrow your government. And so Secretary of State Knox, if I remember this correctly, calls 32-year-old Sam Zemery to Washington for a meeting with him and J.P.

1:12:19Morgan. J.P. Morgan's at the apex of his powers at this point. That's like me being called to a meeting with Jeff Bezos or something. And then Jeff's saying, hey, cut this out. And we'd be like, oh, cut it out? How about I overthrow the fucking government? And so that's what he does. JP Morgan and Secretary Knox like, hey, we have very important business here. This is a US government business. Stay the hell out of it. And Sam Zemuri's high agency response is, okay, not like, okay, thank you guys. I'll just go back to New Orleans and do this. Like, no, they funded military. Now, obviously not encouraging people to overthrow governments, but that was his response.

1:12:50And so he's just the highest agency person ever. Wonderful story. It's such an incredible book too. One of the 10 great books or something. What is the lesson that you've clearly seen across these stories that you're most scared to talk about publicly? I hate to answer this with that's a good question, but that is a really good question. I don't know if I'm scared to talk about it anymore. I mean, you listen to the podcast. I do some outlandish on the podcast. My whole thing goes back to like why I think podcasting is so special where Matt Russell, who's the CEO of Colossus wants me to go on his show, Making Media.

1:13:23And it's like, yeah, I'll go on anytime you want. Essentially has a show about making a media company. And it's just like, yeah, I guess people consider me making a media company. That's not what I look at it at all. I think podcasting, it's authenticity scaled. It allows me to be me, to have a one-on-one conversation with hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously. And so therefore I don't have a fucking script. I break the fourth wall. I talk directly to the person. I have a reaction. Just like you see a great movie, a great piece of art, a great song, a great book. This is not like boring shit to me.

1:13:52I don't make podcasts about books that bore me. I do embarrassing shit on my podcast. You've heard me fucking cry because it reminded me of something that happened, right? Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I throw things and I curse because I can't believe what's going on. So I really try not to hide my true response because if I want to do this for my entire life, which I clearly do, the only thing I can know I can do forever is be me. I can't put on a show. I can probably put on an act for a few years, but you can't do it for like, I want to do this forever. Somebody asked me the question, is there anybody in podcasting, because podcasting is a small industry, like you haven't met that you'd want to meet.

1:14:23The answer is really no other than the obvious answer being Joe Rogan, just because one, it's the biggest podcast in the world, but also because it's not a show. It is him. He's got 2000 episodes or like three hours long. Like if you listen to him, anytime something they try to attack him, he like just survives. Because if somebody came to you and said things about me, dude, I've talked to David for a thousand hours. I know how he is. You're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. That's why I think it makes it so powerful is that it is the actual person. It's like, I'm not putting on a show.

1:14:51This is who I am. So the answer to your question would be like, there's a dark side to all of humans. You're a big fan of Will and Ariel Durant, just like I am. And like, what's the lessons of history is one of the book that we share that we both love. And they studied maybe more human behavior than anyone ever. Yeah. Right. And they're like, in all ages, men were dishonest and governments are corrupt is one of the greatest lines from lessons of history. The fact that they say it's like war is just a constant, like humans are virtuosos of violence. They engage in this. And so there is always a dark side to people, even good people.

1:15:24The best example of this is Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, who I feel is the greatest podcaster of all time. It's why I have a single person solo history podcast because of him. And he has this great series on the war in Asia between the Japanese and China, everyone. And there's something that I think is going to relate to the question you just asked, where he starts this episode, right? And they're in the Philippines. It's like the 1970s or something. And there's a former Japanese soldier hiding in the jungles, shooting at Filipino citizens. And they're like, what is taking place here? And what happened was this guy was indoctrinated that, hey, the Japanese Imperial Army will never retreat.

1:16:05It's death or nothing, right? So for 20 years after the war was over, he is still engaging because he's cut off from his superiors. He has no communications. He's like, oh, the war must keep going on. To get him to stop, right? They were throwing in like newspapers to show, hey, like this is the war. He thought it was propaganda. That was all bullshit. To get him to stop, they had to bring in his commanding officer. He's like, I will only listen to my commanding officer, right? The commanding officer, if you know anything, I mean, that war, especially with like what the Japanese and the Chinese did to each other.

1:16:34They mutilated all the bodies. You see this if you've ever seen the series on HBO, the Pacific. But the crazy thing is the same people that were literally fight to death, kill their enemies and then mutilate the bodies, right? They go bring in the commanding officer who was in charge of all this group who obviously killed tons of people. He finally said, okay, no, we surrendered. It's over. That's how he did. What was the most fascinating part of that story is what was that guy doing? 30 years later, after mutilating bodies and killing everybody, he was selling books. You go in the bookstore, there's a bookstore down the street.

1:17:03to me and you were in yesterday. Imagine us going in there, we see an older, elderly 70-year-old. He's like, hey, how can I help you? And not knowing what he did, there's a dark side to all of humans. So that is the scary part. I want to focus on being a good person. I try to be a good person. I want to focus on trying to serve other people, but self-interest rules the world. And the dark side is that you can be so preoccupied with what you're trying to achieve that you light everything around you on fire. What is your favorite line from Game of Thrones that relates back to founders? So it's unfair that you made me choose one of them.

1:17:39I relate. Okay. So this is going to be real fucking nerdy. Okay. So actually this ties into something else I wanted to talk to you about that we haven't touched on that I've been thinking about a lot lately. You're really great at naming things like maniacs on a mission, life's work, live players, casuals, and that casual designation. Do you have a quick definition? What's the definition of a casual? To me, it's the opposite of serious. I'll relate this back to my point earlier. How do I become a more perfect instrument. Someone who's serious in the way that I like, I like dealing with serious people that are going after something aggressively with interest, with passion, with a lust for it.

1:18:14And a casual to me is the opposite of that, that sort of dabbles. This is the person who wants to get rich with minimal effort or that wants anything with minimal effort. There's a sort of laziness to it, which I recoil from personally. Try not to cast judgments, but everyone can live however they'd like. I don't want to impose my view on anyone, but that's what I mean by casual. It's sort of the opposite of Dr. V. Okay. So I come across this all the time. Once you put it in my mind, I see it everywhere. It's like what Coco Chanel said. Coco Chanel, one of her famous quotes was like, it's immoral to play at one's living.

1:18:47She was dead serious about what she was doing. One term I think about this is permanently superficial. So David Ogilvie talks about who's building a firm, but he's also building the young men inside the firm. And that was really important to them, which is also a form of service that you see in a lot of entrepreneurs. Yeah, they're building a company, but they're also building the young people around them. And he talks about the fact that, listen, getting ahead is, you don't have to be the smartest person. Just collect more information. This is the famous Bill Gurley talk that I always reference on the podcast, which is running down a dream.

1:19:10The playbook I'm running to do founders, I don't have to be the smartest person. I just have to collect more information about history's greatest founders than anybody else. And I think I'm already doing that. I don't think anybody else got to catch me. Ties into the Graham Duncan thing, because I just do it so much more than anybody else has got to do. He's like, listen, if I sign you an advertising account to show oil company was one of the largest accounts at the time, he's like, this is what I want you to do. This is what I would do if I was you. I would read textbooks on oil geology. I would visit your client's factories.

1:19:35I would study up on all the petroleum products. On Saturday mornings, I want you to go down to the gas station and ask the customers questions. And he just lays out, all of this is not genius level stuff. This is just effort. And he goes, most people are far too lazy to do this. So they will remain permanently superficial. And I want to vomit. But if anybody ever described me, I'm trying to be the opposite. And so why the hell, David, you bring up Ogilvy and Coco Chanel and Casuals when Patrick asked you a question about Game of Thrones? This is how I am about everything. So instead of watching a new show, I'll just rewatch Game of Thrones.

1:20:09So I told Patrick yesterday, I rewatched Game of Thrones and I take notes about lines I want to remember because I think there's a lot of insight into human nature and fiction. And so what I mean about that is not only do you watch the show, you watch it over and over again, you read all the books and then you read the encyclopedias. And then I studied the family trees. And then I read the prequels. And then I read the novellas. You immerse yourself into this world. It sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but it's like how you do one thing is how you do everything. And there's so many lessons for entrepreneurs in Game of Thrones.

1:20:38So the three people identify with the most, and I'll explain why. You don't have to know Game of Thrones lore to understand this. Tywin Lannister, right? He was like the founder of a family. That's the way you think about it. Olenna Tyrell and Bronn. And so what I would say is, Bronn is the one I most personally identify with. If you've watched Game of Thrones, you know who he is. Watch it again and just pay attention to what Bronn does the whole time. And to me, he might be the smartest player in the entire fucking game. And I've never heard anybody else talk about this before. They say the obvious one, Tywin's obviously smart, Tyrion, all these other people are smart, the Starks, whatever.

1:21:09But Bronn starts out, and I'm going to answer your question because he's the one that says the line that I think if I had to pick one, it's definitely this one. So Bronn starts out in Flea Bottom. Flea Bottom is your poor as hell. There is literally feces in the street. You have no education. You don't have any opportunities. You have no network, right? Over the series, like he starts out at Flea Bottom and then he ends at the very end and he owns Highgarden. So the example of the modern day equivalent of that is like, let's say you start out with nothing and somehow you took over the third best company in the world.

1:21:37That's the equivalent. I was like, what just happened there? We were talking about intelligence last night. Intelligence is not reading a bunch of books. I'm not smarter because I read more books. The best definition I've ever heard is, first of all, are you smart enough to know what you want to get out of life? And two, the only definition of intelligence matters, did you get it? Were you smart enough to navigate life? Bronn was smart enough to navigate life. And so what happens is he comes in as an ally to this very powerful family called the Lannisters, right? That's where most of his work and opportunity comes from.

1:22:03At the end, there's a civil war between the Lannisters and the sister in the Lannisters hires him to kill the brothers, even though he used to work for the brothers. And so he shows up in one of the last episodes and he comes across the two brothers and he comes in with a crossbow. And they're like, hey, Bron, one of our friends coming in this door right now, I'm like, why do you have that gun? We're just not going to do anything with the gun. We're friends. And he's explaining, he goes, listen, you told me that if anybody ever tried to give me to go against you, whatever their price is, I'll pay more.

1:22:28And so he goes, that's what I'm here for. And he's like, well, what's higher than that? And Bron goes, Highgarden. So if you don't want me to be on your sister's side, I want Highgarden, right? Which is probably, let's say second, might be the richest actually. And one of the Brothers says, Highgarden will never belong to a cutthroat. Why? Lannisters come from multiple generations. They owned all the gold. Grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather. There's nothing changing in this time period. And so it's like, what are you talking about? We come from a rich family. The term for everybody else in the world is Lannister shit gold.

1:23:01So that's their reputation. They come from multiple generations of we're the greatest, we're the smartest, we're the best, we are the most powerful. You're a cutthroat. You're from Flea Bottom. And what he said is something that I see on the podcast all the time. So they say to Braun, Highgarden will never belong to a cutthroat. And then he goes, no, who were your ancestors? The ones that made your family rich. Fancy lads in silk, they were fucking cutthroats. That's how all the great fortune started, isn't it? With a hard bastard. That is inevitably the Rockefeller family fortune. I just did an episode on the dynasties.

1:23:32I did Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Toyotas and the Rothschilds. It all is traced back to what he just said, cutthroats. Somebody has started from nothing. I call them generational inflection points. Our mutual friend, Sam Hickey calls them founders of families. It's the same idea. It's so arrogant for an entrepreneur to say, this is what I love about it. Oh, I have an idea that doesn't exist in the world and I'm going to marshal all my resources to make it real. Fundamentally saying, I noticed an opportunity and nobody else does. It's a very arrogant thing to say. And yet, the ones that do that change everything.

1:24:06I said to you yesterday, something to the effect of like, I don't know anybody that is as clear minded about what they're here to do as you. That's why I love spending time with you and learning from you. Thanks for what you've done for seven years now, something like that. Maybe we'll make this an annual tradition since you're covering 60 new books every year. There's a wealth of new material. So fun to do round two with you. Thanks for your time. Yeah. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, check out joincolossus.com. There you'll find every episode of this podcast complete with transcripts, show notes, and resources to keep learning.

1:24:37You can also sign up for our newsletter, Colossus Weekly, where we condense episodes to the big ideas, quotations, and more, as well as share the best content we find on the internet every week.

1:25:07Thank you.