14 Patterns Behind the World’s Greatest Minds - David Senra - #1126

25:29Just like In-N-Out tries to be the best hamburger, you know, than anybody else when Harry Snyder founded the company. And that idea of find a simple idea and take it seriously is a maxim from Charlie Munger, who's a hero of mine, who I talked about the last time I was on your show. And what Charlie spent six decades, seven decades studying is he wanted to study extreme business success. And what he realized is like, oh, what we find in business, and I would say in life, because me and you were doing this with podcasting, is the winning system oftentimes goes ridiculously far minimizing or maximizing one or a few variables.

26:03All the people that we've talked about, all the people I've had on my show, all the successful entrepreneurs that you'll talk to our study, it's like you realize they have very simple businesses, even if what they're doing is super complex. Like what's more complex about shooting a rocket and landing it? But if you read about Elon, he's like, all he talks about is simplifying, taking the idea very seriously, deleting, reducing complexity. So Todd Graves, his whole thing was like, well, I'm going to sell, his original idea was I'm going to sell chicken fingers better than anybody else. And I'm going to do it to drunk college kids.

26:37That's what he thought was the total addressable market that he had. And then he realized, so he thought I'm going to be able to sell to you when you're out drinking, but he was also open during the day. He starts getting busy during the day. And because he just focused on doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else is if you wanted the best chicken fingers you're just going to go to him and so even when he breaks down like he's got like three or four moving parts on the on the menu it's like the chicken fingers it's the coleslaw it's texas toast it's the fries there's nothing else and then he doesn't separate himself from the customer so like you could draw he's got 900 when i talked to him a few months ago uh on my show he had 915 stores all owned no franchises by the way he was growing faster in year 30 than need ever in his history.

27:18So he's adding like another hundred. How old is he? 52. No, no, he's 53 now because he started the company and was 23 years old. And you can drive into a Raising Cane's and place an order and everyone, and Todd Graves is the one giving you the order. He, his, his business card says fry cook, cashier CEO. So sometimes he's handing you the order out of the drive-thru. Sometimes he's in the world, like literally dumping the chicken into the oil and doing it. Cause there's no separation between him and his customer. And his idea was just like, well, it's served in boxes, right? He goes, as long as that box that I give the customer is the best box they ever get, they'll just keep coming back and back and back.

27:54And because he'll never sell the company, the reason I say it's a$20 billion chicken finger dream is because he owns over 90 % of the company. It's valued at least$20 billion. He's rejected multiple, multiple billions of dollars in acquisition offers. He says, I can't sell it because he believes, this is going to sound crazy, but he truly believes that God put him on this earth to be good at chicken fingers. And he's building this business so he can build a lot of wealth and then help people. And so he does a ton of charity work, supports a lot of people. And that's what he does with his money.

28:23One of my favorite stories about billion dollar ideas, Joe Hudson, his daughter came bouncing down the stairs after he'd been talking about businesses for a while over the last week. He was a VC for a good while, raised, I think maybe a hundred million dollars over his career. And his daughter came bouncing down the stairs and she said, I finally got it. I've got my billion dollar idea he says oh my god it's a it's a an idea that you think is worth a billion dollars she says no no that that's what i i didn't think that's what it was no i i've got an idea that i wouldn't sell for a billion dollars isn't that cool yeah it's such a better way to frame a billion dollar idea right what is something that you would do that you could build that you wouldn't sell if somebody offered you a billion dollars i i get a lot of shit for this in um because obviously a lot of entrepreneurs listen to both my shows and listen it's none of my business what you do i'm not concerned with other what other people do for their lives i don't give advice i just like build the life that i want to build but i'm not interested in like start scale sell and in some cases like i've had good friends of mine so they know it's a joke they'll call me like hey i sold my company i'm like oh sorry to hear that because it's like what the whole point in my opinion is like you want to get to your last company you want to get to the idea that you want to what did i say when i was on your show last time that if you love what you do your exercise it should be death like i just got done saying i get sad when i don't podcast it sounds fucking ridiculous to a lot of people but like i took two weeks off of not having these conversations my life is deficient some people do grow some people have phases and periods i loved running nightclubs for a while not gonna love running nightclubs forever and that was time there was a time and a place for that to happen uh everybody goes through periods now some people manage to land on the thing which is an infinite game for them and also fits their personality across time as they age and mature and change.

30:09But I would say, and that's the key, all the experiences that you had, you couldn't, I think you use the word speed run all the time. You couldn't speed run that. You have to go. I was 32 years old before I found my path. It was another five and a half years before it was able to pay my bills. Like some people, Kobe Bryant found it at 13. Could you imagine how crazy that is? Like finding your life's work that early? I read this, a bunch of biographies on the founder of Cadillac, Henry Leland. He found a Cadillac when he was 60. He found a Lincoln Motors when he was 70. It took him 60 years to find his path.

30:37That's the point. There's not like a time you have to do it by, but all these experiences should, in my opinion, should be getting you to the thing where it's just like, it's not about a dollar amount. It's not about an acquisition. It's not about a sale. It's like you literally, I love this so much, you couldn't pay me to stop. Yeah. The loudest boos come from the cheapest seats. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active. So I had this incredible conversation with Dana White. And I've been a massive fan of the UFC for a decade. But maybe even a bigger fan of Dana, to the point where like, I'll watch the press conferences, his press conferences that he does.

31:10They're usually like 20, 30 minutes long after fights of the fights I didn't even get to see. He's just a phenomenal communicator. And one of the things I most admire about him and his life story is one, I think it's very important. Like the way he is on camera when you're watching press conferences or on a podcast, he is exactly, there is no difference between the person you're seeing and the person and interacting with him in private, which is really, I think, really admirable and fascinating, personally fascinating to me. But what you realize about him is, man, he's like, you know, he built the largest combat organization in the world and he's got tens of millions, maybe a hundred million followers throughout all different platforms.

31:47And he just gets so much shit about the way he's running his business. And so you sit down with him and the loudest boos come from the cheapest seats. That's from this guy named Russ, who you had on your podcast. I love Russ. That episode was excellent, by the way. I love Russ too. actually just talked about him a bunch on this episode i just did with steve stout because steve stout's done a bunch of phenomenal interviews with russ as well but what you realize about like dana and really anybody's like if you're gonna do something in the world it's like dana could put on a fight like the fight he just did at the white house that card was incredible right five fights i think it's the only time in ufc history it was five knockouts there's still people complaining it's still you should have done xyz you shouldn't have done this you should done that.

32:29It's like, and his whole thing is he just like cuts all that stuff out. And the second part of that quote, where it's like making mistakes is a privilege of the active. He, on the episode and in other interviews, he'll talk over and over again. It's like, oh yeah, like I fucked that up or I made this mistake. It's like, if you're going to do anything, it's reframing the mistake is not, oh, it's something to avoid. It's like, yeah, that means I'm trying. It's very high trust. It's one of the best things that you can do as an employee. If you mess up, own it as quickly as possible yeah i fucked it it's when someone starts to hedge and cajole even when dana got pinned for that situation with him and his wife in the nightclub immediately he just took it on the chin and i think that you can tell a lot about somebody by what happens when they're backed into a corner socially like that he just owned it it's like yeah so he so after we recorded so he's got this insane setup in his office i should talk about So he's got his office, right, which has like all these crazy art and like little pieces from his career.

33:27Memorabilia. Memorabilia and these crazy quotes on his walls, which I'll get to in one second. Then on the other side, he's got this insane like professional sports team level gym that only he and his friends work out in. And then the other side we record, he's got a bar because he loves smoking cigars, drinking whiskey. And then he has entrepreneurs come in every day. I think he took like, I forgot what the number, like over a hundred meetings, maybe 200 meetings last year of entrepreneurs coming in and he loves entrepreneurship more than he loves fighting. And he just like gives him advice. Sometimes he does investments.

33:57He just like wants to bullshit and like hang out with people building companies. He's just like obsessed with that. But so we spent a bunch of time afterwards and he's showing me throughout his office and he goes, you might have heard about this little dust up I had with my wife. I'm like, yeah, I'm familiar. And so he goes, after that happened, I put that on the wall. And right when you're walking out of his office, It says, may God have mercy on my enemies because we won't or I won't. There's a clip that I just sent to Jared. It's my favorite Dana clip. You can bet against me. Bet against me.

34:26Tell me it's not going to happen. Tell me it's going to fail. I love it. I love every minute of it. Okay. So there's a reason on the, me and you were talking about the episode I did with Dana before this. And I kept bringing up Todd Graves because like when I sit across from somebody, I have this thing where it's like natural pattern matching. so like dana's talking i'm like oh that's kind of like like rockefeller did or henry ford did or like and i kept getting todd graves vibes because todd graves said the exact same thing where he's just like i need people to tell me that i'm gonna fail and he's like i just use this fuel and energy that i love people telling me they can't i can't do like what i want to do and dana's the same way dana has another great quote uh that i was watching when i was prepping for the episode where he's just like uh he goes i'm the world's best friend and if you want to be friends we can do that but if you want to be enemies i can do that too wow fuck that's good yeah he's really really good i could talk i mean i told him i was like listen i'm just gonna drive if you're cool with you i'm gonna drop in with this film crew every like six months because i could talk to him an hour over and over again the guy never runs out of stories the funniest thing that's ever been said on my podcast came from dana white it really pisses them off because if you think about how much struggle went into but to to building ufc into what it is today it's like They bought it out of almost bankruptcy for$2 million.

35:39They dumped another$40 million into it. This goes back to what we were just talking about. You love it so much that they couldn't pay you to stop. They lost money for like seven years. He wasn't making any money. And he tells this great story of his partner, one of the Fertitta brothers, is the first year they get into the black meetings, they're making profit. They're writing out all the revenue on the board. And Dana's like, what does that say? And he goes, it says you're going to make a million dollars this year. It's like, wow, that's incredible. Dana's a multi-billionaire now. like multi multi-billionaire now but he was just happy just to make a million dollars after seven years of failing he's like if i just do that i could do this forever before we continue most people in their 30s are still training hard their protein is dialed in they sleep better than they did in their 20s discipline is not the issue but recovery feels somewhat different strength gains take a little longer the margin for error starts to shrink and that is why i'm such a huge fan of Timeline.

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37:05If you care about staying strong into your 30s, 40s and 50s and beyond, this is foundational. Best of all, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee plus free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. And right now, you can get up to 20 % off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com slash modernwisdom. and modern wisdom at checkout. Successful people listen. Those that don't listen don't last long. Okay, so this is shocking because if people know that's a quote from Michael Jordan.

37:38So if you've ever seen The Last Dance, people think, oh, Michael's this like tyrant. He's this dictator. He thinks he knows better than anybody else. And there's this great book called Michael Jordan, The Life. It's like 700 pages long. It's by this guy named Roland Lazley. And I've read that book twice. It fundamentally changed my life. and in that that i found that quote in that book and we realized like no no michael's a sponge and all he wants is useful information that's going to help him accomplish his goals and so a lot of this this applies to business it was like i went to ed capmel's house to record a podcast ed capmel's the founder of pixar right pixar's made they invented the the first computer animated film they make some of the best films for families and for kids and for even adults that watch it and he worked with Steve Jobs longer than anybody else.

38:26He worked with Steve for 24 consecutive years and he speaks a lot about it. He's like the way Steve Jobs described in the media compared to the person I knew, it's not the same person. So he always tells these stories and adds this color and he goes, hey, Pixar was a public company for 10 years before Disney acquired it for like$7.6 billion. In that 10 year period, this is Ed telling me a story now, Steve fired two members of the board of directors from Pixar. What most people don't know is why he fired them. And so I asked Steve why he fired them. He goes, well, those two people, they never disagree with me.

39:01And so therefore, if they never disagree with me, they're not adding any value to the company. It's like, successful people listen, those that don't listen don't last long. What Steve understood, what Michael Jordan understands, what all these people get to the top of the profession understand, it's like there's no upside in being wrong. And so it doesn't matter if you give me, you're the reason I started doing video podcasts. You remember having this conversation years ago you're like you we don't have to like get retarded you're not doing video exactly so it's like i could have been like oh like what does chris know well he's got the eighth biggest podcast in the world maybe he knows some shit maybe i should benefit from the fact that i get access to him and we're friends and he can give me advice because you're not doing it to like criticize me like hey you could be doing better here yeah you held me accountable it's like you can you should be doing this you can do you doing a better job here i think people get confused a lot of the time when it comes to taking feedback taking criticism and they assume that uh you know committing yourself to one thing, being on this path, disregarding the chip on the shoulder, they incorrectly pattern match or they ignore advice and think that it's self-belief.

40:03And that's pretty dangerous because you're just stuck in local maxima there. Like you're never going to reach outside of that. And yeah, I think an awful lot about looking for humans who are able to update their worldview, like strong opinions loosely held, as opposed to loose opinions strongly held, which is what most people have. They haven't really arrived there with conviction and vigor. They've just kind of tumbled backward. They've sliding, not deciding into whatever their worldview is. There's actually an interesting story in one of these books I read where Charlie Munger, when he was trying to convince you of something, he would first state the best counter argument.

40:45And would that tell Jews after, you know, he's very verbose and he would talk for probably like 30, 40 minutes before he's gonna let you talk. I had dinner with him and I'd say he spoke 99 % of the time, which is good. He has all the information. What the hell am I gonna say? But what I thought was interesting is like, what does that imply? It means he thought about this so much that he could start with the best counter argument and then essentially rebut that counter argument and say why he believes something different. and i think that's like an excessively valuable skill i've never even heard of anybody else doing that wise people don't solve problems they avoid them no wisdom is prevention that is literally so that's a monger quote wisdom is prevention and uh he had a this is the experience of when i went and had dinner with him and um this when you realize like you know anybody if you live long enough i think he has another quote he's like if you live long enough bad shit's gonna happen to you it's like inevitable and you read his early life and it's like he had the worst possible thing that could happen.

41:39He was going through a divorce. His nine-year-old son had leukemia before it was curable. And so his nine-year-old son's like literally wasting away. And he is like, watch his son die slowly. And he would leave the hospital and like walk around the streets of Pasadena, just crying his eyes out. He's like probably 35, maybe 38 years old when this is, this is happening. And yet you spend time when you realize like, he is just like, nothing can face him. He's like, problems are inevitable. And his whole thing was like, well, it's you're not smart because you solve problems you're smart or you're wise because you avoid them and so the advice that he gave us was like if you just focus on being around really really great people like a handful of really great friends you know you don't need many there's probably a limit how many you could have maybe four or five really like people are gonna do life with for your entire life you know they love you they're high quality people they're not shitty people he has this other side of this is another charlie monaco he says most he's like uh most people are rat poison he's like there's a lot of just evil and low quality people out there.

42:37You should avoid them. So you build relationships with great people, people that you love and you can do life with, and then you find great work. And once you find the great work, you stay in that great work. You don't jump around, like you do that for the rest of your life. And by surrounding yourself with great people and having work that you feel is great and beneficial to the world, that avoids, that eliminates most of the problems that are under your control. And then life will still throw up problems that are outside of your control. Your kid gets sick, you get cancer, whatever the case is.

43:03but the smart thing is to it's not to solve the problems smart thing is to prevent them from occurring ever yeah there's a an insight that it's far easier to date somebody who compensates for your shortcomings than it is to fix them that you are the sort of person that likes to go to bed early and you've decided to get into a relationship with someone that wants to go out partying until three in the morning maybe your 9 p.m. bedtime is a personal failing because you feel like you need to have more control over your life than you actually do maybe it would be beneficial for you to work through that in some way and loosen up and you could go to bed at 11 o 'clock or 12 o 'clock or something like that or you could just get into a relationship with somebody who compensates for your shortcomings and he's like actually do you know what it is i'm not going to make you feel insecure about that thing i want to go to bed at nine o 'clock too so many of the situations that we end up having to we have basically a frustration budget in life every single day and it gets sapped out of you by all of the different interactions let's say uh you're going to dinner and your friend that you're hanging out with is just like really annoying and every single time you go for dinner you're super annoyed by them and then the next morning you wake up and you've got to deal with some real things at work that you can't get away from or that's part of a mission you're like i have less in the tank to be able to deal with this issue because of the situation i went through last night or because of the fact I had to stay up till three in the morning because the girl wanted to go and watch some fucking DJ and some nightclub or whatever.

44:28And now I'm tired and I didn't even want to go, but I did it because, you know, I'm going to compromise. It's really important to compromise. Wisdom is prevention. Like just avoiding problems altogether where you can, like problems are inevitable and they're going to come and smash you in the face. Choosing, like there's no nobility in meaningless suffering. There's nobility in meaningful suffering, but there is no nobility in meaningless suffering and i would say like there's a great uh uh quote in spanish that'll translate it's like uh this person will drown in a cup of water and this is what i mean like the first part of that is before you you find your life's work and and uh like hopefully you're doing something that makes the lives of other people's other people's lives better it's like you have to ruthlessly edit who gets access to you like the first episode i ever did of the new show was Daniel Ak, founder of Spotify.

45:18Right. And if everybody always asked me like, oh, if you had a, uh, if you could have like a personal board of directors from all the people you've read about all the dead entrepreneurs, who would you be? And I have an answer for that. And then like, what about for living? Like who would your personal board of directors be? I was like, I'd only need one. And it's like, Daniel, the advice, the reason he was the first guest is because the relationship we were able to build and the friendship we were able to build. It's like, he's like the wisest, one of the wisest people I know. I call him Swedish Buddha.

45:44He's like he built one of the greatest apps and technology companies in the history of the world right and did an unbelievable struggle to do so but he's just very wise and he he almost all of our conversations i was just with him a few months ago we were racing cars outside of stockholm um and we stayed up late one night and his whole thing was just like i still have notes from the conversation it's just like he's like man you just have to ruthlessly edit who's around you it's like you're just like we said like the mind is powerful place would you feed affection in a powerful way he's like especially you you have a huge platform i can't imagine what your freaking text messages or inbox look like yeah because you get it's a mess yeah you coming on your show could literally change some people's lives and so the problem is they're going to give they're going to act in a way to you that's not their real self and so daniel's point about this was just like you know if you if you feel you're developing french with somebody have other people you trust then go and spend time with this person because the way they act with you might be different from them.

46:38But I'm telling you all these people, and I've built a lot of friendships with a lot of guests I've had on my show. The amount of times they have told me, it's just like, everything comes down to the quality of people that you have around you. Your life is your relationships. That's another great maxim. Your life is your relationships. If you have a bunch of shitty people around you, like you're going to have a shitty life. They're going to cause drama unneedlessly because they, they will drown in a cup of water. And if wisdom is, wisdom is avoidance, you have to prevent you you you have i've cut a couple of these people out of my life and you know way less than i have to now because i've been so like i have a very small circle i would say i just talk my natural tendency is not to have a thousand shallow relationships it's just talk to the same half a dozen people over and over and over again and when i'm doing that i can be by myself i'm very comfortable reading a book making a solo podcast like i don't give a i don't need to go out and like constantly socialize and expose myself to like the vagaries of other people like corrosive and destructive behavior.

47:36I'm not interested in that. Create according to your own taste, not for applause, critics, algorithms, or market demand. This is Rick Rubin. Like you and I, we just talked about this. We just both read his book, Creative Act. And towards the end of that book, he has this thing called like the house on the mountain test. And here's the great thing about reading books about people and then getting to talk to them. Like you get to go deeper. And I want to tell you a story about James Dyson. And we can get there in a little bit. I think it's really important about this. But what Rick Rubin's point was just like, you're North Star in whatever you're doing.

48:09The metaphor he uses, he goes, let's say you bought a house, it's on a mountain. It's so remote, no one is ever gonna see it but you. He goes, do not put in your best effort to decorate it and to design it just like you would want it done. Like you're the only person that's ever gonna see it. No one's ever gonna visit. What do you do? And the answer to that question, that is your revealed preference. That is what you actually want to do. And so when you look at Rick Rubin's career is what does he do? He just makes the music that he wants to listen to. He is not, he says over and over again, don't think about the audience.

48:41Don't think about the customer. Don't think about the end user. Like you're probably not unique. Me and him talked about this. You're not that unique. So if Rick Rubin likes this song by Johnny Cash that with a guitar and just, you know, just this guy's voice, what's the chance that he's the only person in the world that likes that? Probably 10 million people that like the same kind of music Rick Rubin likes. Just like me and you, we talked about this before we started recording. We make the podcasts that we want to listen to. We both are obsessed with podcasts. They've made our lives benefit.

49:10They've benefited our lives immensely. I've learned more from reading and podcasts than I ever did in school. Like I'm just making the stuff that I'd want to listen to. I listen to them before they come out. Could you imagine like your life is making a podcast and you have to listen to it before it goes out? and you don't like it, it doesn't make any sense. So I think that the idea of like the metaphor of you're designing a house on a mountain, no one else is going to see it. You should design your life that way too. There's parts of your life that you share with other people, but there's huge swaths of it that only you know.

49:40You should design those parts of your life same exact way as the parts that other people see. A rule of thumb for anybody that makes things on the internet, would you consume your own content? If not, don't post it. I was with you one time and you asked somebody and there was a 30 second pause. Yeah. Yeah. And after 30 seconds. You know the answer. Wow. I'm like, dude, if it takes more than five seconds, the answer is fucking no. Yeah. Raid your own life. Create a grand theft life. Okay. So you told me before, I missed this episode of yours, but you just did this like round table. What do you call these round table episodes?

50:17Rabbit hole. Rabbit hole with Tim Urban. Yeah. But Tim Urban, like, I don't know, 10 years ago wrote this crazy essay on Elon and SpaceX and Tesla. He kind of predicted a lot of the shit that occurred in the last decade. And he had this thing called Grand Theft Life. And what he realized about Elon was like his ability to step outside of himself. So me and you are going through life all the time. And we're kind of like, right now I'm looking at you. My view is a lot better than yours is, right? Like, you're a lot more handsome than I am. But like, this is my experience. and you're kind of get like siloed into like, this is, I'm just experiencing it as it happens, right?

50:54And this started because Toby Luque, I'll get back to Elon in one second. I sat down with Toby Luque, founder of Shopify, which again, is probably my favorite conversation I've had on the podcast so far. And he has this idea, when he says this, he's running a$200 billion company. And he goes, I like to take the view that I'm a corporate raider. I did not start Shopify. I do not run Shopify. I have now extracted it from the owners and now I'm the new owner. And the previous management was crazy. And then I go through and look at every single other thing that would change. Why do you need to step aside?

51:26Because like, if you're just going through your day to day, there's so many problems he's not seeing. You have to step back in Tim Urban's Grand Theft Life essay that he was writing on Elon. It's like, you see that Elon does that. I mean, you were talking about this before where it's like, okay, if you look at yourself as if you're playing Grand Theft Auto, like your character. You play Grand Theft Auto. My character needs money. So my character goes, does jobs. Now he has more money. My character has stamina. He's running from the cops. He needs better cardio. So I take him to the gym. You just literally say, like from the outside, me and you, I hope you don't cut this from the podcast.

52:00We were in Hawaii together. We had many, many late night conversations about issues with women that me and you were both having that I swear to God, if there was just a casual observer, right? just listening, they were just like, Chris, David, these are simple solutions. You just can't see them because I could see what was wrong with yours and you could see what was wrong with mine. So this idea of just stepping out your side. And I love the idea that, again, putting into entrepreneurial terms, it's like some guy is now taking over my business or taking over my life. What would he change? You need a pause and you need a way to step back and go through this right right now.

52:37George has got this idea where he talks about, imagine that there was an evil version of you, a man with a mustache. What would he do to beat you? What would another version of you with the mustache do to beat you? Or that question of if you had 10 times the agency, what would you do? But with that situation, it's like, you know where your shortcomings, where your biggest shortcomings lie. There's going to be this person. Okay. They would be way more decisive. They would need less certainty in order to reach conviction because I know that I spend too much time vacillating and flip-flopping back and forth and I don't commit so quickly.

53:16And I know that the version of me with the mustache, he would arrive at the outcome way quicker because he wouldn't be doing the flip-flopping or he would be more cutthroat when it comes to not giving people third and fourth and sixth and seventh chances because I keep doing that and it keeps on burning me. That's what he would do. And you just go, okay, just do that. What would your answer to that for your own life be right now? The decisiveness thing I think is probably not far off. My required level of certainty in order to make big decisions. It's quite a high bar. And that's led to me making very few mistakes.

54:00Like I haven't made every business that I've started has succeeded. Almost all of the projects that I get involved in are very good. But it also, if you're not failing, it's probably an indication that you're not moving quickly enough because you could move a little, the headroom for moving more quickly is probably still quite high and you would still end up with a pretty good hit right uh so something like that how about you i think especially the last year the biggest mistake you get distracted especially because like um there was like a slow build to founders podcast it never like it's like i was like a frog in boiling water because it took five and a half years to break through another like it was like eight before it was like any substantial thing three three and a half four for us yeah so like you it was that was great it was actually like in hindsight i wouldn't change anything because it's just like oh i'm still the same person i don't feel any different yeah where the new one because i had an existing audience and it kind of like so it was like disorienting how fast my life changed and then this is it goes back to daniel and why he'd be like my uh you know my sole person on living board of directors is uh he's just like just stay away from the circus that's the advice that he would give me over and over again um so the evil version of you that's trying to beat you with a mustache would just get less distracted he'd be more simple and this is what i've gone back to doing where daniel's advice is just like we just had this phenomenal dinner in New York and then he was driving me to a friend's house and he's just like your life is very simple man he's just like if you just sit in a room and make podcasts and don't do anything else obviously spend time with your friends, take care of your health but you don't have to go to fucking dinners you don't have to go to conferences he had this conference called just sit in a room and make podcasts says the guy that owns Spotify do you think there might have been somewhat of a no because he just stepped down I promise you it's not like no no no because like my shows are always going to be somewhat niche.

55:51Like your show will always be 10 times bigger than anything I do because I'm just narrowly focused on entrepreneurship. But the advice is because I remember texting him. I was like, hey, are you going to Brilliant Minds? Which was his conference. And I don't think he was there this year. He goes, no, and neither should you. And that's when he just, hey, he goes, just stay away from the circus. But this is similar to if you do everything, you will win. No, that's, okay. So we can get to that in one second. so let me finish this because i think i like that you asked the question it's like really helpful for me to now kind of do grand theft life and now step back and say what i would do so it's like i have work that i really like to do i really like to read books i really like to make podcasts you know i like one on one conversations maybe one on two i can't do like group stuff i'm very introverted it makes me very uncomfortable i think like and then i've got to figure out like like.

56:41The dating part, the girl part. But other than that, I think the distraction is... You talked about something to do with this last time, that so many of history's greatest entrepreneurs have been totally shit with women. Like they're just pussy hounds or they're unable to hold a relationship together. But I don't know whether to give them their due, I wonder whether part of it is less they're bad with women and more the traits that make you a very successful elite level entrepreneur, the kind that you study, probably give you some traits that make it difficult to be in a relationship with you.

57:24So I wasn't expecting to talk about this, but I have some interesting ideas. So there's this great book that was written by Arnold Schwarzenegger's girlfriend. He lived with this girl when he was 21 to 26. So he was still, again, he's dominating this weird niche of bodybuilding, but he's not the Arnold that he's becoming, but he's the same person. So you see it's coming. And it's 300 pages of her just be like, why is this guy not acting normal? It's like, because it's Arnold. He's one of the most driven people in the world. I could have solved that for you in 10 seconds, right? Right. And the end result, when I made the episode on that book was like a successful entrepreneur, anybody chasing after somebody, you need a supportive spouse or no spouse at all.

58:02Right. And that, and that's the key there. What I would also say is, uh, I've been talking to this guy. He considers himself like a consultant to some of the most famous people in the world. Right. And what I find interesting is like, he can essentially pattern match across, let's say a hundred of the most famous people in the world. And these are like mainstream celebrities. It's not like me and you. Right. And he talked about, but in some of these people also happen to be captains of industry because Elon's one of the most famous people on the planet. He's not one of his people he talks to, but, and he goes, the problem that these people have is when you're really successful like that, you have an expansive personality.

58:37That's the word that he used, expansive personality, which means the more you succeed, the more you want to succeed. Napoleon said this in French and you could, it translates into appetite comes with eating. Usually you eat and you're full. These kind of people, the more they eat, the more they want to eat. So his point is like these people also have usually bad relationships because there's a ton of infidelity, right? Because it's just like they're expansive and in every element of their life, they're increasing their skills. Maybe their movie is getting bigger. Maybe their business is getting bigger.

59:09They're expanding. But in this very narrow but very important part of your life, which is like your romantic side, you're expected to not have those same personality traits. Now, I don't have that issue. I can stay with one person at a time. The issue that you have is like, whether it's a very close friend, a business partner, a spouse, these are all very similar relationships. Like they look, they're very deep partnerships. And so you have to be very careful to make sure you're picking the right person. And especially you, because you're handsome, rich, super famous. Like you have, I've seen some of your DMs, okay?

59:45Like you have, I hope we cut in that laugh over there. Yeah, make sure you add that in. Like you have so many people trying to get to you that want something from you that doesn't mean they're good for you. And that's where you have to be careful. That's where you have to be somewhat paranoid. Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution? Something that identifies low T faster than a high school bully and it won't cost you all your lunch money. That's where Function comes in. Gives you access to over 160 lab tests, including a deep dive into your full hormone panel.

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1:00:55So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save$25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's what discernment is, right? Being able to distinguish between good and not good, between somebody that's got your best interests at heart and doesn't. You know, the advice I've gotten from some of the, you know, the most successful people in the world about this, they're just like, make sure that she's a good person. That's it. They just have to be a good person. But good people are few and far between.

1:01:23And what I mean by good is like, not selfish, not doing this just because of what's good, what they get out of it. And willing to, and in many cases, dude, Jimmy Iveen. Okay, Jimmy Iveen, we got to talk about this, because this guy's the best. So when people used to ask me, hey, you know, who did you want to meet? You haven't met. Jimmy Iovine, I'd have a list and Jimmy Iovine would be in top three. And people are like, that doesn't make any sense. Most people don't know who Jimmy Iovine is. But one of my favorite documentaries is this documentary called The Defiant Ones. Have you seen this? No.

1:01:52You got to watch it tonight. So it's a four-part documentary. It's technically supposed to be about the relationship, the working partnership between Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre that's been going on for decades. It is really one of the best documentaries about entrepreneurship and these kind of wild personality types. Dr. Dre is a wild boy. He is a, he was probably highly likely a child prodigy, the best in the world he does. Jimmy, same thing. He was in the music business for five decades and has succeeded from engineer to producer to record label executive to building a business and selling it for$3 billion to Apple.

1:02:24And so I, Jimmy was on my show. We live close to each other. He's nice enough that I get to hang out with him and like talk to him on the phone and hang out with him all the time now. And it's, what's fascinating is when you talk to these older guys that are, I think Jimmy's probably 70 years old by now. He's got more knowledge about life in his pinky than I do in my entire body. Like he's just lived through, he's just seen everything. And his biggest thing was, he's like, if you want to be successful, he's like, you probably don't want to be successful for a year, for five years. You want to do it for a long period of time.

1:02:53And he's like, I've been around some of the most gifted, talented people in the world. He's worked with everybody from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, to Tom Petty, to Dr. Dre to Eminem to literally everybody. And out of the one, he's like, most people, the advice he gave me, he's like, most people cannot handle success. You're not destroyed by a competitor. There's not gonna be another Chris Williamson coming in here and out-competing you in podcasting. If you're gonna fail, you're gonna do it yourself. And what Jimmy said, he's like, they fall into four buckets, which I thought was interesting.

1:03:23Number one, drugs. I don't do drugs, not gonna be an issue. Like, avoid them. Alcohol, second one. I don't really drink number three megalomania because remember he's in the music industry he's like listen you start out I mean Kanye I think he I'm a huge fan of his first four albums I think this is what happened in my opinion what happened to him it's like and Jimmy was saying it's like really hard that like you get on stage every night and there's 80 ,000 people telling you screaming your name and telling you how great you are the problem is to come off that stage and then still be dad or husband or friend take the trash out yeah and you not think, and then what happens is the reason he calls it megalomania is because they loved you because of the work you put in.

1:04:06The megalomania thinks, now you think you're some, you're not even human. You're like some kind of like God. So therefore I just show up and it happens. And they stop putting the work. Then it shows up on the work and then there's a death spiral. And then the fourth thing was women. And Jimmy Iovine has been very, he's like very open about this. It's in the documentary where he, his dad was his best friend. like best friend talks every day jamie was dating a playboy playmate and his dad died suddenly unexpectedly they did not see it coming and right after his dad died he decided to get married and he says another documentary we've talked in longer detail privately but you know just like i married the wrong person he's very beneficial of how all the kids and he's got great relationship with his adult kids now he talks to his kids every single day but he's just like that the wrong woman in your life, the wrong man in a woman's life can literally destroy you.

1:05:03And so I think that, I think this is like, we could, we should have an entire podcast next time we come here. We just talk about the stuff we've talked about privately. Yeah. Fuck me. But it is, it's, it's a very hard part of your life because I do consider it almost like a drug. Like these people don't start out, Hey, I'm going to get addicted to pills or heroin or alcohol. And they're smart and successful. It's arrogant to think that wouldn't happen to us. So that's why I think it's so important to like talk about it. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. I had this line from earlier this year, what you are praised for in public, you will pay for in private.

1:05:32And a lot of the time, the single-mindedness, the resilience, the motivation, the permanent growth mindset, the attention to detail, the unwillingness to compromise, the hypervigilance, the anxiety, dedication, all of these things. In the business world, it's called reliability, consistency, non-quitness, fantastic in the boardroom, can often make you a forgotten person around your kitchen table. I had Andy Stumpf, Navy SEAL, on the podcast. And he said, I built my entire identity around being a guy that doesn't quit. So that made me an amazing SEAL team member. Also made me stay in a marriage for a decade longer than I should have done.

1:06:21I don't quit. I'm not the sort of guy that quits. There are certain domains in which the things that you do publicly aren't meant to be applied. And a lot of those are the ones that happen privately. And then when public and private begins to sort of mesh and blend together, that's what we get with modern social media, right? That you can't see the distinction between the two. And the problem is like, you're constantly comparing like your relationship to other people's ideal relationship, which is very destructive. And what I would say about this is like, you talk about being hyper rational. I think you approach your business.

1:06:56I fucking know a lot about your business. Like you're very rational. I actually don't think we should, and I don't want to and will not do in like your romantic life. I think you have to like, you should be a little bit irrational. It is, it is definitely like a, a more irrational, emotional thing. That's why I think the advice that I keep getting over and over again is just like, make sure the person that you're letting into your life, the one that you have a serious relationship with right now is just a good person, that they actually care about you, that they actually want good things for you, because it's not going to work if you try to approach it with like a rational mind.

1:07:26It is default irrational. And what I would say, this is something like, so we have a good friend, Sienna LaRocca. And one of the conversations I had with her was just like, what are you lying to yourself about? And this could be an entire discussion at dinner because everybody's lying to themselves about something. And what I didn't understand about myself, especially until I started the new show, because I was just, I was sitting in a room by myself for a decade, like talking to myself, like no one was around. And I always thought like, I didn't need anybody. And like, I'm a loner and like, you know, other people aren't that important to me.

1:08:03And I realized like, no, that's a lie. Like I had just a lot of low quality people around me, but like, if I could have access and develop relationships and friendships with high quality people, that is my drug of choice. Like I remember when I went to record with Todd Graves, we flew into Baton Rouge and recorded in the very first Raising Canes that he built with his own hands. He built it with his hands. It's insane. And I remember calling a good friend of mine. He's kind of like a, he's like an older brother, like a mentor, like a coach. Um, and I called him and I was like, I'm in trouble. And he goes, why?

1:08:35I go, cause I'm already addicted to doing this. I feel like I'm high as a kite right now. I've never done ecstasy. Never done MDMA. I have to imagine this is what it feels like. I want to do this all the time. And so I guess like what I didn't understand what I was lying about myself was like that relationships weren't important to me where the truth is they're more important than anything else. So I'm sorry to monologue to you, but I think let me just get this out real quick if you don't mind. I desperately did not want to be a loser. And that's why I'm a workaholic and I've worked full-time since I was 15 years old because I saw up and down my family tree.

1:09:10I was just fucking terrified of winding up just like them. And this is the chips on shoulders, but chips in pockets. Like I, I, I'm not a strategic person. I genuinely just throw a lot of hours and effort. I don't think I have any strategy. Um, and so I thought forever, like my, my work is how I protect myself because it's, it's gives me my independence. It allows me to build a world that I can control. Cause I didn't have control when I was younger. It allows me to take care of family members and other people to help. And it's like, it's my thing. It's the only, it's more important. If you were asking, is like more important than anything in my life.

1:09:41And I realized that that's a lie. Like if you ask what's the most important thing in my life now, it is my relationships. It's building and maintaining and deepening the relationships I have with people that are very high quality, that I love with everything. And now right underneath that, my work's like bumping up against it, but this is still my number one priority. And I think also you'll see for people like you, you're super driven, just like I am. You forego some professional success if you want like a deep romantic relationship. And I would say that's what like makes life worth living. You should do that.

1:10:18You should make the irrational choice. How do you square that circle with the single-mindedness that most great people have? I don't think you can. I think like there's an ebb and flow. Like if you look at a snapshot of like my own life, right? Where undoubtedly, I think I would be even more, I would be more successful if you didn't take out the huge chunks of time to build these relationships, both romantic and friendship-wise. But that's not the kind of life I want to live. Now, I've met people like that. I know some of these people have been on my show. You get around them and you're literally like, where's all your friends, dude?

1:10:52That's not important to them. That's not what they're going for. They're playing a different game. What I'm saying is like, that's not for me. Like, I want, I'm not saying a balanced life because I'm definitely not balanced, but like relationships are more important than my work. That's just how I feel. far fewer people than think it are introverts like you're probably not an introvert your friends just suck that's a that's a great way to think about it and if you had better friends you'd want to hang around them there's like everybody has been at a dinner table and adored the conversation and not wanted it to end yeah okay well what what happened there did you change for the evening no i was just around people that resonate i was around people who i usually don't resonate with but for some reason they were really on form that night well you can just get friends that are kind of on form all the time and you can also hang around with people who are never on form i've had friends of mine tell me this it goes back to where we're saying the mind is a powerful place which you feed affects you in a powerful way they're like man you got to be real careful about the way you describe yourself and i think around this i kept saying i'm introverted i'm like i want to be alone or all this other stuff you know this is like that's not how you are to your point i think it's more of like an energy thing like the conversations we have i leave george max treadmill if you put me in a big party with a bunch of strangers i'm like there's no energy and i gotta run away so it's more like am i getting energy from this or am i very uncomfortable is it draining my energy if you go to sleep on a win you'll wake up with a loss so this is actually a conor mcgregor quote uh that he said um i'm pretty sure it's in the documentary called the notorious which again he did the whole kanye thing where he's like poor kid in ireland he's like in collections not paying his credit card bill.

1:12:30I think he's working part-time as a plumber. And somehow he had the foresight to have a camera crew follow him around and document his life because he was just so convinced that he was going to be the champion one day. He's going to be one of the most successful professional fighters of all time. And it's interesting that some of these people don't take their own advice because they get to Daniel X point. They entertain the circus. They go to the events. They start buying, you know, loving the material rewards, the drugs, the women, all the stuff that comes with, you know, success. And one of my personal heroes is a guy named James Dyson.

1:13:02One of the best days of my life happened, I think it was last, maybe October, maybe November in New York City. I got to spend a few hours with James Dyson. I did an episode with him. And the reason this was so important for me, people are like, the vacuum cleaner guy? Like, what the hell is you talking about? It's like, no, no, no. Out of every single biography and autobiography I've ever read in my life. And I think as of today, it's like 425 or something like that because it correlates with the Founders episodes I've done. If you only read one book, it'd be his first autobiography, which is called Against the Odds, an autobiography by James Lyson.

1:13:35Because it's not about... Today, you fast forward, he's 78 years old. He owns 100 % of one of the most successful private companies in the world. He wouldn't sell it. I had a friend that tried to buy it. He guessed, my friend that try to buy it, that if James would sell, it'd fetch between 60 to 80 billion. James has no outside shareholders. That's 100 % of it. My friend put a flyer out to him saying, we want to buy your company. He paraphrased the response that came back from Dyson, which was, fuck you, this is a family heirloom. It's not about the money. He's an engineer. He's a designer. He's obsessed with the work that he's doing.

1:14:07So that book is not about this. It's not the 78 year old James Dyson. It is the Dyson in his thirties and mid forties that is just failing for a decade and a half over and over and over again. 5 ,126 failed prototypes. The 5 ,127th one is the one that worked. It's the James Laysen that's going to bed because he's working in a carriage house, which I guess is like a garage in England. What is a carriage house? No idea. I had to look it up. Oh, I thought it's in the UK. So I figured, you know. So it's like a detached little workshop outside of your main house. I think it's in Bath, England where he is, where he's failing all day long, walks inside, passes his little, his kids, gets into bed, cries himself to sleep.

1:14:46Then his kid is four, sees him failing. His kid is seven, dad's still failing. His kid is a teenager, dad is still a failure. And so the reason this was so important to me is because I knew I wanted to podcast. I knew I loved it more than anything else. I have this irrational love of podcasting that people make fun of me for and I'm fine with. But I was having no success. It was not that like I wasn't making any money. It was costing me money to do this. My savings went down every month and I for some reason wouldn't quit. and one of the reasons I don't think I quit is because episode 25 the very first time I read James Dyson's book is I read this book and I'm like well this guy struggled for 14 years like I can give it a go for a year wound up being five and a half I didn't think it'd take that long but like just knowing that story and rereading that book over and over and over again just I was able to relate to him like he didn't give up why do I have to give up like you know how good you're gonna feel if you get to the other side of this and I did have a lot of faith that I would get to the other side of it and so when you meet James Dyson though like I read his first autobiography biography at least five times.

1:15:43I've read the highlights from that book hundreds of times. This is not a joke. I'm not exaggerating. I read his second biography, which he wrote when he was in the seventies twice. I read, he has, he wrote an encyclopedia when he was like 45 or 50 about, he's obsessed with inventions. It's called a history of great inventions. It literally is like somebody printed out a Wikipedia page of like 200 inventions with hand-scrawled notes. There's a picture of me and James going through the book and me showing him, like me annotating every single thing and so be able to sit with him i thought i understood him completely and there was still this is why it's so powerful to be able to talk to these people first of all he sits across from you and you realize that he's built he doesn't he's not a he's not a absentee executive he does the work he's and he's on the the manufacturing line he's in the engineering meetings he's in design meetings so you sit across from him he's a very thin guy his fingers are probably twice as wide as mine are.

1:16:40Why? Because he's been working with his hands. It's like, look at your biceps. Like how many curls did you do to get those biceps? How many, like him tinkering with his hands did he get? He's got massive fingers. They don't fit the rest of his body because it's like a lifetime of tinkering. It's incredible. But then the reason I say, if you go to sleep on a win, you wake up at a loss is like, most people that have success, they're like, I fucking made it. Look at me. I'm the best. And they forget it's the work that got in there, not them. It's tied to the megalomania thing. Where Dyson's not like that at all.

1:17:09I didn't understand his organizing principle. And so this is what he said. He said, okay, I pick up a product, right? I look at it. I think about, how can I make it better? I make it better. I put it back down. Short bottle later, pick it back up. How can I make it better? I make it a little bit better. Put it back down. And he went through this over and over again. I think he used a coffee cup in the episode. It's been six months, I don't remember. And he goes, and I just didn't, I just did that for 45 years. I never stopped. That's the anecdote to the anecdote. I don't know if that's the right word to going to sleep on a wind.

1:17:42He never slept on a wind because he likes the activity itself. He just, he has an engineering mind, everything around him. He says it doesn't torment him, but he'd see this table. He's like, I think I could shave off a little bit there. I could fix that. I could do that. That's how his brain just works. And he just loves it. It's like a giant puzzle to him. And I think that's the way to do it. It's like, man, if you just love the activity for the sake of itself and you never stop improving it, you're not going to fall prey to the failures and disasters of a Kanye or a Conor McGregor or any of these other people you see.

1:18:10It's fascinating that that was a quote from Conor McGregor, somebody that's had one of the biggest fall-offs in history. Unfortunately, yeah. Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat, and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber? Well, it turns out that 95 % of Americans don't get enough of it, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momentus' Fiber Plus. Most fiber supplements are a one-trick pony, one type of fiber-solving, one part of the problem. Fiber Plus is a three-in-one formula built to tackle digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once.

1:18:43I use this every single day. It is kind of hard to get enough fiber just through food alone. and best of all, Momentus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it, try it every single day for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they will just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35 % off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentus.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. Yeah, I've kind of been obsessed thinking about the difference between what it feels like to have fallen off and what it feels like to have never made it.

1:19:21I would rather never make it. This is another thing where you're surprised. I've talked to Michael Dell about this, Daniel Ek about this, Todd Graves, Brian Jacobs, like all these. Every single person I just mentioned is worth 10. Michael Dell's worth like$200 billion. And he's just like, it's not the love of success. It's a fear of failure. It's like, for me, that is my worst nightmare. That like, I do mean that. Like I would rather never make it than make it, right? And then lose it. And so this is why I wanted to say something earlier that you just prompted this thought. It's like, it's weird because like I'll meet with like young entrepreneurs a lot, right?

1:19:57And I feel like the middle child because I'm not in my 20s anymore, but I'm not 70, you know? And so I'm in both of these worlds. And the advice I give to these like 25 years ago, you should go and spend some time with like a 65 year old, 70 year old. Like try to get an afternoon with Jimmy Iovine who's in his 70s who's seen everything in the world or a james dyson who's seen everything in the world like we we have this guest list that uh we want we want to get and it's in reverse chronological order by age because some of these guys like i got to sit down with charlie mugger never got to record a podcast with him now it's that opportunity's gone same thing got to sit down with sam zell never got to record a podcast with him they have all this knowledge and all you have to do is just like sit down and they'll they they're already down the path that you're that you want to go on and they'll say hey watch for that pitfall there what don't don't turn right when this is going to happen to you.

1:20:42Because you realize like everything that happens to us is not us. If somebody else was sitting in your position, they'd be getting those DMs too. Like they just would. It's not you. It's the position that you're holding. And yeah, I think it's like super important. People say I have a fetish for old people. I don't have a fetish for old people. Just like I want to avoid the failure, the success and then the decline in failure that you see so over and over and over again. There's this interview in 1999. Eminem said, I ain't in this for the money. I'm in here for the respect. If I had a trillion dollars and I fell off, I'd be the most miserable person in the world.

1:21:21He grew up in poverty, but he favored status over money. he stayed he favored skill set so what um he has a line that i think um fits into how i view my own work and he says a plaque and platinum status is whack if i'm not the baddest and what he what he was saying at that point in this is 2003 when i think the m &m show came out 2002 maybe and his whole point at that time is like every rapper had the same goal i want to go platinum because then you get a plaque so that's a plaque and platinum status is whack if not the baddest his contemporaries his peers were like, I'm good because I sold a million records.

1:21:56It means people I'm popular. And it means I'm making a lot of money. And his thing is like, I want to be the best. I don't want to be the biggest. I want to be the best. And this is why you and I have talked about the craft of podcasting so much. And about like, we had a 30 minute discussion with George before we started recording about like, how do you pick guests? How do you think about things? Like we are obsessed with this stuff. It's like, I want to make something that I could point to, like I could tell my Jeff Bezos says this great line he's just like we're trying to build something that we can tell our grandkids about and such things are not meant to be easy so in his case like he should be very proud of building Amazon it's one of the best companies ever created right I am very very proud of some of the things that I have made and I have a daughter so my daughter is 14 now I just recorded this episode with Mr.

1:22:42Beast which won't be out for several months um but she was a huge fan so she got to come with me and meet him and Mr. Beast is a massive fan of my first podcast founders his spotify rap he'll screenshot and send it to me it's like founders is number one on there and for her i'm very proud that somebody she admires is saying hey your dad's work is like really valuable to me and she came with me to record with todd graves she loves raising canes and she knows the spotify like her favorite app is spotify and my friend uh runs to her favorite brand mad happy and all these people are telling her like your dad's work is really important to my life you should be proud of him that's like that's worth more than money it's worth more than a million dollars or 10 million that you'd get if you sold 10 million or a million records i do think it's more addicting and it's certainly more fulfilling to be admired by people that you admire and it's one thing to just seek status it's another thing to seek money but to seek status and respect in the eyes of people who you have judged to be worthy of admiration inside and i would say outside your industry for sure and even more important inside yeah the fact they have the highest amount of taste i think you opened the last episode we did together you're like did you hear my q a where i said you're the podcaster's podcaster correct it's like i and i do this to this day i go around and collect more data on podcaster podcasting anybody else i and we share it we like we don't hold anything and in one case uh i remember my friends david and ben who did the acquired podcast uh i was on a walk with david i don't know like three months ago in san francisco he's actually taking me to the airport because we're just good friends and i had found an idea from rob moore and andrew huberman that I gave to them in terms of like, you have a skew, you have an asset in your podcast that you're not currently monetizing and it's very valuable to advertisers and this is what they might pay.

1:24:23And I told David this idea. And on the walk, he's like, hey, by the way, thanks for that idea. We're gonna make$3 million from that idea this year. And it's just like - I stole the same thing from Rogan back in the last year. Yeah, exactly. So like, the point is like, it's all positive sum with us. It's like, I consider the historical analogy for me and you is like the filmmakers, right? If you study the early days when George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma and all these guys were in their 20s. They were friends. They hung out. They traded secrets. They watched each other's movies.

1:24:54They gave themselves feedback. Because at the end of the day, if you go watch Steven Spielberg's Jaws today and George Lucas' Star Wars tomorrow, what did Steven Spielberg lose? Nothing. What did George Lucas lose? Nothing. It's like all positive stuff. Kind of is pointless doing the big journey thing if you don't get to share it with people. And if people are in tangential industries or even in the same sort of an industry, just being able to see the impact that you've had on somebody that you respect and admire and know that, hey, like that idea, that was the reason that David paid so much attention to video.

1:25:25That was a little, that was just like a little contribution. Isn't that nice? Our nice ripple? Our mutual friend, John Coogan, right? They just had this phenomenal acquisition with TPBN. But well before even that, I've been working with John and like talking about podcasting with John for years before he even started TPBN. and he was one of the first viewers of the new show and he's just like why are you guys only shooting on three cameras why don't you shoot five and explain why and then me and rob made the change immediately you should try seven seven there you go but we made but we made the change immediately and then we're all in a group chat together and rob had mentioned you know we had a good shot and i think john was like hey this shot looks good or whatever you know because again it's it's both hey you can approve here but this is also dope like i like this and rob's like yeah you're the one that told us to do that.

1:26:10Yeah, thank you. Jared, can you pull up on the main TV? Can you just throw the profile shot of me up so that David can look at why you need seven? I'm going to explain to you. I'm going to commit you to two more cameras. So we've always had medium, tight, and then the wide. It's kind of classic. I guess if you've only got three, you're going wide, medium, medium. But this shot where you go very side on - It's beautiful. Is really, really nice. And what you can do, you can reverse frame it. We haven't done it here. but if you move in fact i can do it i can do it by doing this so if i go like that there you actually end up with a complete opposite framing and uh that's used in documentaries typically when there's going to be a pivot in the story yeah so someone's talking someone's talking someone's talking and then there is a a moment where things are going to take a turn for the worst or something it's the it's the uh the minor chord that somebody plays on the guitar and you're like oh something's about to happen.

1:27:05It just feels very intimate. So that's why you need seven. Season eight winner of The Biggest Loser was this dude called Danny, just to round out the difference between having never made it and having fallen off. I was watching the documentary about The Biggest Loser, accusations of it being predatory and bullying and dangerous. And people were getting fucking cardiac arrests and being heli lifted out of that, probably a big helicopter, I guess. and he said there is an extra special shame when you feel being a failure there is an extra special shame you feel being a failure after you've been a success and um yeah i mean the there is a huge huge ick that people have and this is going back to what you said that some people are just not built for success lewis capaldi is like my canonical example of this and i'm so glad that he actually managed to fix his issue and come out the other side of it.

1:27:58But he had all of the singing ability to be this billions and billions and billions of record sales artist. And he didn't have the constitution for a long time to be able to handle the attention. And so many people think that the problem, the reason that they're not famous and they're not where they want to be is because they don't have enough talent. To be in the camp of people who has enough talent, but lacks the constitution to be able to handle the side effects of being that talented. It just has to be like, well, it's going to be very uncomfortable. I want to like, also, like, I think we should say something about it.

1:28:35Like, I don't think success, like, I think you should have an internal scorecard, not an outer scorecard. So what I mean by that is like, some people let society or other people define what, that they are successful. So what I mean by that is like, not that I have less downloads in the future. I don't even know how many downloads I get. I don't care. it's what I, the definition of success that I use, I actually got from Steve Jobs, which was like, did I make something I'm proud of? That's, that's it. As long as I keep making things I'm proud of, or if I, the alternative of this is like, you know how much time it takes to make a great episode, the amount of prep that you have to do.

1:29:13And for my other podcasts, like I have to read an entire book. The danger there is that I give into the circus, give into the distractions and say, oh, I used to put in 30 hours of reading. I can do like six or I can read like the CliffsNotes version and still be as good. That is to me is like when I consider myself a failure is like I'm not I'm no longer making things that I'm proud of. Now you have to make things you're proud of. And also the other side of it is like you have to get it to in front of people and they're smart and dumb ways to do that. But like so there is another element. It doesn't make sense to be the super cool underground band that nobody actually listens to.

1:29:48Oh, it's because they don't get it. they're not sophisticated enough. I think eventually you need to listen to the market. You can be as proud as you want of the thing that you do, but your opinion in terms of taste might not be on the money. There's a great line from David Ogilvie, who is one of the greatest advertising agency founders in history. And he says, you can't save souls in an empty church. And if you feel that modern wisdom is good for people, then you have a moral obligation to get it to as many people as possible. If you truly believe that, which I think you do. I truly believe that people that are interested in building a business, creating a product, changing their lives in some manner, which is what the word entrepreneurship, it's French for has ideas.

1:30:26Entrepreneur is has ideas and does them. So that's why I consider a podcaster, an entrepreneur, a filmmaker, an entrepreneur, a person building Amazon entrepreneur. It's all the same thing to me. An athlete, an entrepreneur. It's just somebody has an idea that they want to see take shape and actually exist in the world. And so I would say like, if you believe that the work that you're doing is good for the world then i would consider a moral obligation to get it to as many people as possible david senra ladies and gentlemen dude you rule i appreciate the heck out of you why should people go to keep up to date with everything you do just search david senra in whatever podcast player or youtube that you're listening and subscribe and listen join us the podcast is podcast and listen to founders as well all right goodbye my beauties bye dude yes yes we did it again so good Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing.

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