David Senra: Podcasts With Billion-Dollar Potential, What Separates Good From Great, and More

32:22And he said, if you don't join me, I'm going to destroy you. So let me know if you, and so to me, that's like, he's like, look, we can work together or I'm going to end you. You can pick. But he wasn't like necessarily like rude about it. yeah so the one thing he said was so badass he was trying to buy somebody out they were resisted he's like i have ways to make money that you know nothing about he was yeah i always say like there's a there's a very common theme that common themes are reappearing in the history of entrepreneurship and so i have maxims for a bunch of these like my favorite one is excellence is capacity to take pain it's just like you're not going to achieve large success without being able to tolerate pain for extended periods of time right another one is bad boys move in silence like they find an advantage and they shut up about it this is what um steve jobs realized when he was trying to build pixar he's just like we can't get any fucking data on how profitable because they're transitioning from selling hardware to just pure animate like trying to build the first computer animated movie and steve jobs is like i don't get why like we can't get any information on this and then he realized he's like oh the reason that you can't go to the library and check out a book that says like the business model of animation is because there's only one company ever did it well and it's Disney and they don't want anybody else to know how lucrative it is.

33:30And so he realized that because they had made Snow White like 60 years before and right when he's doing these negotiations with Pixar and Disney, they re-released it and were selling like VHS tapes and I think that they might have had DVDs at this point and they're like, wait a minute, you sold 28 million copies of a movie you made 60 years ago. That's all profit and they made two, he said they made a quarter billion in profit on that one movie releasing it for like this new technology. And so I actually took an idea from John D. Rockefeller. Rob Moore plays a role in this. is like what Rockefeller would do is like he had the secret allies, right?

34:03And so he entered into an industry that he thought was very disorganized. And so he wound up building relationships and allies with all the people in the oil. Remember, the oil business, when he jumps in, it's not what we think is oil. He was like, it was a refiner. He was selling kerosene for fucking like lighting and stuff. He actually made more money in retirement because after he retired, he still owned a shit ton of equity. It goes back to Felix Dennis. And then the ambition of the core. And so now, like, oh, my stock's even worth more. But what he would do is he'd go around and he'd organize all the other people in the industry.

34:37So, like, I do this with a bunch of podcasters. Like, me and you just started doing this, like, texting about this. It's just like, you just share information. Like, you build secret allies, and you just say, hey, this guy figured out this for your podcast, you should use it. And, like, everybody in the podcast industry is extremely positive. I listened to your interview with Brandon Shaw. He said the same thing about, he's like, Joe told us we have an obligation. to help each other out. And so for business podcasts, it's like they're all kind of like satellites and like loosely defined. And so me and Patrick have been going around building relationships with people and just sharing information.

35:08Like I was at the Choir Guy's house in San Francisco a few weeks ago. They're like, we get Patrick. They have one of the most profitable, Ben and David, who are fantastic. I'm actually wearing their merch right now. They have one of the most profitable podcasts compared to audience size, how much they make. And they're like, well, Patrick told us that we weren't charging enough. So we tripled our prices. Then we, and then we still sold ads and then we tripled them again. And then it's like, holy shit, he was right. And so that idea is like, we're no gatekeeping, just share information and try to help people as much as possible.

35:40That's an idea from Rockefeller. When you read about some of these killers, do you think they are different than me? Or do you start becoming that? Like, do you think that just surrounding yourself with them is going to change your behavior? Or is it just like, aliens exist and I am not, them no here's the thing we i don't know if we were recording i like how you guys just jump right in by the way um so i don't i think most of our discussion was caught on the recording but um i am very glad that i have a wife and two kids um up and down like here's here's my thing it's like the thing that i don't like and it's very present a lot of these books is like if you're an adult it's your job to figure it out and like that let people take advantage of you right so if like john d rockefeller gives you a bad price and for your business you accept it that's on you what i'm and you hear this on the podcast like i'm induced in this state of rage is when people fuck with kids i can't stand them and so up and down my family tree like i was the first person to graduate high school my family much less college i'm the first uh male in my three generations not to go to jail right and so like up and down both sides of my family tree i just see a lot of like terrible parenting and this is not necessarily my parents they did the best they can consider both sets of their parents were shitty people but like i saw drug abuse i saw sexual abuse i saw people going to jail cocaine all this crazy shit right and so i was like if i'm gonna have kids i'm not gonna be a shit father and i think the fact that i have a kid and a wife that like we get along really well it saves me from not i think if i didn't have that i would literally work from the time my eyes open in the morning till the time they close and i would just fucking like i think the scary part is like i and i'm trying to compare myself to you know you can't compare myself to rockfellers but like i have a little bit of that in me too and i think i hear from a ton of people listen they're like i think like that too the whole thing is like learning from their experience like hey but they get to their life they're not necessarily happy you know like so i don't want that um i don't want to destroy everything around me because I chased professional success.

37:43But I think men in general, you know, type A aggressive men, like that's what successful people, super successful people are crazy. Like they're not normal humans. And it's probably one to 5 % of the population that are borderline sociopathic, you know, nothing voter people. That's, that's a little bit extreme, but like they're willing to do whatever they can if you get in their way. And so I, I'm, I've been lucky that as we've, it's funny that as we've gotten more popular for like content and business shit a lot of people in different fields who i previously looked up to like for example a lance armstrong or someone like that uh they'll like message me and i'll get an opportunity to hang out with them and this isn't about lance but this is i've been lucky that it's been a bunch of different people and i'll go and hang out with them a couple times and then i think i don't want to be around you ever again like and so like i don't enjoy being around them and so i've had a bunch of people who if you told me when i was 12 that these people want to talk to me i'd be like that is sick now i just i'm just like i don't like being around you it's actually not enjoyable being around some of these people um because it feels like well i don't know exactly how it feels like like it feels like we we're in a pissing match when we're when we're with each other um yeah i simply don't enjoy it And so now I have a rule in my household, which is no new friends.

39:05So I default. Whenever I talk to someone, I default to I'm not going to be friends until it's like, all right, maybe after a while we can cross the threshold. But by default, it's I don't trust you and I'm not going to let you in. Whereas before it was like, oh, anyone who wants to holler at me? Yeah, I'm in. And then I go and hang out with some of these ballers and these killers. And I think, oh, this is a very unenjoyable hang. There's a bunch of people who... Maybe Ben might know who we're talking about. But there's a couple people that are some of the most famous and successful people in the world.

39:37And we've been lucky to hang out with them. And then we'll go hang out with them after the pod. And I'm like, oh, this is just miserable. I don't want to be around you at all. And so my point being is, to what you said about the most successful people being crazy, not only are they crazy, I don't want to be around them. It's not fun. They're not fun to be around. And so you really see that there's a price to pay, which is you are in the one percentile or 99 percentile of these other traits, which usually not always means you're going to be lacking in a handful of other traits. And sometimes that's like whatever the traits are of you wanting to be near someone, I guess, like physically and hanging out with someone.

40:13That's my thing. Everybody's like, OK, like, are you doing all this? Do you want to run like the next Apple? Like, what are you doing this for? And I'm like, no, like out of the 300 people that I've studied, the person that I want to be the most like is the closest person that I've studied and read about that has come to mastering life is a guy named Ed Thorpe. Right. And so it's up. Who's he? This is a fucking crazy story. So it's episode 222. And the crazy thing is like, usually the episode titles are just the book I read. Right. This says my personal blueprint. Right. Right. And because what he did is like, first of all, he's a, Ed Thorpe is one of, he was the guy that made the first quantitative hedge fund.

40:50Right. Uh, the reason I liked him is because what I think you were talking about earlier, like you have varied interests, right. Where you need a balance because I've also heard you speak enough where I'm like, okay, he's clearly type A and driven. And like, if you didn't have your wife or you didn't have these other things, I could also see you going, I'm not sociopathic, but like, you know, no limit to the kind of empire you want to build. You have a chip on your shoulders. It's like all of them. I do too. So I see that. Ed Thorpe, essentially what he did is he made a ton of money as a quantitative investor.

41:23But once he had more money, he didn't need to worry about money anymore. He refused to trade time to make more money because he understood he's like, more money is not going to make me happy. But by time is limited. He was a good father. He was a good husband. He followed his own intellectual interests. Like he had fun. He, Tim Ferriss just interviewed him and I would highly recommend going to YouTube and just type in Tim Ferriss at Thorpe and look at that guy's picture and tell me how old you think he is. I've done this a bunch. I did it with my wife. I go, how old do you think he is? She's like, I don't know, 65.

41:54He's fucking 90 because he learned when he was really young that physical fitness was really important. And so he gave me the best heuristic for health. He goes, I view every hour in the gym as one less day I'll spend in the hospital at the end of my life and the guy's still doing like pull-ups he looks fucking fantastic right he's like not i think it might be like 92 um and so this whole balance of like your friend ryan holiday actually i learned this from his content was like what it means to be a complicated human we've known that forever we just get distracted it's like you want work that has meaning you want good relationships you want to have fun and you want to make sure that your body is healthy and you should feel good that's it there isn't anything else i love what you just said because the same thing when you have a successful podcast you get hit up on all kinds of fucking crazy experiences, which is actually a huge benefit.

42:40But it's like, man, I'm not going to build a thousand relationships that are like an inch deep. I just talk to the same people over and over and over and over again. It's like you have a limited amount of people you can actually be friends with. And yet we're all connected. So we're like, we're hugely distracted. So I was like, okay, I'm not smart as a Thorpe. He's way smarter than me. So I'll just fucking copy his blueprint. I'll write that down. I'll be a good father. I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of my health. I'll have work that I'm really fucking obsessed with, but I put guardrails on, right?

43:07And I'm not going to keep trading money or time, which we're going to run out of for more money when I'm not even spending the money I have. I want to ask you some more questions about history, but a story really quick. I have a friend who's 40, low 40s, worth a billion dollars, has a publicly traded company. And he was telling me the story about how he had this phrase called, it's never enough. and he was telling me a story about how he went to one guy's home who was worth 50 million and the guy was complaining about how he lives in this fancy neighborhood and he can't his home is his six million dollar home is less good than or is worse than the other people in the neighborhood then he's like i went to another guy who's worth like half a billion and he was saying like yeah but you know what i don't have a super yacht and then there was another guy who had like one or two billion and this guy was complaining he's like can't get a sports team though it's not enough and so yeah i don't want to be around people i think you hit it don't be like i don't want to be around people like that it's never enough and that's what i've also learned because like i've thought that when i've hit certain points i'm like well i won't want anymore it's you always want more it's a very challenging thing it doesn't have to be that way though i had the advantage because like this is the crazy thing about podcasts you just said like you never know who's listening so i got uh invited to have uh two-hour lunch with sam's though right and that's fucking crazy.

44:30It came inbound. Sam had listened to the podcast I made on his autobiography and he's like, I want to meet that guy. Sam Zell is a real estate guy. He's got a great book called, Am I Being Loud Enough? Am I Being Subtle? Am I Being Subtle Enough? He's probably close to 90 now. He's kind of got this blue collar-ish vibe about him, but he's worth probably five or$10 billion dollars something like that he owned uh uh all these real estate things he created the reet i think then he like owned schwinn bicycles he owned the la times i think or the tribune something like that he so he's like a tycoon he so you're and you'd fucking love him so he's 81 years old he sold his his real estate company for 38 billion to black roach or blackstone i don't fucking know you know they're all named the same and so you know who the fuck how often you get to meet somebody that sells their company for$40 billion.

45:23And I couldn't believe this was going to happen. I thought it was like, oh, this isn't really going to happen. Now I was like, oh, maybe it's going to be a lunch I'm invited to. And there's like 20 people there. He sat eye to eye for two fucking hours. And he's not like that. The reason I got back after that lunch, I told my wife, I go, I want that. I want that. I want to be 81 years old, completely still unbelievably curious about the world around him, still doing deals, doesn't give a fuck. he's not one of these like media trade guys right he only wears blue jeans i think he invented he takes he takes credit he's like i invented business casual i'm like sam i don't know if you should invent the business casual it's fucking hilarious that you would say that you invented business casual will not wear a suit still rides a motorcycle still i think smoked weed like it's fucking crazy but the thing the advice that he gave me he's like david he's like the richer you get, what you realize is one, he goes, you'd be shocked at how many rich guys I know that aren't having fun, which is describing exactly what you're saying.

46:22You go to their house and they're talking about other people or what other people have. I'd run the other fucking way. Sam didn't talk about that. He goes, listen, he goes money. He's like, there's very few true luxuries in life. The richer he got, he's like, then I just kept just buying nicer of the same shit. So I'd buy a house, then I'd get richer, then I'd buy another house. It's like, this is fucking stupid. So he's like, I basically own nothing. He has a place in Chicago and he has a compound in Malibu. That's his words, by the way. He's like, I have a compound in Malibu. He's like, the advice he gave me over and over again, he said five or six times over two hours.

46:50He's like, optimize for freedom. If you get freedom, you get to choose what you do, and then you'll have fun. And if you have fun, you'll be really good at it, and the money will come. But do not give up your freedom for money, which so many rich dudes do. It's fucking crazy. And then he goes, the one thing, he's like, none of that shit matters. I could buy everything I want. He goes, I rent a bunch of shit, which reminded me of you, because I know you fucking hate owning a house. and i like renting yeah he's like don't own a bunch of shit just rent it when you need it like and you're like because if you own it you gotta take care of it this is advice from fucking the guy that you know obviously own assets he was buying he's still buying a ton of businesses the day before i saw him he's like he dude he's 81 he just his eyes lit up he's like i just spent 300 million dollars buying 75 of this company makes 50 million a year or some shit like he's just loves the deal he's like i'm gonna be doing deals so i die just because he likes the game he's like he treats it like a game but he's like there's only one true luxury in life he goes try to get the private jet money really what what was it like meeting charlie munger so that was fucking crazy too um and again because like andrew and his partner chris um it was fascinating because uh i heard your podcast where you guys had met chris and spent time with him um and i got to have the the the few hours before we had dinner charlie munger i had like a super long lunch one-on-one with Chris.

48:09And that dude is fascinating. I wonder if he'd ever come on your podcast. I'm going to hang out with him tonight. I want to be with him tonight. Okay. Yeah. Like you should, I know he's more private. He's another guy where I think he knows, like one of the things I loved about Chris, not only is he wicked smart, but one of the things I thought was so cool is like he showed me his calendar when we had lunch. He's like, look at my calendar. It's like every day at three o 'clock I'm picking my, I think it's his son, his son up from school. Like he's not going to be you know he's like obviously rich and successful will continue to be more rich and more successful as he carries on um but he's not doing it at the detriment of being a shitty dad which like i admire a lot i fucking hate shitty dads so what was munger like he was he was present so munger was uh he has this line where he's like oh i didn't succeed in life because of intelligence i succeeded because of a long attention span definitely has a long attention man but that dude is way smarter than me like if anybody's even even at 98 or what how old is he 95 so he's 99 anybody is gonna have uh some level of cognitive decline at 99 and so all i could think about is like if that is who he is at 99 imagine trying to compete with that dude 30 years ago what was his house like i i had to be careful because i got into a little bit of like they want me to keep some of that stuff private so like i can't answer that question was it fancy was it was it as you'd expect which is very very very nice no he lit he's very authentic he if you read munger and talk about munger he's like hey don't have a lot of silly needs in your life uh his whole thing is like i truly believe that he just wanted to show what he could do with his brain so he could make a ton of money with his mind because he's really smart he like where it's like you know he loves flannel in your in your picture i think like flannel from amazon so the costco like his one of his favorite entrepreneurs, Jim Senegal, who I love a lot too.

50:01And one of his favorite companies, Jim Senegal, is Costco because of that. Costco could have made more money but passed the benefit of their group buying onto the customer. And so Charlie is who he says he is. He's like, he doesn't have a fancy watch, doesn't have fancy clothes. He just buys books as far as I can tell and talks to interesting people and makes a ton of money. But he's not in it for the money. He just wanted, he's in it. He says, he's like, I didn't want the Ferraris, I wanted the independents. who all that you've so besides ed thorpe who all have you who have you listened to or uh spoken about that you think is like in your top five people of like they will conquer the world if given the chance like they are they are the the the top they are the one percent of the one percent i mean i i think the selection here is that every single person is in the top you know point zero zero zero one percent because you're only the only to get on founders you have to deliver a somewhere or somebody wrote a book about it.

50:57What I would say is like, I just got done reading James Dyson's autobiography for the fourth time. And it is my number one book recommendation by far for entrepreneurs. And he's written two autobiographies. The second one's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm done with the first one because the first one he writes after 14 years of struggle. What I admire so much about this guy is he's not necessarily a conqueror in the sense that he's going to go around. I don't think he'd be like a Napoleon in other times. but what i loved is like my favorite entrepreneurs are very adamant about what they want to do in life and how they want to run their business it's not formulaic they're not going around asking people advice like what do you think i should do what does my product look like what is how should i run the business like no i have a very set mindset of like how i want to build the product how i want to build my business how i want to uh to like spend my time you know what i call that i call that they bend reality to their to their will you know they kick their dent in the universe That's what I always call that.

51:54I'm like, they know what they want and they bent reality to fit what they wanted. Read that, dude, you can read his autobiography in a weekend. It'll fucking blow your mind because it's like, why is this guy not quitting? Well, what is happening here? He's borrowing, he's got two mortgages on every single house. He's got, he's crying at the end of the night, never think he's gonna be successful and he just won't quit. And what happens is like, you fast forward now, James Dyson is 75 years old. He owns 100 % of Dyson company. he's like you know one that company's probably worth 20 billion dollars it makes supposedly you know a couple billion a year for profit for his family that like they take out of the company what i love is um he the company he owned before dyson vacuums it was this thing called a ball barrow which looks like a wheelbarrow with a ball at the front and he goes and rents uh does a photo shoot for the ball barrow at this like massive estate that has been in england for like 300 years 25 years later he buys it he's like this is my shit now like dude i i've talked to a lot of people who love that book one thing that one thing so i remember like when i've just got started in my career i was like firmly in the in the field of like i'm gonna pull myself up from my bootstraps and i'm gonna i'm gonna make this into existence and then i remember when we were selling our company and everything got done and that was the first time in my life where i thought luck is so important.

53:16And even though I think I'm a badass, and that I would... And I think that I could will myself to a very... I think I could will myself to a really nice amount of success. But in order to have the uber success, which we'll describe as liquid hundreds of millions of dollars, there's lots of people who are these types of killers who do have these attributes. But one or two things, both in their control and out of their control, went wrong or right. And that can absolutely change things. It could be like... John Rockefeller didn't know that a car was going to be invented. Or with Zuckerberg, he would have kicked ass no matter what.

53:53But it just so happened that the phone came out and that has helped a ton. Or someone... I'm sure we've seen a lot of fortunes get created during a pandemic. Luck is real. When we sold our company, and that was my first big win, the CEO, Brian, got into a nearly fatal accident afterwards. and I'm like, dude, if that happened like four weeks prior, I don't know if this would have gone through. And I still think I will be very successful. But imagine if I was selling my company for a billion or$2 billion and the CEO of the buyer got killed or quit. Do you think that with these guys, luck is real?

54:32Of course. You said something great on the Acquired podcast. You're like, I've met a lot of these guys. It's like, they're 20 times richer, but they're not 20 times smarter. Yeah. And a lot of, Rockefeller is a great example, right? Like, so the best way to describe is like moderate level success. Like, you know, you could probably get to tens of millions of dollars in net worth. That's like playing poker, right? It's like, that's the skill set you can get. But like, to like Jeff Bezos, like the funniest thing, I had dinner last night with two founders. So it's like, you guys know that Jeff Bezos was a private jet, has a private jet?

55:00Like he takes off and there's another one. Like that level of shit, like there's so many things that got to break. The idea is like, he knew he was going to do I'd love to ask him. I don't know. So you know how this is like people track private jets now? Some YouTuber made a video and they noticed that every time Jeff's plane, maybe it's like the people he doesn't want on his plane. I don't fucking know. But like there's a jet that follows his other jet around. And like it's somebody put all this together from public information. So that level of success, like he knew, okay, the internet is growing.

55:31The Everything Store was a code name in the hedge fund for Amazon. They were going to incubate it in the hedge fund. He was working for David Shaw, a billionaire hedge fund guy. in New York. And so he knew we could sell books and then he also knew he could sell other things likely, but he didn't know he could invent AWS. There was no, all that stuff that happens. Rockefeller's a great example. Bezos, when he pitched the first investors, he goes, I think this can make $100 million a year if we're lucky. Yeah, it took him 50 meetings for Venture Capitalist to get his first million dollars and he said the most common question he was asked is what is the internet?

56:01Yeah, he's a fucking savage. He is the closest to me. Bezos reminds me so much of Rockefeller. Like if you read Bezos' shareholder letters are excellent uh because he's he's telling you what he's just like the the arnold books that i recommended earlier arnold says this is my blueprint this is what i'm gonna do he calls a shot and then he goes and does it bezos does the same thing but the rockefeller 20 times richer but not 20 times smarter thing i think it's obviously you're talking about randomness you're talking about luck uh rockefeller was going to be sick no matter what like the business he was in as you know it's like he was they were wholesaling like produce and other stuff right they were just traders and one thing that he did i think is really smart it's like he's worked he's like 19 years old, working for two founders.

56:39He's just an employee. He goes back and read all of their books, goes back and studies their entire company history, memorizes all the finances, everything, and then knew more about the business than the founders did. That kind of personality is going to win wherever he's going to go. Now, he could have stayed in that business and made millions of dollars. Is he going to build arguably the most successful company of all time if it wasn't for the random discovery of oil? No. He didn't control the fact that he was in the... What I always say in the podcast, it's like, you find these people that are the right person, right set of skills, at the right place at the right time.

57:08If you're missing any of those, you're not going to build, you know, a trillion dollar company or, you know,$200 billion net worth. You need things to break for you that are outside of your... What do you think you're going to do next? Like, you know, what's your blueprint for 10 years? Okay, so this is where I start talking reckless, because I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I started talking crazy. And then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side.

57:47They're like, shut the f*** up. Stop telling people all this shit. What's an example of a great business built on the back of a pod? I'll tell you off. I can't like there's okay so there's one that I don't have any intimate knowledge on I can give you an example of that because there's some that have intimate knowledge so I'm not sure what I know if I can speak public and I don't but like ButcherBox Bootstrap 500 million dollars of revenue largely expanded from podcasting and there's a ton of those buying podcast ads yes got it yes and then look at this is something I actually learned on your podcast which I think you guys do an excellent job with was when you guys were talking about how Unilever came and bought Onnit.

58:32I didn't know that happened. I knew about Onnit. I knew about Joe. I knew he owned like 30 % rumored to be owned 30 % of the company. But think about it. Joe has a ton of ad slots. Just that one ad slot that he randomly put in. He probably just on that ad slot, I don't know,$75 million depending on what the actual purchase price was. Joe, so this idea is like I started talking shit where people are like, everybody knows because of Mr. Beast's thing. Oh yeah, there's going to be, I could see why there's going to be some billionaire YouTubers. I think that is obvious now given where Mr. Beast, highly likely that dude, unless he dies, he's going to hit that.

59:05My point is the deep relationship people have with podcasters is not comparable to the relationship they have with YouTubers. It's not at all comparable. And this is not at all new. What do you mean? People are deeply, are more, they like podcasters more? There's more affinity? So do you know Blake Robbins from He's at Benchmark? No. He has this, okay, so he'd be actually interested, somebody interested to talk to. He's the one that gave me the spectrum idea. He's helped incubate, what's the, what's the professional call of duty team? 100 thieves or 40 thieves? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know what you mean.

59:41They went from zero to like 80 million in revenue, I think like 18 months or some shit like this. So, Nadeshot was, developed an audience on, you know, Twitch streaming. And so, so Blake has this spectrum and this comes to you. Like, there's people out there that have heard you and Sean talk way more than they've heard their best friend's voice. There's a ton. Yeah, because when they put the headphones in, it's just us and them. And it's usually for 50 or an hour minutes, you know, 60 minutes at a time. Whereas a YouTube video, it's maybe eight. I've heard you talk for a hundred hours. Like, so like we've texted, exchanged messages online, but never talk in person.

1:00:19I was like, oh, I fucking know Sam. Like, I know what he's into. We have the same interests. Like, I think we'll be able to talk about a bunch of shit, right? So his whole point is like on the spectrum is like, how much time do people spend with you? He's like, on the far end, all the way to the left, it's like TikTok dancers, right? TikTok dancers, they may have millions and millions of followers, but they spend 30 seconds. And if they try to like sell tickets, they can't even fill a room with like 3 ,000 people, even if there's millions of followers. On the far end of the spectrum, all the way to the right is Twitch streamers.

1:00:46People spend literally 40 hours a week with their favorite Twitch streamer, right? Or 30 hours a week or 20 hours. He goes, David, podcasting you, you're just one uh one one step towards the left he goes there's going to be people who have listened to you speak for hundreds of hours right and that parasocial relationship is unbelievably deep and comprehensive to like you saw this i saw um people had said that you're doing a public meetup i think in austin right and or a show and there's people flying in from fucking dubai yeah it's crazy right okay so think about that like they're not flying into dubai to watch like a TikTok dancer, they're not flying in and your podcast is technically a business.

1:01:24You have all this other stuff you could do. It's like, how many brands do people identify with so much that they'll fly across the world? I just did this. I'm introverted as fuck, right? Yeah. You seem like it. Yeah. So yeah, but on one-on-one, but with groups, I hate it. So Shane Parrish from Knowledge Project Burner Street was in Miami. He's like, dude, let's do a public meetup. I'm like, oh, fuck and i agree just because he's did it how many people came uh like 70 like i think around like 70 people came it's awkward right it's not awkward uh i i don't think i'd do it again but like this is the thing like the only thing i did to promote it shane was supposed to send it out to his newsletter never did thanks jane but um i just made like this one minute i i was like in like five days before the event or something i uploaded to my podcast feed i was hey, you happen to be in Miami area.

1:02:15We're going to do this. Here's where we're going to be. And I'm like, all right, there's no, my audience is in California, New York. Miami's not the spot for it. People flew down from New York, Washington, D.C., drove for hours. And I'm like, what are you in town for? They're like, this. I'm like, why? What are you talking about? And so it's this deep level relationship. So to answer your question, my 10-year plan is just like, I'm going to be making podcasts till I fucking die. I love doing it. It's the best job in the world. I think Sean tweeted out something that he's like, podcasting is the best job in the world.

1:02:46It's like, you get to be curious to learn all the time. And then you package up what you learn and you send it out to the world and all this good benefit comes back to you. You know, relationships, investment opportunities, businesses, you can launch whatever case is. And so I'm just going to run the same playbook that like Rockefeller does. Like right now you scale with ads, people pay a very high dollar amount because your audience is valuable. And thank you for promoting Hampton on your pod. that was more than my first car but i can't for free i but i appreciate that hey i look hopefully you get more hopefully you get uh more than enough value no that's that's a perfect example i did it you wouldn't you didn't have to ask me to do that because i got so much value from you the weird thing that you probably experienced too that this is people do the conversation you have with podcasters you can if you're not on this side you don't understand a listener does not understand the shit that like why every single person you talk to that's a podcaster has successful podcasts is like i'm never fucking not gonna quit like i'm never not gonna do this this thing is it's like magic um and so when what i was like dude i think hampton first of all is a great idea because um entrepreneurs have to be around other entrepreneurs like we do not think like anybody else you go to you're gonna have you said you're gonna have a family once you started having kids you go to these birthday parties and then you're back into you're outside of your bubble and now you're in like random distribution of people and every time i'm like where's the where's the entrepreneur in the room and if it's not an entrepreneur i gotta leave like you have to be around them paul graham has that great line where he's like ambitious people are star to be around other ambitious people if you put them together they bloom like dying plants with water which is exactly what you're doing with hampton the funny thing is like oh thanks for doing that i was like no thank you for making your fucking podcast i said every day i get messages like thank you for doing it i was like dude if you didn't listen like i get to read books for a living i need to be thanking you so that's the power podcast so the answer question is like i'm going to vertically integrate uh what's that mean so like product by by next year at this time um like you're not going to no one's gonna be able to buy an ad on founders right um so and this is the the crazy thing about having a podcast so like you have all you hit on it you're like uh super successful people read all the time um they also listen to business podcasts all the time and you were able to build relationships with them we're like i just met like when you said well when i talked to chris and andrew i was like you guys can advertise for as long as you want but eventually like what you i think ideally is like find a business you guys buy businesses for a living you hire managers for a living like we'll partner up on distribution as opposed to like just doing an ad uh you have people like patrick shaughnessy from invest like the best like literally saying hey, whether we have to buy a company, we scale it, or we incubate a company, basically he's like, we need to find founder's version of Tegas.

1:05:40And what does that mean? This is something that I think is public now, so I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying this. I've heard about this. I can say it so you don't get in trouble if you want. So this is just rumors. So here, let me tell you the rumors that I heard. And you can let me know. So this way you won't get in trouble for revealing anything. Tegas is a company where I think what they do is if you wanted to talk to an expert, you pay them money and they connect you with an expert, but they record all the conversations and transcribe them. And so instead of paying money to talk to an expert, you could just read the transcriptions they had with any other experts, whatever.

1:06:16I heard that they advertised on Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast and he saw how good it was going. And he goes, screw this. I want some type of equity and I'll invest a little bit but I want to add a sweetheart deal. And it was a sweetheart deal. And he continued sending them tons of customers to the point where his equity holding in the company is worth tens of millions of dollars. Is that roughly accurate? So I don't know the prices. I know he says this publicly. He put 20 million into his company. He's got a giant fund too. My point is, I don't know the valuations. I'm sure if I asked Patrick, he would tell me, but it's none of my business.

1:06:52My point is that, okay, Michael Elnick, who's a co-founder of Tegas, the ceo and a fucking savage like he is he is like the guys we study right i was we we talked i was talking to him one time and um he was just telling me like oh like what do you do like decompress like you're in a like he's building an incredibly valuable company he's got a like and he's completely dedicated to it and him and his brother both ran track at brown so like they blow off stress by like running like phil knight did in nike and then you ask him he's like oh so like how much do you work he's like oh no i take time off like i think saturday morning's off and it's like that's it oh saturday moth shakes so he's on it i love his intensity but he said he's just like one at one podcast they only advertised they had their first few customers from like you know word of mouth of their network but you know the first probably 50 to 60 million dollars of revenue whatever it is like patrick's podcast because of who's in his audience helped them scale and as a result like then there's just a relation there's a million things you could do so in Patrick's case he's running a fund like you can do equity I'm not an investor you said the other day when you were talking to Kim or who you were interviewing like you don't like investing in people's companies like you want to like build your own shit yeah investing doesn't entirely give me a dopamine rush like I'm in the game for adventure and I'm searching like a little bit of a rush and I find it to be very it's so boring.

1:08:18You give someone money and you don't hear from them for six years. I'm the same way. I'm like, I'm not interested. I get so much deal flow. Like, hey, do you want to angel invest? I'm like, no. Like, why? I would just like do my own shit. And people say I'm stupid on doing that. And they have to understand it's like, I'm not also running my life to maximize for most dollars made. Like, that doesn't make any like it. We talked about learning is not just memorizing information, it's changing behavior. How many fucking times you get to these super rich people that do things they don't like for money and then get money and they wonder why they're not happy anymore.

1:08:45All that matters is how you spend your time. What's going to be your T-GIS, though? What's going to be your product? I don't know what that... See, that's the thing. It's like, I was having a conversation with two founders about this last night. The good thing is, is like, we have some ideas. Obviously, like, we'll share that when time comes. But like, I have all these really smart, successful people that like the podcast that want to help. You know, like Andrew and Chris Atani. I just met with their EIR. I think they have more than one, but I just had a conversation with their EIR. Patrick's trying to help me.

1:09:12The guy that connected me with Sam Zell, He's got like$20 billion of assets under management. He's just like, well, we can fucking buy a company. We can do whatever you want. You know, he's also has the best business of some companies to scale up podcasting. So he understands power and he just likes the product. So the point being is like, that's where I'm going, but I'm not doing it for money. I'm doing it because I'm completely obsessed with podcasting. I think it's a miracle. Like when I say I start talking shit about podcasts, I'm like, podcasting is fucking, to me, it's like the printing press for the spoken word.

1:09:38It's like as big a revolution as Gutenberg's fucking printing press. and it's just like it's on-demand audio that you can educate yourself anytime you want all over the world that's fucking crazy they didn't exist when you and i were kids it didn't exist i had to fucking walk i i remember like being obsessed with talk radio and just having to listen to whatever was on the three or four dials at the time it was on and then they go from that to like streaming it in the browser i remember when that happened i was a fucking grown man i was like oh this is amazing and then when my friend eric's like oh no you can listen to joe's podcast anytime you want like what the fuck did you just say what the fuck did you just say that's crazy and think about that like if somebody like this is um a young kid so me and you both know michael seekon who's michael from our future oh oh yeah dude he's in my phone as michael future and i never referred to him as seeking his last name never i was like i don't know i don't know if i'm pronouncing it correctly dude he's at my house he's at my house like twice a week and i just call him michael future i like it's crazy i love how arrogant i had a guy at my wedding and i didn't even i barely even knew how to say his i didn't even know his last name i just i just called him sieva russia i love michael's confidence and my point being is like imagine being you know 20 20 because he would call dm both me and you and yeah he he's really good at it he sent me a dm he's like hey hey, I love your podcast.

1:11:03I took an idea that I got for your podcast, made a video about it, and it got 10 million views. Can we talk? I go, you did what? What the fuck are you talking about? That's an impossible message not to... Dude, I always tell him. He's at my house all the time. And I'm not old. I'm 33. But he's 23. I mean, whatever. He's just out of college. He'll come... Yeah, young. And he'll come over and me and Sarah will be like, Michael, just tell me what are the young kids doing nowadays? And he'll literally just sit there for two hours and just tell Sarah and I all these phrases and words. and I'll just listen.

1:11:33I don't even say a thing. I just say, just talk. Just tell me what's up with young people. And he's like, he'll just tell me. And I'll ask him about his dating life. He just talks. And so I always try to, this sounds always weird whenever I say this. I always try to surround myself with younger people. And I'm like, just tell me. I just want to listen. Just tell me what's going on. And he always does that to me. He's like, you tweeted that one time where he said something like, oh, what are you going to be doing in 10 years? I'm going to be landing my helicopter on your lawn or something. But I love his confidence.

1:11:59One time he said, he goes, got some really bad news today just got back from the chiropractor they said that the chip on my shoulder is permanent he actually gave me a really good book recommendation he texted me yesterday that I never had found it's like all these like which one was it? the ones that I'm obsessed with the history of the American West and like all that personality type that's like oh no fuck the East Coast I'm gonna go across and do this crazy journey in the West Philip Anschwitz the guy who owns the biggest ticketing company in the world or something. It's called like AWE. Whatever it is, it's like one that everyone knows.

1:12:37I think they own Ticketmaster. I think. Something like that. He says they're on the Lakers and the Coachella. He says, I don't know if that's true, but it's called Out Where the West Begins. Yeah, and they own Coachella. Anyway, this guy, Phillip, a lot of people don't know this. It only has 10 reviews on Amazon. This 80-year-old,$20 billion guy, he has a book about the West. yeah and i already ordered it the the reason i brought up michael though is because one i think it's smart to be like i think we have a an epidemic of people that don't believe in themselves people think we have an epidemic of arrogance i believe the complete opposite it's like there's so many more people that can create businesses because like the best description of a what a business came from richard branson i've ever heard came from richard branson he goes a business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better and if you look at it from there like there's limitless opportunity and so to have the belief that you can do that something that pops up in these books all the time is that belief comes before a building but society wants you to show me that you're you should have like show prove that you should have your confidence deserved it's like no no you don't actually understand it's like they the belief comes before well then that's why a lot of people were like amongst my entrepreneurial friends they watched the billy mcfarland fire festival documentary and they were like yeah he did the wrong things but it almost worked and the reason why like a lot of my entrepreneurial friends were like were like forgiving of him was it's like yeah but i've been there i've faked it until i made it type of vibe and like because i remember i did this for my conferences too i would kind of fib i would tell these 15 speakers individually the other 14 had already confirmed which they hadn't and luckily i got them all to confirm and it worked out so it wasn't and it didn't end up being a lie but there's like so many examples where i promised something that wasn't real where i'm like oh shit i got i hope i can deliver on these things you know yeah that happens a lot the the point i I was making with Michael though is imagine being his age right and being able to listen to every single episode of my first million every single episode of founders or what or how how to take over the world we got to give Ben a shout out because fucking I think what he's doing is incredible and like perfect example is like dude you should just make as many episodes as possible because like you have missed you have Sam Parr saying your shit is really good right which is fucking incredible and you have Mr.

1:14:49Beast literally the biggest creator on the fucking internet saying only listen to one podcast. So I hope that lights a fire under Ben as well. But just see a build, I would kill. I would have fucking killed. That's why I think podcasting is a miracle. I don't want to do anything else. Let's say I never launched any businesses to ensure a 10-year plan, which I don't see how that's even possible because there's a ton of entrepreneurs I know that want to partner on these things. But even if I just made podcasts and I just continue to grow the audience and I just made money on ad revenue, like whatever, that's plenty fine for me.

1:15:22that's the way I like to live my life. Do you ever read, do you ever heard of Chuck Eager? Chuck, is that the guy who broke the sound barrier? Yes. So the fucking crazy thing is the Miracle books is like, you never know, like when you're going to read some random sentence that you never fucking read. Everyone loves that guy's book. All business people love his book. So I didn't know who the fuck he was. I kept noticing this old guy on Twitter in a pilot suit talking hella shit, like unfiltered. And I fucking love these people that like really talk who they are. They're authentic. And I read his book.

1:15:53It turns out he fucking, it sold like 5 million copies the first year it came out in the 80s. Like it's one of the most successful autobiographies of all time. Well, he was famous back then when he did that. I think he broke the sound barrier. Is that right? So he broke two or something. He was the first pilot to break the sound barrier. And I think he was the first pilot to become ace in a day in World War II. He's like, I love killing Nazis. He says, he's like, one of my favorite things to do is kill Nazis. and so yeah he there's a great line in his book where um he's like from this like this is what i also love is like great can come from anywhere he lived in like this rural um what's that area in west virginia it's like appellation where there's like a yeah yeah so he lived in like the appellations completely like isolated right and so he describes the way he describes in his book about killing all these nazis he shot down five to become an ace in a day he had to shoot down five enemy planes and he goes the nazis came up uh into the skies and they met a goddamn west virginia buzzsaw is the way he described himself but he gave me another blueprint um let me see if i can get the quote exactly right this is the magic of having readwise too because i can just think of something and pull it up immediately it's like a giant search engine for everything i've read um and he gave me this idea where it's like it's how you and i should avoid what you just describe you get around all these rich guys they never it's never enough they don't seem to be enjoying life which is what's the point of being rich at that point um they it seems to be surprising to them that they're not enjoying life because they don't actually like what they do day to day, but they make a ton of money.

1:17:19So why the fuck, how the fuck could you take one third of your life is going to be spent working, right? You hate what you do. You think, how is it possible that you think you're going to get your end of your life and like your life? It's impossible. And so he says, he goes, I wasn't a deep, sophisticated person, but I live by a basic principle. I did only what I enjoy. And here's the part. I wouldn't let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren't interesting to me. And so it took me years. Isn't that funny how that's like business people say it, pilots say it, it doesn't matter.

1:17:50Like people, a lot of people who I talk to, they, they, they asked me what my pot is, if it's all about business. I'm like, not really, because like, I don't give a shit if you're an artist, as long as you're like kicking ass and you've like defined what success is and you've achieved it. I think that's, I think that's dope. It's all the same personality type, just applied to different things. Like I could show you this. I don't know if you can see on camera but like this is one of my favorite dudes he's my fucking his name's ernest shackleton i love reading about polar explorers i like reading about athletes that's the best book i've read in probably three years endurance yeah yeah it's excellent i love i'm gonna make a shirt and i might sell it but i'll just make it for myself with that fucking picture where he's just like covered in snow and looking like shit and i love the fact that he came up with his own motto buy endurance we conquer it's like we're just gonna win because we're never gonna quit and i think that could be applied to everything that you fucking do assuming that you like to do it but um yeah i think chuck ears is smart we're like so many people buy into this this i feel prestige is a myth right where they're like i'm gonna go do this i'm gonna do activity x because it'll give me prestige and what prestige is is you think other people are thinking about you and no one is thinking about you you like humans are self-absorbed that is our human nature so like think about the person you i listened to your ariel hawani uh interview you're a big fan of his i love ariel hawani you're a big fan of his how much of your life is spent thinking about you're a huge fan you buy all shit you listen to stuff less than two tenths of one million percent of your life right i wish people understood it's how few people are thinking about them and therefore you wouldn't chase prestige because prestige doesn't like all that matters is like the people around you do they do they think you're a good person do they approve what you're doing and then your work all that really matters is like your own opinion right that ben texted me the other day about an idea for his podcast and i was like dude because he's like he added music ben do you care if i say this okay so ben added music he's like what do you think of it and i was like i don't love it and i don't hate it i don't care about it at all i thought your episode was fantastic it was excellent i shared it with friends but i was like he's like well the the reviews are mixed so you go i saw that i went to the tweets it's like some people like this is great some people like this is bad exactly fucking exactly all that matters is what you like if you like the music and they don't then let them go find another fucking podcast listen to dude his music though on that first on his uh on how to think of the world that's the best intro song yeah guessing that that intro song has helped make uh make his podcast popular the ufc like that going back to the ufc thing that that connected us to like go what like i know you have but like everybody out there needs to go talk about manifest cowboy conor mcgregor is that he is literally in the documentary the fact that he was had somebody film him when he was flat broke living in his mom's he owed money to every single fucking agency in ireland and he's like i'm gonna be the fucking world champion one day he's like literally manifesting this shit remember when he got the double belts and he's like he joe's interviewing him he's like i saw this in my mind he goes oh look at that he's like i dream he's like i literally saw it and i fucking made it real yeah that's why people like him that documentary is fucking incredible it's because he called his shot it's like he just ruins it by doing he ruins it by doing all the other dumb stuff though but it certainly he's he's he's a i have a love hate relationship with them where it's like you've got all this amazing stuff i admire you so much and i also can't stand some of this other behavior you know what i mean i think that's where your wisdom is there's like okay i i sold my company like i'm rich as fuck uh you're still like you have a massive advantage like uh you can launch businesses you work on whatever you work on but you're realizing it's like but i also like take care of my health i want to spend time with my wife i want to have a family i want to like be able to like have freedom i've heard you describe like what's important to you and this is like yeah that's that's how i feel too because like it's my issue is like i'm not impressed by somebody successful for a year five years ten years it's like i like the people that fucking never fucked it up and um there's a great line that charlie munger said he's like it's not getting rich that you have to worry about it's staying sane he's like it's not part and this is in a book it's not normal to human nature to have unlimited resources or be so much rich richer and then not fuck it up through draw he says uh through ladies leverage and liquor is usually how rich men go broke that's what he said yeah well it's in his book he didn't say it in person but um well point being is like i think there's a sense of wisdom there where it's like okay I already have this.

1:22:14How do I keep building on it? People like Connor and Kanye West is in this example too. It's like they're gifted at a young age. And then their superstar success is so disorienting that like, again, it's not getting rich to you to worry about. It's staying sane. They weren't able to stay sane. I want to stay sane, dude. I want to get to them in my life. When I'm trying to make decisions, like when I'm 80 years old, I knew for a fact, part of the reason I felt comfortable, like jump all in on the podcast, even though I didn't know if I was going to make a success or not, was that when Jeff Bezos is like, well, I was making a ton of money at this hedge fund.

1:22:48I was 30 years old. I had an apartment on the Upper West Side. I'm best friends with a billionaire who's mentoring me. He's already set for life, right? But he's like, I knew if I quit now and forego my quarterly bonus and move across the country to Seattle and try to sell books on the internet. He's just like, I feel that the internet is a life-changing technology and i want to play a role in that technology and the 30 year old self you can confuse yourself and think oh it's as prestigious as working at a hedge fund it i'm gonna miss out on you know a couple million dollar bonus whatever it is he's like your 85 year old self is gonna be like you had a shot to play a role on internet and you didn't do it that's how i feel about podcasting is it's like i believe it's a miracle i want to play a role and therefore like i want to get to my life i know 80 year olds like damn david i'm glad you fucking risked it i'm glad you did that i'm happy you came on here you're um you're very fascinating to me i've listened to dozens of your episodes um i'm very eager to see what you become i think it's cool i didn't know that you're doing it for six years i know that i've listened to like episode like number 10 as well as like 300 so i guess i should have done the math but like congratulations on your success it seems like you're kicking ass it seems like you're in the groove and like it's really cool to see someone like it's really fun to see someone um like right when it's happening and that's like kind of the cool thing about podcasting and like twitter and all this stuff is like you can catch stuff in the middle not before and not after but as it's happening that's where you are right now and i appreciate you doing this where um what do you what do you promote just founders i call it founders pod it's a founders podcast founders twitter your founders uh you're always tweeting good shit um i want to say thank you for having me on like seriously i love your podcast i would just say that um one thing that podcasters uh like it's obvious who has the magic and i've been telling people way before i ever fucking messaged you i was like you need to watch what sam and sean are doing it's clear they have the magic they have insane chemistry i remember listening to you guys and you're like oh i'm only getting 60 000 downloads an episode which is still super impressive and now you guys are fucking blue right past that um it's extremely obvious that you guys are really good at it i hope you like do a ton of it i swear and i know you're might not be interested in this but like there's a there's a massive hole in podcasting for like the pat pat mcafee version of business podcasts i agree and i think you and sean you and sean like like dude there is going to be a business podcast where you have pat mcafee gets paid like 30 million a year by whatever his presenting sponsor is whatever like i forgot what it is um dan levitar got that 50 million dollar contract from like draft kings you see spotify gave uh alex cooper 20 million a year that the reported number for joe rogan is way bigger than it's reported but my point being is like there's a gap in the fucking business podcast space which i think you and sean have the best way to like if you did it every day just like you did like your hour show is the perfect length, the research, it feels like you're hanging out with your smart friends and you guys are brainstorming together.

1:25:55There's nothing else that's like what you guys are fucking doing. Hey, Spotify, if you're listening, I'm easy to contact. Just DM me on Twitter. We can talk. Thanks. I appreciate you inviting me on. That was fucking super cool of you. I appreciate you doing this. And yeah, it means a lot. And yeah, it was awesome. That's the pod. That's the pod.

1:26:22I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

1:26:41Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:27:11If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N-A, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.