Why Balance Is the Enemy of Greatness | David Senra

26:17So Jimmy was kind enough when I did a founder's episode on him. He said like a thousand people texted to him and he invited me to his house. And one of the pieces of advice, again, 72, maybe 75, something like, it's probably 72. Guy has more knowledge, you know, practical knowledge is pinky than I have in my entire body. And he's like, most people cannot handle success. And the advice that he's been around super talented people. And these are some people who are legit geniuses and they destroy their lives i'm not interested in being successful for a year for five years for 10 years i want to i don't want to i want to be this time decide i'm going to stop doing this and so his whole thing was there's like basically four things that he sees for ways that people do this the most ruin their success they they are successful they're talented and they destroy themselves yeah what are the four the first one was drugs pills or hair heroin all this stuff i don't do any drugs that's not gonna happen to me did you see the Eddie Murphy documentary?

27:13No, everybody keeps telling me about it. Oh, it was so good, dude. And one of the main things was, you know, he was famous since he was 16. He was on SNL, I think, when he was 18. And, you know, did all these movies when he was 21. He was like, I've never done drugs. And he's like, that's one of the main reasons why I am what I am. So he's going to be number three on this list, which we'll get to in a minute, about what could destroy you. And he wasn't destroyed by it, but he's addicted to something else, which we'll get to. Number two, alcohol. like you just like could destroy your life you know I had went to dinner last night with a friend and like I had a glass of sake like but I didn't get drunk it was like fine right three women they just like they attract the wrong kind of women they fall in love with the wrong kind of women they let the wrong women in around them like what's the what's the Patriots coach Bill Veltrick yes you see what he's doing now he's dating like a 20 year old or something oh yeah man she just calls the shots okay that well it's exactly what you're describing no in case it gets a lot darker there's like just it can distract you it's just you have to you want high quality people around you in every single domain friends high quality people people who work with high quality people the people you date you want high quality people like you just want high quality people it's like what's the most important decision you make in your life is the people that you let around you which i see people are way too casual about this and i could be really really ruthless in this domain um and then the fourth one is megalomania and the reason i say Eddie Murphy because like he's like dated every single person.

28:41He's got like 10 kids. I think he's got a bunch of different baby mamas. Uh, again, he's still living his life. He wants to do, but he clearly likes that, that, uh, uh, number three. So number four is just megalomania. Um, you start to think that you're successful because of you and not the work that you put in and you start to believe you, you have like, you're like a God and like everybody should, you know, praise you and you just completely become disassociated from reality. And this is why i say like it's very dangerous especially to like do numbers driven thing like i talk to founders all the time i'm like oh like tell me about your company like i just want to be the first you know i want to build a trillion dollar company i want to be the first the fastest company to 100 million ar i'm like you know like no of none of history's great entrepreneurs that's not a history's great entrepreneurs i'm calling you out on that that's bullshit because when i talk to ramp the ramp founders are amazing they're like the best and the best they said our goal is to get to a billion dollar in uh valuation in 18 months that was not their primary goal their primary goal but they said that's what their goal i mean he he was like he's like i think it'd be cool if we could do that oh that's different that's oh come on no that is different i'm saying the reason for your existence the reason what you're doing these people are telling me i'm only starting this company so i can hit a certain financial number that's completely different no that's not what he said yeah yeah that's not what they i was wasn't i there with you in the I recorded with him and he repeats this all the time.

30:01It's like a cool thing. He was like, I thought it'd be cool if we could get to a billion in valuation in 18 months. I don't know if I heard that episode, but like - He said it a bunch. Okay, their experience with Paribus beforehand was giving the insight into the founding story of Ramp. So that's a longer story. But my point being is like, I'm hugely skeptical if there's some kind of external metric that I will only be happy if I hit that metric or that is the reason that I'm doing this. Where mine is just like, I want to make things that are proud of that I think are good in, like I could put out in there, like good into the world.

30:36And I don't confuse, like when we were just upstairs and you're like that guy sitting next to us. It's like, I don't confuse with somebody saying, hey, I like what you do. Like, that's the perfect way to say it. You like what I do. You might like me as a person. If we knew each other, we'd probably get along. We'd probably have the same interests, but never confuse that they don't like you. It's the work. and if once you stop putting in the work, everything else goes away. That is how the megalomaniacs, they just think like, I'm so talented, I just show up. Everything I touch turns to gold. I don't have to practice.

31:06I don't have to put in any effort and everything's going to work out. And then they also, you know, treat people essentially not as people. If you had to teach someone who is 19 how to find their life's work based off of talking to, reading about 400 people and not talking to dozens of, hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, what would you say is the exercise that they should do? My problem is, I think at that age, I wouldn't have taken anybody's advice. And I think I'm only now, the last few years, been open to letting other people mold my mind. Well, what would you say? The fact that they're asking the question.

31:44There's this great line where it's like, a 21-year-old kid comes up to Mozart and it's like, I want to know how to write a symphony. And he says, you're too young. and the guy that is asking most of the questions is just like, yeah, but you wrote symphonies when you were 14. He's like, yeah, but I didn't go around asking people how to do it. There's something in there where you feel somebody else has the answer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for advice. I'll be very clear here. I don't think there's anything magical I would have to say that would put them on the other path. You need to spend a lot of time thinking about what you actually believe.

32:17A lot of people just lie to themselves over and over and over again. And this long conversation last night and the conversation started. it's like what's the lie that you're telling yourself and we went back and forth me and this other person uh for a while about this uh my lie i'll just tell you right now which uh again i'm probably sharing too much publicly is like that i don't need anybody else that's a lie you think that that's a lie i've been telling myself for a very long time which again has happened and i learned that because of the experience i'm having the relationships i have like realizing that like you're you're doing that because it's a defense mechanism not because it's actually true and so So for this, I'd be like, take the time, like what do you actually want?

32:53And that's very hard to be truthful about. And the one way that I found it is just like, I just follow, like I have ungovernable curiosity about things. I cannot tell you why I like to read. And so like when I first started my first podcast, I was like, oh, like it'd be cool if I could like build a business and a life where I just get to read all the time, which sounds ridiculous, but it actually worked. And then you just follow this. And then now to the point where like we recorded this conversation with Todd Graves, who's one of the people I wanted to meet the most, which people sounds crazy, but I'm like, he's like, what does he do?

33:23He's like, he sells chicken fingers. And they're like, what? Why do you want to meet him? I was like, because he grinded himself. First of all, he's been doing his business for 30 years, started out, built the first store by hand. He had no money, went to crazy risk to find the financing because there's no venture capital and no one would give money. He had to like risk his life on a boat, sailing off, fishing off Alaska. He worked as a Boilermaker. He was like highly leveraged and almost went out of business. He did all these crazy things because he just found he had this chicken finger dream.

33:52That's what he calls it. And he's like, I have to do the chicken finger dream. I can't explain why it, again, he's not external, looking for external validation. I'm going to do this. Everybody's like, you're an idiot. You can't do that. It hasn't changed his menu in 30 years. So we fly to Baton Rouge. The conversation is incredible. We record for two hours, two and a half hours, two hours. And then we spend another two and a half hours one-on-one together after. Was he any different? No, because he's also listens to the podcast so we understand who I am. Like, it's just very, this is what I meant.

34:19It's like, I don't make media. I'm building relationships. He might be a top 10 person I've listened to on your pod. Yeah. He's incredible. And so this is the point about following the curiosity going back to the 19 year old. I go back to the airport and I call Sam Hinckley and he picks up and I go, I'm in big trouble. And he goes, what's going on? I go, I am already wildly addicted to having these conversations. He goes, I go, I've never done ecstasy, but this is how I feel right now. I am like high, I am wired. I am like high as a kite because I had this guy, again, he's got three decades of experience.

34:56He had 915 stores. The company's worth over$20 billion. He owns 90 % of it. He's growing faster in year 30 than it ever has in history. He still has trouble sleeping because he can't wait to wake up and get back to work the next day. And so you just get like, Like you get this download of information and energy from him that like just made me euphoric. Who would be on your board of advisors? Would he be on one of them? How many people do I get? Six. I have to name them? Yeah. Living or dead? Either. Let me do dead just because that'll give me some time to think about living. And I think like, I don't know if I want to answer that question honestly, but I would have to.

35:28Dead, you know, Rockefeller built the greatest company ever created. Rockefeller, I think, is one of the few tycoons of, in terms of like unpeachable character and like amazing success. I think he's the best. Debatable and unpeachable. No. Okay. Unpeachable is not the right word because he screwed up. He did lie on the record a bunch of times. But in general, I think he's an ethical, honest person. Got a little handsy towards the end of his life. Let's just put it that way. I remember I collect He was 100. I collect obscure Rockefeller biographies. I have made my own. I have one at my house I haven't done an episode on.

36:00It's 1 ,700 pages long. It's in a big binder. He was a weirdo when he was like 90 and he was like giving people nickels and shit. That's dope. That's fine. Great. He undeniable, one of the best businesses ever created. Charlie Munger told me to my face that he thinks Rockefeller created the best business in history. Yeah. Munger would have to be on it because he's dead. Unfortunately, now I think he's the wisest person I've ever studied. If I could only like emulate, learn from one person, it'd be him. Edwin Land. Who's that? Founder of Polaroid, patron saint of Founders Podcast. He was Steve Jobs' hero.

36:30His whole thing. He's got a lot of things that a lot of personal mottos. He invented the instrument. some photography, the entire industry, then monopolize the industry. It's like one of the last great American technology companies that were never like his patents were never. What did he die? I've never heard of him. In the nineties, he met when he was in his seventies, Steve Jobs met, um, Edwin Land when Steve was like 25, Edwin Land was like 72, I think. And he said, Steve Jobs said that spending time with him was like visiting a shrine. This is how a lot I get to meet like crazy people in the world.

37:04Right. I actually had lunch with a friend yesterday. Um, and she told me something fascinating she's just like you need to like take a minute to think about what's going on in your life and the fact that you have this ridiculously sick life because of the people you have like access to you ever write this stuff down like a journal no this is like i think i've i think one of the reasons i wanted to do the bruce brinstein episode is because i think i'm also i like run from my past i don't like thinking about it like there's just all kinds of other stuff going on. And so I spent time yesterday with a 71-year-old guy.

37:37It looks like he's going to do his first ever podcast interview with me. He just sold his company for$60 billion. And in an hour, he transferred like more knowledge to me than I would weeks speaking to like a young startup founder. It's just like, it's just unbelievable that. So Edwin Land, I felt, did the exact same thing for Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs, like what, he's such a copy. He patterned Apple off of Polaroid. and a lot of people don't understand that. Like to the point where like you can go back and watch Steve's product demonstrations and the table and chairs that are on that are the exact same ones that Edwin Land did for Polaroid.

38:12You're not, this is, people don't actually see, if you don't have, if you're not studying history, you don't have this like basis of historical knowledge in your head, you actually don't know what you're looking at. Like I saw something different when I saw that video than somebody that didn't study history does. It's like very, very valuable. And this is like, we're wasting time doing dumb shit, like watching short form videos all day you being obsessed with the news following x like this stuff is garbage this is like read books and talk to really amazing people and try to like apply what you're learning from both those experience to be a better human and then the better human human you are other better humans will then open up to you and then there's like this virtuous cycle you have three more so rockefeller munger land obviously steve jobs steve jobs built you know the most successful consumer product of all time i will say about evan land i took two ideas from him he he had a his personal motto is don't do anything someone else can do.

39:04I think that's different demands differentiation. When you listen to my podcast, they are very weird. Foundry, there's not like, you can read books and have a solo podcast. You're not going to make it like that. It's a very weird thing. Even the way I'm doing the new show, it was like, this guy interviews weird. I'm not interviewing a goddamn person. I am having conversations. What you're hearing on the show is exactly what you would hear if we weren't recording this. This is the stuff I have. The idea that all these guys, everybody that's been on the show besides James Dyson so far, has listened to the podcast.

39:32You think, first of all, a lot of the early listeners for the new show come from founders, right? And some of the messages I get, they're like, yeah, but you're talking too much. And you interrupt and you do all this other stuff. You should do it the way this guy does. We just did 400 episodes of people that build lives and phenomenal careers by being differentiated. And now you're like, no, no, don't be differentiated. Go do it like this other guy. The differentiation I have compared to other podcasters that want to talk to excessively successful people in business is they haven't read 400 biographies about history's greatest entrepreneurs like I have.

40:06I spend time with Daniel Eck all the time. I just saw Michael Dell again last week. I promise you, they don't want me to not talk. That is not what they want. They listen to the show. And so this idea from Edwin Land is like, don't do anything someone else could do. That is a very, very simple sentence and a very profound insight if you actually apply it. most people are so scared to be different. Because your recall is so good. I wasn't born with that. It's work. It's 10 years of reading and then rereading and then like building my own database. And then like I've done all kinds of crazy shit that no other podcasters do.

40:39Because you know, like I talk to other podcasters and I ask all kinds of questions. It's like, everybody's like, you are blessed with a phenomenal memory. No, I forget everything all the time. But I don't forget something if I've read it 15 times. I was up in your room and I took a photo of your book. You had the Brad Jacobs book. Yeah. And I was like, I just want to see what he's underlining. I was like, I just want to see like his thinking. You underlined so much stuff. You had so many notes in there. Yeah. So, but this is because again, like I also love what I do. And if you love what you do, you're going to do things that are, not for financial reasons.

41:09You do it because you want it to be great. Like I'm killing myself over this edit right now. The episode that I'm working on right now is probably four days late and it's, I still don't have it. And like, I feel uncomfortable right now, but I know that's a good feeling because like when I get on the other side, this happened, I did this episode called How Elon Works. I think it's the most downloaded episode of founders by far. And I remember talking to a friend because I was working in Malibu and I was like, it's just not ready. Like I can't, like I am struggling. Like it was supposed to be out on Sunday.

41:41It's not coming out. But the thing that I realized is like, no one's going to remember if it came out four or five days late. They're going to remember if it was great or not. And spending that extra time and being confused is like a good signal. It means that I care and then I'm trying and I will find my path, like my way there. So I think that's really important. So let's go back to the other thing about Edwin Land real quick. He also has this great line that says, this is where I said I was lying to myself about wanting a balanced life. He says, there's a rule they don't teach you at Harvard, which he knows because he dropped out of Harvard twice.

42:11He goes, the rules they don't teach you at Harvard, that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. I can't hold myself. Like I have to take things as far as they can go. That's why I can't do many things. I essentially can just do podcasts. I can take care of my health. I could do podcasts and I could build relationships. That is essentially all my 24 hours a day. That's all I have. I can't do anything else. So Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Rockefeller, Munger, two other dead people. I don't think I need the other two. I like fewer deeper, fewer deeper relationships. I tend to talk to like the same people over and over again.

42:44You know, being public figures, you could talk to a thousand people a year if you wanted to. I find that like, I want people, I want to genuinely know people who they authentically are. I want them to know who I authentically am. And then like, I want to skip all the bullshit and I want to get right to like the actual stuff that we want to talk about. I want to talk about the relationships you have with women. I want to talk about like the guilt that you have being on the road all the time and the fact that you're a dad. I want to talk about the stuff that you lied to everybody else about. Like, this is the stuff, the only stuff I'm interested in.

43:10I cannot have like superficial conversations. Like I remember one time this guy reached out, he was a billionaire and he's like, I'd love to talk to you. I was like, sure. And then he's like, I sit down. And I got like looped in with an assistant. I don't even have an assistant. I do everything myself. So like, besides, I guess the new show, now I have a whole squad that you see. But I remember getting the calendar invite and it was like 30 minutes. I'm like, like, we're not even gonna get started in 30 minutes. Like, and so I was like, this isn't gonna work. Like, tell me when you have like more time.

43:38Like, but I'm not gonna talk to you for 30 minutes. All right, let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send, and it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury.

44:06And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. What do you think would be the biggest regret of all the people that you've talked to? What would be the top three biggest regrets that they've had?

44:38This is where it's like, with these kind of people, I don't necessarily believe them, that they're regrets. It's like, so Sam Walton, he's writing his autobiography as he knows he's dying. He's got cancer all of his body. He's in immense pain. He took out some of the last time that he ever had in life. And he essentially distilled what he learned from his like 50, 60 year career. And I think it's one of the best books, easily top five, you know, entrepreneur book of all time. And it's like such a gift to future generations of entrepreneurs that he did that with his last time. And he said that, you know, he missed out a lot of stuff.

45:07Like he was working all the time. He's like a fairly, he calls himself a fairly overactive fellow. Yeah, well, that's one way to put it, Sam, but like that you're just a conqueror. You're an insane person in a good way. He's trying to do something, you know, that he thought was good. And he's like, you know, if I have to be honest, though, like, yeah, I missed out on seeing, you know, parts of my kids' lives. Like I was working a lot. But he's like, if I did it all again, I would do it the exact same way. And I think a lot of people feel that way. And it gets in their life. and then they're like, I think it's just natural to be nostalgic and to think, oh, what would I change?

45:43But like even Buffett says in Snowball, whatever he did to draw, to like push his wife away, his first wife, I would go back. He says I would go back and like do it differently. Maybe, I don't know. Like I think he did exactly what he wanted to do. Maybe in that case he's right. He's like, I was like truly in love with this woman and I messed that up. I could see that being like a true regret. I think a lot of these people have a hard time assessing like their own regrets accurately. There's this great book called How to Get Rich. Have you read that one? Felix Dennis, episode 129. Yes, one of my favorite books of all time because his writing is really good.

46:30It's the best. I compare him to, he's like a, if Mick Jagger and Richard Branson had a baby, his writing is the best and it's one of the very few books that's tactical and written by a billionaire and so he the reason it's a good book is he was dying he was uh dying of cancer i think he died when he was 60 or something and he said uh if i could live life all over again i would accumulate 50 million dollars as fast as i can hopefully by the age of 35 and then i would spend the rest of my life writing poetry yes and the reason i believe him is he spent the last 10 years of his life retired writing books on poetry and his philanthropic issue or thing was uh planting forests he loved trees it's very strange he also likes that in the book he's like i've spent a hundred million dollars on whores and crack cocaine cocaine over a decade i was gonna bring that up where like this is this is it was he he's he was a crackhead he was a legit i didn't know it was crack no it was crack he was a crackhead right around here actually in this neighborhood i believe him because he got to like 500 to 800 million like he got way yeah but this was like in the year 2002 so like even more yeah yeah and so you read that book and again this is why like i spend so much time with these older people because there's like a certain like you don't know yourself as well when you're younger you're still on the rise and so you're incentivized to like put on a show essentially like you're not being truthful and you can't let the world actually see how you like what you believe about certain things and especially in like this entrepreneurial ecosystem you're in like most of these start founders are just straight up lying so they can raise more money.

48:00Like, it's really gross and disgusting. This is my whole thing. I am fundamentally, if I am, like, being, if I'm being dishonest about something or if I have, like, different sides of me, I don't like that. I need to reconcile that right away. I've gotten so much more value out of listening from old people than I have reading Twitter or whatever. It might be because they're willing to tell you the truth. Well, and it's also because once you get past a certain level, and that level, honestly, is pretty small, but, like, once you get past a certain level, the analogy that I heard recently was really good.

48:26It was like, I'm the captain of a boat, and I'm not trying to fix the engine, but steer the ship. And so I don't want, I don't necessarily need tactics right now. I just need, tell me how to live like a good life. And a good life is a variety of things, but like, I need to know about what the definition of a life worth living is, not how to make money or whatever. I don't know whatever the tactics are. And so I've gotten so much more value. So my friend Noah Kagan's got this channel on YouTube where he interviews like 80 year olds and mostly like entrepreneurs. I've gotten so much more value out of that.

48:57You see this, if you can't interview them, at least you can pick up like Felix Dennis' book where how many people are going to be honest about it? That is a crazy thing to admit to, that I spent 10 million a year for 10 years, $100 million on prostitutes and coke. Dude, when he died, his prostitute girlfriend was living with him. Again, like I'm sure, I can't imagine the STDs this guy has or had and doing coke and drinking and nightclubs because they're like nightclubs, I think if I remember correctly. Yeah, like in the 80s. it too. She's like, you don't want to do that. Like, what are you doing?

49:29Um, like it's going to shorten your life. And some people want to, like, there's a great line in, uh, Bruce Rienstein's autobiography where he's like one, some people's five years is worth more than other people's 50, you know? So like some people just have to burn bright and like they're going to, that, that is like their destiny. That's what they're going to do. I want to like have a very interesting life and I want to succeed decade after decade after decade. Were you making any money in the first five years? Back then. So there's a long story, but like there was the podcast advertising is not like how it is now, which is like way more advanced and like you can sell your own deals independently.

50:01So at that time there was like these, they call them podcast networks, but they're not, I guess they're not, there wasn't a network of podcasts. They would just sell ads for you. And so I just remember reaching out to one of them and they're like, we would love to like sell ads for you. It's like, you need 50 ,000 downloads per episode. And what did you have, 1 ,500? The number they said, I was like 50 ,000. I was like, it seemed like such a, I was like, I will never have that. Like I just didn't, I couldn't compute. I don't even know what I had. A couple thousand or whatever the number was back then.

50:31And so then you would like try to do like you could do like affiliate deals. Like remember Audible scaled on podcasts. People don't understand the size of businesses you can build on the back of podcasts to this day. And now I don't even talk about this publicly anymore because like I think this is my secret of mine. Well I think like my business has made a lot of money via podcasting because I promoted my company Hampton on there. And there's just a million examples that people don't even know. Like I've collected all these cases. The hard part is that like podcasts are like the most challenging to grow, but they're the most sticky, I think, of all the mediums.

50:59Oprah understood the intensity of a pair of a legitimate parasocial relationship back in the 80s, way before, like nothing we're doing is new. She had built in distribution, right? She hooked up with the network and that was, and there was only 60 channels. I did an episode on that. That might be 332. I might be wrong on that episode, but the key there, like, let me just tell you her insight and I'll tell you what she figured out and how to monetize it in such a huge way. Her key insight was, you know, she would have like Brad Pitt on her show or like these A-list celebrities. And she's like, oh, I have something different because the way my audience responds to like a movie star is not the way they respond to me.

51:31And so like, they're like, Brad, oh my God, you're handsome. I love your movie writer. And they're like, Oprah, it's nice to see you. How are you? No, they're like, Oprah, come over for lunch. Come over for dinner. When people walk up to me on the street, they like get right into it. Yeah, because I think they know you. And in many cases, they do. They know like what I'm into and like what I'm, you know, intensely interested in. And then Oprah's thing, just to close that real quick, First, also, I think people vastly underestimate the importance of frequency, which is like another thesis I'm about to try to prove here.

51:59Whereas she's in your house one hour a day, five days a week. The intensity of the success of her business and the intensity of the parasocial relationship would be much more diminished if she was doing it once a week. I think that's very important. Second thing she realized is that at the time, this is all television. The most profitable show on TV at this time was local news. right because it's like cost nothing to make and you can sell advertisers like i want to sell my car in charlotte more targeted huge targeted you know and what she realized is like if you have oprah coming into being the lead-in from four to five to your five o 'clock news right she's gonna bump up your rating your nielsen rating by like i forgot what the number is let's say three and for every one nielsen rating your local news would make like another five million a year so let's say you don't have Oprah, you just lost out on$15 million.

52:52So if you, if Oprah says, oh, I'll sign with you, you have to pay me five of that. I'm making up the numbers. You have to pay me five of that 15. You're going to say, yeah. So what I couldn't figure out how to sell enough ads. I'll close this real quick. Cause I've talked about this on other podcasts too. I had found this socialist podcast called Chapo Trap House that was selling, uh, that did not run ads because they were not capitalists. So they thought it was immoral and they were using Patreon at the time to sell subscriptions to podcasts. And the Patreon API is public. And there is a website called Graftreon.

53:23And they were at the top of the list. And I found this. And they had 25 ,000 people, or let's call it 20 ,000 people, paying them at least$5 a month. And I'm like, oh, there's a business model right there. And their business model is simple. You can listen to every other episode for free. If you want the other episodes you're not getting, you have to pay$5 a month. And so I was like, well, this is like information for business. People for business would, of course, pay for this. and there's actually a story here. And so, but I sold it too cheap. It was like$100 a year or$10 a month. And then I ground to like, grind it to like a couple thousand.

53:53So it's like, you're making like dentist money or something like that. That's the way I would think about it. But then - Then 24 grand a year ain't dentist money. No, you're making hundreds of thousands a year. I thought you said 2000 a month. You got it. No, no. Annual subscribers had like a couple thousand. Got it. Okay. 3000, 4000, something like that. So that'd be like 400 grand or whatever the number is, right? but then let me then i also rob was like you idiot i'm trying to send this he's like your biggest asset you have is your back catalog and you have a big giant do not enter sign in front of your biggest asset he's like i've been trying to send it to people and it's so good that i had you had to buy gift descriptions and so he's like i spent like nine hundred dollars this week sending your episode to my nine friends i have to pay a hundred dollars every time i want to send somebody's uh so friend my friend sam hanky he was spending like two to three thousand or four thousand a year because like this is too good he was just buying it for everybody he's the one that told patrick about it which has obviously changed my life from there um and so then here's another thing which i didn't understand that podcasts are not all all is not that it appears from the outside this is a lesson from rockefeller where he realizes that one of his advantages was that not everybody, there's posted rates on how much it's gonna cost to ship a barrel of oil over the railroad.

55:06That posted rate is a lie. Yeah, so he gets rebates. Yes. The foundation of his empire. And so what I realized, and I remember Hinckley calls me one day, and he goes, hey, where are you? I go, I'm in the Hamptons. He's like, what are you doing there? I go, this guy DM'd me, and we talked on the phone. I really liked him. And he has this giant house in the Hamptons. And he's like, will you come speak to my company offsite? And Sam's like, he's paying you for that? And I go, yeah, of course. He goes, how much? And I go, X amount. And he goes, and I go, he's paying me X amount. And then he put me in this crazy house or this crazy hotel where like the room service is like a three-star Michelin.

55:45The restaurant downstairs, there's only one restaurant. It's like I'm ordering room service from like a Michelin-star restaurant. And then I go to check-in even though I'm not paying for it. And I see what he's paying a night. It's like$3 ,000 a night or something like that. And so I was like, yeah, this place is incredible. It's beautiful. and, you know, and we just went over like basic numbers and Sam goes, you have got to stop selling things. He goes, you have one of the most price insensitive audiences in the world. You cannot sell something for$100 a year. It's like, they would have paid $10 ,000 because like, it's relative to their wealth.

56:19And so like, this just happened when you said the book that you saw upstairs. In that book, Brad Jacobs, who has now become a friend of mine, sent me an early copy of that book. He did not tell me I'm in that book. He just said, here's the book. Tell me if you like it. I'm reading the book. And it says at the end for his new company, not even the end, I think it's on page 76, if I remember correctly. He's like, most of the investors in my new company, which is now a multi-multi-billion dollar company, are repeat investors. However, two of my top 20 shareholders did not know who I was. They discovered me because I was profiled on David Sanro's Founders podcast.

56:56and I'm like that's crazy and I knew I know the two people because those two people also told me and they told Brad that means Brad raised 750 million dollars from my audience from people that didn't know he existed before I did the episode on his book so that was Sam's point he's like you have the most one of the most price insensitive audiences in the world you cannot sell things for a hundred dollars this guy and the speech wasn't even a speech we go his whole team's at his Hampton's house it was like 30 of us and he just wanted to like shoot the shit in front of them for like 30 minutes and pay me unbelievable amount of money dude this is like that i told uh ben wilson i so i i found i was i've been the history buff for 20 years and i love ben and i saw ben's podcast how to take over the world and i was he sent me the graph i think when i found him he was doing 100 downloads an episode i was like ben what's going to happen in the future is you're going to become sort of like a guru but not in that type of way where because you've consumed all that this was before ai because you've consumed all this history knowledge billionaires gonna pay you money to help them predict the future by not repeating the past i was like that could be like the business model and it was like hard to understand at the time but it's not your time kind of sucks but that's like the joy of reading history it's basically it's like sort of education that's wrapped in entertainment that's why i love it so much do you ever use newspapers.com i bought a scripture i don't think i've ever gone on you have to use it it's so fun because the problem with biographies and like listening of your podcast is you're telling me these stories when I already know the ending and it's so much better to go back so for example you could read about like Dan Gilbert and he's just one of the greats when it comes to being an entrepreneur and you can read about him and watch interviews but you know that he was successful you already know the outcome of the story and so it's really fun to go back I use newspapers like I'm all the time because I go and find articles in the 80s when they when and I'll find his first profile like the very first time a newspaper wrote about him and like what were they saying about him right then and there or how are they disrespecting them or did they like could they spot it or like because there's revisionist history like what were people saying about him then and there because because i was in san francisco starting i moved to san francisco when i was 21 and there's a bunch of like people that are ballers now and i'm like i knew that guy when we were nothing i did not see that i did not know that he had that in him or this person i thought was going to be the they were nothing and so it kind of becomes hard to like predict who's going to be i mean obviously angel investing would be a lot easier if this were the case this is why i would say like the only filter i trust like time is the best filter and so that's why i can gravitate towards people that were successful for many decades we didn't finish the uh so like if you think you asked me the living board of directors yeah i think this is a good segue into like what you were just talking about where it's like it would probably be a lot of the people that have had on the new david sander show so far so ovitz dell no the first the first spot would go to daniel ek for sure for sure he was cool because he everyone's a shark who's that successful but he had a soft side that i liked he is like swedish buddha i don't know how to describe him he is unbelievably philosophical and he's changed my life in so many different ways i can't believe he's that way at such a young age too and that's the way like we're close in age but he is like so much wiser than i am and i've spent a bunch of time with him and i would say the he's taught me a lot like he he's another guy that will call you on your shit.

1:00:08In a very polite way, though. Yeah, he's great. So like he the reason I started doing video, the reason I'm doing the new show, too, is because of him. And his whole thing was just like we were having this crazy dinner, this four hour dinner in New York. He's just like, why aren't you doing video? And I was like, I'm not doing this for like fame. I'm a very private person. I don't want to ever be recognized in public. And he's just like, a lot more people know what I look like than what you look like. He goes, I got recognized in the gym this morning. You know what they do? they come over and say hey i love spotify thanks for building it and then they go about their ways and he's just like you i'm paraphrasing what he said he's just like he knew i was like obsessed with podcasting he gave me great advice he's like you're easy to understand so therefore you're easy to help because all you care about is podcasting and so it's very easy for me to help you because i you're that's a wise line he's this is what i mean if i only had one board of directors it's probably him he and they get into the podcast he tells a story about how he advised Dara to take the job at Uber.

1:01:05And he was like, he tells this amazing story. He was like, Dara, you know, I think you should take this job. And Dara is saying, you know, somebody nominated me to run Uber. And Daniel was like, yeah, you seem like you've been complacent, this and that. And then he talks about how he convinced him basically to take this job at Uber. And then he later tells the story. He's like, I was the one that nominated you. He didn't even tell him. He was like, I nominated you. This is the important part. For somebody to say that to you, you seem complacent. That looks like you're criticizing that looks like you're attacking this is why you have to get over don't listen to random people but if that person genuinely cares about you you have to be able this is something i struggle with like you're this is he didn't curse he's just like essentially my paraphrase is like you're lying this is bullshit like get over like he said something about like getting on like i'm i'm straddling the fence i can't remember the exact words but essentially just like this is the business you've chosen and the fact of the matter is podcasts that have video grow a lot faster than podcasts that don't.

1:02:01He gives interviews multiple times. People ask him what his favorite podcast is. He says founders. Like, he's like, he genuinely believes it's good for the world. So me not doing video means less people see it before less impact. Yeah, sort of like a horse dealer fighting the fact that Ford is around now. Yeah, and it's just like, what are you doing? Like, so get off the fence. And then me and Patrick's at this dinner too. We get in the car. After that, I'm like, we're going to do video. Well, Patrick didn't want to do it either. I know. Neither of us wanted to do it. But that's why my point is, like you have to be smart enough to change your behavior when you're reacting to new information.

1:02:30And so this also leads us to really like my obsession now, founders will always be my obsession because I'm never gonna stop reading, but like I'm spending a lot of time, most of my time will be on David's Enra, is we get in the car, I'm going back to Patrick's house to spend the night at his house. And he's been pushing me to record podcasts and do more what he called interviews at the time than he did for years. And I was like, no, no, no. Whose house do you say? Patrick. and we get in the car with the driver, and he's like, you absolutely have to start recording these conversations that you're having.

1:03:04He goes, I just spoke. He goes, I spoke 2 % of the time. Daniel spoke 49 % of the time. You spoke the other 49 % of the time. He goes, I've known him for four years. You got more out of him in four hours than I have in four years. Nobody can speak to the soul of the founder like you can in the world. You have to start recording these conversations. And that is the push. I was like, oh, that conversation's different. Like, I can't interview anybody. Like I, like that might be interesting. It might, there could be a differentiation there. Are you ever going to monetize this in a different way than normal media ways, ads and subscription?

1:03:35No, I don't think I'll ever do subscription again because I think that you're only going to monetize with ads. Yeah. I think the power of media is like it's free and readily accessible and therefore it can compound through word of mouth. Just such a shitty business model for how much influence you have. I don't, well, we'll see. I have some other thoughts on there that I will keep to myself. I think I have an earned secret. So there's one of my favorite tweets. This is what I will say. Like you, you mentioned like taking out interesting ideas of the books and how do you do that or whatever the case is.

1:03:59And maybe sometimes my interpretation may be different than other people's. I remember reading Cable Cowboy, which is supposed to be a biography of John Malone. Right. And, you know, it was like, oh, he's like, he is the person that invented the word EBITDA and he has all this ways to finance and he's focused on cash flow. And there's all these other takeaways that I've heard other people describe that book. That's not the main takeaway for me. fact is like most industries default into like some kind of like oligarchy oligarchy and at the cable industry i think there's like eight like main players and you know the top two are bigger and number six is a little smaller whether the case was and what's fascinating is like he's one of the eight yet all the other players that are essentially competitors like go to him to like learn about like their industry this in this brand new industry that they are the ones essentially building the foundation, the one that has now grown crazy in the last like 50, 60 years or whatever the case is.

1:04:51And so one of the important parts for me where I would like disagree, but some of the stuff I can't say publicly is like, I saw this tweet one time and it says, I think one of the most interesting ways to, or one of the ways to have the most interesting careers is to find an earned secret and exploit the hell out of it for decades. and this tweet was talking about Mark Leonard, who used to work in VC from Constellation Software, saying, hey, these vertical market software businesses, they are shitty for VC, but they're great if I put it in a conglomerate and then everything that he did. So I think he started, I don't remember a number, say 50 million, 80 million, and grind it to like 80 billion, whatever the number is.

1:05:30And so he had that earned secret. VMS, bad for VC, good for this other way. Let me just do that. And he exploited the hell out of it for three decades. I think because I've strived to collect more information about podcasting almost anybody else I think I have earned secrets that there I don't think there is any limit to what the the size or the performance of the business no and all the great ones like you know you're talking about Oprah the other day like there there there is the breakthroughs don't particularly have like a blueprint where you're like and we were also talking about how like the people who are number one in certain things are literally a hundred times better than number two.

1:06:06So I buy into that. Jay-Z has a line, if I'm going to make it to a Billy, I can't take the same path. And so I'll be very eager to see what you're going to do. I hate advertising. In most cases, I ran an advertising business. When you rely solely on advertising, I hated it. But if you can make money in ways where I own bits of companies that I love to promote, or if you do it in some interesting way, then it becomes good. But the traditional form of advertising, I think is a pain in the ass business model that only captures a fraction of the value that you create. And so I'll be very eager to see how you will change that.

1:06:39And here's the thing, I'm very comfortable like putting out a lot more value into the world than I capture. And I just think I'm going to capture more than like, if you go back, somebody asked me, my friend at lunch yesterday asked me, he's like, what would like the 25 year old version of you think of this? And I was like, I don't even know if I can think in those terms. It's like already wildly like exceeded. I'm just very happy. like where I'm at and like what I'm doing. And I know that I have. Are you a happy person? I would describe you as a happy person. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Happy with the way my work is going.

1:07:11Are you a happy person? I don't think you're happy. I think this is, again, why is Daniel Act number one on my, on my board of directors? I already mentioned one of them. Like he's pushed me in a certain direction. Another thing that he's taught me is like, you get around them and you realize like you don't have any ceilings. Dude, those people are really rare. I've been around a handful of them. It is contagious. And I'm always curious. I'm like, who gave you that? This is the key. This is where constant refinement of association. People hear that. They're like, great advice. They don't actually do it.

1:07:38So few people will do it. This is, I'm very interested in being one of those very few. I think about this a lot. I take this very seriously. So I don't think I'm apt to answer your question. Another idea that I got from Daniel, which is on the first episode of David's Unirged, people should listen to if they haven't, and they have listened to it, they should watch it again. I'm going to do a Founders episode based on the transcript of the conversation that I had with him. Because there's so many good ideas in there. And I'm like, we printed it out. it's like, I don't know, 60 pages, 70 pages, something like that.

1:08:04Like, it's crazy. It's like a little, it's like a miniature book. So impact over in his old thing, he's just like, you don't optimize for happiness. You optimize for impact, which is exactly the advice he gave Dara for Uber, the advice that he takes for himself. And like, I am very happy. If you saw, this goes back to like, I don't need to capture, I don't need to be, let's say, I don't know, whatever the number of value out into the world. And I only capture 1 % of it or 2 % of it. It's like, man there's other things that are so like if you go and like you can go to the website right now and send me a message which i might have to stop reading because it's just like all these messages come in all day most of them are positive but if you would just go through like my emails my dms uh the contact form it's just like these people like you change my life and it's not me changing their life they're like basically you have all these people okay i really appreciate what you're doing i want you to know that it has an impact on my life this guy chased me down at the airport the other day and he's just like you don't understand like the the difference of my life pre and post like discovering your work and so it's like okay that's not a i can't take it to the bank and and you know deposit that but that's not there's a very real tangible benefit from and then this is the crazy thing so the james dyson episode we just did right god bless rob moore took 45 emails back and forth to to get that scheduled it's just like this relentlessness but everybody knew like he was my number one guy that his first book is episode 25.

1:09:28Dude, I bought a Dyson because of you. Exactly. There you go. 25, 200, 300, episode 400. It's all about the same book. The book that changed my life. The book that encouraged me to persevere when I had no reason to persevere. There was nothing that I was seeing that's like, this is going to be a success other than just relentless self-belief that I'm going to figure this out. If I focus on it and I want it to happen, I will make it happen. Like, I feel like I have a very intense will to change, like, what I want to happen in life to happen. And so, the crazy thing is I've been talking about this guy for seven years.

1:09:59It was seven years in the making. That, when we started doing the previews for the episodes, showing the pictures, some of the trailers, some of the clips, then the episode comes out. Strangers I've never met are like, I'm unbelievably happy for you. I cannot, I know. Yeah, I saw that. It was cool. Like, how crazy is that? I was pretty invested into it. So, like, what is that? That is me capturing value. And this idea where like, oh, I have to hit a certain number or I'm not going to be happy. That's not wise. I'm not trying to be smart. I'm trying to be consistently not stupid. And if I can be consistently not stupid over a long period of time, I think that's going to result in me being wise.

1:10:32And that's what I'm after. That was a good ending. All right, that's it. That's the pod.

1:10:48All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.