David Senra on the Founders Who Never Quit

26:39He's also been unbelievably like generous to me. Like he had sent me a DM like years ago, like I don't know, 2023, before almost anybody knew who I was. And he's like, you – I think he said like you're really good at this. your podcasts are a plus plus plus and i think there was like little trophy emojis and then um when i went to meet him for the first time in austin this is before we recorded together we spent like five hours talking and like what is an hour of that guy's time worth like it's inconceivable that he would be so generous with me and then i brought the book along with me so he can see like i mean he listens to podcasts you should know but like the effort that i put into what i'm doing like this is not a game to me like i'm trying to be the best in the world at what i'm doing and for him to like i didn't even see that he signed it and went back to malibu and like two days later open the book and he's just like david i think you're you're a master at your craft and he's like linked in that line before he's like tweeted he's just been unbelievably uh generous to me in fact he might not even know this but i have this deep multi-year partnership and the way that came about who knew that wow surprise you're like i didn't wear a shirt I have tattoos I don't know what that is The way this came about though This was very interesting Is one of my very close friends Is one of the founders We were friends way before we worked together And he called me one day And he's just like dude I was at Michael Dell's house He didn't know we were friends and he couldn't stop talking about your podcast He's like I know 10 to 15 billionaires personally That listen to your podcast We've got to find a way to work together and this guy has a bunch of stuff going on so we just went through the list because like now i'm talking business podcasts this might be like 17 hours but basically for these kind of audiences is like you need a high ltv high customer acquisition costs and price discrimination and so like when you apply that to this list of companies it was obvious like it was the perfect fit and then we you know we did this like deep deep partnership and it hasn't it could not have gone better than what has happened in the last like year and a half and you know we have a multi like i'm with them for years and years and years they're the presenting sponsor of the new podcast i was just in their office uh with rob moore and rob asked eric gleiman the ceo he's like what's your podcast strategy he just pointed at me like david that's our podcast strategy um and so dell has just been i just can't believe like somebody like that one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever you know we're running starting company 19 he's and he's 61 still running into this day unbelievably generous with me and so i just dm'd him because i admire him he's like one of my heroes like i don't feel like i admire deeply admire what he did and when i see like the the scope of what your life can be i'm like i want that i want what he did like this is incredible i don't want to jump out or jump around i don't want to start scale sell like i want to do the same thing forever and be really good at it um and then we can talk about some of the lessons i learned from him and so i just shot him a dm i was like would you do this he's like yeah immediately he's like let's do it and then the crazy thing is we flew with an entire crew because to jumpstart this like these guys are so hard to schedule with yeah masters of the universe kind of people i was like i will come to you at a moment's notice and so we went up setting up in his office in the conference room right next to his office in i think it's round rock right outside of uh, Austin.

30:04And what I love about Michael, this is important too, is the only filter I trust is time. And I like people that have the same people around them for a long time. Cause again, you can, we're in a, uh, the game of startups and VC is just so dirty. There's so many liars and sociopaths and just very dangerous people that I've seen, you know, in the last decade, I do not like a lot of this behavior. And so I always look like, does this person have people around them for a very long time and so i think dell's head of comms has been there for like 26 years his assistant has been there for 25 years she i heard him stephanie she's so sweet and i was sitting here talking to her before recording and she goes i don't know who you are but you're obviously very special to michael i go why are you saying that she goes he he doesn't like attention he does not he could be being on a million podcasts every day if he wanted to anybody would want him on their podcast he goes he says no to all of these requests and if he does say yes he he gives them 30 minutes he goes he blocked out two hours for you and so again like he's just i i'm deeply i'm deeply proud that somebody like michael would find value in my work and then i just respect him and so when i get to talk to him you know i get just essentially get to sit at the feet of like a master and just be like you just, I just listened.

31:23I just shut up and listen the whole time. Well, so what were the key lessons you learned from him? The beauty of like the infinite game. And so his whole thing, like, you know, at one point he had more money than the market cap of his company. And it's just like, if you read his autobiography, it's like how is one person this good at every single thing that they do? And so I think the most important thing from him is, well, let me give the advice he gave me when, before we recorded, this is like probably, I don't know, 60 days before we recorded. and I've told you this too, because like you're off to a fantastic start.

31:56Most people are not taken out by competition. Most people sabotage themselves. And so, you know, he was telling me story after story of all these people that, you know, were had, they were making 500 million a year in revenue and they were doing all this other thing. It's like, they just sabotage themselves. And sometimes it's, you know, drugs. Sometimes it's, they go, they go to, they go to sleep on a win and wake up at a loss. So like, Oh, I can like chill now. I've made it. It's like, no, you've never made it. And so I think like making sure you're not doing anything to sabotage yourself is one of the most important lessons.

32:27And then if you really talk to Michael, it's like what motivates him. He is a very generative person. It's not, he does not have a negative fuel source. He looks at everything like a giant puzzle. And it's just like, well, how do I build a new AI company? How do I reimagine, you know, this company has, I don't know, 60 ,000 or 100 ,000 employees. Like, how do I do this? How do I make it so the company can survive this next technological revolution. We talked a lot about like what happens when you start making money. Like he's been making money since the 1980s, you know? So then it's like, oh, then I should probably learn about this investing thing.

33:02Like, what do I do? He starts this crazy merchant bank. He just, I think that's like one of the most important things is if you just, you can kind of step back, you're going to have crazy problems in your, in any business. And he's just like, oh, that's not a problem. That's a puzzle. And I think reframing that in your mind, it's like problems are inevitable like take a step back like oh okay well problems are there to be solved like we can figure how to solve them so what do we do next that reminds me a lot of your conversation it's a conversation not interview by the way uh with brad jacobs because he is also all about embracing problems by the way amazing like what he put you in his new book what was that okay so brad jacobs is a funny guy uh probably the most energetic person i've ever been around he's 68 or 70 years old so brad jacobs has started i think eight now eight separate billion dollar companies and he for a long time he was like my linkedin reply guy what yeah so i gotta tell you the story this is a hilarious story so the first podcast he ever did i think he was interviewed by patrick shansey on invest like the best okay and if you they recorded in patrick's got a studio in new York he's got a studio in Greenwich and obviously shout out to Connecticut shout out Connecticut and Brad lives in Greenwich and tries to avoid the city like a plague so he recorded in the Greenwich studio if you go upstairs in this like house this office house that Patrick has the entire upstairs attic is like uh like it looks like a library and most of those books were covered on founders or not most but like half the books were covered on founders and so he has like references to founders everywhere and Patrick calls me after that happened and he goes dude I just with brad jacobs you know who this is i was like yeah he sent me like his his new book yet this is years ago so this is in the book you're talking about which we'll get to in a second and he goes you know the founders guy i love founders and so he starts sending me messages that he's like i'm addicted to your uh your your book i think he calls them book reviews i was like that is kind of funny i kind of do a book report for a living like what you do is like an elementary school i do that for for a living and um so we start talking and he invites me to go to breakfast's house and i had this email newsletter that i sent inconsistently but i should where essentially what i do is take the top 10 sentences or paragraphs of every book that i read and just send send that out right as like a you know here's these 10 ideas and then if you want to listen to the episode here's the episode i get to brad jacobs house and it was my personal website at the time that now has been updated he printed out my i've done this for i don't know a couple hundred books he printed out my entire public website and i get to his house first of all he's one of the craziest house you've ever been to as you can imagine we're gonna have breakfast it's me patrick brad's comics guy and brad and the table is like 40 feet long and i'm just like what is going on who is who else is coming to this breakfast and next to brad as he's like sipping his coffee it's my website it's like this it's like 12 inches thick thick and he's just going through and reading them and i had met a couple people who work for brad and They told me that they, he makes them do that at the office.

36:10He like prints them out and they have to like go through and read all of these. So I do this episode on Brad's first book, which is how to make a few billion dollars. That episode goes viral. Like it probably has a million people listen to it. And if you're in PE, everybody knew who Brad Jacobs was. But my audience is like entrepreneurs and business owners and investors of all over. So then he becomes like, I ran into him at a birthday party. my friend Rick's birthday party in Miami a few months later and he walks out to me and goes I love you and I go why he goes you made me famous I go I definitely did not like your book first of all great title second of all you're you're a wild man like you're this crazy character like you're that you're so differentiated you can't help but notice them even if you don't like them you're just like you're gonna know like you're gonna pay attention to that guy and so then when I had breakfast he's like yeah everybody says I should write another book but I don't, I only had one book in me.

37:04And I see him a few months later. He's like, I wrote another book. So I was like, all right, send me an early copy. Like I want to read this. So he sends it to me, but he doesn't tell me what he puts in it. And this is, we'd already recorded an episode of the new show. So I saw him a bunch of times. I just saw, I was at this event at the Four Seasons of Miami Beach, like a few weeks ago. Like I see him kind of frequently. Um, and I'm going through the book to make an episode of founders on it. And I'm just like reading, he's talking about sources of capital, right? Cause the first two chapters is all about what you just said.

37:33It's like he was he had a very unhealthy mind and he found the tools necessary to transform an unhealthy mind into a healthy mind because like if you have an unhealthy mind it's going you're not going to reach your potential and you can't build a great company if you're so messed up in the head and you're stressed and you you can't handle what's going on so he's like well i need tools so i can have i can operate from a place of like abundance and love and he's like really into like meditation everything else and so i'm reading then the rest of the book is how to do roll-ups how to do acquisitions and he's done 500 different acquisitions his lifetime he's raised I don't 50 billion of capital like I mean his resume is freaking incredible and he gets the sources of capital and then he talks about the fact that I like being a public company um I think these companies are staying private too long there's all these other benefits of being a public company and then we get to the point where he's just like um his new company started as a public company and he's like two i'm reading the book not knowing this is about to happen and he goes uh and then i found a different source of capital which was two of the top 20 shareholders in the new company came because david senra profiled me on his founders podcast and i'm like what oh my gosh so he had told me that in private but the best john our mutual friend john coogan said that was the best podcast endorsement of all time um so when i went to record with him in his house in greenwich i we we traveled like a five camera setup it was like we have an army that comes with us and these are just like these aren't business guys these are just like camera guys and like podcast guys and he goes uh he goes i love david i raised 750 million dollars out of his audience and i didn't even have to pay him a fee and he laughed he like slapped his knee and laughed And I don't know anything about investment banking.

39:25So I call a friend of mine. He's like, oh, yeah, that saved him quite a bit of money. And so that's what he's talking about. It's like one of my – two people didn't know who he was. They heard my episode on his first book. One put in$400 million. One put in$350 million and then joined his board. And they told Brad how they learned about him. And so then he put in the book. Damn. Yeah. I'm going to have to ask for a fee next time. No, I would never. No, because I just want to be friends. I don't need anything. Okay. Well, I have like two tracks in my mind right now that I'm like spinning off of this.

39:58One, the fact that he is like so obsessed with founders. And that is like a common theme that I hear through these conversations that you're having on the new show. One of them was with Michael Ovitz. And like I think the first time you met, you were on the phone or you were with Patrick or someone like that. Do you want me to tell you a story? Yeah, tell me the story. so uh there's actually an interesting ovates has got has given me really good advice too that i think is really important we'll come back to it but like you need people in your life that tell you the truth because if you think about ovates i mean when he was he was he was in contact with like 200 people a day when he was when he was building ca he's probably talked to thousands of people over his lifetime spent a bunch of time with maybe i don't know 500 800 probably even more than that on like the dinner level or like a few hour level and you know he's basically got three friends and one of them is one of my closest friends this guy named rick gerson and i asked i guess i'll tell you that story first before i go to how i how i met him and i was like you know i always want to know why people choose who like ovates is a legend when you know an absolute legend like how do you choose who you're gonna let into your life who you're gonna get access to who are you going to see over and over again it's not just like oh yeah we had lunch one time it's like no you've built a friendship with this guy over two decades like what is it about and so i was asking about this and you know obviously some level of intelligence it's like well rick's really smart he's really serious but he's like he's one of the few people in my life that'll tell me the truth and what ovis was saying is like it could some people are so hyper sensitive to criticism that if you tell them something negative right they might push out of their life.

41:44They might discount it where he's like, I know he'll tell me the truth and he wants the best for me. He's not saying it to like hurt my feelings, to insult me like that. We're way past that. And I think that's really important. So, um, me and Rick go to this same spot. Uh, we have breakfast all the time together and his phone was on the table and we're just sitting there talking about the stuff we talk about, which is, you know, entrepreneurship, investing, reading books, like the same stuff that history, we're two giant nerds and we just read all the time so these are the basis of our conversations and i had known who ovitz was i did an episode on he's like episode like 55 or something like you're talking about eight years ago i read i think michael ovitz is uh who is michael ovitz autobiography is one of the most important entrepreneur autobiographies ever read because are ever written because he puts in all the bad stuff all the regrets all the mistakes he made all the the the way he destroyed relationships just is very valuable.

42:43You essentially read that book and you have a guy that has four decades of experience. It's very wise saying, hey, I did this. This idea worked out really good. I did that. Don't do that. That caused a lot of pain. And I kind of sabotaged myself there. So his phone's on the table. It rings and it says, Michael, it's all my, oh shit. I was like, I know who that guy is. And I don't even know if I knew they were friends at that point. And he picks it up on speakerphone. And Rick's like, hey, I'm actually sitting here with a good friend of mine. You might know who he is. His name's David Sender. He does this podcast called Founders.

43:13Pause. I listened to four of them yesterday. That's the first time I ever heard Obis' voice. Like, I listened to four of them yesterday. He was in, like, St. Bart's. And he really meant it. Because a lot of people, me and you have gone through this before. Yeah. We've talked about it in the past. You meet people where it's like, I love your podcast. I'm like, yeah, I'm sure you do. Yeah, I just saw a clip. Yeah, some of them definitely don't listen. Some of them do. But, like, everybody wants to flower to you. So it's like, okay, well, thank you. No, he's just, like, rattling off, like, stories from the episodes.

43:40he was talking about Cornelius Vanderbilt and all this other stuff and um and so then we just became friends uh we've had like he's again somebody that has taken an interest in me because he gets value in my work and just gives me guidance even if I don't listen to what he says in many cases like sometimes the one time he got upset where like he's like I invite you to dinner because I have he didn't say basically like had a plan for my life and I'm like oh okay like do I have any input here and he lays it out now to his credit this is right before i i didn't i was already working on the new show but i didn't announce it and to his credit he had correctly identified the weaknesses in my previous business model how to take it to the next level he had repped charlie rose which he didn't even know was my basis for what i'm doing like i was going to do this generation's charlie rose he lays it out for 20 minutes exactly what i should do which almost verbatim with the plan I came up with and I was like Michael it's pretty impressive I'm already doing this and I explained it to him and he goes oh so I didn't get you didn't you didn't need this dinner I was like dude stop like I just want to hang out um and then the thing about him is I just want to keep him as a friend because he he's like offered to like help me and rep I'm like Michael you're a shark you forgot I read your book I know who you are and the reason he's taking an interest in me is because he's like I know all the other podcasters he goes there's nobody like you and me and you are the same and that is like that's really nice and that's exactly why we will not be working together what do you think is the biggest mistake of most podcasters they don't actually love it so the the reason goes back to like i go around and collecting like all the information on podcasters it's like one this is a market an industry full of second rate talent it started out as excessively low status and you've mean you've had a bunch of conversations on podcasting and i think i know i'm nervous to talk to you because i feel like you're going to tell everyone what do you mean i feel like you you go around collecting information i'm i'm coming from the vc world everyone is like really transactional yeah but this is another okay so there's a couple of mistakes people make here uh there's some podcasters that view podcasting as like zero sum or like fix sum or whatever the term is.

46:01Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the most positive sum thing in the world. Totally. We're not, I'm more competitive than any other podcaster on the planet. And I don't treat any other podcasters as competition. It's like, you're not thinking about this clearly. And when you do that, other podcasters know and then they stop talking to you because you're a weirdo. 100%, yeah. And so the analogy I have there is like, it's much more, I would prefer us to all be like filmmakers. And so like, if I've done a bunch of episodes on filmmakers like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Jim Cameron.

46:31What is so fascinating is so many of them got their start together. They spent a lot of time together. They were sharing ideas together. So like I think the day that Star Wars came out, George Lucas was like driving around with Steven Spielberg. And I think it was the same thing like the day Jaws came out, they were together. And they would preview each other's movies and essentially they just shared information because if you go watch Jaws one day, and that doesn't affect George Lucas because you can go watch Star Wars the next day. If you listen to one of Molly O'Shea's podcasts today and then later on you listen to mine, like, you're not taking anything from me.

47:05So what are you guys doing? And I just think it's a lot smarter. I just went, I was off the grid for, like, two days with, like, six of the biggest podcasters in the world, and nobody was weird. Like, we were talking about revenue, ads, how much you're spending for equipment, how you're thinking about this, what your frequency is, And like at the end of those conversations, everybody gets better. It doesn't make a difference. So one of the things, the earned secret that I had was I went into this because I loved it. And Pete, that a lot of really talented people didn't because they saw it as low status.

47:39I don't even think about the outside world. So I didn't even like, I know I'm not autistic, but I wasn't saying you were, I saw your face, but like, I just was so obsessed with what I'm doing and loved it that I didn't, I just thought okay if i love this thing i can transfer my love and passion infection infectious uh passion for this to like everybody else and the secret that i think you've discovered as i like share more information with you is just like oh it's like the reverse it's like the highest status thing you could do because i get access to people that the startup founder raised 100 million dollars couldn't they wouldn't even talk to them yeah like i get access to the craziest people in the world because they benefit from my work and it's not like a transactional relationship like they invite you to their house you go on vacation you have intense conversations with them you literally become friends with them because you have the same interests and they they're like you you make yourself easy to understand so i think one is most talented people don't go into because from the outside it looks low status i i would like to encourage that uh miss like that mistaken uh belief as much as i can two uh the people that do do it their second rate talent second rate work ethic and three they all quit and so i think when i think about you you're one of i don't know you're easily in the top 10 of like the hardest working podcasters that i know like and you're in it i think you just said uh you tweeted like you're four months into this full-time full-time yeah yeah so it's obviously what you should be doing it's like just keep doing what you're doing and don't sabotage yourself and don't stop and part of that is goes back to the brad jacobs things when we were finished it's like keeping it you're gonna as you keep getting i was just on the phone with andrew human about this this morning because i'm going through this huge inflection point and like people run into me and know me now not even from founders i don't even know what founders is it's from the new show and having somebody like andrew in my corner i can say hey i've just i've been through what you're gonna go through like here's the pitfalls you have to avoid and here's like what to expect and like just be careful with this so your biggest thing is like managing as a way higher profile and your stuff is it can be real spiky that carp thing took over the entire internet um and so your thing is like until bill ackman tweeted can i meet you or may i meet you that ruined my spike but your your thing is like really obvious is i i do think you realize how great a job this is um and your biggest thing is just like what I always tell you.

50:09You're just laying bricks. Like don't try to think what's going to happen next year. It doesn't matter. It's like what can I do today? And we make another podcast. Cool. I'm going to lay another brick. Then I'll record another view, lay another brick. I'll get better at, you know, my lighting, my cameras, the way I promote my podcast and do everything else. And that's all you have to do. You just don't interrupt the compounding. Like your path is so clear. Me and Patrick were just talking about this on the way over here because he was asking what I was doing. I was like, I'm going to do Molly's show.

50:35Did he ask if you were going to walk around? No, but he did think that was like, again, you did something that was differentiated. And I did tell him, I was like, now I think everybody's calling her like, give me the carp. Yeah. Can I have this carp special, please? I'd like a walking tour. But remember, you sent me an early copy of the carp episode. Yeah. And I watched it and I was like, that's your best episode. This thing's going to rip. Do you remember this conversation? Yeah. Yeah. It was obvious. I was like, oh, this is like very interesting. It's going to help with retention. Like, it was fascinating.

51:06yeah between that and the clips and then the viral things off of that eliano over there who's amazing the palantir team is just amazing they think we probably easily reached 50 million impressions from that two-week period so it's probably more now but it's just in crazy and by the way a good differentiation between all this is like and everything that you're saying about creation is more on the artistry of it i'm not trying to create things to go viral that's a cool like after effect just a natural authentic personality i have a weird personality and sometimes i'm like super sarcastic and then i pretend i don't know that jack altman is related to sam altman and it goes viral this is um you did that like birthday tweet where you were talking about like you you've been working like so hard at building sorcery that you you barely like paid attention oh yeah like do you remember this forgot yeah and then i remember reading it and obviously like we were having conversations about your podcast um and i think like you correctly identified like the most important part which is the conversation some of the i think a base of some of the conversations we had just like pika goes back to your previous question what are the mistakes that podcast makes like they don't think about differentiation you're a founder your product podcast just happens to be a podcast or excuse me your product just happens to be a podcast i don't understand why thought more podcasters don't think like founders.

52:29And so if you just say, hey, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm building this business. I love it. This is my product. What would any, what standard advice would anybody give you? It's like you need some form of differentiation. So what is the differentiation for a podcaster? Being who you actually are. You are like a goofy, funny, like awkward person. I don't, you know, I'm saying this in like a nice way. I know. And I told you that. And it's in that tweet where it's just like show more of yourself. Yeah. Like you're going to be a public figure. You have to have the confidence to be like, okay, this is who I am.

52:59This is actually – I was having private conversations with a bunch of other like high-profile founders recently around this. Like there's some founders that do excellent job in having like cult-like followings, which I think the best podcasts are definitely – founders has a cult-like following. And part of that is you have to show your authentic self. So like Elon, tons of people hate him, but tons of people love him because of his authentic self. Karp, tons of people hate him, tons of people love him, but he's who he is all the time. He says crazy, you know, stuff. Dana White does a really good job at this.

53:37And I think podcasters should be the same way. It's like, man, I'm not for everybody. This isn't, you're not, there's no value in building like a very vanilla audience. They have to be there for you. And so I think the one form of differentiation for podcasts is just like be who you are. And you can, therefore, it makes your job easier. Because you can be who you are forever. But if you're playing some kind of role, like, or you have some kind of mask, then you're going to slip up one day. And then people are like, oh, she wasn't who I thought she was. And then some of, I mean, I don't want to comment too much on other podcasts, but some of them have just like negative bends to themselves because they see other things and they're like, I don't want to do that.

54:13And here's what I'm doing because I'm going to get into dangerous territory if I go further on that. I would ignore – I would ignore – I think it's like Weekend has a line where it's like the competition doesn't even listen. Yeah. Like same thing. Competition is for losers, Peter Thiel. I know. But like I think – yeah, there are some podcasters that are just like paying attention to every little thing everybody else does. Like I want to know how you're building your business, how you look at it, like the philosophy behind what you're doing. Just like a founder. Like I want to know like why you're doing what you're doing and how you're doing it.

54:49I think it's very fascinating, but I don't care what other podcasts are doing. I'm just going to do it the exact same way that I want to do it. Okay. Speaking of business, you mentioned you want to build a show like Charlie Rose. What does that mean? So I always think about this goes back to differentiation. So let's back up. I think episode number six of the new show was James Dyson. that was one of the best days of my entire life because james dyson his first out of all all the 400 plus biographies of entrepreneurs i read his first autobiography called against the odds is by far my number one recommendation everybody's like give me like a top 10 list i was like no i don't have a top 10 listen to all of them over and over again but if you want one go find this hard to find book and read it over and over again i've read it i don't know at least five times i read his second autobiography at least twice i read his history of great inventions this encyclopedia that he wrote i've lost watch all his interviews he gave me the motivation to not quit when i was going through a very difficult time five and a half years of struggle before i built the podcast into something that was like sustainable and then it grew from there he did 14 years of struggle and the whole time i was like this guy did five 14 years of struggle 5127 prototypes he is failing his entire life and he didn't give up i can like persevere through this and so it was very important he was the number one person in the world that i wanted to meet and he couldn't have been better.

56:10So sweet and witty and impressive. He owns one of the, he's 17 years old. He owns one of the hundred, he owns a hundred percent of one of the most valuable companies in the world. And he doesn't give, he doesn't care about money. He's, first of all, he's like made way more money he'll ever spend in lifetimes. He just cares about building the best products possible. And so his mantra is differentiation and retention of total control. And that's exactly what I try to do with founders is like I own all of it I turn down crazy acquisition offers crazy investment offers like nope it's differentiated and I retain control and so when I think of podcasts if I'm gonna start a new podcast I want to like look at the podcast landscape and I want to see what where's the white space I don't I'm not going to do anything else that somebody else is doing and this is like we have mutual friends in John and Jordy with TPBN and they will tell you What is it called?

57:01I always say it wrong. T-B-P-N. They say I say T-P-B-N. T-B-B-B. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. I don't even know what the acronym is for. John and Jordy show. So I thought John Coogan was a generational media talent. Yeah, he's exceptional. And I've told him this for years. We've been working, like I've been trying to help him, not that he needs my help, trying to find the right format. Because when I found him and he was doing documentaries, I was like, dude, your documentaries are incredible. you're he did this video called the history of silicon valley and i had read at least by this time 40 books on that topic and i learned stuff in that video i didn't know so that i was like oh this guy's serious because i go through every kind of creator i hate that word but every kind of podcaster documentary is like i didn't know it's they're so bad that the good ones just you can't help but notice them and so i was like dude you should move to podcasting because documentaries take too long.

57:56The business model sucks. You have no idea the kind of business that you can build over here. And, you know, he, he, not many people know this. He did this podcast. I won't even say the name cause I don't want people looking it up cause I don't think he's proud of it. It was like almost like a modern version of founders solo show deep dives on an individual. I flew, flew with him to Greenwich, try to convince Patrick to sign it. Patrick said, no, I was like, you're crazy. We got to sign this guy. And then, um, and then he just went through a couple of different variations. And he, one time he asked me to do a show with him and it was going to be a show covering like tech news.

58:31I was like, I don't even, I don't care about tech news at all. I don't pay attention to what's going on in the world. I read history and I make podcasts like I'm the wrong person for this. And so the white space there was like, I was, and he knew this too. I was like, somebody should build a Pat McAfee of business. You can take an idea that's working somewhere else and just apply it to a different niche. And I was like, it's, you know, you live stream it. You can have a co-host. You can do call-ins. Essentially, if you look at what TPBN evolved into, it looks a lot like the Pat McAfee business.

59:00And no one knew how lucrative these shows could get. Pat McAfee's presenting sponsor for one year, they paid 30 million. So a single company for a single ad slot for a single year to a single podcaster paid$30 million. So it's like, okay, well, that's just one. How much money do you think that show makes? He's like, Like he's got 15 hours of content that he's making every week. You could have – the thing is going to print cash. And so that was differentiated. And so it comes out and obviously did what it did. You have somebody super talented, super differentiated, someone that takes it very, very seriously, doesn't do anything else.

59:33And I'm not – I am surprised at how big it got, but I'm not surprised that they were successful. And so I was like, well, what else is missing? And forever, like Charlie Rose, younger people know who he is, but everybody like he was the place where the elite people in the world went to have intelligent conversations and their conversations usually were an hour long five days a week and so my idea was just like where are all the elite people in the world capable of having intelligent conversation multiple times a week that is what i'm going to right now we're doing twice a month then we're working up to one a week and then i want to do multiple times a week and i was like all i have to do is like this isn't rocket science david just build this generation's charlie rose now the difference is he was much more of an interviewer where i have i think a very unique data set in my head that can allow me to produce something to completely differentiate it so it's like and i interview is not interesting to me like i just told you it's like but having conversations with these elite people and learning from them is very like i don't do drugs but the way I feel after I have these conversations, it's like I'm the, I'm high on life.

1:00:44I can't sleep after these conversations because these people fill me with such energy. Um, and I'm just learning so much in such a short amount of time. And so, yeah, the idea was like, okay, well, who else could make Charlie Rose? It's not there. We agree. It's not there, right? Okay. So it's not there. So who else could make it? And it's like, probably had to be an existing podcaster. And so you go through like, who's a business podcaster and you just, there's not that many that actually people pay attention to. And it's like, oh, no one, by the time, I'll be so far ahead, by the time no one will be able to catch me.

1:01:15So what's the business model behind that? I mean, media, you need frequency. And so like, founders is a crazy business. People understood like the business behind it. But I'm always going to be constrained because to make an episode of founders, I have to read an entire book. It's 52, 52 books a year is still a lot. Maybe I can make 70, but I can't do 250. I can't do 200. where conversations, I could have a different conversation every night and people are going to find it interesting. Even if we record, I think we're going to get better on the editing, but let's say record for two and a half hours with almost anybody on the planet that's an interesting entrepreneur.

1:01:51There's going to be an hour of interesting stuff in there for sure. So it's just a frequency. And then what we're understanding, and this is where I think we have this advantage as business podcasters, which is the business that you've built around your show, is when you have a high value audience, right? You're not going on number on screen, go up. That's how no other podcasters do it. Where if you're selling on a CPM basis, it makes a difference. So I will make more, proportionally more money if I have 2 million people than if I have 1.5 million. In business podcasting, it's who does that number represent?

1:02:28Michael Dell listening to your podcast is worth 10 million normal Americans. So most of the companies that come to us is like, do you want these kind of people to know that you exist? And then what happens is it helps with recruiting. It helps with customers. It helps. Brad Jacobs pulled$750 million out of my audience. Helps with enterprise value because your audience is full of people that want to do deals. They want to find new great products to buy. They want to discover new talented founders that they didn't understand. They're looking for investment opportunities. There's all kinds of interesting, unintended, positive externalities that happen just getting in front of these people.

1:03:07And so when I have these and I do like multi-year partnerships with most of my partners, it's just like it's never like, oh, I'm going to guarantee you X impressions. It's like when these people know that you exist, good stuff's going to happen and they get it right away. Turing is training the next generation of AI with tasks that require real expertise and real world judgment. That's why companies like NVIDIA, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Gemini partner with Turing. Turing builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces, the kind of infrastructure Frontier Labs need to train superintelligence.

1:03:43Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. It's amazing how many people have done deals off of the episodes I've done, too. Like, it's just, you would not expect it. I would expect it. And listening might not expect it. No, the people, the audience wouldn't. We have some incredibly powerful people. It's just amazing. Is it true one of your guests tickled you? No comment. No comment. And so, damn, you found the button. We have a secret founders button. No comment. Okay. So you do something people rarely do nowadays. You read physical books. How long does it take you to read those books? And is it true you use a sword to highlight them?

1:04:36I'm sorry, a ruler. Yes, it is true that I use a ruler. there's a great line where i think it was one of steve jobs biography where it's like a great product is better than it has to be and i think about that line all the time and what that means it's like sometimes the customer that you're going to put so much effort into things they may not even notice but they can feel it yeah it's like a you evoke emotion and and um steve jobs was famous for this because like he would insist that the the inside of a computer which you couldn't even open up had to be beautiful and they're like steve no one's gonna see this he's like yeah but i'm going to see it and Walt Disney was like this and you'll see a lot of the same reoccurring patterns uh throughout history they're just so obsessed with the quality of the product that they're making that they just can't help themselves because it's offensive to them that it goes out any other way and so it'd be a lot more efficient i'm kind of anti-efficiency when it comes to my work because i do think there is almost like a this this sounds really foo-foo but like there is a spiritual connection i have to what i'm doing i deeply love it it reminds me much more of like being like a so this is founders now when i'm recording with other people it's different i feel like like a like a solo songwriter like just because i'm making it founders is made by one person like i pick the books i read the books i record i edit i hand edit the transcripts this is like ridiculous everybody tells me you should not be spending time doing this and i feel like i'm better the product is better because i i pay attention to all these like little details and spend a lot of time, I spend a lot of time doing them.

1:06:08And so it would be much more efficient if I just read Kindle because then all my notes and highlights are there. I'm not doing arts and crafts over here. So like I sit down with a book, this is what it looks like. It's like I'm doing an arts and crafts project. I sit down with a physical book, pen, ruler, not a sword, post-it notes and scissors. And that is how I make them. I should have brought one today. I didn't even think to do this. And it takes a long time. And then I have to transfer them. So this goes back to a great product is better than it has to be. So then I lucked out in doing something all the way back in 2018 that now is paying unbelievable dividends today.

1:06:44Is I decided to put every single one of my notes and highlights into this giant searchable database called Readwise. And so now I have – I mean there's I think 30 ,000 highlights and notes in this database that I can search. So I'll be reading something today. And I'm like, oh, this sounds like something Walt Disney did. Let me go search and find it. and then I part of Readwise and they built this other tool just for me. Other people can access to it now, but it started out just for me where all my notes, highlights, and transcripts for every single episode and I have an AI system that's just trained on just that.

1:07:15And so I'm clearing this all the time as I'm making new episodes. So to compete, goes with like competitions for losers. Say, I'm going to do exactly what David does on Founders. Okay, well, I'm 407 books ahead. I'm going to keep doing this every day. So that means like, if you're gonna you're never gonna catch me but even that then you have to like i'm doing all like i'm creating all these tools and this technology and all these different ways to do it it's like if you don't have access to that either it's just gonna be very it's gonna be nearly impossible to to be able to at least duplicate what i'm doing um so they i read like 25 pages an hour like i'm not a speed reader um and i'm reading with the intention to understand it so well that I can turn around and teach it to somebody else.

1:07:59And the teaching actually makes me learn better because there's so many times where I'm talking, like speaking out loud about something I thought I knew. And I'm like, well, you just had to make any sense. You don't even understand what you're talking about. So you got to stop, pause, go back. And then like, even like this morning, I was like rereading past highlights. So like, that's my form of practice. Like an NBA player will, you know, Steph Curry's putting up 500 threes a day in practice. I'm rereading past highlights to remind myself I'll listen to past episodes all the time. she's like, we forget that we forget.

1:08:29I'm like, I read the book. I made the episode. I listened to the episode before it came out. It's been two years. I forgot more than half the stuff in there. And so it goes back to like, what is your organizing principle? It's like, well, I wanna be the best in the world at what I do. I think there's a great line. Did you ever read the Aminak and Naval? Yeah. Rabacan? Okay, so there's a great line in that book where he says in the age of infinite leverage, being at the extreme of your art is really important. And I changed that to being at the extreme of your craft because power laws all the way down.

1:08:59And if all the people in the world say, hey, I'm going to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs, I want to be the default choice. And if you are, I think I am the default choice, but if you are the default choice, you get 99. Why are you laughing? I'm not laughing. Okay. You get all the rewards. So there's a great example of this where there's a skater named Tony Hawk who's by far the most famous. he's by far the most famous skate skateboarder and i was listening to him on a podcast one time and you know he got paid to perform he had his uh he had his own skateboard company he had all these deals he was endorsed by and he said like something like 90 of his wealth came from the video game tony hawk pro skater or whatever it's called yeah and you know it's hundreds of millions of dollars flowed to him as a result of that and it made me think i was like oh how much did the second like most famous or second most well-known skateboarder making his video game and the answer to that question is who the hell is the second most famous skateboarder now i'm sure in the world of skateboarding you might know but the general population the answer is i don't know that's it's very important to be the extreme of your craft so i'm looking for any of these like little edges that i can keep doing and compound over a long period of time a couple things one I learned from Charlotte that that learning, that learning style of like reading something and reciting with someone else is like, is like, is key to absorption and understanding.

1:10:27And I think she was, she's in high school. So she is like reading Macbeth and like these different history books. And I was Justin Pullen and I was visiting her and I was like, well, I would love to, I love, I'm a nerd. Like I would be happy to like assist you in learning these subjects that would be really fun um and two in your dyson interview this was a hilarious you there are some funny moments in some of these things one is in the brad jacobs one where you're like you're like explaining him and then you're like actually you know what i'm gonna stop you can explain and then then in this um in this uh dyson one you're like you're like going through the interview and then at the end of the interview you're like you know i can't help but notice this but like your your hands are huge i said that on thick hands i forgot about that and it goes to the physicality of like like making things and why you take so much time and practice in the physicality of like printing out um even your transcripts for founders and like reading them and like fixing them and all that kind of thing and then with the books and like reading and underlining and using swords and like all this weird stuff that you do but like yeah it's it's pretty interesting.

1:11:40Thank you. You're welcome. I don't know if that's a compliment. Was that a question? Thank you. You said it's interesting. Good. I'm trying to make interesting things that people want to listen to and hopefully learn from. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25 % year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis.

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1:12:54So you're going after, you know, like there's only like 2 ,000 to 3 ,000 billionaires out there, like really, really successful people who've made it to that mark. one of the challenges with podcasts is scheduling and so you're niching down even further because you like old people and so like how do you plan on like scheduling all these i'm sure you have a list of people that are in queue so how do you manage all of that and and who's up next so i have like i said i think the best especially if you want to like increase the cadence Yeah, well, okay. So I think I have the best team in podcasting.

1:13:31And so like Rob Moore is the one and the team are the ones taking care of all this. So like, hey, how do we get this person? Assuming I can't like access them myself. And actually like you were helpful in this domain because I don't even think about, again, I'm just like focused on the work. I don't think about the external world's interpretation. And you had like said this on like offhand comment one time. You're like, yeah, like he obviously knows who you are. I'm like, why would he know who I am? Because I don't think of like what I'm doing. And I forget that like millions and millions of people listen to founders every year.

1:14:05And now the new show is like we're going to add millions and millions more. And so what I realized is like, oh, if I like want to get to somebody and I just say, if I like DM them, there's highly likely I could just start with the people that follow me on Twitter in terms of like almost all the top founders do. And so one way to do this is like you can obviously go through their PR, their comms people, which Rob's an expert at. but I've just like like I know somebody who knows them and I'm like hey can you just ask that guy if he like knows who I am and tell him I want to talk and so far I've done this I don't know like six times and these are like public company CEOs too it's just like turns out every single time they're like a fan of the podcast and so it's just frequency it's like realizing that was the biggest mistake we made was moving way too slow on the queue it's like let's record one person and then we'll move on to the next person it's like no we need to be talking like 50 people at a time and then I'm ready to go whenever i have an idea of what i wanted to talk to them about anyways and then they'll just drop in when like their schedule allows and in many cases like we've had to reschedule three four five times like stuff just always comes on so yeah i think the biggest thing i have to to take care of next year is just vastly increasing like the top of the funnel to make sure that i have the people i want second thing they're not all going to be old okay geriatric uh two they're not all going to be billionaires like i don't there there's a multi-billionaire right now that is asked to get on the podcast and i started researching guy i thought he was a little creepy and i said no so it's like i'm not just i'm not impressed just because you have a lot of money i again if you go back to what we said at the beginning of the conversation founders is the books that i'm intensely interested in reading and sometimes they're deviate they're not founders at all like i did this episode of haruki mirakami or a bunch on winston churchill or like there's lessons we can take away from them but they're not the typical founder i was just super interested in reading about them turns out if i'm interested in the audiences too and then the new show is just who i'm intensely interested in speaking to and yeah in many cases they're gonna be doing what they've been doing for a long time that doesn't automatically make them old but i am interested in like people that have a singular career and if they don't haven't developed a singular career yet they just there's something about them that is very unique to them i that i'm interested in talking to them so it's just like not a net worth thing not even how long i've been doing i originally thought okay maybe i'll talk to you should be doing it at least like 10 years and i think most of the people i will talk to have been doing it for at least 10 years because again i'm not into startups i'm into building a durable business creating a startup raising a bunch of money and going out of business it's not an accomplishment and that is the vast majority of these people like go back i used to take notes on all the podcasts i listened to and I had like this huge, uh, it started as an Evernote notebook.

1:16:50Then it was a sub stack. And you go back and just go back and pick all the same startup. There's a lot of the same startup podcasts, 2020, 2021, 2022, make a list of the guests. And I, this is how I realized I was wasting my goddamn time. Um, make a list of the guests and then see how many are still in business. It was shocking. They're all gone. I'm not interested in hearing some startup founder espouse how great they are when they're already dead and they don't even know it. So I do think keeping some kind of time as a filter I'm going to do, but it's just come down to like, I find this person interesting or I want to know how that person thinks.

1:17:27And I think we can have a very, very interesting conversation. But no, there will be several guests under 50. Okay. Well, something that's worked for me is making the Sorcery Top 100 list. It's not top and it was not ordered in any particular number. I know. Me and you both know it wasn't in the right order. Why? 66. You put me as... What was the title? Top 100... Sorcery 100 guest list. Something like that. Top guests you want list? Yeah. It took me like... Originally, it was like 50 people. And then I was like, oh, no. So I wasn't going to be on the list if I'm 66? You had to add another 100 or another 50?

1:18:16Yeah, maybe. I think so. Okay. You and I both know that is not true. And then I'd add two more on top of that because I completely forgot. Never mind. But anyways. Okay, so first of all, I want to clarify the record. That was a lie. You know that you and I both know I'm not top 66. Well, you're not top 60s. You have made it within the top 10, by the way, of that list. I will accept 1B to Ivanka Trump's 1A. That's Alex Karp. Okay, okay, okay. You can be 1C. No, I will accept 2. 2? To Ivanka's 1A, Karp, 1B. Elon Musk. It doesn't matter. So then I'm 2B. I don't care. I'm not going lower than 2B. Okay.

1:19:03Yeah. And honestly, the only one, the Karp thing, just because I do think your episode with him was really excellent, but I retract. That was incredible, yeah. I retract my statement. I'm 1B behind Ivanka. What? Ivanka is the only one I'm taking a backseat to. Ivanka is good. She's the best. She's really good. She is one of the sweetest people I know. One of my favorite people by far. Unbelievably well read. Yeah. Like a kind soul. She's legitimately one of my favorite people I get to spend time with. She's incredible. She's going to do the new show too. Can you put in a good word? we'll see how the rest of this interview goes oh god okay anyways on that subject were you going somewhere with the top 100 lists or were you done there no no that i mean that was i was just a suggestion what i told you when i saw that list is really excellent advice that i got from daniel ek which was he's like you're really easy to understand he was talking to me it's like you're really easy to understand so therefore you're really easy to help and i think one of the smartest things you did was making yourself very easy like you're very legible online where it's like I'm going to organize this list I'm going to publish it on my Twitter feed and immediately you book carpet what seven days later no less than three like I got a call that day like hey I think we got something and then by the third day was scheduled so there you go insane I think if you can do more of those things to make you easy to understand and therefore easy to help is like really smart.

1:20:36Yeah. The, the, the tricky thing with that though, is doing it in a tasteful way. I'm not exploitive. How would it be exploitive? Well, I just, I also to drive off of serendipity a bit, actually building relationships with people and going the warm connection way. I'm like over capacity right now, even with the Anderle episode, that was fucking awesome. I thought I was just going to interview one of them. I heard back and no, all four founders are going to be in town on Monday. You're going to do an episode with, I'm like, in what capacity has anybody interviewed all four founders and gotten a tour at Andrel?

1:21:11Like, it's insane. And like, Palmer was on my list. Tracy was on my list twice. Oh, there you go. I didn't mean to. I meant, I totally meant that. But yeah, it was the universe helping you. The universe helping me. But yeah, I, I'm like over capacity for, for a bit, which is like fantastic. And so I'm just going to be at the whims of uh what does over capacity mean just because you've recorded so many episodes i have so many in the back and so many in the backlog i like i'm running through editors i'm burning them out and like it's just wait how are you burning out your editors are you like a hard task master i don't know am i brett

1:21:53no comment hit the button one of the things i like to talk about so one of our sponsors is brex and they're all about performance spending smarter moving faster intelligent af finance you've probably heard of them they're very very popular they've definitely heard of me um

1:22:17and so one of on on the topic of performance I think a lot of performance comes down to like who you surround yourself with you're you think very critically of this and so I'd be curious of your answer but I think it it comes down to who you surround yourself with who you admire most and like who's a mentor to you so I'm curious for you like who are those people for you I think that your entire life is who you surround yourself with is by far not only from like, okay, so the people, the first people you recruit are obviously like who your company turns out to be. And so that's why there's a great book called In the Company of Giants, which is published in 1987 by two Stanford MBA students.

1:22:55And they wind up as a result, they just happened to be in Silicon Valley at the time during this huge, you know, the first internet boom. And they interview 16 technology company founders. Also interesting to see how many of those technology company founders wind up disappearing. okay then this whole theme of like trying to dominate for decades but one of them you know they got michael dell's in there bill gates is in there but steve jobs is in there and you know being nba students they didn't know any better we're like hey steve like you're running your company so obviously like you don't have any time to recruit now and he's like what it's like are you crazy it's the most important thing that i do and he gave this great and he's like it's very important at the very beginning of your company but it continues to be important so he's like when you're picking your co-founder like you should choose wisely why because it's 50 of your company at the time and then employee number 10 still super important it's 10 of your company and so there's a great line where steve would say that the person he learned more from management than anybody else was ed catmell the founder of pixar and ed catmell talks about this like he would go around giving talks he's like hey what's more important people are ideas and he said people always got this question wrong it's so weird to me it's like they said ideas are more important he's like no it's obviously people because ideas come from people and so he has this great line to illustrate this he's like hey if you give a mediocre idea if you give a great idea to a mediocre team they'll screw it up but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team they'll either fix it or they'll throw it out and come up with something new and brad jacobs you'll just see this over and over again it's like the quality of people around you is your entire life the best piece of advice that i was ever given came from one of the best piece of advice i was given came from Jared Kushner, who's a good friend.

1:24:31I actually talked to him like a few hours ago. And this is also what I've told you one of the first times we talked. That's Ivanka's husband, right? That is correct. Okay. It's constant refinement of association. And Jared's one of these people where it's like, he will tell you the truth. If he likes you, well, first of all, he wouldn't spend time with you if he doesn't like you. But like, he says stuff to me that if people hear that, they're like, damn, like that might even be rude. It's like, no, no, no. like he's a very direct person but he's saying that because he wants i know he wants like my best interests and like he wants me to do well and he's he said he's like benefited hugely from uh from your podcast so like his whole thing is like he's seen me in environments where he's like these people are not good enough for you he's just like you're like you have built one of this is what he told me he's like i know all the elite people in the world they all listen to your podcast and he's like pushed me on a lot of different things and in a very like direct but like truthful manner.

1:25:23And I think it's really, really important. And so the other day, I'll tell you one of like my close friends and mentors, cause really, I don't really have a mentor. I guess Hinky would be the closest, but like, it's more like a coach. It's just like my very close friends that are like the people that I actually pay attention to. And like, I'm pretty ruthless with getting access. Like I'm not on the scene. You can't access me. You can't just like call me up or get in touch with me or anything like that. Like I am deliberately like evasive when it comes to that. Cause I don't, I already have as many friends I can handle.

1:25:56And I'm sure because of our jobs, you're going to meet interesting people. And I might be able to add one great friend that's every year or two or something like that. But it's like, even if I added none, I'd be fine. And so one of my closest friends is, you know, legit genius. I won't say his name. He doesn't like to be talked about publicly you'll find nothing about him online but everybody that needs to know in tech knows who he is and he's highly highly respected and we were on the phone the other day and this is again somebody i know has my best interest and like we have a legitimate friendship and he knew that i was about to spend time or that i was spending time with another somewhat high profile person and he's just like all i want you to consider and again like they're not no one's like you need to do xyz they talk in stories or you have to kind of read between the lines and so he's like i would just consider like why that guy like leaves like a trail of like chaos and discontent and broken relationships everywhere he goes like why is his co-founders of his first company hate him why co-founders of this company hate him like why is this person saying these things about him and he's like you should just see like who he has around him that's been around him for a long time that talks positively around him.

1:27:15And they're both super successful financially. But my friend has all these wonderful relationships and people who do almost anything for him. And I'm probably one of them. And this guy doesn't. And his whole point was just like, man, we're doing this. They're both billionaires. He's just like, we're doing this because we like the game and it's fun and we love it. But at the end, he said this line that was great. He's like, but your life is your relationships he's like this guy doesn't have any like what does that tell you it doesn't matter how much money he has and i've met some super successful people it's like where are your friends dude like where are your friends it's like unbelievably sad so i think part of it is just because we are mimetic by nature like you are going to pick up on the habits of your friends that are around you and you have to be very so many no one does this by the way 99 of humans do not they're they they give shitty people access to them when i think of like if i could only have one mentor that was dead it'd be charlie munger who i was good enough to incredible i got to go to his house and have dinner with him for three hours before he died and his line on this is like the advice that he gave i was there with two other entrepreneurs and his whole thing is like most people are rat poison charlie had no filter like he's like most of humanity you know they they're they're not high quality people and you should avoid them.

1:28:35So the main piece of advice that he gave us was, I distilled it into this maxim called go for great. Because his whole thing was like, hey, your job right now is very obvious. You need to build a seamless web of deserved trust with really high quality people and talk to nobody else. He goes, everybody knows that I was 35 when I met Buffett and Buffett was 28. What they didn't know is that there was a bunch of other of our friends and guys around us. We built a seamless love of dessert trust and we did deals together for decades. And he's like, at that time, he's like, most of them were dead, you know, because Charlie's 99.

1:29:14I think Buffett was like 92 or 91 at that point. And so he's the go for great thing was problems are inevitable. Okay. You live long enough, bad shit is going to happen to you. That's It's a direct quote from Charlie. So he's like, your job in life is to get, he goes, is to build relationships with great people. He says, wisdom is prevention, right? Great people don't solve problems. They avoid them. High quality people, and I see this in my life, they avoid them. Most of them, wisdom is prevention. It's one of the best maxims. So high quality, build a relationship with high quality people and then get into a good business and stay there.

1:29:55He was very adamant about that other part. Stay in the good business. Stop jumping around. He goes, if you surround yourself with high-quality people, and good businesses, obviously, they have way fewer problems than bad businesses, or great businesses, rather. Great businesses have a lot less problems. So he's like, your job is if you surround yourself with great people and you get in a great business to stay there, that avoids most of the problems you're going to have in life. And that is your job. Go for great. surround yourself with great people and just be in one great business. It's all you need to build wealth for generations.

1:30:28And so I think about that like all the time where I do think I already am in a great business. I will continue to like build this into a great business. I think that one of the best things to launch off media is more media, like I just did with launching the new show off of founders. And then just being insanely, having insanely high bar for who I spend time with. but I would say most of them, they're not even like, I could name names. Most people wouldn't even really know who they are. They're just really good, high quality, smart, good people that have some kind of body of work that they can point to, and that's how we became friends to begin with.

1:31:13That's a good answer. Maybe I picked the right profession. I don't know. Yeah, we'll follow up on that in three more months. You'll be six months into this new job. Founders ship faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast so you stay focused on scaling. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, ER, benefits, and compliance so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37 ,000 fast-growing companies trust Deal to move fast. visit d-e-e-l.com slash sorcery. That's d-e-e-l.com slash s-o-u-r-c-e-r-y. As we enter 2026 and we leave 2025, first, how would you define 2025 for you?

1:32:03Best year of my life. Why? I just cannot believe, like, first of all, the thing about podcasts, again, I know we keep going back to this topic. what a lot of people don't understand about podcasts is they're unique experience generators and so the amount of things that i was able to do the people i was able to meet this year the places i went the amount of activities that i got to do is like you couldn't buy access to them there's no tickets there's nothing it's like you were you had to be invited into this by really high quality people because they respect you and they respect like your body of work and so I don't look back a lot.

1:32:41In fact, I just had a lunch with a friend of mine in New York and that's exactly what she told me. She's just like, you don't seem to like take inventory of like your life or how unusual it is because it's just like, oh, I did that next podcast. And I do think there's value to just focusing on today and then doing the same, trying to like push the ball forward or lay bricks the next day. But I probably should get better at, you know, at least like documenting, like go back in my camera roll. I'm like, oh my God, I forgot I did that. So I definitely need to get better at that but like the the relationships i built the experiences i got to have and then just founders just absolutely it was already crazy last year but it's like just absolutely ripped and then the new show like i could not have we we literally couldn't have had a better start than what uh we did and then you know some of the stuff because we go back and forth on podcasts but like i can't name like some of the people i got to spend literally like there's like three people in the world my top three list and i got to spend one-on-one time I'm with all three of them this year and only one I've recorded a podcast with so far.

1:33:41And it's just like, how did this happen? Like, sometimes I'm sitting there. I'm like, who is this person sitting across? Like, this is insane. And then for the all to be, in many cases, fans of what I'm doing. It's like, you didn't even know I had a top three list. How is that possible? And to spend time with them and to learn from them, it's just been absolutely crazy. And then I really do like think I just, I'm so glad I made the decision. It's like, hey, this is the year I'm going to pull the trigger and I'm going to do this new show. And we started recording in May, launched in September. And I think it was one of the – I think it will go back and be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

1:34:18If you could define 2026 in one word, what would you want the word to be? It can't be one word, but I am very interested in seeing how far I can take this. And I just said I spent a bunch of days with six of the biggest podcasters in the world. I was talking to Patrick on the drive over here and his whole thing was like I'm so glad that you do what you do in the sense that you go around you like collect all this information you just don't think about anything but podcasting and he's like because I'm not interested in it at all I like one podcaster he's like I like you he's like I don't actually like podcasters is what he was telling me and he's like and if you weren't doing what you're doing I'd feel like FOMO like what's going on in the world where I can just like call you and you could just like data dump on like what's going on with me.

1:35:05And I text this like two Saturdays morning. It was like seven in the morning. And I text two members on the team of the new podcast. And I was just like, we're going to like take this as far as it goes. Like I don't know where we can go. I just know no one else is going to take it farther than us. And so the way I would describe it is like I don't want to get to the – definitely not the end of my life, but certainly not the end of next year without knowing like I want to push it to the limit and I don't mean to break I don't mean to like I mean like I want to see what I'm actually capable of and I think that's the biggest thing where like I don't have any doubt that I found my life's work I know that for sure so I don't have to take there's no introspection there like like but I want to do this as best as I possibly can to the point where like I didn't leave anything whereas like or I didn't like half-ass it or yeah I just, I want to push it to the limit.

1:36:01Me and John and Jordy text screenshots of that song, push it to the limit from the Scarface. It was in their launch video. Remember when they did a helicopter and everything, push it to the limit, that song. And I think that is just, we just texted back and forth. Cause it's like, that is just the anthem. I think they're like, if you saw the interview, they just did like, they're very much in line with this as well. It's just like, let me see how far I can take this. I'm very interested. And I really hope, uh yeah i just want to avoid anything that doesn't allow me to do that um that that would be like push to the limit would be my answer what would you hope the biggest takeaway from your listeners would be with this new show i think really man like just i i think a lot of the media that entrepreneurs are consuming is just like it goes against their incentives there's this really really well-known um founder so there's a there's a bunch of people that don't do really do any podcasts i've been trying to convince to do podcasts and that is really hard um and i had dinner with one by far the most intense person i've ever been around and i was like man he's got all this stuff like in the dinner like you just couldn't believe the stories he has like the the company building knowledge that's in his head that he just doesn't share it with anybody.

1:37:23It's insane to me. And I was trying to be like, hey, this is an act of service for the next generations of founders. I go, dude, they're all listening. All the content that entrepreneurs are listening to are made by VCs. And he interrupted me. He goes, real entrepreneurs don't listen to VCs. Is this Travis Kalanick? I don't know who it is. So I guess the important part is like, I want to offer like an alternative to start, scale, sell. Because I've talked to so many founders that started that scaled that sold and are unbelievably depressed or unhappy or realizing that was my best idea i'll never have an idea that's good i have three and a half decades of life four decades of life ahead of me yeah and i can't take that back it's like man you're gonna get the money anyway so there's other ways to do what you want to do like just don't give up so like i again i think the alternative is like can i present an alternative path where it's like more like Michael Dell.

1:38:21This is an infinite game. This is a giant puzzle. You can constantly reinvent yourself and reinvent your company over and over and over again. And you're going to be so much more satisfied when you're 60 or 70 than you did that you made a hundred million dollars when you were 35 or whatever the case is. It's like a lot of people have money. Like it may be a small percentage of the population, but a lot of people are rich. How many people can say they built something that's truly great? A much smaller percentage to the population. That's what you want. I think Jeff Bezos said it the best. He's like, you want to build a body of work and a company that you're proud to tell your grandchildren about.

1:38:56And your grandchildren are not going to care that grandpa 40 years ago sold a company and now just sits in a rocking chair and does nothing. Grandpa probably won't even live because retirement is fatal. You need to do something. So yeah, I think the alternative is just like, hey, why don't we try to build durable companies and stick with them and do it forever? Like what else are we going to do? It's funny you mentioned Michael Dell. Like the first thing I thought of was the past couple of conversations I've had with Zach and the fact that they're literally setting out to build a multi-generational company.

1:39:31Same thing. Yeah. I wonder where he got that idea from. I don't know. I should ask. Yeah. Okay, David. Well, thank you. This was awesome. Thanks for having me. Cool.

1:39:45hey it's molly if you enjoy our interviews check out our newsletter sorcery.vc where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews subscribe to sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on youtube spotify apple or wherever you listen link in description to sign up