#396 The Obsession of Enzo Ferrari

it was often said that the greatest skill that Enzo Ferrari had was his ability to recognize talent. He spent his entire career working with the very best people he could. Enzo Ferrari knew, just like Steve Jobs knew, just like Jeff Bezos knew that you always bet on talent. In fact, Steve Jobs had this great quote where he says, "A small team of A+ players can run circles, run a giant team of B and C players." Enzo Ferrari built the best cars in the world and a small workshop with a small team of A players. Jeff Bezos believed in working with the most talented people. In fact, Jeff said, "Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon's success. You must build a team that pursues the A players that is exactly what Enzo Ferrari did and is exactly what ramped it. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast and ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry. 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Go to vanta.com to learn more. And if you tell them that David from Founders sent you, they will give you $1,000 off. That is vanta.com. The Ferrari is something special. Its whole profile implies speed and risk of life. It gives a sense of immense power. Its pedometer goes up to 180 miles per hour. Its luggage compartment is small, seemingly to imply that he who travels fast carries little. And he who speeds to death carries nothing. There is something about the car's enormous reserve of power. It's easy and precise handling. And it's very shape that invites bravado. Ferrari is a masterpiece of automotive engineering. And like all masterpieces, it bespeaks the character of its creator, Enzo Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari is apt to give the impression that the commercial Ferrari, masterpieces are not, are merely a sideline, a means of making money to lavish on his obsession, the construction of Ferrari race cars. To followers of motor racing, the name Ferrari has been famous for a generation. During this time, they have won more international motor races than the cars of any other maker. Ferrari is dedicated to winning races. His heart is on the track in the most dangerous of sports. Stoically accepting the deaths of many of his drivers, he was once denounced by the Vatican as a Saturn, a devourer of his own children. He has a reputation for a towering temper, authoritarian methods, and implacable stubbornness. This has made Ferrari a diabolical symbol. Most of the time he broods, concocting the ideas that will win the next race for Ferrari. Simply by nature, Ferrari is a forbidding man. His eyes are almost always covered by sunglasses. He greets visitors to his factory in large, dark, bear office containing only the huge, bear desk he sits at, a bear conference table, a few uncomfortable chairs, and one note of sentiment. A frame picture of his son, Dino, a young handsome man in his early 20s, who died of muscular dystrophy 10 years ago. This profile that I'm reading from was first published in 1966, Enzo was still alive and he was interviewed for it. Just how much time Enzo spends in his office questionable? There are no files, our papers, and one gets the impression that it is primarily a place of ceremony. If Ferrari approves of the visitor who encounters him, he's capable of smiling and a considerable amount of hospitality. He actually has I would say God-level charisma. He's one of the greatest marketers, salespeople, and manipulators of men that has ever lived. I'll go into a lot more detail about that. The height of this hospitality is an imitation to visit his factory, which is off limits to most visitors and particularly to journalists. He likes to protect his secrets. The place is fascinating. As automobile factories go, it is very small and it has the neatness of the workshop of a meticulous sculptor. Its smallness is, according to Ferrari, a great advantage. I am not an industrialist, he explains. I am a constructor. In my little factory, I can make immediate changes in design, which would require months of overhaul and a large mass production plant. I do not have the temperament for mass production. I am interested in innovation. The factory employs about 600 highly qualified workers and turns out about 750 cars a year. Half a dozen of these cars are racing machines. In all these cars, Ferrari is concerned only with the chassis and the engines. The bodies are not designed but stamped and welded in Turin and then shipped to Ferrari. He is obsessed with engines. Enzo once said, "I don't care if the door gaps are straight when the driver steps on the gas, I want him to shit his pants." There is an assembly line of sorts but it moves very slowly. Crank shafts are sculpted by hand from solid steel. Each one requiring 86 hours of work by a highly skilled craftsman. Cylinder blocks, gearboxes and such are cast from an aluminum alloy that is produced in a foundry on the premises. And to watch two men pour the metal into the molds, recalls the casting of Renaissance Statuary. Beautiful engines lie about. Ferrari looks at them with pride and occasionally pats them as another man might pat the head of a small child. Remember this part for later? He speaks of his creations. As if they're alive, he describes some of his products the way you would describe your lover. There is a small wind tunnel. There is a production department and there's also a department of design in which engineers are busy with pencils and graphs. The whole process is intimately connected, occupying what amounts to one enormous room. Enzo can keep an eye on everything that is going on merely by walking a few yards. There is an air of austerity about the place and also an air of feverish dedication, both of which reflect Enzo's temperament. The commercial Ferrari's emerge right alongside the racing cars at a rate of not quite two a day. When one compares this output and the care that goes into it with the 4,000 cars a day turned out by Fiat are with the much larger output of most American firms. This is one of my fairy lines. It is obvious that a Ferrari is the product of a sort of automotive watchmaker. Ferrari rules like a dictator. He is intolerant of disagreement and this is caused the resignation of skilled workmen and chief designers. Along with his intolerance goes a perfectionism and an amount of personal dedication that are more apt to be found among artists than among industrial executives. Ferrari has never taken a vacation in his life. He is 67 when this profile is being written. He will continue working on Ferrari for another 23 years. A reporter recently found him at work in the month of August when virtually all Italian industry shuts down. He has given a gloomy account of his devotion to work saying that quote, "One must keep working continuously otherwise one thinks of death." Ferrari was born in Modena 67 years ago and he lived there with his mother until her death a month ago. He also has a house in Maranello near the factory where he stays during particularly heavy schedules of work. He has rarely left the vicinity since his early days as a racing driver. He once made a brief visit to Switzerland but otherwise has never traveled outside of Italy. Modena is seldom visited by tourists. It is a very old fashioned town. The citizens here are mostly tough, muscular farmers are industrial workers. They keep to themselves and seldom venture far from the city. Ferrari is characteristically modernese. His toughness, his pride, his temper, his faithfulness to the city and his total lack of interest in visiting the world outside of it even though his cars are sold in the world's most cosmopolitan centers. Ferrari comes from a family traditionally employed in the working of metal and like many Italian craftsmen he has inherited an almost intuitive feeling for the possibilities of his material. At the time he was born his father owned a small ironworks. His father acted as his own designer, chief mechanic and salesman. The family lived right next door to the shop and the clanging of metal is among Ferrari's earliest childhood memories. There was an older brother but both he and Enzo's father died in 1916 when Enzo was only 18. This sudden double loss created a feeling of loneliness and isolation that has pursued Ferrari throughout his career. In 1917, shortly after the family tragedy, Ferrari was drafted by the Italian army and because of his experience with ironwork was given a job shewing mules for the mountain artillery. He fell ill, had to undergo an operation and was discharged from military service. There followed several hit or missed jobs in the automobile industry to which he felt naturally drawn. He tried to join Fiat which is the general motors of Italy but was turned down. Then he drifted into assembling spare automotive parts into what looked like elegant and powerful cars at a time when cars of any sort were hard to come by. Ferrari was learning a lot about automobiles and he soon became a test driver for CMN as they've small and underfinanced company. The Italian automobile industry in the early 1920s was undergoing a rapid conversion from wartime production of military vehicles into the manufacturing of civilian cars and in this sort of work the smaller plants had certain advantages which Ferrari was not to forget. For a time he was a racing driver for CMN and in 1920 he took on the same job for the more glamorous firm of Alfa Romeo. He continued racing for Alfa Romeo through 1931 but admits he was never an ideal racing driver for one specific reason. He couldn't bear to ruin an engine in the interest of winning. Ferrari was in love with engines. He began to be more interested in building engines than enracing them and surely afterward he set up a factory in partnership with Alfa Romeo. Ferrari wanted to manufacture racing cars. He was Alfa Romeo's chief racing and persario and coach with his own team Scuderia Ferrari and he was very good at this. The most celebrated racing drivers of the period drove on his team a car that he built in 1937. 131 out of 35 events. By now Ferrari's name was famous in racing circles and he could not resist the temptation to break away from Alfa Romeo and start creating racing cars on his own. In 1951 a Ferrari first beat an Alfa Romeo in a major race. Ferrari's reaction was proud but tearful. I have killed my mother he quotes himself as having said at the time. Ferrari is deeply sentimental about engines and nothing else. Not long afterward he cave up attending races altogether because he couldn't bear to watch his beautiful engines being abused on the track. Racing is a profession for men who do not wish to die in bed. Scarcely a year passed without a driver's death and in some years the deaths ran to six or eight. Spectators died in large numbers two. In 1955 a car plowed into a crowd at Le Mans killing more than 80 spectators. These statistics may make automobile racing seem senseless and inhuman. Not to Ferrari. On the contrary he regarded the whole business as eminently human. A demonstration of man's natural desire to excel even at the cost of life. There is something ever so slightly ingratiating about his total even belligerent honesty concerning himself in his obsession and about his absolute lack of moral pomposity or false pretension. Once in my racing days he writes in his autobiography "I was in third position when I suddenly saw a car ablaze on the edge of the track. I could make out the number. It was the car that had just been in front of me. What thoughts do you think passed through my head at that instant? Well my first thought was one less now I'm second. During a long lunch with an interviewer recently in a little restaurant across the road from his factory Ferrari was asked. Do you have any social life whatsoever? No, none he responded. Life passes soon enough. If you want to do one thing well you have to work at it fast. A Ferrari may not be a masterpiece in exactly the same way that a great work or painting or sculpture is. It represents the work of many men bringing to life the ideas of Ferrari. Nevertheless Ferrari's aim is to perfect an ideal to transform inert raw material into a living machine. Enzo is not primarily a man of business making money is not his main object. He believes that men who accomplish things do not do so for financial gain but for prestige. The whole Ferrari operation seems to support this idea. His main concern is to herald the name Ferrari far and wide by producing cars that are as nearly as perfect as cars can be and by winning all the races in the world. Ferrari takes an understandable pride in his work. That was an excerpt from a profile in the New Yorker published first in 1966. The profile is called the terrible joys of Enzo Ferrari. In addition to reading that I also read a book called the story of Ferrari by Stuart Coddling. It's not a bad book but I want to give you a sense of the man. A sense of who Enzo Ferrari was and how he built his career on what I really believe is a small handful of powerful ideas. So in addition to reading the New Yorker piece this new book The Story of Ferrari. I also went back and pulled a bunch of highlights and ideas from three other biographies of Enzo Ferrari that I've read. It's Enzo Ferrari by Luca D'Amonte. Enzo Ferrari by Brock Yates. And also this book is remarkable book which the movie Ford vs. Ferrari is based on called Go Like Hell Ford Ferrari and their battle for speeding glory at Le Mans. And so most of what I want to focus on is this small handful of powerful ideas that describe the life and career of Enzo Ferrari. I do want to start with what I think is one of the most important paragraphs. So this is not an exaggeration. I have read hundreds of thousands of pages about Enzo Ferrari. That book by Luca D'Amonte is over a thousand pages long by itself. And even after reading hundreds of thousands of pages about this man, this paragraph resonates with me the most and is why Enzo is obviously a very flawed person as you'll see. But he's still one even though he's a very flawed person. He's one of my favorite founders from history. And I really do believe that he is one of history's greatest obsessives. And I want to start with this paragraph. If there was one essential quality about the man, it was his iron bound tenacity. His fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name from 1930 onward for nearly 60 years hardly a day past when this thought was not foremost in his mind. When or lose he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense, his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent for that alone he towered over his peers. Okay, so I'm going to go through all these ideas on how he built his business, how he lived his life. I do want to, there's a couple things in that New Yorker piece that I feel they skipped over that are very important to understanding why Enzo was the way that he was. So when he was 10 years old, his father took him to see his very first automobile race. He writes in his autobiography, he talked about this. He says that that day with his dad produced a spark in his heart. That spark is going to be the passion that he would dedicate the rest of his life to. This is another example. I know I say so whenever again, I think it's one of the most fascinating ideas I've ever heard expressed because you see it over and over again in all these biographies. Jeff Bezos once said that we don't choose our passions, they choose us. Enzo experienced that at 10 years old. Another thing about Enzo, which is very fascinating, he talked about over and over again. He was relatively uneducated and he just loved to work. Even when he's young boy, his dad's so alive, he hated school. He said, I simply wanted to be a worker and nothing else. So his capacity for work, for sustained amounts of work, is going to be a fundamental trait for his entire life. So his father would beat the shit out of him because he got bad grades in school because he was such a bad student because what his dad wanted for Enzo's life, his dad wanted Enzo to study so he could become an engineer. Now in this twist of faith, right? Enzo would never become the engineer that his father wanted him to be, but in time, he would become something far, far greater, but his father did not live long enough to see it. And so this again, is everything that Enzo does, if you think about what happened to him when his 18 is going to make a lot of sense, it's probably the exact same reaction your eye would have if we went through what Enzo went through. So his dad, these two deaths that happened, they were unexpected. His dad, I think, is like 49 years old, something like that when he dies of pneumonia. His brother is fighting for Italy in World War I. He's in the trenches. They say he dies of an illness. Highly likely, it's either typhoid fever or the Spanish flu. Both of those deaths are unexpected. Both of those deaths come within a year of each other. And then after the deaths, the family business collapses because his dad's not there. And then Enzo is immediately drafted into the Italian army. And so Enzo would talk about some of the things that he learned from his dad by observation. He was a little kid who's in the workshop all the time. He said his dad was a living example of devotion to duty. Come on, that is exactly what Ferrari was. He was devoted completely to his mission, to his duty to Ferrari. Another trait that he's copied of his dad was his dad was a very strict individualist. His father preferred working alone. He wanted to be in charge. He wanted to be in control. And he actually told his son when he was younger, do not have any partners. So that's really important to understand the story of Enzo. The second thing that has stuck out with me, and you know, I started reading about Enzo probably five, six years ago, is this, he gets out of, he almost dies from a sickness. He's so sick he had to be hospitalized. He winds up surviving. And then after that, he's like, okay, I have no money. I have no father. I have no brother. My, my mom is depending on me. He tries to get a job at what is, would be considered the leading technology company of his day, which is Fiat. So he goes to to rent where Fiat is. He tries to get a job there. They turn him down. There's a scene in the book where he goes and he sits on this park bench. Remember what he just went through, right? He's a teenager. He has no family. He has no job. He has no money. He's sister and he cries. Now, this is one of the most important points of his life. It says, although it was a rare moment of true despair in his life, he was determined not to give up. Now, there's two things that happen as a result of this. Anger and revenge are great motivators of human behavior. You see that over and over again. So this, he took it as a slight as a rejection by Fiat. And that slight festered in his brain. And actually, his anger, you know, it usually anger to, to manage this with time. His anger increases with the passage of time. And so he was seeking revenge. Revenge on Fiat saying, basically, I will show you that you were wrong in rejecting me. The reason I remember this part from the book that I read, you know, six years ago is because 50 years later, he will go back to that same exact bench after Fiat buys Ferrari. And I absolutely love Enzo's description of this time in his life. He says, I was back where I had started. No money, no experience, limited education. All I had was a passion to get somewhere. And so Fiat wouldn't hire him. But this tiny little business that's undercapitalized. And I think goes out of business shortly after this called CMN hires him. Now his job, they, they have so little money, they want to race cars, but they can't transport their race cars by rail or trucks. So they hire Ferrari to drive the race cars to the tracks. And there was some unique occupational hazards of one of his early jobs. He winds up having to drive through a blizzard in the mountains. The car breaks down him and the guy he's with. They're set upon by a pack of wolves, but Ferrari carried a pistol everywhere he went. And so he winds up having to pull out the pistol and shoot at the wolves outside the window. And this did not discourage him in the least. Once he knew there was no, there's no like waffling. He had an unbelievable, I would say strong and profound faith in his own judgment. Because even his mother, his mother had been against him working in the automobile industry. It's fascinating. She had, she basically had the common misunderstanding at the time. She did not understand the enormous potential of the automobile at the automobile industry. She didn't understand why her son was drawn to work in this industry. But once he starts working in it, he never stops until he dies. Talks about it at the end of one of these books where he works until he can't walk anymore. And so is another example of this maximum that his only extra strategy was death. So after also racing for C-M-N, he does well enough that he gets recruited by Alfa Romeo. And at that time, Alfa Romeo is the preeminent manufacturer of racing cars inside of Italy. He starts as a racing driver, but I think he knows he's never going to be one of the best. So he does something that's really smart. He starts expanding his role. And he realizes he has a gift very early on. He's a great salesman. So he actually establishes an Alfa Romeo dealership in his hometown while he's still racing for Alfa Romeo. So he has multiple jobs for Alfa Romeo. He has a dealership. He's racing. He's running their racing team. He is 31 years old at this time. I just want to give you a description of his typical schedule. And again, this is his enormous capacity for work. In the morning, he got up before sunrise. He would drive to multiple cities in the three regions that he ran. He usually skip lunch to travel to another city to meet another client. By late afternoon, he was back to make sure everything proceeded unhindered in the branch office. Then he'd return and check in on the workshop to ensure that the day's work had been carried out this day after day, week after week, month after month. During the weekends, he went to events scattered all over Italy, where although he rarely raced, he kept busy strengthening existing relationships and forging new ones. This schedule, this skill set is going to lead him to starting his very first business, which is Scuderia Ferrari, which he's going to do in partnership with Alfa Romeo, which I get there in one second. This is a description of Enzo at 33, skilled and shrewd and energetic all at the same time. A man who knows what he wants, a real organizer, a champion who never goes off the road. So he's racing for Alfa Romeo. They decide because it's very, very expensive to race. And Ferrari is going to lose money, basically his entire life. So racing is unbelievably expensive. It is very good, like good advertising. But Alfa Romeo decides, hey, we're going to withdraw from racing. So this gives Enzo an idea. He has a relationship with Alfa Romeo. He is mad. He spent all his time essentially building up his network. So he knows a ton of wealthy customers. He knows all the talented mechanics, all the talented designers. So he's like, hey, why don't I start my own racing company? He gets to seed capital from two wealthy customers and from Alfa Romeo. He takes on most of the financial risk and runs the entire thing. And Alfa Romeo can benefit because they retain the marketing value of motor racing. Now this goes on for a few years. I think it's like six or seven years. Eventually Alfa Romeo buys Enzo out buys the entire racing team. This renders Enzo an employee, which he would never stay. They they bring in a new team lead. This guy Enzo hates. Then the Ferrari names ceases to exist. And they rename the team. The racing team Alfa course. So Enzo leaves and starts a new company AAC. But he has a four year non-compete agreement. So he cannot race against Alfa Romeo for four years. Now it's perfect timing because they're in his four years. That's the start of war war two. Most of what his company is going to do is actually manufacture things for Italy for the war. Now the reason I'm telling you all this backstory, the reason I'm bringing this up is because what we think of as Ferrari today was not founded until 1947. Enzo was almost 50. Enzo was almost 50. Years old before he starts the company that he is known all over the world for and that's still existing and thriving to this day almost 80 years later. And when I say that he's one of the history's greatest successes, this is what I mean. Okay, he's got no resources yet. His goal is still to be the best. Okay, it took Ferrari. Remember, this is after World War II. It took Ferrari nearly two years to build the first car. In post-war Europe, electricity was a luxury. Fuel and manpower were in short supply. This is what he said. All we wanted to do was build a conventional engine. Only one that would be outstanding. This guy has no resources. Yet the goal is always the same. The goal is to be the best. Now we get into what I think is a small handful of ideas, principles that he built his career around. Ferrari had two fundamental talents. First, he was by his own admission, an agitator of men. He was gifted with charisma that effortlessly captured anyone who crossed his path. He could stimulate the energy and creativity of his colleagues like no one else. He was very demanding, especially when things were going well. He refused to rest on his laurels. He was absolutely dedicated to his work and he could be ruthless. So this idea of agitator of man is by far my most common reoccurring highlight and idea that I pulled out from all these different books. Ferrari's second talent was that he was an absolute marketing genius. There's a story in the book where a very important and wealthy American client comes and visits the factory Enzo vets every single customer personally. So at the time, the factory had a parking lot that was filled with unsolved Ferrari's that the client cannot see. They are hidden from view. So the American says Enzo, "I would love to buy a Ferrari." And Ferrari replies, "Yes, of course, but we have so many requests. I'll do what I can, but I'm afraid that you have to wait several months before you can buy one." Enzo's employee after the American left, he overheard this and he's asking Enzo about this. Like, I don't understand, we have all these unsolved Ferrari's. Like, why didn't you just sell them on now? And Enzo says something that was incredible. He says, "A Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available. Otherwise, the dream is gone." So in order to maintain that exclusivity of his brand, production has always been lower than demand of the market. Let's go back to this idea of that repeats over and over again. He is an agitator of men. He says, "I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor, but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running. My innate talent was for stirring up men." Another example of being an agitator of men, there's no question that Enzo Ferrari had become a compelling salesman and manipulator. Another example, it is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent. And this is one of the most important things to understand. So he takes the idea that, "Hey, I'm an agitator of men. I have a great eye for talent." He has this remarkable ability to manage these highly skilled people with giant egos. He has a fundamental understanding of human psychology and is a great marketer and that he doesn't do anything else. He just focuses on work and literally nothing else. So I also, there's another thing I need to bring up to you. There's always a blueprint. When you read all these biographies of people that had achieved great things, what did they do? Before they achieved great things, they studied other people that had previously achieved great things. Itori Bugatti was Enzo Ferrari's blueprint. So the prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned was that of Bugatti. The founder of Bugatti was about 20 years older than Enzo. He actually interesting enough. He dies the same year that Ferrari was founded. They knew each other. In fact, Enzo referred to Bugatti as a very fine gentleman, which is kind of crazy because Enzo did not believe in handing out compliments. This is a description of Bugatti, this part artist, part engineer, part entrepreneur. Part sculptor had created an automotive fiefdom in a tiny village. I'm reading this to you because it's exactly what Ferrari does. The Bugatti estate included a small elegant in for the entertainment of guests and customers, a stable of thoroughbred horses, and the factory itself. Bugatti was just one of a bevy of colorful ascents, playboys, dreamy commoners and hard-eyed egomaniacs who populated the world of European motorsports in the 1930s. He stood above the rest in terms of lifestyle. A feudal baronny had been created around the spidery machines he manufactured in limited quantities and sold only to those he personally deemed worthy. By contrast, Enzo Ferrari was then still a drab simple journeyman laboring in a small garage in an Italian backwater. I found a biography of Bugatti from 1960, that was written by his daughter, had to be translated from French. It's episode 316 if you have not listened to yet, Bugatti's life was incredible. And so this is the influence of Bugatti on Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari had clung to the dream of becoming what he called a grand constructor. The classic manufacturer of complete racing cars in high-performance road automobiles for a select clientele of elite enthusiasts, only a few men in history had achieved such an elevated status. Now another thing that Enzo Ferrari learned from people that came before him is, hey, you know what, the best marketing is? The best marketing is winning. If we build successful racing cars, then rich men will flock to our door to obtain similar cars. This sounds a lot like Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan said that the marketing he did for his business was done on the court. That if he won championships, people would automatically buy his shoes. People are attracted to winners. So as Ferrari wins more races as legends, as the Ferrari legend and the brand grow so do the people lining up hoping to buy just a tiny piece of it. And then here's a great quote from Ferrari. He's got this really counterintuitive point about losing. So somebody that's pathologically competitive as he was. You would expect him to be introduced into a state of rage when he loses. But he actually thought that he learned way more when he was losing than winning. So this is counterintuitive point. And why they said usually after loss, the workshop and the factory was actually kind of calm because they understood what they had to what they had to fix. And so Enzo says there's always something to learn. One never stops learning, particularly when one when one is losing. When one loses, one knows what has to be done. When one wins, one is never sure. Want to go back to this idea of Enzo being an agitator of men. There's another thing that he's going to have in common with Michael Jordan. Enzo Ferrari was the consummate manager of men, not dacile, soft men, but proud, fiercely competitive, egocentric men whose livelihood and their very reason for living depended on this most demanding and unforgiving of sports. I am shocked at how many other people that worked with Ferrari worked for Ferrari in all these different books. I'm pulling from four different books. They were afraid of him. If you watch this documentary on Michael Jordan and they called the last dance, it talked about we were afraid of him and we were his teammates. They say the exact same thing about Enzo. Another thing they say over and over again when you run into Enzo that he was a pathological competitor. They called him a man with a diamond hard will to win at all costs and building race cars and winning. That was his singular focus his entire life. Remember, he was not, he says, "I was not driven by money. I'm driven by prestige." Says Enzo Ferrari was born with simple taste and even after became rich and prominent, he retained the ways of a simple, uncluttered man. During the 1930s, when every ounce of his energy and every lira in his pocket was being plowed back into the business, he lived a modest and frugal life. So he's working seven days a week. He does not travel. He never gets on a plane. He's scared of, he's scared of elevators. He doesn't spend money on anything else but his cars. He said, "He works all day." And then at night, he has a rather robust, romantic life. Let's just put it that way. If you want to learn more about that, the Enzo Ferrari book by Brock, by Brock Gates has a lot of detail on his extracurricular nighttime activities. But outside of that, he just had this singular focus. He says, "Enzo Ferrari was immersed in the life of a full-time racing boss with all of his energies concentrated on the team's competition schedule." Again, on his relentless focus, he just wants to show up to every race for decades. The source of much of Ferrari success over the years was not technological brilliance or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing, a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible. So he wanted, you know, everything was about Formula One. I just did this episode that came out last week about it. That's the premier racing series in the world. So Enzo's obviously going to want to take part of that. But he wants to show up at every race in every league, no matter how large or small a pathological competitor is how to describe him. He says over and over again, here's another description of Enzo from People in Newham, intensely competitive, self-made, utterly single-minded, prepared to work endless hours. You see how I'm repeating this over and over again. He just had a handful of principles he built his entire life around that what made him specials that he started working on this when he was 19 and worked on it until he was 90. Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple. When he was asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied as someone who dreamt of becoming Ferrari. He was animated by an extraordinary passion that led him to build a product with no equal. And when you have a singular focus, you tend to have a simple life. He had habits that he rigorously respected. He never boarded a plane. He was said he was scared of elevators. He didn't like to travel. If you wanted to meet him, you had to come to his office. He wore dark sunglasses so you couldn't look him in the eye. The key factors were Enzo's perseverance, a stubborn faith in himself, and an insatiable thirst for success, not simply in motor racing, but in life. These were all qualities that he would never abandon. They shaped him. I love this line that was in the New Yorker profile said like all masterpieces, it bespeaks the character of its creator. I found a line in one of Enzo's biography that sounds a lot like that. Enzo was without question, the central of the whole endeavor, the originator and the brains of the operation, the energy behind the future activity. Now there are a few times when he is depressed or close to nervous breakdown. Again, until he sells 50% of the company in 1969 to fiat up until that point, he is reinvesting every single dollar. He is not a wealthy man. And so he's got financial stress. He's got friends dying all around him. He's got drivers dying all around him. He did not live. I'm not trying to paint like a rosy picture for you. He did not live an easy, happy life. And so when he goes through these periods, he would just throw himself completely into his work. He said work has always been and always would be the best antidote. And one area where Ferrari, the brand and Ferrari, the man actually deviate is, Ferrari, the brand talks a lot about their illustrious past as you could imagine in one of the most successful racing teams of all time. Ferrari did not talk about the past at all. He believed that each victory or accomplishment was only the starting point for the next. In fact, one of his motto was, "My next car is best." He liked to keep his business as simple as possible. There was a time where he was entertaining the idea. And I think this was just a negotiation tactic where he almost sold Ferrari to Ford, which I don't believe he was actually ever serious about doing so. I think he was just using it to push up a price because he was going to sell to a tiny company. There's just no way this he wanted to be out there. I just don't believe that he was ever going to sell to Ford. But what was fascinating is during the talks, a bunch of Ford executives in the delegation would come over and they would tour his factory. And this is what they said. The Americans marveled at the fact that each Ferrari was entirely hand-built. They marveled at the rudimentary wind tunnel, at the cleanliness of the production line in the foundry, and how lean most departments were, including the press office, which was headed entirely up, which was headed and entirely made up of one guy. Remember at the time, Ford probably has the most advanced factory, certainly most of advanced automobile manufacturing factory on the planet, something Ferrari would repeat. He believed he possessed just one quality, the stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me. That is a great line. The stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me. He was anti-marriage. He says, I should not have married because a man dominated by a passion such as mine can hardly divide himself in half and be a good husband. If I had listened to my wife, I would have been a clerk and a bus company. Another thing that I absolutely loved about him is the way he would speak out of his products, the way he would speak about the process of making his products. He spoke of his cars as if they were alive. He said cars possessed unique behaviors, just like people do. They breathed through their carburetors. They were skinned with metal. There's another funny thing. So sometimes when I'm reading quotes from him and he's talking about Ferrari, he thinks he might be talking about his company. No, he's talking about himself. He would refer. He'd refer to himself in third person a lot. There is, he's got to weigh with words. He's obviously a great salesperson, he's a great manipulator of men. There is a showman, he understood there's a showmanship to business. So if you think about, if you listen to the episode you did last week on the geniuses who built Formula One, one of the guys I profiled in there was scanning Bernie Eccleston who made more money off of Formula One than anybody else in his life. He also knew Enzo. Enzo is one of the few racing car team owners that he actually respected. He thought a lot of them were kind of scrubs, except Enzo was a shark. And Bernie Eccleston changed himself from a used car dealer into a multi billionaire, right? And he talks about the advice that Enzo gave him. He says something he's very interesting. Enzo told him one time that the sport is on the table and the business is underneath it. Enzo understood that showmanship is also salesmanship. He believed his cars were the best because they were made by craftsmen with soul in the game. He winds up having this fight when he tells Ford he's not going to sell to sell to him. So he has this war with Henry Ford II. And during the war, Ferrari said that Henry Ford II made ugly little cars in an ugly factory. And then he has this genius idea that I truly believe is true about what he's meant to say here. He believed that his cars could only be made in this region of Italy. He said that the modernese held beauty and great esteem. And he has this great way to talk about this. It is my opinion, Ferrari once said that there are innate gifts that are a peculiarity of certain regions and that transferred into industry. These propensities may at times acquire an exceptional importance. In Modena, where I was born and set up my own works, there is a species of psychosis for racing cars. There is a species of psychosis for racing cars. Enzo worked 70s a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, holidays included at night he returned to Modena. He felt extremely emotionally attached to his city. Except for his daily drives to Marinello, he refused to leave Modena for almost any reason. He did not attend races. Again, just another example of this singular focus. Enzo studied the psychology of winning. He said certain principles were self evident. Number one, competition is the impetus for innovation. The fiercer the competition, the faster cars will go. Number two, there is in some men a need to achieve greatness. When matched with talent, this necessity can turn humans into demigods. Number three, a man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man in a faster car if he can survive until the end of the race. So this love of beauty, this craftsmanship that he says is innately modernese, winds up playing very well in America. So one of I think his most lucrative market was America. So they start importing cars into America. Listen to this description. Nothing like a Ferrari had ever graced American roads. They were cars built by Italian artisans. Every detail down to the steering wheel hand crafted using some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and the royal carriages of ancient kingdoms. I hope they use that description as a copy for an ad. That's excellent. Years later, Ferrari was asked which of his cars was his favorite. He answered the car which I have not yet created and which of his victories meant the most. The one which I have not yet achieved. Again, I bring this up over and over again because I really do believe this is the mentality that a lot of history's greatest founders share. No rear-view mirror, no resting on laurels, no sleeping on winds, make something great and then do it again. The only thing that's going to take these kind of people out of the game is death. You see it over and over and over again in these biographies. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory. Ferrari said, "Everything that I've done I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day I want to build a car that's faster than all of them and then I want to die." He was 60 when he said this and this is what I meant earlier when the way he describes his products is the way you would describe your lover. This is what he says. This kind of love which I can describe in almost sensual or sexual way within my subconsciousness is probably the main reason why for so many years I no longer went to see my car's race. To think about them, to see them born and to see them die because in a race they are always dying even if they win, it is unbearable. He uses that same kind of language when he's describing the process of creating his products. In the first act of his labor, the maker conceives what his creature is to be. He dreams of it and he sees it in detail and he lays down the plan of work which he entrusts to a band of helpers who share his passion. A racing car, in fact, does not necessarily come into being as a creation of a superior mind, but it is always the compendium of the common, unflagging and enthralling work of a team fired by a common enthusiasm. And so this kind of language and this kind of opening up, it is only reserved for his products. In fact, somebody worked for a long time once described his temperament as closed like a walnut. There's a line that Ferrari wrote in his autobiography that I think is tied to this. He says the facial expression, smile or frown or whatever it might be, is merely a form of defense and should be taken only as such. There is something that Ferrari has in common with John D. Rockefeller is Rockefeller had a mask. So people could work with Rockefeller for decades and they'd never heard him race his voice or say an unkind word. And I think only that's another person I probably read a couple hundred thousand pages on. And there's only one time where he let it slip his entire career where he was induced into a state of rage in front of somebody else. And the person working with him talks about his like almost like a demon came out of him and you can see the rage on his face and immediately when Rockefeller realizes that he let his self control slip, he just brought it back inside and his face goes back to normal. He had a mask he had unbelievable control over what he was feeling inside and not letting it out. Enzo was like that back when Enzo used to watch races on television. His own cars, right? He stopped doing that after a while. A friend who would watch races with Enzo would said that he never moved. He didn't have any reaction whatsoever whether they won or they lost. They said he sat there like a stone. Another friend of his said Ferrari has no other satisfaction. His very life is that creature of his law Ferrari. And then to give you a sense of how difficult and domineering this person was. This is one of his drivers who won championship's form describing Enzo Enzo Ferrari's expectation of performance exerted a strong force that radiated throughout the organization and the drivers were not exempt from it. Rather than the race being a culmination of a team effort to win, there was a feeling instead as if you the driver had been reluctantly entrusted with this gem of a machine. This fruit of genius and hopefully your natural foolishness would not destroy it. When one of us did win, I sensed a certain reluctance on Ferrari's part to share the laurels with the driver, to pat him on the back and think him for a job well done. It was more like Ferrari felt the victory was his. He had not only managed to build a car that was better than all the others, but a car that was also good enough to foil even his driver's natural destructiveness. There was no separation between Enzo Ferrari the man and Ferrari the company I would say that Ferrari is just Enzo with 10,000 lives. The key to the Ferrari legend, the X factor which makes its road cars such objects of desire and seats in its race cars so coveted, is the presence of the creator etched into the DNA. Enzo's personality, his hopes and dreams inhabit every car which rolls out of the factory gates. Enzo's cars were so directly an extension of his own being to admit fault to them was to admit fault in himself and again, he was the protector of the brand. He understood how valuable this mystique, the fact that you couldn't read his emotions, you couldn't even see his eyes. He vetted each potential buyer personally. He put up, he made it very hard to buy his products and what happens because he understood human psychology. This kind of gatekeeping, all it does is make people want it more. When he sets up all these barriers, what happens? The wealthy and the famous all over the world, Americans, Europeans, Asians, they flock to his door. So one example of the fact that the most famous and successful people in the world were customers of his, were customers are Ferrari. So the heir to the fiat empire, this guy named Gianni and Giannelli, there is a documentary on his, on Gianni. Part of the documentary is the fact that Gianni just drove his Ferrari everywhere throughout Italy as if he was in a formula one race. At the time, Gianni is one of the most famous and wealthiest people in Italy. Everybody knows his love of Ferrari and so then they start love of Ferrari. Then they try to buy a Ferrari, then they see all these barriers to entry and only make some want it more. There's a great line that it says associations with famous rogues did Ferrari's profile no harm at all. So let me give you an example. This is the wildlife. I found him in the new book. His guy named Porofio Ruby Rosa, perhaps the most prolific Ferrari purchase of the 1950s, was Ruby Rosa, a polo player and racing driver who many believe to have been involved in political blackmail operations, including assassinations on behalf of a Dominican dictator. He dated a string of stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Eva Gardner, and Jaza Gabor. Ruby Rosa died after wrapping his Ferrari around a tree having spent the evening celebrating a polo victory. He was 56 years old. Associations with famous rogues did Ferrari's profile no harm at all. And so even when a fatal accident of somebody famous driving a Ferrari, you think that would harm the brand. It didn't. It caused more people to want Ferrari's. Let's go back to the fact that Enzo was ruthless. He believed that his cars were the stars and those who designed and raised them were expendable. Once engineers had given their best in began to fail, he would replace them immediately. Drivers came and went without sentiment. Over time, that wound up being a massive mistake. I think the best founders avoid this. So the best founders actually want to be told the truth that they understand that you need unfiltered information from the front lines. The problem is the way Enzo organized his company. It made it easier for other people to manipulate him. So Enzo's policy of ruling his empire from the center of relying on trusted lie tenants to feed him information left him open to manipulation and meant he lost touch with what was really happening at the cutting edge in Formula One. Remember, he's been dominating for a long time. So rival British teams that had Enzo initially dismissed start out performing him. So they're actually innovating. So if you listened to the episode it last week, the very first person I profile is getting Colin Chapman. He's one of these British innovators that is going to outcompete Enzo. And one of the innovations that Chapman did was he relocated the engine to the rear of the chassis for better balance, following more modern aerospace construction practice to save weight. The British teams left Ferrari standing. Innovative low weight high strength chassis design and low profile aerodynamics would define the competitive order of this era. Colin Chapman was the person responsible for this. He was the mad scientist of F1. If you haven't, make sure you listen to episode 395 to learn more about Chapman. Now I mentioned this earlier, but in 1969 when Enzo was 71, Fiat buys 50% of Ferrari. And then at the time, a journalist describes how this ties to remember Fiat slammed the door in Enzo's face 50 years earlier. It says half a century is long. And Enzo has spent it working hard, depriving himself of holidays and amusement. He has built an empire that is worth a few billion lira through motor racing. He became rich where others lost everything. So what Fiat does, they grant him this wish. He's going to he's going to sell 50% of the company, but he retains control over all racing activities. Fiat's investment also helped stabilize Ferrari's finances, because remember at this time, Enzo was always reinvesting everything back into the business. It also enabled Enzo to provide his son Dino dies, which was the son he had with his wife. He also has a bunch of mistresses. And he had one, what they call, illegitimate son, Pierre or Pietro. That son was given 10% of Ferrari, which if I'm not mistaken, he still owns to this day, which makes him a multi billionaire. And then as part of the deal, Enzo's other 50% ownership or his 40% ownership would revert to Fiat upon his death. And so at the time of the deal, they're looking back. Because Ferrari had represented Italy for almost five decades and had always done so on his own and on his own terms. It was said that there's two religions in Italy, the Catholic church and Ferrari. But even at this time, Ferrari is not looking back. No rear, rear, rear, no looking back for Enzo. And so said, I don't like monuments. The focus is always on the next race. And even in his 80s, he works until he's 90. He dies at 90. In his waning years, Enzo continued to come to work until he was no longer strong enough to stand. And even before he died, he still talked about the fact that this passion that he, the spark of passion that he had when he first went to that first race with his father, and he was 10. It's still there. It says after almost eight decades live with rare intensity, he could profess that his love for the automobile and for motor racing began early in his youth, quote, had not suffered from the insults of time. He continues to secret of this total faithfulness, which I believe difficult to find in other types of relationships springs from the possibility to do year after year, new experiments to find new solutions to build new automobiles. Again, that word total, whole, entire, full, unquestioned. His business was the very essence of his being, the fast cars, the Grand Prix victories, the factory itself were all secondary to what they stood for, the towering ego of the man whose name they carried. When Enzo Ferrari died at 90 years old, writers around the world, groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant. Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not. Others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was, however, exactly what he had repeatedly said he was, an agitator of men, and he remained true to his credo to the day he died. Enzo Ferrari, the last of the great automotive titans, was gone, never to be replaced.