A conversation on focus and finding your life's work

I want to post this conversation that I just had with my friend Patrick on his podcast of S.I.K.T. and I want to tell you why. So a few weeks ago he called me after listening to the episode, it was episode 3D3, the one I did on Todd Graves. It's called Todd Graves and his $10 billion chicken figure dream. And Patrick asked me to come to New York and record an episode with him on the topic of focus. And if I had to simplify into still what I've learned from this entire project, you know, eight years, maybe nine years, close to nine years, almost 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, red to one word. That is definitely the word that I would choose, which is focus. It is, I believe, it is the single most prominent attribute that the people that I've studied on the podcast have that I think the rest of the world lacks. In fact, I just flew to San Francisco to meet and have a conversation with my friend Daniel Akku's, the founder of Spotify. We probably talked close to four hours and there's probably not another living entrepreneur that I've learned more from than Daniel and he actually gave me really great advice. And I think he did this inadvertently. I don't even think he meant to. And the advice was related to focus. He had told me how's like more and more people ask for your time and this happens to all of us. Like if you don't guard your time, he had a great line that he said about this. If you don't guard your time, greatness will disappear. Another way to think about that is like if you lose your focus, greatness will disappear. That literally gives me chills. That is terrifying to me. And another thing that me and Daniel talked about is the fact that he has this really great idea that you really should be optimizing for impact, a positive impact on other people. And I believe that what I'm trying to do with founders has a positive impact on the world and I should be very, very, very careful to not lose the focus on that because really what I believe is like the people I read about, the people that you and I study on this podcast, they were brilliant. They made incredible things. They built incredible lives even though they didn't know each other. They lived at different points in history, lived in different parts of the world, worked in different industries. They arrived at very similar conclusions on how to build a great business. And I think the idea is very simple. I got this idea from Charlie Munger. He says find an idea and take a very simple, find a simple idea and take it seriously. And the simple idea I have that I'm trying to take very, very seriously and focus on is like, hey, somebody should read all these old books, mine these timeless ideas and then just spread them to current and future generations. And this applies to everything including who I picked to partner with on the podcast. One of the most important, I'll give you an example of this. One of the most important ideas that is repeated over and over and over again is the fact that all of his great entrepreneurs constantly emphasize the importance of controlling expenses and controlling your costs. This idea goes back hundreds of years. You can go back and read Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie would repeat a mantra over an organ. He said profits and prices are cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces on the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled. And in Andrew Carnegie's view, any savings achieved in cost were permanent. That is why I picked ramp as the presenting sponsor of this podcast. I know all the founders of ramp. They're friends of mine. We've spent a ton of time together. Before they were the presenting sponsor of this podcast, they all listened to the podcast and they picked up on the fact that the main theme from the podcast is also the reason that ramp exists and that's the fact that the importance of watching a cost and controlling your spend and how doing so can give you a massive competitive advantage. And one thing I would add to that that I think is related to the conversation you're about to hear. And that's also a demonstration of focus. The reason that ramp exists is to give you everything you need to control your spend. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your costs. Ramp gives you easy use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting and cost control. I use it for my business, Patrick uses it for his business. I've gotten hundreds of emails, text messages, DMs about people that listen to the podcast that are now using ramp for their business. There is a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography where it said cost control became nearly an obsession. Keep in mind, when Carnegie sells his business to JP Morgan, Carnegie had the largest liquid fortune in the world. Knowing your business rate is a and your cost down to the penny makes you very, very hard to compete with. In fact, I think Sam Walton in his autobiography really beautifully summarized this point and I really the competitive advantage of doing so. And he wrote, "Our money was made by controlling expenses. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient." Ramp helps you run an efficient organization. Ramp gives you everything you need to control your spend and optimize all your financial operations on a single platform. I believe that if Andrew Carnegie and Sam Walton were alive today, they'd be running their business on ramp. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com, turn on how they can help your business today, that is ramp.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I'm very passionate about these ideas and I really appreciate Patrick for giving me an opportunity to convey some of these ideas that I think are very, very important. As always, thank you for listening. I think about founders and try to simplify what it is. I would say that it's an entrepreneur who lives 40 years and builds something. Biographer spends for-ish years researching them and writing something. You spend 40 hours reading the book and thinking about it and tying it to all the other lessons. You spend 40 minutes listening to your summary of that thing. If you think about that incredible amount of distillation, that's a big reason it's so interesting and so valuable. My first question is to distill it even more. If you think about the entire project, the entire corpus, and we're forced to distill it all, all your work and therefore all the work that came before it down to one thing, what that one thing would be. Yeah, the one word to be focused. The way I think about this is like, by the end of this year, I would have studied red over 400 biographies of history-grade entrepreneurs. I'm like eight years into the project. If I was forced to distill that down to one word, the word would be focused. The reason I think that pops out is because the way I look at this, I've told you this before, we've talked about this bunch. I feel that when you read a biography of somebody or an autobiography, even a better example of this, I feel you get to have a one-sided conversation with somebody. Obviously, if I do a monologue podcast, I like to talk. I can't talk. I'm just forced to sit there and listen and I feel that person is telling me the most important parts of their life, their 40, 50, 60 year career. Then I go online. We live in this very modern environment. I open up Instagram. I look at TikTok, look at X. It's like, oh, the exact opposite of what this person did their whole career and what I've just spent 40 hours doing is this. It's like, let's not focus on something for 40 years or five decades or even 40 hours. Let's focus on it for four seconds. We were on the walk over here. I mentioned the point where I was like, maybe the best thing for me to do because where I do is like what I get joy is just literally like, I like to spend about half my, oh, the time then I'm awake alone. And most of that is reading. I get a lot of joy out of that. And then the way I feel after I read a good book or I make an episode that I'm proud of. And then the way I feel like when I go online, I'm like, oh, these are like the complete opposite. They're the contrast. And one is feeds my soul. And one is good for me. And one is the opposite. And so I told you I was like, maybe what I should do is just like not read online at all and just post all day long about the stuff I'm reading. Use it as a tool instead of a giant distraction where I think a lot of people like it's just completely destroying their ability to focus. And I think it's related to maybe why you asked me the question is like, I'm very reluctant to like have an opinion on like when you listen to podcasts or when we have conversations or we're on the phone, if something comes up, it's like, well, you know, Steve Jobs would say do this or David O'Gee did this or Buffett looked at this way or Munger looked at this way. It's not like David thinks you should do this because I don't really have an opinion on what other people should do. I just think of like how I want to run my life. And now I'm thinking maybe I should actually like be a little more vocal about hey, it's kind of weird that the people that were literally the best at what they did in their life were completely focused. We're not in this huge rush. They obviously work very fast, but they're not like they didn't have goals like when I'm seeing a lot online. It's like, we're the fastest company ever to X revenue. It's just like, they didn't talk that way. Like Sam Walton did not talk that way. Coco Chanel did not talk that way. And so for all right, they understood they found something to do and did it for an incredibly long time. And so I talked about this where I get to meet a lot of great entrepreneurs and my favorite entrepreneurs, I've been the most impressed with. They're all over the age of 70, like all of them. It was like who's the young entrepreneur? I was like, I don't even know any of their names because I'm so focused on this person has spent five decades thinking deeply about what they're doing and the stuff they can convey with to you over like a dinner, a phone call, a conversation. I just, I don't find that anywhere else. And I think that's a complete byproduct of the fact that they were able to focus something for many, many decades, which is completely, I would say opposite of a few minutes. Sure. I think that is why it's valuable because it's so rare for people to build you that. Why does that interest you? Like why is the 50 year version of a business story more interesting than a 10 year version, which I'm picking 10 because it's like 10 decades a long time. Time is the best filter. Time is the only filter that I trust. Most of the people I covered dead, if they're not dead, their career, they're at the end of the career. They're an older, wiser person and they're passing on these lessons. And I remember people, I got a lot of pushback when FTX was taking off and all these people were telling me. - We got to do an episode on SPF. This guy's a genius. He's the fastest person to like a $35 billion net worth or whatever the number was. And so I was like, oh, maybe I'm like missing something. Like that's maybe they're right. And we got to talk about Todd Graves in the episode of "Easy State," because I'm really proud of him. So I think, you know, we're gonna be asking every episode now. - Yeah, when people ask me who's my favorite living entrepreneur, they expect me to say like a tech entrepreneur. It's like no, the guy that owns raising canes. They're like, what are you talking about? I get, he owns 90% of a business. They started in college. He's been doing it for 30 years. The business is worth at least $10 billion is going to 30% a year. And he refuses to sell. What would be the opposite of that, right? The slow grind to really perfecting what you're doing before you try to like just scale it up. There's a great line, I think, in Nick's Sleep's partnership letters, which I just did. And he's like, we just don't understand where we go to his companies. They're losing money and they want to figure out how to get bigger. And so, lose more money. And he's not talking about like an Amazon where you actually have to do that. SPF, I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'm wrong. Like maybe these people are right. And the reason I thought about Todd Graves, because there's so many people in his career, which we'll get to, they said, no, you're doing it wrong. And he was younger. He's like, damn, they're like experts. They're smarter. They're like older than me. And he started it down himself for a little bit. And he's like, wait, no, they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. And so, I was really resistant to the SPF thing. So I started listening to all these podcasts on them. And then when he does podcasts, he would like multitask, which my personal hero is Charlie Munger. I think he's the wisest person that would ever come across. The wisest person that would ever talk to him. What does he say? Like you're gonna get half-assed effort. This is not exact quote. Like if you multitask, he just, he single-tacks. Like I'm just focused on whatever's in front of me. He's this great quote that I put up that went viral. It's like obvious. And he's like, I didn't succeed in life because I'm a intelligence student. He's a senior because I had a long attention span. And that's what I'm so interested in to go back to your point. But then I started watching these SPF podcasts. And not just back down, I'm sure he's a nice guy. I'm not trying to insult him. But he's like, I've been on a bunch of podcasts. I've never played fucking video games. - Well, I'm, I mean, it-- - He did say hi to me. - Yeah, it's like this. So first of all, it's kind of disrespect to us like a human level. It's like you don't even deserve my full attention. You know what, my phone's out here. Like we're like just having this conversation. But then, so I started, okay, well maybe there's interesting ideas here and then he explains what he was doing. And then I heard him say something. And immediately he said this. He's like, well, I actually think no one ever has to read a book. And he talks about like he doesn't read books. Books are stupid. Should just be a blog post and I was like, oh, there's no way I'm doing. What's the chance that this young kid, right? He arrived at a conclusion that for the last 5,000 years of humanity, you have all these people talking about how valuable it is to write down the lessons from the people that came before us and to pick up that book and read the lessons. And this guy comes along and says, no, no, just disregard that mass of humanity. That's not a valuable activity. I'm sorry, I'm gonna take Munger over SPF every day. And I'm so glad I didn't do the episode. 'Cause imagine if I had in the founders back catalog, a podcast on history's greatest entrepreneur and it's a guy that was essentially a fraud. If you think about that over 70 category entrepreneur that you've learned so much from, what do they do most differently in contrast to the inner hurry fastest to 100 million ARR type entrepreneurs that you've also spent time on? One, they just, I think great anything takes time. Like a great business takes time. You can be phenomenal. If you look at the early days of Amazon, obviously Jeff was really gifted. He's really smart. He was doing a lot of smart things even before he started Amazon. But if you look at how good he was and how great the business was a decade, two, three decades in, I always say this quote and I think it's dead right. It's fascinating that everybody in technology has read zero to one, right? If you're only gonna read one book, probably that would be the one to read it. I think it's excellent. But they missed the part of what he says in there where he's like, hey, there's a big problem with technology companies is they optimize for growth at the expense of durability. But if you look at when do these giant companies and he said tech companies, but you see this in all these companies, raising canes is another example. We're like, they actually make more money. Three, four, five, six decades into the future. All the real money is out there. So therefore if you're optimizing for growth at the expense of durability, you're never gonna get to the real rewards. And the reason you did it is because growth, you can track and durability you cannot. And I just did this episode in Ken Griffin and it was fascinating. He's founded Citadel, I think 35 years ago and I think he founded Citadel as a security 20, 23 years ago. And he just said, we've had the most, the best financial years of our entire life in the last four years. He's 30 years, 30 years into that business is the best time he's had. And he's, you know, hopefully he keeps compounding that. So where does the durability come from? Like how do they, those long stories? How do they earn the durability? I think what this really comes down to, like you're kind of hitting at this. I think this is why even though I'm not an investor, I do like you're framing of like trying to back people that it's their life's work. I am very interested in people that have a mission. And I don't know why. It took me 32 years to find my mission, another five and a half to make it work and actually support my family. And then, you know, now I realize like, oh, this is it, this is the thing I'm doing. I wanna tie into something everybody else say you guys actually made this great profile, Neil. Yeah. And what I would say is there's a lot of good quotes in there. I feel like I should do like a miniature like episode, bonus episode on that one. You get this analogy of like of the helicopter. It's like most people are like doing due diligence on a company or whatever and they're at like 8,000 feet and they maybe go, they'll hover down to 5,000 feet and they're like, oh, we did our job. They're like, no, no, Neil lands the helicopter then gets out of the helicopter, then goes underneath the helicopter and then puts his hands in the dirt. And I read that, I don't think of any entrepreneur living. I think, oh, that's Walt Disney. That's Steve Jobs, that's S.T. Lauder. That's all the people that admire. That's Todd Grace. It sounds like I heard stories. I just said this dinner last weekend for somebody who knows Ken and they asked what episode I'm working. I was like, oh, I'm working on an episode of Ken Griffith and they were telling stories that were very similar to that paying attention to even the tiniest corner of the business. You wouldn't even think he's paying attention to you. What he's spending on his sit there and talk to the first person, so what if we're three straight hours to make sure it's being done? I just like people that take what they're doing seriously. The feedback on the categories of episode, it's absolutely ripping. But the only negative feedback is like, I can't because he says in the episode, that he believes that God put him on earth to be good at chicken figures, to help people. So he can make a lot of money and he does a lot of charitable work. And people are like, you know, they think they're smarter. - Two assessor chicken figures. - They think they're smarter in him. Essentially what they're saying is like, have you built a $10 billion company? Have you done that? Are you the best in your profession? Are you the top of your craft? It doesn't matter what the craft is. At least he has a mission. You may laugh at his mission, you think it's ridiculous. But one, I know he believes it for a fact. Or he's a world's greatest actor for three decades, right? And we can go through the level of commitment that he had to make that dream real, right? Or like, and you can make fun of the fact that he's a mission but it's like, he's already ahead of most of humanity that is alive today and has ever lived. Most people don't have a mission. There's a great example of this in Steve Jobs that he was heavily criticized in early of his career because he would make the inside of the computer that you couldn't even open up. Beautiful. And people are you're wasting your time. It wasn't a waste of time to him. - The reason I like the Graves one so much is because it's chicken fingers, like the object of his obsession is like this sort of low status thing. I think so many people would love to build a fancy piece of technology or something very sexy as their lifelong mission or something. But in many of my conversations with you, the object of obsession is something very simple like chicken fingers. And I just think chicken fingers is like, it's such a visceral thing we've all eaten chicken fingers. And a man like Todd has devoted himself to one thing. I think you said on the episode he won't even make. People wanted the sandwich and he just took his chicken fingers and put buns around him. That's the sandwich. Like he is singularly obsessed with this chicken finger dream. And I love the question now, what is your chicken finger dream? And chicken fingers better than something else because of almost how absurd it is. So tell us a little bit more about what you've learned from studying him. It was probably my favorite episode of Founders Ever. And maybe just hit me at the right time and I needed to hear that message right then and there to work on something for a certainly long time, not think short term, whatever. Lots of common lessons. But what is it about? Why do you think this one is so, especially this person and this business, which is so simple and so low brow, so resonant with so many people? I truly believe, like I'm obsessed. And we've talked about this all the time. Like, you know, I get literally emails. They're like, why do you quote munger in every single episode? And it's just like, 'cause all I do is listen to this what I thought this brilliant guy, his advice. And I just did it. Like, I always say learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. And there's been a handful of times where I meet people or read a book, I have a conversation where literally my behavior, and that my behavior is changed. The director of my life is changed. The way he was able to describe things to me, he's just like, there's a bunch of examples. And he's like, you know, he knows everything about business history. He had 60 years of experience and he would share freely with everybody. And he's like occasionally we find scaling down and upping the intensity, you get an advantage. That sounds like tug graves to me. He's like, oh, you have, my competitors have 10 things on the menu, I have one. You can get three chicken pairs, four chicken fingers, six chicken fingers, anyone chicken chicken sandwich? Here's two buns and that's it. And then find a simple idea and take a seriously as another mungerism. And then what he'd realize when he analyzed Costco, where he's like, we often times in business, we find the winning system goes ridiculously far. That's the most important two words in this sentence. Ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables. I think it was Ken Griffin talked about this. I've seen this with a bunch of investors. We talked about this with Richard Rainwater before. Jay Pritzker was like this, Sam Zell was like this 'cause we'll tie this to investing. It's like if you bring him a deal. And there's like seven different things that have to go right. Like the chance of every single one going right is very, very small. And so like I love what Richard Rainwater would do, where it's like, "You bring me your idea on one piece of paper. You write it on one piece of paper, explain to me in simple words, and then at the end just tell me how much you're on money you're putting in." And then on the side of me going to do this. You guys wanted the best deal makers and investors of all time. You see it over and over again. Sam Zell told me when I got to meet him, it's also in his autobiography. He's like, "Jay Prisker was the most brilliant financial mind I've ever come across. He was like an older brother to Sam, he was like 20 years older." And his whole point was like, "I'd come to him when I was younger and bring him like, okay, there's like six things we have to do." And Jay would look at, he's like, "No, one. If you nail that, everything else will, will everything else we either work out, either live or die off of that. Think, go back to him in the huge mania in, you know, with 2020-21, all this huge tech bubble, where Sam Zell goes on CNBC, he's like, "We work's going zero." Like, no, not going to work. And it was like, at all times high, Mosso's pinning in like $20 million, what the case is. And it was like asset, price, liability, mismatch, or whatever the word. He's like, "No, this guy in 1972 did this, failed. 82, this other guy did it, this is the company, failed. Why?" Because there's only one thing that's important, an app doesn't fucking solve that. You're not paying attention. And so when I look at Todd Graves, the reason I wanted to do that episode is one, I just saw a clip. This is what I mean about learning is not memorizing information, learning is changing behavior. I talked to a lot of people, and they're like, "I love your podcast." And some of them we can be friends with. And I see the decisions they're making there. Business like, "Oh, you're listening, and you're just wasting your time, because you're not actually applying the lessons. Take what they did, and what they said, and see if that works in your business, and then actually change it." And so I saw a clip. And it was a clip, I think, on TikTok, where Todd Graves was being interviewed on a comedian's podcast, "Deavon." And he was talking about, he's like, "I've been a big believer in always doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else." And then they kept cutting the clip, you know, it was probably 45 seconds. And he talked about, he even got down to the minutia of, "How simple is my menu?" If it's, "How easy can I make it to select what the customer wants?" Okay, so that customer is now going to take five seconds to decide. I go to reason, in case I know exactly what I'm getting, right? As opposed to, you go to McDonald's or another competitors. Now it's, instead of a 10 second order, it's a 40 second order. That mean make not a big difference when you're having, you know, 100 orders a day and you have one store. He's got 800 now. It makes a huge difference. And he just immediately understood. And so when I might, this is how, because of fucking brainwash myself about this, I don't think of Todd Graves when I hear that. I'm like, "Oh, that's like Rockefeller going over to one of his employees who was soldering, closing up oil cans, and says, "How many drops of solder do you use?" And he gets like, "40. Have you ever tried less? Try 38." Okay, I tried 38. It leaked. Okay, I tried 39. Oh, 39. It works. So we were wasting one drop of solder, which might not make a shit a difference when the business is, you know, making a couple thousand. That business went up scaling 10, 20, 30X. Makes a huge difference. All of these people, they're obsessed with their business. They're in the details. Another thing that Todd Graves said that was very fascinating. He's like, "I had all these experts. Tell them, "Hey, like, you should delegate." And he has the funny sign. It goes, "Delegate." What is that word even? He goes, "What kind of word is that?" Right? Because he was literally being interviewed in one of the, in one of the, in one of the podcasts I use as a search material to make mine. And he's, again, this, this, this happened, you know, last few months, maybe a year ago. And he stops the interview to look at the Instagram reel because they just had an event. I think they were like throwing a super bowl part or something like that. And he's like, "I'm going to watch it before it goes out. I don't think of Todd Graves. I think of Steve Jobs every Wednesday having a three hour meeting in Apple, reviewing every single ad that goes out. Nothing went out of Apple. Not a billboard in Missouri, not a, what's on their landing page without Steve looking at it. There's a guy that wrote the book called, I think it's called insanely simple. I think his name is Ken Siegel, if I'm correct, if I'm correct about that. He was running, he was work, he was the ad executive for the marketing company, the ad company that Steve was using. And he said, "Steve would call me at midnight, and we'd have to talk for an hour about a single word." That's a obsession. That's loving what you do. That's taking what you do very seriously. I don't care if it's building computers, if it's making a podcast, if it's making chicken fingers. I just love people that take what they do seriously. This idea of anything worth doing, being worth doing for its own sake, and my fear of maximum, that I've stumbled across, I think originally from Kevin Kelly, the other wired magazine was that the reward for great work is more work. And it seems like so much of the fastest to 100 million of ARR type thing, is that the target is something that's not the work itself. It's some other thing. And that the healthy orientation that you're describing that Todd Graves has and all these other people have is actually just towards the work itself. And you had this really interesting notion of almost anti-business people. Ivan Schienart is the founder of Patagonia comes most immediately. To my, I love that book of his, I love my people go surfing. So talk a little bit more dig deep around this idea of anything worth doing for its own sake. The reward for great work is more work. Being anti-business as an entrepreneur, there's some depths to this that I think continue to pull at the same threat. You can change the name of a podcast. I can log into my podcast host and change founders to whatever one. Whatever. You can't change the URL slog for the RSS feed for the first name effect. And the first name I picked for founders was telling you from day one. In back in 2016, the name of the podcast was called Autotelic. Autotelic, the definition of that, is an activity done for the sake of itself. I was telling you from the rip, I don't care if nobody listens. I need to do this. I got some advice the other day. And they're like, this reminded me of Ted Graves. Henry Ford has the exact same thing about experts. People outside of your business try to give you advice. And this is why I like retweeter them. Like these people like, sorry, I'm not going to read that tweet. I'd rather, I'll just listen to what Steve Jobs said. He probably has better advice than this random fucking guy on Twitter. And so someone goes, hey, I have a great idea for you. I hear you thought about hiring other people to read the books for you. That's not what I'm doing it for. I'm not taking the easy way. The hard, I love what Jerry Senthill said. The hard way is the right way. And so I told him a story. And this is the line that, this is my response to this. And this is the line that I say. It's like, you don't work all your life. To do what you love. To not do it. And all I know is that person doesn't have a mission. They don't have a love. They're not, that's fine. I know most people never do. But I don't go around. I mean, it's the people about what they should be doing. It's the weird thing where the source of this advice comes from. And I remember reading about Charles Schultz, the guy. I was a fucking kid. And I'd read Charlie Brown and P-Nuts. Every Christmas. We'd watch Charlie Brown's Christmas. Yeah, I think he came out in the 1960s. And so I was like, I'm going to read his biography. And then you read it. And it's like crazy. He's like, the guy ran, you know, I'm going to, these are approximately right. He ran the, the comic ship for like, let's say 40 or 50 years. He drew, drew, came up with the idea, penciled everything, drew everything, every single strip over 50 years. I think it was 17,000 different individual ones that he did. He had already had one plan. So when he dies, this is the, no one can ever take it over. When I die, this is what you put out. Like when I die, this is the last one that's ever published. And people would go through it. If I remember correctly, it's living somewhere in California. They come to our studio at the time. He's on a much older man. He's like 67 years old. And they're like, well, who's doing this? He's like, what do you mean he's doing this? He's like me. And they couldn't, these people with 20 years, couldn't wrap their head like, well, could you hire somebody else to do it? So then you could take a vacation or you could take some time off. And that was his line. He's like, you couldn't understand why they were asking that. And he's like, but you don't work your entire life to do what you love to not do it. That's why I think thinking a long time, you know, most of this is trial and error. Some people find what they love to do really. Like I think of Kobe Bryant, the episodes that's done on him. It's 12 years old. He would tell you, I'm going to be the best best player of all time. No one finds what they love to do at 12. I'm working on this Michael Dell episode right now. You could see from 12 years old, the guy was a money maker, a successful computer. There's a part in the story that's great where he takes apart an IBM. And he has this realization, he says, "Wayman, IBM's selling computer, but they don't make any of the components." And like you just see, is it like a little kid's like, "Mmm, there might be an opportunity here that he's going to pursue later on." And then he gets in trouble in class because he's not paying attention to class. He's just reading computer magazines. He's telling you what his life is going to be. You just have to listen and every single person has something like that. They just don't fucking listen. They don't listen to themselves. What does it feel like when you find it? Because you said earlier, you were 32 before you kind of stumbled on it. And then five years after that, was it like actually the full-time thing that you could do, turn a living and much more, what was the change in feeling of, what does it feel like to do the thing that you love to you? Unbelievable relief. Like a weight off your shoulders that I can't describe it. And then from there, that doesn't mean like, "Oh, now I wake up." You know, that's like, "I'm kind of a tortured person." Like, so there was a clip of me on another podcast that just went out. And the person's like, "You know, the podcast is good. If the host looks asleep, the problem." Like, that's as good as I can look. Okay, because that's like, my sleep score on my A-Sleep right now is like 60. It's not, I'm not doing well because I am completely obsessed with what I'm doing. And you know, it's weird. Like, people keep telling me. It's like, you shouldn't be obsessed with this like most sadist. The ass like, "I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't even hear it." Because I'm like, I know exactly where I am. And I know exactly what I want to do. And we talk about this. We have mutual friends that like, they're kind of so obsessed [BLANK_AUDIO] to their detriment about like, what will somebody else think of me? Or like, if I do X, well, like, I'm worried about the public perception or what my friends will think of me. I don't think about that at all. There's a great line, the reason that people are surprised with some of the people that I want to meet they're still living. So I have like, you know, a list. And in the top three that list is getting to Jimmy Iveen. We mean you share love for that define ones. Define ones, documentary. Last dance, define ones. Like those are the best documentaries. I watch him open over again. And Jimmy Iveen has this great line. He's just like, when you're running after something, he goes, they do his great editing job where it shows horses on a racetrack. And it goes back and forth between that and Jimmy. And Jimmy's like, you know what? If they fucking blinders on those horses? And he goes, he goes, 'cause if they look left or right, they'll miss a step. And humans should have that too. When you're chasing after something, don't look left. Don't look right. Go. And that's why it's like, I wake up every day. We talked about this when we did that live show in New York City. It was obvious if you read the books that the great entrepreneurs once they find what they have, they love to do. Low to zero introspection. Now they think deeply about their business, but they wake up every morning. They're not wondering, what should I do today? They know exactly what they're doing. And to find that, to for me to know, I'm gonna wake up and do this. For as long as I have a voice, I have eyes, like hopefully I have life. Like that's an unbelievable leaf. Now, because of your mission, and because I'm also super competitive and kind of a little crazy, our mutual friend Daniel, he has the greatest line he told me. He's just like one of the reasons I like you so much is because you're like an LLM train on history's greatest entrepreneurs with the temperature turned. (laughing) That's like, you're obviously like some people are not gonna like that and that's fine. Then you kind of torture, I did this episode on Jensen Wong, and he has a great thing where he doesn't like to fire people. He's like, I'd rather to torture them into greatness. And then you realize how he goes about his life, he actually tortured himself into greatness. You know, even, this is in recent few years, they tell a great story. Blowout quarter. Companies doing incredible. And he walks into the meeting and goes, every morning I wake up, look myself in the mirror and say, why do you suck so much? We've heard that a few times from some exceptional people. They're all like this. Say one click more about this anti-business, you call that anti-business billionaire so that I would get lots of views on Instagram or whatever. That's not why I did it though, 'cause that's what I believe them to be. I like, I appreciate it. You thought it was click baity. I'm not trying to click bait anybody. Although Todd Graves and his $10 billion chicken figure dream is probably good. That's a banger episode. That's definitely what I mean by anti, and it really should be anti-business as usual billionaires. Okay, so the, and again, am I my own business? I don't care if people say, I want to wake up and all I'm gonna do is take a pile of money and making it a bigger file money and they love it. Cool. I have no opinion what you're doing. The people I most admire, the people that I'm trying to powder myself off of is these people where it's like they have, so they're so obsessed about the product quality, right? What, and there's three people in that video. It's a Vaunchanard, James Dyson, and Steve Jobs, right? One guy's making outdoor equipment, one guy's making high technology, and one guy's making fucking vacuum cleaners. Okay, but there's the exact same approach where it's like the, the reasons company exists and jobs have said this multiple times, where the only reason to start a company is because of the product. And then like, so the company needs to assemble all the resources, but the product we exist to make the product. And then of course, he talks about profitability a lot because the profits allow you to keep making the product. Everything starts from the product. So everything I do, the reason I still do every single social media post, the reason I answer all my emails, the reason I don't have an assistant, the reason I don't have an editor, is because I'm trying to make the world's best product. I feel my podcast is a handmade, artisanal, but it just happens to be like technology and infinite leverage. You know, the same work is gonna go into it. If one person listens or 10 million people listen, and I'm trying to build what drives me, and I think annoys most of the people that are around me because I can be like pretty fucking stubborn about this, is that I want to make the best product in the world based on what I like for the best people in the world. The very first time we talk, you kind of, and this is when I like, I think like 3000 people listening back then, and you kind of nailed it on our first talk. You're like, oh, you built it, like you're gonna win by default, you built this pulling mechanism in the funerary ecosystem, like by the time people try to do it now, they're gonna try to, they're never able to catch you, but it's really important to me as a competitive person that I build the best product for the best people in the world. I am not interested. I've told this story before. I know Mr. Beast, Jimmy's, he's been very nice to me. He's treats about the podcast. It's very nice. He's invited me to go to like his headquarters, and he's like, you can use our studio record here. We'll help people to script. Jimmy's is no script. We'll give you data and Alex people. I don't even know how many fucking people will listen to the podcast. I don't look at analytics. I build what I want for me. So the reason I have to edit it is because when this is done, I listen to it. It's the Stephen King thing. I am not just the writer. I am the first reader. That's what Stephen King said. Quentin Tarantino says, when I, people are like, when you make a movie, do you have an audience of mine? He's like, yeah, me! I'm making it for me. What is your own measure of good or great for your own product? That I like it. But why? What is it about whatever that episode was or the Tiger Graves episode? Or like if I stacked ranked 50 most recent episodes based on the quality, your own perception of their quality. What's different about number one versus number 40? Like what's more true in number one than number 40? Like what is the measure of goodness? I've been thinking about this recently, and it applies specifically to the fact that I'm covering people that build companies. And what I realize is like, I've never been around and pressed people in my entire life, right? We talked about this the very first time I was on your podcast, knowing my family in graduate high school. What's this college? So it's like, I never saw examples of great people. And then you add to the fact that my father, like on the son of a Cuban immigrant, I grew up meeting people that risked their lives and came over here and I laughed. And it's like kind of weird. Hey, like you, you have, like we both have kids. We love them more than life itself. Like I would die for my kids. Everybody would die for their kids. And it's like things were so bad in your country that you risked your 14 year old son's life and put them on a boat. Like how bad does that have to be? And I'm like, well, let's go to Miami Beach. How many people, how many Americans are getting on the raft and going? That's a one way trip. So that tells you something is very special about where we live and very, very bad about where they're coming from. And what I realized is like not being an educated family, parents never having money, being terrified, growing up terrified, being a loser, it's like entrepreneurship is a miracle. Capitalism is a miracle where I meet some of these other people where they're like, they might be the son of the grandson of somebody really wealthy and you'll find like a weird high correlation for like almost like socialistic like perspectives. And I was like, this is so crazy to me. Just like my wife's from Columbia. Like no one in South America is like, they made it to America is like, no, I want to go back there. Like you don't even understand what you have. And so now what I realized about this is like one of the reasons I'm so passionate about is yeah, I like to read the most unbroken hobby I've ever had. Yeah, I would generally think podcast or miracles. You, we were at this conference together and you said something really funny. You walk over and every time I'm at it at the other table and I'm like, most of the people will listen to the podcast but if not, I would grab their phone. You saw me installing it and you had to quip. You're like, I wish I could find a way to make money for David's ability to turn every conversation back to podcasting. It's like 14 really successful and the top of the allocators and me, I don't even know what the hell was doing there. The root cause is like I really believe entrepreneurship is a miracle, the fact that anybody could say, hey, I have an idea that makes somebody else's life better because that's the best, that's all businesses. Business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better. No one can stop me from doing it to delivering value to other people. And then if I deliver the more value I deliver to the higher number of people that generate wealth. What? Imagine going back to, you know, I might do this episode on Jenga's Con. Like the 1100s and saying like you could be the richest person in the world and you could you invent a button and you know, press that button and anything is a deliver to that or like any other, or Sam Walton, I told the story, I was in my feature, Marina on a friend's boat and I was like, that boat's huge, who owns that boat? And I look it up, it's like, Sam Walton's niece. And I'm like this guy, I had like this great experience. I'm looking at this giant boat, it's probably, I don't know, $300 million, some crazy number like that. And I'm like, and it came from your uncle, just realizing, hey, if I just deliver everyday low prices, again, another simple idea taken very seriously, everyday low prices, no one's gonna be to some pricing. So how do you work back for some of that idea? There's all kinds of technologies, there's logistics, there's, college, all those stuff is very difficult. The idea is simple, but the finish is very difficult and look what you can generate. And people shit on Walmart. I had to shop at Walmart when I grew up. Like I'm not shopping there now, but like they did a service for my family. And for millions of people's like, they destroyed main street businesses. Like we couldn't afford to not shop at Walmart. It's a miracle that he gave. And what's the, the buy-park of that? By making, I don't know, how many people you think you shop at Walmart billions by now? A lot. Billions. Everyone at some point. Yeah, he deserves that money. Good, I'm glad he got that money. I mean, he wrote a lot in his books about the relationship between simplicity and mastery. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's the theme of our conversation. Like it shows up over and over and over and over again. That conference you're referencing with the capital allocators, you know, you said, I don't know why I'm there. Well, I know why you're there. Like I wanted you to go because I had a theory, which was correct, which is that the people there were going to be more interested in you and your project. Then, you know, the next guy is like, latest grade investment. And I think the reason for that is that everyone recognizes a truth in this basic message of the power of finding one's mission and then pursuing it forever. And I would just love to hear you riff a little bit on what that has taken for you. In the last, I guess we met in 2022, so called three and a half, four years ago, something like that. In that period of time, which is when this thing has really taken off, what are your drops of glue or like what are the things that you've done had to do to make this thing better? Because I just want to keep bringing this point to life. Like once you find the thing, what kinds of things does it then take to make the thing great? So what have those things been for the last four years? - I don't even know if I can, I have a good answer to that question. Other than there is something that I think is two other lines for longer. Again, I go back to him where it's like, he says intense interest in any subject is necessary for like to master it. He has a better line at messing that up. And then he says, "Fuller and Ultra Drift." You know, we talk about this all the time, where when I describe you to other people, I'm like, "Well, you have to understand. Patrick is doing the best like the best episodes all day long every day. Like 10 times a day, he just doesn't record them. He's just naturally curious. He will, he just want, he's curious around other people in the way that I am frankly not. Right? I'm interested in books. I can't like deal with, you know, people. That's why I work alone. In general, like obviously I have a handful of very close people. But I just think, I don't know why. There's a great line. So I just did this kind of Griffin episode. And I made the point in the episode. I think it's really important. It's like, I'm not interested in Timely. I'm interested in Timeless. And so there's no book on Ken. There's a bunch of great stories spread out there. The internet that I use, the source material. And then I listed to every single thing I could find all these talks. And most thing that Rizzi does is like, what do people want to know? What do you think with the market? Who do you think about this president? But I did find, like he had this hour long talk at Yale. Highly recommend listening to it. Where's like more like almost like an oral biography, like more timeless principles. And then I transcribe that. And then, you know, I listen to, I don't know, 30 other hours of him talking. And it maybe only made like five or 10 other notes to something small, but something he said is very fascinating. He's like, for reasons I don't quite understand. Since I was in the third grade, I've been obsessed with the stock market. How does it work? How do you make money? What are the problems you can solve? In that line, for reasons I don't understand. I truly believe that Jeff Bezos nailed it when he said, you don't pick your passions, your passions choose you. You don't choose your passions, your passions choose you. I was not made like, you know, at five years old wondering like, what's a good hobby for self development in my future? Maybe I should read. I just read. I told you the first time we talked. Like my mom before she died, she said I would read the back of cereal boxes. It's just, I have no idea. And so all I do is like, I'm just intensely interested in everything that I'm learning. And then I like the craftsmanship. I heard, there's an idea that Ken has that, again, I think is an entire reason that founders is valuable. It's a podcast. He says, you really, you want to know what's going on your business. You want to study your competitors, but you really should be grabbing ideas from other businesses far afield from your industry. And he told the story about a way to mitigate his risk and he got an idea from Saudi Ramco. Saudi Ramco and Citadel, it was very different businesses, right? What was the idea? Okay, so I'll explain this. Make sure I don't forget that 'cause I'm in the middle of the weave. So he uses the term, I think they were like, they were like, be a bee player in risk. They weren't doing well in risk. And he was still in Chicago at the time. And he goes and visits Saudi Ramco and he sees this giant screen on a wall on their headquarters there. And it's like 30 feet long, 10 feet wide. And it has all the most important data. Not like 100 things, but like where the ships are. How many, well, the barrels of oil we're reducing, like the handful of metrics and they just look at it all day. - Yeah, they're just solutions. - Exactly. What's gonna happen? Like you look at it all day, like then you're gonna improve it, right? And he's like, oh, what if we took all the important risk metrics and put a giant wall on our headquarters? And he said it took him from like, you know, a bee player to like one of the best in their field. And his old advice was like, you really need to be taking ideas that are far afield of like your own industry. And you know, this would you do when you read a book? Like I'm not gonna build Walmart. I'm not gonna build Ferrari. I'm not building Apple. I'm building my podcast, but there's all these ideas that I can take from them. So as I expose myself to that, I just find like little ideas that I can use in the craftsmanship of the product. And one of the main ideas goes back to your question about the anti-billion, anti-business billionaires. The reason I say, and I do this same book over and over again. So I've done an episode 25, episode 200, episode 300, and it'll be episode 400. It's James Dyson's first autobiography called Against the odds. He, it took him 14 years, 5,127 prototypes until he got the first world's first psychonic vacuum cleaner that he owned 100% of that was up to his standards. And so all I'm trying to figure out is this is like, can I make something that I would listen to? I don't know any other way. And so last week I actually had to republish an old episode, which is still a great episode. But the reason was because I read a book where I found the person it did not like and I don't wanna spend any time in his mind. So I'm not gonna make an episode on him because not only did I finish reading the book which I threw across the fucking room, but then I have to spend another, you know, - You're really miss one together, if it's the one I think. - Yes, and then I spent another 30, then I had to spend another 30 hours making the podcast. And it's like, I don't wanna be like this person. I'm looking for role models 'cause they didn't have anyone I grew up. And then I read a fabulous book that mean you both read "Pappy Land" by Wright Thompson. - Excellent writing. - You're gonna be writer too. - Unbelievable. But I couldn't figure out how to make an episode on it 'cause it's really like, it's about a family business. It's really about a family. It's really about the relationship between father and son. Like, and I'm very interested in that relationship. I think it's the most powerful relationship. The world which I got heckled at whenever I live shows when I said that. - Why did you get heckled? - I don't remember. 'Cause I said it was the most, it's not discounting the relationship between a father and a daughter or mother. - Yeah, obviously. - Clearly, something pops up in these biographies over and over again all the time. And Wright Thompson is great writing about relationship that the grandson had with the father and the father with just a lot of feeling and anguish. Excellent book. But I was like, this isn't good enough that the book was, but I can't make anything good enough. So I'm not putting anything on. Nothing. I'm not going to put out something I wouldn't listen to. - One of my favorite things that happens with you is someone will say something that just bothers you and sets you off and gets you going on this stream of lessons that we're talking about today that you've learned that you've shared with people. What other things that you see people do bother you the most in business? - You have a great line on this. Like you talk to a way more people on you. And I'll ask you about like, oh, is this person, this person reached out? And you're like, oh, no, he's a casual. Again, I don't care what people do because there, I know, I could study fucking people's lives for a living. So much of what shapes you is like, happens when you're so young and you can't even describe why you're interested and what you're interested in. But I think the only thing that bothers me is like, there's a great line that I mentioned in the Ovid's episode that mediocrity is invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. And so much of the people that you meet, so many of the products that you deal with, so many of the people, it's just like they're casual. They have a casual effectation about them that I find personally disgusting. And I'm not, again, it's not like a grown judging people. It's gonna make me sound like a terrible human being. It's just like, it's a way for me to filter who I want to spend time with. And my favorite people to spend time with, like they're all working vastly different things but they take what they do so seriously. And it's not a selfish thing. They're making something that they feel makes somebody else's life better. So the only thing I could think of is like, I don't like the, you know, casualness. And then I'm not a fan personally of like the over-financialization of business. I think a lot of people are starting companies. They're creating financial instruments, which is fine. But I think you're gonna realize, like just, these kind of people just don't have enough experience and they have enough biographies to realize, like you think what you want is money, but what you really want is meaning. You're gonna get the money and then you're gonna be like, why am I so unhappy? Because you're a human and this happens over and over again. That doesn't mean people don't like money and they obviously solves a lot of benefits, but you're gonna feel a lot better. If you think about the reasons that people sell a business, typically it's either because they have a chance to make a tremendous amount of money or some amount of money, or it's because they're tired of the thing, of the business, therefore of the product of the whole endeavor. Why do you think that the money thing has become, I would think about it as like a false idol or something like that. It has become the unit of interest, of obsession, of showing off, of status, of all this kind of stuff. What's your theory for why this seems to have been reflected so crazily in the last couple of years? Well, now we have a giant mirror into everybody else's life we never had this way. Like, think of one good thing about decentralization of medias, like there's no gatekeepers. That's also the bad thing in the sense of like, now, somebody just put me onto crazy rich Asians of TikTok and it is some of the most-- I've got that one. Oh, we should do that. I'll send you some clips. And it's some of the most disgusting behavior, like one lady is, I guess, her parents own-- she lives in California, but her parents own-- one of the largest cloud computing companies in China. Another one is like some giant, maybe even like government collusion in Singapore or something like that. But it's like all the videos, all the videos are just straight consumption. It's, look what I got. Me and my-- and they do this thing where it's like, me and my mom went shopping today. And we spent 25,000 of in cleaf. And then we bought a Hermet thing. And we did this. It's like, this is disgusting behavior. Because you shouldn't take pride in what you consume. That doesn't take skill or talent. You should take pride in what you built. That is the most selfish thing you could possibly do. And I'm not a kid. Like, dude, I'm building-- the goal here is to change the trajectory of my entire family tree. I'm going to. to build generational wealth, not so my kids can do that shit. That'll never happen. But to try to teach him, the wealth came because you made somebody else's life better. You dedicated, it's a selfless act, even if you love it. And this idea that like we are, so I understand that, it's like so, but then young people see that and they're like, "Oh, that I need to figure out how to make money." And I was like this, I was so embarrassed when I was younger. That I had to like, how much I had to work or like, I didn't have a car or like all this other stuff that happened. I remember being deeply, deeply embarrassed. And then switching from embarrassment to like, almost like relentless self belief that like, "I am better than that person." Like I remember going, there was this kid that lived close to, like, went to the same school as me. It was a public high school. But I remember the crazy story I heard where like, I think again, this was like, it's funny when you think of wealth. But like his dad owned like, I don't know, like 100 dominoes or something. But I just remember they used to take a helicopter to lunch. And I'm like, what? And I remember him bragging about the car. His dad bought him like 120,000 like car. He'd park in front of the country club, which obviously I would never even be able to get into the country club. And I remember flipping and I was like, "I'm better than that kid. Like I'm smarter than him. I work harder. Like I'm gonna fuck him up." And it turned into like this competitive, like, I will prove to you that like, you what was handed to you, I will get myself. And there was like some kind of weird drive behind that. But so when I see people like that where it's just like, you're glorifying the wrong thing. Where like if you think about, there's this great talk that Steve Jobs gave when he came back to Apple and he said, "Well, Apple spends all this money on marketing. You would never know it. It sucks. All your marketing sucks." And he's like, who are the best, what is the best example of marketing? And he talked about Nike. And he's like, what does Nike do? He doesn't even talk about like, the shoe is has a bunch of six bubbles or whatever. They glorify great athletes. They glorify great achievement. And so that's where he did the crazy ones ad. And so I think that's like to some degree, what I'm trying to do is like, the reason I make these clips on the anti-business billionaires, the reason I'm too spend so much time talking about these people and the craftsmanship and talk about this guy that is literally a craftsmanship with his chicken figures, is because to some degree, I want to celebrate these people saying, "Hey, I'm going to dedicate my life to building the best possible product I can and to make somebody else's life better." And I'll talk all day long about that. And not about the fact that, you know, I'm building a yacht or I'm doing all this other stuff. Like you can have all these things. But like, what are you actually proud of? You're not proud of your consumption? Well, you're probably, and you may go to the store and buy that. Not everybody can build a truly great product. Why are the people that are doing it that way so much better at marketing than like, if you read a marketing book and, you know, try to go market your product or had some marketing person at your company in charge of how the world hears about you. I'm thinking about the Red Bull founder, Estee Lauder, like, there seems to be Steve Jobs, of course. This shows up over and over again that not only is the ability to create an incredible product, that God, I love that line of mediocrity is invisible until passion shows up to. What are you exposed to? To expose it. So I won't forget that one. But the same thing seems to happen. So that's the product side. The same thing seems to happen from all these same people on the marketing side. What is the flame there that's behind that? Like, why? What have you learned about that side of business studying all these people? Were they're not only responsible for the product but also for how the world engages with it and hears about it? Again, I'd go back to those three. Ivanshanard, James Dyson and Steve Jobs, I think they have all these lessons in that. Ivanshanard calls it nonfiction marketing. He's like, if you have a shit product, like you have to like dress it up, you have to put, you have to have a mascot, you have to hire these expensive advertising companies. You know, you have to make up all the stuff. It's all fiction. But if you just, in his thing, he didn't even want to be a billionaire. He just like, hey, I'm going to, again, he built a product for himself. He was a mountaineer. He was at, he spent all his time outdoors. He fishes. He's mountain, he skis. He climbs mountains. He does all these super-rissing sports. All the gear I'm using sucks. I'm going to make the gear that I use and guess what? If I make the best gear, then everybody's like, where'd you get that? Oh, that's good too. And it takes best friend. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that'll compound again. If you don't sell after five years or four years, or do anything that puts in jeopardy to durability of your company. And so I think about James Dyson. It's this great line in a, like, paraphrase. But how he wants to spend his time, he wants to invent. He wants to be as close to the possible to the design of the product, the manufacturing of the product. He will be on the line of the product even in the 70s, right? But what he realized is like, after he's done making the product, he's the one that went around the world and sold the product. Because he's like, the creator is the only person that can explain what went into the process of the thinking behind it. And then with his full heart, he's something like that, with the full heart and complete belief in what he's saying, foisted upon other people at a high price. Because he knows, hey, yeah, this, you can go and buy a vacuum cleaner for $40 or $600. Guess what, my house, I have a Dyson. It's the best vacuum cleaner. It just is. And I'm asking you to pay 10x before you can get, you know, anywhere else. Why? And I can tell you what went into it. The blood sweat and tears. I kind of reject this purely rational, like the way people, they try to analyze business in a rational way, which is weird to me because humans are nothing but irrational. And they give money for reasons they can't describe. And some of this, like, why would somebody pay? You know, I love this thing that you see with like, Enzo Ferrari, you guys did a great post about this when you did a Ferrari episode. And it showed like the racetrack, the test track. And they're like, there's a test track. And then literally, Enzo Ferrari's house, he built the racetrack around his house, right? And it's just like, why do people come from all over the world to meet this guy, right? And to buy a car that, you know, is 100 times 10 times, 20, 30 times more expensive than just another car that could go fast. There's a story behind it. And I think that's where, like, you see, the people that love the product so much, they put so much of their life's energy into it. That then they can explain very clearly why it's valuable. The reason I'm not trying to be like obnoxious when I ask people for this in the podcast, and they don't, I tell them to take out their phone. I heard this great thing, and this is another idea I got from Paul Graham. When we said in the early days of Stripe, they call it the callousin installation, where they're like, oh, there's other YC companies, they're like, I love their new Stripe, and they'd be like, oh, great, give me your laptop. And they would install it right then. And so I saw that idea. Great idea. I'm gonna do this center installation. And so I've done this over and over. I don't even know, I probably installed it, I don't know, not joking, like 500 times. Like, oh, this is gonna be the best day you've ever had. You're gonna look back on this day. Unbelievable what this podcast is gonna do for your career. Here, follow right there. Like I think James Cameron episode is the best episode ever done. Maybe the Red Bull episode, maybe the Chicken Finger episode. But like, I can tell you that with a straight face and not feel shameful or shameless or whatever the term is there about doing that. Because I believe in it. It took a lot of fucking work to make that. And I know the lessons are good, because that guy told you they're good. What is it about the Red Bull? Story. It's so unique. It's so different. It's one of my favorites they've ever done. So this is another against like, it's like, you know me well, I'm getting hot. You know me well enough, it's just like, I'm not like, somebody could offer me like, come run my company or like, pay me more money. Like there's just no way I would do that. Like I'm not doing, there's other ulterior motives for it. And one, like, if you're really smart, you can find a way to build a grid business almost anything. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. With Deatrice Matches, it's like his whole thing, one of the stories is crazy because at the time I did that episode, there's no biographies in English. So like this is also what drives me insane. And everything you should be thinking about differentiation. The reason I started a solo podcast, right, on history podcast in 2016 is because in 2016, I thought there was way too many, I can go interview entrepreneurs. Everybody's already doing that, right? And there's obviously something in interstitial, always room for great, right? But I did, I have this natural inclination of my entire life to like go in the other direction that other people are doing. So I knew it was differentiated. And what I love about the episodes I love the most is like, there's not even a book about it. You have to like make the content for the episode. So I had to translate, our friend of mine translated that biography from German. So first of all, I was like, oh, good. Like how many people have done an episode on this guy based on this book? Well, if you haven't spoke German, not, right? So, and then you realize this story, it's just like, you know, he was working for a bunch of CPG companies, traveling to Asia. He's jet lagged all the time. He, he winds up finding the red bull, but it's in a different language. It's like 15 cents or whatever the case is. He's like, oh, this works. And there's really no like energy drink category. So he helps create the category and then master the category. And then realizes you have a lot of like, you really need to raise the price. And then even the way he looked at things, where he's like, oh, we're a marketing conglomerate. So we're gonna outsource everything else but marketing. It's like everybody's talking about content, decoromers and all this other stuff today. It's like, this is nothing is new. You just have a red enough history. Like, you wanna look at the best content of commerce? Right there. And then what does he do? He optimizes for, he did not wanna have a board directors. He did not wanna be in the public stock market. He didn't wanna be answerable to anybody. The guy, I mean, the guy wasn't married. Like, you just look at it. People give you hints about what's important to them. Just look, read between the lines. And you clearly see, he doesn't like people telling him what to do. He has a ton of fun. He's also crazy. He likes to like, he even went out to his 70s. He was like taking risky sports, mountain biking. He was like flying his own planes, racing his own cars. He was like the red bull. Like the brand of red bull was him. And then you get to the point where the him and his partner, they each own 49% of the company. They put $500,000 in each. Then they had a small bank loan. Every single thing from the growth from there was out of profits. How many people, essentially, can bootstrap? If somebody gave, if you mean you have a business right now, right, you're gonna put in half a million, I'll put in half a million, we're gonna get a small bank loan. You know, hard, the unlikely outcome that you and I build a business that's worth 40 or 50 or 60 billion dollars? You know, hard that is. How the hell did he do that? There's a great line by Charlie Munger. He says one of my favorite ways to, one of my favorite ways to knowledge is finding an extreme example and asking what the hell happened here? You know, and you're like in my case, it's like people. It's like what? There's a guy. There's some Austrian guy that owns Red Bull that is turning down his, he turned on multiple offers where he would have made 20 billion for his 49%. He's paying himself 500 to 800 million a year. He's so private that he buys the magazine that's trying to write a story about him. Like there's a guy that is trying to write an unauthorized biography of him, goes to his mom's house. Deetress finds the guy and says if you don't leave my mom alone, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pay a Russian guy to break your knees. Your kneecaps is like what is happening here? Who is this person? And I think that's really important because all it does is like completely pops off the top of your head about what is possible in life. The reason I'm obsessed with these main acts on emissions, these super-driven people, these the opposite of casual people is because it's like they stretch what I believe is possible. Let me be a perfect example. There's a There's this recurring theme on the podcast that's in all these biographies and I the shorthand I have for this is how bad do you want it? And I just came across an example this with Ken Griffin. The reason I did the Ken Griffin episode even though there's not a biography on him. I think there's one that's like crappy and it's like two stars in Amazon. So you know, these people writing it's probably like Chetchy PT wrote it or something. Or the old version of Chetchy PT, the new version actually the deep researcher can write the D research. Hey, I use deep research every day. It's really good. He talks about when he was 33 years old and run both up. John Arnold tells the story on Twitter and it goes viral on Twitter. And that's how I found it. That's what sparked me because I keep hearing about Ken. Once I read that, I was like, this is a founders guy have to do it and N run blows up spectacular in 2001. The day blows up. Ken Charters Gulfsube Jet sends like 16 people down to Houston. Interviews every single person in the N Ron energy like the quantity of business. Everyone finds out how they made money. What their competitors were. What worked. What didn't work. Right. Then he finds the head trainer, which is John Arnold and John Arnold's like Ken's assistant calls. He's like, Hey, Ken wants to talk to you. We just talked him. He's like, Listen, I'm not open for a job right now. I'm trying to close the books, but I respect what Ken is built. So I will talk to him. Okay. I'm headed to Aspen for an event right now. When I'm back in Houston, till Ken, I will take his phone call. Hangs up. Assistant calls back a few minutes later. Ken is willing to fly to where you are. If he flies to Aspen today, well, you meet with them. He said, Yeah, how bad do you want? And Ken's point that he makes that's I don't think that's in the Twitter post, but he tells us same story in the conversation with you. He goes, I hired all the best people at N Ron. And since then, we've made about 30 billion dollars. Trading commodities. How bad do you want it? Most people like, Oh, I'll wait till next week. I'll catch you a couple days. He's like, I'm coming today. 33 years old. You always see the true interest is revealed early. He was doing stuff like that. When when long-term capital manager blew up in 98, he was 30 years old. He went and visited those guys. What do you want to know? You guys didn't lose control of your business until over 90% of your equity. How the hell did you keep it after like 30% 40% 50%? How is that possible? And then what happened? That was in 1998. He was 30 in 2008. When he was 40, he lost 50% of his equity. And he says, well, I learned from those conversations. I used 10 years later to keep Citadel and business. I asked sort of the marketing version of this question, like the non-fiction marketing. If you believe so deeply in the thing, it actually becomes easier to sell the $600 vacuum versus the $40 one. What about it on the talent side? I know you've learned a lot from Brad Jacobs and other people about the power of hiring the very best people. Everybody says that. It really says that they don't do it. But they don't do it. So why don't they do it? What do found true founders in your sense of the word? Do differently. The same question I asked about marketing, but for talent. Yeah, there's a green line. I did this clip in this video called Overpay for Talent because you can't really overpay for talent. And Brad Jacobs in his book, he talks about that over and over again. We mean you went to his house and he talked about it. He told us numbers he was paying for talent. It would shock you. Mr. Beast's video editor is like this 22 year old, the main kid, 22 or 24 year old kid. If you know what he paid him, you see this over and over again. Why? Because the example in the video is like, well, did Apple really need next? No, they need a seed job. So they paid 500, they paid half a billion dollars to rehire the guy they shouldn't that they needed. And he produced, you know, whatever return on that money, like they got a deal on getting him back. The reason I think people don't do is one, I don't think everything we describe and do I think there's like a limit to like the actual application. I guess the these ideas you can scale down and scale up, but like there's just not that many talented people in every field and they they're really hard to find. They take a long term, long time to to usually convince. They're usually really, really expensive and in many cases they're working for themselves. So like they're not like there's not like a abundance of people, but this just happened with me and you talked about this. Your new editor in chief just wrote that Neil made a piece and how did you find them? You found he wrote the best Palmer lucky and Palmer luckies. The best profile period. Yeah, and the best and Palmer lucky. He's like he's got a lot of coverage. He does great interviews and everything. He's wildly entertaining. And yet this guy wrote the best piece on him. Jeremy. So it's very, Jeremy. Stern. Thank you. It's very simple. It's like, oh, this is what Munger told our mutual friend, Brent. He's like, how do you find CEOs? I just find somebody did a great job at being a CEO. I said, do that. But for me, him then Brent's like, what about hiring for potential? And Munger's like, I don't do that. I don't do that. I just find the great guy in Tell McCormick over here. So you just did this. You're like, hey, that guy's really good. What's the chance that he's only able to write one good? Right. Possible. Yeah. Like you don't get that good without there's a skill there, you know? And so I have gone through. I realized I wasn't even taking my own advice because I would use like all these people when you're just like inside baseball like when you see all these podcasts that have all these clips. They're outsourced. Claps arms. Yeah, they're like, they're like all the pictures like it's so cheap. And I even use some that my friends recommended. And I'm like, these are terrible. And I found a guy and we met him together. And he is really young and really gifted. His name is Maxim. He is my opinion one of the best short form editors in the world. Shout out Blake Robbins for connecting us. It took me a while. If you want to do this, it only works because he's obsessed with the podcast. And he was like in the audience. He's predisposed and he's already listening to it anyways. And I was like, do that for me. And then he tells me the price and the price is like six times. Six X. What other people pay? And I said, done. Where do I send the wire? And then what happens? The clothes are coming out. And the person that doing your video right now, all these people with me, they're like, these are the best podcasts. And then we, when you talk like, what's the management? There is no management. Like I bought your taste. It's like, I know already know you're great because I watch your videos and like, this is incredible. It's like hiring Tarantino and be like, I have some feedback for you. No, we should shut. That's Tarantino. This happens to me where like I get emails and the subject line, feedback on the podcast. Don't even read it. Right in the garbage. You link me to a podcast that you have made that is even in the, in want like even in the same category. And then I will listen. But again, you think I'm making it for you. The act of publishing it makes it an act of service. But I made it for me first. So I can't do what you want me to do. Because I'm not making it for you. I have to be satisfied first. And so the answer question is like one, even me who every single episode is like overpay for talent, find the best people, never ever forget the dynamic range of humans. You know, Steve Jobs says, you know, the best person is not a hundred times better. Not twice as good. There are a hundred times and a thousand times better, which is obviously true. Think about the best investors. Like, you know, that profile you did on Neil made a like, I don't know how many other investors in the world are better than him. It's not 10,000. Whatever the number is, it's a small number, especially if you say the same age group. Now what? Five, two, one. I don't know. But that's the, and that's so hard to actually find the person. In this case, it came because somebody else that's really good at spotting talent told me and you about this guy. And maybe I probably wouldn't have found him if it wasn't for that. So these things take a lot of time. And then what I would say is just like, if you're not, you have to actually actually, actually, I think having a, I have a basic intolerance for casualness, for mediocrity, for not being completely obsessed with what you're doing. And so that we doubt most of humanity anyways. And then what I do is like, I have this great back somewhere. It's like, you should limit, you should limit the amount of details and then make every detail perfect. And so for me, it's like, I don't need a much, I don't need anybody to edit on anybody to make it. The only thing I can't do is I'll never be a video editor like him. So I can't, it's not like I have to go out and hire. I don't want to put myself in a position where my business only works if I find like the 15 best people in the world. That's not the game I'm playing. I love the answers on product, on marketing and on talent. Maybe the last one is on capital. Is there anything that you've seen the people that you've studied do different or especially, especially well when it comes to attracting the right sources and partnerships with on the capital side specifically, raising money, doing clever deals, clever financing. Is there any dimension there that's worth exploring? These were starting getting in trouble too. I literally have no friends that aren't entrepreneurs. But I just can't talk to anybody that's not an entrepreneur. What I always tell them, they're like, yeah, I started this company and it's like software company. And they're like, all right, I got to go and like raise a bunch of money. I was like, You should take a look at what Larry Ellison did, and Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. You listen to the podcast, right? You told me you listen to those episodes, what did they do? They raised money? No, they sold the product. They started selling the product before the product was made. Well, maybe you should go out and see if you can get other ways to do this. It's shocking to me how the default is, I must go out and convince other people that are not my customers to give me money. And sometimes you have to. There's nothing, I'm not, again, I'm not anti-raising money. I'm anti-wastefulness. And the point that Todd Graves makes in the episode is, like, listen man, a lot of these PE guys come in, and they try to buy you out and everything else. This is like, why do you think they want your equity? 'Cause it's very valuable. So doesn't mean you can't change, you know, exchange money for equity, sometimes you have to do it. But you should be very, very careful. And he came up with, like, think about this. This way, how bad do you want it? And I'm doing the Michael Dell episode. I'm almost positive. Michael Dell, his initial server capital for Dell, was $1,000. I have to double check, 'cause I've already listened to the book three times, I've read it, I'm going through it again. So I couldn't mind my read. And I'm pretty sure when he went public, he only 70% of Dell. It's not my opinion. I would just go, how does Larry Ellison know so much of Oracle? Like, where did the funding come from Microsoft? What about Apple? Like, what did they do? Like, they obviously raised money, they go public, they do all this other stuff. Just like, think about that. And do you have to do that? This is a really important decision. You should not be casual about what you're doing. So, Todd Graves, chicken figure, right? How many people are you gonna criticize this guy for being put on this earth by God to make the world's best chicken fingers? And I love them. Fried chicken outside of like, I like fried chicken. Like, I like it. I don't know what to tell you. I try not to eat it, 'cause I get fat immediately, but I like fried chicken. I've eaten a lot of fried chicken. I like his fried chicken. I think it's the best. So, what did he do? He's like, listen, I went to a bank. He goes, it was the idea for Reason Cains was a paper in business school, LSU. And he got the worst grade in class, which is funny, because FedEx, Fred Smith, got a bad grade. Still a night, Nike, bad grade. Maybe we shouldn't have professors judging business plans. Maybe this is kind of stupid, right? So, Todd Graves goes, I bought, he goes to office depot, buys a briefcase, the little shitty one with like the zero zero zero, and I put the brief, so I buy a $99 suit. I buy a briefcase. I put the business school paper that I got a bad grade on in the briefcase. I go down the bank and they're like, dude, we're not, you're not in a position to loan you money. And one of the reasons was you have no experience, they sell them, you should work in the industry for 10 years, even though he'd already worked through it in college. But you want to just make chicken fingers where your industry is going in the opposite direction. And this is where I got really pissed off in the episode. I was induced into a state of rage. They said, Todd, obviously this is not gonna work out because liquid McDonald's is doing. They're going after a variety, they're salads, there's all these other stuff on the menu, there's milkshakes, you just have chicken fingers. Like, what is wrong with you? And my point was that shame on that person at the bank because again, nothing we're doing is new. Go back to 1948, look up to Skyrim Harry Snyder who founded this company called In and Out. All Todd Graves did, if you look at what he did, he's like, oh, I'll just do In and Out with chicken fingers. It's the exact same story, except he started earlier and is now, I think when Harry Snyder passed away, he only had like 17 restaurants and Todd's son, charger's company's got the 800 and something. And so like, that part really frustrates me 'cause it's like, there's already a historical equivalent of this succeeding beyond like your Wall of Streams. In and Out probably wasn't an LSU, the guy didn't know, maybe there was no internet back then, whatever the case is, I'm not like being overly harsh on this. So then what's Todd, let's do it. You're not gonna loan me any money. What do I do? I guess I'll just give up. That's what most people just stop right there. "Oh, okay, I will work for 10 years." These guys are right. I'm some young stupid college kid. They're in fancy suits in a nice office. They know what they're talking about. History. Of course he sees that it, in many cases, not the case. So then what do you do? He's like, okay, these oil companies hire boilermakers. And what happens is if a refinery goes down, every day that thing is down, that's very expensive them. So boilermakers come through and they either like update the equipment or fix the equipment. And so if you're willing to work 95 hour weeks in rotesque environments, in physical labor, you can make so much money working a hundred hours a week for like five weeks at a time. Then he makes a ton of money. He saves up a couple of thousands of dollars doing that. Then one of the boilermakers named Wild Bill, who's also one of his investors, which I love. He got the money from saving money from boilermaking, right? Then they tell him, "Hey, you can go up and do commercial fishing in Alaska." At the time Todd is doing this, I'm like much younger watching Deadliest Catch. He was on, like the show is being filmed when he's doing this. And so yeah, you may fall overboard and die, but if you don't, you're gonna make, you know, 50 grand in two months as a 20 year old kid and he lived in a tent. He lived in a tent. He ate nothing but ramen noodles. He risked his life, right? On the boat, he went to the boilermaker. Then he comes back. The boilermaker is giving him a little bit of money. Like you keep talking about chicken fingers, you're fucking crazy. I will give you a little bit of money. Then he had a bookie, he guess what? My bookie has a lot of cash. He has a cash business. This guy does not have a bank account. So then he invested. And that's how he got the money to do his first store. And then from there he's like, okay, well, how do I do store two, store three, store four? The first 28 stores after this was financed in a very unique way, which he says, this worked out for me, do not do what I'm about to tell you to do. They're all geographically concentrated in Louisiana, right? And so he would go and he said, he called him angel investors. They're not angel investors. So he goes, so I have two chicken finger stores. I'm open the third. I don't have any money, right? Banks not still have to give me money, right? But these things start cash flowing right away. So I go to you. I go, dude, give me 200 grand. I'll give you one paid contract. Personally liable, not the company, personally liable. And I will pay, I'll get into a 15% return on this 200 grand. And you say, okay, you don't, you give me the 200 grand. I put the 200 grand in the bank. The bank now will lend me that like, oh, you have $200,000 on your equity. I'll lend you 800 grand on top of that, a million, whatever the number is on top of that. And I start the store. And what happens? Well, day one, there's gonna be some people buying chicken. So cash flow happens right away. I pay my rent 30 days later. I pay payroll two days, two weeks later. And I pay all my supplies, net, you know, net 30 or net 60. And so it works as a lot of these people come in and start buying chicken fingers. And so he's like, I was rolling. I was balling out of control. He gets to all the way up to 28 stores doing this. Leverage to the, yeah, exactly. Leverage to the hilt. And then hurricane Katrina comes to and goes, (whooshing) there goes all of your restaurants. And so then he's like, oh my God, I'm going to lose everything. He turns the pandemic, this is what great entrepreneurs and investors do. They find opportunity and catastrophe, right? And so he's like, listen guys, we have to open up. One, you guys wanna pay Jack, right? Two, every single other restaurant in Louisiana is closed. So people need to eat. Three, if we don't, I'm done. There's nothing like, I need to make money. He winds up being the first restaurant to open after Hurricane Katrina. He had like a, he had like 90 days, something like 16 to 90 days to himself. So what happens? You live in Louisiana, maybe you never tried raising gains. Guess what? - Right, right. - Now you try it now. Oh, this is really good. And now you're a fan and you tell other people and it keeps compounding. Same thing with the pandemic. What happened? All the restaurants are closed. But the government said, food is essential, right? In a central business, but it has to be in the drive-through. You move from doing something like, I don't know, let's say two billion or let's say a billion dollar a year in 2020 to like five and like two, 24. Yeah, so taking something terrible and turning it into an actual opportunity. So that's like pretty creative way to finance something. And his whole point is it's like, yeah, or you could go, how bad do you want it? And just think through what you're doing. Because his whole point where he saw a bunch of other people, they raised money and we know people that this has happened to, they don't have control. And his thing was he was not optimizing for money. He was, if it's your dream, the first thing, the most important thing is survival. It's to make sure that they can't take your company away from you. Steve Jobs, again, this, people, founders talk about this all now, like this is something new. Steve Jobs said in like the '80s, victory in our industry is spelled survival. You go back and talk about like, people think, like he was unbelievable. He said, he says this line, it says something like, you pay attention to the nickels 'cause the nickels are into quarters. And he says when, and he's like, at the beginning of Apple, we pay attention to all of our costs. We watch what we were doing. We bought intelligently. He would call if the suppliers had all the hell out of them. And obviously he's the best, probably the best I was never lived. And then when he started next, he's like, oh, I didn't do it anymore 'cause I'm rich. And I don't need to. And I have Ross Perot writing fat checks and I'm on. I'm famous and he stopped doing it. He's like, we gotta get back to the basics. We have to be very creative and very pay attention to this. - We started our conversation talking about focus. To conclude it, can you just define after all this study what the word founder means to you? - That's a good question. I don't know if I ever thought about it. The way it, so my definition for entrepreneur has always been like somebody has ideas and does them. And I think the reason I'm interested, we have this thing called, the shorthand called founder mentality. And there's the reason I profile down just like founders, but investors and athletes and filmmakers and people like Napoleon and Churchill, is because what they did is they saw something missing in the world, it could be leadership. And they think, well, Winston Churchill, or during World War II, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a product, it could be a company, it could be a service. And they're like, this thing should exist. And I'm the one who's gonna be the one who's gonna be the one. going to make it come to life. And the way I'm going to do this, like I'm going to direct my energy on creating this thing from nothing and making it real. And I still think like, again, you know this, because like you have small kids and especially when they're really small, they're they're about different kind of intelligence where everything to them was a wonder. And so they're constantly like, why is that? Why is that? My son's in this age right now, just why, why, why, why, why? And sometimes they can get frustrating, but it's also like kind of brilliant. It's like on the midwit meme, it's like all the way to the left, but like really actually brilliant. And I don't think I ever get over the fact that you can have an idea that you don't even know where it comes from. Maybe it comes from yourself conscious, maybe it comes from a dream, maybe it comes from God, whatever you call it. And that idea just starts with an idea. It's like, oh, and then that goes from your mind into real life. And the version of this is like, it's a little disorienting to this day where I just sat in a room by myself reading and then I spoke into a microphone not knowing what was going to happen. And like that made something real, that act of creation. And it's the thing I'm most proud of. The fact that like I was talking to a friend of mine, we went on a walk right before I fell up here to meet you. And I was like, I think the thing I'm most proud of in my life is like I grind it for five and a half years with like no f**k, no visible, like progress. And I didn't give up. And like I don't know if I do that today. I don't know if I would do that today. And I look back, I'm like, you would make a lot of stupid decisions along this way. But like that is a really good decision. That you just something told you you can't explain. You didn't couldn't predict that like just keep going. Like you will figure it out. You have the self-belief. Keep going. It's a wonderful closing thought. So cool to think about everything you've done the last, I guess eight years now, nine years now. I love how you close your thing. We're saying, you know, 400 books down a thousand to go. There's always a thousand to go. Wonderful closing sentiment. Thanks for doing this with me.