Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast)

It's like, I repetition works. Who got the truth?

Another story on the way.

David David Senra, that is, has read hundreds of founder biographies and done deep episodes on them all.

We covered a ton of ground, including that, I think. Two nights before we recorded. David was just coming up from L.A. where he had dinner with Charlie Munger. And so he spent a lot of time talking about that. Charlie's influence on David, his and Warren's influence on all three of us. A bunch of thoughts on advice generally. And as you can imagine, David just sprinkled dozens and dozens of historical examples and founder stories throughout the episode.

David is definitely close with the Eminent Dead. I will say after editing this episode, I had one enormous takeaway. David Senra is really, really into podcasting, so get fired up to meet him on his level. All right, quick things go.

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So, David, do you want to tell us who you had dinner with? The other night? I had a three-hour dinner with Charlie Munger.

But Charlie's a different level for me, like I literally think of him like the wise grandfather I never had. You know, I've met all kinds of people. I don't really get like nervous or starstruck. I was legitimately like shaking the day before.

I was like, I cannot believe I did. I didn't want to tell that many people because like this is, there's no way this is gonna happen. Like, I just, I won't believe it till it actually happens. We we do very similar work, right where? It's like, how many people have spent six, seven years? Tens of thousands of hours reading hundreds of books about the history of entrepreneurship and investing, and then not even reading it, taking notes on it, making a podcast.

Yeah, so it's like, it's so much like the room we're in, like, you know, very similar size and, you know, floor-to-ceiling shelves. And so I'm with a small group of friends. It's in fact mutual friends for us. So people that set this up for us, or for me, was Andrew Wilkinson and Chris from the founders of Tiny, who are mutual friends. And and so we're sitting there and there's actually a funny thing where it starts out. And they know both Warren and Charlie, they've talked to him before, so they go right into it. And then, like, I'm sitting there and I had this whole list of.

It's like he was unbelievably gracious. hmm, you know, unbelief. Like I was like, Hey Charlie, you mind if I take a look at your bookshelf, right? He's just like, do whatever you want, just unbelievably polite, still, like biting intellect, ferocious intelligence at 99, at 99. So we were talking earlier.

Downstairs, where the scary thing about Charlie is. I remember asking a question about Henry Kaiser, this guy that was super famous when Charlie was younger. He built like a hundred companies, built the Hoover Dam, like he was as famous in his time. Is like, Elon Musk is today right? But no one knows who he is. And I was asking questions about Charlie in the book, and his recall is just insane.

So the point we're asking, Ago, how do you know all this, Charlotte? He goes. I knew his partner starts telling stories about being knowing, like having a relationship with Henry Kaiser's business partner. And then all these three hours of just unbelievable stories, and then I go.

Charlie Like, how do you remember all stuff like, do you write? like, you take notes, you reread the books over and over again? He's like, Nope, and all I could think, I was like, Imagine, wow, that guy's mind at 99 is still so sharp. I had brought a gift for him because he talks about like Rockefeller all the time.

I bought him this special edition.

Centennial edition version of Henry Flagler's biography, Oh, Flagler. So I live in Miami. The guy less Sandiford, I think, is his, the author of that book he is good friends with. There's only like one local bookshop in Miami called Books of Books.

And so less is a local author who's good friends with the owner of that bookstore. So they did a. But you can't get this book anywhere else, it's a special edition book. Because Flagler moved to Florida after the standard oil, yeah.

Yeah, that he's got a fascinating story, that where he made you unbelievably wealthy because of standard oil. Yeah, he's, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old when he's doing this, and he's just like, Oh, what do I do now? I'll build an entire state when he gets to Miami. Miami is little less than 500 people living a swamp, he can't live there.

There was no AC at the time. And so then he builds the the world's first railroad over connecting the Florida Keys. He just essentially like, you read that book and like, Oh, humans have no limits other than the ones we put on ourselves. And so that's what Flagler does. He did stretches it.

He does some terrible things to where it's like, Yeah, wanted to find a way to divorce his wife, so he literally moves to another state because you couldn't be divorced. In New York. Bribes the the the government of Florida, they create the Flagler law, which allows him to get a divorce. Then he does that like a few thing a few times, I think he's like in the 70s and marries like a 30 year old. Like, just not all good.

But that guy's like, Oh, your rules don't apply to me. Like, I will build whatever I want. He built infrastructure, hotels, everything else.

Here's the next amazing thing that they did.

Like, I don't want to know where the origination, their last name.

So I would literally, and I've done this forever. It's like, I don't. We need like a Warren Buffett, or Ben Franklin, or George Washington, or anybody super famous. When we see them, it's like, Oh, who's the Ben Franklin on the hundred dollar bill, right? or who's of Washington on the Dollar Bill? or who's Buffett at the meeting in Omaha?

It's like, No, no, that that's the guy that is is enjoying the fruits of the person actually built the empire. That's a little, yeah. I go and stare at pictures like a freak at like of young Charlie Munger when he was, like, 38, or young Warren Buffett, right? They? They were like, Oh, they were young people once.

We got to do Walmart first. People want this like this is the right way to study things.

Yeah, 38 billion of whatever was. It's like, you don't build a company, sell for 40 billion dollars and then learn all this. It's like he was doing this since he was up, since he was young, we were talking in his autobiography.

They're watching game tape, they're working on the fundamentals from the time they're 12 through the time they die, they don't stop.

One thing I don't like, and I'm paraphrasing, because I don't. I wasn't expecting to talk about this. He's like, I don't like that. These young, the younger people denigrating the people that came before them. Yeah, and he's like, he made the point that none of the none of history's greatest entrepreneurs, investors did that. They had the opposite perspective.

All of them had idols. You just made the point you can't understand Jeff Bezos until you study Sam Walton. can understand Sam Walton.

And then I start looking, it's like, Oh, I'm just taking picture after picture after pictures, like I'm ordering every single one. So we're talking about this idea that like that.

I think it's the hardest part about what we do, and I'm curious if you ever think about.

The story? We both hit on all the podcasts because I've done a bunch of podcasts on Sam, too, where it's like, the guy's pissed off. He's just like driving to store to store, and he's like mountain roads taking forever. So he buys the plane and he realizes like, Oh, this is a massive advantage because I'm doing something my competitors aren't right.

I'm flying over and you guys mentioned it too, which I thought was hilarious. And then he just lands, is like, who owns that? let me land? And and then he, you know, buys for action. So he's like, we're gonna negotiate. Right now. I want to buy it from you, and so my point is like, okay.

Yes, that most likely occurred, but what is the idea behind that? It's do you can have an advantage by doing something your competitors are not doing right. Yeah, and it this ties together what you're. What you just said is like, they all learn from somebody else. When we're reading these books and listening to these podcasts, like, what's the idea I can use in my life?

We're not building the next Walmart. There's no way we read Titan that we could tell. Did this actually happen, right? I don't know, but I'm looking for the ideas behind it. Not all I can. I'm gonna verify for every single word in this book.

That's ridiculous, right? And.

You know, this was premeditated, it's like, whether it's premeditated or not, yeah, you know, the facts are the facts. And like, maybe I can duplicate a different realm for what we do.

Sometimes you'll do five different biographies on Edwin Land. And like, if a choir was gonna do polaroid, we would do polaroid, the episode would be polaroid. Maybe it would be like Polaroid part 1 and part 2. Or like, maybe at some point we have one there. If we'd have, like, someone on to, like, talk about the story, you know, in addition to our one canonical episode, but like, we would be shooting the moon.

I'm like, let's make sure that we get the polaroid story as right. It's almost like, how do we find the correct average of all of the other stories to create the canonical version?

Like, I could not imagine trying to compete against that guy 40 years ago, like he would destroy me, right? He's got a supermind that I don't have. But what Bill says is like, you made it like you don't have to be the smartest person. But you can collect more, the most information. And he's, and he holds you to a high standard in that talk, Bill's like, listen.

In the age of the internet, so all the information you possibly need right is right at your fingertips. You have no excuse not to do this. And so he gives the example of, if you, you, you want to be a domain expert and whatever you're doing, like within two years of intense study. If you're doing that and you're focused on, it's like, you're gonna get to the point where, like, you know more than maybe anybody else. And so that's my whole thing. Was like, when you talk to, you've never met a founder, an entrepreneur, that's like, kind of into, into entrepreneurship, it's like, no, it's our lives.

Yeah, so, of course, the reason why so many of them listen to both of our shows, right? It's because they're building machines where they literally can turn knowledge into profit, right? I? I've become close friends with the guy through the podcast. He's a young kid and I don't mean to call him kid. He's not kid, but he's a lot younger than I am and he's like 28 years old.

And we were on the phone the other day because he had a very serious offer for a company he was like 95 of. And they were gonna, they were gonna give him a hundred million dollars, right? I wasn't saying no to it. But the point is like, when you talk to him, you know he's listened to all the episodes, read like 60 of the books. He'll text me a picture of like, you want to tell me what the book? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure I read that like he's.

Oh, yeah, it's from this episode. It's like, Oh, why? What if he finds one idea in a book, one idea in a podcast, and it gives a 10 improvement on his company? It's a 10 million dollar idea, yeah.

Well, we were talking about this earlier, like.

That is Charlie, Charlie tells the stories like, Yeah.

Because he does, here, he goes. I read. This isn't something, he said. Dinner that firms say publicly. He's like, I read Barron's every all the time for 50 years.

I found one idea that I can act on. I made 50 million dollars on that deal and then I took that 50 million and I gave it to Lee Lou. Is that the oh yeah, I gave that? I gave that 50 million to Lee Lou, and Lee Lou turned into 400 million dollars?

That's how I made 400 million dollars from reading Barron's Wow and listen, I'm not. And this is another thing where I feel like everybody's like, Oh, this time is different, this is new, it's like human nature has never changed.

It will never change. This time is not different. You're just experienced. The difference is you're. If you don't study the history of the people came for you, you're just ignorant and making mistakes that people already saw in the past.

Learning from history is a form of leverage.

Okay, that's good in addition to that.

You optimize her durability first. Dummy like, that's to me, like my interpretation, what he's, what he's saying, right? Yeah, so you're gonna get, you know?

Right, what you do, you? You talk to a microphone yourself every week.

They can jump in and try to do that right, but you have six years of experience you have.

I just take advice when people are smarter, me, Bill said. Go collect everybody, everything you can. Okay, good, I'll do that. This is. These are simple ideas, yeah, and so I'll find somebody that's interesting.

I'll read everything about him. And so with Charlie, I have, like a little Charlie Monger on my shoulder. I have a little Steve Jobs, a little Edwin Land, a little David Ogilvy, Estee Lauder, Coco Chanel, all these people that have been heroes of mine. James Dyson. And so now I'm presented with the situations like, what would they do? And you have. If you read and spend and absorb everything that's out there about these people, like, you'll have an idea of, like, how they would respond.

Did you guys ever read Ken Koscienda's book Creative Selection? Uh-huh about that? Oh, that's shocking.

He has this excellent book that I've read like three times, called Creative Selection. I think the The Design, How Apple Design Products and Golden Age of Steve Jobs might be the subtitle. But he talked about that where he demoed to Steve, right? And you're not gonna describe it to him, you're gonna demo and you're gonna hand it to him. And so they iterate, you guys already know this.

They iterate through a series of demos, and it's based on Steve's taste. Okay, it's not, Oh, let's talk about this, like, Nope, do this, do this, that. And so Ken has a great line in the book. Where he's like, Demoing for Steve is like asking questions to the oracle Delphi, except the oracle Delphi would like respond with a riddle. And he's like, No, no. Steve was unbelievably like, Crystal clear.

You understood him. Out of every single person I've ever studied, Steve Jobs is by far the clearest thinker I have ever come across. Like, I just gifted at that. Charlie is like the oracle, and it's crystal clear. You are not like you were gonna understand what he's, the idea he's trying to get into your brain, for sure.

But my point being is, like all of the people that we study, they don't denigrate the past. They Steve Jobs. The reason I'm so obsessed with Evan Land I read in a biography when Steve was like 20 in his 20s, Edwin Land is in like, 70s.

He goes and meets Edwin Land, and he goes. Visiting Edwin Land was like visiting a shrine. He's like, he is my hero. More people should try to be like that. And then you guys made the point in that.

You know, Jeff Bezos took a lot of ideas from Sam, who took a bunch of ideas from Sony to Steve, and, yeah, Jeff. So that you always find these people were like, Oh, I thought this was a Steve Jobs idea, right? No, it's an Akiya Morita idea.

How did you, like, decide that this is what you were gonna do with your time on this planet? And?

You know, Jerk, our mutual friend Jeremy from Formula of Tiny. Yeah, I just spent like a bunch of hours with him, he was in town. In one sentence, he, like, he psychoanalyzed me better anybody else ever has.

He goes, You didn't have any mentors growing up, so you like, you have. Then you took it to like this extreme. And he said it more, much, more eloquently than I am. But he's like, you don't have any mentors, so I view your career is like the psychopathic search for like mentors that can help you. You know, so like to answer questions like.

I don't go into too much detail here, but, uh, like, I've only had one habit my whole life, and that was reading. I was reading for as long as I can remember. My mom passed away from breast cancer a couple years ago. And.

She, We didn't have like a lot of money, like long story, but like I was the first person. Not you graduate college, but like high school in my family, like I came from a family, like, unfortunately both sides of family, like no education, a lot of, like, just bad habits. So I identify with a lot what Charlie Munger says, because he essentially observes bad behavior and then tries to do the opposite, right. So I was just let me example. I was just up in Canada, actually at an event Andrew Wilkinson was hosting for a bunch of entrepreneurs. Me, Shane Parrish from the Knowledge Project and and Farnham. She was up there. Ben Wilson from How to Take Over the World, and we were doing this panel together.

And Shane's the moderator and we don't know what we're gonna talk about beforehand, and so Shane asked the questions like, Oh, what? Um, what did you learn most from your upbringing? Or something like that, right? And I go. I learned not to do cocaine and to graduate high school, like, so that kind of thing, right?

And so there's just a bunch of anti models. I thought about this as I was walking through the tenderloin this morning at San Francisco. And I was like, I should have do this walk with my daughter as the best. Like, Hey, this way, you don't do drugs like. This is the perfect example of like you would for you observe bad behavior and then you do the opposite. So, long story short, I've always been obsessed with reading. Like one of the best things my wife, my mom, ever did, was. Even if we didn't have money for books, she would take me to the bookstore and just sit there.

Like, you know, the bookstores are so cool because they just let you read, they don't. No one comes here. Okay, you've been reading for an hour, like you got to get out of here, you know, and just read and read and read.

Oh yeah, and he's in Canada growing up on. But like they were, so their parents had lost much money, they think they were Jewish and had to, like, escape from persecution of Russia. I can't remember that where they came from, but they go and they have to start all over. And they're in Canada. And like there's no heating, and like they're freezing and like. So he has this like psychopathic drive to change, but you stay, stays with you forever.

So, like, once, you know, he builds this massive company and literally changes the trajectory of all of his descendants. And as his daughter's an adult. And she tells a story in the book, where Sam is sitting there in, like a mansion by a next to a fire. Like shivering. Thinking about how embarrassing it was to have to go to school with tatter clothing. It's just like that guy's never gonna go back to that and he never, never loses it. So I just always been a reader.

That's the only thing I've ever like, the only one unbroken habit I've always had. And so I just had this idea like I would. I was a social podcast forever. I was obsessed with audio before there's such thing as a podcast. Like I would listen to talk radio when I was a kid. And at that time, you know, it's.

It's not like there's no on-demand anything. You would listen, sports talk radio, politics talk radio. It's embarrassing. There was, like this woman that used to be on at night.

People would write in like, Advice for love, their love life, and I'd listen to that. Just the idea of, like, just all this information, man.

M With Art Bell. Do you ever listen to this? Like, it's when all the other radio programming sort of expires, and then you enter the like one in the morning A.M radio stuff. And it was like, you know, aliens and like, tons of paranormal stuff.

But it was like, if you, if you listen, like, you know, the Cavs game ends, I'm from Cleveland and so like, then you listen to, like the sports post game. And then it goes into, like the politics hour, and if you still can't fall asleep, then you're into, like, aliens, and it's like, four hours of that stuff.

It wasn't on-demand. So if you're not listening at three o'clock or twelve, like, you miss it. And then once I saw what this would Mark Cubans company was, his was like broadcasting audio for sports games. Though. I think, Hmm, I don't actually know. Yeah, it's like an error.

It's broadcast calm, right, yeah.

So you would do like affiliate, you know? At that time, I remember when I first started, you went through a bunch of business, yeah, so when I first started. They're like, Hey, you contact, like the few podcast advertising networks there were back then. You know, cuz you guys started your show in 2016, right? 1550 Okay, so I started in 2016 and you contact me. Like, yeah, we can do ads for your show. You know, you need like 25,000 downloads an episode. And at the time, I like, I'll never get there, right, like.

Obviously, we've skyrocketed past that, but like, that's impossible. It's like as many people as in a basketball arena.

So, like one, and I've done this forever, it's like, I, it's funny. I remember it's one of my friends that we were met up one day. And I was like, Man, I think I'm gonna try to make like a business around the fact that I read so much and he's like.

And they call me like, a year, like six months ago, a year ago. He's like, I can't believe you did that. He's like, I thought you were the dumbest thing ever heard. But I just picture him. When I started, it's like, Oh, the whole idea behind the show was like, what if you've got to meet up once a week with your friend? That reads a lot and he just tells you the stuff that he read that week, like interesting ideas.

I think he's like, I can't believe what that guy does right.

Monologue podcasters like, I think it's the hardest thing to do in this medium, and I can't, I mean, there's.

I was like, I was obsessed with his listen to all those episodes. For like, years. You were talked about falling asleep. I did that too, but I fell asleep to Dan Carlin. So I'd over and over and over again to now, where I listen to him, I'm like, it's like.

It's, uh, like, I've love Ian.

He is one of the first podcasters when he was podcasting his his first episodes. At the time. He would do it, he would call into a number and record, right? And then that there was a service that would transform that recording from your phone into an.

You want the early Charlie? I get that I can see where the magic was, even though they didn't know yet like this.

You guys made the point that there was a great point where it's like, you're never gonna think. 25 years in the future, when there's watermelons and donkey crap on the ground, that there's gonna be the richest family in the world, right?

But I've been thinking about that I was thinking about ahead of our conversation here. Like I used to say all the time, people like, Oh, I go back. I listen to their early episodes like, No, don't. It's so embarrassing. I actually think like we always want to be embarrassed by our last episode.

We've just constantly kept like, raising every episode, like we try and just notch it up. Because we keep picturing the stadium right, like, that's, that's the lake. That's why I think about the stadium, because I think about the like, the pressure of like we got.

I'm like, literally walking out in front of an NFL stadium full of people that I want to impress. And like, I didn't used to have that pressure. But like, once we found content market fit for acquired with like people that I've always thought highly of that, that that is.

That was excellent and like, it doesn't mean you can't keep improving ten years from now. But no, I like, I look back and I think, like.

But I either thought like, no one will listen to this one, or like, this will be our most successful episode with LVMH. Even after we recorded it, I was like, and or after we edited it, because we had to, like, edit a lot of stuff. This is, I was like, this is, this is how much we didn't know. But it's not like our best ever.

There's a bunch of stuff that we could have done better in that episode, like a whole bunch.

It's like, I was like, Oh, I haven't read that book in like two years. I'll just listen my episode on it and it like, it's a tool for me, right? And so I was like, and then I'll listen to him, like.

Oh, wow, I forgot that I need to keep that idea in my mind, except. But I'll hear myself like, Oh, you said that in two paragraphs, I could put one paragraph, cut that part, that doesn't make sense. And so, yeah, I understand the improvement, but what I'm saying is your qualities already super high, like it can increase and get better.

Don't gonna be wrong, but like, you're never gonna be embarrassed. You're just like, Oh, I could probably do a 20 30 better, which is still excellent from the like a level you're at.

We end up pulling out 20 ish minutes of just fluff. It's just like, Okay, we could have been tighter in that point. Is there a way to get tighter in it without re-recording it? And I think that has dramatically contributed to episode quality, because by the time we ship it, neither of us feel that there are extraneous sentences.

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Classes podcast Network is fun is called positive some, and that's how he acts. I joined his network. This is like, months later, and they're like, hey, like, like, you know, we have editors, whatever like. He has like this empire over there and resources like, What do you want?

And I was like, I just want you to amplify my audience and then connect me with first first rate advertisers. Because, like, I think, Acquired is a luxury podcast, not maybe not luxury premium. We got to go over the distinction there for LVMH. But like, we're saying no, no, this is like we're trying to set the bar here. But anyways, he's a hey, do you want editors? You want any of this stuff? I was, you know, I don't want.

No one gets to touch my stuff. Like people think, Oh, like this, do they tell you what books to read? And like, No. Patrick liked my show and he's just like, why would I tell you? like, just whatever you're doing.

Just do it to more people now. And so the answer question that no. Like, I picked the books I record on my edit, I'm still one person show. I don't know if that happened forever, but I do think the fact that it just happened. Like, spend so much time with the material gets it in my brain. But the reason that, like, I want to talk about, like the role you guys played in, that where we're gonna zoom. And for like, the background here is like, you know, we had known of each other.

I talked to Ben a long time ago because he was running this. This podcast is like, years ago. And so anyways, we're like, you're. That's also funny to think back.

Cove it happened, and we were like, no one wants to hear these. Like stories of like extreme capitalism, like we're like the X games of capitalism, and like this is a moment. We're like, everyone is hurting zero business and like this.

Isn't that the stock market trough to where? You're just like, Wow, like, you know, all businesses are gonna go under. I've no one's ever gonna have jobs again. This is, you know, it's scary.

And so we were like, well, like, what story should we tell? How about businesses that are adapting to make it through this tough time and to, like, show how serious we were about it?

We changed the name of the show. It was like our three least listened to episodes of covering a pretty amazing stories, but we just branded it wrong. Like, Canless is like the most interesting restaurant story you could ever hear about. Yeah, and like we did Intel, that's the only time we've ever done an Intel.

It was stupid, so stupid. But you look, there's no way to do like, learn.

The worst name, autotelic, comes from this flow that a you to te l. I see, maybe I don't know. I can't spell for, I can't spell, pronounce, I have no grammar.

So I think, like you read so much, I was like, I don't pay attention to that stuff. It's at the me me. Hi.

Now I have a son, a wife, a daughter and a son. And I was like, I bet you, I just put trust in myself. It's just like, I'm going to. If I focus on this seven days a week, I'll figure out the business model I know I like. I don't think I'll ever get rich from it, but I will at least pay my bills, right?

And so like, every month, I'm like, Oh, less money there and like, so I pay to do it. So the idea we're like, you know, again, people get. I think Steve Jobs talks about this. Like the older, he said, something like the older he gets, the more he realizes why people do things matters. And so he's always asking those questions.

Like, I always say, it's like, how do you know that you found what you love to do? And people are like, Oh, cuz? Like, I wouldn't sell my company? It's like, Okay, there's another level. It's like, how much would you've had to pay Steve Jobs to stop working at Apple?

The answer is he wouldn't take all the money in the world. How would? How much would you have to pay? Charlie? A lot of people, yeah, like, think about that, like, the idea is like, he's not doing it for money.

He's in a different game, he's doing it for the sake of itself. And so I went through a bunch of different names, history's greatest men, history's greatest, like history always there's terrible names. And I just started narrowing it more and more and more to like.

You weren't like, there's a this wasn't content marketing. no, there's like, no, it was just like.

He was pretty much already fully web 3 by the time we so. Do you guys remember foundation? yeah.

That's right. So it was, I don't know if you could buy it yet, but it was like, coming or whatever. And you know, it's way younger and like, you know? And then, in 2015, Tim Ferriss, I was a big fan of his podcast and read like, Great for our work week.

I did that slow carb diet, cold showers like I did, I did. The funniest thing is like, this is like this whole cold plunge thing, that's like becoming a thing now.

I'm like, was nobody like reading Tim Ferriss in 2011? yeah.

And again, this comes from the humility to realize, Hey, Warren Buffett, smarter than me. So if that dude in his shareholder letters is saying, Uh, David Ogilvy is a genius, I'm like, Wait a minute, this dude. How many businesses has Warren Buffett looked at at that point? How many founders and IT managers? Says he looked at? When he's like, This dude's a genius. Yeah, this is not rocket science, guys.

Just go like.

I'm speaking to the people, listening, not you. You always know it's like we've already been done. Just go see, hey, that person's smart.

He learned from 40-year career. Like, you're not gonna pick up an idea you can use a silly.

There's some cases where it's it's not true, but I think most truly. Like iconic, world-changing businesses and founders they build, they stand on the shoulders of giants. But they have one or multiple things that is novel that they come up with.

That's an idea he got from Claude Hopkins and Albert Lasker, who were building advertising businesses 50 years before him.

He wouldn't let, he's like he built, because it was like the secrets of the industry, right?

So then he's like, Oh, Albert Lasker made more money than anybody in than anybody else in the history of the advertising business.

That doesn't make any sense to me. So you read Albert Lasker and then he tells you about Claude Hopkins. He's like, Yeah, the information was so good that, like, I stored that in my vault for 20 years. And then once he sold his advertising, or he gave it away like a token, like hundred thousand dollar, you know, to the people working there. And then they released it and Claude went off on his own and everything else. So these are not like, yeah.

It's like, Dude, you're doing it wrong. Listen for every one person, I think it's been a citizen. For every one person that would buy a podcast, there's a thousand or a hundred that would listen to him for free, like just.

It's about a hundred, yeah, probably more than that, you know? And so then you guys would show me like you open the kimono, you're like, this is. These are our downloads.

This is who we advertise with, this is what we charge for advertising.

The Mass should sort of work out where that's gonna be the case for the type of podcast that we are. Whether you have lots of founders and CEOs and hedge fund managers and the sorts of people listening. You could never ask someone to pay you in membership what they are worth to the most valuable advertiser for that slot. And so the way it sort of works out is like you're massively hamstring your monetization potential. If you make it membership only because you'd have to be like, yes, please pay two to five thousand dollars a year in order to get access to this private thing. Versus if you were to take that same piece of content and open it up to advertisers.

So even I think, if you make what a million dollars a year, and we know people obviously in our audiences make a lot more than that. But I think million dollars, years, about 500 bucks an hour or something like that, I don't know the math, I'm not a good person. But like, So you're asking if they listen to an hour long podcast of founders like that's $500. Like, you cannot waste these people's time. So I never answer your question when you're like, Hey, how do you guys think about this?

Do you do re-edit or do you cut them out? I use the script as well. I actually think the way I listen to founders is obviously listening to it and listening and reading. Like, the super power of podcast is you can listen to it when you're doing something else, but when you're editing. But I think I'm gonna put all my ads, all my podcasts up on YouTube, Not, I don't have any video, but I think I'm gonna use the script.

So if you there is like some people have success. Just putting up the audio and audio like a static picture and you can listen to it on YouTube. Yeah, but I also think I was like, Well, if I'm gonna do that, might as well, just I have this and that's kind of cool.

Literally, what I'm saying is like, I'm gonna upload the MP3 to YouTube, like I'm not making a video just because it is. They're eventually gonna have, they're not stupid, they're eventually gonna have, like the podcast player inside of YouTube, like I did you.

They release it's like 40 page document I read on their podcast, Goals. Hmm, are you two guys?

No, I'll send it to you guys. So right now I have YouTube Premium so you can listen to them in the background. Yeah, like a podcast player, but it's great, but they need to have podcast functionality. It's still like a video. Yeah, hey, so anyways, um, the the way I do it.

It's like, Yes, I'm very aware that who's listening? I'm not ever gonna waste a lot of their time. And what I found, with the more practice I have for the podcast, is I'm able to edit on the fly. Like I don't have a script, right? So, like, I'll go through the book.

I highlight, then write down whatever pops my mind I don't like, just am I? First of the highlights, like, am I excited about that? Oh, that's interesting, highlight. Just go off instinct, right? And then write down it like something that.

Oh, that's like, this or that made me think of this and I just write it down right then. I'll reread all these highlights the night before I record.

Cuz you, I love, like, we're like, we gotta move David's chair back here a little bit. Do you ever, if you ever watched the old Jeff Bezos interviews when he's, like, first starting Amazon?

One that's like, in that field outside the conference, Yes, I think this is the one. He's like, sitting like, you see grass, so, but he, like, leans forward. He's like, we're gonna be the most customer-obsessed company ever. It's like, he's got that look.

But something that he is. But Jeff says something in Invent and Wander, which is an excellent book. Because it's all of his shareholder letters and yep, transcripts, Walter Isaac said, Yeah, right, yep, and all of his transcripts for the speeches. And he goes, Do you really want to?

To live in a world or to compete against somebody that's that's as good as you, like, I certain would certainly wouldn't. That's what his, he states, and he's like his.

If you read a shareholder letters and listen to talk, he's like, he's constantly looking for unfair advantages. Yep, and I think part of the fact that I have now over 20,000 highlights from hundreds of books. I still like 50 or 60 or maybe 80 books I haven't put in there yet that are in my library. So it's like, that's my readwise account is an unfair advantage, because anytime somebody's talking, it's like, I can immediately.

Oh, you said something. I search for that term and it pulls up and it's like, Oh, and then I see my highlight, I see my note. It takes so long, yeah, like, so long to do that, but it's worth the extra five or ten.

And well, what what I'll do is like, whenever I'm like, waiting for Uber today, right? Just pull up ReadWise and I Read Wise has the Highlights feed and I'll show you guys what it looks like. It looks a lot like a Twitter feed, right? Completely random. So I'm not choosing this. And instead of me reading Twitter all day, which is not a good use of your time, it's this highlight from the Dodge Brothers. I haven't read that book, you know, that was like, episode, you know, Billy Duran, who's the founder of GM Sam Colt?

And then what happens is like, you can do this anytime. Like people like, Oh, I'm running late for lunch, like, I'll just do this, or I'll answer DMS. Or. I always have stuff to do with me. But I use it as a form of practice. The reason I said this is like, it sounds stupid. People think it's maybe, maybe they think it's silly. I don't know, but I read this book. It's episode 212 of Founders.

It's called Michael Jordan The Life, It's a 600 page biography, and in that book.

I just think you're trying to. This is what I asked Charlie, like one of the most interesting things, he said. He's like one of the best things that ever happened to me. So I got rich later in life, you know. Like he saw the time and how difficult it was, like he was talking about, like, Um, imagine you being like a super famous or rich when you're like 21 or 25. And how disorienting he's.

Like, I was a full-grown man, like with a life experience, with a wife and kids. Yeah, a child who died. Yeah, I didn't. I did not mention that, yeah.

Yeah, but like, he had all, like, you know, full life experience. And therefore also the main problem that happens is people don't know. They're like, I was the son of a poor man. Now I'm rich and my kids live an unbelievable amount of wealth and privilege. How do I deal with that? That comes up in the books for hundreds of years?

The answer is no one knows, right? And so with Charlie, though. The benefit is he didn't have a famous last name or a lot of wealth. His kids were, like, grown right? They wouldn't have to deal with that when you're five or seven or ten. He also gave me some advice that was fascinating. You do that.

And it was really. We went to three different bookstores. I'm not kidding, like I brought energy drinks, yeah, but no. We like, bless Sam and his patience with me and like, drove me all around Menlo Park and Palo Alto yesterday, going to bookstores.

I was literally looking for you guys, what do you like? You had specific books? Oh my god, I like going to use bookstores. And then like, I think of how I might my interpretation of you guys in my mind and I'll.

I just know if this book is good for that person, like the Charlie Munger, the Henry Flagler book. I knew that was good for Charlie Munger because of what he said. So I don't know what's gonna happen now. I do have two books picked out for you guys, which I'll send you, but they're like newer books.

I think it's what he said, his description of it. But I like obscure books, I read this book that it's very hard to find, like 300 bucks. It's called the Invisible Billionaire. Daniel Ludwig was the richest person in the world in the 80s, and no one knew who he was.

He paid public relations firm to keep his name out of the papers. Okay, and what your competitors don't? Yeah, it's always just like, I don't want to be known. And a lot of his was like, it's like shipping and oil and refining and mining and and and all the other stuff.

But the author made us a point in the book, like, how different a million and a billion is going back to Charlie Munger, Right, yeah, and he goes. A stack of a million dollars in a stack. $100 bills is like 40 inches, you know, billion dollars. In the second, hundred dollar bills would be taught. Would be three times taller than the Empire State building. Yeah, and so like for us, like, Oh, that guy's kind of rich. Like, No, the billionaire millionaires are not in the same category. It's so disorienting.

And they're asked like, Okay, what do I do with like this wealth with my kids? And it's like, you know, is it? If you give your kids a bunch of money? Is it gonna demotivate him? And Charlie goes, Of course, it's going to, but he's like, you know, it's like, again, like, this should be obvious to you.

So, he says, I don't try to steer his kids or his grandkids into what they should do for a living. Which is Charlie Munger's one of his best piece of advice that I took to heart. It's like, follow your natural drift. Yeah, like how I pick books, there's been like 15 or 20 that I've read completely or half, and it's like, I don't like this book. I'm not making an episode about it.

I go to my bookshelf and I have like probably 80 or 100 books I haven't read yet. Most come from the audience. And I was like, What am I most excited to learn about now?

Anyways, are they're gonna hate you for it? And I was like, that's like, because I before this, I've read so many like Family Dynasty stories. And I'm not saying I'm trying to. Where they decide we're not gonna give them money or no, they did, and it ruined them.

Like, Did you guys? you guys haven't done an episode on Common case TCI John John?

It's awesome, it's excellent, and there's, so, you know, the story about to tell you where the crazy thing is like, I'm always thinking about. I didn't understand this before studying up, dedicating my life to studying history, right where it's like, Oh wow. The decisions I'm making now can can reverberate through the generations. That's a crazy thing. We're Bob Magnus, which is the founder of TCI is, you know, yep, he doesn't have any monies. And rural Texas wants us do this.

You jump into this new industry cable, right? Full of cowboys, little cowboy, literally. And he doesn't have money, so his dad gives him a $2,500 loan. So Bob takes that $2,500 loan. And then, let's say 40 years later, Bob dies, and he's got a pass on his money, right?

That was created from the company he created to his two kids, and he winds up giving them. I think I don't know numbers, I want to say like 200 million each, two sons. So think about that. One decision I think I talked about in the episode. And if I didn't, it's a big mess up on my part and I stopped in that part.

I'm pretty sure you did. I was like, hold on, think about that. Like, what if his dad didn't give him the 2,500? Yeah, he's talking about that, yeah, so his $2,500 turns into 400 million.

Let's say 200 million each for his grandsons change his grandsons lives, right?

So my thought was like, oh, like, get them a little bit, but not enough that they don't have to work or whatever. And Charlie's like, they're gonna hate you, yeah, and like, What's the so? It's such a good insulin. He's just like human nature.

This is my biggest takeaway from Charlie, and I think the biggest benefit. That people that listen to founders and acquired, and then hopefully read a bunch of the books and do studying on their own are gonna realize this is like, Charlie. I said it was how my notes and this is the first thing. It's just like it's comforting the conversation.

Charlie was comforting, the same way that people tell me listening to founders is comforting is like Charlie has an almost complete indifference to problems. Troubles from time to time should be expected. This is inescapable. So why would you let it bother you? And the difference? And and if you think about that's the main takeaway from this three-hour dinner had with them, right?

And if you think about how does he avoid this, he avoids it. By great things have less problems. You're never gonna escape problems, but if you're on great people, you know like they're not gonna throw up.

Just like a great business doesn't throw up big problem after big problem after big problem. Your, your wife, your kids, your friends, your co-workers. His whole thing is aim for the highest quality you can get. And then that's gonna solve 99 of your problems. And then when you have the problem, the inevitable promises are gonna come. Okay, just deal with it. Yeah, he talked about, like when he lost the money on Alibaba.

He brought that up, you know, that people try to make fun of him for whatever. It's like, you guys are missing the point, like you're not gonna escape. Get through life without making mistakes.

The founder of Ikea has this great quote where he says, Uh, making mistakes is the privilege of the active. Only those asleep make no mistakes.

I have no idea.

So he invented the electric starter. He founded a CDELCo that gets acquired by GM, right? He is the head of research and development at GM. When GM is the most valuable company, and most like, the cutting edge of technology company in the world. At the time, there's a story from his wife and his daughter in that book, saying, Hey, when he dies, there's only one.

There's only be three words on his arm, on his tombstone. I don't know, because that's what he would say over and over and over again. Yeah, one is it. There's a he's having this conversation, same thing.

He was the son of a poor man, He is now a rich man, his kids are rich. He's talking to other people to have the same experience, his peers like, What do you do?

And the answer, what they came up with, I.

But like, you don't, it's just dependent on the person. So I, if there was a simple, if there was a correct answer, I think some of these guys, some of these guys would have figured it out well. That's the thing about humans, right?

They couldn't optimize all of the areas of the life at what they did for like their work, right? You know? Sam Walton is one of the rare guys where he gets the end. He knows he's dying because he's got cancer all over his body. When he's writing that book, yeah, and he's like, Listen, if I could do everything again? he's like, Yeah, I missed some of my kids childhood. They worked in the stores and he took him with him.

He's like, I'd do it again. I had to do this, I had to get after it, I had to improve. A lot of them, you know, get to the end of life and like, Ah, I regret. The founder of Ikea has the best words on this.

He said You know, I had three sons growing up. He started IKEA when he was like 17, worked on it. He was like 80 something, and he's like, I sacrificed my three sons childhoods. I regret it, he goes.

It's anybody that has kids knows that childhood does not allow itself to be reconquered. And so like, we were hanging out today, we were gonna do recording, go to dinner, and I was. My plan was I was, I want to see my son.

He's like, And my daughter, it's like, I'm gonna take the red eye. And then I realized, like, Yeah, but I want to spend time with David and Ben. So I'm leaving early tomorrow morning. But it's like, I'm doing this as fast as possible, and if I had to, I'd like fly back and forth. Because, like your kids are, think about, like you, the relationship you guys have with your parents.

Are they still alive? Yep, yep, okay, so you get to talk to him, Sam, but you have your whole life, right? When your kids are small, there's like this tiny window when they're like two to five to six, where you're everything to them. Oh yeah, even like you and I've talked about, I absolutely feel this way. Even my ten-year-old daughter, like, right now, she wants to spend time with me.

Like, it was the cutest thing ever. I was leaving, going to L.A. to see Charlie and coming up to San Francisco to see you guys. And she text me, she goes, I'm wearing your sweater because, like, it makes me feel close to you, like while you're gone, you know, I mean. But if you ask her, do you want to spend movie night with dad and mom, or you want to go play Roblox with your friends?

Everything. They're friends and she loves me, don't get me wrong, but like they're their friends are way, they're really important to them. Yeah, we're like, every day.

I miss my son's about to turn three. It's like, I'm not gonna get back that day and there's only like, a thousand of those days. Yeah, and my wife won't have any more kids. Even though I was like, I don't want a bunch of kids, like, I want a bunch. It's like, no way I say I don't have to get pregnant.

So that's fine.

It's kind of like the Bill Gurley, you know? But you have no excuse not to do that.

This is like, this dude is crazy. He's read 300 biographies of entrepreneurs. There's no way I'm gonna have dinner with them and not pick up one idea. Yeah, like, and then now I've built this machine where, like, Oh, that's an interesting idea, I'll just plug it into this business and like.

It's not a financial transaction by any means, but there's no the reason. It's not that, like, Charlie was the first person I met that I was actually nervous about. And it's the reason I'm not nervous because I know I've done the work. Like, you can't put me in a room with anybody on the planet. And I'm not gonna be able to tell him at least one interesting thing. It doesn't mean I'll be the most. The best dinner they're ever had in their life. That's not what I'm saying.

It's just like they're gonna hear something that's like, Oh, that's interesting and like, go through their own brain. And it's only because I've spent six years and same with you guys. It's like, Oh, you should feel comfortable, like you guys mentioned earlier, it's like.

Your audience feels like, you know, to football fields and like, oh, it's a little bit of like. And that you didn't use the word insecurity, but like, you know, a little like, nervousness. I want these people to like, like me, it's, yeah.

Pushing you from back, but you know, like you've most likely read you, you're, you know, more about the subject. And they do, sure, I do, but I need to make something worthy of their time.

Means that when you and I put in the work, the product, the product is good. But it took a long time to to arrive at that. It's almost like.

You know that this is another Sam Hickey thing. Trust the process, yep, the.

He's influenced my thinking a lot, too, and he has this thing in. And the Neval, The Almanac, Neval, by our friend Eric Jorgensen. Yeah, and he's just like, if you read an hour a day, that put you in the point zero, zero, zero, one percent of humans. And I'm.

It's like, 0.5, zero. I remember asking a book publisher.

They average is zero. Yeah, it's crazy, yeah, to your point. I've become friends with a bunch of writers, some of them I met through the podcast. And they've been telling me. Like, teaching me about the publishing industry and just breaking down. Like, 98 of books ever published sell less than 5,000 copies.

It's parallel.

And like, they kind of don't care about recouping it, because, no, they, it's even worse. The whole business is about, Do I did I sign up, you know, James Clear this year?

Yeah, and like, you know when you have Michelle Obama on your hands and you have to pay for it, but you don't know when you have a James Clear on your hands. And when that becomes the book that America reads this year. You better make sure it's in your publishing house and not one of the other three big or four big, whatever it is publishing houses.

I'm like, oh, cuz, yeah, the thing is going back to, like, you guys, listen to Gamecraft, Blake Robbins, Oh yeah, every episode, yep, so excellent, like, unbelievably good. And what I loved about is how they focused on the business model innovations, and how one decision by some random group of programmers in the 1980s affected a business model decision. Ten years later. Whatever, and I was talking to Jimmy about this ago.

The books are fantastic, they the best products in the world you can. There's a great quote in Poor Charlie's Almanac, which says that there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book for Charlie Munger. Warren Buffett That is literally true, right? Yeah, um, and what I don't understand is like, you guys have such a high-value product and you haven't innovated on the business model. Yeah, and so I was telling Jimmy, I was like, Do you know the deal like?

Like, you just you think about this like an entrepreneur, like you're not a writer, you're an entrepreneur, and your product just happens to be a book. But you can make money off that any kind of way you want, like, you can just get creative.

I go, people think it's crazy. Where I'm like, I'm trying to be the Jay-z of podcasts and people like, What the hell is wrong with you? and I did, like, that, have you done episodes on Jay-Z?

That episode I did on Jay-z autobiography is one of my most popular people. I bet two, I love you.

So I can't believe I'm with. Jay-z is has the founder mentality and he had it since he was a kid. And you just see everything his whole career and people look at him like, Oh, like, this is another thing about. Intelligence manifests itself into vastly different ways.

It's not always like credentialed. In many cases, it's not right. But, like, Jay-Z is a straight-up genius. If you listen to him and what he did and he looked at, he's like, Yeah, he says it from the get-go.

He's like, I thought, I told you characters, I'm not a rapper. He's like, I'm a businessman and rap just happens to my product. And so I'm gonna think about like that.

I go, Jimmy should do that, I go, why don't you just find a deal like Jimmy, like Jay-Z did with Samsung? He's like, What are you talking about?

Well, it's like, true.

So he goes, he goes. You know, I could I record this, this, this album, and then I could sell like normal, you know, stream it, and it's all for $10. You want the physical copy, etc. etc. What if I just want my money guaranteed? So he goes to Samsung and says, Samsung, you're launching this new app, all right, this new phone, and you have your own app on it.

I'm gonna sell you, I will sell you a million copies, $5 each. you give me five million dollars guaranteed from album. I'm still gonna own it so he gets a streaming, right.

He goes, And so what I'll do is say, you pay me five million. The first million people that get access to my album are gonna be Samsung. To have that whatever phone was coming out. You download for free if you have this device, and so it's advertising to the Samsung and it's guaranteed money at him. I go, dude, you're writing about technology founders.

It was like, there's these venture capital funds to have what 80 billion dollars of assets in their engines. It's like, Hey, will you pay me a million dollars? Write this book? and you say, Hey, this book is now presented by whatever firm. This is why, I mean, you have us.

We've talked about this privately. You guys already know. This was like there's been like something like 15 acquisition or investment offers for founders, I said. Note every single one. A lot of them are like this, where it's like, Oh well, you have the attention of people that are valuable.

You just said the worst thing that happened to a venture firm is they miss the the hit of that, so they have to expand. Like, there's a make sure they catch that, right. Yeah, so it's like, Hey, we'll, we'll pay for founders or whatever. Give you x amount of money, pay you to do it.

You do exactly what you do, the only difference is such as you're trying to buy up our inventory forever. It's like, Hey, Founders is presented by X Company. If you're gonna raise money, email here, you know? And the the response I have when these I get these pitches is like, if I did that, that means I'm not actually learning the lessons in the books.

Right, right, which is like, you never give up control. It's like, no.

This is the intelligent thing.

I go. David Ogilvy ran the same exact ad in the same magazine for 30 years and it was still effective. Yeah, and so I went, I was like, This is, I go, what do you think?

Coca-Cola's been doing for a hundred.

They don't deploy, deploy. You read Izzy Sharpe's fantastic autobiography, The Founder of Four Seasons, right? And he says this, he goes. He's building what didn't exist at the time, the only chain of five-star hotels at the time. And he says, I grow, and this is every founder does Andrew Carnegie, Johnny Rockefeller, Henry Clay Frick. When they have recessions, that's when they grow.

So what he would do is his, his competitors would pull back on advertising, he would spend more. And he says, he claims, I think in the book, he increases market share by like 25 or 28 percent. Using this over and over again, because human nature is, oh, crap, things are short and they cut this. What Ogilvy said, Ogilvy's like if you need advertising to sell your product.

It's not a marketing expense, it's a production cost, it's a it's a product, it's actual cost of manufacturing your product. And so what, what he gets, Michael Elnick did, that was such a genius. Move. Was first of all. He knew something was working right, and he scaled up through podcast ads and.

He knew it was effective. And then he's like, Okay, well, like, now you have this. The all these people in the tech industry, the their stocks creating, everybody's like running in retreat. What does he do? He goes like, Oh.

It's private, everything else is like, that's the right decision, the same decision. That's what Ogilvy would have done.

That's what Buffett and Munger do when they put money in, like, that is that's what Coca-cola does. It doesn't matter the economic climate. Is you ever gonna see less Apple?

You guys are doing, you can, I mean, well, one of them, like, let's let's abstract away. Like speaking to the acquired audiences as one of them, or as a gigantic means of differentiation. Your XYZ average venture firm out having money and writing the check.

Yes, having money, right? But like a year from now, it's like six to twelve months from now, that's gonna be differentiating. All right, listeners. Our sponsor is one of our favorite companies, Vanta, and we have something very new from them to share. Of course, you know, Vanta enables companies to generate more revenue by getting their compliance certifications. That's sock to ISO 2701. But the thing that we want to share now is Vanta has grown to become the best security compliance platform. As you hit hyper growth and scale into a larger enterprise.

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But when you guys were talking a little about like, your business and like, you're the venture game in general, is. I just think of, like, what? One of my favorite things that I heard Jeff Bezos say is, you know, for years, people were like, Hey, when are you gonna do physical retail? when you can do physical retail, when you do physical retail? And he says something that was crazy. He's like, physical retailing is an ancient business, I love that term, it's like an ancient business.

So I'm not gonna do it until I know like, I can. It's so hard to improve on an ancient industry, it has to be completely differentiated. You mentioned, I heard you on one of your podcasts where you're like, you went to the Amazon Go store. Just as like, like, pure curiosity. It's like, yeah, like you needed something, and so you guys have probably read that story too.

Where it's like, at one time they were gonna do like book, like meat and like all this other stuff. You'd have to, like, talk to somebody's like, No, you have to redo this. This doesn't make sense. The key that the the differentiation here is that you walk and you walk out, not walk in, talk to some guy you like.

He's like cutting salami for you, like, you gotta get that out of there. And so I've had this thought because I've read a bunch of biographies on investors too, and like, investing is an ancient business. Like, Yeah, and we're just doing it in different ways now.

And so I was like, well, if you, if you wanted to invest, right, let's say you wanted to invest in private companies, which people have been doing forever. I always think of like, like, where did J.P. Morgan get his deal flow? And you know, you like?

You've read through the history. It's like people like, Oh, that was J.P. Morgan Bank, like, No, there's no retail bank, like, you're not going in there.

There's no add up like a sign on the doors, like here's J.P. Morgan companies. Like. It was a relationship based, it's like you got in if you knew somebody, right?

Yeah, I read this biography, that's incredible. I highly recommend people read it. It's episode 103 of Founders. It is The Richest Woman America, Hedy Green.

You are your read-wise, that's how I get it. So, um, the Hedy Green, though, was so wealthy that she bailed out. The city of New York, like that book, has unbelievable stories. This is. I've never heard this person's name and they bailed out.

The city of York, her family, so the richest, and when she was alive, the richest city in the world per capita, was like, New Bedford, Massachusetts. Oh, yeah, Willie, yeah. Her family made so much whaling, and the way they looked at the family fortune is. I am a steward of this money. My job is to make it grow so that the next generation has more. And then she's, like, the third generation of these, whaling and then whaling destiny like it, it died out, I think, the generation before her.

So they had to figure out how to make money. The technology stocks of her day, railroads, like she made a ton of money, roads, and then she'd buy land like real estate in New York and everything else. But anyways, my point being, and I had this conversation with Patrick one day, I was like, think about it like that was an ancient. Investing is an ancient business. So, like you wouldn't do it, Hedy Green did, like, where'd she get her deal for from?

People knew her, they knew she was wealthy, they knew that she was the first person to go to. In financial panics, they called financial panics what we call recessions and depressions now. And it was like, you know, every three years back then, yeah. And so what she would do is she had a desk in Chemical Bank in Manhattan.

So the advantage there is geography, physical location. You're at the center of finance in America, you need to be here, you build a reputation. So literally, there are stories in the book where there'd be a line of people in financial crashes waiting for at her desk.

Okay, I'll say my rose stocks pennies on the dollar. Cornelius Vanderbilt did the same thing. She invested with him and a bunch of other people, right? And I was like, But what would you do today? Like, you're an eight year, you want an edge?

Everything we're talking about is like, you need an edge, right? You can't play at. Dorp has a great the Great quote in his book. He's like, I've been a minute money manager for 50 years. One thing I know is you. The surest way to get rich is only play games and make investments where you have an edge.

So I'm just gonna do this, right? Yeah, so my point being is like, how would you do it today? Well, you would. It would look very much like what I think you guys are building. And I'm not an investor. So I don't know anything about your your world. But it's just like I'd spend my time reading and learning about business history.

Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. Did that. Every single investor you guys have probably read about does that all the time. They read constantly, right? I would share what I know that's gonna build my network of other people.

Those people are interesting in so many deals. Then I have this huge advantage that you couldn't even do 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Because there's such thing as a podcast, right? It's like, now I could record all the stuff I'm learning, right? Which we should say like, there have been iterations of this.

What is the most successful content marketing of all time?

Berkshire shareholders. Because this is how you know. Of course, a genius, it is the greatest act of salesmanship because you never even see the sale happening. It's like, Hey, and they spend, you know, you guys have probably done this research, how much time they spend on those letters, it's like half a year, seven, eight months for every letter.

This is not like, Oh, I just, and the crazy thing is like, he's old uncle Warren. How many people have? This is something Charlie taught also, this is a great, great thing that that this came up there.

Don't you talk about the letters with him? No, I asked him about, like, so I was explaining. I was like, Charlie, I'm literally in the middle of, like, reading about you when you were, like, around my age.

So every time I read a book, I'm like, Okay, I first of all I know what year they're, they're born. So every time as I go through the books, I'm like, how old are they? And I write down, Okay, he's 24 here, he started.

I want to know what they were doing in and around my age. And so I'm like, Charlie, I'm thinking about you guys like you just started, like your fun starts. He's like 41 or something, I don't remember what it was right and and I was like then like 50. If you start out, you're trying to figure things out.