Podd: Founders

#377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

27 januari 2025 | 64 min

#376 Jensen Huang: Founder of Nvidia

13 januari 2025 | 101 min

#375 The Single Biggest Individual Financier In The World. The Richest Woman In America: Hetty Green

6 januari 2025 | 54 min

Hetty Green bailed out New York City. Her decisions on what interest rates to charge moved markets and were reported in major newspapers. She was a one woman bank and the single biggest individual financier in the world. She took no partners and ran her own money. She built a financial empire of stocks, bonds, railroads, and real estate. She battled the great men of her day and kept a gun on her desk. She did all of this alone. Defiantly independent and ferociously intelligent she built a vast, liquid fortune at a time when women couldn't even vote. She used her intelligence to increase her wealth, her independence to live as she wished, and her strength to battle anyone who stood in her way.

This episode is what I learned from reading Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America’s First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack and The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach.

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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

The Most Inspiring Autobiography I've Read: Chung Ju-yung Founder of Hyundai

27 december 2024 | 76 min

Chung Ju-yung grew up so poor he had to eat tree bark to survive. He founded Hyundai and became the richest person in Korea. When Chung was in his 80s, he wrote an autobiography that tells the devastating reality of growing up in dire poverty, how he escaped through manual labor, and how he founded and grew one of the world's largest conglomerates. Along the way he shares advice like why you should emulate bedbugs, the importance of going where the money is, and why people called him "The Bulldozer."

This episode is what I learned from reading Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#374 Rare Jeff Bezos Interview

15 december 2024 | 36 min

#373 Breakfast with Brad Jacobs + How To Make A Few Billion Dollars

6 december 2024 | 94 min

#372: Amancio Ortega: The Genius Behind the Inditex Group

29 november 2024 | 49 min

Amancio Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the world. Ortega is the founder of Inditex, a pioneer of fast fashion, an entrepreneur with over 60 years of experience, and has created a business model that is studied in universities that he could not access. His life story is inspiring, educational, and full of valuable ideas for future generations of founders. This episode is what I learned from reading This is Amancio Ortega: The Man Who Created Zara by Covadonga O'Shea.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

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Notes and highlights from the episode:

I remembered a comment that Luis Miguel Dominguin made to me years ago, when he was at the peak of his glory and his son, still a child, played in the garden of his house. "This child will never be a bullfighter. To face a bull you have to go hungry.”
The important thing is to set goals in life and put all your soul into fulfilling them.
I have dreamed of growing the company since I was nobody.
We gave it every day. My priority has always been the company, and I have committed myself to it, with full dedication, from day one.
Ortega is a man of mission. He is so convinced of what he is and what he has to do.
I was convinced that I had to dominate the customer.
Ortega starts with the customer and work backwards: “I am going to manufacture what the customer wants.”
I met Ortega when Zara did not exist. He only had the factories. In those years when nobody thought about technology within our sector, in which there was almost no computer science or mobile phones, he wanted to have a good team in technology.
He built a groundbreaking and avant-garde textile distribution company.
Inditex's business is centered around one simple premise – to be quick at responding to the market.
Their main advantage: an astonishing ability to detect fashion trends, assimilate them, and make them a reality on the hanger at a bargain price, and all in less than 15 days.
Ortega wanted to integrate design and manufacturing first, then complete the chain with distribution and sales in his own stores, turning the customer into his source of privileged information and not just the receiver of a commodity.
I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. — Henry Ford
There are no mature sectors where everything is already discovered, but rather companies or managers with closed minds who resist innovation.
Logistics is a fundamental part of the circle that completes Inditex’s vertical integration process. Inventory control in all locations around the world is as important as getting the design right and producing in a short time; that's why Inditex has invested time, effort, and a lot of money in establishing logistics centers with the latest technologies.
Traditionally, the seller ensures high margins at the beginning of each season, but endures several months of discounts to get rid of stock; the customer knows, therefore, that in the long run they will get the same items at lower prices. Ortega's company renews its clothes in stores around the world every week and twice weekly in Europe. The buyer knows that they will always find new items, but probably won't be able to get what they tried on seven days ago. In this way, customers understand that if they see something they like, they have to buy it immediately, because in a few days it will no longer be in the store. It's about creating an atmosphere of scarcity and opportunity.
Ortega has created a business model that is studied in universities to which he could not access.
I consider myself a worker who is immensely fortunate to have done what he wanted in life and to continue doing it.
It's the most beautiful company in the world.
I want a company with a soul.
Ortega stayed focused on his one great objective: To enable the entire world to dress well.
Ortega refuses to settle halfway to excellence.
He is a man with a lot of personal charm because he is not false. He does not have ulterior motives. He can be very tough, impulsive, very sure of himself, but very truthful.
Ortega does not like to lead sitting in a chair.
He has never liked praise. More than once I've told him: 'What a beautiful collection, how happy the customers are!', and he always interrupts me and asks me: 'Now tell me what's wrong.”
When asked on his advice for future generations of entrepreneurs: “The first thing is that you like what you are doing, that you are passionate about your work. I insist on this idea because it is very important. It has to be something that you would almost pay to do.”
Simplicity is the heritage of geniuses.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#371 James J. Hill: The Empire Builder

18 november 2024 | 59 min

What I learned from rereading James J. Hill: Empire Builder by Michael P. Malone.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Notes and highlights from the episode:

—He had unlimited energy, was stubborn, had a temper, was supremely arrogant and he did more to transform the northern frontier of the United States than any other single individual.

—One of the things he learned from history and biography: The power of one dynamic individual: Like so many other nineteenth-century youths, young Jim Hill fell under the spell of Napoleon. He came to believe in the strength of will, the power of one dynamic individual to change the world, the conquering hero. (He says that the railroad entrepreneurs conquered the distance between remote communities in the American west)

—He accustomed himself to handle a large workload.

—If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. –James J. Hill

—He held people’s attention as he engaged them in characteristic rapid-fire, highly animated conversation, gesturing expansively and driving home his point with jabbing motions of his hands—the embodiment of high energy.

—He worked incredibly hard, sometimes laboring late into the night, falling asleep at the desk, then getting up for a swim in the river and a cup of black coffee, then going back to work.

—“Rebates existed in other industries. I just applied them to oil.” Rockefeller said. [Don’t copy the what, copy the how] —John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

—"The very best employee at any job at any level of responsibility is the person who generally believes that this is their last job working for someone. The next thing they'll start will be their own. — Max Levchin in The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

—Hill drank little, worked hard, and confined his socializing to respectable settings. As always, he read incessantly. He permitted himself few distractions in his relentless drive to achieve wealth and status.

—Inefficiency disturbs him greatly.

—James J. Hill loved eliminating steps.

—Genius has the fewest moving parts.

—Hill limited the number of details. Then he makes every detail perfect.

—Hill called vertical integration, rational integration.

—Hill always gets out quickly in front of the emerging trend.

—Hill had an entirely pragmatic business personality. When competition suited him in a market, he competed fiercely. But when competition became wasteful to him, he did not hesitate to end it, even if this meant joining with old enemies and creating a monopoly.

—Hill was making profits owning steamboats. Then a competitor from Canada starts running the same route and the rates and profits dwindle. Hill discovers a neglected maritime law that prohibited foreign ships from operating in American waters. Hill then persuades the US Treasury Department to enforce the law against his competitor. The competitor has to transfer ownership to an American. After that Hill then merges with that competitor and forges another monopoly.

—This railroad is my monument. — James J Hill

—As man emerged into history, he became a road maker; the better the road, the more advanced his development. — James J. Hill.

—By 1885 Railroads brought in twice the revenue than the federal government.
Railroads were the nations largest employer.
The railroaders were the largest private land holders in the country.
They owned more than 10% of land in the United States.

—Hill identified an opportunity hiding in plain sight: Unlike most who viewed the Saint Paul and Pacific as a near-worthless derelict, Hill viewed it as a miracle waiting to happen, a potentially wondrous enterprise simply lacking competent leadership. He studied the road constantly, reading every scrap of information he could find about it and boring anyone who would listen with endless detail as to what it could one day be.

—He possessed a priceless advantage compared with most other nineteenth-century rail titans. Rather than coming from the outside world of finance, as most of them did, he arose from the inside world of freighting and transportation, and he knew this world in all its complexities. He was about to demonstrate how certain well-established, regional capitalists on the frontier could challenge and even best larger eastern interests.

—Being obsessed is an edge. Hill was obsessed getting control of the bankrupt Saint Paul & Pacific rail line: Hill, who knew the road better than anyone else, constantly argued to his friends, the potential prize defied description. He seemed completely fixated on the project. Many years later, his friend recalled that Jim had spoken of it to him “probably several hundred times” during the mid-1870s.

—James J. Hill finds what he is best at in the world at, at 40 years old, in a field where he had no direct experience.

—“It pays to be where the money is spent” — James J Hill

—James J. Hill was very easy to interface with. He had an easy to understand organizing principle for his company. Hills credo: What we want is the best possible line, shortest distance, lowest grades, and least curvature that we can build.

—He had appreciation for those who had dirt underneath their fingernails.

—Many observers would later compare Hill with Villard. The comparison was inevitable. “While Hill was building carefully and checking his costs minutely Villard built in ignorance of costs.” Like other transcontinental plungers, Villard did in fact build rapidly and poorly, much of his main line would later have to be torn up and rebuilt. He had rushed to get the massive land grants. Amid mounting deficits and acrimony, Villard was then forced to resign the presidency of the NP in 1884.

—Find what you are good at and pound away at it forever.

—He simply could not delegate authority and live with the outcome.

—Hill on how to build a railroad: Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then more work. — James J Hill.

—They managed the finances of the railroad in a highly conservative and prudent manner. Hill advocated and practiced a policy of plowing large percentages of profits directly back into the property, knowing that the best defense against invading railroads was a better-built system that could operate at lower rates.

—Give me Swedes, snuff and whiskey, and I'll build a railroad through hell. — James J. Hill

—From the Hour of Fate: James J. Hill had built the Great Northern with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn't need JP Morgan the way other railroad executives did. (Financial strength was kryptonite to JP Morgan)

—He cared most about freight, never frills.

—The life of James J. Hill certainly demonstrates the impact one willful individual can have on the course of history.

—I’ve made my mark on the surface of the earth and they can’t wipe it out. — James J Hill.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#370 The Founder of IKEA: Ingvar Kamprad

12 november 2024 | 66 min

What I learned from reading Leading By Design: The Ikea Story by Ingvar Kamprad and Bertil Torekull and The Testament of a Furniture Dealer by Ingvar Kamprad.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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Notes and highlights from the episode:

Ingvar works on IKEA from the time he is 17 until he dies at 91.

The Testament of a Furniture Dealer by Ingvar Kamprad (1976) is a sermon on the culture of IKEA

IKEA’s common goal: We have decided once and for all to side with the many. IKEA will offer a wide range of well-designed furniture at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.

Billy Durant (founder of General Motors) describing Henry Ford’s one single idea: Durant noted that Ford “was in favor of keeping prices down to the lowest possible point, giving to the multitude the benefit of cheap transportation.” — Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors by Lawrence Gustin

Something Ingvar repeats: We will do it a different way.

This will not be easy. We must demand much from ourselves.

IKEA must have low prices. Ingvar’s dedication to that idea is total. Without low costs we can never accomplish our purpose. The principle can never be compromised: Our policy of serving the many can never be changed.

If you are not enthusiastic about your job, one-third of your life goes to waste.

Wasting resources is a mortal sin at IKEA.

Expensive solutions to any kind of problem are usually the work of mediocrity.

Planning is often synonymous with bureaucracy. Exaggerated planning is the most common cause of corporate death.

Simple routines have a greater impact. Simplicity in our behavior gives us strength.

No reports. No committees. Just done. — Elon in the early days of SpaceX Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger. (Founders #369)

We dare to do things differently.

You had to remember he'd been picking up the best ideas from all around the country. — Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. (Founders #181)

Concentration is important to our success. The general who divides his resources will invariably be defeated.

We can never do everything, everywhere, all at the same time.

We must concentrate for maximum impact, often with small means.

Concentration means that at certain vital stages we are forced to neglect otherwise important aspects.

Constant meetings and group discussions are often the result of unwillingness or inability on the part of the person in charge to make decisions.

Only those who are asleep make no mistakes. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active.

The fear of making mistakes is the root of bureaucracy and the enemy of development.

It is always the mediocre people who are negative, who spend their time proving that they were not wrong. The strong person is always positive and looks forward.

Happiness is not reaching your goal. Happiness is being on the way. It is our wonderful fate to be just at the beginning (He said this when he was already 33 years into running his company!)

Bear in mind that time is your most important resource. You can do so much in ten minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. You can never get them back. Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.

Let us continue to be a group of positive fanatics who stubbornly and persistently refuse to accept the impossible.

Ingvar’s family had to rent out all the rooms in their house to strangers to make ends meet.

Selling things became an obsession. Trading was in my blood.

By 1997 IKEA had mailed out over 100 million catalogs.

Ingvar was the first person in the furniture industry to combine a mail order catalog and a furniture store.

Cost awareness was to be IKEA’s anthem.

Ingvar’s greatest regret was working so much that he missed out on seeing his 3 son’s grow up: Childhood does not allow itself to be reconquered.

I have not been able to avoid severe losses. Both fiascoes and triumphs have marked the history of the business.

Ingvar would rather his employees make mistakes than be idle.

The wave Ingvar rode: Sweden’s housing construction boom. More than 1 million new apartments were built after the war. All of them needed well designed, affordable furniture.

The way IKEA was described by its competitors: A monster with seven heads: “If you cut off one, another soon grows.”

A golden rule of IKEA: Regard every problem as a possibility. The boycott by the National Association of Furniture Dealers was the best thing that ever happened to IKEA. It forced IKEA down a path of product differentiation and helped them stumble upon the idea of flat packing and self assembled furniture.

The laws of IKEA since birth:

-A good cash reserve must always be ensured.

-All property must be owned.

-All expansion is to be largely self-financed.

-There shall be no boasting.

We push cost awareness at all levels with almost manic frenzy.

Ingvar believes in the ability to wait out difficulties.

Ingvar believes in gathering unfiltered intel from the front lines. He makes unannounced store visits and spends time talking to the employees unloading furniture and helping customers.

The day he is free of IKEA life for him will no longer be worth living. He loves it, aways wants to lie as close as possible to it, and never tires of improving it.

A demon in me says I have so much to do. I am never satisfied. Something tells me what I’m doing at the moment has to be done better tomorrow.

Behind this multinational tycoon is a country boy with a fierce sense of being an underdog.

He has a peasants distrust of a favorable destiny that keeps his feet on the ground.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#369 Elon Musk and The Early Days of SpaceX

1 november 2024 | 64 min

What I learned from rereading Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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Episode Outline:

—Numerous other entrepreneurs had tried playing at rocket science before, Musk well knew. He wanted to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them.

—Elon announces that he wants to start his own rocket company and I do remember a lot of chuckling, some laughter, people saying things like, ‘Save your money kid, and go sit on the beach.’” The kid was not amused. If anything, the doubts expressed at this meeting, and by some of his confidants, energized him more.

—Musk was a siren, calling brilliant young minds to SpaceX with an irresistible song. He offered an intoxicating brew of vision, charisma, audacious goals, resources.

—When they needed something, he wrote the check. In meetings, he helped solve their most challenging technical problems. When the hour was late, he could often be found right there, beside them, working away.

—The iterative approach begins with a goal and almost immediately leaps into concept designs, bench tests, and prototypes. The mantra with this approach is build and test early, find failures, and adapt. This is what SpaceX engineers and technicians did.

—"Here was a man who was not interested in experts. He meets me, he thinks to himself, 'Here is a bright kid, let's employ him.' And he does. He risks little with the possibility of gaining much. It is *exactly* what I now do at Dyson

This attitude to employment extended to [Jeremy] Fry's thinking in everything, including engineering. He did not, when an idea came to him, sit down and process it through pages of calculations; *he didn't argue it through with anyone; he just went out and built it.* When I came to him to say, 'I've had an idea,' he would offer no more advice than to say, 'You know where the workshop is, go and do it.' 'But we'll need to weld this thing,' I would protest.

Well then, get a welder and weld it.' When I asked if we shouldn't talk to sure someone about, say, hydrodynamics, he would say, 'The lake is down there, the Land Rover is over there, take a plank of wood down to the lake, tow it behind a boat and look at what happens.' Now, this was not a modus operandi that I had encountered before. College had taught me to revere experts and expertise. Fry ridiculed all that; as far as he was concerned, *with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible.* It was mind-blowing. No research, no preliminary sketches. If it didn't work one way he would just try it another way, until it did. And as we proceeded I could see that we were getting on extremely quickly. *The root principle was to do things your way.* It didn’t matter how other people did it. It didn’t matter if it could be done better. As long as it works, and it is exciting, people will follow you." — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson by James Dyson (Founders #300)

—Elon personally interviewed the first 3,000 employees of SpaceX.

—His people had to be brilliant. They had to be hardworking. And there could be no nonsense.

—SpaceX operated at its own speed.

—Pony Express ad: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

—I’ve never met a man so laser focused on his vision for what he wanted. He’s very intense, and he’s intimidating as hell.

—SpaceX had juice with the best students in space engineering. The freedom to innovate and resources to go fast summoned the best engineers in the land.

—Talent wins over experience and an entrepreneurial culture over heritage.

—He always made the most difficult decisions. He did not put off problems, but rather tackled the hardest ones first. And he had a vision for how aerospace could be done faster and for less money.

—He didn’t want to fail, but he wasn’t afraid of it.

—The speed SpaceX worked at relative to its peers could be jarring.

—No job is beneath us.

—No committees. No reports. Just done.

—Most of all he channeled an intense force to move things forward. Elon wants to get shit done.

—SpaceX likes to operate on its own terms and its own timeline.

—90% of the book is SpaceX failing.

—Elon spent much of the flight poring over books written about early rocket scientists and their efforts. He seemed intent to understand the mistakes they had made and learn from them.

—SpaceX is in this for the long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work.

—Who knows your customers? Find the person that knows your customers and then hire that person to sell your product to them.

—No work about work, just work. Shotwell wrote a plan of action for sales. Musk took one look at it and told her that he did not care about plans. Just get on with the job. “I was like, oh, OK, this is refreshing. I don’t have to write up a damn plan,” Shotwell recalled. Here was her first real taste of Musk’s management style. Don’t talk about doing things, just do things.

—Within its first three years, SpaceX had sued three of its biggest rivals in the launch industry, gone against the Air Force with the proposed United Launch Alliance merger, and protested a NASA contract. Elon Musk was not walking on eggshells on the way to orbit. He was breaking a lot of eggs.

—A Pegasus launch cost between $ 26 and $ 28 million. SpaceX’s price was $6 million. Musk wanted it front and center on the company’s website. This sort of transparency was radical at the time.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Steve Jobs and Edwin Land

20 oktober 2024 | 62 min

What I learned from rereading Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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Episode Outline:

— The most obvious parallel is to Apple Computer. Both companies specialized in relentless, obsessive refinement of their technologies. Both were established close to great research universities to attract talent. Both fetishized superior, elegant, covetable product design. And both companies exploded in size and wealth under an in-house visionary-godhead-inventor-genius. At Apple, that man was Steve Jobs. At Polaroid, the genius was Edwin Land. Just as Apple stories almost all lead back to Jobs, Polaroid lore always seems to focus on Land.

— Both men were college dropouts; both became as rich as anyone could ever wish to be; and both insisted that their inventions would change the fundamental nature of human interaction.

— Jobs expressed his deep admiration for Edwin Land. He called him a national treasure.

— Books on Edwin Land:

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid(Founders #40)

— Biography about Steve Jobs: Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

— Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. — Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214)

— Book on Henry Ford:

I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford by Richard Snow (Founders #9)

The Autobiography of Henry Ford by Henry Ford (Founders #26)

Today and Tomorrow Henry Ford (Founders #80)

My Forty Years With Ford by Charles Sorensen (Founders #118)

The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn (Founders #190)

— Another parallel to Jobs: Land's control over his company was nearly absolute, and he exercised it to a degree that was compelling and sometimes exhausting.

— When you read a biography of Edwin land you see an incredibly smart, gifted, driven, focused person endure decade after decade of struggle. And more importantly —finally work his way through.

— Another parallel to Jobs: You may be noticing that none of this has anything to do with instant photography. Polarizers rather than pictures would define the first two decades of lands intellectual life and would establish his company. Instant photos were an idea that came later on, a secondary business around which his company was completely recreated.

— “Missionaries make better products.” —Jeff Bezos

— His letter to shareholders gradually became a particularly dramatic showcase for his language and his thinking. These letters-really more like personal mission statements-are thoughtful and compact, and just eccentric enough to be completely engaging. Instead of discussing earnings and growth they laid out Land's World inviting everyone to join.

— Land gave him a four-word job description: "Keeper of the language.”

— No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. — My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins (Founders #170)

— The leap to Polaroid was like replacing a messenger on horseback with your first telephone.

— Hire a paid critic:

Norio Ohga, who had been a vocal arts student at the Tokyo University of Arts when he saw our first audio tape recorder back in 1950. I had had my eye on him for all those years because of his bold criticism of our first machine.

He was a great champion of the tape recorder, but he was severe with us because he didn't think our early machine was good enough. It had too much wow and flutter, he said. He was right, of course; our first machine was rather primitive. We invited him to be a paid critic even while he was still in school. His ideas were very challenging. He said then, "A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique.

— Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita.

— Another parallel to Jobs: Don't kid yourself. Polaroid is a one man company.

— He argued there was no reason that well-designed, wellmade computers couldn't command the same market share and margins as a luxury automobile.

A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way as a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Rather than competing with commodity PC makers like Dell, Compaq and Gateway, why not make only first-class products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?

The company could make much bigger profits from selling a $3,000 machine rather than a $500 machine, even if they sold fewer of them.

Why not, then, just concentrate on making the best $3,000 machines around? — Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney.

— How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher

— Books on Enzo Ferrari

Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97)

Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and The Making of an Automotive Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

Enzo Ferrari: The Man and The Machine by Brock Yates (Founders #220)

— Soul in the game. Listen to how Edwin Land describes his product:

We would not have known and have only just learned that a new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being by SX-70 when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photographs: it turns out that buried within us—

there is latent interest in each other; there is tenderness, curiosity, excitement, affection, companionability and humor; it turns out, in this cold world where man grows distant from man,

and even lovers can reach each other only briefly, that we have a yen for and a primordial competence for a quiet good-humored delight in each other:

we have a prehistoric tribal competence for a non-physical, non-emotional, non-sexual satisfaction in being partners in the lonely exploration of a once empty planet.

— “Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company’s owners are slim at best.” —Charlie Munger

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#368 Rockefeller's Autobiography

15 oktober 2024 | 56 min

What I learned from rereading Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller.

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Notes and highlights from the episode:

It has not been my custom to press my affairs forward into public gaze. (Bad boys move in silence)

My favorite biography on Rockefeller John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

Secrecy covered all of his operations.

Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

We had been frank and aboveboard with each other. Without this, business associates cannot get the best out of their work.

Rockefeller said Jay Gould was the best businessman he knew. Jay Gould books and episodes: American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz (Founders #285) and Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258)

"If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result." — Jeff Bezos

It's a pity to get a man into a place in an argument where he is defending a position instead of considering the evidence. His calm judgment is apt to leave him, and his mind is for the time being closed, and only obstinacy remains

I like doing deals with the same people. You get to know each other and build a mutual sense of trust. Today, a lot of what I do originates from associations that go back ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years. — Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell.

Writing a check separates conviction from conversation. — Warren Buffett

We had with us a group of courageous men who recognized the great principle that a business cannot be a great success that does not fully and efficiently accept and take advantage of its opportunities. (Do everything and you will win)

Such was Rockefeller's ingenuity, his ceaseless search for even minor improvements. Despite the unceasing vicissitudes of the oil industry, prone to cataclysmic booms and busts, he would never experience a single year of loss. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. #247 Henry Flagler (Rockefeller’s Partner)

Rockefeller on the impact Henry Flagler had on the beginning of Standard Oil: He always believed that if we went into the oil business at all, we should do the work as well as we knew how; that we should have the very best facilities; that everything should be solid and substantial; and that nothing should be left undone to produce the finest results. And he followed his convictions of building as though the trade was going to last, and his courage in acting up to his beliefs laid strong foundations for later years. (Build a first class business in a first class way)

Young people should realize how, above all other possessions, is the value of a friend in every department of life without any exception whatsoever.

When you recruit A players you don't tell them here's 5 things I want you to focus on. Here's your top 10 priorities. NO. You've got one priority. Destroy that priority. Do it more than anybody else possibly will. (Henry Flagler’s main priority was controlling the cost of transportation.)

Larry Ellison: You don’t want turnover on your core product team. Knowledge compounds. Don’t interrupt the compounding. — Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds. (Founders #124)

We were accustomed to prepare for financial emergencies long before we needed the funds. (Keep a fortress of cash)

It is impossible to comprehend Rockefeller's breathtaking ascent without realizing that he always moved into battle backed by abundant cash. Whether riding out downturns or coasting on booms, he kept plentiful reserves and won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

I learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were.

This casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me.

As our successes began to come, I seldom put my head upon the pillow at night without speaking a few words to myself: "Now a little success, soon you’ll fall down, soon you’ll be overthrown. Because you’ve got a start, you think you’re quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head—go steady." These intimate conversations with myself had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I couldn’t stand my prosperity, and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions. (If you go to sleep on a win you’ll wake up with a loss)

I hope they were properly humiliated to see how far we had gone beyond their expectations. (Chips on shoulders put chips in pockets)

98 percent of our attention was devoted to the task at hand. We are believers in Carlyle's Prescription, that the job a man is to do is the job at hand and not see what lies dimly in the distance. — Charlie Munger in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. (Founders #182)

Rockefeller on Standard Oil stock: Sell everything you've got, even the shirt on your back, but hold on to the stock.

All business proceeds on belief: Trying to run a company without a set of beliefs is like trying to steer a ship without a rudder. — Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp (Founders #184)

Rockefeller on his “unintelligent competition”: We had the type of man who really never knew all the facts about his own affairs. Many kept their books in such a way that they did not actually know when they were making money or when they were losing money.

A few weeks later, the newspapers announce his new partnership—revealing who had backed his bid—and the news that Rockefeller is, at twenty-five, an owner of one of the largest refineries in the world. On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more. — Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

At best it was a speculative trade, and I wonder that we managed to pull through so often; but we were gradually learning how to conduct a most difficult business.

A blueprint for success in any endeavor: Low prices to the customer. Root out any inefficiency. Pay for talent. Control expenses. Invest in technology.

We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. The company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization

The fastest way to move a dial is narrow the focus. People naturally resist focus because they can’t decide what is important. Therein lies a problem: people can typically tell you after some deliberation what their top three priorities are, but they struggle to decide on just one. What is too much and what is too little focus? Do you ever even discuss this? Most teams are not focused enough. I rarely encountered a team that employed too narrow an aperture. It goes against our human grain. People like to boil oceans. Just knowing that can be to your advantage. When you narrow focus, you are increasing the resourcing on the remaining priority. — Amp It Up by Frank Slootman

Two people can run the same business and have vastly different results: Perhaps it is worth while to emphasize again the fact that it is not merely capital and "plants" and the strictly material things which make up a business, but the character of the men behind these things, their personalities, and their abilities; these are the essentials to be reckoned with.

When it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. — Jeff Bezos in Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

Don't even think of temporary or sharp advantages. Don't waste your effort on a thing which ends in a petty triumph unless you are satisfied with a life of petty success.

Study diligently your capital requirements, and fortify yourself fully to cover possible set-backs, because you can absolutely count on meeting setbacks.

Do not to lose your head over a little success, or grow impatient or discouraged by a little failure.

Know your numbers. You need to know your business down to the ground.

Money comes naturally as a result of service (Henry Ford)

Don’t do anything that someone else can do (Edwin Land)

The man will be most successful who confers the greatest service on the world.

Commercial enterprises that are needed by the public will pay. Commercial enterprises that are not needed fail, and ought to fail.

Dedicate your life to building something that contributes to the progress and happiness of mankind.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#367 Inside the Contrarian Mind of Sam Zell

8 oktober 2024 | 50 min

#366 Mr. Beast Leaked Memo

27 september 2024 | 45 min

#365 Nick Sleep's Letters: The Full Collection of the Nomad Investment Partnership Letters to Partners

16 september 2024 | 56 min

The best investors are not investors at all. They're entrepreneurs who have never sold. — Nick Sleep

Nick Sleep’s letters are a masterclass on the importance of understanding the underlying reality of a business — what he calls the engine of its success.

I read all 110,000 words of Nick’s letters (twice!) to make this episode and what I found most important is Nick’s ability to develop a deep understanding of “honestly run compounding machines” (like Costco and Amazon) years before everyone else.

Nick explains clearly how Jim Sinegal and Jeff Bezos set up their companies for long term success —from the very beginning — and gives us a few hints along the way on how we can do the same in our business.

And the absolute entrepreneurial history nerd in me loved the references to Henry Ford, Sam Walton, Rockefeller and other greats from the past that are sprinkled throughout Nick’s letters.

No surprise that someone who was able to make $2 billion for his clients has a deep understanding of the great work that came before him.

If you want to read all of Nick Sleep’s partnership letters you can do so here for free

You can also read William Green’s book Richer, Wiser, Happier: How The World's Greatest Investors Win In Markets and Life —which both Nick and I recommend. It has an excellent chapter on How Nick and Zak built their firm.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube (Video coming soon!)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#364 Nick & Zak's Excellent Adventure: How Nick Sleep and Qais Zaharia Built Their Investment Partnership

10 september 2024 | 45 min

#363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett

6 september 2024 | 84 min

#362 Li Lu

26 augusti 2024 | 38 min

Charlie Munger said that Li Lu was the only outsider he ever trusted with his money. Decades before Li Lu made Munger half a billion dollars, Li survived one of the most horrific childhoods imaginable:

Born into poverty, abandoned, hungry, beaten, surrounded by death. Persistent. Smart. Disciplined. Intensely curious. Obsessed with reading and learning. Determined to escape. This is a story you absolutely cannot miss.

What I learned from reading Moving The Mountain: My life in China from the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square by Li Lu.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

----

Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube (Video coming soon!)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#361 Estée Lauder

18 augusti 2024 | 58 min

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said it was a crime that more business schools didn't study Henry Singleton. I think it's a crime that more entrepreneurs don't study Estée Lauder. She is one of the best founders to ever do it. This is the story of how she went from a childhood obsession, to a single counter in a beauty salon, to a multibillion dollar empire.

This is my third time reading this book. It gets better every time I read it. This episode is what I learned from rereading Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder.

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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

----

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

----

Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube (Video coming soon!)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#360 Robert Kierlin: Founder of Fastenal

12 augusti 2024 | 57 min

#359 The Russian Rockefellers: The Nobel Family Dynasty

7 augusti 2024 | 66 min

The name of Nobel usually calls to mind Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and the internationally prestigious prizes that bear his name. But Alfred was only one member of a creative and innovative family who built an industrial empire in prerevolutionary Russia. The saga begins with an emigre from Sweden, Immanuel Nobel, who was an architect, a pioneer producer of steam engines, and a maker of weapons.

Immanuel's sons included Alfred; Robert, who directed the family's activities in the Caspian oil fields; and Ludwig, an engineering genius and manufacturing magnate whose boundless energy and fierce determination created the Russian petroleum industry.

Ludwig's son Emanuel showed similar mettle, shrewdly bargaining with the Rothschilds for control of the Russian markets and competing head-on with Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell for lucrative world markets.

Perhaps no family in history has played so decisive a role in building an industrial empire in an underdeveloped but resource-rich nation. Yet the achievements of the Nobel family have been largely forgotten. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Emmanuel had to flee the country disguised as a peasant.

The Nobel empire with its 50,000 workers lay in ruins. An empire which had taken eighty years to design and build, was nearly destroyed, bringing a sudden and bitter end to one of the most remarkable industrial odysseys in world history.

This episode is what I learned from reading The Russian Rockefellers: The Saga of the Nobel Family and the Russian Oil Industry by Robert Tolf.

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Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.

----

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

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Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube (Video coming soon!)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#358 I had dinner with John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods

28 juli 2024 | 94 min

#357 Haruki Murakami

21 juli 2024 | 59 min

What I learned from reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

Build relationships with other founders, investors, and executives at a Founders Event

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(3:01) No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.

(4:00) Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

(4:00) The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.

(10:00) You can't fake passion — someone else, that really loves the job, will out run you. Somebody else sitting in some other MBA program has a deep passion for whatever career path you're going down, and they are going to smoke you if you don't have it yourself. — Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love

(12:00) What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away.

(14:00) Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you. — David Ogilvy

(16:00) If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting. — Jeff Bezos

(16:00) So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets.

(19:00) Failure was not an option. I had to give it everything I had.

(19:00) My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I’m more a workhorse than a racehorse.

(22:00) I was more interested in having finished it than in whether or not it would ever see the light of day.

(26:00) I’m the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do.

(29:00) The entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer. — James Dyson

(34:00) You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing,

(37:00) You can’t please everybody. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten didn’t like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.

(40:00) The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(41:00) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(43:00) No matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long.

(44:00) Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist—in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that’s what I did.

(45:00) I decided who I want to be, and that is who I am. — Coco Chanel

(46:00) Once, I interviewed an Olympic runner. I asked him, “Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in?” He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, “Of course. All the time!”

(47:00) I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures. Not only are they business failures; they are character failures also; it is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations. — Henry Ford’s Autobiography

(50:00) If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again.

(51:00) Focus and endurance can be acquired and sharpened through training.

(54:00) Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#356 How The Sun Rose On Silicon Valley: Bob Noyce (Founder of Intel)

12 juli 2024 | 58 min

What I learned from reading The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on Silicon Valley by Tom Wolfe.

Read The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone with me.

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(1:00) America is today in the midst of a great technological revolution. With the advent of the silicon chip, information processing, and communications, the national economy have been strikingly altered. The new technology is changing how we live, how we work, how we think. The revolution didn't just happen; it was engineered by a small number of people. Collectively, they engineered Tomorrow. Foremost among them is Robert Noyce.

(2:00) Steve Jobs on Robert Noyce: “He was one of the giants in this valley who provided the model and inspiration for everything we wanted to become. He was the ultimate inventor. The ultimate rebel. The ultimate entrepreneur.”

(4:00) When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(7:00) Bob Noyce had a passion for the scientific grind.

(10:00) He had a profound and baffling self-confidence.

(15:00) They called Shockley’s personalty reverse charisma. — Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel Shurkin. (Founders #165)

(25:00) What the beginning of an industry looks like: Anywhere from 50 to 90% of the transistors produced would turn out to be defective.

(33:00) Young engineers were giving themselves over to a new technology as if it were a religious mission.

(41:00) Noyce's idea was that every employee should feel that he could go as far and as fast in this industry as his talent would take him. He didn't want any employee to look at the structure of Intel and see a complex set of hurdles.

(43:00) This wasn't a corporation. It was a congregation.

(43:00) There were sermons. At Intel everyone, Noyce included, was expected to attend sessions on "the Intel Culture." At these sessions the principles by which the company was run were spelled out and discussed.

(45:00) If you're ambitious and hardworking, you want to be told how you're doing.

(45:00) In Noyce's view, most of the young hotshots who were coming to work for Intel had never had the benefit of honest grades in their lives. In the late 1960s and early 1970s college faculties had been under pressure to give all students passing marks so they wouldn't have to go off to Vietnam, and they had caved in, until the entire grading system was meaningless. At Intel they would learn what measuring up meant.

(49:00) When you are trying to convince an audience to accept a radical innovation, almost by definition the idea is so far from the status quo that many people simply cannot get their minds around it. They quickly discovered that the marketplace wasn’t just confused by the concept of the microprocessor, but was actually frightened by its implications. Many of my engineering friends scoffed at it was a gimmick. Their solution? The market had to be educated. At one point, Intel was conducting more seminars and workshops on how to use the microprocessor than the local junior collage’s total catalog of courses. Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove became part of a traveling educational roadshow. Everyone who could walk and talk became educators. It worked. — The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#355 Rare Bernard Arnault Interview

4 juli 2024 | 44 min

What I learned from reading The House of Arnault by Brad Stone and Angelina Rascouet.

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(3:00) While other politicians were content to get their information from a scattering of newspapers, he devoured whole shelves. — Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden. (Founders #320)

(7:00) Arnault had understood before anyone else that it was a true industry. — The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. (Founders #296)

(9:00) Arnault is an iron fist in an iron glove. — The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai.

The public conception of Sam as a good ol’ country boy wearing a soft velvet glove misses the fact that there’s an iron fist within. — Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance Trimble.

(12:00) People often ask me, “When are you going to retire?” And I answer, “Retire from what?” I’ve never worked a day in my life. Everything I’ve done has been because I’ve loved doing it, because it was enthralling. — Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

(16:00) “I am not interested in managing a clothing factory. What you need, and I would like to run, is a craftsman’s workshop, in which we would recruit the very best people in the trade, to reestablish in Paris a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. It will cost a great deal of money and entail much risk.” — Christian Dior to Marcel Boussac

(17:00) Arnault believed that luxury brands could be larger than anyone at the time imagined.

(20:00) Arnault said this 35 years ago: “My ten-year objective is that LVMH's leading position in the world be further strengthened in the luxury goods sector. I believe that there will be fewer and fewer brand names capable of retaining a worldwide presence and that those of our group will be among them as we will provide them with the means for growth.”

(25:00) There are huge advantages for the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing—when a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows. But people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave, whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people, including National Cash Register. Surfing is a very powerful model.” — the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(25:00) One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and STAYING in it. There’s a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still.

(25:00) The incredible career of Les Schwab: Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab. (Founders #330)

(30:00) Dior in his autobiography: It is widely, and quite erroneously, believed that when the house of Christian Dior was launched, enormous sums were spent on publicity: on the contrary in our first modest budget not a single penny was allotted to it. I trusted to the quality of my dresses to get Christian Dior talked about. Moreover, the relative secrecy in which I chose to work aroused a positive whispering campaign, which was excellent (free) propaganda. Gossip, malicious rumours even, are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world.

(31:00) Munger: “There are actually businesses that you will find a few times in a lifetime, where any manager could raise the return enormously just by raising prices-and yet they haven't done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they're not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer. Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot and the attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disneyworld and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies. At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca-Cola-which had some untapped pricing power.”

— Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin

(33:00) The benefits Arnault receives from owning commercial real estate: He makes money from his own stores, from leasing space to rivals—and from the appreciation of premium real estate. When LVMH buys a building, it takes the best storefronts for its own brands and often asks rivals to move out when their leases expire.

(35:00) Arnault is all about details. He has 200,000 employees and he’s paying attention to details about landscaping in the Miami Design District.

(36:00) If we lose the detail, we lose everything. — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#354 Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man

29 juni 2024 | 93 min

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance Trimble.

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(2:30) Sam Walton built his business on a very simple idea: Buy cheap. Sell low. Every day. With a smile.

(2:30) People confuse a simple idea with an ordinary person. Sam Walton was no ordinary person.

(4:30) Traits Sam Walton had his entire life: A sense of duty. Extreme discipline. Unbelievable levels of endurance.

(5:30) His dad taught him the secret to life was work, work, work.

(5:30) Sam felt the world was something he could conquer.

(6:30) The Great Depression was a big leveler of people. Sam chose to rise above it. He was determined to be a success.

(11:30) 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. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(15:30) He was crazy about satisfying customers.

(17:30) The lawyer saw Sam clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at his hands. Sam straightened up. “No,” he said. “I’m not whipped. I found Newport, and I found the store. I can find another good town and another store. Just wait and see!”

(21:30) Sometimes hardship can enlighten and inspire. This was the case for Sam Walton as he put in hours and hours of driving Ozark mountain roads in the winter of 1950. But that same boredom and frustration triggered ideas that eventually brought him billions of dollars. (This is when he learns to fly small planes. Walmart never happens otherwise)

(33:30) At the start we were so amateurish and so far behind K Mart just ignored us. They let us stay out here, while we developed and learned our business. They gave us a 10 year period to grow.

(37:30) And so how dedicated was Sam to keeping costs low? Walmart is called that in part because fewer letters means cheaper signs on the outside of a store.

(42:30) Sam Walton is tough, loves a good fight, and protects his territory.

(43:30) His tactics later prompted them to describe Sam as a modern-day combination of Vince Lombardi (insisting on solid execution of the basics) and General George S. Patton. (A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.)

(43:30) Hardly a day has passed without Sam reminding an employee: "Remember Wal-Mart's Golden Rule: Number one, the customer Is always right; number two, if the customer isn't right, refer to rule number one.”

(46:30) The early days of Wal-Mart were like the early days of Disneyland: "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland.

So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything.

We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions. — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

(1:04:30) Sam Walton said he took more ideas from Sol Price than any other person. —Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary by Robert Price. (Founders #304)

(1:07:30) Nothing in the world is cheaper than a good idea without any action behind it.

(1:07:30) Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#353 How To Be Rich by J. Paul Getty

23 juni 2024 | 64 min

What I learned from reading How To Be Rich by J. Paul Getty.

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger.

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

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A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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(2:00) My father was a self-made man who had known extreme poverty in his youth and had a practically limitless capacity for hard work.

(6:00) I acted as my own geologist, legal advisor, drilling superintendent, explosives expert, roughneck and roustabout.

(8:00) Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

(12:00) Control as much of your business as possible. You don’t want to have to worry about what is going on in the other guy’s shop.

(20:00) Optimism is a moral duty. Pessimism aborts opportunity.

(21:00) I studied the lives of great men and women. And I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

(22:00) 98 percent of our attention was devoted to the task at hand. We are believers in Carlyle's Prescription, that the job a man is to do is the job at hand and not see what lies dimly in the distance. — Charlie Munger

(27:00) Entrepreneurs want to create their own security.

(34:00) Example is the best means to instruct or inspire others.

(37:00) Long orders, which require much time to prepare, to read and to understand are the enemies of speed. Napoleon could issue orders of few sentences which clearly expressed his intentions and required little time to issue and to understand.

(38:00) A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202)

(41:00) Two principles he repeats:

Be where the work is happening.

Get rid of bureaucracy.

(43:00) Years ago, businessmen automatically kept administrative overhead to an absolute minimum. The present day trend is in exactly the opposite direction. The modern business mania is to build greater and ever greater paper shuffling empires.

(44:00) Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going!by Les Schwab (Founders #330)

(46:00) The primary function of management is to obtain results through people.

(50:00) the truly great leader views reverses, calmly and coolly. He is fully aware that they are bound to occur occasionally and he refuses to be unnerved by them.

(51:00) There is always something wrong everywhere.

(51:00) Don't interrupt the compounding. It’s all about the long term. You should keep a fortress of cash, reinvest in your business, and use debt sparingly. Doing so will help you survive to reap the long-term benefits of your business.

(54:00) You’ll go much farther if you stop trying to look and act and think like everyone else.

(55:00) The line that divides majority opinion from mass hysteria is often so fine as to be virtually invisible.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#352 J. Paul Getty: The Richest Private Citizen in America

15 juni 2024 | 90 min

What I learned from reading As I See it: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty by J. Paul Getty.

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger.

Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

Get access to Founders Notes here.

You can also ask SAGE (the Founders Notes AI assistant) any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here.

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(2:00) Vice President Nelson Rockefeller did me the honor of saying that my entrepreneurial success in the oil business put me on a par with his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr. My comment was that comparing me to John D. Sr. was like comparing a sparrow to an eagle. My words were not inspired by modesty, but by facts.

(8:00) On his dad sending him to military school: The strict, regimented environment was good for me.

(20:00) Entrepreneurs are people whose mind and energies are constantly being used at peak capacity.

(28:00) Advice for fellow entrepreneurs: Don’t be like William Randolph Hearst. Reinvest in your business. Keep a fortress of cash. Use debt sparingly.

(30:00) The great entrepreneurs I know have these traits:

-Devoted their minds and energy to building productive enterprises (over the long term)

-They concentrated on expanding

-They concentrated on making their companies more efficient

-They reinvest heavily in to their business (which can help efficiency and expansion )

-Always personally involved in their business

-They know their business down to the ground

-They have an innate capacity to think on a large scale

(34:00) Five wives can't all be wrong. As one of them told me after our divorce: "You're a great friend, Paul—but as a husband, you're impossible.”

(36:00) My business interests created problems [in my marriages]. I was drilling several wells and it was by no means uncommon for me to stay on the sites overnight or even for two days or more.

(38:00) A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature and one of the more pronounced motivating forces in my life. Once I have committed myself to any undertaking, a powerful inner drive cuts in and I become intent on seeing it through to a satisfactory conclusion.

(38:00) My own nature is such that I am able to concentrate on whatever is before me and am not easily distracted from it.

(42:00) There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(47:00) [On transforming his company for the Saudi Arabia deal] The list of things to be done was awesome, but those things were done.

(53:00) Churchill to his son: Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.

(54:00) My father's influence and example where the principle forces that formed my nature and character.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#351 The Founder of Rolex: Hans Wilsdorf

4 juni 2024 | 57 min

What I learned from reading about Hans Wilsdorf and the founding of Rolex.

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"Learning from history is a form of leverage." — Charlie Munger. Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand.

Get access to Founders Notes here.

You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

(0:01) At the age of twelve I was an orphan.

(1:00) My uncles made me become self-reliant very early in life. Looking back, I believe that it is to this, that much of my success is due.

(9:00) The idea of wearing a watch on one's wrist was thought to be contrary to the conception of masculinity.

(10:00) Prior to World War 1 wristwatches for men did not exist.

(11:00) Business is problems. The best companies are just effective problem solving machines.

(12:00) My personal opinion is that pocket watches will almost completely disappear and that wrist watches will replace them definitively! I am not mistaken in this opinion and you will see that I am right." —Hans Wilsdorf, 1914

(14:00) The highest order bit is belief: I had very early realized the manifold possibilities of the wristlet watch and, feeling sure that they would materialize in time, I resolutely went on my way. Rolex was thus able to get several years ahead of other watch manufacturers who persisted in clinging to the pocket watch as their chief product.

(16:00) Clearly, the companies for whom the economics of twenty-four-hour news would have made the most sense were the Big Three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed— studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors almost everything but a belief in cable. — Ted Turner's Autobiography (Founders #327)

(20:00) Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

(27:00) Rolex was effectively the first watch brand to have real marketing dollars put behind a watch. Rolex did this in a concentrated way and they've continued to do it in a way that is simply just unmatched by others in their industry.

(28:00) It's tempting during recession to cut back on consumer advertising. At the start of each of the last three recessions, the growth of spending on such advertising had slowed by an average of 27 percent. But consumer studies of those recessions had showed that companies that didn't cut their ads had, in the recovery, captured the most market share. So we didn't cut our ad budget. In fact, we raised it to gain brand recognition, which continued advertising sustains. — Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

(32:00) Social proof is a form of leverage. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(34:00) What really matters is Hans understood the opportunity better than anybody else, and invested heavily in developing the technology to bring his ideas to fruition.

(35:00) On keeping the main thing the main thing for decades: In developing and extending my business, I have always had certain aims in mind, a course from which I never deviated.

(41:00) Rolex wanted to only be associated with the best. They ran an ad with the headline: Men who guide the destinies of the world, where Rolex watches.

(43:00) Opportunity creates more opportunites. The Oyster unlocked the opportunity for the Perpetual.

(44:00) The easier you make something for the customer, the larger the market gets: “My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.” — Steve Jobs

(48:00) More sources:

Rolex Jubilee: Vade Mecum by Hans Wilsdorf

Rolex Magazine: The Hans Wilsdorf Years

Hodinkee: Inside the Manufacture. Going Where Few Have Gone Before -- Inside All Four Rolex Manufacturing Facilities

Vintage Watchstraps Blog: Hans Wilsdorf and Rolex

Business Breakdowns #65 Rolex: Timeless Excellence

Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

27 maj 2024 | 47 min

What I learned from reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo

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(1:00) You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around. —Steve Jobs in 1997

(6:00) Why should I care = What does this do for me?

(6:00) The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. (Founders #348)

(7:00) Easy to understand, easy to spread.

(8:00) An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire by Robert Daley

(8:00) The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(9:00) love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of 3 days driving on dangerous road, it’s 1.5 hours by air. That’s a 48x improvement in time savings. This allows the company to work so much faster. The best B2B companies save businesses time.

(10:00) Great Advertising Founders Episodes:

Albert Lasker (Founders #206)

Claude Hopkins (Founders #170 and #207)

David Ogilvy (Founders #82, 89, 169, 189, 306, 343)

(12:00) Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.) — Ogilvy on Advertising

(13:00) Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.

(19:00) Start with the problem. Do not start talking about your product before you describe the problem your product solves.

(23:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

(27:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.

Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced-subconsciously and, to some extent, consciously-by what we see others do and approve.

Therefore, if everybody's buying something, we think it's better.

We don't like to be the one guy who's out of step.

The social proof phenomenon, which comes right out of psychology, gives huge advantages to scale.

— the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)

(29:00) Marketing is theatre.

(32:00) Belief is irresistible. — Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

(35:00) I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#349 How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple

20 maj 2024 | 52 min

What I learned from reading Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall.

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(1:30) Steve wanted Apple to make a product that was simply amazing and amazingly simple.

(3:00) If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(5:00) Steve was always easy to understand. He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time. Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next. — Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(7:00) Watch this video. Andy Miller tells GREAT Steve Jobs stories.

(10:00) Many are familiar with the re-emergence of Apple. They may not be as familiar with the fact that it has few, if any parallels.
When did a founder ever return to the company from which he had been rudely rejected to engineer a turnaround as complete and spectacular as Apple's? While turnarounds are difficult in any circumstances they are doubly difficult in a technology company. It is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once but twice. And the second time he was alone.

— Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz.

(15:00) If the ultimate decision maker is involved every step of the way the quality of the work increases.

(20:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland. So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions." — Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #347)

(23:00) The further you get away from 1 the more complexity you invite in.

(25:00) Your goal: A single idea expressed clearly.

(26:00) Jony Ive: Steve was the most focused person I’ve met in my life

(28:00) Editing your thinking is an act of service.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Michael Jordan In His Own Words

12 maj 2024 | 96 min

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil.

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Episode Outline:

Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching.

It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words.

To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me.

You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared.

Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised.

I knew going against the grain was just part of the process.

The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.

I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today?

I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.

In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes.

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You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

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A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#348 The Financial Genius Behind A Century of Wall Street Scandals: Ivar Kreuger

7 maj 2024 | 76 min

What I learned from reading The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy.

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Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

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Episode Outline:

1. Ivar was charismatic. His charisma was not natural. Ivar spent hours every day just preparing to talk. He practiced his lines for hours like great actors do.

2. Ivar’s first pitch was simple, easy to understand, and legitimate: By investing in Swedish Match, Americans could earn profits from a monopoly abroad.

3. Joseph Duveen noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation. — The Days of Duveen by S.N. Behrman. (Founders #339 Joseph Duveen: Robber Baron Art Dealer)

4. Ivar studied Rockefeller and Carnegie: Ivar's plan was to limit competition and increase profits by securing a monopoly on match sales throughout the world, mimicking the nineteenth century oil, sugar, and steel trusts.

5. When investors were manic, they would purchase just about anything. But during the panic that inevitably followed mania, the opposite was true. No one would buy.

6. The problem isn’t getting rich. The problem is staying sane. — Charlie Munger

7. Ivar understood human psychology. If something is limited and hard to get to that increases desire. This works for both products (like a Ferrari) and people (celebrities). Ivar was becoming a business celebrity.

8. I’ve never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don't have and don't need. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

9. Great ideas are simple ideas: Ivar hooked Durant with his simple, brilliant idea: government loans in exchange for match monopolies.

10. Ivar wrote to his parents, "I cannot believe that I am intended to spend my life making money for second-rate people. I shall bring American methods back home. Wait and see - I shall do great things. I'm bursting with ideas. I am only wondering which to carry out first."

11. Ivar’s network of companies was far too complex for anyone to understand: It was like a corporate family tree from hell, and it extended into obscurity.

12. “Victory in our industry is spelled survival.” —Steve Jobs

13. Ivar's financial statements were sloppy and incomplete. Yet investors nevertheless clamored to buy his securities.

14. As more cash flowed in the questions went away. This is why Ponzi like schemes can last so long. People don’t want to believe. They don’t want the cash to stop.

15. A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222)

16. A summary of Charlie Munger on incentives:

1. We all underestimate the power of incentives.
2. Never, ever think about anything else before the power of incentives.
3. The most important rule: get the incentives right.

17. This is nuts! Fake phones and hired actors!

Next to the desk was a table with three telephones. The middle phone was a dummy, a non-working phone that Ivar could cause to ring by stepping on a button under the desk. That button was a way to speed the exit of talkative visitors who were staying too long. Ivar also used the middle phone to impress his supporters. When Percy Rockefeller visited Ivar pretended to receive calls from various European government officials, including Mussolini and Stalin. That evening, Ivar threw a lavish party and introduced Rockefeller to numerous "ambassadors" from various countries, who actually were movie extras he had hired for the night.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#347 How Walt Disney Built His Greatest Creation: Disneyland

29 april 2024 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.

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What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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(8:00) When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney.

We were quite wrong.

He had, instead, created his masterpiece.

(13:00) This may be the greatest product launch of all time: He had run eight months of his television program. He hadn't named his new show Walt Disney Presents or The Wonderful World of Walt Disney.

It was called simply Disneyland, and every weekly episode was an advertisement for the still unborn park.

(15:00) Disneyland is the extension of the powerful personality of one man.

(15:00) The creation of Disneyland was Walt Disney’s personal taste in physical form.

(24:00) How strange that the boss would just drop it. Walt doesn’t give up. So he must have something else in mind.

(26:00) Their mediocrity is my opportunity. It is an opportunity because there is so much room for improvement.

(36:00) Roy Disney never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant, perfectionist imagination of his younger brother.

(41:00) Walt Disney’s decision to not relinquish his TV rights to United Artists was made in 1936. This decision paid dividends 20 years later. Hold on. Technology -- developed by other people -- constantly benefited Disney's business. Many such cases in the history of entrepreneurship.

(43:00) Walt Disney did not look around. He looked in. He looked in to his personal taste and built a business that was authentic to himself.

(54:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes.

We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before.

Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland.

So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything.

We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions."

----

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#346 How Walt Disney Built Himself

22 april 2024 | 107 min

What I learned from rereading Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler.

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What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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(2:00) Disney’s key traits were raw ingenuity combined with sadistic determination.

(3:00) I had spent a lifetime with a frustrated, and often unemployed man, who hated anybody who was successful.

— Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

(6:00) Disney put excelence before any other consideration.

(11:00) Maybe the most important thing anyone ever said to him: You’re crazy to be a professor she told Ted. What you really want to do is draw. Ted’s notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him. Here was a man who could draw such pictures. He should earn a living doing that.

— Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #161)

(14:00) A quote about Edwin Land that would apply to Walt Disney too:

Land had learned early on that total engrossment was the best way for him to work. He strongly believed that this kind of concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. (Founders #134)

(15:00) My parents objected strenuously, but I finally talked them into letting me join up as a Red Cross ambulance driver. I had to lie about my age, of course.

In my company was another fellow who had lied about his age to get in. He was regarded as a strange duck, because whenever we had time off and went out on the town to chase girls, he stayed in camp drawing pictures.

His name was Walt Disney.

Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. (Founders #293)

(20:00) Walt Disney had big dreams. He had outsized aspirations.

(22:00) A quote from Edwin Land that would apply to Walt Disney too: My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do.

(24:00) Walt Disney seldom dabbled. Everyone who knew him remarked on his intensity; when something intrigued him, he focused himself entirely as if it were the only thing that mattered.

(29:00) He had the drive and ambition of 10 million men.

(29:00) I'm going to sit tight. I have the greatest opportunity I've ever had, and I'm in it for everything.

(31:00) He seemed confident beyond any logical reason for him to be so. It appeared that nothing discouraged him.

(31:00) You have to take the hard knocks with the good breaks in life.

(32:00) Nothing wrong with my aim, just gotta change the target. — Jay Z

(35:00) He sincerely wanted to be counted among the best in his craft.

(43:00) He didn't want to just be another animation producer. He wanted to be the king of animation. Disney believed that quality was his only real advantage.

(47:00) Walt Disney wanted domination. Domination that would make his position unassailable.

(49:00) Disney was always trying to make something he could be proud of.

(50:00) We have a habit of divine discontent with our performance. It is an antidote to smugness.

— Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: Being Very Good Is No Good,You Have to Be Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Good by David Ogilvy and Ogivly & Mather. (Founders #343)

(53:00) While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly. I would crawl into the house every night covered in dust after a long day, exhausted and depressed because that day's cyclone had not worked. There were times when I thought it would never work, that I would keep on making cyclone after cyclone, never going forwards, never going backwards, until I died.

— Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(56:00) He doesn't place a premium on collecting friends or socializing: "I don't believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It's the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it's just to convince myself again that I'm not missing a lot."

— The Red Bull Story by Wolfgang Fürweger (Founders #333)

(1:02:00) Steve was at the center of all the circles.

He made all the important product decisions.

From my standpoint, as an individual programmer, demoing to Steve was like visiting the Oracle of Delphi.

The demo was my question. Steve's response was the answer.

While the pronouncements from the Greek Oracle often came in the form of confusing riddles, that wasn't true with Steve.

He was always easy to understand.

He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time.

Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.

He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was willing to invest his own time, effort, and influence to see that they were.

Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted.

Much like the Greek Oracle, Steve foretold the future.

— Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(1:07:00) He griped that when he hired veteran animators he had to “put up with their Goddamn poor working habits from doing cheap pictures.” He believed it was easier to start from scratch with young art students and indoctrinate them in the Disney system.

(1:15:00) I don’t want to be relagated to the cartoon medium. We have worlds to conquer here.

(1:17:00) Advice Henry Ford gave Walt Disney about selling his company: If you sell any of it you should sell all of it.

(1:23:00) He kept a slogan pasted inside of his hat: You can’t top pigs with pigs. (A reminder that we have to keep blazing new trails.)

(1:25:00) Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.

(1:33:00) It is the detail. If we lose the detail, we lose it all.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#345 George Lucas

12 april 2024 | 119 min

What I learned from rereading George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones.

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(0:01) George Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself.

(1:00) George Lucas is the Thomas Edison of the modern film industry.

(1:30) A list of biographies written by Brian Jay Jones

(6:00) Elon Musk interviewed by Kevin Rose

(10:15) How many people think the solution to gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special-effects company? But that’s what he did.

(17:00) When I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it. I ate it. I slept it. 24 hours a day. There was no going back.

(18:00) Those on the margins often come to control the center. (Game of Thrones)

(21:00) As soon as I made my first film, I thought, Hey, I’m good at this. I know how to do this. From then on, I’ve never questioned it.

(23:00) He was becoming increasingly cranky about the idea of working with others and preferred doing everything himself.

(34:00) Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

(42:00) The film Easy Rider was made for $350,000. It grossed over $60 million at the box office.

(45:00) The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing by Randall Stross. (Founders #77)

(47:00) What we’re striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released, and be completely free. That’s very hard to do in the world of business. You have to have the money in order to have the power to be free.

(49:00) You should reject the status quo and pursue freedom.

(49:00) People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They’re people in cages with open doors.

(51:00) Stay small. Be the best. Don’t lose any money.

(59:00) That was a very dark period for me. We were in dire financial strait. I turned that down [directing someone else’s movie] at my bleakest point, when I was in debt to my parents, in debt to Francis Coppola, in debt to my agent; I was so far in debt I thought I’d never get out. It took years to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance. Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank… getting little jobs, eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted.

(1:02:00) “Opening this new restaurant might be the worst mistake I've ever made."

Stanley [Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus] set his martini down, looked me in the eye, and said, "So you made a mistake. You need to understand something important. And listen to me carefully: The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled."

His words remained with me through the night. I repeated them over and over to myself, and it led to a turning point in the way I approached business.

Stanley's lesson reminded me of something my grandfather Irving Harris had always told me:

“The definition of business is problems."

His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer.

(1:05:00) My thing about art is that I don’t like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit, and I equate those two directly. I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie.

(1:06:00) I know how good I am. American Graffiti is successful because it came entirely from my head. It was my concept. And that’s the only way I can work.

(1:09:00) Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(1:21:00) The budget for Star Wars was $11 million. In brought in $775 million at the box office alone!

(1:25:00) Steven Spielberg made over $40 million from the original Star Wars. Spielberg gave Lucas 2.5% of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Lucas gave Spielberg 2.5% of Star Wars. That to 2.5% would earn Spielberg more than $40 million over the next four decades.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Steven Spielberg

4 april 2024 | 99 min

What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride.

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Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

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What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

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Episode Outline:

Whatever is there, he makes it work.

Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience."

"He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.' And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."

One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying "he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.” He was twelve.

He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.

Spielberg remained essentially an autodidact. Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career. Universal Studios, in effect, was Spielberg's film school. Giving him an education that, paradoxically, was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment. Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal, immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development.

At the time he came to Hollywood, generations of nepotism had made the studios terminally inbred and unwelcoming to newcomers. The studio system, long under siege from television, falling box-office receipts, and skyrocketing costs, was in a state of impending collapse.

When Steven was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in, he always had a positive, forward motion, whatever he may have been suffering inside.

In the two decades since Star Wars and Close Encounters were released, science-fiction films have accounted for half of the top twenty box-office hits. But before George Lucas and Spielberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction. The conventional wisdom was science-fiction films never make money.

Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones who want us around. So fast, it’s a few years, then it's over. You are not being careful. And you are missing it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#344 Quentin Tarantino

30 mars 2024 | 66 min

What I learned from reading Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino.

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(9:00) Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive.

(14:00) On the ride home, even if I didn't have questions, my parents would talk about the movie we had just seen. These are some of my fondest memories.

(14:00) He has a comprehensive database of the history of movies in his head.

(17:00) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron (Founders #311)

(25:00) Robert Rodriguez interviews Quentin Tarantino in the Director’s Chair

(26:00) Like most men who never knew their father, Bill collected father figures. (Kill Bill 2)

(27:00) When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, No, I went to films.

(29:00) Invest Like the Best #348 Patrick and John Collision

(31:00) Tarantino made his own Founders Notes [Comparinig himself and another director] Nor did he keep scrapbooks, make notes, and keep files on index cards of all the movies he saw growing up like I did.

(32:00) Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza. (Founders #337)

(41:00) On Spielberg and greatness: Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever made, because one of the most talented filmmakers who ever lived, when he was young, got his hands on the right material, knew what he had, and killed himself to deliver the best version of that movie he could.

(46:00) I've always approached my cinema with a fearlessness of the eventual outcome. A fearlessness that comes to me naturally.

(51:00) The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey’s Bay Hustle by Jacquie McNish (Founders #131)

(51:00)

Tarantino's top 8 movies have cost around $400 million to make and made about $1.9 billion in box office sales

Pulp Fiction
$8 million
$213 million

Jackie Brown
$12 million
$74 million

Kill Bill 1
$30 million
$180 million

Kill Bill 2
$30 million
$152 million

Inglorious Basterds
$70 million
$321 million

Django Unchained
$100 million
$426 million

The Hateful 8
$60 million
$156 million

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
$90 million
$377 million

(58:00) What made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of seventies and eighties film criticism, he seemed like one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently, their life. I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#343 The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: David Ogilvy

24 mars 2024 | 32 min

What I learned from reading Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: Being Very Good Is No Good,You Have to Be Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Good by David Ogilvy and Ogivly & Mather.

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Some questions other subscribers asked SAGE:

I need some unique ideas on how to find new customers. What advice do you have for me?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me more ideas about how to avoid competition from Peter Thiel?

Have any of history's greatest founders regretted selling their company?

What is the best way to fire a bad employee?

How did Andrew Carnegie know what to focus on?

Why was Jay Gould so smart?

What was the biggest unlock for Henry Ford?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffetts best ideas?

If Charlie Munger had a top 10 rules for life what do you think those rules would be?

What did Charlie Munger say about building durable companies that last?

Tell me about Cornelius Vanderbilt. How did he make his money?

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(0:01) But what did David actually mean by divine discontent? Here's an interpretation:

DON'T BOW YOUR HEAD.

DON'T KNOW YOUR PLACE.

DEFY THE GODS.

DON'T SIT BACK.

DON'T GIVE IN.

DON'T GIVE UP.

DON'T WIN SILVERS.

DON'T BE SO EASILY HAPPY WITH YOURSELF.

DON'T BE SPINELESS.

DON'T BE GUTLESS.

DON'T BE TOADIES.

DON'T GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

AND DON'T EVER, EVER ALLOW A SINGLE SCRAP OF RUBBISH OUT OF THE AGENCY

(5:00) We have to work equally hard to replace the old patterns of self-defeating behaviors. An old Latin proverb tells us how: a nail is driven out by a nail, habit is overcome by habit.

(7:00) Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

(7:00) Fear is a demon that devours the soul of a company: it diminishes the quality of our imagination, it dulls our appetite for adventure, it sucks away our youth. Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity.

(10:00) Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth. — The NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(13:00) How great we become depends on the size of our dreams. Let's dream humongous dreams, put on our overalls, go out there and build them.

(14:00) If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word my bet would be on “curiosity” — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(17:00) Only dead fish go with the flow.

(18:00) If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I’ll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result. — Jeff Bezos

(20:00) It's the cracked ones that let light into the world.

(20:00)

Rule #1. There are no rules.
Rule #2. Never forget rule #1.

(21:00) Bureaucracy has no place in an ideas company.

(23:00) You see, those who live by their wits go to work on roller coasters. The ride is exhilarating, but one has to have a stomach of titanium. For starters, you're never a hundred per cent certain you'll ever get there. If you (even) get to your destination, you sometimes wonder why you've ever bothered.

Other times the scenery pleasantly surprises you.

(24:00) Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

(25:00) God is with those who persevere.

(25:00) Dogged determination is often the only trait that separates a moderately creative person from a highly creative one.

That's because great work is never done by temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey-men.

(26:00) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(26:00) We are what we repeatedly do. Our character is a composite of our habits. Habits constantly, daily, express who we really are.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#342 The Lessons of History (Will & Ariel Durant)

18 mars 2024 | 53 min

What I learned from reading The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant.

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(1:00) This is a 100 page biography of the human species

(1:00) The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant (Full Set)

(2:30) Generations of men establish a growing mastery over the earth, but they are destined to become fossils in its soil.

(4:00) Ruthlessly prioritize how you spend your time.

(4:00) The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows.

(4:30) ALL OF THE NAPOLEON EPISODES:

Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294)

The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Wordsedited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza. (Founders #337)

(8:00) Our job is to make our companies and ourselves better equipped to meet the test of survival.

(11:30) Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group.

(12:30) The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

(14:30) In the end, superior ability has its way.

(16:30) Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

(19:00) The imitative majority follows the innovating minority and this follows the originative individual, in adapting new responses to the demands of environment or survival.

(20:00) If you can identify an enduring human need you can build a business around that.

(21:00) In every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt.

(25:00) Survival at all costs: Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under.

(25:00) Victory in our industry is spelled survival. — Steve Jobs

(25:00) All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. (Founders #224)

(26:00) By being so cautious in respect to leverage and having loads of liquidity, we will be equipped both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham (Founders #227)

(27:00) History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

(31:00) The Iron Law of Oligarchy

(32:00) Every advance in the complexity of the economy puts an added premium upon superior ability.

(33:00) The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

(34:00) Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman

(37:00) All technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of achieving old ends

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#341 Cornelius Vanderbilt (Tycoon's War)

11 mars 2024 | 66 min

What I learned from rereading Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins.

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(0:01) Vanderbilt was only interested in two things: making money and winning

(3:00) Cornelius Vanderbilt, the descendant of poor Dutch immigrants, would die in 1877 possessing more money than was held by the United States treasury.
(3:00) The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

(5:00) The NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(6:00) “If I had learned education. I would not have had time to learn anything else.”

(7:00) Vanderbilt wrote nothing down, keeping every detail of his business dealings in his head, and at any given time he knew his income and expenditures down to the last cent.

(10:00) From Founders Notes. I asked the chat feature:

Tell me about Cornelius Vanderbilt. How did he make his money?

One trait it identified in Vanderbilt was this:

Vanderbilt's approach to business was often marked by a sly concealment of his intentions, keeping information close while simultaneously gathering intelligence on competitors. This strategic obfuscation allowed him to make moves that others often couldn't predict or comprehend until it was too late

(This feature will be available to Founders Notes subscribers very soon!)

(15:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields (Founders #292)

(24:00) The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

(26:00) Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

(37:00) He's turning everyone against Walker by appealing to their interests. He’s not saying do this for me to get my ships back. He appeals to their interests and aligns their interests with his own.

(40:00) Vanderbilt had more money than all the Central American governments combined.

(41:00) As far as my nature is concerned, I do not meet competition, I destroy competitors.

— The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #324)

(41:00) Vanderbilt said why don’t you pay me to not compete with you?

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#340 Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant

1 mars 2024 | 84 min

What I learned from reading Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim Grover and Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness by Tim Grover.

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(3:00) What I am giving you is insight into the mentality of those who have found unparalleled success by trusting their own instincts.

(3:00) Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

(6:00) Michael was the best because he was relentless about winning. No matter how many times he won he always wanted more and he was always willing to do whatever it took to get it.

(6:00) Michael never cared about achieving mere greatness. He cared about being the best ever.

(7:00) These are the most driven individuals you'll ever know, with an unmatched genius for what they do: they don't just perform a job, they reinvent it.

(8:00) Alex Rodriguez interviews Kobe Bryant

(11:00) The most important thing, the one thing that defines and separates him from any other competitor: He's addicted to the exquisite rush of success and he'll alter his entire life to get it.

(11:00) The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be. —

—Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)

(12:30) If one thing separated Michael from every other player, it was his stunning ability to block out everything and everyone else. He was able to shut out everything except his mission.

(14:00) At some point you made something simple into something complicated.

(16:00) Being at the extreme in your craft is very important in the age of leverage. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.

(20:00) A 600 page biography of Kobe Bryant: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #272)

(21:00) This could be an ad for FOUNDERS NOTES

The greats never stop learning.

All the hours of work have created an unstoppable internal resource you can draw on in any situation.

(22:00) Mostly he tested himself. It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

— Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

(23:00) Kobe and Ahmad Rashad interview

(23:00) Be indifferent to the opinions of other people. Michael does not care what you think. Kobe does not care what you think. There is no one that can hold them to a higher standard than themselves.

(34:00) How Kobe Bryant knew he was going to win a lot of championships:

It was easy to size other players up in the NBA. I found that a lot of guys played for financial stability. Once they got that financial stability the passion, the work ethic, and the obsessiveness was gone. Once I saw that I thought, “This is going to be like taking candy from a baby. No wonder Michael Jordan wins all these fucking championships.”

(35:00) Michael Jordan worked on consistency, relentlessly.

(49:00) A good competitor always evaluates his oppenent. And you understand him for what he really is. You never try to give him confidence you try to take it at all times. — Michael Jordan video

(53:00) Everyone wanted to be like Mike. Mike did not want to be like anyone else.

(1:07:00) Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(1:07:00) Stop adding. Start deleting. Winning demands total focus.

(1:11:00) It started with hope.

It started with hope.

We went from a shitty team to one of the all time greatest dynasties.

All you needed was one little match to start that whole fire.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Jay Z's Autobiography

25 februari 2024 | 128 min

What I learned from reading Decoded by Jay Z.

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(1:39) I would practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep

(2:10) Even back then I though I was the best.

(2:57) Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (Founders #219)

(4:32) Belief becomes before ability.

(5:06) Michael Jordan: The Life (Founders #212)

(5:46) The public praises people for what they practice in private.

(7:28) Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers.

(7:50) Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234)

(9:50) He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own — from Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Founders #209)

(12:47) The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

(13:35) I'm not gonna say that I thought I could get rich from rap, but I could clearly see that it was gonna get bigger before it went away. Way bigger.

(21:10) Over 20 years into his career and dude ain’t changed. He’s got his own vibe. You gotta love him for that. (Rick Rubin)

(21:41) Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

(25:27) I believe you can speak things into existence.

(27:20) Picking the right market is essential.

(29:29) All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason – they run out of money. —Don Valentine

(29:42) There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes- you don’t have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. The other financial metrics you can forget. —Don Valentine

(31:54) I went on the road with Big Daddy Kane for a while. I got an invaluable education watching him perform.

(33:12) Everything I do I learned from the guys who came before me. —Kobe

(34:15) I truly hate having discussions about who would win one on one or fans saying you’d beat Michael. I feel like Yo (puts his hands up like stop. Chill.) What you get from me is from him. I don’t get 5 championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.

(34:50) Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (Founders #214)

(37:20) This is a classic piece of OG advice. It's amazing how few people actually stick to it.

(38:04) Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success(Founders #56)

(39:04) The key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it's your first project.

(41:10) The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233)

(44:46) We (Jay Z, Bono, Quincy Jones) ended up trading stories about the pressure we felt even at this point in our lives.

(45:22) Competition pushes you to become your best self. Jordan said the same thing about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

[46:43] If you got the heart and the brains you can move up quickly. There's no way to quantify all of this on a spreadsheet, but it's the dream of being the exception.

(52:26) He (Russell Simmons) changed the business style of a whole generation. The whole vibe of startup companies in Silicon Valley with 25 year old CEOs wearing shell toes is Russell's Def Jam style filtered through different industries.

(54:17) Jay Z’s approach is I'm going to find the smartest people that that know more than I do, and I'm gonna learn everything I can from them.

(54:49) He (Russell Simmons) knew that the key to success was believing in the quality of your own product enough to make people do business with you on your terms. He knew that great product was the ultimate advantage in competition.

(55:08) In the end it came down to having a great product and the hustle to move it.

(56:37) Learn how to build and sell and you will be unstoppable. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Founders #191)

(58:30) We gave those brands a narrative which is one of the reasons anyone buys anything. To own not just a product, but to become part of a story.

(59:30) The best thing for me to do is to ignore and outperform.

(1:01:16) Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

(1:06:01) Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary (Founders #78)

(1:08:42) Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products(Founders #178)

(1:11:46) Long term success is the ultimate goal.

(1:12:58) Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love - Bill Gurley

(1:15:11) I have always used visualization the way athletes do, to conjure reality.

(1:18:14) The thing that distinguished Jordan wasn't just his talent, but his discipline, his laser-like commitment to excellence.

(1:19:42) The gift that Jordan had wasn't just that he was willing to do the work, but he loved doing it because he could feel himself getting stronger and ready for anything. That is the kind of consistency that you can get only by adding dead serious discipline of whatever talent you have.

(1:21:37) when you step outside of school and you have to teach yourself about life, you develop a different relationship to information. I've never been a purely linear thinker. You can see it to my rhymes. My mind is always jumping around restless, making connections, mixing, and matching ideas rather than marching in a straight line,

(1:27:41) Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram’s Mr. Sam (Founders #116)

(1:34:15) The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you. That you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.

(1:36:25) There are extreme levels of drive and pain tolerance in the history of entrepreneurship.

(1:38:45) Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

(1:42:24) I love sharp people. Nothing makes me like someone more than intelligence.

(1:44:17) They call it the game, but it's not. You can want success all you want but to get it you can't falter. You can't slip. You can't sleep— one eye open for real and forever.

(1:51:49) The thought that this cannot be life is one that all of us have felt at some point or another. When a bad decision and bad luck and bad situations feel like too much to bear those times. When we think this, this cannot be my story, but facing up to that kind of feeling can be a powerful motivation to change.

(1:54:18) Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#339 Joseph Duveen: Robber Baron Art Dealer

20 februari 2024 | 64 min

What I learned from reading The Days of Duveen by S.N. Behrman.

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(0:01) Duveen noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation.

(2:30) The great American millionaires of the Duveen Era were slow-speaking and slow-thinking, cautious, secretive, and maddeningly deliberate.

(3:30) How Larry Gagosian Reshaped The Art World by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Founders #325)

(4:30) Invest Like The Best #342 Will England: A Primer on Multi-Strategy Hedge Funds

(6:00) There is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere:

1. Take a simple, basic idea and

2. Take it very seriously. — the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(10:00) The art dealer Joseph Duveen insisted on making the paintings he sold as scarce and rare as possible. To keep their prices elevated and their status high, he bought up whole collections and stored them in his basement. The paintings that he sold became more than just paintings—they were fetish objects, their value increased by their rarity. — The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

(14:00) Duveen had enormous respect for the prices he set on the objects he bought and sold. Often his clients tried, in various ways, to maneuver him into a position where he might relax his high standards, but he nearly always managed to keep them.

(16:00) Wildcatters: A Story of Texans, Oil, and Money by Sally Helgesen. (Founders #338)

(18:00) You don’t need many customers if the few customers you do have are the riches people in the world.

(22:00) His enthusiasm was irrepressible.

(26:00) Duveen felt that his educational mission was two fold —to teach millionaire American collectors what the great works of art were, and to teach them that they could get those works of art only through him.

(27:00) When you pay high for the priceless, you're getting it cheap.

(31:00) He was interested in practically nothing except his business.

(31:00) Certain men are endowed with the faculty of concentrating on their own affairs to the exclusion of what's going on elsewhere in the cosmos. Duveen was that kind of man.

(32:00) Monopoly was his method.

(38:00) Duveen would pay the servants of staff that worked in the homes of his clients. This was the result: They developed a feeling that it was only fair to transmit to Duveen any information that might interest him.

(41:00) The art dealer Joseph Duveen was once confronted with a terrible problem.

The millionaires who had paid so dearly for Duveen’s paintings were running out of wall space, and with inheritance taxes getting ever higher, it seemed unlikely that they would keep buying.

The solution was the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which Duveen helped create in 1937 by getting Andrew Mellon to donate his collection to it. The National Gallery was the perfect front for Duveen.

In one gesture, his clients avoided taxes, cleared wall space for new purchases, and reduced the number of paintings on the market, maintaining the upward pressure on their prices. All this while the donors created the appearance of being public benefactors.

— The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

(48:00) His clients felt better when they paid a lot. It gave them the assurance of acquiring rarity.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#338 Monty Moncrief Texas Oil Billionaire

13 februari 2024 | 60 min

What I learned from reading Wildcatters: A Story of Texans, Oil, and Money by Sally Helgesen.

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(0:01) Family and business were the same thing to him.

(1:00) We're one-hundred percent family owned, unincorporated, and independent, and we intend to stay that way.

(1:00) He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and the truly great.

(2:00) His unquestioning confidence in the worthiness of his enterprise made him seem impervious to doubts.

(5:00) The Morgans always believed in absolute monarchy. While Junius Morgan lived, he ruled the family and the business. Until Junius died his massive shadow dominated his son’s life. — The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

(8:00) Everywhere they looked, they saw opportunity without limits. The land itself was empty, and so these men built cities upon it and founded dynasties. They left behind them a world made in their own image.

(9:00) The old wildcatters had neither the time nor the inclination to question their own purposes, or to agonize about what the future consequences of their efforts might be. They just went out and did whatever was there to be done.

(10:00) The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was up near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil. — The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough (Founders #149)

(14:00) Charlie’s surfing model. One thing I learned from having dinner with Charlie was the importance of getting into a great business and STAYING in it. There’s a tendency in human nature to mess up a good thing because of an inability to sit still:

"There are huge advantages for the early birds. When you're an early bird, there's a model that I call surfing—when a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time.

But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows. But people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave, whether it's Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people."

— the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(18:00) Ted Turner's Autobiography (Founders #327)

(19:00) All the stories seem to be about the same prickly individual. They are giants, successful predators, acute and astute, tamers of the untamable and defenders of vast treasure.

(26:00) There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

(29:00) Delusional optimism: Go from one setback to another setback without any loss of enthusiasm.

(31:00) There's no what if. There's only what happened.

(33:00) Rainmakers Podcast

(34:00) I’d rather be lucky than smart, because a lot of smart guys go hungry.

(36:00) Optimism is the personal quality that nurtures luck.

(36:00) Chaos and defiance ruled the day, and those who led the way made little secret of their refusal to be controlled.

(44:00) Anybody who's got an idea of his own has to be a little bit crazy. Being crazy is something big companies just don't understand.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#337 Napoleon's Maxims and Strategy

5 februari 2024 | 61 min

What I learned from reading Roots of Strategy by Thomas R. Phillips and Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza.

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(0:01) Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar combined.

(5:00) The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(7:00) Insull: The Rise and Fall of A Billionaire Utility Tycoon by Forrest McDonald. (Founders #336)

(8:00) No one should believe more in your business than you do. If this is not the case you are in the wrong business.

(11:00) If you do everything you will win.

(13:00) Napoleon episodes:

Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294)

The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(14:00) What is the bigger number, five or one? One. One army, a real army, united behind one leader, with one purpose. A fist instead of 5 fingers. — Robert Baratheon in Game of Thrones (YouTube)

(17:00) Keep your forces united. Be vulnerable at no point. Bear down with rapidity upon important points. These are the principles which insure victory.

(17:00) Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic. Make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the secrets of the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, you will reject all maxims opposed to those of these great commanders. [If Napoleon was alive you know he’d listen to Founders podcast]

(20:00) The Tao of Charlie Munger by Charlie Munger and David Clark (Founders #295)

(20:00) Advance orders tend to stifle initiative. A commander should be left free to adapt himself to circumstances as they occur.

(23:00) The art of war consists in a well organized and conservative defense, coupled with an audacious and rapid offensive.

(26:00) Ten people who yell make more noise than ten thousand who keep silent.

(29:00) Long orders, which require much time to prepare, to read and to understand are the enemies of speed. Napoleon could issue orders of few sentences which clearly expressed his intentions and required little time to issue and to understand.

(31:00) A great leader will resort to audacity.

(32:00) “Alexander the Great thought, decided, and above all, moved swiftly. He appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible. His enemies were always stunned and shocked by his arrival. He invented the blitzkrieg.” — Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Episode #226)

(34:00) It is no harm to be too strong; it may be fatal to be too weak.

(41:00) Napoleon on single threaded leadership: Once a campaign has been decided upon there should be no hesitation in appointing one commander to assure its success. When authority is divided, opinions and actions differ, and confusion and delay arises. A single chief proceeds with vigor; he is not delayed by necessity to confer.

(42:00) Posess obstinate will.

(43:00) Experience must be supplemented by study. No man's personal experience can be so inclusive as to warrant his disregarding the experiences of others. (This is a great reason why you should invest in a subscription to Founders Notes )

(44:00) It is profitable to study the campaigns of the great masters.

(47:00) Skill consists in converging a mass of fire upon a single point. He that has the skill to bring a sudden, unexpected concentration of artillery to bear upon a selected point is sure to capture it. (A lesson from Peter Thiel: Don’t divide your attention: focusing on one thing yields increasing returns for each unit of effort.)

(49:00) All great captains have been diligent students [of history].

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#336 How To Lose A Few Billion Dollars: Samuel Insull

1 februari 2024 | 86 min

What I learned from reading Insull: The Rise and Fall of A Billionaire Utility Tycoon by Forrest McDonald.

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(0:01) Insull had been in the electric business as long as there had been an electric business.

(4:00) He awoke early, abruptly, completely, bursting with energy; yet he gained momentum as the day wore on, and long into the night. Sam had near-demonic energy.

(5:00) Sam's most obvious attribute was a capacity for racing through large quantities of reading material, effortlessly perceiving its important assumptions and generalizations, and thoroughly assimilating its salient details.

(7:00) He eagerly embraced platitudes:

• Idle hands are the devil's workshop

• Time is money

• Things are simply "done" or "not done"

• One reveres one's family

• Only that which is useful is good

• Survival of the fittest

(8:00) Opportunity handled well leads to more opportunity.

(12:00) He developed an ability to concentrate on a single subject and to completely shut out everything else, no matter how pressing.

(13:00) A theme from the robber baron era: How do we turn a luxury product into a necessity?

(18:00) If you do everything you will win. — Working by Robert Caro. (Founders #305) and The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(19:00) Insull reread every one of Edison's European contracts, and he took it upon himself to write weekly letters to Johnson, summarizing the fluctuations in the telephone situation and outlining Edison's shifting interests in connection with it. These letters proved to be the best selling points Johnson could have in recommending Insull to Edison.

(20:00) One of his most deep-rooted traits was that he was absolutely unable to imagine the possibility of his own failure; he entirely lacked the sense of caution of those who doubt themselves.

(21:00) Caution, like relaxation, was unnatural to him.

(21:00) We will make electric lights so cheap that only the rich will be able to burn candles.

(27:00) Edison had an almost pathological hostility to any form of system, order, or discipline imposed from without.

(33:00) Warren Buffett on leverage:

Unquestionably, some people have become very rich through the use of borrowed money. However, that's also been a way to get very poor. When leverage works, it magnifies your gains. Your spouse thinks you're clever, and your neighbors get envious. But leverage is addictive. Once having profited from its wonders, very few people retreat to more conservative practices.

And [to repeat] as we all learned in third grade-and some relearned in 2008–any series of positive numbers, however impressive the numbers may be, evaporates when multiplied by a single zero. History tells us that leverage all too often produces zeroes, even when it is employed by very smart people.

Leverage, of course, can be lethal to businesses as well. Companies with large debts often assume that these obligations can be refinanced as they mature. That assumption is usually valid. Occasionally, though, either because of company-specific problems or a worldwide shortage of credit, maturities must actually be met by payment. For that, only cash will do the job.

— The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

(35:00) Smart men go broke three ways: liquor, ladies and leverage. — Charlie Munger

(42:00) To make electricity as cheap as possible we need the largest base of customers. The way to get the largest base of customers is through monopoly.

(45:00) He understood the potential of his industry in a way others did not.

(45:00) We are only going to do things that other people can not do.

(47:00) While money may not buy friends it will keep many a man from becoming an enemy.

(50:00) The moment of applause was the moment for action.

(1:00:00) You need to tell your customers what goes into making your product. It may be normal to you because it is your everyday thing. It is not normal to them. And if you explain and you educate your customers they will find it fascinating. And as a result it will make the service and the product you provide more valuable in their eyes.

(1:00:00) Sam Insull made electric power so abundant and cheap in the United States that people who had never expected to use it, found it as natural and as necessary as breathing.

(1:06:00) He took his leverage too high and the structure of the leverage was a problem. — Ted Turner's Autobiography.(Founders #327)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#335 How To Make A Few Billion Dollars: Brad Jacobs

23 januari 2024 | 73 min

What I learned from reading How To Make A Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs.

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(0:01) I'm what's called a moneymaker. I've started five companies from scratch—seven if you include two spin-offs and turned them all into billion dollar or multibillion-dollar enterprises.

(2:00) I love working with outrageously talented people to deliver outsized returns for shareholders in public stock markets.

(5:00) All of the successful people I know have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals in turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails.

(5:00) The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places and they do this by thinking about business from first principles. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel (Founders #335)

(7:00) So much of success in business comes from keeping your head in a good place.

(8:00) I'm an ambitious person by nature and a dealmaker by inclination.

(9:00) Episode #295: I Had Dinner With Charlie Munger

(13:00) Listen to Think Big and Move Fast: Brad Jacobs on Invest Like the Best

(14:00) Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20)

(15:00) If you want to make money in the business world, you need to get used to problems, because that's what business is.

(20:00) I am not surprised when things don’t go perfectly. That is the nature of the universe.

(21:00) Listen to this incredible conversation between Charlie Munger and John Collison on Invest Like The Best.

(28:00) Invest in technology. The savings compound, it gives you an advantage over a slower moving competitor, and can be the difference between a profit and a loss. (Lesson from Andrew Carnegie)

(31:00) How Larry Gagosian Reshaped The Art World by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Founders #325)

(36:00) While the rental industry overall was slow to computerize, the larger regional players were more tech-savvy. By 1997, nearly all of them were running on software developed by a company called Wynne Systems.

I bought Wynne.

Owning Wynne accomplished two things.

We had an industry-best platform that we could continue to develop internally for our own use, and the acquisition gave us access to aggregated, anonymized data on macro-trends across the industry.

This gave us a high-level view of emerging market trends, such as equipment gluts or shortages in the making. We could proactively adjust our pricing and asset management, while the rest of the industry was being reactive.

(40:00) The deals I've avoided have contributed more to my success than the deals I've done.

(42:00) I love these questions for a business and a family:

“What's your single best idea to improve our company?"

and

"What's the stupidest thing we're doing as a company?"

(47:00) There are few mistakes costlier than hiring the wrong person. An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#334 Oprah

16 januari 2024 | 70 min

What I learned from reading the transcripts of Young Oprah on Her Life and Career and Oprah on Career, Life and Leadership.

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(1:00) Oprah fired her agent and replaced him with a Chicago lawyer named Jeffrey Jacobs. "I heard Jeff is a piranha. I like that. Piranha is good."

(3:00) I will just create. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, I’ll create something else. I don’t have any limitations on what I think I could do or be.

(4:30) Dr. Julie Gurner’s Ultra Successful newsletter

Dr Julie Gurner's Website

(7:00) Imitation precedes creation. — Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Founders #210)

(9:00) On getting demoted from anchor to talk show host: I was embarrassed by the whole thing because I had never failed before. It was that “failure” that led to the talk show. (Opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss.)

(9:00) The talk show immediately felt right to her: This is what I should have been doing because it was like breathing to me. It was like breathing. I knew it was the right thing to do.

(10:00) Oprah has an intense, powerful belief in herself. And she has had that since she was 4.

(11:00) I truly believe that thoughts are the greatest vehicle to change power and success in the world. Everything begins with thoughts.

(12:00) If you actually have to choose between the most experienced person, or the most educated person, or the person who actually wants it the most, you always pick the person who wants it the most. — Josh Kushner on the Invest Like the Best podcast

(14:00) Visualize.

If in your mind's eye you see a successful venture, a deal made, a profit accomplished, it has a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation is the most powerful means to achieve goals.

If you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind, you will orchestrate failure.

Countless times, before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a reality. I've visualized success, then created the reality from the image.

Great athletes, business people, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know this secret.

— Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

(17:00) I am going to have what I deserve.

(19:00) I was watching my grandmother boiling clothes (they had no indoor plumbing) and I was four years old and I remember thinking: My life won’t be like this. My life won’t be like this. It will be better.

(22:00) I thank whatever God there is for my unconquerable soul.

(22:00) And whatever you do, if you do a lot of it, you get good at it. And that is how this broadcasting career started for me. I’ve been an orator for a long time. I’ve been an orator all of my life.

(27:00) I feel that my show is a ministry.

(27:00) I loved books so much as a child. They were my outlet to the world.

(29:00) I had a very strict father. I remember my father saying you can not bring C’s in this house because you are not a C student. You’re an A student. It was just so matter of fact.

(31:00) Paul Graham on how to make yourself a big target for luck:

“When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved.They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up.So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious.Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.”

— How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(33:00) Her schedule in college was intense: I’d do all my classes from 8am to 1pm. Then I worked at the tv station from 2pm to 10pm. Then I’d study until 1am and then do the routine all over again the next day.

(34:00) I demand only the best for myself.

(35:00) Oprah on the parasocial relationship with her audience: It’s not like other celebrities. I see people react to other people and it’s not like it is to me.

(37:00) Asking for help is a superpower no one uses.

(39:00) The ability to read at an early age saved my life. I knew there was a better way. I knew there was a way out because I had read about it.

(41:00) I sign every check. It is tedious. It gets to be a lot. I have piles of checks. The idea of having money and not being responsible and knowing how much money you have and keeping control of it is not something that I personally can accept. I watch it very carefully.

(42:00) Henry Singleton pays all the bills and signs all the checks, calling it "a form of discipline. Through doing the signing it's amazing how much you learn about the business. There's a reminder of each event or action behind each check. — Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

(42:00) How do you learn to be a founder? You do it the same way you do anything else: 14, 15 hour days. I feel most comfortable working.

(43:00) For me, work just meant discovery and fun. If I heard somebody complaining, “Oh, I work so hard, I put in ten- and twelve-hour days,” I would crucify him. “What the fuck are you talking about when the day is twenty-four hours? What else did you do?” —Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141)

(43:00) It doesn’t feel like work.

(46:00) Intuition is a very powerful thing. More powerful than intellect in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. — Steve Jobs

(48:00) I am only a little dress-maker, trying to make women young and pretty. These other designers that do the pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand women, they don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, freaks. — Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. (Founders #199)

(51:00) I live from the inside out.

(54:00) Acquired’s podcast episode on Oprah and Harpo

(54:00)

Self belief

Ownership

Do the same thing for 25 years

Stay within your circle of competence

(55:00) Find what feeds your passion. Your real job is to find out why you are really here and then get about the business of doing that.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#333 Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac Founder: Dietrich Mateschitz

8 januari 2024 | 69 min

What I learned from reading The Red Bull Story by Wolfgang Fürweger and Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac by Duff McDonald.

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(1:30) "In literal financial terms, our sports teams are not yet profitable, but in value terms, they are," he says. "The total editorial media value plus the media assets created around the teams are superior to pure advertising expenditures."

(2:30) "It is a must to believe in one's product. If this were just a marketing gimmick, it would never work."

(5:00) He doesn't place a premium on collecting friends or socializing: "I don't believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It's the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it's just to convince myself again that I'm not missing a lot."

(7:30) The most dangerous thing for a branded product is low interest. (Edwin Land: The test of an invention is the power of an inventor to push it through in the face of the staunch-not opposition, but indifference-in society. (Indifference is your enemy)

(9:00) Nike, Adidas and Vans episodes:

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and The Family Feud That Forever Changed The Business of Sports by Barbara Smit. (Founders #109)

Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans by Paul Van Doren. (Founders #216)

(11:00) The lines between Red Bull, Red Bull athletes, and Red Bull events are blurry on purpose. To Mateschitz, it's just one big image campaign with many manifestations.

(12:00) He has no plans to sell or take Red Bull public. "It's not a question of money. It's a question of fun. Can you imagine me in a shareholders' meeting?”

(13:00) Red Bull’s Billionaire Maniac https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-05-19/red-bulls-billionaire-maniac

(16:00) He is universally described as a person with great charisma.

(16:30) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders 292)

(17:00) He has a fierce desire for privacy. He buys a society magazine to make sure he never appears in it.

(22:00) There is no market for Red Bull. We will create one.

(24:00) Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

(30:00) the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger. (Founders #329)

(31:00) Gossip and malicious rumors are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world.” — Dior by Dior: The Autobiography of Christian Dior (Founders #331)

(36:00) Control your costs and maintain financial discipline even when making record profits.

(38:00) Cult brands have their own laws, otherwise they would not be cultish.

(38:00) Red Bull is Dietrich Mateschitz and Dietrich Mateschitz is Red Bull.

(38:00) Many companies outsource their marketing and advertising activity. Red Bull consistently took the opposite route: It outsourced production and distribution and takes care of sales and advertising itself.

(40:00) Charlie Munger and John Collison on Invest Like The Best #355

Rolex: Timeless Excellence on Invest Like The Best

(41:00) If you are making a physical product make it look different from its competitors from the start.

(43:00) Everything is marketing.

(45:00) Never do anything that compromises your survival.

(46:00) He keeps his empire constantly in motion

(46:00) All corporate projects like Formula 1, football, Air Race, and media serve the core business: the sale of the energy drink.

(47:00) This is a battle for attention.

(49:00) Red Bull owns their events. They never relinquish media rights to any event. They invest in making the content and then they give their content to other media distributors for free. A very clever way to multiply their advertising and marketing spend.

(52:00) The Bugatti Story by L’Ebe Bugatti. (Founders #316)

The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. (Founders #289)

(54:00) Why he moved Red Bull’s headquarters to a little village on a lake: The aim was to create a more pleasant working atmosphere.

(54:00) On why fitness is so important to him: “Everything that gives me pleasure in life is connected with a certain physical fitness and physical well-being. I like going to the mountain, I like skiing, I like sailing, I like riding a motorbike, I like fooling around - and everything is connected with a minimum of physical agility, motor skills, dexterity, strength, stamina. In order to enjoy it outdoors, I need the indoor program.”

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#332 Jesus

24 december 2023 | 35 min

What I learned from reading Jesus: A Biography from a Believer by Paul Johnson.

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(3:00)

Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252)

Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226)

(10:00) Jesus was:

-observant

-detail oriented

-maintained intense eye contact

-confident

-decisive

-charismatic

-gifted communicator

(11:00) The most important step when starting anything new is recruiting the people who are going to help you on your mission.

(12:00) No prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

(16:00) Jesus emphasized the importance of humility, gentleness, non aggression. The importance of the pursuit of justice and righteousness. He encourages acts of compassion and forgiveness towards others. He focuses on inner purity, sincerity, and a genuine heart. He commends those who work towards reconciliation, harmony, and peace.

(17:00) Some of Jesus’s maxims:

Love your enemies.

If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.

Judge not and you will not be judged.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

(18:00) A summary of Jesus’s teaching in two words: Be kind.

(18:00) He turned compassion, which all of us feel from time to time for a particular person, into a huge overarching gospel of love. He taught the love of mankind as a whole.

(26:00) Jesus taught to change and improve yourself. He led by example and encouraged imitation. Those that changed themselves, changed the world.

(27:00) Jesus’s new 10 commandments:

1. Each of us must develop a true personality. Each of us is unique. Develop your character.

2. Abide by universality. See the human race as a whole.

3. Give equal consideration to all.

4. Use love in all your human relationships, at all times, and in every situation.

5. Show mercy.

6. Balance. Keep your head even when others are losing theirs.

7. Cultivate an open mind.

8. Pursue truth.

9. Judiciously use your power.

10. Show courage.

(34:00) Join my personal email list to get updates about the new Founders conference

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#331 Christian Dior

18 december 2023 | 61 min

What I learned from reading Dior by Dior: The Autobiography of Christian Dior and Creators by Paul Johnson.

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(4:00) The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. (Founders #296)

(5:00) Opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss.

(6:00) Dior was a nobody in his forties, with nothing in his design career to suggest genius.

(6:00) When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.

— How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(7:00) Dior told him: “I am not interested in managing a clothing factory. What you need, and I would like to run, is a craftsman’s workshop, in which we would recruit the very best people in the trade, to reestablish in Paris a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. It will cost a great deal of money and entail much risk.”

(8:00) He spat in the face of postwar egalitarian democracy and said, in so many words, “I want to make the rich feel rich again.” His first collection turned out to be the most successful in fashion history.

(18:00) I envisioned my fashion house as a craftsman’s workshop rather than a clothing factory.

(19:00) A fortune teller tells Dior he must do found his fashion house in spite of his fears and doubts: She ordered me sternly to accept the Boussac offer at once. You must create the house of Christian Dior, whatever the conditions, she told me. Nothing anyone will offer you later will compare with the chance which is open to you now.

(22:00) Dior said Balenciaga was "the master of us all" — Balenciaga (Founders #315)

(26:00) Gossip and malicious rumors are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world.

(29:00) The most passionate adventures of my life have been with my clothes. I am obsessed with them.

(30:00) When asked what was the best asset a man could have, Albert Lasker replied, ‘Humility in the presence of a good idea.’ It is horribly difficult to recognize a good idea. I shudder to think how many I have rejected. Research can’t help you much, because it cannot predict the cumulative value of an idea. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#330 Les Schwab (Charlie Munger recommended this book)

11 december 2023 | 97 min

What I learned from rereading Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab.

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(8:00) I didn't know how to ride a bike. We never had one. All the other young kids delivered newspapers on a bike.

He's got no money. He doesn't have a bike. So he ran his routes for two months in order to get enough money to buy his first bike. He’d run nine or 10 miles a day.

(8:00) I was too proud to complain.

(10:00) For a poor boy, money was much more important than pride.

(10:00) Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

(13:00) I was young. I was cocky. But the same cockiness helped me a lot in going through life.

(15:00) The very first sentence describing his very first day in business is mind blowing: I had never fixed a flat tire in my life.

(15:00) the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)

(29:00) Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble (Founders #150)

(35:00) I always knew that if we fixed all the flat tires in town, we'd have all the tire business in town.

(40:00) If we become complacent, then brother, it's all over with.

(52:00) Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc (Founders #293)

(56:00) If you’re not serving the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don’t need you. —Sam Walton

(1:00:00) The company paid low wages and had a lower overhead. The flaw was they didn’t get —with the low pay— near the quality of employees we had.

(1:01:00) Life is hard for the man who thinks he can take a shortcut.

(1:06:00) Decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level.

(1:08:00) Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat.

(1:08:00) Charlie Munger analyzes why Les Schwab was successful.

(1:11:00) Extreme success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following factors:

1 Extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. Think Costco.

2 Adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success, often in nonlinear fashion, as one is reminded by the concept of breakpoint and the concept of critical mass in physics. Often, results are not linear. You get a little bit more mass and you get a lollapalooza result. And, of course, I've been searching for lollapalooza results all my life, so I'm very interested in models that explain their occurrence.

3 An extreme of good performance over many factors. Example, Toyota or Les Schwab.

4 Catching and riding some sort of big wave. Example, Oracle.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#329 Charlie Munger (the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack)

5 december 2023 | 114 min

What I learned from reading the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.

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Listen to this incredible conversation between Charlie Munger and John Collison on Invest Like The Best.

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(2:00) The practical wisdom of Poor Charlie's Almanack, this ode to curiosity, generosity, and virtue will similarly compound at successive generations of entrepreneurial readers extend his lessons to their own circumstances.

(12:00) Education is the process whereby the ability to lead a good life is acquired. — Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252)

(22:00) Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth.

(29:00) Charlie is content to trust his own judgment when it runs counter to the wisdom of the herd.

(31:00) Animated: Charlie Munger: The Psychology of Human Misjudgement

(31:30) Aim for durability. Durability has always been a first rate virtue in Charlie’s eyes.

(32:00) Charlie only focuses on great businesses and great businesses have moats.

(33:00) Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. (Founders #183)

(42:00) You can flourish in a niche: People who specialize in the business world —and get very good because they specialize— frequently find good economics that they wouldn't get any other way.

(45:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale. This is what you might call an informational advantage. It increases social proof.

(46:30) Business Breakdowns episode on Coca Cola

(49:00) Occasionally scaling down and intensifying gives you a big advantage. (You can find great profit margins this way)

(50:00) Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(51:00) Scale and fanaticism combined is very powerful. (Think Sam Walton)

(57:00) I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those games or make those investments where I have an edge. — A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222)

(1:08:00) The best thing a human being can do is help another human being know more.

(1:14:00) Optimism is a moral duty. — Edwin Land

(1:17:00) You want to maximize the playing time of your top players.

(1:17:00) The game of competitive life often requires maximizing the experience of the people who have the most aptitude and the most determination as learning machines.

(1:22:00) The most important rule in management is get the incentives right.

(1:25:00) Never, ever think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Reflections from my dinner with Charlie Munger

29 november 2023 | 31 min

#328 Tom Murphy (Buffett's favorite manager)

22 november 2023 | 43 min

What I learned from reading The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike.

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(5:00) Tom Murphy] gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. He said, 'Warren, you can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow'...You haven't missed the opportunity. Just forget about if for a day. If you feel the same way tomorrow, tell them then-but don't spout off in a moment of anger." All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286)

(5:15) Thirty years ago Tom Murphy, then CEO of Cap Cities, drove this point home to me with a hypothetical tale about an employee who asked his boss for permission to hire an assistant.

The employee assumed that adding $20,000 to the annual payroll would be inconsequential.

But his boss told him the proposal should be evaluated as a $3 million decision, given that an additional person would probably cost at least that amount over his lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits and other expenses (more people, more toilet paper).

And unless the company fell on very hard times, the employee added would be unlikely to be dismissed, however marginal his contribution to the business.

— A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202)

(7:30) The autobiography of the founder of CBS: As It Happened A Memoir by Bill Paley

(9:00) The goal is not to have the longest train, but to arrive at the station first, using the least fuel.

(10:00) Tom Murphy’s simple formula:

1. Focus on industries with attractive economic characteristics.

2. Selectively use leverage to buy occasional large properties.

3. Improve operations.

4. Pay down debt.

5. Repeat.

(13:00) The business of business is a lot of little decisions every day, mixed up with a few big decisions.

(16:00) He quickly indoctrinated Burke into the company's lean, decentralized operating philosophy.

(17:00) I had an appetite for and a willingness to do things that Murphy was not interested in doing. Burke believed his job was to create the free cashflow and Murphy's job was to spend it.

(19:30) Stay in the game long enough to get lucky. The most important thing that he does happens 30 years into his career.

(21:30)

Q: Is this a case of leading by example?

Murphy: Is there any other way?

(23:30) Decentralization is the cornerstone of our philosophy. Our goal is to hire the best people we can and give them the responsibility and authority. They need to perform their jobs. We expect our managers to be forever cost conscious.

(24:00) Repeated by Murphy: Hire the best people and leave them alone.

(24:00) An extreme decentralized approach keeps both costs and rancor down.

(25:00) Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.

(26:00) The best defense against the revenue lumpiness inherent in advertising supported businesses was a constant vigilance on costs.

(30:00) Why Capital Cities had low turnover: The system in place corrupts you with so much autonomy and authority that you can't imagine leaving.

(35:00) To learn more about a Capital Cities like company listen to The 50X Podcast.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#327 Ted Turner

14 november 2023 | 87 min

What I learned from reading Ted Turner's Autobiography.

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(9:00) My net worth dropped by about 67 million per week, or nearly 10 million per day, every day for two and a half years.

(10:00) Once to drive home a point about the difficulties of attracting good loyal employees he told me: Jesus only had to pick 12 disciples and even one of those didn't turn out well.

(10:00) Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise .

(11:00) Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141)

(13:30) The problem isn't getting rich, it's staying sane. — Charlie Munger

(17:00) I learned a lesson that would stick with me throughout my career. When the chips are down in the pressure's on it's amazing to how creative people can be.

(20:00) My father always maintained many of the different billboard businesses as separate legal entities. (He didn’t want to dilute ownership of his main company and separate entities allowed for periodic reorganization to offset capital gains liabilities.

(20:30) When you own an asset your job is to maximize its value.

(23:00) He combines the assets he has in a way his competitors can not.

(24:00) The more I learned about TV stations the more I realized that ours was a disaster. Of the 35 people who were on the payroll when we took over only two were still there a year later —the custodian and the receptionist.

(25:00) Ted Turner believed in the power of television more than almost anybody else.

(30:30) My dad taught me early on that longterm relationships with your customers and partners are very important. You never know how the guy who you're friendly with today might be able to help you tomorrow.

(31:00) Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux. (Founders #268)

(32:00) What other people in his industry sees as a threat, Ted sees as an opportunity.

(37:00) These issues were all unchartered territory. All of us, the regulators, the broadcasters, the program suppliers and the leagues were sorting things out on the fly. I was working as hard as I could. I'd go all out during the day, working on sales, distribution, regulatory issues, whatever the battle happened to be, and I'd worked right up until it was time to fall asleep. I had a pull down Murphy bed in my office and I would literally work until the point of total exhaustion. Then I'd put my head on the pillow at night worried about problems. Then I'd wake up and spend the entire next day trying to solve them.

(44:00) One of the most important ideas in the book is the power of Belief: Clearly the company for whom the economics of 24 hour news would have made the most sense with a big three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed: studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors. They had everything but a belief in cable.

(45:00) I'm going to be a billionaire. And here's why. I'm going to put this station up on a satellite and I'm going to get a news thing going. Sports, movies and news, 24 hours a day, all over the world. He said this in 1976.

(46:00) Henry Ford didn't need focus groups to tell him that people would prefer inexpensive, dependable automobiles over horses. Alexander Graham Bell never stopped to worry about whether people would prefer speaking to each other on a phone.

(49:00) I'm always convinced that one of the reasons that I've been successful is that I've almost always competed against people who were bigger and stronger, but who had less commitment and desire than I did. For Turner Broadcasting this dispute meant everything. We had to win.

(52:00) Ted’s Superstation idea is printing money: $177 million in revenue and $66 million in profit. This is in the 1980s!

(53:00) It would be 13 years before we faced another 24 hour news channel.

(57:00) He has a keen understanding of how to combine assets to create an advantage that no one else has.

(58:00) The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History by William C. Rempel. (Founders #65)

(58:00) Genius has the fewest moving parts. Never get into deals that are too complicated.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#326 Anna Wintour

6 november 2023 | 72 min

What I learned from reading Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell.

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(8:00) She knows the ecosystem in which she operates better than anyone.

(8:30) If Anna had a personal tag line it would be: I just have to make sure things are done right.

(16:00) He had a desk with nothing on it except a buzzer underneath, so that when he was done with you, which was in about five minutes, his assistant could come in and whisk you away.

(17:00) What is the number one thing you hope people learn from you? To be decisive and clear.

(19:00) The Vogue 100 is a private club whose members pay $100,000 a year just for access to Anna.

(29:00) She did not second guess herself.

(30:00) She was meticulous about everything.

(32:00) Her focus was singular. She was very clear minded about wanting to do work that she thought was the best.

(38:00) She knew that killing stories was necessary to let people know that you had standards.

(41:00) Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. (Founders #281)

(44:00) Anna ran the magazine with iron fisted discipline.

(48:00) With Anna you get two minutes. The second minute is a courtesy.

(49:00) It is slothful not to compress your thoughts. — Winston Churchill

(52:00) Anna intentionally builds relationships with the most powerful people in her industry.

(52:00) Anna saw the potential for the industry and how she can expand the power and the influence that her individually, and Vogue as a brand, by just combining all these people that are already in the ecosystem and then intentionally putting them together. When they work together it becomes stronger. And as a result of what she created, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

(53:30) The power she has cannot be understated. The way in which she accumulated the power was fascinating. She aligned everybody's interest, with her at the center.

(1:05:00) She's not just building up a personal brand. She's not just building up Vogue. She's building up the entire industry.

(1:06:00) Relationships last longer than money.

(1:06:00) Resist any cheapening of the brand, however popular and lucrative it might be in the short term.

(1:08:00) Anna told him don't spend any time and money building out the perfect store in New York. Just roll racks into the unfinished space and start selling clothes. (He ignored this advice and went out of business)

(1:11:00) More resources:

Front Row: Anna Wintour: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor in Chief by Jerry Oppenheimer

The September Issue (Documentary)

The Devil Wears Prada (Movie)

73 Questions with Anna Wintour

73 More Questions with Anna Wintour

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer)

29 oktober 2023 | 72 min

What I learned from reading How Larry Gagosian Reshaped The Art World by Patrick Radden Keefe.

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(4:00) The dealer has been so successful selling art to masters of the universe that he has become one of them.

(5:45) We think of genius as being complicated, but geniuses have the fewest moving parts. Gagosian is simple. He's basically a shark, a feeding machine.

(6:00) A novice is easily spotted because they do too much. Too many ingredients, too many movements. Too much explanation. A master uses the fewest motions required to fulfill their intention.

(10:00) His own publicist described him as “A Real Killer”

(12:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

(17:30) There is always a blueprint. Joseph Duveen was the art dealer to the Robber Barons.

Biographies of Duveen:

Duveen: A Life in Art

Secrets Of An Art Dealer

Duveen

The Artful Partners: The Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen

(18:00) Numerous friends of Gagosian caution me not to mistake this merry-go-round of parties and galas and super yacht cruises for a life of leisure. This guy is always working. This motherfucker works 24/7. The parties are marketing showcases in disguise.

(19:00) The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. (Founders #296)

(19:30) The best way to raise the price of something is to say that you would never sell it.

(23:00) If Gagosian possesses one secret weapon that has equipped him for success it might be his disinhibition.

(33:00) The niche Gagosian pursued was seen —at the time —as low status. The secondary business was perceived as a backwater by dealers. It was considered a bit distasteful.

(42:00) He disdains formal meetings. He finds bureaucracy and protocol dull. There is no hierarchy. There is Larry and then everyone else.

(44:00) Gagosian reaps huge profits from asymmetries of information.

(51:00) Art is just money on the walls.

(54:00) David Geffen is still as liquid as the day is long.

(56:00) The competitive drive of self-made billionaires does not go into remission once they’ve made their fortune.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#324 John D. Rockefeller (38 Letters Rockefeller Wrote to His Son)

21 oktober 2023 | 106 min

What I learned from reading The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son by John D. Rockefeller.

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(5:00) My Influence had been extended to all corners of the oil industry. If I say that I have the power of life and death over oil producers and oil refiners, that is not a lie. I can make them wealthy or I can make them worthless.

(7:25) I never thought I would lose. As far as my nature is concerned, I do not meet competition. I destroy competitors.

(8:30) Retreat means surrender. Retreat will turn you into a slave. The war is inevitable. Let it come.

(9:00) Bring a steel like determination to face all kinds of challenges.

(13:45) I firmly believe that our destiny is determined by our actions and not by our origins.

(15:45) Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

(21:00) The glory and success of the family cannot guarantee the future of a children and grandchildren.

(22:30) People of poor backgrounds will actively develop their abilities while also seizing various opportunities because they urgently need to rescue themselves.

(26:00) Luck is the remnant of design luck is the remnant of design. — Cyrus McCormick

(27:30) Rockefeller explains to his son, in writing, exactly what he was: A conqueror.

(28:00) Everyone is a designer and architect of his own destiny.

(29:00) If you do everything you will win: All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. — The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(32:00) Visionary businessmen are always good at finding opportunities in every disaster. And that is how I did it.

(36:00) Anything can happen in this world.

(38:30) People who climb up in any industry are fully committed to what they are doing. They sincerely love the work that they do. If you sincerely love the work that you do you will naturally succeed.

(41:00) Do it now. Opportunity comes from opportunity.

(42:00) Action solves everything.

(42:00) Always more audacity. — Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard. (Founders #319)

(43:00) So at this time we’d better push it. We’d better push it.

(43:00) Smart people make things happen.

(46:00) Life is an opportunity at a time.

(48:00) Get rid of the habit of being distracted.

(54:00) No one in the world leads a smooth life.

(58:00) Too many people overestimate what they lack and underestimate what they have.

(58:00) You cannot sharpen your razor on velvet. — Abraham Lincoln

(59:00) When I was a poor boy I was confident that I would become the richest person in the world. Strong self confidence inspired me.

(59:00) I never believed that failure is the mother of success. I believe that faith is the father of success. Victory is a habit.

(59:00) Believing that there will be great results is the driving force behind all great careers.

(1:06:00) A story about Rockefeller’s ruthless competitive drive.

(1:07:00) My nature never wears off. What I like is the good feeling of victory.

(1:09:00) The people who can get ahead in the world are those who know how to find their ideal environment. If they cannot find it, they will create it themselves.

(1:16:00) Enthusiasm is a force multiplier to everything.

(1:16:00) The outcome of things is often proportional to our enthusiasm.

(1:18:00) I think carefully prepared plans and actions are called luck. I never succumb to luck, I believe in cause and effect.

(1:18:00) Ask yourself: Am I using my mind to create history?

(1:18:00) I never succumb to luck, I believe in cause and effect.

(1:18:00) In the process for pursuing career success the most important step is to prevent yourself from making excuses.

(1:19:00) The important thing is that you firmly believe that you are your greatest capital.

(1:19:00) Faith [in yourself] is the force that must drive you forward.

(1:20:00) No American has completely changed the American way of life like Henry Ford did. He has turned the car from a luxury into a necessity that everyone can afford.

(1:23:00) I told myself, I warned myself. You must hold onto this tightly. It can bring you to the realm of your dreams.

(1:26:00) Of course I paid a high price, but what I won was freedom and a glorious future. I became my own master.

(1:32:00) The end is just the beginning. — Andrew Carnegie

(1:33:00) Look at those who fail, and you will find that most people fail not because they make mistakes, but because they are not fully committed. The same goes for companies.

(1:35:00) The person who can create value the most is the person who devotes himself completely to his favorite activities.

(1:36:00) Match people by their enthusiasm.

(1:38:00) THE ROCKEFELLER EPISODES:

#307 The World's Great Family Dynasties

#254 John D. Rockefeller: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers

#248 John D Rockefeller (Titan)

#247 Henry Flagler (Rockefeller's partner)

#148 John D. Rockefeller's Autobiography

#16 John D. Rockefeller (Titan)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Mike Bloomberg

10 oktober 2023 | 81 min

What I learned from reading Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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[2:08] Answering to no one is the ultimate situation.

[3:02] Twitter thread on Michael Bloomberg by Neckar.Substack.com

[5:28] We never made the error that so many others have: mistaking their product for the device that delivers it.

[6:27] We knew our core product was data and analytics.

[7:01] We were motivated by an idea that we could build something new that just might make a difference.

[9:04] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

[10:05] I was willing to do anything that they wanted. I would have never left voluntarily.

[16:00] Street smarts and common sense were better predictors of career achievements.

[17:40] Almost all occupations have a big selling component: selling your firm, your ideas and yourself.

[18:20] It is the doers, the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies, who go the furthest and achieve the most.

[21:36] Comparing John to Bill on leadership, I always thought John was more egalitarian, but less effective.

[22:55] It was a lowly start. We slaved in our underwear and an un-air conditioned, a bank vault.

[23:57] The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb

[24:22] Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity by Frank Slootman

[27:20] David Geffen biography: The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood

[30:07] It's said that 80 percent of life is just showing up. I believe that. You can never have complete mastery over your existence. You can't choose the advantages you start out with, and you certainly can't pick your genetic intelligence level. But you can control how hard you work.

[31:20] Life, I've found, works the following way: Daily, you're presented with many small and surprising opportunities. Sometimes you seize one that takes you to the top. Most, though, if valuable at all, take you only a little way. To succeed, you must string together many small incremental advances-rather than count on hitting the lottery jackpot once. Trusting to great luck is a strategy not likely to work for most people. As a practical matter, constantly enhance your skills, put in as many hours as possible, and make tactical plans for the next few steps. Then, based on what actually occurs, look one more move ahead and adjust the plan. Take lots of chances, and make lots of individual, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

[32:12] Don't devise a Five-Year Plan or a Great Leap Forward. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either.

[34:16] I truly pity people who don't like their jobs. They struggle at work, so unhappily, for ultimately so much less success, and thus develop even more reason to hate their occupations. There's too much delightful stuff to do in this short lifetime not to love getting up on a weekday morning.

[38:48] Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly failure? Absolutely. Happiness for me has always been the thrill of the unknown, trying something that everyone says can't be done, feeling that gnawing pit in my stomach that says danger ahead. I want action.

[40:28] Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

[41:37] I rented a one room temporary office. It was about a hundred square feet of space with a view of an alley, a far cry from my previous place of employment. I deposited $300,000 of my Salomon Brothers windfall into a corporate checking account. And fifteen years later, I had a billion-dollar business.

[45:25] By endurance we conquer.

[46:50] Zero to One by Peter Thiel

[47:14] Made In Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita

[51:19] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

[54:35] Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games

[58:30] Each news story is a product demo. More demos lead to more revenue. More revenue leads to more stories and then even more revenue.

[1:03:24] He's got a lot of these like roundabout ways to get in front of potential customers. He’s repurposing the information that his unique business collects.

[1:15:53] When it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. —Jeff Bezos

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#323 Jimmy Buffett

3 oktober 2023 | 66 min

What I learned from reading Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White and A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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(8:00) Q: What are you going to do with your life? A: Live a pretty interesting one.

(10:00) A lesson that his grandfather taught him: The only thing standing between Jimmy and the world would be a lack of imagination an an over abundance of caution. All he had to do was leap and the world would be his.

(13:00) There is a lot of Mark Twain in Jimmy Buffett. Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr. (Founders #312)

(13:30) There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me. — Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141)

(15:00) Jimmy Buffett and Warren Buffett: Their lives are illustrations of the power of compounding.

(16:30) A hit song was nice. But owning the publishing on a hit song was even better.

(17:30) Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

(19:30) You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something. — Steve Jobs

(24:00) If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Futureby Peter Thiel (Founders #278)

(28:00) It is ironic that I was never categorizable and now I’m a category. — Jimmy Buffett

(28:00) Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him, nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody. What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players. There were a lot of better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing. — Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan. (Founders #259)

(29:00) No one is ever eager to fix a cash machine that isn't broken.

(29:00) You can’t sell a bagless vacuum cleaner to people that make $500 million a year selling vacuum bags. — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson(Founders #300)

(31:00) Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. — Paul Graham How to Do Great Work (Founders #314)

(36:00) My description of Jimmy Buffett:

-Blue collar work ethic

-Learning machine

-Loves it

-Won’t quit

(37:00) The Business of Phish

(42:00) What Jimmy Buffett and Kanye West have in common

Some say he arrogant. Can y'all blame him?

It was straight embarrassing how y'all played him

Last year shoppin' my demo, I was tryna shine

Every motherfucker told me that I couldn't rhyme

Now I could let these dream killers kill my self-esteem

Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams

(46:00) Jimmy kept the main thing the main thing: “I don't give a shit what happens 22 and a half hours of the day. The only thing that matters is the 90 minutes that we're on stage.”

(1:04:00) That's what's wrong with the world these days. Nobody wants to put in the time it takes to be legendary. Mythology is not fast food.

(1:05:00) Margaritaville Holdings intuitively adopted the asset-light model, where it licenses its intellectual property to owners and operators via franchise agreements

(1:09:00) There is nobody who understands who Jimmy Buffett is and what Jimmy Buffett does better than Jimmy Buffett.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#322 Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

26 september 2023 | 43 min

What I learned from reading Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg and Herb’s Heroes by David Sanders.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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(2:30) Reality is chaotic; planning is ordered and logical. The two don’t square with one another.

(5:30) You undergo a lot of stress all the time. How do you handle it? I don’t handle it. I like it.

(7:30) He smoked 5 packs of cigarettes a day. He drank Wild Turkey Bourbon daily. He said “Wild Turkey and Phillip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life.”

(8:00) He built the most successful airline in history. Southwest was profitable for 47 straight years.

(9:30) All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle

(18:00) Kelleher didn’t mince any words: “I told Lamar, you roll right over the son of a bitch and leave our tire tracks on his uniform if you have to.”

(27:30) No carrier knows its niche as well as Southwest.

(28:30) While other carriers have been lured by the temptation to step outside their niche, Southwest has maintained the discipline to stay focused on its fundamental reason for being.

(29:00) Herb on why he was conservative with debt: When there are bad times you aren't threatened by debt payments and debt payments are what put other airlines in and out of bankruptcy forever.

(30:00) Southwest is obsessed with keeping costs low to maximize profitability instead of being concerned with increasing market share.

(30:15) Southwest is willing to forgo revenue generating opportunities in markets that would disproportionately increase its costs.

(35:00) Keller has said on many occasions that a company is never more vulnerable to complacency than when it's at the height of its success. The number one threat is us he would say.

(38:30) When we look back at the last 20 years it is obvious that a number of large companies were so set in their ways that they did not adapt properly and lost out as a result. 20 years from now, we'll look back and we'll see the same pattern. — Bill Gates

(39:00) Herb Kelleher illustrates the speed with which Southwest moves by telling a story about Don Valentine, former VP of marketing.

Valentine had just joined from Dr. Pepper when the marketing group met in January to discuss a new television campaign.

Valentine was ready with his timeline for producing the spots:

-script in March

-script approval in April

-casting in June

-shoot in September

When Valentine finished, Kelleher said, “Don, I hate to tell you, but we’re talking about next Wednesday.”

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#321 Working with Jeff Bezos

21 september 2023 | 57 min

What I learned from reading Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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(8:00) Principles Jeff Bezos would repeat: customer obsession, innovation, frugality, personal ownership, bias for action, high standards.

(10:30) Single threaded leadership: For each project, there is a single leader whose focus is that project and that project alone, and that leader oversees teams of people whose attention is focused on that one project.

(11:00) The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Futureby Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

(12:30) Jeff said many times: We need to eliminate communication, not encourage it. Communication is a sign of dysfunction.

(14:30) Jeff is insisted that instead of finding new and better ways to manage our dependencies, we figure out how to remove them.

(15:30) Jeff on decision making speed: “Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you're probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you're good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure."

(16:30) The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody's part-time job.

(21:00) Even though you cannot hear it, with a well-written narrative there is a massive amount of useful information that is being transferred in those 20 minutes.

(23:00) A simple tip on how to produce unique insights:

Jeff has an uncanny ability to read a narrative and consistently arrive at insights that no one else did, even though we were all reading the same narrative. After one meeting, I asked him how he was able to do that. He responded with a simple and useful tip that I have not forgotten: he assumes each sentence he reads is wrong until he can prove otherwise. He's challenging the content of the sentence, not the motive of the writer. Jeff was usually among the last to finish reading.

(26:30) Jeff wanted to know exactly what we were going to build and how it would be better for customers. To Jeff a half-baked mockup was evidence of half-baked thinking.

(27:00) Founders force the issue.

(28:00) Writing required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why customers would want it. Half baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides.

(34:30) Failure and invention are inseparable twins.

(35:30) Working backwards exposes skill sets that your company needs but does not yet have.

(36:30) Differentiation with customers is often one of the key reasons to invent.

(44:00) To read Bezos’ shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written.

(46:00) The idea that Amazon, a pure e-commerce distributor of retail products made by others, would become a hardware company and make and sell its own reader device was controversial.

(46:00) If you outsource then your company doesn’t acquire those skills. Amazon wants the skills.

(54:00) Jeff wanted to build a moat around his best customers.

(58:00) We had acquired a core competency only a few other companies could match.

List of Jeff Bezos episodes to learn more:

#282 Jeff Bezos shareholder letters

#180 Jeff Bezos (Invention of a Global Empire)

#179 Jeff Bezos (Everything Store)

#155 Jeff Bezos (Invent and Wander)

#71 Jeff Bezos Shareholder Letters

#38 Space Barons

#17 Jeff Bezos (Everything Store)

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#320 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 2

14 september 2023 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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(5:00) It was better for the world that he had known failure and suffered moments of self doubt.

(6:00) There was something in Churchill's character that simply wouldn't allow him to give up. He was a dangerous optimist.

(8:00) History likes winners.

(9:30) The adventures and ordeals of those early years were essential to the making of a man who triumphed in the second world war.

(10:00) At 40 he was largely written off as a man whose best days were behind him. (Churchill shares a lot of parallels with Steve Jobs)

(10:30) He fashioned his career as a grand experiment to prove that he could work his will on his times. Persevering in that approach, despite repeated setbacks and often harsh ridicule of those who didn't share his high opinion of himself.

(13:00) At the heart of this story is an irrepressible spirit.

(17:30) Little men let events take their course. I like things to happen. And if they don't happen, I like to make them happen.

(15:00) In every age there are great men. Why not us? And why not now?

(19:30) Churchill mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

(22:00) While other politicians were content to get their information from a scattering of newspapers, Churchill devoured whole shelves.

(23:00) Winston Churchill wanted to be the dominant political figure of his time.

(23:30) Robert Caro's books on Lyndon Johnson

(26:30) Listen to Invest Like The Best #343 David Senra

(30:00) If a man is sure of himself it only sharpens him and makes him more effective.

(35:00) Another thing Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill had in common: High Energy. This story about Steve Jobs in incredible.

(36:00) The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. (Founders #196)

(44:00) Churchill to his son: “Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence." — The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. (Founders #196)

(48:00) Larry Ellison: I know that most people think trying to build a hard wing of this size is crazy. But that’s the beauty of the idea. The other side isn’t trying to build one. So we’ll have a wing, and they won’t. — The Billionaire and The Mechanic(Founders #126)

(50:30) Winston's opponents never tired of saying that he was unreasonable.

(58:00) All of the Winston Churchill episodes:

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. (Founders #196)

Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard. (Founders #319)

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Sam Zemurray (The Fish That Ate the Whale)

11 september 2023 | 90 min

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.

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[4:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real.

[8:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)

[10:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been.

[12:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children.

[12:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen

[12:54] He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the head of the crowd. Grasper, climber-nasty ways of describing this kid, who wants what you take for granted. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top.

[14:01] There is no problem you can't solve if you understand your business from A to Z.

[17:08] Sam spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing.

[18:17] As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar firms were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade.

[18:42] The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around. // There's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it's that dream of being the exception, the one who gets rich and gets out before he gets got that's the key to a hustler's motivation. —Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[26:36] He was pure hustle.

[28:15] Preston later spoke of Zemurray with admiration. He said the kid from Russia was closer in spirit to the banana pioneers than anyone else working. "He's a risk taker," Preston explained, “he's a thinker, and he's a doer.”

[30:33] They don't write books about people that stopped there.

[32:48] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) and John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (#254)

[34:22] He seemed to strive for the sake of striving.

[34:44] If you're on a mans side you stay on that mans side or you're no better than a goddamn animal.

[35:11] The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again.

[39:41] A man whose commitment could not be questioned, who fed his own brothers to the jungle.

[40:00] The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacificby Alistair Urquhart.

[41:02] Why the Founders of United Fruit were the Rockefellers of bananas.

[47:23] He kept quiet because talking only drives up the price.

[48:19] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

[53:30] He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body.

[1:02:04] He disdained bureaucracy and hated paperwork. So seldom did he dictate a letter that he requires no full-time secretary.

[1:04:01] He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. There was not a job he could not do nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret of his success.

[1:05:02] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)

[1:08:00] Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error.

[1:10:44] Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, If you're going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it's because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I'm describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop.

[1:11:44] Founder Mentality vs Big Company Mentality: When this mess of deeds came to light, United Fruit did what big bureaucracy-heavy companies always do: hired lawyers and investigators to search every file for the identity of the true owner. This took months. In the meantime, Zemurray, meeting separately with each claimant, simply bought the land from them both. He bought it twice paid a little more, yes, but if you factor in the cost of all those lawyers, probably still spent less than United Fruit and came away with the prize.

[1:13:04] His philosophy: Get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and blood in your eyes.

[1:17:02] For every move there is a counter move. For every disaster there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency.

[1:17:57] A man focused on the near horizon of costs can sometimes lose sight of the far horizon of potential windfall.

[1:20:22] You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

[1:23:03] In a time of crisis the mere evidence of activity can be enough to get things moving.

[1:23:42] Zemurray was never heard to bitch or justify. He was a member of a generation that lived by the maxim: Never complain, never explain.

[1:27:08] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relationsby Larry Tye

[1:28:14] He should link his private interest to a public cause.

[1:29:32] In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

[1:32:28] Sam's defining characteristic was his belief in his own agency, his refusal to despair. No story is without the possibility of redemption; with cleverness and hustle, the worst can be overcome. I can't help but feel that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray–not the brutality or the conquest, but the righteous anger that sent the striver into the boardroom of laughing elites, waving his proxies, shouting, "You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

—

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#319 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 1

5 september 2023 | 48 min

What I learned from reading Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard.

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(2:30) He was meant not just to fight for his country, but one day to lead it. Although he believed this without question, he still had to convince everyone else.

(3:30) He didn't even have a plan. Just the unshakeable conviction that he was destined for greatness.

(4:00) Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

(4:30) Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden

(5:00) The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. (Founders #175)

(8:00) In his open pursuit of fame and popular favor, Churchill seemed far less Victorian than Rooseveltian.

(8:30) Winston advertises himself as simply and as unconsciously as he breathes. Churchill was widely criticized for being a self advertiser.

(9:30) “I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am a prod."

(9:30) Churchill did not need encouragement. He only needed a chance.

(11:00) "I have faith in my star. That I am intended to do something in the world."

(12:30) "I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending."

(13:30) The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(17:30) Winston had spent the best years of his life composing his impromptu speeches.

(18:00) He had no one who believed in him quite as much as he believed in himself.

(20:30) He was defiantly determined to decide for himself where he would go and what he would do.

(27:00) From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed. — Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. (Founders #144)

(31:00) Nothing but being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover.

(32:00) The greater the obstacle, the greater the triumph.

(34:00) He had hated his captivity with an intensity that surprised even him. He could not bear the thought of being in another man's control.

(35:00) Who shall say what is possible or impossible, in these spheres of action one cannot tell without a trial.

(36:00) Always more audacity.

(43:30) He read for four or five hours every day.

(45:00) He would be obliged to rely on someone else's intelligence and cunning. This state of affairs was far less appealing to him than the dangerous he would face if he were on his own.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

The best interview I've ever done about Founders

3 september 2023 | 81 min

#318 Alistair Urquhart (Listen to this when you’re stressed)

27 augusti 2023 | 48 min

What I learned from reading The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart.

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(4:00) I hope that this book will be inspirational and offer hope to those who suffer adversity in their daily lives.

(10:00) You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods. — Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251)

(13:30) When you reach a large goal or finally get to the top, the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying. First comes heightened confidence, followed quickly by overconfidence, arrogance, and a sense that “we’ve mastered it; we’ve figured it out; we’re golden.” But the gold can tarnish quickly. Mastery requires endless remastery. In fact, I don’t believe there is ever true mastery. It is a process, not a destination. — The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. (Founders #106)

(15:30) Invaders are always organized.

(23:00) Stay at the front and do not look back.

(29:00) Every morning I would tell myself over and over: Survive this day. Survive this day. Survive this day.

(32:00) On countless occasions I've seen two men with the same symptoms and same physical state and one will die and one will make it. I can only put that down to sheer willpower.

(35:00) Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts

(41:00) Dan Carlin's Nightmares of Indianapolis podcast episode

(48:00) Alistair Urquhart was conscripted into the British military to fight during World War II. He was 19 years old.

He was sent to Singapore. The Japanese invaded and he was taken hostage.

He survived 750 days in the jungle working as a slave on The Death Railway and the bridge on the River Kwai.

Most of the time he worked completely naked.

He contracted dysentery, malaria, and tropical ulcers. A lot.

He was transferred to a Japanese hellship.

The ship was torpedoed.

Almost everyone on the ship died. He survived.

He spent 5 days adrift at sea until he was picked up by a Japanese whaling ship.

He was sent to Nagasaki and forced to work in a mine.

Two months later he was struck by the blast from the Atomic bomb.

He was freed by the US Marines shortly thereafter.

He returns home to Scotland and finds out his best friend died in the war and the girl he loved got married and moved to Canada.

At 90 years of age he wrote the book to inspire others to persevere when they are faced with hardships in their life.

I think it is a great book for entrepreneurs.

The story demonstrates the adaptability of humans, our fierce desire to survive, and puts the stress of building companies into the proper perspective.

The entire story only takes 3 hours and 14 minutes

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#317 Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar)

21 augusti 2023 | 65 min

What I learned from rereading Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull.

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(7:00) Walt Disney created a made-up world, used cutting-edge technology to enable it, and then told us how he’d done it.

(7:30) Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #187)

(7:30) Both Einstein and Disney inspired me, but Disney affected me more because of his weekly visits to my family's living room.

(7:45) Every time some technological breakthrough occurred, Walt Disney incorporated it.

(9:30) His dad was the son of an Idaho dirt farmer. His dad was one of 14 kids. 5 of his dad's siblings died as infants. His dad was the first person in his family ever to go to college. He had to work while he was going to college and pay his own way. His dad built the family house with his own hands.

(10:30) When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. — How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. (Founders #314)

(12:30) The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis (Founders #274)

(14:00) George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones (Founders #35)

(15:00) We [Ed Catmull and George Lucas] worked with a blinders on intensity. George had relentless practicality. He wasn't some hobbyist trying to bring technology into filmmaking for the heck of it. His interest in computers began and ended with their potential to add value to his filmmaking process.

(19:00) George Lucas believed in the future and his ability to shape it.

(20:30) The storyteller is the most powerful person in the world. — Steve Jobs

(20:30) The art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come talk to us can't tell a story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories — Don Valentine

(22:30) Steve used the phrase insanely great products to explain what he believed in.

(26:30) This guy told me that the way to establish his authority in the room was to arrive last. His thinking was this would establish him as the most powerful player in the room since he could afford to keep everyone else waiting. All it ended up establishing was that he had never met anyone like Steve jobs.

(38:30) If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.

(42:00) Everything associated with our name needed to be good. Quality is the best business plan.

(42:30) Steve understood that every interaction a customer had with Apple could increase or decrease his or her respect for the company. As he put it, a corporation "could accumulate or withdraw credits" from its reputation, which is why he worked so hard to ensure that every single interaction a customer might have with Apple-from using a Mac to calling customer support to buying a single from the iTunes store and then getting billed for it-was excellent. — Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265)

(48:30) Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #282)

(52:30) People discover and realize their visions over time and through dedicated, protracted struggle.

(53:30) If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing? You have to embrace that sailing means that you can’t control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that, whatever comes, you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side. You will not be able to control exactly how you get across. That’s the game you’ve decided to be in. If your goal is to make it easier and simpler, then don’t get in the boat.

(59:00) It is difficult to understand people who deviate so radically from the norm like Steve did.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#316 Bugatti

14 augusti 2023 | 58 min

What I learned from reading The Bugatti Story by L’Ebe Bugatti.

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(2:01) If there was a prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned it had to be what the legendary Ettore Bugatti built in Molsheim. — Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates. (Founders #220)

(7:00) Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A. J. Baime. (Founders #97)

(14:30) I determined to build a car of my own. I had realized by then that I was completely taken by mechanics. My ideas gave me no rest.

(16:00) The two inventors described to each other a singular experience: Each had imagined a perfect new product, whole, already manufactured and sitting before him, and then spent years prodding executives, engineers, and factories to create it with as few compromises as possible. — Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)

(22:00) Faster progress would be made in all fields if conceit did not cause us to forget or disdain the work done by others before us. There is a tendency to believe that nothing worthy of note has been done in the past, and this has an unfortunate bearing on our judgment; thus the present trend toward mediocrity.

(23:45) I was hypnotized, drawn more and more to the mechanics of motors. These exciting problems had me completely under their sway, and so began for me the hard uphill task, the thankless labor of constructing and destroying and beginning again, without a break or rest, and for days, months, years even, until success finally rewarded all my efforts.

(27:00) Bugatti made no attempt to compete with the low price models already on the market. The price of the Bugatti was higher than any other car of equal horsepower.

(37:00) Bugatti is the personification of Paul Graham’s essay How To Do Great Work(Founders #314)

-Work on what you have a natural aptitude for and a deep curiosity about.

-Make a commitment to be the best in the world at what you do.

-Care deeply about making truly great work.

(42:00) All the finest trophies were won easily by engaging in every important race without pause.

(44:00) Nothing is too good. Nothing is too dear. You've got to win whatever the cost. You work day and night if necessary.

(44:30) There was a factory. However Molsheim was more than that. It was a house and a family. It was a little world where the attitude to things and the relations between people were out of the ordinary.

(45:30) The personality of its founder continued to show in even the smallest details and unexpected ways.

(46:00) You get the feeling of being suddenly confronted with something unusual and beyond classification.

(49:30) His starting point was always to create the most extraordinary things.

(50:30) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(52:00) The root principle was to do things your way. It didn't matter how other people did it. As long as it works and it is exciting people will follow you.

(58:30) A human life, by its very nature, has to be devoted to something or other, to a glorious or humble enterprise, an illustrious or obscure destiny. This is a strange but inexorable condition of things. — The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#315 Balenciaga

7 augusti 2023 | 36 min

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.

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(2:20) Among the masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest.

(3:00) Christian Dior called Balenciaga “the master of us all" and Coco Chanel said that Balenciaga was "the only couturier in the truest sense of the word. The others are simply fashion designers".

(3:30) Jay Gould episodes #258 and #285

(5:00) For the next seventy-four years Balenciaga did a piece of sewing every day of his life.

(5:20) Being prolific is underrated. — Paul Graham (Founders #314)

(8:45) From the age of three to his mid-twenties he learned thoroughly every aspect of his trade.

(17:00) Bernard Arnault (Founders #296)

(23:00) What Dior told Boussac: What you need, and I would like to run, is a craftsman’s workshop, in which we would recruit the very best people in the trade, to reestablish in Paris a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest standards of workmanship. It will cost a great deal of money and entail much risk.”

(26:00) Balenciaga never commented on other designers.

(28:00) Balenciaga had a religious like devotion to his craft: Balenciaga regarded making dresses as a vocation, like the priesthood, and an act of worship. He felt that he served God by suitably adorning the female form, which God had made beautiful.

(29:00) Customers were called patrons.

(30:00) His remoteness was not a pose but part of his dedication to his art. He worked fanatically hard.

(31:00) His fundamental principles as a dressmaker:

Make women happy. Make dresses the customer never wants to take off.

Permanence. You should bequeath your dress to your daughter. And her to her daughter.

Best material from the best textile creators.

(33:00) You don’t wear a Balenciaga dress, you present it. (Make up your own terms!)

(35:00) The essence of his creations was the work of human hands, bringing into existence the images projected on paper from his powerful and inventive brain. The archives of his firm survive intact, and they reveal the extent to which everything was done by hand:

(37:00) Cut against the bias.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)

31 juli 2023 | 58 min

What I learned from reading How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham.

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(2:00) All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.

(2:10) Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible.

(4:15) How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions. —How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham

(5:10) Always preserve excitingness. (Let what you are excited about guide you)

(8:15) If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find.

(9:15) How To Work Hard by Paul Graham

(10:05) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working.

(10:20) You can't tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. You may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it.

(13:00) When it comes to figuring out what to work on, you're on your own.

(14:00) Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr. (Founders #312)

(17:15) One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening.

(17:50) Make what you are most excited about.

(19:00) If you're interested, you're not astray.

(19:30) Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(20:15) At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it.

(22:50) In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage.

(25:00) A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy

(26:00) Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem.

(26:30) The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing.

(27:10) Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started.

(27:30) Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

(30:00) If you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good. This observation has been made by so many people in so many different fields that it might be worth thinking about why it's true.

(36:00) Originality isn't a process, but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on.

(38:00) Change breaks the brittle.

(43:45) What might seem to be merely the initial step — deciding what to work on — is in a sense the key to the whole game.

(45:00) Being prolific is underrated. + Examples of outlandishly prolific people

(48:30) Just focus on the really important things and ignore everything else.

(50:30) One of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another. History is so full of chance discoveries of this type that it's probably worth giving chance a hand by deliberately learning about other kinds of work. You can take ideas from quite distant fields if you let them be metaphors.

(51:30) Seek out the best colleagues.

(54:30) Solving hard problems will always involve some backtracking.

(56:30) Don't marry someone who doesn't understand that you need to work, or sees your work as competition for your attention. If you're ambitious, you need to work; it's almost like a medical condition; so someone who won't let you work either doesn't understand you, or does and doesn't care.

(57:50) The prestige of a type of work is at best a trailing indicator and sometimes completely mistaken. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious.

(58:00) Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies, and it knows more than you do about what's worth paying attention to.

If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word, my bet would be on "curiosity."

The whole process is a kind of dance with curiosity.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#313 Christopher Nolan

25 juli 2023 | 49 min

What I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone.

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(7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively.

(7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed with Memento.”

They're asking me to comment on that, as if I thought it were weird or something, and I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it for years. Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. . . I feel like I have managed to wrap them the up in it way I try to wrap myself up.

(8:30) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (Founders #311)

(11:00) I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones.

(15:30) Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)

(22:45) Nolan is relentlessly resourceful. He wants to spend as as little money as possible so he can maintain as much control over the project as possible.

(23:30) He makes his first movie on the weekends while he working a full-time job!

(29:30) The efficiency of filmmaking is for me a way of keeping control. The pressure of time, the pressure of money. Even though they feel like restrictions at the time, and you chafe against them, they're helping you make decisions. They really are. If I know that deadline is there, then my creative process ramps up exponentially.

(34:00) The result of making a billion dollar blockbuster: Suddenly his position at Warner Brothers went from solid to unassailable.

(37:00) Stories can add to your own thinking but you need your own foundation to add them to first.

(38:00) I know it's more fun when we're all together and we can do the thing together. That's why we keep it as a family business.

(39:00) Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. (Founders #287)

(43:30) Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward. Bezos didn’t believe anyone could make a good decision about a feature or a product without knowing precisely how it would be communicated to the world. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

(45:30) Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore; you always look at yourself through their eyes.

(49:30) I often have terrible luck with the weather, but my philosophy is to shoot no matter what the weather is, always shooting no matter what weather, just keeping going, keeping going. Letting everybody on the crew and cast know we're really serious about doing that, no matter what the conditions are, so they're not looking out the window first thing and going, Oh, we will or won't shoot today.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#312 Mark Twain

19 juli 2023 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr.

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One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets

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(7:20) A great way to think about power law people: Their absence leaves of void that no one else can fill.

(8:00) His death would not have lengthened the life of the Confederacy or the Union, by a single day. It would, however, have reduced the literary inheritance of the United States by an incalculable amount.

(11:20) Opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss.

(13:00) In another life Mark Twain would be a cocaine dealer.

(17:30) I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

(21:15) The ad itself became legendary: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Hundreds of adventure-seeking young men quickly responded.

(24:30) Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides

(27:45) The purest veins were usually the deepest.

(28:00) The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was up near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil. — The Big Rich (Founders #149)

(32:30) Get the facts first, then you can distort them as much as you like.

(33:30) People are attracted to confidence and repelled from nuance.

(37:00) The whole point of the performance was not so much what was being said, as how it was being said.

(47:30) Ambassador Burlingame gave the author a well-meaning piece of advice. “You have great ability; I believe you have genius,” Burlingame said. “What you need now is refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors; always climb.”

It was an admonishment Twain would take to heart and follow, virtually to the letter, for the next forty-four years.

(53:00) When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it. — Jeff Bezos

(57:30) Mark Twain produced a remarkable stream of novels, short stories, essays, and travel pieces that today stands as one of the great bodies of work in English literature.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#311 James Cameron

12 juli 2023 | 72 min

What I learned from reading The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron.

(4:00) I watched Titanic at the Titanic. And he actually replied: Yeah, but I madeTitanic at the Titanic.

(7:10) I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it probably goes back to this idea that there are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen, because the really gifted people don’t fucking want to do it.

(7:20) At 68 years old, Cameron wakes up at 4:45 AM and often kick boxes in the morning.

(7:45) Self doubt is not something Cameron has a lot of experience with. His confidence preceded his achievements.

(9:00) I was going through this stuff, chapter and verse, and making my own notes and all that. I basically gave myself a college education in visual effects and cinematography while I was driving a truck.

(16:00) Every idea is a work in progress.

(17:30) He's been on a planet of his own making ever since.

(18:00) The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron

(22:00) Cameron's career has been built on questioning accepted wisdom and believing in the power of the individual. His outlook is that we can take fate in our own hands.

(27:00) All creative individuals build on the works of their predecessors. No one creates an a vacuum. — Walt Disney and Picasso (Founders #310)

(31:00) Cameron would go to the library at the University of Southern California, photocopying graduate student theses on esoteric filmmaking subjects.

He filled two fat binders with technical papers.

For the cost of a couple hundred dollars in photocopying, he essentially put himself through a graduate course in visual effects at the top film school in the country without ever meeting a single professor.

(34:00) Cameron had only been at Corman's for a matter of days, but he was already taking charge. He seems constitutionally incapable of doing otherwise. (What a line!)

He had a very commanding presence.

(35:30) Your mediocrity is my opportunity.

(37:40) Cameron finds writing torture. He does it anyway.

(43:00) Cameron is willing to let ideas marinate for decades.

(43:45) "I like doing things I know others can’t.” That's part of what attracts him to shooting movies in water. "Nobody likes shooting in water. It's physically taxing, frustrating, and dangerous. But when you have a small team of people as crazy as you are, that are good at it, there is deep satisfaction in both the process of doing it and the resulting footage."

(49:15) I was stunned by Jim's allegiance to the project and the extent of his physical abilities. Jim was there for every minute of it. It was beyond belief, his commitment to what we were doing.

(55:30) I'd just made T2 for Carolco and I admired how they rolled, being their own bosses, mavericks, entrepreneurs. I’d been fed up with the studio system. So I figured I could set up a structure which would allow me to call the shots myself.

(57:30) Mute the world. Build your own world.

(1:04:50) Opportunity is a strange beast. It commonly appears after a loss.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#310 Walt Disney and Picasso

4 juli 2023 | 52 min

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.

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(3:30) Disney made use of the new technologies throughout his creative life.

(4:45) Lists of Paul Johnson books and episodes:

Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.(Founders #226)

Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252)

(5:55) Picasso was essentially self-taught, self-directed, self-promoted, emotionally educated in the teeming brothels of the city, a small but powerfully built monster of assured egoism.

(7:30) Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both killer and poet, you get rich. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #306)

(10:00) Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat. — Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab. (Founders #105)

(11:30) Picasso averaged one new piece of artwork every day of his life from age 20 until his death at age 91. He created something new every day for 71 years.

(15:30) Power doesn't always corrupt. But what power always does is reveal. — Working by Robert Caro (Founders #305)

(17:30) Many people find it hard to accept that a great writer, painter, or musician can be evil. But the historical evidence shows, again and again, that evil and creative genius can exist side by side in the same person. In my judgment his monumental selfishness and malignity were inextricably linked to his achievement.

He was all-powerful as an originator and aesthetic entrepreneur precisely because he was so passionately devoted to what he was doing, to the exclusion of any other feelings whatever.

He had no sense of duty except to himself, and this gave him his overwhelming self-promoting energy. Equally, his egoism enabled him to turn away from nature and into himself with a concentration which is awe-inspiring.

(21:30) It shows painfully how even vast creative achievement and unparalleled worldly success can fail to bring happiness.

(24:00) Walt Disney (at age 18) wanted to run his own business and be his own master. He had the American entrepreneurial spirit to an unusual degree.

(27:00) Recurring theme: Knowing what you want to do but not knowing how to do it—yet.

(26:20) All creative individuals build on the works of their predecessors. No one creates in vacuum.

(28:30) Why Walt Disney moved to Hollywood: The early 1920s, full of hope and daring, were a classic period for American free enterprise, and for anyone interested in the arts—Hollywood was a rapidly expanding focus of innovation.

(28:00) Filmaker episodes:

Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)

George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)

(30:10) The relentless resourcefulness of a young Walt Disney!

(34:30) This is wild: It is significant that Mickey Mouse, in the year of his greatest popularity, 1933, received over 800,000 fan letters, the largest ever recorded in show business, at any time in any century.

(36:00) Something that Disney does his entire career —he has this in common with other great filmmakers— he is always jumping on the new technology of his day.

(37:00) Lack of resources is actually a feature. It’s the benefit. — Kevin Kelly on Invest Like the Best #334

(38:45) Imagination rules the world. — The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(41:15) Disney put excellence before any other consideration.

(41:45) Disney hired the best artists he could get and gave them tasks to the limits of their capacities.

(47:45) Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #158)

(49:30) I Had Lunch With Sam Zell (Founders #298)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Michael Jordan (The Life)

30 juni 2023 | 99 min

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.

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(5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.

(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.

(6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

(14:06) At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.

(16:10) Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that got me going again.

(19:29) Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't.

(59:53) The Jordan Rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became textbook for guarding athletic scorers. The scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped in the long run, by forcing Jordan to find an answer. "I think that 'Jordan Rules' defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan," Tex Winter said.

(1:16:35) Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

(1:19:56) I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel like you missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. I've always been a practice player. I believe in it.

(1:29:47) Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#309 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Before He Was Successful)

26 juni 2023 | 40 min

What I learned from reading Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak by Barbara Outland Baker.

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(6:30) He forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right angles. They had to keep their elbows to their waists. If the boys did not obey, the back of his hand was quick to strike their cheeks.

(7:30) His life began to flourish through the art and science of bodybuilding.

Arnold ate it, slept it, worked it, imagined it, thought it, believed it, and trusted it.

Bodybuilding became his existence.

(8:10) He had no time to waste on naysayers. He aligned only with those who shared his passion.

(8:15) He knew that to succeed according to his manic standards he needed to master an individual sport.

(8:30) His intelligence did not show on his report cards yet he mastered his goals like a wizard. (If you do everything you will win)

(8:50) His singular concentration provided a rock solid belief in his potential.

(9:30) Not even his peers could understand the enormity of his lifetime dreams.

(11:00) Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193)

(11:15) Gradually a conflict grew up in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She had thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off.

But that's a concept that has no place in my thinking.

For me, life is continuously being hungry.

The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

(13:40) If you do everything you will win.

(13:45) And I then saw very clearly what I could achieve, and that gave me a tremendous amount of motivation.

(13:55) Instead of training two hours a day like most kids did, I would train twice a day, two hours.

Totally abnormal.

Sometimes three times a day and sometimes four times a day. I would go home during my lunch time, and then do, for an hour straight, just sit-ups to get that extra hour that no one else has gotten in, just to be ahead of everyone else.

(16:20) Arnold was not a man of many surprises. He was clear in his focus, firm in his decisions, and egocentric at all costs.

(17:55) Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. — The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. (Founders #106)

(21:20) He made it clear that his world was huge and I must learn to accept that other people and activities demanded his attention.

(23:30) His family foundation was instrumental in setting up his intense motivation to succeed.

This negative motivation pushes him to achieve the maximum potential in every activity.

(27:30) No one could restrain his mutinous energy.

(27:55) Arnold always felt self-confident, no matter the disparity in sophistication, income or status.

(29:30) Francis could sell ice to the Eskimos, Lucas said later. He has charisma beyond logic. I can see now what kind of men the great Caesars of history were, their magnetism. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)

(31:30) I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213)

(22:40) Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. — Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)

(33:10) Optimism is a moral duty. — Edwin Land A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. (Founders #134)

(33:50) A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune. — The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #283)

(35:30) Stay public. You gotta promote, promote, promote, or it all dies. You just gotta be out there all the time. — Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. (Founders #219)

(37:00) He maintained his rigorous training schedule.

(38:30) He craved the interaction with each new expert and remembered every tip.

Arnold already recognized that he had the ability to learn any content he chose.

(38:45) The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets. — The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

(39:15) Imitation precedes creation. — Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Founders #210)

(44:35) Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141)

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #193)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#308 The Founder of Glock

19 juni 2023 | 40 min

What I learned from reading Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul Barrett.

Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain.

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(5:22) What struck me is how his inexperience was a great advantage. He didn't assume anything about how to design a handgun because he's never designed one before. Consequently he designed the best one ever. He didn't know what was out of bounds.

(8:20) Gaston Glock himself put it in an interview: "That I knew nothing was my advantage.”

(8:55) He began disassembling the guns, putting them back together, and noted the contrasting methods used to make them.

(9:00) More on Glock’s initial research process: I started intensive studies in such a manner that I visited the Austrian patent offices for weeks examining generations of handgun in innovation.

(9:10) Learning from history of a form of leverage.

(10:25) Crucially, the gun should have no more than 40 parts. This is one of the most important ideas in the book. He designed a product —and a company— based on limiting the amount of moving parts.

(12:00) My intention was to learn as much as possible as fast as possible.

(12:30) Move fast: I worked for two years, day and night, to bring the sample to the Army on time.

(12:45) Difference for the sake of it and retention of total control. — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(15:00) The important thing that gave him his big price advantage was that he designed the pistol for complete production on computer controlled tools.

(15:20) The book is all simplicity, focus, and differentiation.

(15:30) Glock produced the simplest handgun with only 34 components.

(18:30) He's got all these very unique and unusual forms of distribution.

(18:35) How did a pistol produced by an obscure engineer in Vienna, a man who barely spoke English and had no familiarity with America, become in the space of a few years, an American icon?

The answer to that question is distribution.

(20:20) There's a lot of money to be made if we could convert U.S police departments from revolvers to pistols.

(22:50) The only conventional thing about the Glock was the method of operation he adopted for his handgun. Glock borrowed his basic mechanics from John Moses Browning, the greatest gun designer of the late 19th century.

(24:08) He objected to the Pentagon's insistence that the rights to manufacture the winning gun design would be open to competitive bidding. Glock intended to collect all profit from the production of his gun himself.

(24:35) Quality will always bring you more money.

(25:50) Glock's gross margins exceeded 65%. The Glock's simpler design and the computerized manufacturing methods allowed for larger profits.

(27:45) Working by Robert Caro. (Founders #305)

(30:40) David Ogilvy said the word FREE is magical to customers.

(31:00) Glock began putting some of the country's most admired shooting instructors on contract to spread the word about the Austrian pistol.

(32:00) Cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves. + The deals worked financially because of the company's startingly low manufacturing costs.

(32:30) Glock is just running Sam Colt’s playbook — just doing it 140 years later. — Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America by Jim Rasenberger. (Founders #147)

(33:00) Sam Colt relentlessly pursued public contracts, regardless of the profit margin. “Government patronage, Sam Colt once said, is an advertisement, if nothing else.” Gaston Glock became the Sam Colt of the 20th century.

(34:30) Glock was able to focus. They put all of their effort and resources behind a single product: American handgun makers offered many diverse models in the fashion of the Detroit car companies. Glock saw that as competing with himself and resisted the temptation.

(36:20) He evolved from a provincial manager of a radiator factory to a world traveling industrialist.

(41:45) That was Glock's theme. I did it my way.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#307: The World's Great Family Dynasties: Rockefeller, Rothschild, Morgan, & Toyada

12 juni 2023 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses by David Landes.

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Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain.

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(4:25) Success causes failure. As the family develops power and prestige, the heirs find many interesting and amusing things to do rather than run their business.

(6:00) Those on the margins often come to control the center.

(9:00) Great industrial leaders are always fanatically committed to their jobs. They are not lazy, or amateurs. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #306)

(9:50) For many of the great founders “Appetite comes with eating.”

(11:00)

Rothschild episodes:

Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. (Founders #197)

The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. (Founders #198)

JP Morgan episodes:

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142)

Rockefeller episodes:

Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148)

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

(13:30) Mayer Rothschild thought that long term relationships were more valuable than immediate profit.

(15:45) Nathan Rothschild has extreme levels of self belief: When his prospective father-in-law asked for proof of his prospects, Nathan told him that if he was concerned about having his daughters provided for, he might just as well give them all to Nathan, and be done with it.

(19:00) The Rothschilds developed the technique of absolute direction to perfection.

(21:15) Wal-Mart stock is staying right where it is. We don’t need the money. We don’t need to buy a yacht. And thank goodness we never thought we had to go out and buy anything like an island. We just don’t have those lands of needs or ambitions, which wreck a lot of companies when they get along in years. Some families sell their stock off a little at a time to live high, and then—boom—somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain. One of the real reasons I’m writing this book is so my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read it years from now and know this: If you start any of that foolishness, I’ll come back and haunt you. So don’t even think about it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(26:00) If you want to build a family dynasty you need to have a bunch of kids. This is the number one factor for increasing the chance that your family dynasty outlives you.

(29:45) Larry Ellison didn’t have the methodical relentlessness that made Bill Gates so formidable and feared. By his own admission, Ellison was not an obsessive grinder like Gates: “I am a sprinter. I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again.” Ellison had a reputation for being easily bored by the process of running a business and often took time off, leaving the shop to senior colleagues. — Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds. (Founders #124)

(36:13) A man always has two reasons for the things he does, a good one, and the real one. — J.P. Morgan

(38:00) Andrew Carnegie celebrated too quickly. He later admitted to Morgan that he had sold out too cheap, by $100 million. Morgan replied, “Very likely, Andrew.” — The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142)

(38:35) Henry Villard had come to Morgan for help in taking over Edison's company. This was a mistake. Morgan was not by nature, a helper. He was a driver. He arranged a counter coup.

(41:45) Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

(43:30) “It is impossible to create an innovative product unless you do it yourself, pay attention to every detail, and then test it exhaustively. Never entrust the creation of a product to others, for that will inevitably lead to failure and cause you deep regret.”

—Sakichi Toyada

(45:00) You should make an effort to make something that will benefit society.

(45:30) Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary by Robert Price. (Founders #304)

(48:50) Mailman is a Gmail plugin that allows you to control when and what emails should land in your inbox. https://www.mailmanhq.com

(58:30) Rockefeller believed that he would be rich and he believed that this was because God wanted him to be.

(58:45) Rockefeller’s competitors and associates were amateurs by comparison, and he saw them for what they were.

(1:01:00) Published railway tariffs were for the small man. They were not for major shippers who could play one railroad against another while promising steady cargo. (Rockefeller’s initial edge)

(1:03:15) His clincher was to offer the victim a look at the books of Standard. A potential seller was dumbfounded to learn that standard was able to sell at less than his own cost of production. They could kill him whenever they pleased.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#306 David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man)

5 juni 2023 | 48 min

What I learned from reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.

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(4:15) When Fortune published an article about me and titled it: "Is David Ogilvy a Genius?," I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark.

(4:45) The people who built the companies for which America is famous, all worked obsessively to create strong cultures within their organizations. Companies that have cultivated their individual identities by shaping values, making heroes, spelling out rites and rituals, and acknowledging the cultural network, have an edge

(5:30) We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they grow in oak forests.

(5:48) We hire gentlemen with brains.

(6:16) Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way.

(6:25) Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees.

(9:45) Buy Ogilvy on Advertising

(10:45) One decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements. + You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #300)

(15:22) It was inspiring to work for a supreme master. M. Pitard did not tolerate incompetence. He knew that it is demoralising for professionals to work alongside incompetent amateurs.

(16:66) You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. It's too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can't indulge B players.

(18:12) In the best companies, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.

(18:33) I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principal responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.

(19:38) I admire people who work hard, who bite the bullet.

(19:58) I admire people with first class brains.

(20:23) I admire people who work with gusto. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, I beg you to find another job. Remember the Scottish proverb, "Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."

(20:50) I admire self-confident professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence.

(21:40) The best way to keep the peace is to be candid.

(23:18) That’s been the most important lesson I’ve learned in business: that the dynamic range of people dramatically exceeds things you encounter in the rest of our normal lives—and to try to find those really great people who really love what they do. — Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words. (Founders #299)

(24:39) The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz. (Founders #206)

(25:09) Claude Hopkins episodes:

My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. (Founders #170)

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. (Founders #207)

(25:47) Talent is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

(26:49) The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.

(28:21) This podcast studies formidable individuals.

(31:40) Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram’s Mr. Sam by Michael R. Marrus. (Founders #116)

(37:47) I doubt whether there is a single agency (or company) of any consequence which is not the lengthened shadow of one man.

(39:51) Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals.

(40:13) Most big corporations behave as if profit were not a function of time.

When Jerry Lambert scored his first breakthrough with Listerine, he speeded up the whole process of marketing by dividing time into months. Instead of locking himself into annual plans, Lambert reviewed his advertising and his profits every month.

The result was that he made $25,000,000 in eight years, where it takes most people twelve times as long. In Jerry Lambert's day, the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company lived by the month, instead of by the year.

(41:30) The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(41:36) I am an inveterate brain picker, and the most rewarding brains I have picked are the brains of my predecessors and my competitors.

(43:27) We make advertisements that people want to read. You can't save souls in an empty church.

(44:05) You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

(45:13) The headline is the most important element in advertisements.

(47:47) Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

(48:15) Set yourself to becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which you are assigned.

If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. At the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss.

Most of the young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#305 Robert Caro on power, poverty, ruthlessness, & obsession

29 maj 2023 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Working by Robert Caro.

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Listen to one of my favorite podcasts: Invest Like the Best: Sam Hinkie: Find Your People

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[3:40] You can't get very deep into Johnson's life without realizing that the central fact of his life was his relationship with his father.

[8:00] It was the hill country and his father's failures that taught him how terrible could be the consequences of a single mistake.

[8:45] Lyndon Johnson wouldn't understand. He would refuse to understand. He would threaten you, would cajole you, bribe you or charm you. He would do whatever he had to do, but he would get that vote.

[9:00] What mattered to him was winning because he knew what losing could be. What its consequences could be.

[9:50] Robert Caro books I've read:

The Power Broker

The Path to Power

Means of Ascent

Master of The Senate (currently reading)

[11:00] About what I wanted to do with my life and my books (which are my life)

[11:40] I am a reflection of what I do. — Steve Jobs

[23:20] There are certain moments in your life when you suddenly understand something about yourself. I loved going through those files, making them yield up their secrets to me.

[24:10] Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page.

[27:50] Robert Caro snaps: No, that's not why highways get built where they get built. They get built there because Robert Moses wants them there.

[28:15] Robert Moses had power that no one understood. Power that nobody else was even thinking about.

[29:50] There are sentences that are said to you in your life that are chiseled into your memory.

[34:00] Three of the editors took me to some fancy restaurant and told me they could make me a star. Bob Gottlieb said, Well, I don't go out for lunch but we can have a sandwich at my desk and talk about your book. So of course I picked him.

[37:15] Robert Moses was a ruthless genius with savage energy.

[38:30] Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.

— Paul Graham’s essays. (Founders #275-277)

[42:30] in a couple of sentences these two men —idols of mine — had wiped away five years of doubt.

[42:50] There is not a more mysterious craft than entrepreneurship.

[48:15] I now had a picture of Lyndon Johnson's youth, that terrible youth, that character hardening youth.

[54:00] I wasn't fully understanding what these people were telling me about the depth of Lyndon Johnson's determination, about the frantic urgency, the desperation, to get ahead, and to get ahead fast.

As if the passions, the ambitions that he brought to Washington, strong though they were, were somehow intensified by the fact that he was finally there, in the place where he had always wanted to be.

I wanted to show the contrast between what he was coming from the poverty, the insecurity —and what he was trying for.

[55:15] I wanted to make the reader see the contrast between what he was coming from and what he was trying for. Something on the way to work had excited him and thrilled him so much that he'd break into a run every morning.

[56:15] And as Lyndon Johnson came up Capitol Hill in the morning, he would be running.

Well, of course he was running—from the land of poverty to this. Everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever hoped for, was there.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#304: Sol Price (The Founder Who Taught Jim Sinegal, Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, Bernie Marcus)

22 maj 2023 | 60 min

What I learned from reading Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary by Robert Price.

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[6:50] He believed in developing strong operating efficiencies, and he continually emphasized passing on savings to customers.

[8:48] It's pretty incredible to think about that Sol's ideas have created trillions of dollars of value.

[11:18] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. —Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[14:00] Stephen King on the belief and support he received from his wife: “Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference”— Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craftby Stephen King. (Founders #210)

[16:00] True education is gained through the discipline of life. —Henry Ford

[19:45] Sol kept a small sign in his office: “Do it now.”

[24:00] Sol finds an idea future generations of entrepreneurs will use: A membership retail store targeted to a specific niche.

[24:45] When you have people driving far distances to save money that is a very good sign. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

[26:45] Daniel Ek interview on the Acquired podcast.

[39:10] If you’re not spending 90% of your time teaching, you’re not doing your job. —Jim Sinegal.

[39:45] You train an animal, you teach a person.

[40:00] He was not a fan of training manuals because he believed that manuals were a substitute for thinking.

[43:00] What does limited selection have to do with efficiency? Because payroll and benefits represent 80% of a retailer’s cost of operations, pricing advantage follows labor productivity. Fewer items result in reduced labor hours throughout all of the product supply channels. Put simply, the cost to deal with 4,500 items is a lot less than the cost to deal with 50,000 items.

[50:21] The operating efficiencies of the warehouse concept and the direct delivery of products from the suppliers to Price Club made it possible to sell merchandise for less.

[55:00] Costco and Sam's were expanding aggressively while Price Club remained tentative.

[1:03:30] Sol was a poster child for the American dream. His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. Sol was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became an exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropist, celebrated 70 years of marriage, was a good father who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#303 Rose Blumkin (Warren Buffett's Favorite Founder)

14 maj 2023 | 33 min

What I learned from reading The Women of Berkshire Hathaway: Lessons from Warren Buffett's Female CEOs and Directors by Karen Linder.

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Episode outline:

Mr. Buffett, we're going to put our competitors through a meat grinder. — Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. (Founders #182)

There are several "Going Out of Business" advertisements from competitors' stores framed and hanging on the wall.

As a general rule, bet on the quality of the business, not on the quality of the management-unless, of course, you've got a Mrs. B. in your hand. If that is the case, go all in. She was a business genius. — The Tao of Charlie Munger (Founders #295)

Retirement is fatal. — David Ogilvy (Founders #189)

Business like raising a child, you want a good one. A child needs a mother and a business needs a boss.

What is your favorite thing to do on a nice evening? Drive around to check the competition and plan my next attack.

He was 52 and famous. I was 33 and a junior account executive. Early on, he wrote a letter to one of my clients. After listing eight reasons why some ads prepared by the company’s design department would not be effective, he delivered his ultimate argument: The only thing that can be said in favor of the layouts is that they are “different.” You could make a cow look different by removing the udder. But that cow would not produce results. So began my “David” file. Almost everyone who worked at the agency kept one. — The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman. (Founders #169)

Buffet said: If she ran a popcorn stand I’d wanna be in business with her. She's just plain smart. She's a fierce competitor and she's a tireless worker.

Buffett “on how Mrs. B ran her business: One question I always ask myself in appraising a business is how I would like, assuming I had ample capital and skilled personnel, to compete with it. I'd rather wrestle grizzlies than compete with Mrs. B. They buy brilliantly, they operate at expense ratios on to t competitors don't even dream about, and they then pass on to their customers much of the savings. It's the ideal business—one built upon exceptional value to the customer that in turn translates into exceptional economics for its owners."

She hired a chauffeur who drove her around Omaha each day. The driver took her to other stores. She looked in the windows and checked to see how many cars were in their parking lots. It didn't take long for her to plan her revenge.

There was no looking back. She just swung.

Aspiring business managers should look hard at the plain, but rare, attributes that produced Mrs. B’s incredible success. Students from 40 universities visit me every year, and I have them start the day with a visit to NFM. If they absorb Mrs. B’s lessons, they need none from me.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#302 Napoleon (The Mind of Napoleon)

8 maj 2023 | 50 min

What I learned from reading The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold.

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(3:45) A man who combined energy of thought and energy of action to an exceptional degree.

(4:45) He knows that men have always been the same, that nothing can change their nature. It is from the past that he will draw his lessons in order to shape the present.

(5:15) Destiny must be fulfilled. That is my chief doctrine.

(6:05) Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell (Founders #294)

(9:25) To aim at world empire seemed to Napoleon a most natural thing.

(10:00) To have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of one's existence, is not to have lived at all.

(10:55) The greatest improvisation of the human mind is that which gives existence to the nonexistent.

(11:45) The best way to understand a person is to listen to that person directly. — Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words (Founders #299)

(12:55) The great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel a need for it—the precise time when it is too late.

(16:10) The worst way to live according to Napoleon:

When on rising from sleep a man does not know what to do with himself and drags his tedious existence from place to place; when, scanning his future, he sees nothing but dreadful monotony, one day resembling the next; when he asks himself, "Why do I exist?”—then, in my opinion, he is the most wretched of all.

(17:45) Instead his (Steve Jobs) ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. — Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214)

(19:15) He must know himself. Until then, all endeavors are in vain, all schemes collapse.

(20:15) Napoleon on George Washington: Britain refused to acknowledge either him or the independence of his country; but his success obliged them to change their minds and acknowledge both. It is success which makes the great man.

(21:15) Washington saw the conflict as a struggle for power in which the colonists, if victorious, destroyed British pretentions of superiority and won control over half of a continent. — Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnershipby Edward Larson. (Founders #251)

(23:15) If you do everything you will win: All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.

(23:45) Warren Buffett: We are individually opportunity driven. — All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286)

(24:15) Imagination rules the world.

(25:00) Ambition is a violent and unthinking fever that ceases only when life ceases.

(34:52) The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.

(35:30) Roots of Strategy: Book 1

(38:45) Robert Caro profiled two men who seeds were not high (in a tournament) they were without many advantages. And to get all the way to the top you probably had to sacrifice everything to the effort. The meta lesson is if you are not willing to pay that price presume someone else will.

If you want something like the presidency (or being a billionaire) you should presume there is someone out there who will devote all their time, money, relationships, sense of ethics, everything in sacrifice of that one goal. Of course that person would win that race. — Invest Like The Best Sam Hinkie Find Your People

(40:45) I do not want be roadkill on the modern-day Napoleon's path to glory.

(43:15) The ancients had a great advantage over us in that their armies were not trailed by a second army of pen pushers.

(44:05) A wasted life should be your greatest fear.

(46:30) Make use of every possible opportunity of increasing your chances of victory.

(48:55) Paul Graham on Be Hard to Kill:

The way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.

For years I've been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. So the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. — Paul Graham’s essays (Founders #275)

(51:30) Winning is the main thing. Keep the main thing, the main thing.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#301 Tiger Woods

1 maj 2023 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian.

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[3:00] He was someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again.

[5:20] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. — Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[7:15] His output was enormous, much greater than that of nine tenths of other composers. He was a mature artist in most forms at the age of twelve. There was never a month, often scarcely a week, when he did not produce a substantial score. — Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

[7:50] Tiger's opponents were never people; it was always history.

[14:05] I've always been a practice player. I believe in it. — Michael Jordan: The Lifeby Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

[17:00] Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. (Founders #293)

[18:30] Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He wrote some of the messages from the self-help cassettes on a sheet of paper that he taped to his bedroom wall:

I believe in me

I will own my own destiny

I smile at obstacles

I am first in my resolve

I fulfill my resolutions powerfully

My strength is great

I stick to it, easily, naturally

My will moves mountains

I focus and give it my all

My decisions are strong

I do it with all my heart

Tiger listened to those tapes so often that he wore them out.

[31:50] People would ask him how did you get so good Tiger? And he would answer, practice, practice, practice.

[32:10] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. —The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen.

[36:45] The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. (Founders #106)

[40:15] That’s all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You’d think any damn fool could do it. But you don’t. You work too hard and rest too little and get hurt. — Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore. (Founders #153)

[46:15] Money didn't motivate him. Nor did fame. He played for the hardware. He played for the win.

[53:45] Robert Caro’s Books

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#300 James Dyson (Against the Odds)

24 april 2023 | 81 min

What I learned from reading Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson for the 4th time. You can also find the book on Book Finder.

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Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra: Passion and Pain

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Episode Outline:

[4:30] Invention: A Life by James Dyson (Founders #205)

[2:41] I am a creator of products, a builder of things, and my name appears on them. That is how I make a living and they are what have made my name at least familiar in a million homes.

[11:00] Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L.T.C. Rolt. (Founders #201)

[13:10] After the idea there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked.

[14:15] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control.

[18:00] I would not be dragged into something I didn't want to do.

[22:40] They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was making me come in first.

[23:34] As I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind I trained harder to stay in front. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, which makes me keep working at success.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been one before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. While I could never lay claim to the genius of a man like that —I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was. And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on.

[30:33] The vision of a single man pursued with dogged determination that was nothing less than obsession.

[36:30] The root principle was to do things your way. It didn't matter how other people did it.

[41:38] You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several.

[49:30] A direct relationship with the customer is the holy grail. Do not abandon it.

[52:00] One of the strains of this book is about control. If you have the intimate knowledge of a product that comes with dreaming it up and then designing it, I have been trying to say, then you will be the better able to sell it and then, reciprocally, to go back to it and improve it. From there you are in the best possible position to convince others of its greatness and to inspire others to give their very best efforts to developing it, and to remain true to it, and to see it through all the way to its optimum point. To total fruition, if you like.

[1:02:20] Before I went into production with the dual cyclone I had built 5,127 prototypes.

[1:02:30] There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence – and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.

[1:03:30] While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly. I would crawl into the house every night covered in dust after a long day, exhausted and depressed because that day's cyclone had not worked. There were times when I thought it would never work, that I would keep on making cyclone after cyclone, never going forwards, never going backwards, until I died.

[1:06:20] I was broke, hungry and depressed. The outlook was very dreary. My doggedness and self-belief in the absence of any real evidence that they were justified was beginning to look more and more like insanity.

[1:10:30] Persistent trial and error allows them to wake up one morning after many, many mornings with a world beating product.

[1:13:15] I began to consider forgetting the whole thing and doing something else with my life.

[1:16:00] The poor buggers were so wrong, to think that designers knew nothing about business, or about marketing, or is about selling. It is the people who make the things that understand them, and understand what the public wants.

[1:21:30] Go further. There is nothing wrong with making the consumer laugh. Conventional looks do not make a product more marketable.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#299 Steve Jobs (Make Something Wonderful)

17 april 2023 | 121 min

What I learned from reading Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words.

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What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

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(3:48) He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time.

(4:24) He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it.

(7:27) Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview Video and My Notes.

(10:02) Edwin Land episodes:

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid(Founders #40)

(13:23) Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.

(14:10) One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock. (Founders #260)

(15:42) Read Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations(Founders #282)

(19:45) If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297)

(30:47) How important product is based on how much time you spend with it: People are going to be spending two, three hours a day interacting with these machines—longer than they spend in the car.

(39:02) Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz. (Founders #76)

(40:32) The real big thing is: if you’re going to make something, it doesn’t take any more energy—and rarely does it take more money—to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. And a willingness to do so, a willingness to persevere until it’s really great.

(45:07) Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull

(45:31) Steve’s enthusiasm kept him writing check after check to Pixar, ultimately investing some $60 million.

(47:47) It is better to have fewer people even if it means doing less. Let's build our company slowly and carefully.

(53:36) I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213)

(54:40) You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there.

(1:00:11) There wasn’t a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization.

(1:03:33) Don’t be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life. There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can’t be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one’s life.

(1:05:11) Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.

(1:05:58) Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.

(1:09:27) In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)

(1:10:52) Much of it is also drive and passion—hard work makes up for a lot.

(1:13:28) A risk-taking creative environment on the product side required a fiscally conservative environment on the business side.

(1:13:57) You've got to choose what you put your love into really carefully.

(1:14:38) A remarkably consistent set of values that Steve held dear: Life is short; don’t waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward.

(1:19:24) Steve Jobs speaking to Apple employees (Video)

(1:29:48) Apple is the world’s premier bridge builder between mere mortals and the exploding world of high technology.

(1:30:14) Steve’s favorite quote: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

(1:32:29) The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. (Founders #166)

(1:42:27) That’s been the most important lesson I’ve learned in business: that the dynamic range of people dramatically exceeds things you encounter in the rest of our normal lives—and to try to find those really great people who really love what they do.

(1:43:00) Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)

(1:47:27) It’s a circus world, and you never know what’s around the next corner.

(1:53:40) Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. (Founders #219)

(2:01:00) All glory is fleeting.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#298 I had lunch with Sam Zell

10 april 2023 | 90 min

What I learned from having lunch with Sam Zell and reading Zeckendorf: The Autobiography of The man Who Played a Real-Life Game of Monopoly and Won the Largest Real Estate Empire in History by William Zeckendorf.

----

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You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.

You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.

A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:

What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs?

Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)

How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent?

What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors?

Get access to Founders Notes here.

Episode Outline:

[27:31] Start of episode on Zeckendorf’s autobiography

[27:44] 26 years of work was now moving down the chute.

[28:36] The secret of any great project is to keep it moving, keep it from losing momentum.

[34:55] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297)

[36:21] Zeckendorf: Revisiting the legacy of a master builder

[45:08] This ruthless industry has created far more bankruptcies than it has billionaires. — Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243)

[48:49] If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. — James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone.

[53:20] I brought energy and drive. I became the chief enthusiast.

[1:08:42] I was also deeply in debt. Never, except for rare moments, have I ever had my head very far above the financial water and never have I Iet this trouble me.

[1:10:51] The importance to me of being on the heights was that in an hour I could achieve what previously would've taken a year or more of effort to perform.

[1:11:13] One way to succeed is by aiding and supporting the position of others through new or ingenious ideas or projects. This usefulness to others is in large part the reason for my own success.

[1:14:44] Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

[1:15:04] The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

[1:21:28] The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

[1:25:52] More businesses die from indigestion than starvation. — The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. (Founders #291)

[1:29:23] Wisdom is prevention. –Charlie Munger + Be hard to kill. —Paul Graham (Founders #275)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#297 Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia)

3 april 2023 | 60 min

What I learned from rereading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.

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[3:45] One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.”

[4:32] The original intent for writing Let My People Go Surfing was for it to be a philosophical manual for the employees of Patagonia. We have always considered Patagonia an experiment in doing business in unconventional ways.

[7:48] MeatEater Podcast #188 Yvon Chouinard on Belonging to Nature

[7:55] The first part of our mission statement, “Make the best product,” is the cornerstone of our business philosophy. “Make the best” is a difficult goal. It doesn’t mean “among the best” or the “best at a particular price point.” It means “make the best,” period.

[9:58] When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can’t be sold on its merits. I’d be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. I’d much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition.

[14:32] We were like a wild species living on the edge of an ecosystem: adaptable, resilient, and tough.

[14:49] I believe the way towards mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. The more you know, the less you need.

[15:49] The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[17:59] Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved. Take the difference between the Ferrari and the Cadillac of the 1960s. The Ferrari’s clean lines suites its high-performance aims. The Cadillac really didn’t have any functional aims. It didn’t have steering, suspension, aerodynamics, or brakes appropriate to its immense horsepower. All it had to do was convey the idea of power, creature comfort, of a living room floating down the highway to the golf course. So, to a basically ugly shape were added all manner of useless chrome: fins at the back, breasts at the front. Once you lose the discipline of functionality as a design guidepost, the imagination runs amok. Once you design a monster, it tends to look like one too.

[21:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

[28:02] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188)

[28:55] There are different ways to address a new idea or project. If you take the conservative scientific route, you study the problem in your head or on paper until you are sure there is no chance of failure. However, you have taken so long that the competition has already beaten you to market. The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process.

[31:33] Can a company that wants to make the best-quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike? Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables? The question haunted me throughout the 1980s as Patagonia evolved.

[35:47] I was still wondering why I was really in business.

[38:17] We had to begin to make all of our decisions as though we would be in business for a hundred years.

[39:02] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)

[39:13] Jeff Bezos on what he learned from Akio Morita and how it influenced the building of Amazon:

"Right after World War II, Akio Morita, the guy who founded Sony, made the mission for Sony that they were going to make Japan known for quality.

And you have to remember, this was a time when Japan was known for cheap, copycat products. And Morita didn’t say we’re going to make Sony known for quality. He said we’re going to make Japan known for quality. He chose a mission for Sony that was bigger than Sony.

And when we talk about earth’s most customer-centric company, we have a similar idea in mind. We want other companies to look at Amazon and see us as a standard-bearer for obsessive focus on the customer as opposed to obsessive focus on the competitor."

[42:13] Keep your company in Yarak: Super alert, hungry but not weak, and ready to hunt.

[42:45] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[44:02] Jay Z: What am I here for? To be second best? I don’t think so.

[44:13] The more you know, the less you need.

[51:33] Teach, inform, and inspire. Do so relentlessly and the sales will follow.

[53:04] I was taught by some wise people that if you manage the top line of your company-your customers, your products, your strategy-then the bottom line will follow. But if you manage the bottom line of the company and forget about the rest, you’ll eventually hit the wall because you'll take your eyes off the prize. — Steve Jobs

In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)

[56:03] Quality, not price, has the highest correlation with business success. Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality.

[56:59] Huberman Lab Podcast

[57:19] I cannot imagine any company that wants to make the best product of its kind being staffed by people who do not care passionately about the product.

[57:39] One of my all time favorite quotes:

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

[58:56] You should not see change as a threat, rather as an opportunity to grow and evolve to a higher level.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

A conversation with David and Ben from the Acquired podcast

29 mars 2023 | 190 min

David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert — of the Acquired podcast — invited me to San Francisco for a discussion on our mutual obsession: spending every waking hour studying the history of entrepreneurship and sharing those lessons on our podcasts.

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[3:00] David’s time with Charlie Munger

[5:30] Henry Flagler after Standard Oil

[8:30] What makes a great biography, and how to capture all sides of complex characters?

[11:00] Studying history is a form of leverage to achieve success

[13:00] How do we figure out what the true story is for an episode we're doing?

[20:30] Silicon Valley should focus more on durability than growth

[21:30] How David got into reading biographies and podcasting

[25:40] What were each of their influences before starting Acquired and Founders?

[35:30] How to suck less over time

[37:30] What motivates, Ben, David, and David to get better?

[45:00] Dead ends: business model changes, paid podcasts, changing the name to “Adapting”, and Senra's “Autotelic”

[51:30] “You’re not advertising to a standing army, you’re advertising to a moving parade”

[56:00] Comparison of podcasting business models

[1:00:10] Senra’s insane Readwise "healthy twitter" habit

[1:04:30] Is it possible for the ultra-wealthy not to mess up their kids?

[1:14:30] The fleeting moments you get to spend with your kids

[1:17:00] The value of building relationships with best-in-class peers

[1:19:30] How the book publishing industry works

[1:28:45] How to differentiate yourself as an investor in 2023?

[1:38:30] The greatest historical examples as content marketing

[2:02:00] The best businesses are cults (and Senra starts one on the episode)

[2:07:00] Senra gives feedback to Ben and David on Acquired episode format

[2:15:30] Steve Jobs’ 1997 product matrix

[2:17:00] The moral imperative to market products that help people

[2:23:00] Ray Kroc and Steve Jobs: deeply flawed founders

[2:23:30] The founders we idolize are world-builders

[2:28:00] When yachts and jets are underpriced assets

[2:32:00] How to compete when money is cheap vs. when there are real interest rates

[2:39:30] When Ben and David have fixed broken episodes in post-production

[2:44:30] Why masters of craft are so interesting to study

[2:45:30] Should you listen to advice?

[2:51:00] David’s first job detailing cars

[2:52:30] The Cuban experience immigrating to Miami

[3:01:00] College entrepreneurship programs

[3:04:00] Ben’s experience learning UNIX as a kid

[3:08:30] David remembers Tim Ferriss guest lecturing in college

If you have scrolled this far and still haven't followed Acquired in your podcast player please do so here!

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#296 Bernard Arnault (The Richest Man in the World)

27 mars 2023 | 68 min

What I learned from reading The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai.

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[1:16] I am the boss. I shall be here on Monday morning and I shall be running the company in person.

[4:30] The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai

[5:01] I highly recommend listening to Acquired’s episode on LVMH. It is excellent.

[5:16] Business Breakdowns episode LVMH: The Wolf in Cashmere’s Conglomerate

[6:16] Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294)

[6:18] Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words by Napoleon and J. Christopher Herold.

[7:20] I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213)

[9:00] “I am very competitive. I always want to win.” —Bernard Arnault

[10:39] What I'm interested is in doing.

[11:43] He believed in extreme discretion.

[11:56] I Had Dinner With Charlie Munger (Founders #295)

[16:17] Beneath his civilized appearance there lurked the spirit of an adventurer. He wanted more.

[17:45] He wanted to go far. He had an iron will. At a laboriously won tennis match he said “I may lose once but I never lose twice.” —Bernard Arnault

[19:45] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

[23:30] Arnault remained inflexible. He wanted control. There was no question of his becoming the Willots’ partner.

[24:15] Far from discouraging him, this consensus of opinion (that this would lead to failure) acted as a stimulus.

[24:25] “I remember people telling me, it does not make sense to put together so many brands. And it was a success, it was a recognized success, and for the last 10 years now, every competitor is trying to imitate. I think they are not successful, but they try.” —Bernard Arnault

[30:43] “In business, I think the most important thing is to position yourself for long-term and not be too impatient, which I am by nature, and I have to control myself.” —Bernard Arnault

[33:35] He had such an appetite for victory and such a capacity for work that he was bound to succeed.

[35:26] “People think of politicians having true power, but that’s less and less true. After all, they are often constrained or being edged into a corner by a whole series of contingencies ... I’m lucky in that I can say, ‘I want my group to be in such and such a situation in 10 or 20 years’ time’ and then formulate a plan to make that happen.” –Bernard Arnault

[42:37] Those on the margins often come to control the center.

[43:10] Invest Like the Best episode Doug Leone —Lessons From A Titan

[48:31] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. — Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[1:01:20] My relationship to luxury goods is really very rational. It is the only area in which it is possible to make luxury profit margins.

[1:02:45] Arnault wants to take power everywhere and immediately.

[1:07:40] Arnault is an iron fist in an iron glove.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#295 I had dinner with Charlie Munger

21 mars 2023 | 78 min

What I learned from having dinner with Charlie Munger and rereading The Tao of Charlie Munger.

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(5:45) The blueprint he gave me was simple: Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices.

(8:48) He has never forgotten the importance of having friends in high places.

(9:04) Most people systematically undervalue their time. — Peter Thiel

(11:08) Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. Founders #251)

(12:23) Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #284)

(15:02) Charlie took the excess capital out of Blue Chip Stamp and invested it in profitable businesses.

(16:56) Charlie started seeing the advantages of investing in better businesses that didn't have big capital requirements and did have lots of free cash that could be reinvested in expanding operations or buying new businesses.

(17:38) Go for great.

(21:33) In everything I’ve done it really pays to go after the best people in the world. —Steve Jobs

(27:15) If you're in a good business just know that it's human nature to mess it up. Don't mess it up. Just stay there and let time do its work.

(27:34) One truly great business will make your unborn grandchildren wealthy.

(28:08) All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286)

(34:39) I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.

(34:54) Charlie Munger on how he made $400 or $500 million by reading Barron’s for 50 years.

(35:11) One of the reasons Charlie and Warren have never worried about anyone mimicking their investment style is because no other institution or individual has the discipline are the patience to wait as long as they can.

(35:47) Wisdom is prevention.

(36:50) Only play games where you have an edge. — A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222)

(38:31) Wise people step on big and growing troubles early.

(44:51) I am continually amazed at the number of people who are presented with an opportunity and pass. There’s your basic dividing line between the people who shoot up in their careers like a rocket ship, and those who don’t — right there. — Marc Andreessen's Blog Archive (Founders #50)

(46:28) The most inspiring biography I’ve read so far: Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung. (Founders #117)

(47:11) Invest Like The Best #204 Sam Hinkie Find Your People

(42:42) Rober Caro’s Books:

The Power Broker

The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I

Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV

(48:46) We just got after it and we stayed after it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

(52:39) Some brand names own a piece of consumer's minds and they do not have any direct competition.

(55:30) We are individual opportunity driven.

(57:08) Size and market domination can create their own kind of durable competitive advantage.

(56:15) Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)

(1:01:57) Extreme specialization is the way to succeed. Most people are way better off specializing than trying to understand the world.

(1:04:44) Wise people want to avoid other people who are just total rat poison and there are a lot of them.

(1:05:35) Charlie and I have seen so much of the ordinary in business that we can truly appreciate a virtuoso performance.

(1:09:00) Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

(1:10:15) Charlie looks at nearly everything through the lens of history. You aren't changing human nature. Things will just keep repeating forever.

(1:13:13) There should be more willingness to take the blows of life as they fall. That's what manhood is, taking life as it falls. Not whining all the time and trying to fix it by whining.

(1:14:40) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

(1:17:00) Arnold Schwarzenegger autobiographies and episodes:

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141)

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #193)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#294 Napoleon

13 mars 2023 | 43 min

What I learned from reading Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell.

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[3:00] He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them.

[4:00] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

[4:14] Miami meetup with Shane Parrish

[7:31] His life was enormously important, endlessly fascinating, and connected to some of the most controversial and constantly reinterpreted events in the world history.

[8:37] Paul Johnson’s books:

Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252)

[10:54] Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226)

[12:20] He knew the importance of actively crafting his image in all available media.

[15:08] Napoleon found comfort and companionship in books

[17:02] The revolution was overturning age old hierarchies and giving worldwide prominence to previously obscure figures.

[17:24] Napoleon was ruthless.

[18:36] Only after that battle did I believe myself to be a superior man. And did the ambition come to me of executing the great things, which so far had been occupying my thoughts only as a fantastic dream.

[20:00] Many are the historical opportunities that have been lost for lack of talent or vision. In Napoleon's case, the man met his hour.

[20:13] He could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect.

[21:03] Napoleon was a man of stone and iron.

[26:27] Napoleon was something new and the keenest observers understood it.

[29:06] I wanted to rule the world, who wouldn't have in my place?

[29:26] If papa could see us now.

[29:45] Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251)

[32:15] You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods.

[35:30] The Empire was increasingly coming to resemble a skyscraper built in haste without a proper foundation.

[35:58] Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller. (Founders #168)

[39:24] The key to victory was to plan and pursue a war exactly contrary to what the enemy wants.

[39:49] Hardcore History Ghosts of the Ostfront series

[41:08] The distracted do not beat the focused.

[42:36] Success is never permanent. The same person that built the empire, destroyed it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#293: Ray Kroc (The Making of McDonald's)

6 mars 2023 | 52 min

What I learned from rereading Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc.

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[2:00] I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.

[4:00] I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night.Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort.

[5:00] When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.

[6:00] It’s not what you do it’s how you do it:

Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288)

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

[8:00] I never considered my dreams wasted energy. They were invariably linked to some form of action.

[10:00] For me, work was play.

[13:00] I vowed that this was going to be my only job. I was going to make my living at it and to hell with moonlighting of any kind. I intended to devote every ounce of my energy to selling, and that's exactly what I did.

[14:00] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[20:00] This was the first phase of grinding it out—building my personal monument to capitalism. I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had laid.

[21:00] Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.

[26:00] I was putting every cent I had and all I could borrow into this project.

[28:00] Perfection is very difficult to achieve and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary.

[29:00] If my competitor was drowning, I'd put a hose in his mouth.

[44:00] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

[47:00] The advertising campaign we put together was a smash hit. It turned Californians into our parking lots as though blindfolds had been removed from their eyes.

[48:00] Authority should go with the job.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#292 Daniel Ludwig (The Invisible Billionaire)

27 februari 2023 | 47 min

What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.

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[2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.

[4:00] An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things.

[5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.

[5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies.

[6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent.

[8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)

[10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries.

[23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket.

[25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

[28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older.

[28:00] Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"

[29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.

[29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211)

[30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."

[31:00] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.

[32:00] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[37:00] The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them.

[40:00] Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it.

[42:00] He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.

[43:00] The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it.

[43:00] Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#291 David Packard (Founder of HP)

20 februari 2023 | 47 min

What I learned from reading The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard.

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Do our products offer something unique?

Customer satisfaction second to none is the only acceptable goal.

What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters for the 3rd time (Founders #282)

In Silicon Valley, the ultimate career standard was set by David Packard: start a company in a garage, grow it into the leading innovator in its field, then take it public, then take it into the Fortune 500 (or better yet, the Fortune 50), then become the spokesman for the industry, then go to Washington, and then become an historic global figure. Only Packard had accomplished all of this; he had set the bar, and the Valley had honored his achievement by making him the unofficial "mayor" of Silicon Valley.

—The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214)

Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old. — Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

My father wouldn't let me quit.

Given equally good players and good teamwork, the team with the strongest will to win will prevail.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

That was a very important lesson for me —that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions.

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life Of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny

More businesses die from indigestion than starvation.

I found, after much trial and error, that applying steady, gentle pressure from the worked best.

Bill and I knew we didn't want to be a “me too” company merely copying products already on the market.

Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook.

—— Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)

Gains in quality come from meticulous attention to detail, and every step in the manufacturing process must be done as carefully as possible, not as quickly as possible.

Exponential growth is based on the principle that the state of change is proportional to the level of effort expended.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#290 Bill Gates

13 februari 2023 | 47 min

What I learned from rereading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.

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Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old.

Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best.

Everything Bill did, he did to the max. What he did always went well, well beyond everyone else.

You want to maneuver yourself into doing something in which you have an intense interest. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.

Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went.

A young man with no money and tons of enthusiasm. — The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. (Founders #289)

He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures of history thought.

The idea that some people were super successful was interesting. What did they know? What did they do? What drove those kinds of successes?

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen. (Founders #44)

“I’m going to make my first million by the time I'm 25.” It was not said as a boast, or even a prediction. He talked about the future as if his success was predestined.

Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath... and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it.

Bill had a monomaniacal quality. He would focus on something and really stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought.

Don’t do anything that someone else can do. — Edwin Land

You've got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension.

There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft.

“Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy [Gates]. It was like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.

Four years in and Microsoft had only 11 employees.

Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers of the emerging personal computer industry, convincing them to buy Microsoft's services and products. He was the best kind of salesman there is: he knew the product, and he believed in it. Moreover, he approached every client with the zealotry of a true believer.

When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, took the phone calls.

This might be Bill’s most important decision ever: IBM had talked to Gates about a fixed price for an unlimited number of copies of the software Microsoft licensed to IBM. The longer Gates thought about this proposal the more he became convinced it was bad business. Gates had decided to insist on a royalty arrangement with IBM.

You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared.

Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised.

— Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)

Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. (Founders #174)

You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow."

—Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #155)

Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

Gates was intolerant of distractions.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#289 Brunello Cucinelli

7 februari 2023 | 53 min

What I learned from reading The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli.

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[4:00] I am reminded of Machiavelli: during his exile, he too spent his afternoons playing board games and drinking wine, while at night, in the austere silence of his studio, he engaged in solitary, literary conversations with the ancient scholars.

[6:00] The true meaning of my life seems to be a spontaneous drive and energy.

[7:00] I am driven by an immense desire: that my life, when it reaches its end, will not have been useless.

[7:00] Brunello Cucinelli by Om Malik

[8:00] God assigns to all of us a mission to fulfill. Our task is first to discover the nature of our summons, then to follow it.

[11:00] We schedule time to think. Most people schedule themselves like a dentist. It's so easy to get so busy that you no longer have time to think- and you pay a huge price for that. —— All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286)

[14:00] Try to be your son's teacher until he's ten years old; his father, until he's twenty; and his friend, for the rest of his life.

[14:00] The problem is not getting rich, it's staying sane. —Charlie Munger

[18:00] What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. —Carl Sagan

[23:00] Postponing the reward increases the appreciation, a fact that has been forgotten in the current culture of impatience.

[29:00] I could see the humiliation in my father's eyes. His teary eyes were the source of inspiration for my life.

[33:00] I have always been firmly convinced that in order to successfully stand out you need to focus on one single project representing the dream of your life.

[36:00] A young man with no money and tons of enthusiasm.

[41:00] Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288)

[43:00] One thing I never did—which I’m really proud of—was to push any of my kids too hard. I knew I was a fairly overactive fellow, and I didn’t expect them to try to be just like me. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

[48:00] Invention: A Life by James Dyson. (Founders #205)

[49:00] The greatest minds can convey deep and complex thoughts with words that are understandable to everyone.

[50:00] Enthusiastically build an extraordinary reality day after day.

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#288 Ralph Lauren

31 januari 2023 | 61 min

What I learned from reading Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg.

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[2:01] When I lumped him together with a handful of other designers during casual conversation, he snapped: “Don't put me with those designers. My business is not compared to anybody else's."

[3:00] In practice Ralph Lauren is a tough, intensely ambitious businessman.

[3:00] Ralph has always possessed immense self-confidence; it is central to his character, an asset as valuable as his sense of color, fabric, style.

[4:00] Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. (Founders #199)

[7:00] Few outsiders understood fully how lucrative the licensing business had become. Ralph would have been a successful designer in his own right. However, he would never have qualified as one of the world's richest men without licensees willing to pay him 5 to 7 percent of sales.

[7:00] His privately held fashion empire was on the brink of bankruptcy. Geffen surmised that the company should be transformed from a manufacturing firm to a design, marketing, and licensing company. "You guys stink at manufacturing," he said. "You need to get out of that business." Instead, Geffen continued, the company needed to focus on what it really knew: how to design and market the Calvin Klein brand name. — The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells The New Hollywood by Tom King

[14:00] When my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place; they feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit.” —Coco Chanel, 1935

[16:00] What he lacked in experience he compensated it for an energy and enthusiasm.

[17:00] Differentiation is survival. — Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (Founders #282)

[19:00] Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it.

[22:00] From the beginning I've been aware of the need to sell everybody. — Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188)

[26:00] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. — Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[28:00] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)

[32:00] Intransigence is my only weapon. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. (Founders #224)

[41:00] It's torture being a partner to somebody you don't want to be a partner with.

[45:00] On a Thursday night he wins an award for best men’s wear designer. The next day he could not meet his payroll.

[49:00] When bills come due, only cash is legal tender. Don't leave home without it. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

[54:00] 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. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton.

[55:00] The thing that set Ralph apart was his single-mindedness of purpose. Everybody else moved from place to place, from trend to trend. He wasn't trendy. He stayed with it. It's the single most important thing about him. To this day there are people walking around saying Ralph Lauren isn't that special, I could have done it. It's the weirdest thing. They couldn't be more wrong. Ralph is the most special guy in the apparel business.

[55:00] Graham Duncan on the Tim Ferriss Show

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#287 The Founder of Rolls-Royce

23 januari 2023 | 32 min

What I learned from rereading Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh.

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[2:31] Henry Royce had known poverty and hardship all his life. The only university he had graduated from was the one of hard knocks.

[3:00] Rolls on Royce: I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Royce and in him I found the man I had been looking for for years.

[5:00] A great product has to be better than it has to be. Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune. — Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (Founders #277)

[6:00] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. — Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[9:00] This ability to observe, think about and then improve on existing machines (products) was to be a consistent theme throughout Royce’s life.

[10:00] Many times our position was so precarious that it seemed hopeless to continue.

[12:00] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #287)

[12:00] Some have tried to give the impression that it was almost by chance that Royce became involved in designing a motor car. Royce was not a man to rely on chance. He saw that the motor car had a great future and that it would be an ideal product for his business.

[12:00] This part is excellent: There was nothing revolutionary about Royce’s car. He had taken the best of current automobile design and improved on every aspect of it. I do not think that Royce did anything of a revolutionary nature in his work on motor cars. He did, however, do much important development and a considerable amount of redesigning of existing devices so that his motor cars were far and away better than anyone else’s motor cars. He paid great attention to the smallest detail and the result of his personal consideration to every little thing resulted in the whole assembly being of a very high standard of perfection. It is rather to Royce’s thoroughness and attention to even the smallest detail than to any revolutionary invention that his products have the superlative qualities that we all know so well.

[13:00] Henry Royce ruled the lives of the people around him, claimed their body and soul, even when they were asleep.

[14:00] They didn't understand how important this was to me. —Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. (Founders #199)

[16:00] He's made-and remade-Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives. — Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney. (Founders #204)

[21:00] Thomas Edison on how overregulation crippled the British car industry: The motor car ought to have been British. You first invented it in the 1830s. You have roads only second to those of France. You have hundreds of thousands of skilled mechanics in your midst, but you have lost your trade by stupid legislation and prejudice.

[27:00] This is a first: A company so focused on quality that they risked going to prison. Claude Johnson took the bold stand that he would tear up every drawing and go to prison rather than agree to risk inferior skills of other companies. Johnson said that the plan of using other manufacturers was futile and would yield nothing but mountains of scrap.

[28:00] Royce admitted it: I prefer to be absolute boss over my own department (even if it was extremely small) rather than to be associated with a much larger technical department over which I had only joint control.

[31:00] They worked in monastic seclusion in an office situated in the middle of the village about a quarter of a mile from Royce’s house. To ensure a minimum of distraction the office was for a number of years forbidden the luxury of a telephone. This was the team responsible for the design of every car and all their components from 1919 until Royce died in 1933. In matters concerning the actual model which eventually went into production, Royce’s decision was final.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#286 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger

16 januari 2023 | 71 min

What I learned from reading All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin.

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Follow the podcast Gamecraft to learn more about the history of the video game industry.

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[2:01] Buffett and Munger have a remarkable ability to eliminate folly, simplify things, boil down issues to their essence, get right to the point, and focus on simple and timeless truths.

[3:00] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

[4:00] Warren Buffet or Charlie Munger are the very wise grandfather figure that I never had.

[5:00] To try to live your life totally free of mistakes is a life of inaction. —Warren Buffett

[5:00] The sign above the players' entrance to the field at Notre Dame reads ´Play Like a Champion Today.' I sometimes joke that the sign at Nebraska reads 'Remember Your Helmet.' Charlie and I are 'Remember Your Helmet' kind of guys.' We like to keep it simple. (You must structure your life and business to be able to survive the inevitable bad decisions you’re going to make.)

[5:00] Wisdom is prevention. —Charlie Munger

[6:00] We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that's because we've spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking. —Charlie Munger

[7:00] If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom. —Charlie Munger

[7:00] At Berkshire, we don't have any meetings or committees, and I can think of no better way to become more intelligent than sit down and read. I hate meetings, frankly. I have created something that I enjoy: I happen to enjoy reading a lot, and I happen to enjoy thinking about things. —Warren Buffett

[7:00] We both hate to have too many forward commitments in our schedules. We both insist on a lot of time being available to just sit and think. —Charlie Munger

[8:00] I need eight hours of sleep. I think better. I have more energy. My mood is better. And think about it: As a senior executive, what do you really get paid to do? You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #155)

[9:00] I think people that multitask pay a huge price. When you multitask so much, you don't have time to think about anything deeply. You're giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do. Practically everybody is drifting into that mistake. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. —Charlie Munger

[9:00] Jony Ive on Steve Jobs: Steve was the most remarkably focused person I’ve ever met. (Video)

[11:00] It is just that simple. We've had enough good sense when something was working well, keep doing it. The fundamental algorithm of life: repeat what works. —Charlie Munger

[13:00] ALL THE BUFFETT AND MUNGER EPISODES:

Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett. (Founders #88)

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. (Founders #100)

The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett & David Clark. (Founders #101)

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. (Founders #182)

A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202)

The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

Tao of Charlie Munger by David Clark (Founders #78)

Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin. (Founders #79)

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221)

[14:00] Buffett: It's an inversion process. Start out with failure, and then engineer its removal.

[15:00] Munger: I figure out what I don't like instead of figuring out what I like in order to get what I like.

[15:00] Repetition is the mother of learning.

[17:00] Munger: You can see the results of not learning from others' mistakes by simply looking about you. How little originality there is in the common disasters of mankind. (Business failures through repetition of obvious mistakes made by predecessors and so on.)

[18:00] Munger: History allows you to keep things in perspective.

[18:00] Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

[19:00] Berkshire was a small business at one time. It just takes time. It is the nature of compound interest. You cannot build it in one day or one week.

[20:00] Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, “Make me feel important.”

[22:00] Buffett: In almost 60 years of investing we found it practically useless to give advice to anyone.

[23:00] Munger: One of my favorite stories is about the little boy in Texas. The teacher asked the class, If there are nine sheep in the pen and one jumps out, how many are left? And everybody got the answer right except this little boy, who said, None of them are left. And the teacher said, You don't understand arithmetic. And he said No, teacher. You don't understand sheep.

[25:00] Quite often Henry simply talked about his philosophy of running a corporation and the various financial strategies that he came up with as he sat in his corner office each day, often working at his Apple computer. He was a brilliant business strategist, just as he was a brilliant chess strategist and he came up with many creative ideas, ideas that were sometimes contrary to the currently accepted methods of managing a large corporation that prevailed in those days.

“He always tries to work out the best moves," Shannon said, "and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much, because when you are playing a game you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is." — Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

[28:00] Buffett: The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.

[29:00] If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. — James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone. (Founders #96)

[31:00] Buffett: Life tends to snap you at your weakest link.

[35:00] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price (Founders #107)

[38:00] Paul Graham’s essays (Founders #275-277)

[39:00] I'm very suspect of the person who is very good at one business, who starts thinking they should tell the world how to behave on everything. —Warren Buffett

[42:00] The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

[44:00] This life isn't a greenroom for something else. He went for it. —Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever.

[44:00] Buffett: We're here on the earth only one time so you ought to be doing something that you enjoy as you go along and you can be enthusiastic about.

[48:00] Personal History by Katherine Graham. (Founders #152)

[49:00] The problem is not getting rich, it is staying sane. —Charlie Munger

[54:00] Learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. Most people can’t learn from the experiences of other people: Charlie and I don't expect to win you over to our way of thinking—we've observed enough human behavior to know the futility of that, but we do want you to be aware of our personal calculus.

[57:00] We are individual opportunity driven. Our acquisition technique at Berkshire is simplicity itself: We answer the phone.

[1:00:00] A brand is a promise. —Warren Buffett

[1:01:00] Obsess over customers. Buffett said this about Amazon in 2012: Amazon could affect a lot of businesses who don't think they will be affected. For Amazon, it is very hard to find unhappy customers. A business that has millions and millions of happy customers can introduce them to new items, it will be a powerhouse and could affect a lot of businesses.

[1:03:00] Munger: We should make a list of everything that irritates a customer, and then we should eliminate those defects one by one.

[1:04:00] Most companies, when they get rich, get sloppy.

[1:05:00] Munger: One of the models in my head is the 'Northern Pike Model. You have a lake full of trout. But if you throw in a few northern pike, pretty soon there aren't many trout left but a lot of northern pike. Wal-Mart in its early days was the northern pike. It figured out how the customer could be better served and just galloped through the world like Genghis Kahn.

[1:09:00] Practice! Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

[1:10:00] Market forecasters will fill your ear, but they will never fill your wallet.

[1:11:00] We don't have any new tricks. We just know the old tricks better.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#285 Jay Gould (How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune)

10 januari 2023 | 60 min

What I learned from reading American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz.

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[0:01] A series of spectacular financial triumphs had made Gould fabulously rich. At age thirty-six, he was the most notorious businessman in the country.

[1:00] Vanderbilt told a newspaper that Gould was "the smartest man in America." Rockefeller, when asked who he thought had the best head for business, answered "Jay Gould" without pausing to think.

They recognized Gould as a master of his craft. No one disputed that he was an extraordinary problem solver, an unparalleled negotiator, an expert communicator, a lightning-fast thinker, and a masterful tactician with a staggering memory.

[2:00] Railroads changed America in the nineteenth century much as automobiles changed the country in the twentieth century and the internet has changed the twenty first century.

[5:00] American Rascal shows the complex and quirky character of the nineteenth century's greatest robber baron. He was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying American business values by Mark Twain. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring in Thomas Nast's best sketches, paying Boss Tweed's bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht.

[6:00] I consider this part two in a two part series on Jay Gould. Make sure you listen to part 1: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258)

[9:00] He read whatever he could get his hands on. Jay was often nowhere to be found. He was off hiding somewhere with his books.

[10:00] He would wake up at three to study by firelight.

[10:00] My Life and Work by Henry Ford. (Founders #266)

[12:35] “As you know. I’m not in the habit of backing out of what I undertake, and I shall write night and day until it is completed.”

[13:00] Relentless and self-confident: Gould toyed with the idea of college. He visited Rutgers, Yale, Harvard, and Brown. He concluded college was an expensive indulgence. Why bother with college when he could teach himself from books?

[13:00] I am determined to use all my best energies to accomplish this life's highest possibilities.

[22:00] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

[22:00] All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin

[26:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday. (Founders #31)

[30:00] The good ones know more. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (Founders #82)

[37:00] The story of how Gould seized Erie shows his brilliance as a financial strategist, his deep understanding of law, a surprising grasp of human nature, and a mastery of political reality.

[41:00] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)

[42:00] There isn't any secret. I avoid bad luck by being patient. Whenever I'm obliged to get into a fight, I always wait and let the other fellow get tired first.

[44:00] James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone. (Founders #96)

[52:00] Edison and Gould shared some traits. Both were born into poverty. Both thought about little beside their obsessions —inventions for Edison, money for Gould. Both worked all the time. Both had spent their childhoods reading anything that came their way.

[53:00] Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson. (Founders #267)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#284 Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick

2 januari 2023 | 67 min

What I learned from rereading Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford.

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Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and check out these great episodes:

#137 Bill Gurley: All Things Business and Investing
#88 Sam Hinkie: Data, Decisions, and Basketball
#204 Sam Hinkie: Find Your People

—

[0:01] Frick had been the man Carnegie trusted above all others to manage the affairs of Carnegie Steel.

[2:00] Carnegie had delegated the job of holding the line on wages and other demands to Frick—a Patton to Carnegie's FDR.

[3:00] The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #283)

[5:00] Here's a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making. —Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters (Founders #282)

[7:00] In less than half a century the United States had been transformed―from a largely agrarian and underdeveloped federation of competing interests, to a relatively cohesive economic juggernaut. The age of the Founding Fathers was over. The Age of the Titans had begun.

[12:00] By 1863 Carnegie was earning more than $45,000 a year from this and all his other investments, compared with a mere $2,400 from his railroad salary. Yet he understood that it was the contacts he made and the information he derived from his association with the railroad that made everything else possible.

[13:00] More control. Less costs. More profit.

[15:00] Technology is just a better way to do something: As a result of the process for transforming iron to steel that bore his name (Bessemer), a quantity of steel that might formerly have taken as long as two weeks to produce could now be made in fifteen minutes.

[17:00] Carnegie starts his company during a financial panic. The best time to expand is when no one else dares to take the risk.

[20:00] Already the best but still wants to do better: Even his key employees were not spared Carnegie's heavy-handed management style. To almost every positive report Carnegie's response was "Good, but let us do better."

[21:00] Cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves.

[21:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[22:00] He could make steel more efficiently than any of them.

[24:00] Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75)

[24:00] Like Rockefeller, Henry Clay Frick used a lot of borrowed money to get his start in the coke business. There was a line in one of Rockefeller’s biographies where it said “he was the greatest borrower I’ve ever seen.”

[26:00] Frick knew his business down to the ground.

[26:00] LIke Carnegie, Frick expands his business during an economic panic. Frick, who would later recall this as one of the most grueling times in his life, proved as undaunted in the face of adversity as Carnegie had been.

[34:00] Carneige was accustomed to obedience from his subordinates, but if he expected unquestioned subservience from Henry Frick, he had gravely miscalculated.

[36:00] Frick was no puppet, but rather a man willing to take considerable risks in defense of his principles.

[37:00] Frick had ambition, a singleness of purpose, and a lack of self—doubt that even Carneige envied.

[38:00] Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and again: profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the costs of goods were permanent.

[39:00] On this issue the two men were of one mind. Frick had made his way in coke by the same reckoning that Carnegie had in rail and steel: if you knew your costs down to the penny, you were always on firm ground.

[39:00] Frick had always understood how essential new technologies were in driving costs down. Cost control became nearly an obsession.

[47:00] [Frick was shot] Only after he was finished with his day’s work did Frick permit himself to be carried from the office to an ambulance.

[49:00] You must not allow anything to discourage you in the least. Even if things do not go well for some time to come, or even if they should get much worse. Just keep at it, doing the best you can. Do not allow the fact that you are not getting along as well as you would like to lead you to put yourself in a compromising position.

[1:03:00] Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. (Founders #83)

[1:04:00] J.P. Morgan understood the folly of a long-term battle with the Carnegie Company, a firm that controlled its own sources of raw materials, transport, and manufacture, and that was far more deeply capitalized than his or any other of the upstarts. They might stay in the game for a while, and they might put a dent in Carnegie's armor, but in the end, Carnegie would run them into the ground, every one.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#283 Andrew Carnegie

26 december 2022 | 52 min

What I learned from rereading The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie.

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(1:01) 3 part series on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick:

Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74)

Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75)

(2:00) What these guys all had in common is they were hell bent on knowing their business down to the last cent. They were obsessed with having the lowest cost structure in their industry.

(2:00) Highlights from Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America:

—Cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves.

—Frick knows his business down to the ground.

—Frick’s rise from humble beginnings was obviously intriguing to him. It signaled to Carnegie that Frick was another of the fellow “fittest,” and those were the individuals with whom Carnegie sought to align himself.

—Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and again: profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the costs of goods were permanent.

—On this issue the two men were of one mind. Frick had made his way in coke by the same reckoning that Carnegie had in rail and steel: if you knew your costs down to the penny, you were always on firm ground.

(6:00) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115)

(7:00) A sunny disposition is worth more than a fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine.

(7:00) The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. (Founders #100)

(8:00) The most important judge of your life story is yourself.

(9:00) You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. —Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

(10:00) Invest in technology, the savings compound, it gives you an advantage over slower moving competitors, and can be the difference between a profit and a loss.

(17:00) He is working from sunrise to sunset for $1.20 a week and he is ecstatic about being able to help his family avoid poverty.

(18:00) Andrew Carnegie had manic levels of optimism.

(20:00) Do not delay. Do it now. It is a great mistake not to seize the opportunity. Having got myself in, I proposed to stay there if I could.

(21:00) I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was about to climb.

(21:00) Lesson from Andrew Carnegie’s early life: Focus on whatever job is in front of you at this very moment and do the best you can. You can never know what opportunities that will unlock in the future.

(24:00) On the miracle of reading and having free access to a 400 volume personal library: In this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in. Every day's toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty. And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained.

(26:00) To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in Western Pennsylvania:

He opened his Library to working boys and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work. This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew Carnegie, one of the "working boys" to whom were thus opened the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which youth may ascend.

(28:00) Running Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

(36:00) Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258)

(43:00) This policy is a true secret of success: Uphill work it will be.

(46:00) Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.

(46:00) The most expensive way to pay for anything is with time.

(48:00) The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it. It is surprising how few men appreciate the enormous dividends derivable from investment in their own business.

(48:00) My advice to young men would be not only to concentrate their whole time and attention on the one business in life in which they engage, but to put every dollar of their capital into it.

(51:00) The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

(52:00) Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#282 Jeff Bezos Shareholder Letters

19 december 2022 | 70 min

What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (for the 3rd time!)

Read Jeff's letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations

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[2:30] Amazon hopes to create an enduring franchise

[3:00] Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh trade-offs differently than some companies.

[4:00] We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.

[4:00] We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture.

[4:00] We set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way.

[5:00] Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool that we have.

[5:00] We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be easy.

[6:00] "To read Bezos’ shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written." — From CB Insights

[7:00] Common themes repeated in Jeff’s letters:

More innovation is ahead of us.

It is still early. The opportunity —if we execute well — is enormous.

We will move quickly.

We will endure. Amazon will be a durable, long-lasting company.

We will focus on cash flow.

Once in a lifetime opportunities will be risky. Jeff gave himself a 30% chance of success— at best.

Customer obsession is our North Star. It is what we will bet the company on.

We will be BOLD.

We will have a frugal, lean culture that Sam Walton would approve of.

This will be hard. All valuable things are.

We will have to learn along the way.

[8:00] Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

[11:00] I would love to ask Jeff the question, “If you could only have one word to describe you on your tombstone, what would it be?” My guess is he would pick “relentless.”

[16:00] We believe we have reached a "tipping point," where this platform allows us to launch new ecommerce businesses faster, with a higher quality of customer experience, a lower incremental cost, a higher chance of success, and a faster path to scale and profitability than any other company. (A company that builds companies)

[17:00] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)

[19:00] We will continue to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. Though it's sometimes hard to imagine with all that has happened in the last five years, this remains Day 1 for ecommerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time. We must work hard to grow the number of customers who shop with us. (He was right about this — what is the lifetime value of an Amazon customer over 17 years?)

[21:00] To us, operational excellence implies two things: delivering continuous improvement in customer experience and driving productivity, margin, efficiency, and asset velocity across all our businesses.

Often, the best way to drive one of these is to deliver the other.

For instance, more efficient distribution yields faster delivery times, which in turn lowers contacts per order and customer service costs. These, in turn, improve customer experience and build brand, which in turn decreases customer acquisition and retention costs.

[22:00] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Founders #281)

[24:00] Jeff Bezos on The Electricity Metaphor for the Web's Future

[27:00] Repeat this loop: Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop.

[29:00] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[35:00] My Life and Work by Henry Ford. (Founders #266)

[40:00] Jeff Bezos is unapologetically extreme. He is already the best and still wants to be better.

[41:00] This part is incredible— on the need for good judgement and why data may lead you to make the wrong decision:

Our quantitative understanding of elasticity is short-term. We can estimate what a price reduction will do this week and this quarter. But we cannot numerically estimate the effect that consistently lowering prices will have on our business over five years or ten years or more. Our judgment is that relentlessly returning efficiency improvements and scale economies to customers in the form of lower prices creates a virtuous cycle that leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow, and thereby to a much more valuable Amazon.

[43:00] Don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)

[44:00] Differentiation is survival.

[49:00] Missionaries build better products.

[50:00] Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn't otherwise contemplate. It supports the failure and iteration required for invention, and it frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces. Seek instant gratification-or the elusive promise of it-and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you. Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution.

[52:00] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

[53:00] Similar idea said two different ways:

Jeff Bezos: The financial results for 2009 reflect the cumulative efforts of 15 years of customer experience improvements.

Peter Thiel: If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now?

[55:00] The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity—to pursue their dreams.

[57:00] A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics.

—Customers love it

—It can grow to very large size

—It has strong returns on capital

—It's durable in time-with the potential to endure for decades.

When you find one of these get married.

[1:03:00] Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. — Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney. (Founders #204)

[1:03:00] I believe high standards are teachable. High standards are contagious. —Jeff Bezos

[1:04:00] Leaders have relentlessly high standards. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.

[1:07:00] The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope-that a great memo probably should take a week or more.

[1:10:00] Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical

In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal?

How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness?

To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?

We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable.

What I’m asking you to do is to embrace how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness.

The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you.

Don’t let it happen.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#281 Working with Steve Jobs

12 december 2022 | 41 min

What I learned from rereading Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda.

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Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best

[2:01] We're going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence.

[2:01] I'm not remotely interested in being just good.

[3:00] Gentlemen, this is the most important play we have. It's the play we must make go. It's the play that we will make go. It's the play that we will run again, and again, and again.

[4:00] In any complex effort, communicating a well-articulated vision for what you're trying to do is the starting point for figuring out how to do it.

[4:00] A significant part of attaining excellence in any field is closing the gap between the accidental and intentional, to achieve not just a something, or even an everything, but a specific and well-chosen thing.

[6:00] Every day at Apple was like going to school, a design-focused, high-tech, product-creation university.

[8:00] A story about Steve’s clarity of thought.

[9:00] Although Steve's opinions and moods could be hard to anticipate, he was utterly predictable when it came to his passion for products. He wanted Apple products to be great.

[11:00] The decisiveness of Steve Jobs.

[16:00] Steve wasn't merely interested in paying lip service to this goal. He demanded action. Steve found the time to attend a demo review so he could see it. His involvement kept the progress and momentum going.

[17:00] Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Hack away the unessential.

[17:00] People do not care about your product as much as you do. You have to make it simple and easy to use right from the start.

[18:00] Steve Jobs believed that stripping away nonessential features made products easier for people to learn from the start and easier to use over time.

[19:00] Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall

[22:00] Don’t rest on your laurels. Steve said: “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.”

[24:00] The sooner we started making creative decisions the more time there was to refine and improve those decisions. (The sooner you start the more time you will have to get it right.)

[26:00] The simple transaction of buying a song, and of handing over a credit card number to Apple in order to so, became part of what Steve had begun calling “the Apple experience." As a great marketer, Steve understood that every interaction a customer had with Apple could increase or decrease his or her respect for the company. As he put it, a corporation "could accumulate or withdraw credits" from its reputation, which is why he worked so hard to ensure that every single interaction a customer might have with Apple-from using a Mac to calling customer support to buying a single from the iTunes store and then getting billed for it-was excellent. —— Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265)

[29:00] Studying great work from the past provides the means of comparison and contrast and lets us tap into the collective creativity of previous generations. The past is a source of the timeless and enduring.

[29:00] Design is how it works. —Steve Jobs

[31:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (Founders #275, 276, 277)

[34:00] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)

[37:00] Our clarity of purpose kept us on track.

[38:00] Concentrating keenly on what to do helped us block out what not to do.

[40:00] Steve Jobs on the importance of working at the intersection of liberal arts and technology:

“The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users. The users don't have to come to them, they come to the user.”

[42:00] Steve Jobs provided his single-minded focus on making great products, and his vision motivated me.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

The Founder of Kinkos — Paul Orfalea

9 december 2022 | 75 min

What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea.

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Two episodes I recommend:

Paul Orfalea - It's About the Money episode 299

David Senra - Passion & Pain episode 292

[5:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinker. It's often exhausting trying to keep up with him.

[6:21] I graduated from high school eighth from the bottom of my class of 1,200. Frankly, I still have no idea how those seven kids managed to do worse than I did.

[9:29] I also have no mechanical ability to speak of. There isn't a machine at Kinko's I can operate. I could barely run the first copier we leased back in 1970. It didn't matter. All I knew was that was I could sell what came out of it.

[11:24] Building an entirely new sort of business from a single Xerox copy machine gave me the life the world seemed determined to deny me when I was younger.

[14:04] The A students work for the B students, the C students run the companies, and the D students dedicate the buildings.

[24:02] I learned to turn a lot of busywork over to other people. That's an important skill. If you don't develop it, you'll be so busy, busy, busy that you can't get a free hour, not to mention a free week or month, to sit back and think creatively about where you want to be heading and how you are going to get there.

[25:07] There's no better way to stay "on" your business than to think creatively and constantly about your marketing: how you are marketing, who you are marketing to, and, always, how you could be doing a better job at it. You'd be amazed what kind of business you can generate by a seemingly simple thing like handing out flyers.

[27:18] The phone rang. It was one of our store managers calling to ask me how to handle a bounced check. I held the receiver away from my face and looked at it, flabbergasted. If every store manager needed my help to deal with a bounced check, then we really had problems.

[40:55] I never walked in the back door used by coworkers. I walked in the front door so I could see things from the customer's perspective.

[49:06] You had to remember he'd been picking up the best ideas from all around the country.

[55:14] I believe in getting out of as much work as I possibly can.

[55:45] By now, you’d have to be as bad a reader as I am not to figure out that I have a dark side. You rarely hear people talk about their dark sides, especially business leaders, which is a shame because successful businesses aren't usually started by laid-back personalities. I don't hide the fact that I have a problem with anger.

[1:04:37] I'll give you an example of a corporate view of money. We used to sell passport photos at Kinko's and we advertised the service in the local Yellow Pages. It would cost us 75 cents to make a passport photo. I calculated that price jumped by $1 to $1.75 when you added in the cost of the Yellow Pages ads. We'd sell those photos for $13 a piece. You think this is a nice business? Shortly after we sold a controlling stake in Kinko's, the new budget people came in and, to make their numbers, they got rid of the Yellow Pages ads. They saw it as an advertising expense and didn't take into account how it affected the rest of our business. I used to go to the office and think, "Are they deliberately trying to be idiots?" These straight-A types drove me nuts. Then, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we abandoned our passport business. That is corporate dyslexia. There is a lot of corporate dyslexia going on out there.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#280 Jimi Hendrix

6 december 2022 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Starting At Zero: His Own Story by Jimi Hendrix.

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[0:01] He was also a compulsive writer, using hotel stationery, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins—anything that came to hand.

[0:01] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[1:00] He always claimed that for him life and music were inseparable.

[5:00] I liked to be different.

[5:00] The Autobiography of Bob Dylan Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan. (Founders #259)

[6:00] Bob Dylan:

Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene.

I told him, nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody.

What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire.

It was more formidable than the rest of the players.

There were a lot of better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing.

[7:00] Anthony Bourdain on Jimi Hendrix: I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time, to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend must have gone through, the reigning guitar gods of England, what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town.

You hear about it, you go see it.A whole window opens up into a whole new thing.And you think what does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now?

[12:00] The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death. Wow! What was all that about?

[15:00] I loved my music, man. You see, I wasn't ever interested in any other things, just the music. I was trying to play like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. Trying to learn everything and anything.

[16:00] My first gig was at an armory, a National Guard place, and we earned thirty-five cents apiece and three hamburgers.

[16:00] It was so hard for me at first. I knew about three songs, and when it was time for us to play onstage I was all shaky, so I had to play behind the curtains. I just couldn't get up in front.

And then you get so very discouraged. You hear different bands playing around you, and the guitar player always seems like he's so much better than you are.

Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on; just keep on. Sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you'll hate the guitar, but all of this is just a part of learning. If you stick with it you're going to be rewarded. If you're very stubborn you can make it.

[18:00] I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard. I got the guitar together because that was all I had. Oh Daddy, one of these days I'm gonna be big and famous. I'm gonna make it, man!

[20:00] It was pretty tough at first. I lived in very miserable circumstances. I slept where I could and when I needed to eat, I had to steal it.

[24:00] I lived in very miserable circumstances. Sleeping among the garbage cans between them tall tenements was hell.

Rats runnin' all across your chest, cockroaches stealin' your last candy bar from your very pockets.

I even tried to eat orange peel and tomato paste.

People would say, "If you don't get a job you'll just starve to death."

But I didn't want to take a job outside music.

[27:00] I don't wanna play backup on somebody else's team. I have my own ideas that I have to bring to life, and I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort to do so.

[31:00] Obsess over customers.

[33:00] I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play. That's enough for me. I consider ourselves to be some of the luckiest cats alive, because we're playing just what we want to play and people seem to like that.

[37:00] A lesson from Charlie Munger: Look at the behavior of people you dislike, or you don't respect, and do the opposite.

[39:00] Once you've made a name for yourself you are all the more determined to keep it up.

[44:00] James Dyson’s 2nd autobiography: Invention: A Life by James Dyson. (Founders #205)

[49:00] We call our music Electric Church Music because it's like a religion to us.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#279 What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett

29 november 2022 | 56 min

What I learned from reading What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Developing a Highly Successful Company by Barnett Helzberg Jr.

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[5:00] Then, right there on the sidewalk I told one of the most astute businessmen in America why he ought to consider buying our family's 79-year-old jewelry business.

"I believe that our company matches your criteria for investment, I said. To which he replied, simply, "Send me the information. It will be confidential.”

My conversation with Buffett lasted no more than half a minute.

[8:00] My dream buyer for the family business all along was Warren Buffet.

[11:00] "This can be the fastest deal in history," Buffett said.

"But what about due diligence?" I asked, surprised at how fast the negotiations were moving.

Most suitors demand to see every scrap of paper you've ever generated and to interview every top manager.

That wasn't Buffett's way. "I can smell these things, Buffett said. "This one smells good.”

[12:00] First A Dream by Jim Clayton. (Founders #91)

[13:00] Buffett on his management technique: “Managers run their own shows.

They don't have to report to central management. When we get somebody who is a .400 hitter we don't start telling them how to swing.”

[14:00] I was always taught that many, many people were out there developing ideas I could use. I have found that to be true throughout my life. These thoughts and ideas have all been borrowed or stolen from many wise people.

Think of the world as your garden of marvelous people and ideas with unlimited picking rights for you.

[17:00] Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux. (Founders #268)

[23:00] Despite missteps, entrepreneurs are a special breed who do not give up on the larger goals.

[24:00] It's not hard to express the quality we're looking for in metaphors. The best is probably a running back. A good running back is not merely determined, but flexible as well. They want to get downfield, but they adapt their plans on the fly. — Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham

[25:00] Entrepreneurs are driven to succeed. They possess an almost naive belief that nothing can stand in their way, they are mentally deaf to those who belittle their chances, they love to compete, and they have the skills of broken field runners who take the bumps and bruises along the way, change course when necessary, and stay focused on the goal.

If this is not you, don't try to fool yourself. It's not worth it.

Thinking you can start your own business or wanting to be your own boss, just because you hate your job, when you really have no desire or stamina to go it on your own, is courting disaster. Where there is no real will, there is no way.

Some people are more enamored by the concept than the reality. They would rather contemplate the beauty of the mountain from the base.

The entrepreneur wants to climb the mountain first, briefly appreciate the gorgeous vistas from the summit, and then find the next mountain. If you possess this obsession of seeing your own creative notions succeed and are willing to pay the price, then you have no choice but to pursue the life of an entrepreneur.

[29:00] He taught us to concern ourselves only with those things over which we have control.

I thought he was unique in this until I realized this is one of the key common traits of highly successful people.

Those folks are never victims; they take what comes and handle the situation. The rest is a waste of time.

[30:00] Upgrade the herd annually: "You make more money closing bad stores than opening new ones.”

His philosophy made sense. We decided we would rather spend time and effort on a $4.5 million store that could ultimately achieve annual sales of $6 million than on a lower-volume store with less potential.

[32:00] Focus is your lever to success.

Do not underestimate the incredible amount of mental discipline it takes to focus yourself and your teammates. Wonderful alternatives and seductive opportunities abound and temptations to go in multiple directions are unlimited.

Commit yourself to be the best, define what that means, and focus on the head of that pin like no one in your industry.

[32:00] Estee Lauder was a master at doing things don’t scale. — Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[33:00] To be successful, have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. —Thomas Watson The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and The Making of IBM by Kevin Maney (Founders #87)

[38:00] Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. —African Proverb

[40:00] Some of our partners created an inhospitable climate for customers. Some posted negative signs.

At one store a manager hung a sign in red warning customers that they would be charged a steep fee if they bounced a check. It said, "The bank doesn't make copies and we don't cash checks." That really got me boiling.

I jumped up on the counter and ripped it down as customers and coworkers looked on, amazed. That may sound extreme, but I needed to make the point in a memorable way. I didn't want signs like that staring our customers in the face.

I told our coworkers that the occasional hit we took for a bounced check cost far less than what we lost-and couldn't quantify-by creating a subtly hostile atmosphere. —

Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea.

[42:00] Nearly any action or communication means far more when done urgently.

Trust only movement.

[42:00] One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests. —John Stuart Mill

[43:00] None of this works if you can’t trust your own judgement.

[46:00] This reservoir of knowledge and human experience creates tremendous opportunities and advantages for you as an entrepreneur. You are heir to the discoveries of many entrepreneurs who skinned their shins trying something new. It is likely other entrepreneurs before you have experienced the same challenges and problems, and found ways to surmount them.

[47:00] You have the experiences of thousands of experts and mentors at your fingertips.

[47:00] The incredible, wonderful, and unavoidable truth is that seeking the help of others can put you light years ahead of other people who beat their heads against the wall trying to reinvent the wheel

[48:00] I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act. —Steve Jobs

[53:00] "Max kept repeating, 'As hire As. Bs hire Cs. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down." — The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni.

[54:00] “The greatest thing you can do for your competition—hiring poorly.” —Bill Gates

[59:00] I wish that I had known sooner that if you miss a child's play or performance or sporting event, you will have forgotten a year later the work emergency that caused you to miss it. But the child won't have forgotten that you weren't there.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#278 Peter Thiel

22 november 2022 | 57 min

What I learned from rereading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel.

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[4:01] Jobs's return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business-the creation of new valuecannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.

[5:00] A really important sentence to understand one of the main points in Peter’s book: Apple's value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person.

[5:00] A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong personal loyalty, and plan ahead for decades.

[6:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Founders #31)

[7:00] Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.

[8:00] By creating new technologies we rewrite the plan of the world.

[9:00] The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.

The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.

[10:00] The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. —Steve Jobs

[11:00] Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

[13:00] A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company's most important strength is new thinking.

[14:00] What follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

[14:00] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

[17:00] Their casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me. — Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller (Founders #148)

[18:00] My number one repeated learning in life: There Are No Adults. Everyone's making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it. —Naval Ravikant

[19:00] Bill Gurley’s answer to the question For people who were there, does this feel like dot-com bust level unwiding yet? Yes. Link to tweet

[21:00] Peter’s 4 principles for founders:

1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.

2. A bad plan is better than no plan.

3. Competitive markets destroy profits.

4. Sales matters just as much as product.

[22:00] The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

[22:00] By “monopoly,” we mean the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute.

[24:00] Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.

[25:00] Durability has always been a first rate virtue in Charlie’s eyes. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

[27:00] If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now?

[27:00] There is no shortcut to monopoly

[28:00] A substantive advantage makes your product difficult or impossible to replicate.

[30:00] The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.

[32:00] Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

[32:00] Victory awaits him who has everything in order.

[33:00] My heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown often at substantial personal risk. I am simply following the path that they carved into history. —Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott.

[35:00] Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it "wellroundedness," a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. She strives to be great at something substantive— to be a monopoly of one.

[36:00] Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.

[39:00] Monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors.

[40:00] Most startups fail and most venture funds fail with them.

[43:00] You cannot trust a world that denies the power law to accurately frame your decisions for you, so what's most important is rarely obvious. It might even be a secret.

[44:00] I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those games or make those investments where I have an edge. — A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222)

[45:00] Schlep Blindness by Paul Graham

[46:00] Great companies can be built on open but unsuspected secrets about how the world works.

[47:00] Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire by Peter Thielby Ryan Holiday

[48:00] The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside.

[51:00] Keith Rabois on Peter Theil insisting on focus

[54:00] Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true.

[56:00] Advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who cannot acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#277 Paul Graham's Essays Part 3

17 november 2022 | 48 min

What I learned from reading Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham

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[4:00] How To Make Wealth by Paul Graham

[4:01] Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.

[6:00] All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want.

[7:00] It turns out, though, that there are economies of scale in how much of your life you devote to your work. In the right kind of business, someone who really devoted himself to work could generate ten or even a hundred times as much wealth as an average employee.

[8:00] And the people you work with had better be good, because it's their work that yours is going to be averaged with.

[9:00] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)

[10:00] A very able person who does care about money will ordinarily do better to go off and work with a small group of peers.

[10:00] Paul Graham’s Essays (Founders #275)

[11:00] What is technology? It's technique. It's the way we all do things.

[12:00] Sam Walton got rich not by being a retailer, but by designing a new kind of store.

[12:00] Sam Walton epiosdes

#150 Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble.

#234 Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton.

[13:00] Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.

[14:00] So few businesses really pay attention to making customers happy.

[15:00] What people will give you money for depends on them, not you.

[16:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

[20:00] The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.

[21:00] Relentelssness wins. A great product has to be better than it has to be.

[21:00] Relentlessness Wins: Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it.

Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless.

Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible.

[22:00] All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune.

[24:00] The right way to collaborate, I think, is to divide projects into sharply defined modules, each with a definite owner, and with interfaces between them that are as carefully designed and, if possible, as articulated as programming languages.

[25:00] It turns out that looking at things from other people's point of view is practically the secret of success.

[25:00] You only get one life. You might as well spend it working on something great.

[26:00] The Other Road Ahead by Paul Graham

[26:00] Subscribe to listen to Founders Daily (my new daily podcast)

[29:00] Use your product yourself all the time.

[29:00] Mind The Gap by Paul Graham

[29:00] When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There's a huge gap between Leonardo da Vinci and second-rate contemporaries.

[32:00] Technology will certainly increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive.

[33:00] So we should expect to see ever-increasing variation in individual productivity as time goes on.

[34:00] Paul Graham’s answer to how big of a difference can a single developer or a small team make?

The answer is increasingly much. Increasingly much.

Achrimedes said if he had a lever long enough he could move the world.

Well nowawadys from your bedroom —thanks to all the infrastucture that exists — a combination of open source and services like AWS — the lever is enourmoulsy long.

You could be sitting in your bedroom programming … a single person … and if you make something that people like and is novel it can really have a huge effect.

That is very exiciting. You guys may take this for granted but anybody who is as old as me realizes how that was not the case 20 years ago.

It will be interesting to see how far it goes because it is certainly not over yet.

(How far can it go?)

Always further than people expect.

[37:00] Beating The Averages by Paul Graham

[37:00] Paul Graham on Econtalk: I found that the interesting parts of programming you can’t make scientific. [Startups are the same.] What makes a programmer good at programming is more like what makes a painter good at painting. It is something a little less organized. It is taste. A sense of design. A certain knack.

[40:00] In business, there is nothing more valuable than a technical advantage your competitors don't understand.

[40:00] A startup should give its competitors as little information as possible.

[41:00] Taste For Makers by Paul Graham

[42:00] Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better.

[43:00] It's surprising how much different fields' ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again.

[44:00] If something is ugly, it can't be the best solution.

[46:00] In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come with practice. Perhaps what practice does is train your unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require conscious thought.

[48:00] "It is my opinion," Ferrari once wrote, "that there are innate gifts that are a peculiarity of certain regions and that, transferred into industry, these propensities may at times acquire an exceptional importance... In Modena, where I was born and set up my own works, there is a species of psychosis for racing cars." — Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97)

[50:00] The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#276 Paul Graham’s Essays Part 2

9 november 2022 | 42 min

What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays.

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[4:01] You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have but that you know isn't to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea.

[5:20] The independent-minded are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly.

[6:20] Founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees.

[7:40] There are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking.

[8:30] How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something.

[9:00] How To Think For Yourself by Paul Graham

[9:00] How To Work Hard by Paul Graham

[10:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

[11:00] Paul on Twitter: "Maybe better founders could have..." Presumably Patrick knows what he means by that, but in case it's not clear, he's describing the empty set. If Patrick and John Collison had to work long hours to build something great, you will too. Link to tweet

[13:00] Less is more but you have to do more to get to less. — Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)

[13:00] If great talent and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare squared.

[14:30] Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

[15:30] Aliens, Jedis, & Cults

[16:30] How To Do What You Love by Paul Graham

[19:00] Fear's a powerful thing. I mean it's got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out a way to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than to stand in front of you, that's very powerful. I always felt that I had to work harder than the next guy, just to do as well as the next guy. And to do better than the next guy, I had to just kill.

And you know, to a certain extent, that's still with me in how I work, you know, I just go in. —Jimmy Iovine

[20:00] Many problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling.

[22:00] Find work that feels like play. —The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

[23:00] A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can.

[23:00] Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

[25:00] Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clearsighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are.

[26:00] How to Lose Time and Money by Paul Graham

[30:00] Schlep Blindness by Paul Graham

[31:00] A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great.

[33:00] What I’ve Learned From Users by Paul Graham

[34:00] The first thing that came to mind was that most startups have the same problems. No two have exactly the same problems, but it's surprising how much the problems remain the same, regardless of what they're making. Once you've advised 100 startups all doing different things, you rarely encounter problems you haven't seen before.

[34:00] Today I talked to a startup doing so well that they had no current problems that needed solving. Profitable, growing ~20x a year (not a typo), only 9 employees. This is so rare that I didn't know what to do. We ended up talking about problems they might have in the future.

I advised them never to raise another round, so to get equity you're going to have to get hired there. So learn to program. Link to tweet

[35:00] But knowing (nearly) all the problems startups can encounter doesn't mean that advising them can be automated, or reduced to a formula.

[37:00] It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want.

And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. —Steve Jobs

[39:00] That was another big surprise: how often founders don't listen to us.

[39:00] Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221)

[40:00] The reason startups are so counterintuitive is that they're so different from most people's other experiences. No one knows what it's like except those who've done it.

[42:00] Speed defines startups. Focus enables speed. YC improves focus.

[42:00] Alexander combined an excessive tolerance of fatigue with an intolerence for slowness. Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers (Founders #232)

[43:00] However good you are, good colleagues make you better. Indeed, very ambitious people probably need colleagues more than anyone else, because they're so starved for them in everyday life.

[45:00] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#275 Paul Graham

3 november 2022 | 80 min

What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays.

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[4:52] My father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it.

[5:49] Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second.

[7:41] To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool.

[8:00] You should not worry about prestige. This is easy advice to give. It’s hard to follow.

[10:22] You have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.

[12:18] Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail.

[16:46] How To Do What You Love by Paul Graham

[16:34] What Doesn’t Seem Like Work by Paul Graham

[17:16] If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for.

[17:42] Michael Jordan said what looked like hard work to others was play to him. Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) and Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)

[20:53] How Not to Die by Paul Graham

[23:00] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson (Founders #224)

[24:49] You have to assume that running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I've been there, and that's why I've never done another startup.

[27:31] If a startup succeeds, you get millions of dollars, and you don't get that kind of money just by asking for it. You have to assume it takes some amount of pain.

[28:17] So I'll tell you now: bad shit is coming. It always is in a startup. The odds of getting from launch to liquidity without some kind of disaster happening are one in a thousand.

So don't get demoralized. When the disaster strikes, just say to yourself, ok, this was what Paul was talking about. What did he say to do? Oh, yeah. Don't give up.

[28:45] Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy by Paul Graham

[30:23] If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders.

[31:15] If you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.

[34:10] The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.

[35:43] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham

[35:43] I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful.

[37:20] If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.

[37:40] The Anatomy of Determination by Paul Graham

[37:45] David’s Notes: A Conversation with Paul Graham

[39:50] After a while determination starts to look like talent.

[42:12] Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.

[43:21] One of the best ways to help a society generally is to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. (Founders Podcast Conference?)

[45:21] What Startups Are Really Like by Paul Graham

[49:00] The Entire History of Silicon Valley by John Coogan

[49:50] Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

[55:08] You need persistence because everything takes longer than you expect. A lot of people (founders) were surprised by that.

[57:18] Estee Lauder was a master at doing things that don’t scale. Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[58:45] What makes companies fail most of the time is poor execution by the founders. A lot of times founders are worried about competition. YC has founded 1900+ companies. 1 was killed by competitors. You have the same protection against competitors that light aircraft have against crashing into other light aircraft. Do you know what the protection is? Space is large.

[1:01:00] Paul on what he would do if he was strating a company today:

If I were a 22 year starting a startup I would certainly apply to YC. Which is not that surprising, since it was designed to be what I wish I'd had when I did start one. But (assuming I got in) I would not get sucked into raising a huge amount on Demo Day.

I would raise maybe $500k, keep the company small for the first year, work closely with users to make something amazing, and otherwise stay off SV's radar.

Ideally I'd get to profitability on that initial $500k. Later I could raise more, if I felt like it. Or not. But it would be on my terms.

At every point in the company's growth, I'd keep the company as small as I could. I'd always want people to be surprised how few employees we had. Fewer employees = lower costs, and less need to turn into a manager.

When I say small, I mean small in employees, not revenues.

[1:05:07] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[1:07:00] A Word To The Resourceful by Paul Graham

[1:08:07] We found the startups that did best were the ones with the sort of founders about whom we'd say "they can take care of themselves." The startups that do best are fire-and-forget in the sense that all you have to do is give them a lead, and they'll close it, whatever type of lead it is.

[1:09:00] Understanding all the implications of what someone tells you is a subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational resourcefulness.

[1:11:00] Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham

[1:11:00] Startups take off because the founders make them take off.

[1:16:00] The question to ask about an early stage startup is not "is this company taking over the world?" but "how big could this company get if the founders did the right things?" And the right things often seem both laborious and inconsequential at the time.

[1:16:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[1:21:00] The world is complicated. It is noisy. We are not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us. —Steve Jobs

[1:22:00] Any strategy that omits the effort is suspect.

[1:23:00] The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas as scalars. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to build, plus the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going.

Now that there are two components you can try to be imaginative about the second as well as the first. Founders need to work hard in two dimensions.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#274 Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics, Netscape)

27 oktober 2022 | 53 min

What I learned from rereading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis

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[1:23] Maybe somewhere in a footnote, it would be mentioned that he came from nothing, grew up poor, dropped out of high school, and made himself three or four billion dollars.

[7:41] She explained that the shares in Netscape that Clark had given them had made them rich.

"And you have to understand," she said, “that when this happened, we were poor. I was ready to cook the cat."

I assumed this was a joke, and laughed. I assumed wrong.

[12:48] He was expelled from school and left town. One time he came home talking about nothing but computers. No one in Plainview had even seen a computer except in the movies.

[13:21] I remember him telling me when he came back from the Navy, ‘Mama, I’m going to show Plainview.’

[14:42] In under eight years this person, considered unfit to graduate from high school, had earned himself a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

[15:05] I grew up in black and white. I thought the whole world was shit, and I was sitting in the middle of it.

[17:17] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing. — Yvon Chouinard

[17:56] The most powerful paragraph in the book: One day I was sitting at home and, I remember having the thought ‘You can did this hole as deep as you want to dig it.’ I remember thinking ‘My God, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this fucking hole.’ You can reach these points in life when you say, ‘Fuck, I’ve reached some sort of dead-end here. And you descend into chaos. All those years you thought you were achieving something. And you achieved nothing. I was thirty-eight years old. I’d just been fired. My second wife had just left me. I had somehow fucked up. I developed this maniacal passion for wanting to achieve something.

[19:00] Two part series on Vannevar Bush

Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush. (Founders #270) and Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. (Founders #271)

[21:38] New Growth Theory argued that wealth came from the human imagination. Wealth wasn’t chiefly having more of old things; it was having entirely new things.

[22:54] On creating new wealth/companies: A certain tolerance for nonconformism is really critical to the process.

[24:31] The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers, and most people haven't figured this out yet. —The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

[25:06] A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

[27:36] George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35) and Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209)

[33:10] The independence and the control is worth a lot more than the money.

[33:32] These people could never build the machines of the future, but they could sell the machines of the present.

[35:02] Clark on how to avoid being disrupted: For a technology company to succeed, he argued, it needed always to be looking to destroy itself. If it didn’t, someone else would. “It’s the hardest thing in business to do,” he would say. “Even creating a lower-cost product runs against the grain, because the low-cost products undercut the high-cost, more profitable products.” Everyone in a successful company, from the CEO on down, has a stake in whatever the company is currently selling. It does not naturally occur to anyone to find a way to undermine that product.

[40:41] The young were forever eating the old. In this drama technology played a very clear role. It was the murder weapon.

[40:55] The art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us can't tell a story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories. —Don Valentine

[42:53] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[45:48] What is the role I want to play in my company? I need to make sure to design my environment so I am always playing that role. Make sure you design the job you want. What is the point of being an entreprenuer if you don’t do that?

[47:45] John Doerr had cleared $500 million in 18 months. 30 times his original investment.

[49:13] You must find extraordinary people.

I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.

Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done.

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.

— In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)

[52:03] Clark liked to say that human beings when they took risks, fell into one of two types, pigs or chickens. “The difference between these two kinds of people is the difference between the pig and the chicken in the ham-and-eggs breakfast. The chicken is interested, the pig is committed. If you are going to do anything worth doing, you need a lot of pigs.”

[53:14] In our 10 days at sea the value of his holdings had nearly tripled. This is fantasy land he said.

[53:54] There are vastly more conceivable possibilities than realized outcomes.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#273 Kobe Bryant (Mamba Mentality)

26 oktober 2022 | 31 min

What I learned from rereading The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Episode outline:

If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they're not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns and they spread themselves out. That's totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody. Greatness isn't easy to achieve. It requires a lot of time.

You can't achieve greatness by walking a straight line.

Respect to those who do achieve greatness and respect to those who are chasing that elusive feeling.

May you find the power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.

He dedicates a lot of time in this book to the importance of learning from and studying the great people that came before you.

Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby (Founders #272)

His dissection of the game was at another level. In my entire career, I’ve never seen a player as dedicated to being the best. His determination is unparalleled. He unquestionably worked harder than anyone else I have ever played with.

Kobe knew that to be the best you need a different approach from everyone else.

If I wanted to implement something new into my game, I'd see it and try incorporating it immediately. I wasn't scared of looking bad or being embarrassed.

I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best. I never needed any external forces to motivate me.

If something has worked for other greats before you, and if something is working for you, why change it up and embrace some new fad? Stick with what works, even if it's unpopular.

Kobe mentions reading: Jackie Robinson’s autobiography

Reading is forced meditation.

I never thought about my daily preparation. It wasn't a matter of whether it was an option or not. It was, if I want to play, this is what I have to do, so l'd just show up and do it.

I always found that short 15 minute cat naps gave me all the energy I would need for peak performance.

Your routine can change but your obsession can not.

You can find an edge by doing things your competitors are not doing.

I revere the players who made the game what it is, and cherish the chances I had to pick their brains. Anything that I was seeing or going to see, any type of defense or offense or player or team—they had already encountered years before. I talked with them to learn how to deal with those challenges.

I devoured Bill Russel’s autobiography. There were a lot of valuable lessons in there.

If you wanna win championships, you have to let people focus on what they do best, while you focus on what you do best.

You train an animal. You teach a person —Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price (Founders #107)

In our first year together, he (Tex Winter) and I would rewatch every single game together. Preseason, regular season, playoffs. That's a lot of basketball.

As I learned time and again, success in business often rests on a minute reading of the regulations that impact your business. —Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188)

Coach K is really intense. He and I approach winning and losing the same way in that winning is the goal, and losing is, well, losing isn't even on the table.

Coach K in The Redeem Team documentary: Understand the responsibility. I know I’m not going to fucking lose. I am not going to fucking lose. Not when I’m wearing this (team USA jersey) and not at this time in my career. You’re going to have to fucking shoot me. That’s how I want you to play.

These greats won't hang around you if you don't display the same passion as they do. They won't share their time and memories with you if you don't display the same effort and drive for excellence that they did. I was accepted so quickly because everyone saw how hard I worked. They saw how badly I wanted to fulfill my destiny.

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

It is to the point where if you know the basics, you have an advantage on the majority of players.

“There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes- you don’t have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason – they run out of money.” —Don Valentine

I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt I knew that my future was undeniable and no one, not a person or a play, could derail it.

This is the goal. This is my goal: For almost a decade he did nothing but address weaknesses and add to his game. Now his skill set is completely fleshed out. His game has no weaknesses. He's a nightmare to go up against, and he's worked to achieve that status.

That's the money right there: That thirst and quest for information and improvement.

Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#272 Kobe Bryant (The Life)

19 oktober 2022 | 56 min

What I learned from reading Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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[9:15] Notes from The Redeem Team documentary:

30 seconds into the first practice Kobe is diving for loose balls. That set the tone.

Players go clubbing. Come back at 5:30am and see Kobe working out. "This motherfucker Kobe was already drenched in sweat. Yeah he’s different"— LeBron James. By the end of the week the whole team was on Kobe’s schedule.

Understand the responsibility. I know I’m not going to fucking lose. I am not going to fucking lose. Not when I’m wearing this (team USA jersey) and not at this time in my career. You’re going to have to fucking shoot me. That’s how I want you to play. — Coach K

At one point you will have a grandkid on your lap and they will ask you weren’t you in the Olympics ? What did you do? You wanna say: Well son, we lost to that fucking Greek team? —Coach K

When you’re in the Olympic village you're around people who are the best in the world at what they do. That is more special that celebrities in LA because this is athlete to athlete — I understand what they put their body through to get here. There’s so much respect and mutual admiration. —Kobe

What Kobe told team USA going into the 4th quarter: Just think about the play in front of you.

[12:07] At every turn his declarations of future greatness have been met with head shaking and raised eyebrows.

[14:33] It's almost like Kobe's insane level of dedication was like compensation for the bad decision making of his father.

[15:15] 4 parts to Kobe’s blueprint:

Master the fundamentals

Improve your weaknesses

Study the greats

Concentrate

[15:12] Listening to Founders is like watching game tape of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

[15:40] I used to watch their moves and then I'd add them to my game. It was the beginning of a career-long focus on studying game recordings.

[15:48] He would invest long hours each day in breaking down his own performances and those of opponents— far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking.

[17:08] Jay Z’ autobiography: Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[21:22] If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you’re good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. —The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[21:58] If you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats, you come to consider them your teachers.

[22:39] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

[23:00] Jordan and Knight certainly shared a competitive nature that bordered on insanity, Moore added. "If you think Jordan and Kobe are competitive, go meet Phil Knight. He's a no bullshit competitor. It's, 'You play for me or I can't stand you, I will kill you.' That's Phil Knight, full stop. And he's not shy about it.”

[29:30] He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game.

[30:00] One day just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't have the gym due to flooding.

“This is bullshit!” he screamed, slamming a ball off the floor. “This is bullshit! We got practice, I want to practice. This is ridiculous!" (He was in high school)

[31:10] Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research. It held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games.

[32:00] Kobe on Michael Jordan: What you get from me— is from him. I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.

[32:22] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107)

[35:22] Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in the skill set alone, in some ways, just the amount of work that a player would have to have done to possess such immaculate moves, the footwork and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into that kind of perfection.

[37:55] Part of his strategy for keeping his disappointment at bay was to focus on others who had faced far more difficult circumstances. "I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson," Bryant said. “I was thinking about all the hard times I'd go through this year, and that it'd never compare to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective."

[38:50] Kobe’s favorite book was Enders Game by Orson Scott Card.

[39:00] The only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder, to spin his fantasies around and around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality.

[39:45] Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[41:00] I think that game was vital to how good he became. That level of embarrassment to happen to somebody like him? The next year he came out like a fucking maniac.

[41:15] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story by Bertil Torekull. (Founders #104)

[46:03] Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

[47:00] The best book on the emotional toll entrepreneurs experience: Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[54:15] Highly competitive personalities like Jordan and Bryant could absolutely kill a team atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness.

[55:22] He stands up, points around the room and says, You motherfuckers don't belong in the same court with me.You're all shit. And he walked out of the locker room.

[56:07] 4 ideas from Kobe:

Search for your limits

Extreme personal practice

Resourcefullness—find a way.

Study the greats

[57:39] He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else.

[1:02:24] The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

12 oktober 2022 | 53 min

#270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action)

6 oktober 2022 | 65 min

What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Outline:

Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition.

Stripe Press Books:

The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop

The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner.]

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary

— Any exploration of the institutions that shape how we do research, generate discoveries, create inventions, and turn ideas into innovations inevitably leads back to Vannevar Bush.

— No American has had greater influence in the growth of science and technology than Vannevar Bush.

— That’s why I'm going to encourage you to order this book —because when you pick it up and you read it —you're reading the words of an 80 year old genius. One of the most formidable and accomplished people that has ever lived— laying out what he learned over his six decade long career.

— A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

— Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini

— I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas. — The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #157)

— Bush points out that tipping points often rest with far-seeing, energetic individuals. We can be those individuals.

— I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be.

— We are not the first to face problems, and as we face them we can hold our heads high. In such spirit was this book written.

The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next.

This is not a call for optimism, it is a call for determination.

It is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy were overcome by farseeing, energetic individuals.

People are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. —Sam Hinkie

There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made.

You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow." — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson.(Founders #155)

Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations.

Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company, many of them without Steve's blessing or even awareness.

They'd come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided that the project or technology showed real potential.

In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes, on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether.

This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. —Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265)

He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. —Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135)

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)

If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone.

All the past episodes mentioned by Vannevar Bush in this book:

General Leslie Groves: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

Alfred Lee Loomis: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)

J.P. Morgan: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142)

Orville Wright: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. (Founders #239)

Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. (Founders #241)

Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263)

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)

Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)

Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125)

Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bellby Charlotte Gray. (Founders #138)

Difficulties are often encountered in bringing an invention into production and use.

An invention has some of the characteristics of a poem.It is said that a poet may derive real joy out of making a poem, even if it is never published, even if he does not recite it to his friends, even if it is not a very good poem. No doubt, one has to be a poet to understand this.In the same way, an inventor can derive real satisfaction out of making an invention, even if he never expects to make a nickel out of it, even if he knows it is a bit foolish, provided he feels it involves ingenuity and insight. An inventor invents because he cannot help it, and also because he gets quiet fun out of doing so. Sometimes he even makes money at it, but not by himself. One has to be an inventor to understand this. One evening in Dayton, I dined alone with Orville Wright. During a long evening, we discussed inventions we had made that had never amounted to anything. He took me up to the attic and showed me models of various weird gadgets. I had plenty of similar efforts to tell him about, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a fellow practitioner, one who had enjoyed the elation of creation and who knew that such elation is, to a true devotee, independent of practical results.So it is also, I understand, with poets.

Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen. (Founders #50)

If a company operates only under patents it owns, and infringes on no others, its monopoly should not be disturbed, and the courts so hold. An excellent example is Polaroid Corporation. Founded by Edwin Land, one of the most ingenious men I ever knew (and also one of the wisest), it has grown and prospered because of his inventions and those of his team.

I came to the realization that they knew more about the subject than I did. In some ways, this was not strange. They were concentrating on it and I was getting involved in other things.

P.T. Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. (Founders #137)

We make progress, lots of progress, in nearly every intellectual field, only to find that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands.

All the books from Stripe Press

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#269 Sam Zell

29 september 2022 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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[6:37] I have an embedded sense of urgency. What I can’t figure out is why so many other people don’t have it.

[6:50] I was willing to trade conformity for authenticity.

[8:26] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. —Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)

[9:36] Once I have formed my opinion, I have to trust my perspective enough to act on it. That means putting my own money behind it. My level of commitment is usually high. And I stay with my decision even when everyone is telling me I’m wrong, which happens a lot.

[10:37] Long term relationships reflect the most important lesson imparted to me by my father. He taught me simply how to be. He often told me that nothing was more important than a man’s honor. A good name. Reputation is your most important asset.

[11:10] When I was younger my career competed with my role as a husband and father and my career often won.

[11:37] Childhood does not allow itself to reconquered. — Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104)

[12:20] The personality types that stay in the game for as long as Sam has —and he's been in the game for 50 years — usually describe entrepreneurship as a calling and an obsession.

[12:35] The great thing about entreprenuership is that you get to spend your time building something you enjoy. Most people don’t get to do this. They are stuck in jobs they hate. I had the time of my life. —Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234)

[13:29] Business is not a battle to be waged — it’s a puzzle to be solved.

[14:33] Optimize for irreverence.

[16:54] Swimming Across by Andy S. Grove (Founders #159)

[18:11] His family narrowly escapes the Holocaust: His train arrived at 2:00 p.m. It was a ten minute walk home and when he got there he told my mother to pack what she could carry; they were boarding the 4:00 train out that afternoon.

[19:21] Every year for the rest of their lives they celebrated the date of their arrival with the toast to America. My sister and I grew up keenly aware of how fortunate we were to be in this country.

[15:58] You've got to understand that the world is a hard place.

[19:13] My tendency to go against conventional wisdom would later end up defining my career.

[26:55] Sam Zell — Strategies for Investing, Dealmaking, and Grave Dancing on The Tim Ferriss Show

[27:25] It just never occurred to me that I couldn't do it.

[28:42] Indifference to rejection is a fundamental part of being an entrepreneur.

[31:59] It was at this point in my career that I fully realized the value of tenacity. I just had to assume there was a way through any obstacle, and that I’d find it. This is perhaps my most fundamental principle of entrepreneurship, and to success in general.

[33:44] Difference for the sake of it. —James Dyson Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[35:58] I was going to do what I love doing and I wasn't going to be encumbered by anyone else's rules.

[40:35] What I find fascinating is just how many of these ideas that he got from a older, more experienced entrepreneur, that he used for the rest of his life.

[41:36] Larry Ellison episodes:

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds (Founders #124)

The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie (Founders #126)

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellisonby Mike Wilson (Founders #127)

[41:59] Like most oracles, Wasserman gave an opinion that was simple and sensible (but unambiguously presented, thank goodness). “It is not prudent,” replied Wasserman, “to ask people to change their nightly viewing habits. Once they are used to tuning in a given channel, they find it hard to make the move, no matter how good an alternative is being provided elsewhere.” Was that it? All of our thinking and talking and arguing and agonizing came down to the belief that Americans won’t change the dial? Wasserman’s advice sealed our decision.

— Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. (Founders #183)

[43:55] Zeckendorf: The autobiograpy of the man who played a real-life game of Monopoly and won the largest real estate empire in history by William Zeckendorf.

[47:27] The captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!" — The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.

[51:32] There’s no substitute for limited competition. You can be a genius, but if there’s a lot of competition, it won’t matter. I’ve spent my career trying to avoid its destructive consequences.

[52:32] Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux (Founders #268)

[55:20] What do you do? I'm a professional opportunist.

[59:31] A mantra that I would repeat regularly for decades to come: Liquidity equals value.

[1:07:59] I have always believed that every day you choose to hold an asset, you are also choosing to buy it. Would I buy our buildings at the price Blackstone was quoting? Nope.

[1:12:29] Fast decision making and autonomy had become like oxygen to him.

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Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#268 John Malone (Cable Cowboy)

21 september 2022 | 61 min

What I learned from reading Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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Outline:

Thread of highlights from Cable Cowboy by @Loadlinefinance

Malone was stalwart about building long term value through leveraged cash flow. Earnings didn’t count. He wasn’t constrained by quarterly expectations.

Malone built the pipes, then bought the water that flows through them.

Malone took spartan operations to another level. Absolutely no bureaucracy. No waste. We don’t believe in staff. Staff are people who second-guess people.

Malone averaged one M&A deal every two weeks over 15 years. That’s insane. These guys were slinging billion dollar deals like bowls of breakfast cereal.

One of the best parts of the book is Robichaux’s exploration of Malone’s complex personality. It’s not just a fawning glow piece.

The beginning of industries are always filled with cowboys, pirates, and misfits.

This book— by far — has been the most requested book for me to cover on Founders for years.

Founders episodes on Andrew Carnegie:

Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #74)

Founders episodes on JP Morgan:

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow (Founders #139)

The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield (Founders #142)

Mavericks Lecture: John Malone

Two Rockefeller podcasts:

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248)

John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254)

Bob when recruiting John: You've got a great future here. If you can create it.

Malone's top executives were rough riders.

In 1972 TCI had $19 million in annual revenue and its debt load was an obscene $132 million.

Magness learned to listen instead of talk.

Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. —Michael Jordan Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil (Founders #213)

That $2,500 loan turns into hundreds of millions of dollars for his grandsons.

New employees were asked can you walk 10 miles in 10 below zero weather?

The cable companies hardly paid any taxes because of the high depreciation on the equipment.

He skimmed the company's numbers, looked up at Betsy and blurted out, I'm gonna hire the smartest son of a bitch I can find.

Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher (Founders #242)

Once you make a guy rich don’t expect him to work hard. Very unusual people do that.

You can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks.

Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson (Founders #267)

Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr (Founders #258)

1. You raise money so you can increase production.

2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners.

3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors.

4. You continue to find secret sources of income. — John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254)

Malone thinks about his industry more than anyone else.

He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, “That is not how an owner thinks! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)

Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead, while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors. — Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett (Founders #88)

FedEx was fearful the bank would try to seize the mortgaged planes. The bank had a young officer keeping track of the situation. Every time he showed up at the airport, we would radio the planes not to land. It was all very touchy. — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151)

How John described this point in his career: I'm the head of a little pipsqueak company in debt up to its ass, a couple million dollars in revenue, and not credit worthy to borrow from a bank. We're barely making it.

Malone like the mathematics of it. Tax sheltered cash flow could be leveraged to land more loans, to create more tax sheltered cash flow.

Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.

Bowerman’s response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.” —Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore. (Founders #153)

"Forget about earnings. That's a priesthood of the accounting profession," he would preach, unrelentingly. "What you're really after is appreciating assets.”

If you control distribution you get equity in return.

My Life and Work by Henry Ford (Founders #266)

Call Me Ted by Ted Turner

When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

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—

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#267 Thomas Edison

14 september 2022 | 70 min

What I learned from reading Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson.

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Outline:

He had known how to gather interest, faith, and hope in the success of his projects.

I think of this episode as part 5 in a 5 part series that started on episode 263:

#263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.

#264 Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.

#265 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

#266 My Life and Work by Henry Ford.

Follow your natural drift. —Charlie Munger

Warren Buffett: “Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life? And I said, ‘Focus.’ And Bill said the same thing.” —Focus and Finding Your Favorite Problems by Frederik Gieschen

Focus! A simple thing to say and a nearly impossible thing to do over the long term.

We have a picture of the boy receiving blow after blow and learning that there was inexplicable cruelty and pain in this world.

He is working from the time the sun rises till 10 or 11 at night. He is 11 years old.

He reads the entire library. Every book. All of them.

At this point in history the telegraph is the leading edge of communication technology in the world.

My refuge was a Detroit public library. I started with the first book on the bottom shelf and went through the lot one by one. I did not read a few books. I read the library.

Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

Blake Robbins Notes on Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love

Greatness isn't random. It is earned. If you're going to research something, this is your lucky day. Information is freely available on the internet — that's the good news. The bad news is that you now have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable in any subject you want because it's right there at your fingertips.

Why his work on the telegraph was so important to everything that happened later in his life: The germs of many ideas and stratagems perfected by him in later years were implanted in his mind when he worked at the telegraph. He described this phase of his life afterward, his mind was in a tumult, besieged by all sorts of ideas and schemes. All the future potentialities of electricity obsessed him night and day. It was then that he dared to hope that he would become an inventor.

Edison’s insane schedule: Though he had worked up to an early hour of the morning at the telegraph office, Edison began reading the Experimental Researches In Electricity (Faraday’s book) when he returned to his room at 4 A.M. and continued throughout the day that followed, so that he went back to his telegraph without having slept. He was filled with determination to learn all he could.

All the Thomas Edison episodes:

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross (Founders #3)

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. (Founders #83)

The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Tripby Jeff Guinn. (Founders #190)

Having one's own shop, working on projects of one’s own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee. —The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross

Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258)

It's this idea where you can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks.

Edison describes the fights between the robber barons as strange financial warfare.

You should build a company that you actually enjoy working in.

Don’t make this mistake:

John Ott who served under Edison for half a century, at the end of his life described the "sacrifices" some of Edison's old co-workers had made, and he commented on their reasons for so doing.

"My children grew up without knowing their father," he said. "When I did get home at night, which was seldom, they were in bed."

"Why did you do it?" he was asked.

"Because Edison made your work interesting. He made me feel that I was making something with him. I wasn't just a workman. And then in those days, we all hoped to get rich with him.”

Don’t try to sell a new technology to an exisiting monopoly. Western Union was a telegraphy monopoly: He approached Western union people with the idea of reproducing and recording the human voice, but they saw no conceivable use for it!

Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

Passion is infectious. No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin. (Founders #24)

For more detail on the War of the Currents listen to episode 83 Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes.

From the book Empire of Light: And so it was that J. Pierpont, Morgan, whose house had been the first in New York to be wired for electricity by Edison but a decade earlier, now erased Edison's name out of corporate existence without even the courtesy of a telegram or a phone call to the great inventor.

Edison biographer Matthew Josephson wrote, "To Morgan it made little difference so long as it all resulted in a big trustification for which he would be the banker."

Edison had been, in the vocabulary of the times, Morganized.

One of Thomas Edison’s favorite books: Toilers of The Sea by Victor Hugo

“The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want.” —Thomas Edison

“Remember, nothing that's good works by itself. You've gotta make the damn thing work.” —Thomas Edison

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana Kingby Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

He (Steve Jobs) was always easy to understand.

He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time.

Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next.

He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was willing to invest his own time, effort, and influence to see that they were.

Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted.

— Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Bonus episode between Founders #110 and #111)

Charles Kettering is the 20th Century’s Ben Franklin. — Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#266 Henry Ford's Autobiography

8 september 2022 | 74 min

What I learned from rereading My Life and Work by Henry Ford.

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[7:45] True education is gained through the discipline of life.

[8:00] Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263)

[9:40] Reading this book is like having a one-sided conversation with one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live who just speaks directly to you and tells you, “Hey this is my philosophy on company building.”

[12:40] His main idea is that business exists for one reason and one reason only —to provide service for other people.

[12:50] Everything I do is serving my true end — which is to make a product that makes other people's lives better.

[13:47] A sale is proof of utility.

[15:00] The sense of accomplishment from overcoming difficulty is satisfying in a way that a life of leisure and ease will never be.

[16:00] I think Amazon's culture is largely based on one thing. It's not based on 14. It's based on customer obsession. That is what Bezos would die on the hill for. —Invest Like The Best: Ravi Gupta

[20:04] Later Bezos recalled speaking at an all-hands meeting called to address the assault by Barnes & Noble. “Look, you should wake up worried, terrified every morning,” he told his employees. “But don’t be worried about our competitors because they`re never going to send us any money anyway. Let’s be worried about our customers and stay heads-down focused.” — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)

[20:40] Henry Fords philosophy: Get rid of waste, increase efficiency through thinking and technology, drop your prices and make more money with less profit per car, watch your costs religiously, when needed bring that business process in house, and always focus on service.

[21:15] Money comes naturally as the result of service. —Henry Ford

[21:56] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

[22:10] Churchill tells his son “Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.”

[23:45] 3 part series on the founder of General Motors Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan:

Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin. (Founders #120)

Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121)

My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan. (Founders #122)

[24:16] Henry Ford's ONE idea that was different from every other automobile manufacturer:

He was determined to concentrate on the low end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive costs down and at the same time feed even more demand for the product. It was a fundamental difference in philosophy. — Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121)

[25:50] There must be a better way of doing that. And so through a thousand processes.

[27:59] The only way to truly understand what you're doing is to do it for a long time and focus on it.

[28:30] It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game that you've been playing all your life. — Mickey Mantle

[32:25] One idea at a time is about as much as anyone can handle.

[35:45] Picking up horse shit used to be a job.

[37:30] That is the way with wise people — they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work.

[38:20] I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard.

[40:45] None of this works unless you bet on yourself. And usually you are not in the best position when you have to make this decision.

[49:59] The most beautiful things in the world are those from which all excess weight has been eliminated.

[50:15] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)

[54:10] I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have never felt the urge myself.

[55:30] I don't wanna make a low quality cheap product. I wanna make a high quality cheap product. To do that he's literally got to invent the ability to mass produce cars —which did not exist before Henry Ford.

[56:00] A principle rather than an individual is at work. And that the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious.

[56:25] He says if we can save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees that I have, you will save 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy every day. The way Ford’s brain works is very similar to the way Rockefeller's brain works. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

[58:25] What a line! : No one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.

[59:10] I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible.

[59:30] Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way in our company.

[1:01:05] Continuous improvement makes your business likely to survive economic downturns.

[1:05:27] “The definition of business is problems." His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. — Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20)

[1:06:38] The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.

[1:06:53] That is the point that Henry Ford is making. You should thank your stars for the problem that you're having because once you solve it, you will now have better problem solving abilities. And therefore it's likely over time, that your company becomes more successful as a result of you being forced into this very difficult position to actually grow and acquire these new skills, because business is problems.

[1:08:45] Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself. —George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35)

[1:12:35] Henry Ford distilled down to five words: maximum service at minimum cost.

[1:18:52] Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#265 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

30 augusti 2022 | 86 min

What I learned from rereading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

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[3:11] His mind was never a captive of reality.

[5:16] A complete list of every Founders episode on Steve Jobs and the founders Steve studied: Steve Jobs’s Heroes

[7:15] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77)

[9:05] Steve Job’s Commencement Address

[9:40] Driven and curious, even when things were tough, he was a learning machine.

[10:20] He learned how to manage himself.

[12:45] Anything could be figured out and since anything could be figured out anything could be built.

[14:10] It was a calculation based on arrogance. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255)

[18:00] We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.

[17:40] He was a free thinker whose ideas would often run against the conventional wisdom of any community in which he operated.

[19:55] He had no qualms about calling anyone up in search of information or help.

[20:40] I've never found anybody who didn't want to help me when I've asked them for help.

I've never found anyone who's said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked.

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask.

[21:50] First you believe. Then you work on getting other people to share your belief.

[24:55] All the podcasts on Edwin Land:

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40)

[25:00] My friend Frederick’s newsletter I was interviewed for

[30:20] He was an extraordinary speaker and he wielded that tool to great effect.

[31:00] Never underestimate the value of an ally. — Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[32:50] If you go to sleep on a win you’re going to wake up with a loss.

[33:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[34:20] Software development requires very little capital investment. It is basically intellectual capital. The main cost is the labor required to design and test it. There's no need for expensive factories. It can be replicated endlessly for practically nothing.

[38:10] He cared passionately and he never dialed it in.

[39:45] To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy (Founders #235)

[42:58] Time carries most of the weight.

[43:30] People that are learning machines and then refuse to quit are incredibly hard to beat. Steve jobs was a learning machine who refused to quit.

[44:17] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77)

[49:40] Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

[50:30] There were times when the reactions against Steve baffled Steve.

I remember him sometimes saying to me: Why are they upset?

What that said to me was that he didn't intend to get that outcome. It was a lack of skill as opposed to meanness. A lack of skill of dealing with other people.

[55:50] Creative thinking, at its best, is chalk full of failures and dead ends.

[56:40] Successful people listen. Those that don’t listen don’t last long. —Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)

[58:40] You can't go to the library and find a book titled The Business Model for Animation. The reason you can't is because there's only been one company Disney that's ever done it well, and they were not interested in telling the world how lucrative it was.

[1:01:20] The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans.

[1:02:25] The only purpose for me in building a company is so that the company can make products. One is a means to the other.

[1:04:00] Personal History by Katherine Graham (Founders #152)

[1:10:11] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

[1:11:12] What am I focusing on that sets me apart from my competitors?

[1:13:00] The channel? We lost $2 billion last year. Who gives a fuck about the channel?

[1:15:21] Time carries most of the weight. Stay in the game as long as possible.

[1:16:41] The information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#264 The Story of Edwin Land and Polaroid

24 augusti 2022 | 54 min

What I learned from rereading Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.

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(0:01) The most obvious parallel is to Apple Computer.

Both companies specialized in relentless, obsessive refinement of their technologies. Both were established close to great research universities to attract talent.

Both fetishized superior, elegant, covetable product design. And both companies exploded in size and wealth under an in-house visionary-godhead-inventor-genius.

At Apple, that man was Steve Jobs. At Polaroid, the genius was Edwin Land.

Just as Apple stories almost all lead back to Jobs, Polaroid lore always seems to focus on Land.

(1:22) Both men were college dropouts; both became as rich as anyone could ever wish to be; and both insisted that their inventions would change the fundamental nature of human interaction.

(1:37) Jobs expressed his deep admiration for Edwin Land. He called him a national treasure.

(3:12) All the podcasts on Edwin Land:

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40)

(4:07) Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

(5:51) Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. — Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214)

(7:07) All the podcasts about Henry Ford:

I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford by Richard Snow (Founders #9)

The Autobiography of Henry Ford by Henry Ford (Founders #26)

Today and Tomorrow Henry Ford (Founders #80)

My Forty Years With Ford by Charles Sorensen (Founders #118)

The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn (Founders #190)

(9:16) Another parallel to Jobs: Land's control over his company was nearly absolute, and he exercised it to a degree that was compelling and sometimes exhausting.

(11:43) When you read a biography of Edwin land you see an incredibly smart, gifted, driven, focused person endure decade after decade of struggle. And more importantly —finally work his way through.

(13:32) Another parallel to Jobs: You may be noticing that none of this has anything to do with instant photography. Polarizers rather than pictures would define the first two decades of lands intellectual life and would establish his company. Instant photos were an idea that came later on, a secondary business around which his company was completely recreated.

(14:26) “Missionaires make better products.” —Jeff Bezos

(17:44) His letter to shareholders gradually became a particularly dramatic showcase for his language and his thinking. These letters-really more like personal mission statements-are thoughtful and compact, and just eccentric enough to be completely engaging. Instead of discussing earnings and growth they laid out Land's World inviting everyone to join.

(18:03) Land gave him a four-word job description: "Keeper of the language.”

(23:15) No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. — My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins (Founders #170)

(27:00) The leap to Polaroid was like replacing a messenger on horseback with your first telephone.

(28:01) Hire a paid critic:

Norio Ohga, who had been a vocal arts student at the Tokyo University of Arts when he saw our first audio tape recorder back in 1950. I had had my eye on him for all those years because of his bold criticism of our first machine.

He was a great champion of the tape recorder, but he was severe with us because he didn't think our early machine was good enough. It had too much wow and flutter, he said. He was right, of course; our first machine was rather primitive. We invited him to be a paid critic even while he was still in school. His ideas were very challenging. He said then, "A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique.

— Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita.

(32:13) Another parallel to Jobs: Don't kid yourself. Polaroid is a one man company.

(33:32) He argued there was no reason that well-designed, wellmade computers couldn't command the same market share and margins as a luxury automobile.

A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way as a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Rather than competing with commodity PC makers like Dell, Compaq and Gateway, why not make only first-class products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?

The company could make much bigger profits from selling a $3,000 machine rather than a $500 machine, even if they sold fewer of them.

Why not, then, just concentrate on making the best $3,000 machines around? — Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney.

(37:51) How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher

(45:00) All the podcasts about Enzo Ferrari

Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97)

Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and The Making of an Automotive Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

Enzo Ferrari: The Man and The Machine by Brock Yates (Founders #220)

(45:08) Soul in the game. Listen to how Edwin Land describes his product:

We would not have known and have only just learned that a new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being by SX-70 when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photographs: it turns out that buried within us—

there is latent interest in each other; there is tenderness, curiosity, excitement, affection, companionability and humor; it turns out, in this cold world where man grows distant from man,

and even lovers can reach each other only briefly, that we have a yen for and a primordial competence for a quiet good-humored delight in each other:

we have a prehistoric tribal competence for a non-physical, non-emotional, non-sexual satisfaction in being partners in the lonely exploration of a onceempty planet.

(50:31) “Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company’s owners are slim at best.” —Charlie Munger

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It

18 augusti 2022 | 72 min

What I learned from rereading Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.

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[0:01] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.

[1:33] More books on Edwin Land:

Insisting on The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Chris Bonanos

[2:18] “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” — Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214)

[5:17] This guy started one of the great technology monopolies and ran it for 50 years.

[7:35] He lived his life more intensely than the rest of us.

[8:53] His interest in our reactions was minimal — polite, sometimes kind, but limited by the great drain of energy necessary to sustain his own part.

[9:30] He never argued his ideas. If people didn’t believe in them, he ignored those people. —A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

Loomis was not someone you could argue with. He would listen patiently to an opposing opinion. But his consideration was nothing more than that-an act of politeness on his part.” — Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant (Founders #143)

[11:40] Right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes — he is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt.

[14:29] The parallel to Steve Jobs is striking. Edwin Land —like jobs — had to turn around the company he founded before they ran out of money!

[15:02] At 37 he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.

[15:32] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[22:48] The heroes of your heroes become your heroes.

[23:39] Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was —and left disappointed. —Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[27:22] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does. — Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261)

[29:30] He concentrated ferociously on his quest.

[29:43] We live in the age of infinite distraction.

[30:03] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had.

[30:29] Among all the components and Land's intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration. — The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132)

[41:50] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron.

[42:44] A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

[48:33] They had no alternative but to succeed with the camera. Everyone left at Polaroid knew that at the present rate of decline the business, the company, and their jobs would not survive 1947.

[55:45] Smith estimated that throughout the eighties he spent at least four hours a day reading. He found he relied quite heavily on his own vision, backed by assimilating information from many different disciplines all at once. “The common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then synthesize it until they come up with an idea." — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151)

[59:05] If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you’re good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[1:02:24] They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished, but the pressure of time was already weighing on everyone. One day John Hench stopped by to check the progress on the coaches and had an idea, which he brought to his boss. "Why don't we just leave the leather straps off, Walt? The people are never going to appreciate all the close-up detail."

Walt Disney treated Hench to a tart little lecture: "You're being a poor communicator. People are okay, don't you ever forget that. They will respond to it. They will appreciate it."

Hench didn't argue. "We put the best darn leather straps on that stagecoach you've ever seen."

— Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #158)

[1:05:53] There is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.

[1:10:32] There's nothing more refreshing than thinking for a few minutes with your eyes closed.

[1:11:00] The present is the past biting into the future.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#262 Herbie Cohen (World's Greatest Negotiator)

11 augusti 2022 | 59 min

What I learned from reading The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen.

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[1:20] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255)

[2:42] You Can Negotiate Anything: How to Get What You Want by Herb Cohen.

[3:57] Even our heroes falter.

[6:01] Once you see your life as a game, and the things you strive for as no more than pieces in that game, you'll become a much more effective player.

[7:20] He was proving what would become a lifelong principle: Most people are schmucks and will obey any type of authority.

[7:34] Power is based on perception; if you think you got it, you got it, even if you don't got it.

[7:54] Nolan Bushnell to a young Steve Jobs: “I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.” from Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214)

[10:30] Life is a game and to win you must consider other people as players with as much at stake as yourself. If you understand their motivations, you can control the action and free yourself from every variety of jam. Focus less on yourself and more on others. Everyone has something at stake. If you address that predicament you can move anyone from no to yes.

[14:01] Those who can live with ambiguity and still function do the best.

[14:21] Ambiguity is the constant companion of the entrepreneur.

[15:26] Don't bitch. Don't complain. Just play the cards that you've been dealt.

[20:12] Most people try to blend in. Herbie went the other way. When they zig, I zag.

[21:49] It meant Sharon had failed to understand an essential part of an ancient code. If you have a problem with your brother, you deal with it inside the family. Don't rat. Don't turn your brother in to the cops. It was another one of his big lessons. Loyalty. Without that you have nothing.

[27:03] Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

[30:11] When it comes to negotiating you'd be better off acting like you know less, not more.

[32:18] How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know by Byron Sharp

[35:56] He believed it was good, possibly very good, and it was this belief, which never wavered, that would give him the confidence to persist despite the rejections that were coming.

Quoting Harry Truman, he'd say, "I make a decision once."

And he'd made his decision about the book. In case of rejection, the only thing that would change was his opinion of the publishing house.

[37:01] It took 18 no's to get to a yes.

[37:37] Herbie sells his book by hand. This part is incredible.

[40:36] Back in Bensonhurst we were seeing my father as he'd been before he was our father. As he was still deep down when we weren't looking.

[43:50] I told him I did not want something to fall back on because people who have something to fall back on usually end up "falling back on it.

[47:34] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. —Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher (Founders #242)

That was the last time I saw him. His brave cheerfulness chokes me every time I recall the scene. It is impossible to imagine my father's emotions as he waved goodbye knowing that he might be on his way to London to die. Sixty years have not softened these memories, nor the sadness that he missed enjoying his three children growing up.

I felt the devastating loss of my dad, his love, his humor, and the things he taught me. I feared for a future without him.

— Invention: A Life by James Dyson (Founders #205)

[52:48] Even our heroes falter.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#261 Dee Hock's Autobiography of a Restless Mind Volume One and Two

4 augusti 2022 | 39 min

What I learned from rereading Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1 and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock.

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[6:15] One should not read like a dog obeying its master, but like an eagle hunting its prey.

[6:48] Humility and generosity have no enemies.

[7:12] Powerful writing should take one side and stick to it tenaciously, ignoring the other even though it may have merit. Objective writing is impotent.

[8:02] The essential reward of anything well done is to have done it.

[8:07] What becomes known is worthless until it is shared.

[9:25] No dream is so great as the person you might become by remaining true to it.

[11:04] The wise make great use of adversity. The foolish whine about it.

[12:02] Impatience is a perpetual barrier between desire and realization.

[12:46] There are two ways to look at opposition: I want to do it and they will not let me or they want to prevent me and I won’t let them.

[13:54] When we fully attend to management of self, excellent management of all else is unavoidable.

[14:43] A meaningful life cannot be made from denial. It must be made from affirmation.

[15:16] We are each the author of our own life. Whatever we write, masterpiece or trash, it will be published and widely read throughout our life and for decades thereafter.

[16:21] The wise do not feel demeaned by asking for advice or diminished by following it.

[16:37] A wise man goes forth to meet difficulty on rather than agonizing at its approach.

[21:27] Superb design and sluggish effort can never compete with modest design and diligent effort.

[21:45] It is both foolish and weak to defer confronting what cannot be avoided.

[22:04] I have done many great things perfectly—the ones I imagined but never attempted.

[22:09] Delaying what we must do eventually does nothing but lengthen the time and distance we must carry the burden.

[22:30] The most interesting people are always the most interested people.

[22:54] Complaining about life is like hurling sand against the wind.

[23:31] Beginning of Volume 2

[27:29] Certainty is not a property of the universe. It is a construct of the mind.

[28:09] Any idiot can impose and exercise control. It takes genius to ensure freedom and release creativity.

[29:18] Two centuries ago it took a year to send a message around the globe. Now it takes a fraction of a second. We have no idea what this means or what the consequences may be.

[30:04] “Use your head, but follow your heart.” is my advice to all my grandchildren. Come to think of it. It's not bad advice for adults as well.

[30:54] Man is at war with his own nature.

[31:12] There is nothing at all wrong with discipline providing it is self-induced rather than imposed.

[31:26] Books are seductive things. All are worth a look and a touch, some a kiss, others an affair, the best marriage and lifelong devotion.

[32:41] Genius merely articulates what your heart already knows.

[32:45] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does.

[33:20] Great accomplishment often consists of doing little things well.

[33:35] The superior man is concerned when his deeds are not better than his words.

[34:16] Books are not dead things. They preserve some thing of the intellect and spirit that writes, and are instrumental in forming the intellect and spirit that reads.

[34:42] Ignorant commentaries corrupt brilliant thoughts. That may well prove to be the curse of the internet.

[35:44] Conduct is a silent sermon powerfully preached without cessation.

[36:02] Every organization has one or two heroes who gives it birth, direction, and purpose.

[36:20] Minnows of thought dart about in shallow minds with great agitation. Great whales of thought majestically move through oceanic minds without commotion.

[38:00] The new and novel should be viewed with suspicion. For it is improbable that one generation can be wiser than all ancestors combined.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#260 One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

3 augusti 2022 | 81 min

What I learned from rereading One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock.

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[2:00] I feel compelled to open my life to new possibilities.

[2:54] Life is a magnificent, mysterious Odyssey to be experienced.

[3:12] One From Many (Founders #42)

[3:30] Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1 by Dee Hock and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock

[5:12] Patrick Collison tweet on Dee Hock

[7:51] He thought from first principles and questioned everything, even down to the nature of money itself.

[8:26] He saw a better way of doing things and he didn't listen to folks who said it couldn't be done.

[9:32] Today's magic was yesterday's dream.

[13:27] Chaordic 1. The behavior of any self-organizing, self-governing, organ, organization, or system that harmoniously exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos. 2. Patterned by chaos and order in a way not dominated by either. 3. Blending of diversity, chaos, complexity and order characteristic of the fundamental organizing principles of evolution and nature.

[17:05] That Hock boy is a little strange, he'll read anything.

[23:01] None of it seemed demeaning. It was life. It was making a living. It was what proud men did without whining.

[24:14] 76 year old Dee Hock describing the 20 year old version of Dee Hock: Thus, at twenty, newly married, unemployed, eager to learn but averse to being taught, emerged an absurdly naive, idealistic, young man—an innocent lamb hunting the lion of life. The hungry lion was swift to pounce.

[30:39] If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton (Founders #234)

[31:57] In industrial age organizations purpose slowly erodes into process.

[34:29] Excellence is the capacity to take pain.

[38:41] You can't make a good deal with a bad person.

[39:48] Stubborn opinionated, unorthodox, rebellious.

[41:31] With three young children, a heavily mortgaged house, no job, little money in reserve, it was impossible to stay out of a dismal swamp of depression. Day after day, I walked the woods in misting Northwest rain. My constant companion was an overwhelming feeling of failure. What was wrong with me?

[42:51] There would be no more intense commitment to work.

[43:55] He's got an intense commitment to life!

[45:38] Use your brain but follow your heart.

[53:52] When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can’t be sold on its merits. I’d be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard (Founders #18)

[55:56] Focus on how your product or company ought to be and nothing else.

[57:28] Business Breakdowns Visa: The Original Protocol Business

[58:10] Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond (Founders #176)

[1:02:40] His Oh Shit! Moment

[1:06:12] He had a passionate commitment to the ideas that bordered on zealotry.

[1:06:39] There were dozens of times when I longed to quit. What prevented me is not entirely clear.

[1:06:58] Possibility can never be determined by opinion, only by attempt.

[1:07:26] What kept me going remains a mystery. It doesn't really matter for there was an inexpressible sense that in some profound non-physical way existence would lose meaning if I did not persist.

[1:10:03] Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (Founders #259)

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#259 Bob Dylan

27 juli 2022 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan.

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[0:51] No one could block his way and he didn't have any time to waste.

[2:38] Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. —Bob Dylan

[3:01] The best talk on YouTube for entrepreneurs: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

[3:21] Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder (Founders #217)

[7:52] Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him, nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody.

[8:12] We may be in the same genre but we don't put out the same product.

[16:34] What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players. There were a lot of better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing.

[18:00] Bob spends a lot of time thinking about and studying history.

[20:34] I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.

[21:27] I walked over to the window and looked outside. The air was bitter cold but the fire in my mind was never out. It was like a wind vane that was constantly spinning.

[21:45] It is incredible how much reading this guy is going to do. He takes ideas from everything that he reads and applies it to his work.

[22:30] Towering figures that the world would never see the likes of again, men who relied on their own resolve, for better or worse, every one of them prepared to act alone, indifferent to approval—indifferent to wealth or love, all presiding over the destiny of mankind and reducing the world to rubble. Coming from a long line of Alexanders and Julius Caesars, Genghis Khans, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, they carved up the world. They would not be denied and were impossible to reckon with—rude barbarians stampeding across the earth and hammering out their own ideas of geography.

[26:29] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

[29:37] I don't think there's been another human invention that can evoke deeper emotions than a great book —than great writing.

[31:17] “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." —Carl Sagan

[32:35] On War by Carl von Clausewitz

[37:55] I knew what I was doing and wasn't going to take a step back or retreat for anybody.

[46:40] This idea of being completely separate from the outside world is a main theme in the book.

[48:00] Being true to yourself. That was the thing.

[51:11] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell but you can't buy it back.

[57:44] Too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines.

[58:29] There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him.

[59:53] You have to find ways to get out of your own head.

[1:01:47] At first it was hard going like drilling through a brick wall. All I did was taste the dust.

[1:05:14] Sometimes you could be looking for heaven in the wrong places. Sometimes it could be under your feet or in your bed.

[1:07:25] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[1:07:42] Somebody different was bound to come along sooner or later who would know that world, been born and raised with it. . . be all of it and more. He'd be able to balance himself on one leg on a tightrope that stretched across the universe and you'd know him when he came-there'd be only one like him.

[1:08:23] A new performer was bound to appear. He'd be doing it with hard words and he'd be working 18 hours a day.

[1:09:15] Advice from his Dad:

“Remember, Robert, in life anything can happen. Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want."

[1:11:54] I was beginning to feel like a character from within these songs, even beginning to think like one.

[1:12:28] Y’all can't match my hustle

You can't catch my hustle

You can't fathom my love dude

Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers

I deserve to do these numbers

[1:12:51] I played morning, noon and night. That's all I did, usually fell asleep with the guitar in my hands. I went through the entire summer this way.

[1:13:31] The place I was living was no more than an empty storage room with a sink and a window looking into an alley, no closet, a toilet down the hall. I put a mattress on the floor.

[1:15:22] Bound for Glory: The Hard-Driving, Truth-Telling, Autobiography of America's Great Poet-Folk Singer by Woody Guthrie

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#258: Jay Gould (Dark Genius of Wall Street)

22 juli 2022 | 99 min

What I learned from reading Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr.

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[2:40] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

[3:46] From the back cover: Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. He was the undisputed master of the nation's railroads and telegraph systems at a time when these were the fastest-growing new technologies of the age. His failed scheme to corner the gold market in 1869 caused the Black Friday panic. He created new ways of manipulating markets, assembling capital, and swallowing his competitors. Many of these methods are now standard practice; others were unique to their circumstances and unrepeatable; some were among the first things prohibited by the SEC when it came into being in the 1930s.

[5:59] If he was exceptional, it was as a strategist. He had a certain genius. Time and time again, Wall Street never saw him coming.

[7:22] Jay was in fact the Michelangelo of Wall Street: a genius who crafted financial devices and strategies, and who leveraged existing laws, in stunningly original ways.

[7:45] His success was profound, his productivity was astonishing, and his motivations and tactics were fascinating.

[10:54] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[11:11] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son.

[11:43] All ambitious men want either to please their fathers or to punch them in the goddamn face.

[15:05] Persistent. Deliberate in his study. Disciplined.

[16:30] Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung (Founders #117)

[20:07] Jay stated his outright belief that happiness consisted not so much in indulgence as in self-denial.

[20:28] I am determined to use all my best energies to accomplish this life's highest possibilities.

[21:12] I'm going to be rich. I've seen enough to realize what can be accomplished by means of riches, and I tell you I'm going to be rich. I have no immediate plan. I only see the goal. Plans must be formed along the way.

[23:09] One decent editorial counts for 1000 advertisements. — Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. (Founders #200)

[27:32] Jay would always remain acutely aware of the brevity of one's time on earth.

[33:02] Great question to ask: Who would I rather be? Jay breaks down the tanner industry and who is in the best position:

I’ve come to realize that it is the merchants who command the true power in this industry. The tanner appears to take the greatest share of capital, but merely processes that capital, his expenses being extensive, his risk real, and his labor heavy. The shippers deal with the next largest sums, but again have extensive expenses and much work to do. The brokers, meanwhile, take what seems the smallest share but is in fact the largest. Theirs is nearly pure profit made on the backs of the shippers and the tanner, never their hands dirtied.

[38:39] He was aggressive and expansionist by temperament.

[46:10] There are magician’s skills to be learned on Wall Street and I mean to learn them.

[46:51] He fixated on the business and his own future and he appears to have cared little about the wider world.

[47:10] He seemed to have approached all things with a machine like intensity that some found hard to take.

[48:40] As I learned time and again, success in business often rests on a minute reading of the regulations that impact your business. — Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188)

[50:46] Action was his hobby.

[50:48] He was relentless in his efforts to bring about the accomplishment of those things which he set about to do.

[57:16] What finding your life’s work sounds like:

We are at a moment where there is a particular, inevitable future waiting to be made.

I see things very, very clearly. I feel inspired with an artist's conception. My road is laid out before me in the plainest of ways.

He felt as if “all the wheels” had finally been installed on his life.

Not only did he have professional focus, "but also the meaning that is family: a wife and child to fight wars and build castles for.

Now that I am at this place, it is a puzzlement to me how I endured before. Everything prior seems to have been boxing in the dark, scraping without reason.

Now I have my road to walk and my reason for walking it. Now the pieces fit, and this thing ambition is no longer blind but divine, a true and noble and necessary path."

[58:33] Work and family would remain his two hallmarks to the end of his days.

[59:56] He only wanted to be around A Players: Jay's abilities as an entrepreneurial talent scout, selecting the natural leaders from among the naturally led, the innovators from among the drones, would loom large in the making of his fortune.

[1:04:18] No one could have guessed that these two unknowns would soon be notorious as the all time greatest tag team ever to wrestle Wall Street to its knees.

[1:05:56] Both men (Fisk and Gould) had an inexhaustible capacity for work and both were unusually intelligent. They made a formidable combination when they joined forces.

[1:07:51] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye. (Founders #256)

[1:18:14] It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. —Warren Buffett

[1:25:51] Things are not as they appear from the outside. —John D. Rockefeller

[1:29:16] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#257 Richard Garriott (Video Games and Space Exploration)

15 juli 2022 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott.

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[6:49] Richard Garriott’s house

[7:39] Past episodes on video game creators

Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier (Founders#195)

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner (Founders #21)

[9:31] I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes you its master.

[9:52] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[10:08] Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. —Steve Jobs

[10:33] The tagline of his company: We create worlds.

[13:13] My heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown often at substantial personal risk. I am simply following the path that they carved into history.

[13:33] Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (Founders #144)

[13:49] Two books coming soon:

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes

Shackleton: The Biography by Ranulph Fiennes

[14:57] By endurance we conquer. —Ernest Shackleton

[17:01] Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny

[17:45] In his acceptance speech, Land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration: We are becoming a country of scientists, but however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain first of all that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown and dangerous region. Now those regions today are not geographic, they are not the gold mines of the west; they are the gold mines of the intellect. And when the great scientists, and the innumerable scientists of today, respond to that ancient American urge for adventure, then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention; and when an invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate, highly scientific people, new things open up. . . . Always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic, no matter how much you know, no matter how educated you are in science, no matter how imaginative you are, of leading you to say, “I’ll be darned, who ever thought that such a domain existed?” —Edwin Land in A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein (#134)

[17:55] I misspoke. The word should have been ancestors! Not descendants :(

[21:40] The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. —Steve Jobs

[22:00] Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

[25:09] One of my favorite sentences in the book. Every storyteller is familiar with the pleasure that comes from sitting with your friends around a fire, pouring a few drinks, and weaving a yarn. This was man's first form of entertainment, and when done well is still his best.

[26:09] Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell (Founders #36)

[34:10] The owner of the store told me, "Richard, this game you've created that we're all playing is obviously a more compelling reason to have one of these machines than anything that's out there. We really need to be selling this on the store wall."

Selling? Wow, what an interesting idea.

[35:30] This was a state-of-the-art operation then. We hung them up in the store and in the first week sold about twelve copies at $20 each. I would estimate that at the time, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen people anywhere in the world creating computer games, and not one of us could have imagined we were creating an industry that in less than three decades would become the largest and most successful entertainment industry in history, that a game would gross more in a few weeks than the most successful movie in history had earned in decades.

[37:46] California Pacific's version of Akalabeth was priced at $34, of which I received $5; and they sold thirty thousand copies.

I had earned $150,000, more than twice my father's yearly salary as an astronaut. It was a phenomenal amount of money, enough to buy a house.

It was so much money that it didn't really sink in; it all seemed like some kind of fantasy.

We all thought it was a fluke.

It was great that someone wanted to pay me for doing what I was already doing.

[38:59] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255)

[41:55] By then I knew enough about the computer game industry to understand that it wasn't actually an industry; it was an association of companies run by people who had no more experience than I did and who popped up, published a few games, then disappeared. So my brother Robert and I decided to start our own company.

[43:21] The leader's habits become everyone's habits.

[47:00] It would have been almost impossible to be more wrong. That was one of my first big lessons in: "What I think is not necessarily right and perhaps not what everybody else thinks.”

[49:04] Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Breaks Down the Gom Jabbar Scene

[53:32] The belief system of the founder is the language of the company. That is why it is usually written down and repeated over and over again.

[54:03] Imitation precedes creation. —Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Founders #210)

[1:05:59] This is going to be one of the most successful games they ever make and he had to fight just to get them to let him do this.

[1:07:42] The EA marketing team had projected lifetime sales of Ultima Online at 30,000 units—which they thought was wildly optimistic. We put it on the Internet Within a week or so 50,000 people had signed up to pay $5 for the disc.

[1:08:46] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[1:09:40] One thing is for sure. People are very, very willing to spend real money on all types of virtual items.

[1:10:18] A lesson on human nature: People began to covet these items— like property and magic swords— but were not willing to put in the time to earn the gold needed to buy them.

[1:12:01] The art of business was to stay in business long enough to give yourself the best chance to get a big hit.

[1:15:55] The creative joy we'd once shared in developing a game had been replaced by the prosaic demands of running a business. It was hard to believe how much had changed; only a few years earlier our people would happily work all night and love every minute of it, and now we had become a sweatshop.

[1:17:17] I left the office, drove to a grocery store parking lot, and wept for several hours.

It was the end of my personal Camelot. This was no game, this was my life. It had been painful for me to fire other people, but as I had just learned, that was nothing compared to being fired myself. I got blindsided by a deep and complex range of feelings.

I felt like a failure; I was angry and depressed and confused.

It was a hurt that lasted a long time and, frankly, I don't think I ever fully got over it.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)

9 juli 2022 | 78 min

What I learned from reading The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[0:54] The very substance of American thought was mere clay to be molded by the savvy public relations practitioner.

[1:48] Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in and provided them to be made public after his death.

[4:15] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

[6:43] Thinking unconventionally, operating at the edge, and pushing the boundaries became his trademark over a career that lasted more than 80 years.

[10:13] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

[12:06] Eddie was convinced that understanding the instincts and symbols that motivate an individual could help him shape the behavior of the masses.

[12:32] 1. Get hired to promote a product. 2. Attach that product to a cause that gives the consumption of that product a deeper meaning. 3. Use the cause to get a small newspaper/media organization to write about the product. 4. Use that media to get larger media to promote the cause indirectly promoting your product.

[15:36] Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (Founders #82)

[17:13] Humans love if other humans will do their work for them.

[19:01] A lesson he is learning promoting: Public visibility had little to do with real value.

[24:13] The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz (Founders #206)

[24:35] He never, never, never, never has just one plan of attack. It is always many, many, attack vectors, relentlessly.

[28:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

[37:23] The outcome was one that most publicity men can only dream about. An irresistible script for a stunt flawlessly executed, covered in nearly every paper in America, with no one detecting the fingerprints of either Bernays or his tobacco company client.

[38:18] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254) and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248)

[44:15] His philosophy in each case was the same. Hired to sell a product or service, he instead sold whole new ways of behaving, which appeared obscure but over time repaid huge rewards for his clients.

[44:26] The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel (Founders #70)

[45:00] He was convinced that ordinary rules did not apply to him. He repeatedly proved that he could reshape reality.

[45:21] The formula was simple: Bernays generated events, the events generated news, and the new generated a demand for whatever he happened to be selling.

[48:47] In an era of mass communications modesty is a private virtue and a public fault.

[52:45] The best defense against propaganda is more propaganda.

[59:54] Advice to younger parents from Eddie’s wife: Be certain to keep a balance where that little girl is concerned. Be sure not to let her get lost in your busy life. (The little girl was 2 or 3 at the time)

[1:09:14] He's like journalists, writers, media representatives, news anchors — You have something very valuable that I want —the attention of the public. If I can make your job easier, I am more likely to get some of that attention for my private interest.

[1:14:55] I still earned fees until I was 95.

[1:17:29] His children remained mystified as to how Eddie managed to die with so few assets.

[1:17:37] Sometimes later in life Eddie told me that he hadn't spent his money wisely. It is the only time he ever told me that he regretted anything.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#255 Sam Zemurray (Banana King)

2 juli 2022 | 90 min

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.

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[0:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real.

[4:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)

[6:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been.

[8:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children.

[8:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen

[8:54] He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the head of the crowd. Grasper, climber-nasty ways of describing this kid, who wants what you take for granted. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top.

[10:01] There is no problem you can't solve if you understand your business from A to Z.

[13:08] Sam spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing.

[14:17] As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar firms were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade.

[14:42] The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around. // There's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it's that dream of being the exception, the one who gets rich and gets out before he gets got that's the key to a hustler's motivation. —Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[22:36] He was pure hustle.

[24:15] Preston later spoke of Zemurray with admiration. He said the kid from Russia was closer in spirit to the banana pioneers than anyone else working. "He's a risk taker," Preston explained, “he's a thinker, and he's a doer.”

[26:33] They don't write books about people that stopped there.

[28:48] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) and John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (#254)

[30:22] He seemed to strive for the sake of striving.

[30:44] If you're on a mans side you stay on that mans side or you're no better than a goddamn animal.

[31:11] The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again.

[35:41] A man whose commitment could not be questioned, who fed his own brothers to the jungle.

[36:00] The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacificby Alistair Urquhart.

[37:02] Why the Founders of United Fruit were the Rockefellers of bananas.

[43:23] He kept quiet because talking only drives up the price.

[44:19] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

[49:30] He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body.

[58:04] He disdained bureaucracy and hated paperwork. So seldom did he dictate a letter that he requires no full-time secretary.

[1:00:01] He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. There was not a job he could not do nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret of his success.

[1:01:02] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)

[1:04:00] Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error.

[1:06:44] Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, If you're going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it's because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I'm describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop.

[1:07:44] Founder Mentality vs Big Company Mentality: When this mess of deeds came to light, United Fruit did what big bureaucracy-heavy companies always do: hired lawyers and investigators to search every file for the identity of the true owner. This took months. In the meantime, Zemurray, meeting separately with each claimant, simply bought the land from them both. He bought it twice paid a little more, yes, but if you factor in the cost of all those lawyers, probably still spent less than United Fruit and came away with the prize.

[1:09:04] His philosophy: Get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and blood in your eyes.

[1:13:02] For every move there is a counter move. For every disaster there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency.

[1:13:57] A man focused on the near horizon of costs can sometimes lose sight of the far horizon of potential windfall.

[1:16:22] You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

[1:19:03] In a time of crisis the mere evidence of activity can be enough to get things moving.

[1:19:42] Zemurray was never heard to bitch or justify. He was a member of a generation that lived by the maxim: Never complain, never explain.

[1:23:08] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye

[1:24:14] He should link his private interest to a public cause.

[1:25:32] In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

[1:28:28] Sam's defining characteristic was his belief in his own agency, his refusal to despair. No story is without the possibility of redemption; with cleverness and hustle, the worst can be overcome. I can't help but feel that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray–not the brutality or the conquest, but the righteous anger that sent the striver into the boardroom of laughing elites, waving his proxies, shouting, "You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#254 John D. Rockefeller: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers

27 juni 2022 | 101 min

What I learned from reading John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[0:07] He transmitted messages in code and secrecy covered all of his operations.

[0:39] Rockefeller compared himself to Napoleon.

[2:20] He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them.

[2:35] It is always hard to successfully control what you don't understand.

[3:32] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

[7:27] By the time I was a man — long before it —I had learned the underlying principles of business and the rules of business as well as many men acquire them by the time they are 40. I needed no one to advise me about the nature of transactions with which I had been carrying on since childhood.

[8:59] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148)

[10:55] You should try to expose yourself to experiences that are slightly ahead of your skillset or understanding and you should do so constantly.

[13:48] A veteran of long-distance provider MCI, Price came to Amazon in 1999. He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Bezos often said he wanted his colleagues to speak their minds, but at times it seemed he did not appreciate being personally challenged. “You would have thought I was trying to stop the Earth from tilting on its axis,” Price says, recalling that moment with horror years later. “Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, ‘That is not how an owner thinks! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.’ — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)

[18:42] He saw that posted rates, supposedly fixed, could also be negotiated. All was not as it seemed on the outside.

[20:45] He was the greatest borrower I ever saw.

[22:12] What if the president of a bank refused to make me a loan? That was nothing. That made no difference to me; simply meant that I must look elsewhere until I got what I wanted.

[26:07] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[26:41] Lost from view is the Rockefeller that Cleveland knew in the 1860s— a vigorous, alert gentleman with a quiet, but extraordinary personality.

[29:10] Small egos do not build giant companies.

[30:23] When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher. (Founders #255)

[33:10] The customer-experience path we've chosen requires us to have an efficient cost structure. The good news for shareowners is that we see much opportunity for improvement in that regard. Everywhere we look we find what experienced Japanese manufacturers would call muda, or waste.* I find this incredibly energizing. I see it as potential-years and years of variable and fixed productivity gains and more efficient, higher velocity, more flexible capital expenditures. — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #155)

[34:54] Other refiners groused about these restrictions, but in general they accepted them as facts to live with. Rockefeller refused to do so.

[38:55] Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247)

[40:15] You don’t want turnover on your core product team. Knowledge compounds. Don’t interrupt the compounding. — Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds (Founders #124)

[47:47] 1. You raise money so you can increase production. 2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners. 3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors. 4. You continue to find secret sources of income.

[55:23] Most simply doubted that Rockefeller's plan would work. John, it cannot be done, they said.

[56:13] It was ruthless efficiency and hyper competence.

[1:00:07] Rockefeller loves secret allies.

[1:00:31] The secret ownership of other companies was so well preserved that often a refiner enraged by Standard’s ruthless tactics would refuse its offer to buy him out and sell instead to a local competitor—unaware that he had in fact sold out to Standard.

[1:02:01] He believed that Standard Oil stock is the most valuable thing in the world to own and always bought more of it.

[1:05:57] Check out how Rockefeller turns an expense into a profit center: Standard purchased a half interest in Chess, Carley & Company, the largest distributor of refined oil to the South and Southwest. Together they purchased a number of the newly introduced bulk tank cars. Chess-Carley shipped turpentine from southern pine forests to Cleveland, where the cars were emptied and the turpentine was sold in the local market. The tank cars were then filled with kerosene and sent back to Louisville for distribution. In a single swoop the huge expense of shipment by barrels had been eliminated.

[1:09:22] He proceeded in the same steady, methodical way that a farmer plowed a field.

[1:13:47] The danger Potts and the Pennsylvania railroad posed to his creation convinced Rockefeller that the time had come to pick a fight with the world's largest industrial corporation.

[1:23:20] Rockefeller would have horse-drawn carriages drive up and down the streets and sell oil directly.

[1:28:28] I think it is fair to say that the strong men who were competitors in the oil refining business, the aggressive men in the best financial condition, and the most intelligent, indeed the class of men who would be most likely to survive in the competitive struggle, were the men who were most likely to take up our idea of cooperation.

[1:33:09] Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr.

[1:35:38] Jay Gould was the single most unsettling force ever to appear on the American industrial scene.

[1:36:22] Among wheelers and dealers of his day Gould had no peer.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#253 Henry Goldman (Goldman Sachs)

22 juni 2022 | 56 min

What I learned from reading When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher.

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[2:30] The Uses of Adversity by Malcolm Gladwell

[2:40] Business Breakdowns: Goldman Sachs: Fortune Favors The Old

[3:00] Men can learn from the past, and I've been shocked how little some of the younger executives in the present firm know about its origins. They don't even know that my grandfather, whose picture is on the wall there, founded the firm.

[3:46] My grandfather, Henry Goldman, was the son of a poor German immigrant named Marcus Goldman. Marcus Goldman is the founder of Goldman Sachs.

[5:45] Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World by Lynn Downey (Founders #33)

[7:10] The job Marcus Goldman was grateful to have: Walking the streets peddling goods seven days a week. Working regardless of rain, or snow, or the humid summer heat.

[9:13] Henry had been slow learning to read. It was finally determined that the youngster suffered from astigmatism, and his chores in the shop were limited to fetching and carrying articles from the storeroom or fastening the shutters at closing time. His mother was convinced he would never succeed in a competitive world and was inclined to coddle and baby him. (The “slow learner” is the one that fuels much of Goldman Sachs growth!)

[12:03] At the time no qualifications or special training were needed to enter the banking business.

[13:36] Marcus was anxious to capitalize on every waking hour.

[14:19] Henry was an attentive listener who committed everything he heard to memory.

[18:40] Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby (Founders #212)

[25:12] This part about the Railroads reminded me of the Internet: As new businesses started up every day and the distribution of their goods was being revolutionized by the rapid spider webbing of railroads across the country, Henry was itching to get into the action.

[26:05] Goldman Sachs partners with Kleinwort Sons & Co

[27:36] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. (Founders #197) and The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. (Founders #198)

[30:01] David Ogilvy’s idea that The Good Ones Know More: First, you must be ambitious. Set yourself to becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product.

Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. At the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss; you will then be ready to succeed him. Most of the young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #89)

[30:23] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

[32:28] Jacob Schiff was fascinated by railroad development in all its ramifications and became determined that his firm would dominate the field. There was not a facet of railroad investment or operation that he did not carry in his head.

[34:30] Learn more about Standard Oil: Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

[39:18] Markets can turn on a dime. —Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)

[40:12] The greatest entrepreneurs that have ever lived optimized for survival.

[44:22] Henry’s motto: Money is always in fashion.

[45:08] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw. (Founders #145)

[54:00] But he held no sympathy for them. They had relied on the decisions of others, which he himself would never have done.

[54:13] Henry shared the regret that he had never developed greater rapport with his children. He thought of his inability to “noodle" with them, to express approval, to overlook their minor slips, to embrace them and say, “I love you.”

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#252 Socrates

17 juni 2022 | 47 min

What I learned from reading Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson.

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[0:54] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. — Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm. (Founders #249)

[1:20] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)

Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226)

Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

[2:07] It’s fascinating how great entrepreneurs would arrive at similar conclusions even though they lived at different times in history, they lived in different parts of the world, and they worked in different industries.

[3:43] It was Confucius's view that education was the key to everything.

[4:57] Socrates was in no doubt that education was the surest road to happiness.

[7:05] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus (Founders #232)

[8:43] It is immoral to play at earning one's living. —Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie (Founders #199)

[9:40] Socrates was never a bore—far from it.

[11:12] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. —Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

[11:25] No discomfort seemed to dismay him.

[12:36] A healthy body is the greatest of blessings.

[14:50] Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. —Winston Churchill

[15:18] An incredible paragraph: It was Pericles' gift to transmute Athenian optimism into a spirit of constructive energy and practical dynamism that swept through this city like a controlled whirlwind. Pericles believed that Athenians were capable of turning their brains and hands to anything of which human ingenuity was capable-running a city and an empire, soldiering, naval warfare, founding a colony, drama, sculpture, painting, music, law, philosophy, poetry, oratory, education, science and do it better than anyone else.

[16:26] Robber barons like Henry Flagler (Founders #247) and Rockefeller (#248) believed you could be a master of fate too.

[18:41] Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251)

[21:20] His deepest instinct was to interrogate. The dynamic impulse within him was to ask and then use the answer to frame another question.

[22:27] I don’t want to skip over how important that sentence is: He made the people he questioned feel important.

[22:39] Mary Kay would teach her salespeople that everyone goes through life with an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading, “make me feel important.” —Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20)

[25:18] He was extremely interested in how things were done by experts. Craftsmanship fascinated him. He accumulated a good deal of information concerning products and processes.

[27:48] There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. —Steve Jobs

[28:21] He wants to show that on almost any topic the received opinion is nearly always faulty and often wholly wrong. Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious. The truth is very rarely obvious.

[29:39] Be suspicious of the obvious.

[29:47] What is particularly liberating about Socrates is his hostility to the very idea of there being a right answer.

[30:21] This denial of independent thought by individuals was exactly the kind of mentality he spent his life in resisting.

[39:10] Intense competition generated artistic and cerebral innovation on a scale never before seen in history, but also envy, spite, personal jealousies, and vendettas.

[42:14] We have to accept that Socrates was a curious mixture of genuine humility and obstinate pride.

[44:42] Socrates in prison, about to die for the right to express his opinions, is an image of philosophy for all time.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#251 Ben Franklin and George Washington: The Founding Partnership

13 juni 2022 | 57 min

What I learned from reading Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[0:59] Both men have been called The First American but they were friends first and never rivals.

[1:32] Leadership at this level is a rare quality and well-worth study.

[1:53] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. (Founders #62) and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115)

[3:53] He was bookish and inquisitive. Franklin quickly displayed a seemingly inexhaustible capability for hard work and was self-taught by reading.

[5:36] Franklin was convinced that acts mattered more than beliefs.

[6:06] Franklin advised fellow tradesmen. The way to wealth depends chiefly on two words: Industry and Frugality. Waste neither time nor money. Make the best use of both.

[7:06] The years roll around and the last one will come. When it does I would rather have it said he lived usefully than he died rich.

[8:25] He found electricity a curiosity and left it a science.

[8:50] When Franklin proposed the ideal prayer it was for “Wisdom that discovers my truest interests.”

[9:26] George Washington was a vigorous and active man, an early riser about his business all day. And by no means intellectually idle, he accumulated a library of 800 books. —Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226)

[10:08] His (Washington) strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish.

[16:09] The pictures that we primarily know them as: Washington on the $1 bill and Franklin on the $100 bill — Washington was 64 years old in that picture and Franklin was almost 80 — that is not what they look like at this point. Washington is an extremely young man (21 or 22 years old) and Franklin (48 years old) still has almost 40 years left of life.

[18:44] Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

[21:09] Think about this. Franklin is almost 50. He's already a successful entrepreneur, successful scientist, successful writer and now he focuses his talent on the most important project of his life. Something he will be working on in one form or another for the next 34 years —until he dies.

[24:28] Never underestimate your opponent. It’s all downside and no upside.

[26:39] You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don't, you're going to lose. And that's as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you've got an edge. And you've got to play within your own circle of competence. —Charlie Munger

[27:58] Washington remained remarkably calm under fire.

[28:23] This is a great description of how lopsided this was: You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods.

[29:20] This is going to be the most decorated military leader in early American history and so far everything we've seen from his early career is just one failure after another.

[32:00] Where Washington's regimen was chronically undermanned, Franklin’s was oversubscribed. They had precisely the same job—to secure the frontier.

[32:30] There's a lesson that both Franklin and Washington learned during this part that is going to eventually ripple throughout history: A final shared lesson carried weight. Despite the war's ultimate outcome, the British were beatable in New World combat. "This gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted Ideas of the Prowess of British soldiers was not well founded.” So it's like you have this reputation because you're this gigantic superpower, this world empire —and yet what we're seeing on the battlefield was like, oh, wait a minute —they're beatable.

[36:55] Understanding what people believe is pivotal to understanding why they do what they do.

[37:36] Washington’s view of the American Revolution: "Essentially, he saw the conflict as a struggle for power in which the colonists, if victorious, destroyed British pretensions of superiority and won control over half of a continent."

[40:17] We have taken up arms in defense of our Liberty, our property, our wives, and our children. We are determined to preserve them or die.

[43:02] Washington used the winter to reassess and revise his army structure and strategy because both were faulty.

[47:08] By soldiering on for one more year Washington's army, destitute and half naked, turned the world upside down. Imagine if they had quit before this point!

[51:50] When I look at this building, my dear sister, and compare it with that in which our good parents educated us, the difference strikes me with wonder. (A lot can change in one lifetime)

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#250 Jacob Fugger (The Richest Man Who Ever Lived)

8 juni 2022 | 57 min

What I learned from reading The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger by Greg Steinmetz.

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[1:55] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191)

[5:05] It is well known that without me your majesty might not have acquired the Imperial crown. You will order that the money which I've paid out, with the interest, shall be paid without further delay.

[6:20] There's many examples in the book where Jacob is constantly pushing the pace and going further than you would expect when the consequences of making certain mistakes at this time in history was death.

[6:51] He wanted to see how far he could go even if it meant risking his freedom and his soul.

[7:01] He is the German Rockefeller. He thought that he was blessed with a talent for money-making by God. And so he couldn't retire. He couldn't live a life of leisure because God told him to make as much money as possible.

[8:38] Fugger wrote the playbook for everyone who keeps score with money. A must for anyone interested in history or wealth creation. —Bryan Burrough Barbarians At The Gate

[9:33] Jacob was the first documented millionaire in history.

[10:43] His objective was neither comfort nor happiness. It was to stack up money until the end.

[12:18] Venice was the most commercially minded city on Earth at the time. I wonder what the most commercially minded city on Earth is today? I don't know the answer.

[13:31] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

[17:42] The spectacle of the Emperor begging for help startled Jacob. Any belief he may have had in the Emperor’s superhuman qualities could not have survived the fact that mere shopkeepers had denied credit to the supposedly most powerful figure in Europe.

[19:11] Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History WW1 series

[23:16] There was nothing pioneering or innovative about the loan. His competitors could have made it as easily as Jacob did. All Jacob did was put up his money when no one else had the guts. Such out of favor investments became a hallmark of his investing career.

[23:37] The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach (Founders #103)

[28:47] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon (Founders #197) and The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson (Founders #198)

[30:44] He was a radical. He refused to believe that noble birth made someone better than anyone else. For him, intelligence, talent, and effort made the man.

[32:29] You write the best life story by living an interesting life.

[33:23] His greatest talent was an ability to borrow the money he needed to invest.

[36:00] Nothing gave him greater joy than the chores required to make him richer.

[38:12] I don’t like plan B. Plan B should be to make Plan A work. —Jeff Bezos

[38:57] Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford (Founders #247)

[41:04] In every age men have been dishonest and governments corrupt. The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. (Bonus episode between #169 and #170)

[43:47] Luther combined technology with an extremely strong worth ethic work.

[45:29] Jacob monitored every transaction.

[51:31] So this dude wanted to kill the rich and they put him on their currency.

[55:55] Jacob believed that businesses could more easily function with fewer, not more decision-makers.

[56:29] The Fugger family, 17 generations after Jacob lived, still enjoy income on land Jacob acquired centuries earlier.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Steve Jobs's Heroes

2 juni 2022 | 31 min

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Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City.

Get your tickets here!

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On Steve Jobs

#5 Steve Jobs: The Biography

#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple

#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing

#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain

#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111)

On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs

#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs

#34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration

On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders

#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

#208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

STEVE JOBS'S INFLUENCES

Edwin Land

#40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

#132 The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience

#133 Land's Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It

#134 A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War

Bob Noyce and Andy Grove

#8 The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

#159 Swimming Across

#166 The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

Nolan Bushnell

#36 Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent

Akio Morita

#102 Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony

Walt Disney

#2 Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

#39 Walt Disney: An American Original

#158 Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World

J. Robert Oppenheimer

#215 The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb

Henry Ford

#9 I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford

#26 My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford

#80 Today and Tomorrow: Special Edition of Ford's 1926 Classic

#118 My Forty Years With Ford

#190 The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

David Packard and Bill Hewlett

#29 The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company

Alexander Graham Bell

#138 Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell

Robert Friedland

#131 The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle

Larry Ellison (Steve’s best friend)

#124 Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

#126 The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

#127 The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#249 Steve Jobs In His Own Words

1 juni 2022 | 50 min

What I learned from reading I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[1:05]

On Steve Jobs

#5 Steve Jobs: The Biography
#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple
#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing
#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain
#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111)

On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs

#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs

#34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration

On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders

#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

#208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

[3:13] We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best.

[4:54] Company Focus: We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. We just want to make great products.

[5:06] The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations. The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq.

[5:52] Nearly all the founders I’ve read about have a handful of ideas/principles that are important to them and they just repeat and pound away at them forever.

[7:00] You can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.

[8:09] I think of Founders as a tool for working professionals. And what that tool does is it gets ideas from the history of entrepreneurship into your brain so then you can use them in your work. It just so happens that a podcast is a great way to achieve that goal.

[8:48] Tim Ferriss Podcast #596 with Ed Thorp

[8:50] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders 222)

[10:43] In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

[12:05] The Essential Difference: The Lisa people wanted to do something great. And the Mac people want to do something insanely great. The difference shows.

[14:21] Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense, but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience.

[15:57] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. (Founders #19)

[16:41] We had a passion to do this one simple thing.

[16:51] And that's really important because he's saying I wasn't trying to build the biggest company. I wasn't trying to build a trillion dollar company. It wasn't doing any of that. Those things happen later as a by-product of what I was actually focused on, which is just building the best computer that I wanted to use.

[17:14] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208 )

[17:41] It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

[20:29] Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

[21:06] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95) “A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas. There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you will get half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.”

[22:29] Edwin land episodes:

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132)

Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #133)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein. (Founders #134)

[25:01] Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wait a minute, your way is wrong. This is not the way we want computers to go. This is not the legacy we want to leave. This is not what we want our kids to be learning. This is wrong and we are going to show you the right way to do it and here it is and it is so much better.

[27:47] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. (
(Founders #178)

[29:00] Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

[34:39] On meeting his wife, Laurene: I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.

[37:26] It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.

[41:29] Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard. (Founders #246)

[42:30] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)

[44:36] Victory in our industry is spelled survival.

[45:21] Once you get into the problem you see that it's complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level.

[48:15] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225)

[48:25] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan)

28 maj 2022 | 111 min

What I learned from reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow.

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[2:15] Rockefeller trained himself to reveal as little as possible

[4:22] Once Rockefeller set his mind to something he brought awesome powers of concentration to bear.

[4:44] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had. —Edwin Land

[9:00] When playing checkers or chess, he showed exceptional caution, studying each move at length, working out every possible countermove in his head. "I'll move just as soon as I get it figured out," he told opponents who tried to rush him. "You don't think I'm playing to get beaten, do you?"

[9:20] To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules. Despite his slow, ponderous style, once he had thoroughly mulled over his plan of action, he had the power of quick decision.

[14:49] When John was child, Bill would urge him to leap from his high chair into his waiting arms. One day he dropped his arms letting his astonished son crash to the floor. Remember, Bill lectured him, never trust anyone completely. Not even me.

[15:32] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw (Founders #145) He didn't care what people thought of him and despised society.

[16:13] Rockefeller analyzed work, broke it down into component parts, and figured out how to perform it most economically.

[18:49] He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.

[19:10] Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.

[25:14] Rockefeller wasn't one to dawdle in an unprofitable concern. His career had few wasted steps, and he never vacillated when the moment ripened for advancement.

[26:20] He's constantly praising adversity in early life as giving him strength to deal with all the stuff he had to deal with later on his life.

[26:49] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135) He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.

[27:17] Your future hangs on every day that passes.

[36:13] If it is of critical importance to your business you have to do it yourself.

[36:42] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244)

[38:36] He would never experience a single year of loss.

[39:30] Two quotes from Charlie Munger:

The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

You should remember that good ideas are rare—when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark (Founders #78)

[41:03] He's gonna to have a massive advantage over other people who only wanted to book short-term profits.

[42:01] The Clarks were the first of many business partners to underrate the audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them.

[44:27] He's super frugal on one end of the spectrum. Extremely frugal! Not going to let his business waste a penny. But he's also —on the very other end of the spectrum— willing to spend and to borrow and to go big. I will borrow every single dollar the banks will give me. He is the weird combination of extreme frugality and extreme boldness.

[46:08] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday (Founders 31) On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more.

[47:13] On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more.

[47:37] He would never again feel his advancement blocked by shortsighted, mediocre men.

[48:16] From this point forward, there would be no zigzags or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.

[48:38] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. That company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization.

[55:02] He always kept plentiful cash reserves. He won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper.

[55:46] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

[1:05:37] Twenty-nine-year-old John D. Rockefeller demanded that seventy four-year-old Commodore Vanderbilt, the emperor of the railroad world, come to him. This refusal to truckle, bend, or bow to others, this insistence on dealing with other people on his own terms, time, and turf, distinguished Rockefeller throughout his career.

[1:11:07] The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

[1:14:16] This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime and they're running in the opposite direction.

[1:23:37] His master plan was to be implemented in a thousand secret, disguised, and indirect ways.

[1:26:37] I have ways of making money you know nothing about.

[1:30:59] You don't have any ambition to drive fast horses, do you?

[1:32:59] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243)

[1:34:42] He was now living a fantasy of extravagant wealth and few people beyond the oil business had ever even heard of him.

[1:35:33] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192)

[1:36:00] American high society in the 20th century would be loaded with descendants of those refiners who opted for stock.

[1:39:02] Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

[1:39:30] Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed.

[1:40:22] Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things, fail because we lack concentration-the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?

[1:42:31] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. (Founders #181)

[1:42:40] Part of the Standard Oil gospel was to train your subordinate to do your job. As Rockefeller instructed a recruit, "Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it. As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.” True to this policy, Rockefeller tried to extricate himself from the intricate web of administrative details and dedicate more of his time to broad policy decisions.

[1:49:50] He entered retirement just at the birth of the American automobile industry. The automobile would make John D. Rockefeller far richer in retirement than at work.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#247 Henry Flagler (Rockefeller's partner)

19 maj 2022 | 76 min

What I learned from reading Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford.

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[1:14] The building of the railroad across the ocean was a colossal piece of work born of the same impulse that made individuals believe that pyramids could be raised cathedrals, erected and continents Tamed the highway

[1:31] All that remains of an error where men still lived, who believed that with enough will and energy and money that anything could be accomplished.

[2:13] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr by Ron Chernow (Founders #16)

[2:35] Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74)

Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75)

[5:51] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (Founders #62)

[6:24] Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) “This industry visible to our neighbors began to give us character and credit," Franklin noted. One of the town's prominent merchants told members of his club, "The industry of that Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed." Franklin became an apostle of being-and, just as important, of appearing to be-industrious. Even after he became successful, he made a show of personally carting the rolls of paper he bought in a, wheelbarrow down the street to his shop, rather than having a hired hand do it.

[8:54] Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82) Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him.

[10:50] The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227) Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero. That is not an equation whose effects I would like to experience personally.

[13:20] Rockefeller did not believe in diversification. He said they had no outside interest. That it is an immense task building a successful company. It's silly to go out and diversify into other lines or to make other investments. Focus on your business!

[13:53] Their chief binding passion: The desire to make large sums of money.

[14:13] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148)

[19:44] Warren Buffett on MOATs: On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as "widening the moat." When short-term and long-term conflict, widening the moat must take precedence.

[20:06] The way I define moat: Why are you difficult to compete with?

[26:54] For the last 14 or 15 years I have devoted myself exclusively to my business.

[28:00] He had become a creator instead of an accumulator and he had found much more satisfaction in such an accomplishment.

[30:40] Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. (Founders #194)

[35:54] You have to admire Julia Tuttle. She is relentlessly persistent.

[36:27] Flagler likes to keep his options open and react to new information.

[43:25] It was a time in history when men were tempted no longer to regard themselves as the mercy of the fates —but as masters of their environment.

[46:08] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222 and #93)

[46:29] Getting rich and staying rich are two separate skills.

[49:11] It is well-documented that Flagler planned his actions carefully.

[51:06] He is not at all interested in retiring and is in fact, choosing to run directly towards more difficulties.

[51:51] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) Every hustler knows the value of a feint. It keeps you one step ahead of whoever's listening in.

[52:57] During your attempt at doing something difficult you're going to have several points where all of the options in front of you would not be described as good options.

[57:47] You realize that you were before a man who has suffered and has never wept, who has undergone intense pain and has never sobbed, who has never bent under stress.

[58:12] The only excess I believe I have indulged in has been that of hard work.

[58:58] Hard work, energy, and accomplishment. For Flagler it seemed to be all he knew and all he needed to know.

[1:07:16] A story about how not panicking can save your life.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#246 Mark Leonard's Shareholder Letters

13 maj 2022 | 56 min

What I learned from reading Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard.

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[1:10] Business lessons from Mark Leonard by Tren Griffin

[2:11] Newsletter: Liberty’s Highlights The Serendipity Engine: Investing & business, science & technology, and the arts.

[2:59] I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. I don’t like anyone saying I am an authority figure and you will do it this way. I can’t think of anything that annoys me more. I was stuck by the principal. I challenged teachers. I left home early. I had a bootleg radio license. I built a flamethrower. I did things that weren’t accepted by lots of people. That ability to choose what I think is right is something I prize highly.

[4:49] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It (Founders #110) and The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Founders #94)

[4:53] Teledyne grows bigger by dividing businesses into smaller parts wherever possible. Singleton claims that this keeps his managers creative and not wasteful.

[5:12] Our preference is to acquire businesses in their entirety and to own them forever.

[8:57] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37)

[9:18] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

[12:20] Customer relationships that endure for more than two decades are valuable.

[13:08] The longer we have owned a small software business, the larger and better it has become.

[15:32] Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters. All of them! (Founders #71)

[23:22] We didn't get to that point with central edicts or grand plans. We just had a hunch that our internal ventures could be better managed, and started measuring them. The people involved in the Initiatives generated the data, and with measurement came adjustment and adaptation. It took 6 years, but we have fundamentally changed the mental models of a generation of our managers and employees.

[23:56] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market (Founders #93 and #222)

[28:06] Our business units rarely get large.

[28:26] This suggests that the size and performance of our business units are almost totally unrelated. I believe that these business units are small for a reason...that the advantages of being agile and tight far outweigh economies of scale. I’m not a proponent of handling our “complexity problem” by creating a bunch of 400 employee business units to replace our 40 employee units. I’m looking for ways of “achieving scale” elsewhere.

[29:06] Debt is cheap right now, so it is pretty tempting to use it. Unfortunately, it has a nasty habit of going away when you need it most.

[30:42] The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227)

[32:51] Book recommendation from Mark: Thinking Fast and Slow

[34:53] I love what I'm doing and don't want to stop unless my health deteriorates or the board figures it's time for me to go.

[36:42] My personal preference is to instead focus on keeping our business units small, and the majority of the decision making down at the business level. Partly this is a function of my experience with small high performance teams when I was a venture capitalist, and partly it is a function of seeing that most vertical markets have several viable competitors who exhibit little correlation between their profitability and relative scale. (TRUST IN SMALL GROUPS OF SMART PEOPLE)

[37:35] There are a number of implications if you share my view: We should

a) regularly divide our largest business units into smaller, more focused business units unless there is an overwhelmingly obvious reason to keep them whole,

b) operate the majority of the businesses that we acquire as separate units rather than merge them with existing CSI businesses, and

c) drive down cost at the head office and Operating Group level.

[38:11] I want you to bear with me because I really do think this is a very clear description of what he's building, the advantages the strategy provides, and why he's going to be hard to compete with over the longterm.

[40:13] We have 199 business units. We can run a test in 5, 10, 6, 24, whatever it is —we find what works and we can spread it throughout the entire company and spreading best business practices makes those businesses better. The longer it goes, the more businesses we have, the stronger they get over the time. And it's nice you have a checkbook and a phone but I'm way too far ahead— you'll never catch me is essentially what he's saying.

[42:00] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos (Founders #181)

[43:19] Book recommendation from Mark: The Evolution of Cooperation

[44:52] You Don't Know Jack... or Jerry by Robert O. Babcock.

Jack Henry and Jerry Hall launched a software company in theh back of a small engine repair shop. Thirty years later, Jack Henry and Associates, Inc., is a thriving operation with over 3,700 employees in close to 50 locations around the United States.

[47:22] Book Recommendations from Mark: One Man's Medicine: An Autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane and Effectiveness and Efficiency, Random Reflections on Health Services by Archie Cochrane

The first book is a moving, idiosyncratic and dryly amusing autobiography of a brilliant and erudite outsider that makes you wish you’d known the man firsthand.

The second is a stinging critique of a well-meaning but entrenched medical establishment, for their ineffective and dangerous medical practices.

[48:23] We spend time on non-randomized observational studies trying to spot business practices that actually add value rather than just adding overhead.

[48:34] My favorite part of Mark’s letters

[51:09] A huge body of academic research confirms that complexity and coordination effort increases at a much faster rate than head count in a growing organization.

[51:50] The business manager needs to be asked why employees and customers wouldn't be better served by splitting that business into smaller units. Our favorite outcome in this sort of situation is that the original business manager runs a large piece of the original business and spins off a new business unit run by one of his or her proteges.

[53:39] Something wonderful happens when you spin off a new business unit.

[54:16] When you get big you lose entrepreneurship.

[54:43] If I were advising my 35 or 40-year-old self on where to go, I would tell him to stay put. Become a master Craftsman in the art of managing your VMS business. It is the most satisfying job in Constellation and will generate more than enough wealth for you to live very comfortably and provide for your family.

[55:30] You can't be normal and expect abnormal results.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#245 Rick Rubin (In the Studio)

8 maj 2022 | 81 min

What I learned from reading Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown.

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Rick Rubin on Lex Fridman Podcast #275

Rick Rubin on The Peter Attia Drive Podcast #57

Shangri-La Documentary

Rick’s podcast Broken Record

[1:39] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[3:19] Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

[3:31] His goal is to record music in its most basic and purest form. No extra bells and whistles. All wheat, no chaff.

[5:42] Dr. Land was saying: “I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one.” And Steve said: “Yes, that’s exactly the way I saw the Macintosh.” He said if I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like they couldn’t have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it so I had to go and create it and then show it to people and say now what do you think?” Both of them had this ability to not invent products, but discover products. Both of them said these products have always existed — it’s just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera always existed and the Macintosh always existed — it’s a matter of discovery.

[7:31] My goal is to just get out of the way and let the people I'm working with be the best versions of themselves.

[7:50] Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett (Founders #88)

[11:26] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244)

[14:13] “Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways.” —Steve Jobs

[16:00] Less is more but you have to do more to get to less.

[16:25] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. (Founders #200)

[17:56] Rubin's most valuable quality is his own confidence.

[20:57] If we're going to do this, let's aim for greatness. You have to believe what you were doing is the most important thing in the world.

[21:29] Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221) “Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.”

[24:24] On being a reducer —not a producer: Often in the studio there will be the idea to add layers to make it seem bigger. Sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets. A lot of it is counterintuitive. You need to discover it in practice.

[27:10] I want to play loud. I want to be heard. And I want all to know I'm not one of the herd.

[36:16] There were no stars in rap music. It was really just a work of passion. Everyone who was doing it was doing it because they loved it, not because anyone thought it was a career.

[38:12] Krush Groove YouTube link

[38:47] Russell really cared about finding new ways to expose their music to a bigger audience.

[39:03] Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. (Founders #228)

[44:19] A handmade product at scale.

[48:23] Rap music as recorded work was just eight years old.

[50:06] Q: Do you have an engine of constant dissatisfaction. Self criticism that I could have done better? A: No. I’m pleased with the work that we did. Excited to keep working. It’s fun. I don’t know what else I’d do with myself. I like making things, it’s fun. I feel like it’s my reason to be on the planet so I just keep doing it. If it could be better I would have kept working on it. If it could be better it’s not done. I’ve done everything I can to make it the best it can be. I can’t do more than that so there is nothing to be critical of. It is almost like a diary entry. Everything we make is a reflection in a moment in time. Could be a day, could be a year.

[52:54] These things that we don't understand and cannot explain happen regularly.

[58:33] To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

[58:58] He's living in four different centuries at once.

[1:01:02] I believe in you so much, I'm going to make you believe in you.

[1:03:07] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath... and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it.

[1:05:35] The newest sounds have a tendency to sound old when the next new sound comes along. But a grand piano sounded great 50 years ago and will sound great 50 years from now. I try to make records that have a timeless quality.

[1:13:58] Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#244 Harry Snyder (In-N-Out Burger)

3 maj 2022 | 65 min

What I learned from reading In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman.

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[2:03] This is an absorbing case study on how a family business came to be at the center of its own cheerful cult.

[2:42] Aliens, Jedi, & Cults: A Mental Model for Potential

[5:05] Stripe gave me a mental model for potential. An alien founder assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together.

[5:28] The developers raving about Stripe formed the cult.

[6:37] If you are searching for a project with potential, watch out for the alien founder, Jedi team, and cult following of people on a messianic mission.

[7:58] A few years ago I started notice that people were getting Tesla tattoos. It is very hard to ever short something where people are tattooing the brand on their body. — Josh Wolfe

[8:38] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys (Founders #188) Word of mouth is the most effective advertising of all. I have been known to say that there's no better business to run than a cult. Trader Joe's became a cult of the overeducated and underpaid, partly because we deliberately tried to make it a cult once we got a handle on what we were actually doing, and partly because we kept the implicit promises with our clientele.

[9:12] List of David Ogilvy podcasts:

Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82)

Confessions of an Advertising Man (Founders #89)

The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising(Founders #169)

The Unpublished David Ogilvy (Founders #189)

[9:17] Word of mouth is the most effective advertising of all. In and Out has that, Tesla has that, Stripe has that, Bitcoin has that, Trader Joe's has that, Apple has that.

[10:35] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Founders #31) The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.

[11:33] In and Out was fanatically right about something that companies like McDonald’s, Wendy's and others, missed.

[11:43] The most important sentence in the book: "Keep it real simple. Do one thing and do it the best you can.”

[12:55] The family owned, fiercely independent chain has remained virtually unchanged since its inception in 1948.

[14:53] It is known as the anti-chain with the cult-like mystique. The anti-chain is a perfect way to describe In and Out’s approach to building their business.

[19:48] Harry's drive and tenacity were propelled by the uncertainty of watching his parents labor to provide for his family. Harry grew into a disciplined fellow with a strong sense of responsibility.

[27:50] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Founders #179)

[28:15] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator (Founders #107)

[28:55] I have always said that competition just makes you stronger. You shouldn't be afraid of the competition. They make you stay on top of your game. They keep you on your toes.

[29:23] You don't ever cut corners when it comes to the quality of your product.

[30:23] There is no cult-like following for shitty products.

[33:21] This dude is obsessed with simplicity.

[33:44] Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success Never underestimate the degree to which people crave clarity and respond positively to it.

[36:26] If he was alive today and you could ask him for advice I think he would just say do it yourself.

[37:18] This is an important distinction —and I think also how you get to a cult-like following—he's not interesting in being the biggest, he's interested in being the best.

[38:34] If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.

[39:47] He refused to sacrifice quality for the sake of profits.

[40:05] From the start, In-N-Out ran a customer-driven shop.

[41:00] Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans (Founders #216)

[44:07] He believed in paying for quality and that included wages.

[44:31] Why would you skimp on the level of quality people you work with? That's insane to me — it just makes no sense at all.

[44:48] Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going!

[45:42] Embrace hard work, ignore fads, identify what's important to you, and repeat it for decades.

[46:39] The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon(Founders #237)

[50:00] Catering to the car-reliant customer, Harry focused on putting his drive-throughs right next to off-ramps of the fast-expanding freeway system. The growing Southern California freeway network became a significant factor in In-N-Out's own rising popularity.

[50:45] He's got a handful of really simple principles he refuses to deviate from. He focuses on quality and does that for decade after decade, He's giving us somewhat of a blueprint to build a cult-like following. People respond to this because you've put their interest ahead of your own.

[51:56] Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success(Founders #56)

[56:50] You don't build a cult following by trying to wring more money out of cheaper products.

[58:19] I'm focused on the customer. I'm focused on quality. My competitors are focused on a spreadsheet.

[59:56] Limit the number of details to perfect and make every detail perfect. That is exactly what Harry Snyder did.

[1:00:41] From his perspective, In-N-Out was simply a different creature than its competitors.

[1:01:07] He was very much about problem solving before it became a problem.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#243 Francis Greenburger (Real Estate Billionaire)

25 april 2022 | 76 min

What I learned from reading Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger.

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[1:26] I can be extremely stubborn when I have a hunch about something.

[3:31] I knew all too well that markets can turn on a dime.

[5:40] Money that had once flowed freely dried up over night.

[6:41] I always listened to other people's ideas because that is how you happen upon the good ones.

[6:46] Logic is no match for bureaucracy.

[7:33] This ruthless industry has created far more bankruptcies than it has billionaires. Saying no is the most important judgment that you make.

[9:00] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey (Founders #231)

[9:09] Sometimes the best lessons that you learn in life are from what you discover in the weaknesses of otherwise very good people.

[15:54] My father was terrible with money. His knack of mismanaging it, losing it, or not making it in the first place was an incredible source of stress within our family.

[19:09] The constant question mark that was my parents's checkbook balance made a lasting impression.

[24:31] His pride in my abilities formed the basis of the self-confidence that allowed me to start businesses, sell books, make crazy friends, and love women at an age when most others were busy with their homework.

[29:40] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37)

[30:12] I see opportunity where others saw nothing.

[31:34] He doesn't dilly-dally. This guy moves fast. It's not like I proved it once, let me try two or three times. He is like it worked once, it's gotta work over and over again, and he immediately starts to scale it.

[37:40] Don’t interrupt the compounding: I was skating on razor thin margins that a busted toilet could threaten. But I prefer to remain on the edge as I kept my buildings running rather than sell any of them before they grew to the much higher value that I had a hunch they would one day achieve.

[40:45] The idea that builds his empire: By co-oping I would be dealing with tens of thousands of dollars in sales, rather than hundreds of dollars in rents.

[41:58] Once something works don't dilly dally. Go as fast as you possibly can.

[43:08] Lots of folks thought what I was doing was insane.

[43:17] I knew something that the market had not yet fully embraced.

[47:06] My advice to those with expanding businesses is that they must first make a decision about how they want to allocate their time and structure their business so that the balance reflects that.

[49:33] Children require attention and involvement. This takes you out of your self orientation and makes you invest in another person who can only pay you in one currency: Love.

[50:09] If anyone had asked me in 1990 what the chances of my business survival was I would have said 1 in 100. I still consider it a miracle that we didn't go bankrupt.

[53:12] The main lesson is never delay discomfort. Waiting or ignoring a problem never solves it. Just run towards it.

[55:36] Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Founders #30)

[56:27] Every parent’s worst nightmare.

[1:06:25] Disaster usually rises when short-term profit takes precedence over lasting value creation.

[1:08:21] I don't pick investments. I pick jockeys, not horses.

[1:10:31] Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II (Founders #143)

[1:10:52] The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age (Founders #103)

[1:13:52] Real security comes from adaptability.

[1:13:59] Independent thinking in its simplest forms means not assuming that the status quo was the best answer, the right answer, or the most effective answer.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life

21 april 2022 | 89 min

What I learned from reading Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher.

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[2:49] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son.

[5:33] I had spent a lifetime with a frustrated, and often unemployed man, who hated anybody who was successful.

[7:01] And he said, “Yeah, but there can only be one genius in the family. And since I'm already that, what chance do you have? “What kind of father says something like that to his son?

[8:21] He is incredibly talented and incredibly pretentious. He doesn't know what he's doing half the time and the other half of the time he's brilliant.

[9:46] There is no speed limit. The standard pace is for chumps.

[10:04] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (Founders #135)

[11:54] George Lucas: A Life (Founders #35)

[12:45] Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Founders #209)

[14:10] Coppola displayed a remarkable ability to do whatever was necessary to get the job done.

[16:30] I had an overwhelming urge to make films.

[19:11] I deliberately worked all night so when he'd arrive in the morning he would see me slumped over the editing machine.

[20:36] Say yes first, learn later.

[21:00] My peculiar approach to cinema is I like to learn by not knowing how the hell to do it. I’m forced to discover how to do it.

[23:10] His willingness to seize the moment was one of the main characteristics separating him from his other fellow students and aspiring filmmakers.

[30:44] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233)

[37:43] You have to control the money or you don't have control.

[38:53] At his absolute lowest point comes his greatest opportunity.

[41:59] It only takes a couple of these gigantic flops to permanently erase any positive financial outcome that you had previously.

[44:55] Either control your emotions or other people are going to control you.

[47:35] In many cases, the people we study are dead. We can't talk to them, but they can still counsel us through their life stories.

[50:00] Excellence took time and patience.

[51:56] Even in the vortex of the storm some outstanding work was being accomplished. Something strong and powerful was being forged in struggle.

[52:46] Vito Corleone had shown a rough-hewn old-world wisdom, the kind gained through experience rather than from a textbook.

[56:29] A great story about loyalty and friendship. If you have a friend like this, hold onto them.

[1:03:32] Martin Sheen on working for Coppola: I have a lot of mixed feelings about Francis. I'm very fond of him personally. The thing I love about him most is that he never, like a good general, asks you to do anything he wouldn't do. He was right there with us, lived there in shit and mud up to his ass, suffered the same diseases, ate the same food. I don't think he realizes how tough he is to work for. God, is he tough. But I will sail with that son of a bitch anytime.

[1:04:58] I always had a rule. If I was going away for more than 10 days I’d take my kids out of school.

[1:08:31] If you don't have this fundamental alignment between who you are and the work you do —and how you do that work —there's going to be some level of misery unhappiness if you don't resolve that conflict.

[1:12:22] Half the people thought it was a masterpiece and half the people thought it was a piece of shit.

[1:23:01] On the death of his son: I realized that no matter what happened, I had lost. No matter what happened, it would always be incomplete.

[1:25:38] I want to be free. I don't want producers around me telling me what to do. The real dream of my life is a place where people can live in peace and create what they want.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#241 The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies

14 april 2022 | 87 min

What I learned from reading Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone.

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[1:07] The Wright Brothers (Founders #239)

[3:47] Avoid any activity that distracts you from improving the quality of your product and the quality of your business.

[5:58] Completely self-taught, he made spectacular intellectual leaps to solve a series of intractable problems that had alluded some of history's most brilliant men.

[9:46] The Wright-Curtiss feud was at its core a study of the unique strengths and flaws of personality that define a clash of brilliant minds. Neither Glenn Curtiss nor Wilbur Wright ever came to understand his own limits, that luminescent intelligence in one area of human endeavor does not preclude gross incompetence in another. And because genius often requires arrogance, both men continuously repeated their blunders.

[13:38] P.T. Barnum: An American Life (Founders #137)

[13:49] John Moisant had three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador.

[17:44] Master of Precision: Henry Leland (Founders#128)

[19:32] Sacrifices must be made.

[20:18] The science of flight has attracted the greatest minds in history—Aristotle, Archimedes, Leonardo, and Newton, —but achieving the goal stumped all of them.

[23:19] If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic-being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago. —Elon Musk

[23:57] If the process was to move forward with any efficiency, experimenters would need some means to separate what seemed to work from what seemed not to–data and results would have to be shared. The man who most appreciated that need was someone who, while not producing a single design that resulted in flight, was arguably the most important person to participate in its gestation.

[28:46] He found his first breakthrough by doing the exact opposite of his competitor.

[30:08] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Founders #145)

[39:04] His passion was speed. He had tremendous endurance, he was never a quitter, and he would do anything to win.

[42:25] My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins (Founders #170)

[43:46] No lead is insurmountable if you stop running before you've reached the finish line.

[47:03] Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell (Founders #138)

[47:05] The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism (Founders #142)

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (Founders #156)

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (Founders #175)

[47:40] Never underestimate your opponent. It’s all downside, no upside. Churchill (Founders #225)

[57:05] He saw competition as a destructive, inefficient force and favored large-scale combination as the cure. Once, when the manager of the Moet and Chandon wine company complained about industry problems, J.P. suggested he buy up the entire champagne country. — The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (Founders #139)

[1:00:05] Find people who are great at selling your product and hire them.

[1:06:55] He was driven by an uncontrollable desire for adventure and wealth, and almost an adolescent need to be seen as a swashbuckling hero.

[1:07:45] John was left desperate for an outlet for his obsessive audacity.

[1:13:57] The McCormick's were used to making terms, not acquiescing to them.

[1:19:15] Wilbur never seemed to grasp that his crusade to destroy his nemesis could destroy him.

[1:20:00] I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. —Steve Jobs

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#240 Mozart: A Life

7 april 2022 | 46 min

What I learned from reading Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson.

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[1:52] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225)

[2:15] A life of constant hard work, lived at the highest possible level of creative concentration.

[3:05] Mozart worked relentlessly.

[3:56] He started earlier than anyone else and was still composing on his deathbed.

[5:34] He soon came to the conclusion that he had fathered a genius— and being a highly religious man, that he was responsible for a gift of God to music.

[7:05] I think the idea here is if you truly believe that what you're doing is good for the world— and you approach it with the same kind of religious zeal— you have a massive advantage over a competitor that doesn't have the same missionary mindset.

[8:09] My Turn: A Life of Total Football by Johan Cruyff (Founders #218)

[8:42] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104)

[9:09] He loved humor, and laughter was never far away in Mozart's life, together with beauty—and the unrelenting industry needed to produce it.

[13:36] Decoded by Jay Z (Founders #238)

[15:36] Russ ON: Delusional Self-Confidence & How To Start Manifesting Your Dream Life and Steve Stoute & Russ Explain Why Every Creator Should Consider Themselves A Business

[19:46] You don't tell Babe Ruth how to hold a bat.

[20:43] I will take your demand and I'll use it as a constraint to increase my creativity.

[21:27] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37)

[22:37] You need to tell potential customers what work and effort goes into the product that you produce because they will have a deeper appreciation for what you do.

[24:52] Inside Steve’s Brain (Founders #204)

[25:06] He's made and remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives.

[25:30] Mozart wanted to talk to A players.

[26:32] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[26:57] You should only work in industries where— for the important companies of that industry —the founders are still in charge at those companies.

[31:13] As a child and teenager Mozart was the most hardworking and productive composer in musical history.

[34:17] Find something that is being done on a basic level and then realize its potential by re-imagining it.

[36:13] It was all hard, intense application of huge knowledge and experience, sometimes illuminated by flashes of pure genius.

[36:40] Imagine being so good at what you do that the ruler of your country has to pass a law to get people to stop clapping.

[40:15] It is no use asking what if Mozart had had an ordinary, normal father. Mozart without his father is inconceivable, and there is no point in considering it. Just as Mozart himself was a unique phenomenon, so Leopold was a unique father, and the two created each other.

[41:00] There's a sense in which Mozart's entire life is a gigantic improvisation.

[41:21] From the age of twenty Mozart never went a month without producing something immortal-something not merely good, but which the musical repertoire would be really impoverished without.

[43:03] Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. —Steve Jobs

[43:39] Mozart's beauty prevents one from grasping his power.

[43:39] Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Founders #150) and Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234)

[45:31] Never despair!

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Steve Jobs and His Heroes

1 april 2022 | 30 min

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Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City.

Get your tickets here!

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On Steve Jobs

#5 Steve Jobs: The Biography

#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple

#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing

#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain

#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111)

On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs

#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs

#34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration

On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders

#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

#208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

STEVE JOBS'S INFLUENCES

Edwin Land

#40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

#132 The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience

#133 Land's Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It

#134 A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War

Bob Noyce and Andy Grove

#8 The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

#159 Swimming Across

#166 The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

Nolan Bushnell

#36 Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent

Akio Morita

#102 Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony

Walt Disney

#2 Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

#39 Walt Disney: An American Original

#158 Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World

J. Robert Oppenheimer

#215 The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb

Henry Ford

#9 I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford

#26 My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford

#80 Today and Tomorrow: Special Edition of Ford's 1926 Classic

#118 My Forty Years With Ford

#190 The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

David Packard and Bill Hewlett

#29 The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company

Alexander Graham Bell

#138 Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell

Robert Friedland

#131 The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle

Larry Ellison (Steve’s best friend)

#124 Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

#126 The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

#127 The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#239 The Wright Brothers

29 mars 2022 | 93 min

What I learned from rereading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

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[3:40] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham

[4:11] If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.

[5:35] Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. —Charlie Munger

[6:44] No bird soars in a calm.

[10:30] Neither ever chose to be anything other than himself.

[11:36] Wilbur was a little bothered by what others might be thinking or saying.

[11:46] What the two had in common above all was a unity of purpose and unyielding determination.

[15:09] Every mind should be true to itself —should think, investigate and conclude for itself.

[17:53] My Life in Advertising (Founders #170)

[19:33] Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (Founders #174)

[19:39] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (Founders #140)

[23:56] I wish to avail myself of all that is already known.

[30:32] Like the inspiring lectures of a great professor, the book had opened his eyes and started him thinking in ways he never had.

[34:29] In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or the entirely real possibility that at some point, like Otto Lilienthal, they could be killed.

[36:07] When once this idea has invaded the brain it possesses it exclusively.

[38:23] I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act. —Steve Jobs

[41:47] You wanted to start a company. You knew that it was going to be hard. What are you complaining for?

[42:17] Jay Z: Decoded (Founders #238)

[42:56] They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing.

[46:28] You should follow your energy.

[53:49] The Wright brothers have blinders on mentality. They don't care what other people say. They just say I'm working at this. I don't care what other people think.

[54:16] The brothers proceeded entirely on their own and in their own way.

[58:21] This is the blueprint they are using: Test. Iterate. Test. Iterate. Work long hours. Concentrate and ignore the naysayers.

[1:00:31] Wilbur was always ready to jump into an argument with both sleeves rolled up. He believed in a good scrap. He believed it brought out new ways of looking at things and helped round off corners.

[1:00:57] Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (Founders #180)

[1:02:26] Pour gasoline on promising sparks.

[1:04:14] It is very bad policy to ask one flying machine man, about the experiments of another, because every flying machine man thinks that his method is the correct one.

[1:08:46] Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Founders #210)

[1:10:26] They were always thinking of the next thing to do. They didn't waste much time worrying about the past.

[1:11:05] Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. — Driven From Within (Founders #213)

[1:12:56] They would have to learn to accommodate themselves to the circumstances.

[1:20:42] The best dividends on labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.

[1:27:37] He went his way always in his own way.

[1:31:45] A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#238 Jay Z: Decoded

23 mars 2022 | 118 min

What I learned from reading Decoded by Jay Z.

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[1:39] I would practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep

[2:10] Even back then I though I was the best.

[2:57] Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (Founders #219)

[4:32] Belief becomes before ability.

[5:06] Michael Jordan: The Life (Founders #212)

[5:46] The public praises people for what they practice in private.

[7:28] Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers.

[7:50] Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234)

[9:50] He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own — from Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Founders #209)

[12:47] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[13:35] I'm not gonna say that I thought I could get rich from rap, but I could clearly see that it was gonna get bigger before it went away. Way bigger.

[21:10] Over 20 years into his career and dude ain’t changed. He’s got his own vibe. You gotta love him for that. (Rick Rubin)

[21:41] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[25:27] I believe you can speak things into existence.

[27:20] Picking the right market is essential.

[29:29] All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason – they run out of money. —Don Valentine

[29:42] There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes- you don’t have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. The other financial metrics you can forget. —Don Valentine

[31:54] I went on the road with Big Daddy Kane for a while. I got an invaluable education watching him perform.

[33:12] Everything I do I learned from the guys who came before me. —Kobe

[34:15] I truly hate having discussions about who would win one on one or fans saying you’d beat Michael. I feel like Yo (puts his hands up like stop. Chill.) What you get from me is from him. I don’t get 5 championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.

[34:50] Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (Founders #214)

[37:20] This is a classic piece of OG advice. It's amazing how few people actually stick to it.

[38:04] Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success(Founders #56)

[39:04] The key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it's your first project.

[41:10] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233)

[44:46] We (Jay Z, Bono, Quincy Jones) ended up trading stories about the pressure we felt even at this point in our lives.

[45:22] Competition pushes you to become your best self. Jordan said the same thing about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

[46:43] If you got the heart and the brains you can move up quickly. There's no way to quantify all of this on a spreadsheet, but it's the dream of being the exception.

[52:26] He (Russell Simmons) changed the business style of a whole generation. The whole vibe of startup companies in Silicon Valley with 25 year old CEOs wearing shell toes is Russell's Def Jam style filtered through different industries.

[54:17] Jay Z’s approach is I'm going to find the smartest people that that know more than I do, and I'm gonna learn everything I can from them.

[54:49] He (Russell Simmons) knew that the key to success was believing in the quality of your own product enough to make people do business with you on your terms. He knew that great product was the ultimate advantage in competition.

[55:08] In the end it came down to having a great product and the hustle to move it.

[56:37] Learn how to build and sell and you will be unstoppable. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Founders #191)

[58:30] We gave those brands a narrative which is one of the reasons anyone buys anything. To own not just a product, but to become part of a story.

[59:30] The best thing for me to do is to ignore and outperform.

[1:01:16] Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

[1:06:01] Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary (Founders #78)

[1:08:42] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products(Founders #178)

[1:11:46] Long term success is the ultimate goal.

[1:12:58] Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love - Bill Gurley

[1:15:11] I have always used visualization the way athletes do, to conjure reality.

[1:18:14] The thing that distinguished Jordan wasn't just his talent, but his discipline, his laser-like commitment to excellence.

[1:19:42] The gift that Jordan had wasn't just that he was willing to do the work, but he loved doing it because he could feel himself getting stronger and ready for anything. That is the kind of consistency that you can get only by adding dead serious discipline of whatever talent you have.

[1:21:37] when you step outside of school and you have to teach yourself about life, you develop a different relationship to information. I've never been a purely linear thinker. You can see it to my rhymes. My mind is always jumping around restless, making connections, mixing, and matching ideas rather than marching in a straight line,

[1:27:41] Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram’s Mr. Sam (Founders #116)

[1:34:15] The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you. That you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.

[1:36:25] There are extreme levels of drive and pain tolerance in the history of entrepreneurship.

[1:38:45] Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

[1:42:24] I love sharp people. Nothing makes me like someone more than intelligence.

[1:44:17] They call it the game, but it's not. You can want success all you want but to get it you can't falter. You can't slip. You can't sleep— one eye open for real and forever.

[1:51:49] The thought that this cannot be life is one that all of us have felt at some point or another. When a bad decision and bad luck and bad situations feel like too much to bear those times. When we think this, this cannot be my story, but facing up to that kind of feeling can be a powerful motivation to change.

[1:54:18] Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#237 Julio Lobo (Cuba's Last Sugar Tycoon)

16 mars 2022 | 71 min

What I learned from reading The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon by John Paul Rathbone.

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[2:02] Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime (Founders #236)

[3:22] This is a cautionary tale.

[6:18] One of the main lessons of the book is just how fast things can change.

[6:25] The History of Cuba in 50 Events

[10:14] Lobo walked with a limp due to a murder attempt 14 years before that had blown a four inch chunk out of his skull.

[12:29] One of the most human of all desires is to perpetuate what you have created.

[12:55] Lobo thinks he has leverage when he really doesn’t.

[18:39] He dies in poverty. Imagine having $5 billion and then at the end of your life having to rely on an allowance from your adult daughters.

[20:30] I think about what Charlie Munger says: Don't try to be really smart. Just try to be consistently not dumb over a long period of time.

[20:58] Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams (Founders #146)

[22:59] Chico, I was born naked. I will probably die naked. And some of the happiest moments of my life happened when I was naked.

[29:01] From an early age it was apparent that Lobo sought not only wealth but glory too.

[30:21] He was an individualist who did not spare himself any sacrifice to attain his objectives.

[31:26] The clearest path to wealth is building a business that benefits somebody else's life. Make a product or service that makes somebody else's life better. Do that for a long period of time and keep improving it.

[33:45] His father told him I would much rather you make your mistakes now than later when I may not be around to pick up your pieces.

[38:16] It turns out that almost being executed makes you impatient for large success.

[40:32] If you instead focus on the prospective price change of a contemplated purchase, you are speculating. There is nothing improper about that. I know, however, that I am unable to speculate successfully, and I am skeptical of those who claim sustained success at doing so. Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game. And the fact that a given asset has appreciated in the recent past is never a reason to buy it. —Warren Buffett from The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227)

[45:09] Think about the type of funeral you want. There is a story about a person who died. The minister said it is now time to say something nice about the deceased. After long time a person came up and said, “His brother was worse.” That is not the kind of funeral you want. —Charlie Munger

[50:34] Alfred Nobel: A Biography (Founders #163)

[52:30] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King(Founders #37)

[54:26] They almost resorted to a duel, which was still common in Cuba at the time, where differences were often settled with machetes at dawn.

[1:04:34] There are times when chasing the things money can buy, one loses sight of the things which money can't buy and are usually free.

[1:05:10] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness (Founders #191)

[1:05:17] A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love, these things cannot be bought, they must be earned. —Naval Ravikant

[1:08:52] His business collapsed like a house of cards.

[1:09:34] It was the same ending that befell so many other famous speculators throughout history.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#236 Nims Purja (Mountain Climber)

11 mars 2022 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime by Nims Purja.

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[3:36] Walking out on my career felt risky, but I was prepared to gamble everything for my ambition.

[4:20] Your extremes are my normal.

[12:04] Wow, this is my shit. I'd been working without much thought, operating in the flow state that athletes often describe when they set world records or win championships. I was in the zone. Brother, I thought. You're a badass at high altitude.

[13:27] I was poor from the beginning. We didn't have any money, and the thought of owning a car was unimaginable. But we were a loving family, and I was a happy kid. It didn't take a lot to keep me amused.

[14:57] From an early age, I believed in the power of positive thinking.

[18:17] I also like the idea of being on top.

[19:00] Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234)

[19:03] I understood that to become a special forces operator, it was important to adapt to an increased workload.

[19:25] One thing I don’t even have on my list is “work hard.” If you don’t know that already, or you’re not willing to do it, you probably won’t be going far enough to need my list anyway. —Sam Walton

[19:44] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #141)

[20:58] This is insane: On weekends, my daily routine involved running for hours at a time. I'd haul my ass around the streets with two or three Gurkha buddies; we operated in a relay system, where I was the only soldier prevented from taking a break. One guy would accompany me for six miles, leading me along at a strong pace. Once he completed his distance, another running partner took over, and together we'd go six more miles. This went on for hours, and left me physically and psychologically pummeled.

[21:43] Emotional control was only one of the many traits I'd need to possess to become elite.

[22:22] Read the first 113 pages of this book Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193)

[24:14] I focused only on the 24 hours ahead. Today I will give 100 percent and survive, I thought at the beginning of each day. I'll worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

[26:47] You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t start by saying, ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ If you do that every single day, soon you will have a wall. —Will Smith

[28:52] I always smiled my way through the mud.

[29:03] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. —Isadore Sharp (Founders #184) Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

[30:02] Dru Riley founder of Trends.VC has a 100 Rules Personal Philosophy

[32:14] The glass-half-empty attitude went against everything I'd been taught in the military, where grumbling or giving up wasn't an effective strategy. If problems or challenges came my way, I was supposed to find solutions, having been trained to adapt and survive.

[35:30] The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Founders #100)

[43:33] I approached every day with a positive thought: I can do this. I will navigate every problem the mission can throw at me. I've already climbed the world's tallest peak. The only thing standing in my way right now is funding. Get out there and smash it.

[48:48] I'd proven to everybody that it is never too late to make a massive change in your life.

[53:43] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233)

[54:40] There were occasions when a panicked call would come over the radio: “Nims, it's snowing heavily on the mountain. It's going to be a rough climb!"

Rather than wallowing in negativity, I'd make a smart-ass comment to lift the mood. "Come on, bro, what do you think we're getting on a mountain—a bloody heat wave?"

[54:58] Mark Twain once wrote that if a person’s job was to eat a frog, then it was best to take care of business first thing in the morning. But if the work involved eating two frogs, it was best to eat the bigger one first. In other words: Get the hardest job out of the way.

[57:57] Suffering sometimes creates a weird sense of satisfaction for me. It creates a sense of pride when seeing a job through to the end.

[58:23] It is important to keep the promises you make yourself: If I say that I'm going to run for an hour, I'll run for a full hour. If I plan to do 300 push-ups in a training session, I won't quit until I've done them all-because brushing off the effort means letting myself down, and I don't want to have to live with that. And neither should you.

[1:02:05] The adventure taught me an important lesson. Fear was never going to hold me back from pressing ahead with my plans. It established in me a mindset with zero doubts and zero tolerance for excuses.

[1:03:12] We worked as a small expedition unit, in teams of three, four, or five, but we moved with the power of 10 bulls and the heart of a hundred men.

[1:03:24] Most of all, I realized that somebody in the 14 peaks had been a launchpad. I needed more. I have to push my limits to the max, sitting tight, waiting it out and living in the past have never been for me.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#235 Steve Jobs (The Pixar Story)

7 mars 2022 | 78 min

What I learned from reading To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy.

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[1:34] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233)

[3:42] Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Founders #34)

[3:52] Readwise App

[7:22] George Lucas: A Life (Founders #35)

[7:48] Steve jobs had been a Silicon Valley's most visible celebrity but that made it all the more glaring that he had not had a hit in a long time —a very long time.

[8:49] Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (Founders #77)

[13:35] Why would I join a company that had been struggling for sixteen years and whose payroll was paid every month out of the personal checkbook of its owner? I had not realized how dire Pixar's financial situation was. It had no cash, no reserves, and it depended for its funds on the whim of a person whose reputation for volatility was legendary.

[14:05] There is no a better advertisement than a demo.

[15:57] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (Founders #141)

[16:03] There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me. —Arnold

[16:31] I looked at my start-up clients and to me they were on an adventure. I yearned for the kind of adventure they were on.

[17:28] Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life (Founders #229)

[17:46] I regard myself as guardian of the company's soul.

[19:06] Pixar has this amazing collection of talent doing work that no one has seen before. Now it's time to turn that into a business. —Steve Jobs

[22:01] Steve had an almost permanent intensity about him, like he was always in top gear.

[28:25] Pixar was embarked on a lonely courageous quest through terrain, into which neither it nor anyone else had ever ventured.

[28:52] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader (Founders #19)

[31:37] Home video was turning animated feature films into big business. Bigger than we had ever imagined.

[32:24] There was no modern precedent for taking an independent animation company public.

[36:54] Look at the value of the major Hollywood studios and you'll see their library of films is really significant.

[39:27] There was no part of Steve that bought into the idea of making products that might not all have a shot at greatness.

[41:22] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony (Founders #102)

[48:40] Steve once told me that the gestation of great products takes much longer than it appears. What seems to emerge from nowhere belies a long process of development, trials, and missteps.

[53:46] The problem with success, even a little success, is that it changes you. You are no longer walking along the same precipice that drove you to do great work in the first place. Success can take the edge away.

[54:16] Creative vision does not spring forth fully formed.

[59:33] Fear and ego conspire to rein in creativity, and it is easy to allow creative inspiration to take a back seat to safety.

[1:01:38] The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice (Founders #126)

[1:06:41] Once Steve decided what he wanted in a negotiation, he developed something akin to a religious conviction about it. In his mind, if he didn't get what he wanted, nothing else would take its place, so he'd walk away. This made Steve an incredibly strong negotiator.

[1:10:52] One never knows if an event that appears detrimental is in fact part of a larger pattern that we cannot see.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#234 Sam Walton: Made In America

28 februari 2022 | 115 min

What I learned from rereading Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton.

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[1:56] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[5:45] We just got after it and stayed after it.

[6:06] Foxes and Hedgehogs

[6:39] Hedgehogs may not be as clever as foxes but they obsessively measure and track everything about their business, and over time, they acquire deep, relevant knowledge and expertise. Their single minded approach may appear risky at times but they are conservative by nature. Hedgehogs don’t speculate or make foolish bets. If all their eggs are in that one proverbial basket, they follow Mark Twain’s advice – and watch that basket very carefully.

[7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way.

[7:28] Hedgehogs are the ones who build great, lasting companies. As entrepreneurs, they are the rarest of breeds – those who can start something anew, make it work, stick with it, and build something special, and ultimately, inspire others along the way, with their determination, dedication and commitment.

[8:49] At first, we amazed ourselves. And before too long, we amazed everybody else too.

[9:26] Think about how crazy this is. He died weeks after that writing this. His last days were spent categorizing and organizing his knowledge so future generations can benefit.

[12:32] Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger(Founders #90)

[12:56] "It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears, Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all. —Charlie Munger

[17:11] What motivates the man is the desire to absolutely be on the top of the heap.

[17:32] Practice your craft so much that you're the best in the world at it and the money will take care of itself.

[18:44] We exist to provide value to our customers.

[21:18] A Conversation with Paul Graham

[22:32] It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[26:42] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg. (Founders #231)

[29:35] It didn’t take me long to start experimenting—that’s just the way I am and always have been.

[30:56] Do things that other people are not doing.

[33:13] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

[33:41] I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of the biggest contributions to the later success of Wal Mart.

[34:10] Our money was made by controlling expenses. I gotta read that again because it's so important. Our money was made by controlling expenses.

[37:49] Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Founders #150)

[38:37] I’ve always thought of problems as challenges, and this one wasn’t any different. I didn’t dwell on my disappointment. The challenge at hand was simple enough to figure out: I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

[42:47] Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

[45:12] The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74)

[47:08] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107)

[49:56] Sam had a really simple hypothesis for the first Wal Mart: We were trying to find out if customers in a town of 6,000 people would come to our kind of a barn and buy the same merchandise strictly because of price. The answer was yes.

[52:19] I have always been a Maverick who enjoys shaking things up and creating a little anarchy.

[54:23] In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables. —Charlie Munger

[55:02] He does something really smart here. And this is something I missed the first time I read the book. He finds a way to force himself to know the numbers for every single store.

[56:13] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

[58:11] Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213) I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. —Michael Jordan

[58:43] We paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to the way things were supposed to be done, you know, the way the rules of retail said it had to be done.

[1:03:15] Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[1:04:00] One thing I never did—which I’m really proud of—was to push any of my kids too hard. I knew I was a fairly overactive fellow, and I didn’t expect them to try to be just like me.

[1:06:38] I was never in anything for the short haul.

[1:10:36] Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) Like so many NBA players, Drexler was operating mostly off his great store of talent, absent any serious attention to the important details of the game. Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

[1:11:56] And you can think about Sam constantly learning from everybody else, visiting stores —that is a form of practice. Every single craft has a form of practice. It just is not as obvious as it is in sports.

[1:13:26] He proceeds to extract every piece of information in your possession.

[1:15:37] He has just been a master of taking the best of everything everybody else is doing and adapting it to his own needs.

[1:18:52] We were serious operators who were in it for the long haul, that we had a disciplined financial philosophy, and that we had growth on our minds.

[1:19:54] Most people seem surprised to learn that I've never done much investing in anything except Walmart.

[1:20:42] He's like I just figured out the Walmart's worked. And then all I did was focus on making more of them. You don't have to over-complicate it.

[1:23:04] If you ask me if I'm an organized person, I would say flat out, no, not at all. Being organized would really slow me down. (Optimize for flexibility)

[1:24:26] The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson (Founders #127): My view is different. My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important, and you devote all your time to those and forget everything else. If you try to do all thousand things, answer all thousand phone calls, you will dilute your efforts in those areas that are really essential

[1:26:15] I think one of Sam's greatest strengths is that he is totally unpredictable. He is always his own person. He is totally independent in his thinking.

[1:26:45] If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. —Bruce Lee

[1:28:40] You can’t possibly know the TAM. You are in the middle of inventing the TAM.

[1:30:08] There is no speed limit by Derek Sivers

[1:31:54] Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion (Founders #45)

[1:41:35] I like to keep everybody guessing. I don't want our competitors getting too comfortable with feeling that they can predict what we're going to do next.

[1:42:25] He ties that investment int technology with the compounding savings and over the long-term, he's going to destroy his competition just off this one metric alone.

[1:43:39] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192)

[1:47:56] Sam’s 10 Rules for Building A Business

[1:48:04] One thing I don’t even have on my list is “work hard.” If you don’t know that already, or you’re not willing to do it, you probably won’t be going far enough to need my list anyway.

[1:48:51] Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work.

[1:50:54] Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running—long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation’s largest retailer—we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. 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.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#233 Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin (PayPal)

23 februari 2022 | 114 min

What I learned from reading The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni.

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[0:50] Your life will be shaped by the things that you create and the people you make them with.

[2:45] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age (Founders #95)

[3:17] Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Founders #1 and #30)

[4:48] It is hard to find a lukewarm opinion about PayPal's founders.

[5:29] To skip PayPal's creation is to neglect the most interesting stuff about its founders. It is to miss the defining experiences of their early professional lives —one that defined so much of what came later.

[6:39] There's just so many times I put down the book and I'm like, “That is really, really smart, what they just did there.”

[6:59] It perfectly captures when they [Musk, Thiel, Sacks, Hoffman, Levchin, Rabois] were just hustlers trying to figure it out.

[8:31] For the next several years, the company’s survival was an open question. They were sued, defrauded, copied, mocked— from the outset. PayPal was a startup under siege. Its founders took on multi-billion dollar financial firms, a critical press and skeptical public, hostile regulators, and even foreign fraudsters.

[10:14] From Henry Ford’s autobiography: That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work.

[11:11] Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy (Founders #89)

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson (Founders #115)

Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151)

[12:03] A wall in the engineering office had two banners. One was titled The World Domination Index. The World Domination Index was a total count of PayPal's users that day. The other was a banner bearing the words Memento Mori —Latin for remember that you will die. PayPal's oddball team was out to dominate the world, or die trying.

[15:37] At PayPal disharmony produced discovery.

[16:22] Steve Jobs The Lost Interview Notes

[17:36] Properly understood PayPal story is a four year odyssey of near failure followed by near failure.

[20:22] He showed early signs of his hallmark intensity. He wanted to be the best at everything he did.

[21:08] Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss

[21:50] Knowledge Project: Marc Andreessen

[23:01] What would Shimada do? I understand how this guy thinks. I've studied how he thinks. Now I'm presented with a difficult decision. I'm running it through my own calculus—but to enhance that is like, let me ask what would Shimada do in this situation? That is genius.

[23:47] The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (Founders #41)

[25:19] Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel (Founders #31)

[29:25] Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. —Charlie Munger

[31:14] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

[32:25] "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Characte by Richard Feynman

[35:32] He walked into Musk's his bedroom. The room was literally filled with biographies about business luminaries and how they succeeded. Elon was prepping himself and studying to be a famous entrepreneur.

[38:32] Musk had learned that startup success wasn't just about dreaming up the right ideas as much as discovering and then rapidly discarding the wrong ones.

[39:04] Keep iterating on a loop that says, Am I doing something useful for other people? Because that is what a company is supposed to do. Too much precision in early plans, Musk believed, cut that iterative loop prematurely.

[40:10] My mind is always on X, by default, even in my sleep. I am by nature, obsessive compulsive. What matters to me is winning and not in a small way. —Elon Musk

[48:20] PayPal prioritized speed on everything over everything else except in one category —recruiting. They would rather staff slowly then compromise on quality.

[48:47] Max would keep repeating “As hire As. Bs hire Cs. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down.”

[50:52] Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham

[52:31] Is there something that you're not working on that could be a more simple version of what you're currently doing?

[55:30] Why is that crazy? Because three years later Elon Musk will make $180 million from this broken situation that he's currently finds himself in.

[55:48] Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple by Mike Mortiz (Founders #76)

[57:48] Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger (Founders #172)

[59:02] There is no speed limit by Derek Sivers

[1:03:51] Make your product as easy as email.

[1:05:08] Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall (Bonus episode in between #112 and #113)

[1:10:19] In Levchin and Thiel, Musk found something he rarely encountered— competitors as driven to win as he was.

[1:11:36] “I really liked this Elon guy”, Levchin remembered thinking. “He’s obviously completely crazy, but he's really, really smart. And I really like smart people.”

[1:18:23] Oftentimes it's better to just pick a path and do it rather than vacilitate endlessly on the choice. —Elon Musk

[1:18:40] Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell (Founders #36)

[1:19:39] He was going to tame us young whippersnappers with these like seasoned financial executives or whatever. And we're like, uh, these are the same seasoned executives at these banks who can't do jack shit, who can't compete with us. This doesn't make sense. —Elon Musk

[1:21:16] The founder may be bizarre and erratic, but this is a creative force and they should run the company. —Elon Musk

[1:22:26] Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Brooks

[1:23:33] Company leaders set a cultural tone of impatience.

[1:26:17] Every moment of friction for the customer was fat to be cut.

[1:31:00] Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. —Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Founders #34)

[1:31:35] Peter Thiel’s tendency to buck convey convention had nothing to do with math or political philosophy. It had to do with people. He didn't give a shit. He cared about smart people who worked hard.

[1:37:25] PayPal was a company of extremely aggressive people with a real bias for action.

[1:38:24] You can copy what I'm doing, but I'm only focused on this. While payments is just one part of your gigantic business.

[1:40:32] PayPal began this effort as it had begun much else over the prior years with a little planning, quick action, and faith in itself to iterate its way to success.

[1:47:25] Just because someone shoots five bullets at you and misses does not preclude the sixth one from killing you.

[1:47:33] A great Steve Jobs story

[1:51:23] Reid Hoffman forces himself to regularly ask others, "Who is the most eccentric or unorthodox person, you know, and how could I meet them?"

[1:52:25] It is hard but fair. I live by those words. —Michael Jordan in his autobiography (Founders #213)

[1:52:34] PayPal's earliest employees reserve their highest praise for those who tread the same stony road— founders across varied fields of endeavor. "Those that bring the big ideas into hard, unpredictable reality are the practitioners, the high-leverage ones, and I admire them almost without reservation," Max wrote "One key ingredient of being this kind of person is an almost irrational lack of fear of failure and irrational optimism. —Max Levchin

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#232 Alexander the Great

16 februari 2022 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus.

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[1:28] Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulleby Paul Johnson (Founders #226)

[2:16] Each was brave, highly intelligent, almost horrifically self-assured, whose ambitions knew no bounds.

[2:46] He was a man of formidable achievements. He was highly creative. He woke up early. His diet was spare. He was skilled with the sword and the spear and an expert at all forms of arms drills. He dressed to be seen.

[3:50] He had supernatural self confidence and persistence. There is no substitute for will.

[4:26] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225)

[5:50] Addiontal research: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Addenum Glimpses of Olympias

[6:03] The Macedonians were a rugged people.

[7:23] Think about this— At 19 years old you think it is your place in history to take revenge on something that happened 150 years previous. That is unapologetically extreme.

[9:42] There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. It is: If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.” —Edwin Land

[12:11] Alexander had excessive tolerance of fatigue

[13:14] Combine an excessive tolerance of fatigue with an intolerance of slowness.

[14:06] Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp (Founders #184) "Excellence is the capacity to take pain."

[14:17] All the things you want in life are on the other side of difficulty and discomfort.

[17:12] The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (Founders #175)

[21:59] He considered that the task of training and educating his son was too important to be true and trusted to the ordinary run of teachers.

[22:14] Knowledge Project: Inside the Mind of A Famous Investor | Marc Andreessen

[25:03] Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones (Founders #161)

Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life by Sidney Harman (Founders #229)

Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. (Founders #228)

[27:40] Learning is nonlinear.

[31:38] I meant to say Alexander, not Aristotle. Alexander is the one writing the letter to Aristotle.

[33:49] Alexander was a lover of books.

[38:55] George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones (Founders #35)

[44:51] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg (Founders #231)

[49:16] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann (Founders #192)

[51:24] Fortune generally makes those whom she has compelled to put their trust in her alone more thirsty for glory than capable of coping with it.

[54:11] What folly forced you, knowing as you did the fame of my achievements, to try the fortunes of war?

[58:05] No trait of Alexander's was more firmly held or enduring than his admiration for genuine excellence and brilliant achievement.

[58:30] Winners don't go around leaving negative comments about other people winning.

[1:01:59] Stand firm, for it is toil and danger that lead to glorious achievements.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#231 William Rosenberg (Founder of Dunkin Donuts)

12 februari 2022 | 79 min

What I learned from reading Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[5:18] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

[5:30] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age (Founders #93)

[10:28] When I opened my first Dunkin Donuts store I focused on making the first store a success. Then after I did that I could move on to the second and the third and the fourth, but I gave all my heart and my soul to making that first store a winner.

[12:13] From an early age these working experiences taught me that if I put my mind to it and worked hard, I could do whatever I was doing as well or better than most other people. I learned to strive for excellence.

[14:05] Odd as it may sound I think one of the best lessons I ever learned from my Dad is what he didn't do properly. He taught me what I never wanted to have happen to my family.

[15:02] I decided I wanted to quit school, go to work and help support my family. I knew they desperately needed help. We didn't have enough money to live.

[19:25] I learned an important lesson about sales. You don't sell to people. You get people to buy from you. You say to yourself, if I were in their position why would I want to buy this product? If I was in their position why would it be to my benefit?

[19:48] The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century (Founders #206)

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Founders #170)

Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82)

Confessions of an Advertising Man (Founders #89)

[22:58] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (Founders #141)

[27:00] They were not interested in building a long-term business. They were only interested in a fast buck, buying their wives mink coats, and driving Cadillacs. They did not have the same ideas that I had about building a business. These guys didn't care about gaining respect, about being honest and honorable. I didn't want to be in business with people of that nature.

[27:29] Adversity is a great teacher. Little did I know that this downturn of events would catapult me to a higher ground.

[30:25] Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies (Founders #181)

[32:18] I came from within inches of quitting that day.

[32:43] Not many things are as exciting and satisfying as being part of a business that is succeeding and growing rapidly. There's an atmosphere and a feeling that's tremendous.

[41:48] How can you get closer to the customer? And then just keep maintaining that relationship.

[42:44] I wasn't content to rest on my laurels. Good enough wasn't good enough for me. I saw that we had a good thing going and I wanted to expand in a big, big way before somebody else did.

[43:02] Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business(Founders #20)

[50:07] Identify your bottleneck and put all your resources into attacking that bottleneck.

[51:33] Focus is saying no. —Steve Jobs

[53:34] Bloomberg by Bloomberg (Founders #228)

[56:39] Keep your foot on the gas and stay close to the customer.

[1:00:19] Les Schwab’s autobiography (Founders #105)

[1:02:27] I was eager to have Bob takeover. I think this is common in family businesses when a parent hands over the reigns to the child. But the danger is that the parent becomes blind to some of the drawbacks of such an arrangement. This didn't become apparent until later.

[1:10:22] They spent a lot of time in court preparing and fighting legal battles. Instead of building the business. I stuck by my son and his team. My fortune in Dunkin donuts stock went from $30 million to $3 million.

[1:13:06] I made many mistakes in my life. I believe one of the biggest mistakes was trying too hard to accommodate my son's desires.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#230 Lucille Ball (TV's biggest star)

7 februari 2022 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball.

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[3:19] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #141)

[3:28] Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Founders #193)

[4:37] Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.

[6:21] I like reading about people that do things that they're not supposed to do.

[9:45] Create a comprehensive family history.

[14:43] People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don't strive or exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field-not only show business-often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood.

[19:27] This is a school that teaches acting, telling what is going to wind up being one of the most successful actresses that ever lives, that she can't do it.

[20:29] I soon learned that to survive you have to be very strong, very healthy, and damned resilient. Rarely does anyone give you an encouraging word.

[20:52] I'd show up early for rehearsals and stay until they had to sweep me off the stage. . .I didn't give up. I wore out my soles trudging to casting offices.

[21:08] I can't say that I was discouraged. For some incomprehensible reason, knew that someday I'd make it.

[21:15] Remember that there are practically no “overnight" successes. Before that brilliant hit performance came ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years in the salt mines, sweating it out.

[25:08] I was determined to stay in Hollywood. I would do what I could to make sure I'd survive the long haul.

[27:34] What would you give to be a star in two years?’’ Lela asked me when I first was getting to know her.

“What d’ya mean?’’

"Would you give me every breath you draw for two years? Will you work seven days a week? Will you sacrifice all your social life?"

“I certainly will," I promised.

"Okay," she said, "let's start.

Lela was the first person to see me as a clown with glamour.

[28:43] Lela taught us never to see anyone as bigger or more important than ourselves.

[30:07] Buster Keaton used to tell me about dozens of Hollywood people who ran into trouble. This was comforting, like reading an autobiography and thinking, “Well, that happened to them, too. I'm not the only one.”

[35:51] He soon learned that in striking out on your own, you have to throw out your chest and sell yourself.

[42:03] I learned the bitter lesson that directors and producers can make or break an actress.

I was a star, but I felt that I couldn't afford to turn down parts for fear of infuriating these bigwigs

If I did turn down a script I would be put on suspension, without salary.

I couldn't accept an offer from any other studio, no matter how good, yet I could be fired at any time without the bosses showing cause.

All the glittering “stars" were at the mercy of the whims of the top people.

[45:12] I had a driving, consuming ambition to succeed in show business.

[47:23] Founder mentality. Desi and I decided that since nobody else seemed to have faith in us as a team, we’d form our own corporation to promote ourselves. Desilu Productions, Inc., was launched.

[48:54] At that time, television was regarded as the enemy by Hollywood. So terrified was Hollywood of this medium, movie people were afraid to make even guest appearances. (As bill gates and Walt Disney learned — go with the phenomenon— not against it)

[50:50] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace (Founders #178)

[52:57] To my delight, I discovered that the I Love Lucy show drew from everything I'd learned in the movies, radio, the theater, and vaudeville.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#229 Sidney Harman (Founder of Harman Kardon)

30 januari 2022 | 94 min

What I learned from reading Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life by Sidney Harman

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[3:46] Foxes and Hedgehogs

[7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way.

[8:27] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

[9:38] “The essence of commitment is making a decision. The Latin root for decision is to ‘cut away from,’ as in an incision. When you commit to something, you are cutting away all your other possibilities, all your other options” From the book The Lombardi Rules: 26 Lessons from Vince Lombardi—The World's Greatest Coach

[11:16] The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis

[13:12] I regard myself as guardian of the company’s soul.

[15:05] Steve Jobs liked to say the Beatles were his management model—four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great.

[15:50] Avoid recklessness, encourage daring.

[18:08] His main point here is the fact that he started the company in defiance of conventional wisdom

[24:08] Bloomberg by Bloomberg

[26:16] I believe that refusing to accept business orthodoxy uncritically can open your eyes to opportunity.

[34:56] We were free to follow our best instincts. We were free to bring totally new thinking to what we were doing.

[38:44] Treat hard work and your smarts respectfully, but recognize that they are neither decisive nor do they guarantee anything. Most of all, I told myself, don’t underestimate determination and persistence, and never quit.

[40:25] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys

[41:51] I loved building a business. What could be better? The products were wonderful. They employed technology wisely. They made beautiful music. My instinct for marketing—for selling, for emotive advertising—was not only indulged, but rewarded.

[43:00] Mavericks do not play well with others.

[55:12] It did not require a genius to recognize that I was looking at the future.

[58:34] Reducing business matters to their essence, whittling away that which obscures or is unnecessary, has served me well. I admire greatly those who practice the art.

[59:48] A company requires an articulated mission, a philosophical base, a moral compass, critical judgment, and the realization that it is a dynamic, living instrument populated by complex human beings.

[1:05:05] The best leaders are catalysts who prompt others to reach beyond their most natural abilities to find something they had previously thought beyond their reach.

[1:18:03] I have found that by insisting on simple explanations, the mystery disappears and with it most of the nonsense.

[1:23:12] It is vital that everyone know what business he is in.

[1:28:23] Opportunity can be attacked with enthusiasm.

[1:30:01] The person who invests in writing, who exercises the discipline to do it well, and who uses it frequently, will possess a matchless instrument for discovery, clarity, and persuasion.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#228 Michael Bloomberg

27 januari 2022 | 81 min

What I learned from reading Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg.

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[2:08] Answering to no one is the ultimate situation.

[3:02] Twitter thread on Michael Bloomberg by Neckar.Substack.com

[5:28] We never made the error that so many others have: mistaking their product for the device that delivers it.

[6:27] We knew our core product was data and analytics.

[7:01] We were motivated by an idea that we could build something new that just might make a difference.

[9:04] Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

[10:05] I was willing to do anything that they wanted. I would have never left voluntarily.

[16:00] Street smarts and common sense were better predictors of career achievements.

[17:40] Almost all occupations have a big selling component: selling your firm, your ideas and yourself.

[18:20] It is the doers, the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies, who go the furthest and achieve the most.

[21:36] Comparing John to Bill on leadership, I always thought John was more egalitarian, but less effective.

[22:55] It was a lowly start. We slaved in our underwear and an un-air conditioned, a bank vault.

[23:57] The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb

[24:22] Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity by Frank Slootman

[27:20] David Geffen biography: The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood

[30:07] It's said that 80 percent of life is just showing up. I believe that. You can never have complete mastery over your existence. You can't choose the advantages you start out with, and you certainly can't pick your genetic intelligence level. But you can control how hard you work.

[31:20] Life, I've found, works the following way: Daily, you're presented with many small and surprising opportunities. Sometimes you seize one that takes you to the top. Most, though, if valuable at all, take you only a little way. To succeed, you must string together many small incremental advances-rather than count on hitting the lottery jackpot once. Trusting to great luck is a strategy not likely to work for most people. As a practical matter, constantly enhance your skills, put in as many hours as possible, and make tactical plans for the next few steps. Then, based on what actually occurs, look one more move ahead and adjust the plan. Take lots of chances, and make lots of individual, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

[32:12] Don't devise a Five-Year Plan or a Great Leap Forward. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either.

[34:16] I truly pity people who don't like their jobs. They struggle at work, so unhappily, for ultimately so much less success, and thus develop even more reason to hate their occupations. There's too much delightful stuff to do in this short lifetime not to love getting up on a weekday morning.

[38:48] Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly failure? Absolutely. Happiness for me has always been the thrill of the unknown, trying something that everyone says can't be done, feeling that gnawing pit in my stomach that says danger ahead. I want action.

[40:28] Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

[41:37] I rented a one room temporary office. It was about a hundred square feet of space with a view of an alley, a far cry from my previous place of employment. I deposited $300,000 of my Salomon Brothers windfall into a corporate checking account. And fifteen years later, I had a billion-dollar business.

[45:25] By endurance we conquer.

[46:50] Zero to One by Peter Thiel

[47:14] Made In Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita

[51:19] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

[54:35] Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games

[58:30] Each news story is a product demo. More demos lead to more revenue. More revenue leads to more stories and then even more revenue.

[1:03:24] He's got a lot of these like roundabout ways to get in front of potential customers. He’s repurposing the information that his unique business collects.

[1:15:53] When it comes to competition, being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. —Jeff Bezos

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

I read 66 biographies last year— Here are my top 10!

24 januari 2022 | 12 min

#227 The Essays of Warren Buffett

20 januari 2022 | 117 min

What I learned from reading The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham.

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[1:39] Founders #88 Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters — All of them!

[2:36] Buffet and Charlie Munger built this sprawling enterprise by investing in businesses with excellent economic characteristics and run by outstanding managers.

[5:21] Founders #224 Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson

[5:41] Books on Henry Singleton: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success and Distant Force A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It

[7:06] Founders #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson

[8:03] Founders #34 Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull

[9:19] Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.

[9:58] Founders #208 In The Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

[11:11] Run your business as if:

You own 100% of it

It's the only asset that you hold

You can’t sell it for 50 years

[14:04] Buffett’s essays are sprinkled with historical reference points, especially economic history. He reflects the importance of understanding the past to handle the present and navigate the future.

[16:04] A main theme of Buffett: Identify good ideas and then concentrate your resources around them.

[16:54] Buffett’ Shareholder Letters on Kindle

[23:44] Founders #104 Leading By Design: The IKEA Story

[24:53] Founders #93 and Founders #222 A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market

[27:19] Businesses seldom operate in a tranquil, no surprise environment and earnings simply don't advance smoothly.

[29:28] Founders #143 Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II Loomis had one important characteristic. His ability to concentrate completely on a chief objective, even at the cost of neglecting matters that appear to other people to be of equal importance.

[31:19] The competitive position of each of our business grows either weaker or stronger each day. If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs, and improving our products and services, we gained strength. But if we treat customers with indifference or tolerate bloat, our businesses will wither on a daily basis.

[33:45] Founders #50 Marc Andreessen’s Blog Archive

[36:07] Business is like nature. It doesn't care if you arrive at the right answer from the wrong reasoning.

[42:23] Games are won by players who focus on the playing field, not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.

[47:16] Some part of your business philosophy will not be financial and that's the way it's supposed to be.

[50:39] Founders #155 Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

[58:15] “My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” —Edwin Land

[1:01:50] Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers.

[1:02:16] Loss of focus is what worries Charlie and me the most.

[1:04:08] Helpful cheat sheet to use when reading Warren’s shareholder letters

[1:06:30] I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire. We have never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.

[1:10:33] By being so cautious in respect to leverage and having loads of liquidity, we will be equipped both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival.

[1:18:38] Bull markets can obscure mathematical laws, but they cannot repeal them.

[1:19:14] The 3 part series on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick Founders #73, 74, and 75 Book links: The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick:The Life of the Perfect Capitalist, and Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America

[1:19:44] Cut the prices, scoop them market, watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.

[1:21:00] Founders #96 James J. Hill: Empire Builder of The Northwest

[1:24:09] One of Larry Ellison’s favorite maxims was, “The brain’s primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.” Book: The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

[1:24:55] There's two ideas that saves us time and effort: 1. If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. 2. If it is worth doing, do it to excess.

[1:28:09] An absolute masterclass on how to differentiate your product. Scroll all the way down. It’s appendix B.

[1:50:33] If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.

[1:52:28] If you can't predict what tomorrow will bring, you must be prepared for whatever it does.

[1:54:24] Advice from Charlie Munger: You should reserve much time for quiet reading and thinking.

[1:54:46] Buffett's decision to limit his activities to a few kinds, and to maximize his attention to them, and to keep doing so for 50 years was a Lollapalooza.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers." — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

12 januari 2022 | 67 min

What I learned from reading Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.

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[0:55] I have always had a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth, even if it puts them in a minority of one.

[1:20] 4 traits of heroes:

1. Absolute independence of mind. Think everything through yourself.

2. Act resolutely and consistently.

3. Ignore the media.

4. Act with personal courage at all times regardless of the consequences to yourself.

[2:25] Churchill by Paul Johnson

[2:47] Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson and Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.

[3:34] Founders #196 Book link: The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitzby Erik Larson. “It’s slothful not to compress your thoughts.” —Churchill

[4:58] They carved out vast empires for themselves and hammered their names into the history of the earth.

[5:04] Each was brave, highly intelligent, and almost horrifically self-assured.

[6:09] Founders #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World "People are packaged deals. You take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same thing." —Steve Jobs

[10:22] Alexander the Great read Homer all of his life and knew the passages by heart. It was to him, a Bible, a guide to heroic morality, a book of etiquette and a true adventure story. The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer.

[11:50] Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

[12:15] The most important factor, as always with men of action, was sheer will.

[15:56] Caesar appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible.

[16:15] Founders #155 Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos “You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow."

[18:33] Caesar was a man of colossal energy and farsighted cunning. He aimed to conquer posterity as well as the world.

[19:42] You should avoid an unfamiliar word as a ship avoids a reef. —Julius Caesar

[20:55] You train an animal, you teach a person. —Sol Price

[23:02] Caesar’s approach to difficulty was all problems are solvable.

[24:36] Caesar was a man of exceptional ability over a huge range of activities. Among his qualities: great mental power, energy, steadfastness, a gift for understanding everything under the sun, vitality, and fiery quickness of mind. Few men have had such a combination of boldness shrewdness and wisdom.

[26:30] George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

[27:14] Founders #191 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

[27:25] George Washington was a vigorous and active man, an early riser about his business all day. And by no means intellectually idle, he accumulated a library of 800 books.

[29:57] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love

[35:08] His (Washington) strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish.

[36:12] All that counts is survival. The rest is just words.

[37:18] A lesson from the history of entrepreneurship: Why you start your company matters. Doesn’t have to be complex. A great example: Phil Knight said he started Nike because he believed if everyone got out and ran a few miles every day the world would be a better place.

[42:06] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

[45:23] Words and the ability to weave them into webs which cling to the memory are extremely important in forwarding action.

[53:01] Founders #200 Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson: This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are, rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can't of be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers." — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#225 Winston Churchill

9 januari 2022 | 83 min

What I learned from reading Churchill by Paul Johnson.

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[2:09] Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down.

[4:19] The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. (Founders #196)

[4:57] He wrote best-selling biographies on Napoleon, Churchill, Eisenhower, Socrates, and Mozart.

[6:39] 3 part series on Larry Ellison: Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle (Founders #124), The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice (Founders #126), The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison(Founders #127)

[7:40] How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Dennis (Founders #129)

[8:35] On the importance of belief: I am not asking you to be Winston Churchill. None of us could be. But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly. Do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and, worse still, if you believe you never can believe, then, by all means, go on reading this book. But take it from me, your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else?

[10:15] How did one man do so much, for so long, and so effectively?

[11:29] Reading is not a chore. Reading is theft. It is a robbery. Someone smarter than you has spent 20 years beating their head against the wall trying to solve the problem you're dealing with. You can steal that hard won knowledge and make it yours. That is power.

[12:57] Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life by Richard Branson (Founders #49)

[15:27] Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

[16:44] My personal email list: My top 10 highlights from Churchill.

[21:51] He had accumulated a number of critics and even enemies, and a reputation for being brash, arrogant, presumptuous, disobedient, boastful, and a bounder.

[22:22] He thirsted for office, power, and the chance to make history.

[27:29] Paul Orfalea The educational system teaches kids they have to be good at everything, or else. Out of the classroom, I've found this just isn't so. Adults have a much easier time. They get to specialize. They pick one thing. It's a whole lot easier. Copy This!: How I Turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 Square Feet into a Company Called Kinko's (Founders #181)

[33:34] He is so resourceful and undismayed.

[35:00] It's amazing how much of an advantage simply not giving up can give you.

[37:28] Don’t turn your back on he who will not accept defeat.

[38:10] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS (Founders #192)

[41:09] Really it’s a pretty simple philosophy. What you have to do is just draw a line in the dirt, and force the bureaucracy back behind that line. And then know for sure that a year will go by and it will be back across that line, and you’ll have to do the same thing again. —Sam Walton

[42:26] Shit happens. Acknowledge it. Learn from it. Forget it. Move on. —Paul Van Duren Authentic: A Memoir by The Founder of Vans (Founders #126)

[44:00] Churchill was again sent to the bottom and had to face the task of wearily climbing the ladder again, for the third time in his life. It was not so easy now he was nearing fifty.

[44:35] The World Crisis by Winston Churchill

[45:01] No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money by David Lough

[45:40] Churchill had his own version of PEDs: In those days, Churchill often took several whiffs of pure oxygen to lift him before a bout of oratory, and he traveled up with two canisters.

[47:14] He called for a premium on effort and a penalty on inertia.

[50:30] You have to work yourself into a position where you can trust your own judgment. That's all you have in life.

[52:28] Never underestimate your opponent. All downside, no upside.

[1:02:49] From Shoe Dog: I looked down the table. Everyone was sinking, slumping forward. I looked at Johnson. He was staring at the papers before him, and there was something in his handsome face, some quality I'd never seen there before. Surrender. Like everyone else in the room, he was giving up. The nation's economy was in the tank, a recession was under way. Gas lines, political gridlock, rising unemployment, Nixon being Nixon-Vietnam. It seemed like the end times. Everyone in the room had already been worrying about how they were going to make the rent, pay the light bill. Now this. I cleared my throat. "So...in other words," I said. I cleared my throat again, pushed aside my yellow legal pad. "What I'm trying to say is, we’ve got them right where we want them."

[1:08:52] We shall never surrender.

[1:10:00] Identify your most valuable asset and go all in: What’s going to win this war? Airpower.

[1:13:10] From Estee Lauder's autobiography: No community was too small for my attention, my absolutely full efforts. I had ridden, for instance, on a bus for six hours to open a small store in Corpus Christi, Texas. The store's clientele was modest in size and economics. No matter.

[1:15:22] From Personal History: In one exchange between us, I had deplored the fact that we had the bad luck to live in a world with Hitler, to which Phil responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a privilege to have to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history.”

[1:16:24] Churchill had an uncanny gift for getting priorities right.

[1:16:40] He is an apostle of the offensive.

[1:20:05] Words are the only things that last forever.

[1:20:23] The Second World War by Winston Churchill

[1:21:40] Never flinch, never wary, never despair.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#224 Charles de Gaulle

5 januari 2022 | 110 min

What I learned from reading Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson.

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[6:45] The Winston Churchill episode is #196 based on the book The Splendid and The Vile

[7:07] Don’t turn your back on he who will not accept defeat.

[7:54] The greatest founders in history have identified a series of ideas that are extremely important to them and they repeat these ideas over and over again. Repetition is persuasive.

[12:24] De Gaulle was a voice before he was a face.

[16:45] Whatever happens the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished, and it will not be extinguished.

[19:15] De Gaulle spoke about the army the way Enzo Ferrari spoke of his cars. Founders #97 Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

[23:30] Nothing dented his belief in victory.

[23:38] The victor is the one that wants victory most energetically.

[32:17] “Henry Singleton always tries to work out the best moves and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is.” —Claude Shannon

[32:51] A country (or a person, or a company) is defeated only when it has lost the will to fight.

[36:19] Excellence is the capacity to take pain.

[42:13] To be passive is to be defeated.

[48:18] Leadership is a solitary exersize of the will.

[53:23] “I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass. We are going to kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing.” —General Patton

[53:45] That central is completely opposite of what the French* generals thought.

[54:34] Founders #208 In The Company of Giants

[59:15] The history of entrepreneurship is extremely clear about the need to be able to concentrate.

[1:00:38] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words.

[1:04:55] He pushed himself to the limits and he expected the same from his men.

[1:05:53] All those who have done something valuable and durable have done so alone and in silence.

[1:07:07] Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime by Nims Purja

[1:14:31] What everyone seems to ignore is the incredible mixture of patience, of obstinate creativity, the dizzying succession of calculations, negotiations, conflicts, that we had to undertake in order to accomplish our enterprise.

[1:15:19] He really believed that giving up was treason. That you deserved death for giving up.

[1:20:12] Fortune cannot always be favorable to us.

[1:23:01] It was from this moment in his memoirs that DeGaulle starts to talk of himself in the third person. De Gaulle appears as a figure whom the narrator of the memoir watches.

[1:27:55] No question or discussion, we must go forward. Whoever stands still, falls behind.

[1:30:05] I have only one aim: to deliver France.

[1:41:10] The effective formula De Gaulle used was 1. Ruthlessness. 2. Brilliance. 3. Total clarity about what he wanted to achieve.

[1:45:36] Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France!

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#223 Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

29 december 2021 | 75 min

What I learned from reading Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend by Joshua M. Greene.

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Never give up. Only death is permanent. Everything else can be fixed.

I couldn't take such talk about not coming out alive. I didn't want to hear it. Whenever my mind told me I was not going to survive, the Almighty told me to keep going. So I stayed away from the others.

Because I could outwit the guards, I always felt superior to them. I hated them. I hated their brutality, their inhuman behavior. I felt stronger, more intelligent, and I had confidence in myself from childhood. So even though they had the guns and did all the killing, I felt superior. It was obviously a touch of arrogance, and some of it was justified and some not justified, but even in that totally hopeless condition I looked down on all of them.

It was clear that Americans were alive in every sense, moving purposefully toward some vision of tomorrow. He liked that. He would do that, too: grasp opportunities and not allow the darkness of the past to rob him of a bright future.

Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers!

When Naomi found out her husband was purchasing shares of Wilshire on a regular basis, she chided him. "More stock? We can barely pay the bills and you're buying more stock?" Siggi made excuses, but he didn't stop buying. "I didn't see how this was going to change our life," Naomi said, remembering other stocks her husband had bought and other career moves he had made. "But that's how it turned out."

You are looking at a man who had the foxlike instincts to survive history's darkest hour, a man who has no fear of adversity and who cannot be intimidated by overwhelming odds.

Siggi had grown his bank from $180 million in assets to more than $4 billion.

Siggi was the first person in history to sue the Federal Reserve.

He's just happy to be alive. People thought he was nuts and laughed at him, but he didn't care.

Less than a year after his death, his estate was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. “Not bad," as Siggi once said, "for a short, bowlegged Jew with flat feet who never graduated kindergarten and started with only $240 in his pocket."

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#222 Ed Thorp (My personal blueprint)

20 december 2021 | 98 min

What I learned from rereading A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp.

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1. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and, not least of all, fun.

2. I learned at an early age to teach myself. This paid off later on because there weren’t any courses in how to beat blackjack, build a computer for roulette, or launch a market-neutral hedge fund.

3. Even though the Goliath I was challenging had always won, I knew something no one else did: He was nearsighted, clumsy, slow, and stupid, and we were going to fight on my terms, not his.

4. I admired the heroes who, through extraordinary abilities and resourcefulness, achieved great things. I may have been inspired to mirror this in the future by using my mind to overcome intellectual obstacles.

5. Rather than subscribing to widely accepted views—such as you can’t beat the casinos—I checked for myself.

6. What matters in life is how you spend your time.

7. Life is like reading a novel or running a marathon. It’s not so much about reaching a goal but rather about the journey itself and the experiences along the way. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Time is the stuff life is made of,” and how you spend it makes all the difference.

8. I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those gambling games or make those investments where I have an edge.

9. Since much of what we were doing was being invented as we went along, and our investment approach was new, I had to teach a unique set of skills. I chose young smart people just out of university because they were not set in their ways from previous jobs. Better to teach a young athlete who comes fresh to his sport than to retrain one who has learned bad form.

10. Whatever you do, enjoy your life and the people who share it with you, and leave something good of yourself for the generations to follow.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#221 Charlie Munger

13 december 2021 | 85 min

What I learned from reading Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe.

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[16:02] I had a considerable passion to get rich. Not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.

[26:49] I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. My family was into all that stuff, getting ahead through discipline, knowledge, and self-control.

[37:44] He talked about business in a way that was animated and interesting though now I see he was almost broke. I knew he drove an awful car. But I never thought he was anything but a big success. Why did I think that? He just had this air-everything he did was going to be first class, going to be great. He had these enthusiasms for his projects and his future.

[38:48] Charlie drummed in the notion that a person should always "Do the best that you can do. Never tell a lie. If you say you're going to do it, get it done. Nobody gives a shit about an excuse. Leave for the meeting early, Don't be late, but if you are late, don't bother giving people excuses. Just apologize. They're due the apology, but they're not interested in an excuse.”

[42:22] The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.

[49:15] He wouldn't accept anything on face value. His interest in almost everything can be so intense, he will have a perspective that others will not have.

[49:29] Do things that other people aren't doing.

[1:07:55] I am a biography nut myself and I think when you're trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personalities of the people who developed them. I think that you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the emìnent dead who had the right ideas, I thìnk it will work better in life and work better in education. It's way better than just giving the basic concepts.

[1:15:15] It is Charlie's philosophy that a first-rate man should be willing to take at least some difficult jobs with a high chance of failure.

[1:21:28] Though few companies last forever, all of them should be built to last a long time, says Munger. The approach to corporate control should be thought of as "financial engineering." Just as bridges and airplanes are constructed with a series of back-up systems and redundancies to meet extreme stresses, so too should corporations be built to withstand the pressures from competition, recessions, oil shocks, or other calamities. Excess leverage, or debt, makes the corporation especially vulnerable to such storms. It is a crime in to build a weak bridge. How much nobler is it to build a weak company?

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#220 Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine

9 december 2021 | 82 min

What I learned from reading Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates.

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[0:01] Editorial writers around the world groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant. Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not; others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was, however, exactly what he had repeatedly said he was: an agitator of men. And he remained true to his credo to the day he died.

[0:43] If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. For nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers.

[44:26] Enzo Ferrari was a man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs.

[45:08] If they were to survive, it would be thanks to their wits and their ability to play the ancient game of life. Few men understood this game better than Ferrari.

[48:49] Enzo Ferrari was born with simple tastes, and even after he became rich and prominent, he retained the ways of a simple, uncluttered man. During the 1930s, when every ounce of his energies and every lira in his pocket were being plowed back into the business, he lived a modest, frugal life.

[1:05:50] It is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent.

[1:06:13] Ferrari appeared to be happier when he was losing, which jibes with mechanics' observations that the race shop on Monday was more serene following a defeat than a victory. But why? Was not winning the central object of the exercise? Ferrari explained: “There is always something to learn. One never stops learning. Particularly when one is losing. When one loses one knows what has to be done. When one wins one is never sure.”

[1:08:08] The source of much of Ferrari's success over the years was not technological brilliance or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing—a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible.

[1:15:44] Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple.

[1:19:34] His view of racing remained constant; the event itself was essentially meaningless. For him the stimulation came in the planning and preparation, in the creation of the machines, in the organization of the human beings who would man the team.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#219 Tony Bourdain: The Definitive Biography

30 november 2021 | 107 min

What I learned from reading Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever.

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[28:32] All the energy he'd put into trying to destroy himself, he put that into building himself back up. All that negative energy became something else. He became so serious, and so driven and focused. He worked really hard. It takes a lot of determination to wake up early in the morning and write, and then go to a job in the kitchen, and come home at god knows what hour, and get up the next morning and do it again. He was a fiend. One time, he said about his disciplined writing regimen, "Such was my lust to see my name in print." He threw himself into his work in a manner that I found astonishing.

[41:17] He gave me really good advice: "Stay public. You gotta promote, promote, promote, or it all dies. You just gotta be out there all the time." Tony embraced that.

[56:17] He proceeded to tell everyone to ignore the network. He said, "Completely ignore everything they're saying about music, about story, about shots. Let me deal with it all. I'm gonna make the show I want to make, across all fronts.” I had already been editing for ten years, and this was the first time I'd heard anything like this. Everyone is always just trying to make the network happy.

[1:01:51] The line between Tony and the show was very thin, if it existed at all.

[1:07:07] This life isn't a greenroom for something else. He went for it.

[1:20:50] He demanded excellence, and he never settled for shit. He just wanted the show to be the greatest thing ever, all the time.

[1:22:48] It was his life's work, and he never slacked.

[1:34:56] Tony gorged himself on being alive.

[1:46:13] The world is not better off with him not here. It's just not.

[1:45:46] I liked him better when he was just kind of living his best life and looking in the rearview mirror like he stole something. This beautiful life that he had, something people would dream of, and no one else could do it but him. A "slit my wrist" love story is just the shittiest ending to it all.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#218 Johan Cruyff (A Life of Total Football)

25 november 2021 | 58 min

What I learned from reading My Turn: A Life of Total Football by Johan Cruyff.

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[0:01] I always say you play football with your head; you just use your legs to run.

[1:09] I'm not capable of doing something at a low level.

[8:45] I'm definitely cunning. I'm always on the lookout for the best advantage.

[13:16] To be able to touch the ball perfectly once, you need to have touched it a hundred thousand times in training.

[14:00] My father died in 1959, when he was forty-five and I was twelve. His death has never let go of me.

[21:07] Winning was the consequence of the process that we had concentrated on.

[45:30] It doesn't work without full commitment.

[55:17] The experiences I have been through have given me a vast store of knowledge that needs to be shared so that others can profit from my experiences.

[56:09] I've led a full life and can look back on it the way you're supposed to. It's been so incredibly intense that I feel like I've lived for a hundred years.

[56:21] A setback is probably a sign that you need to make some adjustments. If you learn to think that way, all experiences are translated into something positive.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#217 Estée Lauder

18 november 2021 | 83 min

What I learned from rereading Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder.

Watch Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley.

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[21:14] I sometimes wonder if I had set my heart on selling tassels, cars, furniture, or anything else but beauty, would I have risen to the top of a profession? Somehow I doubt it. I believed in my product. I loved my product.

[32:07] Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances.

[39:24] I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream.

[44:38] Despite all the naysayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative.

[55:59] We took the money we had planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products.

[1:02:20] Never underestimate the value of an ally. Today they call it networking—this sharing between colleagues. It is one of the most powerful tools in the business.

[1:12:22] It's not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it.

[1:15:03] Love your career or else find another.

[1:19:05] Visualize. If in your mind's eye you see a successful venture, a deal made, a profit accomplished, it has a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation is the most powerful means to achieve goals. If you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind, you will orchestrate failure. Countless times, before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a reality. I've visualized success, then created the reality from the image. Great athletes, business people, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know this secret.

[1:21:34] I've always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I've never allowed my eye to leave the particular target of the moment.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans)

14 november 2021 | 89 min

What I learned from reading Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans by Paul Van Doren.

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The way we deal with hardship is our legacy. You can accept defeat, or you can overcome it.

Quitting Randy's had probably been the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Opportunity is a strange beast.

Whenever a situation went sideways and things looked dire, I always called up my one superpower: focus.

I believe honest self-evaluation and the ability to listen to others has been one of my greatest strengths, one that has served me well over the years. If someone had a better idea than mine, of course I would adopt that. I really didn’t care if I didn’t get credit. I didn’t need credit; I needed success.

The very best thing that occurred during that first decade of Vans was that we truly became a family business. Without exception, family has always been the most important thing in my life.

Most of the kids in the early skater crews came from single-parent households, from the wrong side of the tracks. They were idiosyncratic, creative, independent—they were seen as the “freaks” of the sport. In so many ways, they were our people.

If you do something no one else can do, or do something better than most, the odds are in your favor for success.

Shit happens—it really does. Letting yourself get stuck in it doesn’t do any good. Acknowledge it and then move on. Don’t let it weigh you down—just cope. Tackling things in a positive way will help you succeed more often than not. Shit happens: these two words fully acknowledge the difficulties in life, but you can put them firmly in the rearview mirror, without letting them mess with your head or your path in life.

To me, the more critical the situation, the better I’ll perform. I don’t create clutch situations just to feel the rush—I’d prefer to eliminate risk than encourage it—but I for one have always found defeat intoxicating, especially when it's someone else's. And when it's mine, I can’t say it's ever done anything but make me think smarter and behave differently, even courageously. Hell, it's only after I lost something or when something didn’t go my way that I was afforded the opportunity to shine.

I’ve learned that what makes a successful entrepreneur is the same thing that makes a good skateboarder or good surfer: you need grit and determination to get back up every time you’re knocked off the board.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#215: J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves (The General and the Genius)

9 november 2021 | 57 min

What I learned from reading The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka.

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It is clear that nothing short of a full-speed, all-out attempt would be worthwhile.

Once Leslie Groves accepted his new assignment, he embraced it completely. From his appointment in September 1942 until the end of the war, he worked at full speed, often fourteen hours a day or more. His remarkable energy and stamina frequently exhausted those who worked and traveled with him.

Groves's style was to delegate whatever he could and then put the screws to the delegees. He was a taskmaster.

The instructions to the project were that any individual in the project who felt that the ultimate completion was going to be delayed by as much as a day by something that was happening, it was his duty to report it direct to me. Urgency was on us right from the start.

When Marshall asked him if he ever praised anyone for a job well done, Groves said no. "I don't believe in it. No matter how well something is being done, it can always be done better and faster.”

Oppenheimer insisted that Los Alamos should have one director. He had learned enough about management from studying Groves to believe that while consensus was important, an organization needed a single leader.

The dual approaches reflected Groves's belief in pursuing multiple solutions to a problem until the problem is solved.

In a frank assessment of his boss after the war, he called him, "the biggest S.O.B. I have ever worked for. He is the most demanding. He is the most critical. He is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic. He disregards all normal organizational channels. He is extremely intelligent. He has the guts to make timely, difficult decisions. He is the most egotistical man I know. He knows he is right and so sticks by his decision. He abounds with energy and expects everyone to work as hard or even harder than he does. If I had to do my part of the atomic bomb project over again and had the privilege of picking my boss I would pick General Groves."

Groves had a reputation for competence. He was demanding, rough, and sometimes brutal with his staff, intolerant of delay and mental slowness. On the other hand, he never swore, rarely lost his temper, and never raised his voice. He was also prepared to let subordinates disagree if their arguments were sound. He disliked people who groveled.

Groves remained unflappable, accepting the unanticipated as normal.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

3 november 2021 | 132 min

What I learned from rereading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson.

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1. He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you.

2. He refused to accept automatically received truths, and he wanted to examine everything himself.

3. Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

4. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

5. The way we're running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let's make it simple. Really simple.

6. Jobs’s intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions.

7. The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry to an irrational extreme.

8. One of Jobs's talents was spotting markets that were filled with second-rate products.

9. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

10. His mind was never a captive of reality. He possessed an epic sense of possibility. He looked at things from the standpoint of perfection.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#213 Michael Jordan: Driven From Within

27 oktober 2021 | 67 min

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil.

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[4:55] Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching.

[9:47] It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words.

[12:49] To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me.

[24:00] You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared.

[24:26] Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised.

[37:01] I knew going against the grain was just part of the process.

[53:20] The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.

[57:41] I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today?

[1:06:04] I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.

[1:06:22] In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#212 Michael Jordan: The Life

23 oktober 2021 | 98 min

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.

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[5:07] His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.

[5:58] He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.

[6:33] It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

[14:06] At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.

[16:10] Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that got me going again.

[19:29] Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't.

[59:53] The Jordan Rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became textbook for guarding athletic scorers. The scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped in the long run, by forcing Jordan to find an answer. "I think that 'Jordan Rules' defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan," Tex Winter said.

[1:16:35] Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

[1:19:56] I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel like you missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. I've always been a practice player. I believe in it.

[1:29:47] Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent.
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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#211 Aristotle Onassis: An Extravagant Life

16 oktober 2021 | 75 min

What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady.

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He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested.

The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seeming inconsistencies.

Onassis had long since begun to formulate a personal business philosophy. The key to success was boldness, boldness, and more boldness.

He was constantly visiting and inspecting ships, talking to ship owners and other importers and quietly absorbing everything, making a very conscious attempt to learn as much as he could before going into ship-owning seriously.

He was quite observant about what, to others, were trifles but, to him, were important details. He often quoted Napoleon: “The pursuit of detail is the religion of success.”

Onassis was a man of the pier, but with the cocksureness of a king.

She simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis, a paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.

Onassis was a born orator. He could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound.

Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pore over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York, looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each day.

And I, of course, will do exactly as I please.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#210 Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

10 oktober 2021 | 70 min

What I learned from reading Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

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My earliest memory is of imagining I was someone else.

By the time I was fourteen the nail in wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. I'm not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

There was also a work-ethic in the poem that I liked, something that suggested writing poems (or stories, or essays) had as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation.

The realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit.

If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. I could see myself thirty years on, wearing the same shabby tweed coats with patches on the elbows, potbelly rolling over my Gap khakis from too much beer. I'd have a cigarette cough from too many packs, thicker glasses, more dandruff, and in my desk drawer, six or seven unfinished manuscripts which I would take out and tinker with from time to time, usually when drunk. And of course. I'd lie to myself, telling myself there was still time, it wasn't too late.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate - four to six hours a day, every day – will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself. These lessons almost always occur with the study door closed.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#209 Steven Spielberg: A Biography

6 oktober 2021 | 71 min

What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride.

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Whatever is there, he makes it work.

Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience."

"He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.' And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."

One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying "he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.” He was twelve.

He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.

Spielberg remained essentially an autodidact. Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career. Universal Studios, in effect, was Spielberg's film school. Giving him an education that, paradoxically, was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment. Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal, immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development.

At the time he came to Hollywood, generations of nepotism had made the studios terminally inbred and unwelcoming to newcomers. The studio system, long under siege from television, falling box-office receipts, and skyrocketing costs, was in a state of impending collapse.

When Steven was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in, he always had a positive, forward motion, whatever he may have been suffering inside.

In the two decades since Star Wars and Close Encounters were released, science-fiction films have accounted for half of the top twenty box-office hits. But before George Lucas and Spielberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction. The conventional wisdom was science-fiction films never make money.

Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones who want us around. So fast, it’s a few years, then it's over. You are not being careful. And you are missing it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#208 Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Bill Hewlett

29 september 2021 | 82 min

What I learned from reading In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz.

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A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. —Steve Jobs

There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. —Steve Jobs

Usually people never think that much about what they're doing or why they do it. They just do it because that's the way it has been done and it works. That type of thinking doesn't work if you're growing fast and if you're up against some larger companies. You really have to outthink them and you have to be able to make those paradigm shifts in your points of view. —Steve Jobs

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Steve Jobs answer to What advice would you give someone interested in starting their own company?

A lot of people ask me, "I want to start a company. What should I do?" My first question is always, "What is your passion? What is it you want to do in your company?" Most of them say, "I don't know."

My advice is go get a job as a busboy until you figure it out. You've got to be passionate about something. You shouldn't start a company because you want to start a company. Almost every company I know of got started because nobody else believed in the idea and the last resort was to start the company. That's how Apple got started. That's how Pixar got started. It's how Intel got started. You need to have passion about your idea and you need to feel so strongly about it that you're willing to risk a lot.

Starting a company is so hard that if you're not passionate about it, you will give up. If you're simply doing it because you want to have a small company, forget it.

It's so much work and at times is so mentally draining. The hardest thing I've ever done is to start a company. It's the funnest thing, but it's the hardest thing, and if you're not passionate about your goal or your reason for doing it, you will give up. You will not see it through. So, you must have a very strong sense of what you want.

You have to need to run such a business and know you can do it better than anyone else.

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There are no safe harbors. The only safe harbor is competency. Competency at doing something. —T.J. Rodgers founder of Cypress Semiconductor

The first time someone says, “The product you've made has changed my life," is the biggest sense of satisfaction you get. It motivates me more than anything else, by far. —Charles Geschke, founder of Adobe

Being detached from the customer is the ultimate death. —Michael Dell

The faster you experiment and get rid of things that don't work and keep doing things that do work, the faster you get to the winning business model. —Michael Dell

The important things of tomorrow are probably going to be things that are overlooked today. —Andy Grove

The best assumption to have is that any commonly held belief is wrong. —Ken Olsen

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#207 Claude Hopkins (Scientific Advertising)

26 september 2021 | 51 min

What I learned from reading Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

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Individuals come and go, but they leave their records and ideas behind them. These become a guide to all who follow.

Genius is the art of taking pains.

The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. The best ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information. They site advantages to users.

Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. The care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising. Ads say in effect, “Buy my brand. Give me the trade you give to others. Let me have the money." That doesn't work.

We learn that people judge largely by price. We often employ this factor. Perhaps we are advertising a valuable formula. To merely say that would not be impressive. So we state as a fact that we paid $100,000 for that formula. That statement when tried has won a wealth of respect.

The weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific. Makers of safety razors have long advertised quick shaves. One maker advertised a 78-second shave. The difference is vast. If a claim is worth making, make it in the most impressive way.

The product itself should be its own best salesman. Not the product alone, but the product plus a mental impression, and atmosphere, which you place around it. Samples are of prime importance. However expensive, they usually form the cheapest selling method. Samples serve numerous valuable purposes. They enable one to use the word "Free" in ads. That often multiplies readers. Samples pay for themselves in multiplying the readers of your ads.

Mail order advertising tells a complete story if the purpose is to make an immediate sale. You see no limitations there on the amount of copy. The motto is, "The more you tell the more you sell." And it has never failed to be proven wrong in any test we know.

Show health, not sickness. Don't show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about the wrinkles. Show pretty teeth, not bad teeth. Talk of coming good conditions, not conditions that exist. We are attracted by sunshine, beauty, happiness, health, and success. Point the way to them, not the way out of the opposite.

I spend far more time on headlines than on writing. I often spend hours on a single headline. The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in its returns. It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns by five or ten times over.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#206 Albert D. Lasker (the creation of the advertising industry)

23 september 2021 | 97 min

What I learned from reading The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz.

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Advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words: Salesmanship in print.

Before he arrived on the scene, advertising agencies were mostly brokers of space in newspapers and magazines. With Lasker's prodding, the industry became a creative force and began earning substantial commissions.

His rare ability to put troubled geniuses to work on challenging problems grew in part from the fact that he himself had been driven by "a thousand devils.”

Albert measured himself against the man who had braved the privations and horrors of the Civil War, epidemics, and hurricanes and made several fortunes in a foreign and sometimes hostile land.

Thomas was often taken aback by his young colleague's unconventional views and methods.

He decided that he could represent as well as anybody, because at least as far as he could tell, nobody in his office really knew anything much about the business they were in.

He was beginning to suspect that advertising agencies were leaving an enormous amount of money on the table. Lasker felt sure that he could build the business, and boost commissions if he could improve the agency's copywriting.

You are insufferably egotistical on the things you know nothing about, and you are painfully modest about those things about which you know everything.

Hopkins began imparting his theory of copywriting. We should never brag about a client's product, he said, or plead with consumers to buy it. Instead, we must figure out how to appeal to the consumer's self-interest.

Lasker argued that rather than maintaining many modestly successful small brands, the company needed to create one overwhelmingly powerful product.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#205 James Dyson (Invention: A Life)

18 september 2021 | 112 min

What I learned from reading Invention: A Life by James Dyson.

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This is a story told through a life of creating and developing things, as well as expressing a call to arms for young people to become engineers, creating solutions to our current and future problems.

I have tried to seek out those young people who can make the world a better place. I have seen what miracles they can achieve. This book is aimed at encouraging them.

Some may well become heirs to my heroes—inventors, engineers, and designers—who make their appearance in these pages. Like them, they will not find it easy and they will need oodles of determination and stamina along the way.

That was the last time I saw him. His brave cheerfulness chokes me every time I recall the scene. It is impossible to imagine my father's emotions as he waved goodbye knowing that he might be on his way to London to die. Sixty years have not softened these memories, nor the sadness that he missed enjoying his three children growing up.

I felt the devastating loss of my dad, his love, his humor, and the things he taught me. I feared for a future without him.

Running also taught me to overcome the pain barrier: when everyone else feels exhausted, that is the opportunity to accelerate, whatever the pain, and win the race.

Stamina and determination, with creativity, are needed to overcome seemingly impossible difficulties.

I admire Soichiro Honda greatly for his addiction to the continuous improvement of products.

Craziest of all, during the first thirty years of our marriage, she agreed unselfishly to keep putting her signature to endless bank guarantee forms in front of solicitors, signing away our possessions. If we had defaulted on the bank loans, we would have been evicted from our home.

At Dyson, we don't particularly value experience. Experience tells you how things should be done when we are much more interested in how things shouldn't be done.

Jeremy Fry encouraged me to think for myself and to "just do it."

Jeremy Fry taught me, without saying a word, that each day is a form of education.

I wanted to make new things—things that might seem strange—and not things you make because you know they will sell.

I was left with a burning ambition to emulate designer-engineers like Issigonis and Citroën in my own small way.

I happen to find factories and production lines romantic places. They are truly exciting.

Selling goes with manufacturing as wheels do with a bicycle.

Products do not walk off shelves and into people's homes. And when a product is entirely new, the art of selling is needed to explain it. What it is. How it works. Why you might need and want it.

He believed, most of all, in the power of enthusiasm.

I still find myself putting into practice at Dyson some of the same things Jeremy said and did when I worked for him half a century ago.

He believed in taking on young people with no experience because this way he employed those with curious, unsullied, and open minds.

Jeremy was always looking for a better way of doing things.

He loathed arrogance and experts, by which he meant those who want you to believe that they know everything about a subject when the inventive mind knows instinctively that there are always further questions to be asked and new discoveries to be made.

Alec's view was that market research is bunk and that one should never copy the opposition.

I was also putting into practice ideas I'd learned directly from Jeremy Fry and indirectly from Alec Issigonis: Don't copy the opposition. Don't worry about market research. Both Jeremy and Alec Issigonis might just as well have said "Follow your own star." And this is indeed what successful entrepreneurs do.

I was penniless again with no job and no income. I had three adorable children, a large mortgage to pay, and nothing to show for the past five years of toil. I had also lost my inventions. This was a very low moment and deeply worrying for Deirdre and me. It was deeply upsetting, too. My confidence took a big blow, and it would take some years to regain it.

Here was a field-the vacuum cleaner industry-where there had been no innovation for years, so the market ought to be ripe for something new.

For the following fifteen years I lived in debt. This might not sound encouraging to young inventors with an entrepreneurial spirit, yet if you believe you can achieve something then you have to give the project 100 percent of your creative energy. You have to believe that you'll get there in the end.

You need determination, patience, and willpower.

Experts tend to be confident that they have all the answers and, because of this trait, they can kill new ideas.

I had various degrees of perseverance underpinned by a kind of naïve intelligence, by which I mean following your own star along a path where you stop to question both yourself and expert opinion allong the way.

How best could I share my enthusiasm for what I knew was a great and innovative product?

We knew this was the most exciting adventure of our lives.

As Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

En route, there are multiple failures, sleepless nights, a great deal of frustration.

This was another of those products, used frequently by hundreds of millions of people, stuck in a technological time warp.

The general idea was to show that Dyson was founded by Mr. Dyson and that he was responsible for Dyson products. Big, long-established multinationals, most of them public companies, would not be able to put forward an individual in the same way.

Dyson has become as much an Asian as it is a British business.

The fourth Industrial Revolution is not going to dissipate anytime soon.

Learning by doing. Learning by trial and error. Learning by failing. These are all effective forms of education.

Children love making things and yet, all too often, this innate curiosity and experimentation expressed through our hands is stamped out by educational systems that see no virtue in such natural creativity.

Education should be about problem solving.

Invention is a human imperative.

If I wasn't getting anywhere with the education system in my quest to raise the number and quality of engineering graduates, why didn't I start a university of my own?

There were to be no tuition fees. Our undergraduates would work three days a week with Dyson on real research projects alongside young Dyson engineers, earning a proper salary, and we would teach them for the remaining two days. When the first undergraduates complete their four-year course they will be debt-free.

I also have an interest, verging on obsession, with the past.

It is about understanding and celebrating the progress that has been achieved, learning from it, and building on it.

Each artifact has its own story of against-the-odds progress and lessons on why having faith in your ideas and believing in progress is so important.

It is hard for other people to understand or get excited by a new idea. This requires self-reliance and faith on the part of the inventor.

Remember that there is nothing wrong with being persistently dissatisfied or even afraid.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#204 Steve Jobs (Inside Steve's Brain)

14 september 2021 | 59 min

What I learned from reading Inside Steve's Brian by Leander Kahney.

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1. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.

2. He remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives.

3. I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that 'vision thing' and I'm not afraid to start from the beginning.

4. Good storytelling lasts for decades. I don't think you'll be able to boot up any computer today in 20 years. But Snow White has sold 28 million copies, and it's a 60-year-old production.

5. Jobs has said the starting point is the user experience.

6. In everything I've done it really pays to go after the best people in the world.

7. My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we've got to be a great marketing company.

8. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

9. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea or a problem you're passionate about; otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.

10. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that motives make so much difference. Our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs—not to be the biggest or the richest.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#203 Georges Doriot (Birth of Venture Capital)

8 september 2021 | 87 min

What I learned from reading Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital by Spencer Ante.

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1. He was very important because he was the first one to believe there was a future in financing entrepreneurs in an organized way.

2. He brought a unique style to everything he did.

3. He called his course Manufacturing, but it was really his philosophy of life and of business.

4. At Harvard, Doriot became a Yoda-like figure, dispensing wisdom to an ever-growing group of disciples.

5. He got me motivated to start a business.

6. A real courageous man is a man who does something courageous when no one is watching him.

7. If any information is to be exchanged over whiskey, let us get it rather than give it.

8. You will get nowhere if you do not inspire people.

9. Always remember that someone somewhere is making a product that will make your product obsolete.

10. Decades before economists appreciated the value of technology, Doriot realized that innovation was the key to economic progress.

11. He upset the conventional wisdom by proving that there was big money to be made from patient investing in and the nurturing of small, unproven companies.

12. He believed in building companies for the long haul.

13. I don’t consider a speculator constructive. I am building men and companies.

14. A creative man merely has ideas; a resourceful man makes them practical. I look for the resourceful man.

15. When ARD liquidated its stake in Digital, the company was worth more than $400 million—yielding a return on their original investment of more than 70,000 percent. It was the young venture capital industry’s first home run.

16. Doriot never figured out a way to appease government regulators, who repeatedly threatened to put ARD out of business.

17. More than any other person, Doriot pioneered the transition to an economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation.

18. Celebrating anything less than the best possible result smacked of contentment

19. A commercial bank lends only on the strength of the past. I want money to do things that have never been done before.

20. Every successful man can usually point to a mentor that helped guide his career.

21. One of things that profoundly affected Georges was his father getting wiped out financially.

22. Doriot would go on to mentor thousands of other students, giving them advice, finding them jobs, guiding them in their careers, and taking an extraordinarily personal interest in each and every one of their futures.

23. Doriot believed strongly in forming a close bond between student and teacher.

24. Doriot described with a palpable sense of glee the importance of imparting a strong work ethic.

25. Doriot encouraged his students to ponder the purpose of life and business. It was a highly unusual technique but the students realized Doriot was giving them knowledge of much deeper value.

26. Always challenge the statement that nothing can be done about a certain condition

27. There was still a fire that burned in Doriot. A passion that kept him searching for his next mission impossible.

28. Doriot was a workaholic with no family responsibilities to divert his energies

29. A committee is an invitation to do nothing.

30. Lack of competent personnel was his most vexing problem.

31. One word is omitted from Doriot’s vocabulary. That word—“impossible.” If a thing must be done, it can be done.

32. Doriot was putting in twelve-hour days, seven days a week.

33. We cannot depend safely for an indefinite time on the expansion of our old big industries alone. We need new strength, energy and ability from below.

34. A team made up of the younger generation, with courage and inventiveness, together with older men of wisdom and experience, should bring success.

35. On his desk, Doriot kept a stopwatch. “Sometimes I use it to see how long it takes someone in a meeting to tell me the same thing three times,” he said.

36. An average idea in the hands of an able man is worth much more than an outstanding idea in the possession of a person with only average ability.

37. The riskiest investments, they were learning, held the potential to generate the greatest financial returns and the highest personal satisfaction

38. He knew that if entrepreneurs weren’t self-driven and a bit egotistical they’d be punching the clock for IBM or General Electric.

39. Creative ability knows no boundaries.

40. It’s very important to cultivate the memory of great people.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#202 A Few Lessons From Warren Buffett

2 september 2021 | 67 min

What I learned from reading A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin.

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Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.

Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.

Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. —W. Somerset Maugham

"Moats" —a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors.

Business history is filled with "Roman Candles," companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed.

When a company is selling a product with commodity-like economic characteristics, being the low-cost producer is all-important.

In a business selling a commodity-type product, it's impossible to be a lot smarter than your dumbest competitor.

As a wise friend told me long ago, "If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business."

The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph.

Our managers have produced extraordinary results by doing rather ordinary things—but doing them exceptionally well.

If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs and improving our products and services, we gain strength.

On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as "widening the moat."

We always, of course, hope to earn more money in the short-term. But when short-term and long-term conflict, widening the moat must take precedence.

Charlie and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.

It's difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.

Investors should understand that for certain companies, and even for some industries, there simply is no good long-term strategy.

Most of our directors have a major portion of their net worth invested in the company. We eat our own cooking.

Our trust is in people rather than process. A “hire well, manage little" code suits both them and me.

Just run your business as if: (1) You own 100% of it; (2) It is the only asset in the world that you and your family have or will ever have; and (3) You can't sell it for at least a century.

We believe in Charlie's dictum-“Just tell me the bad news; the good news will take care of itself".

We do have a few advantages, perhaps the greatest being that we don't have a strategic plan. Thus we feel no need to proceed in an ordained direction but can instead simply decide what makes sense for our owners.

We always mentally compare any move we are contemplating with dozens of other opportunities open to us. Our practice of making this comparison- acquisitions against passive investments –-is a discipline that managers focused simply on expansion seldom use.

We have no master strategy, no corporate planners delivering us insights about socioeconomic trends, and no staff to investigate a multitude of ideas presented by promoters and intermediaries. Instead, we simply hope that something sensible comes along-and, when it does, we act.

Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me.

Charlie and I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good. We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogilvy & Mather's founding genius, David Ogilvy: “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But, if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead, while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors.

A compact organization lets all of us spend our time managing the business rather than managing each other.

Thirty years ago Tom Murphy, then CEO of Cap Cities, drove this point home to me with a hypothetical tale about an employee who asked his boss for permission to hire an assistant. The employee assumed that adding $20,000 to the annual payroll would be inconsequential. But his boss told him the proposal should be evaluated as a $3 million decision, given that an additional person would probably cost at least that amount over his lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits and other expenses (more people, more toilet paper). And unless the company fell on very hard times, the employee added would be unlikely to be dismissed, however marginal his contribution to the business.

In both business and investments it is usually far more profitable to simply stick with the easy and obvious than it is to resolve the difficult.

The most elusive of human goals- keeping things simple and remembering what you set out to do.

Stay with simple propositions.

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

Tomorrow is always uncertain.

The less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.

In allocating capital, activity does not correlate with achievement.

The roads of business are riddled with potholes; a plan that requires dodging them all is a plan for disaster.

Unquestionably, some people have become very rich through the use of borrowed money. However, that's also been a way to get very poor.

The trick is to learn most lessons from the experiences of others.

When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#201 Isambard Kingdom Brunel (James Dyson's Hero)

30 augusti 2021 | 74 min

What I learned from reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L.T.C. Rolt.

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1. His career was to him a tremendous adventure.

2. I have always made it a rule, which I have found by some years experience a safe and profitable one, to have nothing to do with newspaper articles.

3. It is consoling to be thus reminded that the lunatic fringe is a hardy perennial and not a phenomenon peculiar to our day and age.

4. The livelihood of anybody relying upon their penmanship is generally precarious.

5. One whose high spirits seemed quite impervious to cold and discomfort.

6. The ready wit and the gaiety concealed a fire and a power which would drive him, undeterred by repeated disappointments, to achieve fame and fortune.

7. The name of Isambard Brunel would not mean what it does today if he had not displayed the same characteristics of dogged persistence and an unlimited capacity for hard work which distinguish the self-taught engineers.

8. A great man achieves eminence by his capacity to live more fully and intensely than his fellows and in so doing his faults as well as his virtues become the more obvious.

9. It is not in freedom from faults but in the ability to transcend and master them that greatness lies.

10. Isambard Brunel threw into the work all that unsparing energy which was to distinguish his whole life. For as much as thirty-six hours at a time he would not leave the tunnel, pausing only for a brief cat-nap.

11. The Brunels were not men to sit down with folded hands and bewail their misfortune.

12. Spurred on by Brunel's unconquerable determination, the work went forward.

13. Iť's a gloomy perspective and yet bad as it is I cannot with all my efforts work myself up to be down hearted.

14. Never Despair has always been my motto – we may succeed yet. Persevere.

15. This time he was going to win, but it would be a great struggle.

16. He never lost faith in himself.

17. He determined then to make perfection of his work the supreme goal and from that resolve he never subsequently wavered.

18. He knew that it would be so because, as any artist or craftsman must, he had alrcady conccived the completed work in his imagination

19. For it was an inviolable rule of Brunel's that he would never, under any circumstances, accept an appointment which involved divided responsibility. In any work upon which he engaged there could be only one engineer and he must have the full responsibility for the work and for the conduct of his staff.

20. Plain, gentlemanly language seems to have no effect upon you. I must try stronger language and stronger measures. You are a cursed, lazy, inattentive, apathetic vagabond, and if you continue to neglect my instructions, and to show such infernal laziness, I shall send you about your business. I have frequently told you, amongst other absurd, untidy habits, that that of making drawings on the back of others was inconvenient; by your cursed neglect of that you have again wasted more of my time than your whole life is worth.

21. Experiment was the breath of life to Brunel and for him precedents only existed to be questioned.

22. Brunel rejected precedent and proceeded from first principles.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#200 James Dyson (Against the Odds)

27 augusti 2021 | 134 min

What I learned from rereading Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson.

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1. I am a creator of products, a builder of things, and my name appears love on them. That is how I make a living and they are what have made nom my name at least familiar in a million homes.

2. This is also the exposition of a business philosophy, which is very different from anything you might have encountered before.

3. It has all happened, I really believe, because of the intrinsic excellence of the machine; because it is a better vacuum cleaner than anything that has gone before; and because it looks better than anything like it has ever looked.

4. Perhaps millions of people, in the last few thousand years, have had ideas for improving it. All I did was take things a little further than just having the idea.

5. My own success has been in observing objects in daily use which, it was always assumed, could not be improved.

6. Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners. After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked.

7. The best kind of business is one where you can sell a product at a high price with a good margin, and in enormous volumes. For that you have to develop a product that works better and looks better than existing ones. That type of investment is long term and high risk. Or at least, it looks like a high-risk policy. In the longer view, it is not half so likely to prove hazardous to one's financial health as simply following the herd.

8. Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control.

9. This is not even a business book. It is, if anything, a book against business, against the principles that have filled the world with ugly, useless objects, unhappy people, and brought the country to its economic knees. We all want to make our mark. We all want to make beautiful things and a little money. We all have our own ideas about how to do it. What follows just happens to be my way.

10. I have been a misfit throughout my professional life, and that seems to have worked to my advantage. Misfits are not born or made; they make themselves.

11. I took on the big boys at their own game, made them look very silly, just by being true to myself.

12. Herb Elliot was a big name at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes. This suited me fine, because if I had nothing else I certainly had sand dunes. Out there alone on the dunes I got a terrific buzz from knowing that I was doing something that no on one else was - they were all tucked up in bed at school. I knew that I was training myself to do something better than anyone else would be able to do.

13. The act of running itself was not something I enjoyed. The best you could say for it was that it was lonely and painful. But as I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it more and more, because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something that no one else was doing. Apart from me and Herb, no one knew. They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was bon making me come first.

14. In so many ways it taught me the most significant lessons in all my youth. I was learning about the physical and psychological strength that keeps you competitive. I was learning about obstinacy. I was learning how to overcome nerves, and as I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind, I trained harder to stay in front.

15. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, which makes me keep working at success.

16. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been one before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. While I could never lay claim to the genius of a man like that —I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was. And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on.

17. I have tried, in my own way, to draw on Brunel's dream of applying emerging technology in ways as yet unimagined. He was never afraid to be different or shocking. He never shirked the battles with the money men, and he had to overcome the most incredible resistance to his ideas: when he applied the system of the screw propeller to a transatlantic steam ship he actually filled a boat with people and sent them across the sea. I have asked people only to push my inventions around, not to get inside them and try to float!

18. I have told myself, when people tried to make me modify my ideas, that the Great Western Railway could not have worked as anything but the vision of a single man, pursued with dogged determination that was nothing less than obsession.

19. Throughout my story I will try to return to Brunel, and to other designers and engineers, to show how identifying with them, and seeing parallels with every stage of my own life, enabled me to see my career as a whole and to know that it would all turn out the way it has.

20. I am led to the belief that, for 'vision' one might equally well read 'stubbornness'. At any stage in my story where I talk of vision, and arrogance seems to have got the better of me, remember that I am celebrating only my stubbornness. I am claiming nothing but the virtues of a mule.

21. And I suppose it was here that I learnt the crucial business principle that would guide my later attempts at making money from invention: the only way to make real money is to offer the public something entirely new, that has style value as well as substance, and which they cannot get anywhere else.

22. He did not, when an idea came to him, sit down and process it through pages of calculations; he didn't argue it through with anyone; he just went out and built it.

So it was that when I came to him, to say, 'I've had an idea,' he would offer no more advice than to say, 'You know where the workshop is, go and do it.'

But we'll need to weld this thing,' I would protest. 'Well then, get a welder and weld it.' When I asked if we shouldn't talk to someone about, say, hydrodynamics, he would say, 'The lake is down there, the Land Rover is over there, take a plank of wood down to the lake, tow it behind a boat and look at what happens.'

23. Now, this was not a modus operandi that I had encountered before. College had taught me to revere experts and expertise. Fry ridiculed all that; as far as he was concerned, with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible. It was mind-blowing. No research, no 'workings', no preliminary sketches. If it didn't work one way he would just try it another way, until it did. And as we proceeded I could see that we were getting on extremely quickly. The more I observed his method, the more it fascinated me.

24. But I learnt then one of the most crucial business lessons of my life: to stint on investment in the early stages, to try to sell a half-finished product, is to doom from the start any project you embark on.

25. People do not want all purpose; they want high-tech specificity.

26. You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several.

27. I set off around the world to start selling it properly. It was time spent away from designing, but it was to teach me, above all else, that only by trying to sell the thing you have made yourself, by dealing with consumers' problems and the product's failings as they arise, can you really come to understand what you have done, to bond with your invention to improve it.

28. Only the man who has brought the thing into the world can presume to foist it on others, and demand a heavy price, with all his heart.

29. It was an interesting lesson in psychology, teaching me that the entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer.

30. One decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements.

31. In following his advice to abandon direct selling and supply shops via wholesalers, we began to lose that contact with the consumer that was the basis of our success.

32. One of the strains of this book is about control. If you have the intimate knowledge of a product that comes with dreaming it up and then designing it, I have been trying to say, then you will be the better able to sell it and then, reciprocally, to go back to it and improve it. From there you are in the best possible position to convince others of its greatness and to inspire others to give their very best efforts to developing it, and to remain true to it, and to see it through all the way to its optimum point. To total fruition, if you like.

33. That is what development is all about. Empirical testing demands that you only ever make one change at a time. It is the Edisonian principle, and it is bloody slow. It is a thing that takes me ages to explain to my graduate employees at Dyson, but it is so important. They tend to leap in to tests, making dozens of radical changes and then stepping back to test their new masterpiece. How do they know which change has improved it, and which hasn't?

34. While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly. I would crawl into the house every night covered in dust after a long day, exhausted and depressed because that day's cyclone had not worked. There were times when I thought it would never work, that I would keep on making cyclone after cyclone, never going forwards, never going backwards, until I died.

35. Everyday products sell. Although it is harder to improve a mature product, if you succeed there is no need to create a market.

36. Try out current products in your own home, and make a list of things that you don't like about them – I found about twenty things wrong with my Hoover Junior at the first attempt.

37. No one ever had an idea staring at a drawing board.

38. Painful but true. Breaking the mould will upset people. Challenging sitting tenants will be tough. It will take longer than you ever imagined. Ten years of development? Do you fancy that? And then negotiations on a knife edge, a shoestring, and hanging by a thread? It will take balls.

39. Total control. From the first sprouting of the idea, through research and development, testing and prototyping, model making and engineering drawings, tooling, production, sales and marketing, all the way into the homes of the nation, it is most likely to succeed if the original visionary (or mule) sees it right through. As I have often said, I aim not to be clever, but to be dogged.

40. I need to sleep a hell of a lot, you see. Ten hours a night or the whole day is useless.

41. We also scooted to number one so silently because our profile was raised more by editorial coverage than by paid-for advertising. Apart from being cheaper, this is much more effective, because it carries more of the weight of objective truth than a bought space. But in terms of visibility it is less popularising, while being more efficient in selling to those to whom it is exposed, because those prospectively in the market will be drawn to it. It is also out of your control—you cannot make journalists write about you, and I have never tried. And, when they have, I have never sought to influence what they write and have never asked to see their copy before publication. They take me, or the products, as we are, and I have to hope they like us.

42. It is one of the virtues of having such a strange—looking product, however, that journalists are more likely to take an interest in it.

43. If you make something, sell it yourself.

44. Companies are built, not made.

45. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can't of be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#199 Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

20 augusti 2021 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie.

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'When my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place; they feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecration of fame.” —Coco Chanel, 1935

Her father soon left them, discontented with marriage and fatherhood.

The dead are not dead as long as we think of them.

I like talking to myself and I don't listen to what I'm told.

Gabrielle spent seven years in the orphanage, until she was 18. Her father never returned to see her or her siblings.

I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself I don't know how many times.

And having to hear people call me an orphan! They felt sorry for me. All this was humiliating.

She was one of the charity pupils who were provided with a free place, and therefore treated differently to those whose family could afford to pay for their education. It was here, too, that she was given further instruction in how to sew.

She sought to define herself by her idiosyncratic choice of clothes.

She distanced herself from the past in storytelling. For telling stories is a way in which to imagine a happy-ever-after.

What she did want was to earn her own living.

They didn't understand how important this was to me.

Coco made hats that were stripped of embellishments, of the frills that she dismissed as weighing a woman down.

Coco began to edge her way to the centre of attention, elbowing past her rivals and competitors.

Paul Poiret, whose fame at the time was such that he dubbed himself the 'King of Fashion', said of Chanel's early days as a milliner, 'We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head. It was going to give us every kind of shock, and produce, out of its little conjuror's hat, gowns and coiffures and jewels and boutiques.’

I often fainted. I had too much emotion, too much excitement, I lived too intensely. My nerves couldn't stand it.

The House of Chanel seemed to give her stability.

I am not here to have fun, or to spend money like water. I am here to make a fortune.

She rejoiced in her independence.

I was my own master and I depended on myself alone.

Chanel was neither slave girl nor wife, but something of her own making.

The little black dress wasn't formally identified as the shape of the future until 1926, when American Vogue published a drawing of a Chanel design, and announced: 'Here is a Ford signed Chanel.' It was simple yet elegant sheath, in black, with long narrow sleeves, worn with a string of white pearls; and Vogue proved to be correct in the prediction that it would become a uniform, as widely recognised as a Ford automobile; fast and sleek and discreet.

I imposed black; it's still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around.

She did not see herself as an artist – she repeatedly described herself as an artisan who 'works with her hand' - and yet her precision and commitment to her craft was reminiscent of Reverdy.

Coco was always contrary.

Chanel N°5 was the solid foundation of her empire. N°5 was multiplied a million times over - and more, far more - in a dizzying proliferation that made Coco Chanel rich and recognised around the world, so that her name became a brand, and her face as famous as her logo.

She surreptitiously sprayed the women who passed their table with the new perfume. “You've got to be able to lead them by the nose.”

Each tormented the other at different points in their lives, with such antagonism that Pierre had to employ a full-time lawyer simply to deal with her.

She was both a copyist, and much copied.

Coco is really strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire. —Winston Churchill, 1927

Chanel's deft designs were not without precedents. Nor did she invent its associated fashions. But as was often the case in her career as a designer, she was quick to distil its essence, absorbing it into her own style, and selling it to customers eager for her clothes.

It is immoral to play at earning one's living.

I am only a little dress-maker, trying to make women young and pretty. These other designers that do the pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand women, they don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, freaks.

When I showed it in Paris, I had many critics. They said that I was old-fashioned, that I was no longer of the age. Always I was smiling inside my head, and I thought, I will show them.

She devotes her energies to barely noticeable refinements of detail of her suits and dresses.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#198 Nathan Rothschild (Rothschild Family Dynasty)

18 augusti 2021 | 75 min

What I learned from reading The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson.

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A business can only be managed well if one pays as much attention to the smaller business transactions as one does to the larger ones.

All banks have histories, only the Rothschilds have a mythology.

Ever since the second decade of the nineteenth century, there has been speculation about the origins and extent of the family's wealth; about the social implications of their meteoric upward mobility; about their political influence, not only in the five countries where there were Rothschild houses but throughout the world.

Unlike modern multinationals, however, this was always a family firm.

Perhaps the most important point to grasp about this multinational partnership is that, for most of the century between 1815 and 1914, it was easily the biggest bank in the world.

In terms of their combined capital, the Rothschilds were in a league of their own. The twentieth century no equivalent.

What exactly was the business the Rothschilds did? To answer these questions properly it is necessary to understand something of nineteenth-century public finance; for it was by lending to governments or by speculating in existing government bonds-that the Rothschilds made a very large part of their colossal fortune.

It was war and the preparation for war which generally precipitated the biggest increases in expenditure.

It was in this highly volatile context that the Rothschilds made the decisive leap from running two modest firms—a small merchant bank in Frankfurt and a cloth exporters in Manchester—to running a multinational financial partnership.

The system they developed enabled British investors (and other rich "capitalists” in Western Europe) to invest in the debts of those states by purchasing internationally tradeable, fixed-interest bearer bonds. The significance of this system for nineteenthcentury history cannot be over-emphasised. For this growing international bond market brought together Europe's true “capitalists": that elite of people wealthy enough to be able to tie up money in such assets, and shrewd enough to appreciate the advantages of such assets as compared with traditional forms of holding wealth (land, venal office and so on). Bonds were liquid.

The Rothschilds spent so much time, energy and money maintaining the best possible relations with the leading political figures of the day.

They constantly strove to accelerate the speed with which information could be relayed from their agents to them. They relied on their own system of couriers and relished their ability to obtain political news ahead of the European diplomatic services.

The primary concern of this book is therefore to explain the origins and development of one of the biggest and most unusual businesses in the history of modern capitalism.

The history of the firm is inseparable from the history of the family.

Inevitably, there were conflicts between the collective ambitions of the family, so compellingly spelt out by Mayer Amschel before he died, and the wishes of the individuals who happened to be born Rothschilds, few of whom shared the founder's relentless appetite for work and profits.

There are few major political figures in nineteenth-century history who do not feature in the index of this book.

"I see in Rothschild," he went on, "one of the greatest revolutionaries who have founded modern democracy": Rothschild destroyed the predominance of land, by raising the system of state bonds to supreme power, thereby mobilizing property and income and at the same time endowing money with the previous privileges of the land. He thereby created a new aristocracy.

All the copies of the outgoing letters from the London partners were destroyed at the orders of senior partners.

Nathan was a fiercely ambitious and competitive man.

The merchants who are well organised are the ones who get very rich, and the ones who are disorganised are the ones who go broke.

In a market crowded with numerous small businesses, subject to rapid fluctuations in prices and interest rates and almost completely unregulated, it took a combination of burning aggression and cool calculation to survive and thrive. Nathan Rothschild possessed both in abundance.

Nathan felt himself almost at war with his business rivals.

Nowadays everybody calls himself 'Excellency.' I remember, however, what our father used to say, With money you become an Excellency.

Father used to say, If you can't make yourself loved, make yourself feared.

We owe not only our wealth but also our honourable position in society primarily to the spirit of unity and cooperation that binds together all our partners, bank houses and establishments.

Playing hide and seek with the authorities was becoming second nature to the brothers. Indeed, even their sons were already being taught to attach importance to secrecy.

Nathan had only one concern: business.

Nathan gloried in his ascetic: After dinner I usually have nothing to do. I do not read books, I do not play cards, I do not go to the theatre, my only pleasure is my business.

Our old established practice of buying some gold whenever we can find any.

Contemporaries found Nathan Rothschild an intimidating man: coarse to the point of downright rudeness in manner.

Such bruising encounters in the office were later distilled into the famous "two chairs" joke, probably the most frequently reprinted Rothschild joke: An eminent visitor is shown into Rothschild's office; without looking up from his desk, Rothschild casually invites him to "take a chair." "Do you realise whom you are addressing?" exclaims the affronted dignitary. Rothschild still does not look up: "So take two chairs.”

To give mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business; that is the way to be happy. I required a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.

Stick to one business, young man. Stick to your brewery and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be bankrupt.

When a guest at the same dinner expressed the hope "that your children are not too fond of money and business, to the exclusion of more important things. I am sure you would not wish that," Nathan retorted bluntly: "I am sure I should wish that."

This man is really a complete original.

He and his brothers recognised that there might be a conflict between higher education and a successful business apprenticeship.

I advise you not to let him study more than another two years so that he should enter the business when 17 years old. Otherwise he would not be deeply attached to business.

No one could conceive that the man who, since the death of his father in 1812, had been the unquestioned leader of the house of Rothschild, might die at the very height of his powers.

All that mattered was that they should hold together in unity.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#197 Founder of the Rothschild Family Dynasty

11 augusti 2021 | 77 min

What I learned from reading Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon.

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Riches cover a multitude of woes.

Only a few crumbling bricks are left today of the dark, foul-smelling alley in Frankfurt where, in the second half of the eighteenth century, a disenfranchised Jew named Meyer Rothschild founded a European banking dynasty.

Rothschild was a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy and ingenuity.

He raised five famously gifted sons, veritable money-making machines, to carry on his work after him. Their names overshadowed his own and became synonymous with colossal wealth, extravagant living and hidden political power.

A century after his death they would still ask, in all seriousness, if a great war was still possible in Europe if the House of Rothschild set their face against it.

Rothschild's origins were certainly modest. There was little reason to foresee his destiny. The personal circumstances of his life were difficult throughout. They suggest a saga not only political and financial but also human and dramatic – more dramatic, perhaps, than that of his flamboyant sons. The sons were not persecuted human beings, legally confined to the squalor of a congested ghetto.

The old ghetto where Rothschild lived his entire life was a narrow lane, more slum-like and overcrowded than any other tenements in Frankfurt. A closed compound, it was shut off from the rest of the city by high walls and three heavy gates. The gates were guarded by soldiers and were locked at night, and all day on Sundays. In it lived the largest Jewish community in Germany in conditions of almost total isolation, and apartheid.

How they managed to survive under these circumstances and at times even to prosper was a mark of human enterprise and ingenuity.

Every petty principality minted its own currency. The only coins from outside the city that were accepted as payment were those which had the same silver content as the Frankfurt gulden. All others had to be exchanged before a purchase could be made. Constant variations in the exchange rates offered knowledgeable moneychangers ample opportunity to profit.

The spirit of the place was workaday and businesslike. A city ruled "by the God of this world – Money".

At home, from an early age, he was apprenticed in the family business. Everybody in the family, boys and girs, were expected to help.

As a thirteen-year-old orphan, with a few coins in his pocket, the future tycoon launched out alone into the world.

Besides learning the rudiments of the financial business, Rothschild broadened his knowledge of rare and antique Jews were disencoins and historic medals. Coins had fascinated him since early childhood.

He was acquiring a certain amount of historical knowledge without which he might not have been able to find his way. Coins and medals attracted collectors who often bought them as an investment. By the time he was eighteen, he had become something of an expert. He read every other book or paper he could find on the subject.

Selling a few old coins could not possibly make him rich., But it was a means to establish contacts with persons of wealth, power and importance. Such a person was the young Crown-Prince Wilhelm, who would play a decisive role in Rothschild's future career. Wilhelm was the presumptive heir to his father's vast fortune. His pedigree was one of the finest in Europe.

Rothschild threw himself into his business with determination and zest.

He ran something like a mail-order business. In 1771 he published the first of several printed coin catalogues which he sent out during the next twenty years at regular intervals to potential customers all over Germany.

He brought to his work a certain natural flair, a knowledge of human nature and a capacity to generate trust.

As a rule, he preferred to minimize profits in the hope of increasing turnover and consequently his prices were often lower that those of other dealers. He was ready to lower them even more, at times even at a small loss, in the hope of more profitable business in the future.

Thrifty Guttle Rothschild spent only a fraction of this annual income on her household; a large part was pumped back into the business.

There was little, if any, visible wealth. The family's modest lifestyle did not reflect the true extent of Rothschild's accumulated riches, which he continued to channel back into the business. Rothschild had an inborn compulsion to hide his wealth.

Long after his death one of his sons quoted him as saying: "Something three people know about is no more a secret".

He shunned all conspicuous displays of wealth.

He practised his old policy of maximizing volume by minimizing profits. His competitors, who for decades had handled the affairs of the landgraves of Hesse, were gradually squeezed out. By 1807 Rothschild enjoyed a near monopoly.

No one in the family was idle.

Yet as a critical and strict father, he also anguished over Nathan's casualness and disorganized work habits. A lack of order would make a beggar out of a millionaire.

While other bankers mostly awaited orders to reach them, Rothschild went out to solicit them.

It paid homage to their father's "proven industry, good business sense and experience, who through his tireless activity from youth to advanced age, was the sole cause for the present flourishing state of the business and the worldly happiness of his children".

They reflected an overriding desire to perpetuate unity among the brothers, prevent the dispersion of capital and retain, as far as possible, the compact, disciplined, well co-ordinated character of the family firm.

His astonishing concentration on business continued as before.

His main concern in his last hours was to secure the continued happiness and prosperity of his sons. He knew that riches came and went. He had seen in his lifetime fortunes dissipate through waste, vanity or infighting among heirs. Fortunes, he warned Amschel: do not keep longer than two generations.For two reasons: one, because house-keeping and other expenses are not considered; two, because of stupidity.

He urged his "dear children to relate to one another with mutual love and friendship". He knew his sons were strong-willed, difficult, impulsive men. He was afraid of their tempers. On his deathbed he urged them once more to remain united at all cost. It had become an obsession with him. He said on his deathbed: Amschel, keep your brothers together and you will become the richest men in Germany.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#196 Winston Churchill (Leadership during WW2)

7 augusti 2021 | 79 min

What I learned from reading The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson.

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I wondered how on earth anyone could have endured it: fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months. In particular I thought about Winston Churchill: How did he withstand it?

It is one to say "Carry on," quite another to do it.

History is a lively abode, full of surprises.

The only effective defense lay in offense.

The king harbored a general distrust of Churchill's independence.

He had lived his entire life for this moment. That it had come at such a dark time did not matter. If anything, it made his appointment all the more exquisite.

At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.

Churchill brought a naked confidence that under his leadership Britain would win the war, even though any objective appraisal would have said he did not have a chance.

Churchill knew that his challenge now was to make everyone else believe it too.

He considered Churchill to be inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once.

"If I had to spend my whole life with a man," she wrote, "I'd choose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr Churchill if there was a storm and I was shipwrecked.”

Churchill was flamboyant, electric, and wholly unpredictable.

Churchill issued directives in brief memoranda.

No detail was too small to draw his attention.

Churchill was particularly insistent that ministers compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts," he said.

Anything that was not of immediate importance and a concern to him was of no value.

Churchill wanted Germans to "bleed and burn."

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

In the Churchill household defeatist talk inspired only rage.

"It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour," Churchill said. "It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”

Churchill said, "We shall not hesitate to take every step-even the most drastic-to call forth from our people the last ounce and inch of effort of which they are capable.”

Recognizing that confidence and fearlessness were attitudes that could be adopted and taught by example, Churchill issued a directive to all ministers to put on a strong, positive front.

If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

He had been fond of quoting a French maxim: "One leads by calm."

“Your idle & lazy life is very offensive to me," Churchill wrote. "You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence."

So confident was Hitler that England would negotiate, he demobilized 25 percent of his army. But Churchill was not behaving like a sane man.

Churchill’s message was clear. “We shall not stop fighting until freedom, for ourselves and others, is secure.”

Nothing must now be said which would disturb morale or lead people to think that we should not fight it out here."

It typified the uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill—his ability to transform the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.

There was still no sign that Churchill was beginning to waver.

When raids occurred, he dispatched his staff to the shelter below but did not himself follow, returning instead to his desk to continue working.

Churchill did many things well, but waiting was not one of them.

Churchill’s resilience continued to perplex German leaders. "When will that creature Churchill finally surrender?"

Brush aside despondency and alarm and push on irresistibly towards the final goal.

Goebbels confessed in his diary to feeling a new respect for Churchill. "This man is a strange mixture of heroism and cunning. If he had come to power in 1933, we would not be where we are today. And I believe that he will give us a few more problems yet. He is not to be taken as lightly as we usually take him.

To be stupid about one's life is a crime.

She told Churchill that the best thing he had done was to give people courage. He did not agree. "I never gave them courage," he said. "I was able to focus theirs.”

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer)

31 juli 2021 | 74 min

What I learned from reading Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier.

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Sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed.

Each game taught me something, each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it.

We are surrounded by decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do.

If my gravestone reads "Sid Meier, creator of Civilization" and nothing else, I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives.

There was no such thing as a retail computer game, only free bits of code passed between hobbyists, so it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer.

"I could design a better game in two weeks." “Then do it," he insisted, "If you can do it, I can sell it."

At the time it felt like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the danger of retroactive mythologizing is that it makes people want to hold out for something dramatic, rather than throwing themselves into every opportunity.

—

As soon as the articles were published, Bill began placing calls to hobby stores that were farther than driving distance away.

"Hello, I'm looking to buy a copy of Hellcat Ace.

"Hmm, I don't think we carry that one"

"What?" he would fume. "What kind of computer store are you? Didn't you see the review in Antic?" Then he would hang up in a huff, muttering about taking his business elsewhere.

A week later he would call again, pretending to be somebody else. And a third time a week after that.

Finally, on the fourth week, he'd use his professional voice. "Good afternoon, I'm a representative from MicroProse Software, and I'd like to show you our latest game, Hellcat Ace." Spurred by the imaginary demand, they would invite him in.

—

My appetite for making games was growing stronger.

I never forgot that moment. My mother had become emotionally invested in this little game, so profoundly that she'd had to abandon it entirely.

Games could make you feel. If great literature could wield its power through nothing but black squiggles on a page, how much more could be done with movement, sound, and color? The potential for emotional interaction through this medium struck me as both fascinating and enticing.

Were there people who got paid for making games? Could I be one of those people? I knew by now that I was a person who would make games, probably for the rest of my life, but it had never occurred to me that it could be a source of income. If that were true, then being a game designer seemed like the ideal job.

I was cautious about giving up my steady paycheck, and still not convinced that this dream was going to last.

Quality content was the driving force behind it all.

All that mattered to me was that I got to make games for a living.

I don't think any of us could have imagined back then the kind of cultural domination that gaming would someday achieve.

Robin Williams pointed out that all the other entertainment industries promoted their stars by name, so why should gaming be any different?

A pirate's career would last about forty years between childhood and old age, and his goal was to accomplish as much as he could in that window-to have an adventurous life with no regrets.

Life is not a steady progression of objectively increasing value, and when you fail, you don't just reload the mission again. You knock the wet sand off your breeches and return to the high seas for new adventures. And if you happen to get marooned on a deserted island a few times, well, that makes for a good tavern story, too.

I'd always had a distaste for business deals in general, simply because it's not the kind of thing I want to spend my day doing, but I was starting to realize that there was potential danger in them as well.

People play games to feel good about themselves.

Age and experience may bring wisdom, but sometimes it's useful to be a young person who hasn't learned how to doubt himself yet.

Sid Meier makes a pathetic Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he makes a magnificent Sid Meier.

Deciding what doesn't go into the game is sometimes more important than deciding what does.

Conventional wisdom said a strategy title would never make the big money. (Sid sold 51 million copies)

They were interacting with the game as a tool, rather than an experience.

Good games don't get made by committee.

What I didn't see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality; it only heightens it.

The dichotomy between someone else's talent and your own is a cause for celebration, because the further apart you are, the more you can offer each other.

This is not to say that my version of Civilization had no outside influences—far from it. Aside from the general "creating not destroying" concept I had first encountered in SimCity, there were two games that I very much respected, and blatantly took ideas from to use for my own purposes.

The ideas didn't start with us, and they can't end with us either.

Whatever it is you want to be good at, you have to make sure you continue to read, and learn, and seek joy elsewhere, because you never know where inspiration will strike.

A full 70 percent of Candy Crush Saga users have never paid a dime for the game yet it still brings in several million dollars a day.

So many of our wildest dreams have turned out to be laughably conservative that it's hard to write off anything as impossible.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#194 Ernest Hemingway (Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy)

27 juli 2021 | 78 min

#193 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Arnold's first autobiography)

22 juli 2021 | 59 min

What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn't simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest.

I'm not exactly sure why I chose bodybuilding, except that I loved it. I loved it from the first moment my fingers closed around a barbell and I felt the challenge and exhilaration of hoisting the heavy steel plates above my head.

The only time I really felt rewarded was when I was singled out as being best.

I had it tougher than a lot of my companions because I wanted more, I demanded more of myself.

I was literally addicted.

I learned that this pain meant progress. Each time my muscles were sore from a workout, I knew they were growing.

I could not have chosen a less popular sport. My school friends thought I was crazy. But I didn't care. My only thoughts were of going ahead, building muscles and more muscles.

I remember certain people trying to put negative thoughts into my mind, trying to persuade me to slow down. But I had found the thing to which I wanted to devote my total energies and there was no stopping me.

My drive was unusual, I talked differently than my friends; I was hungrier for success than anyone I knew.

Reg Park looked so magnificent in the role of Hercules I was transfixed. And, sitting there in the theater, I knew that was going to be me. I would look like Reg Park. I studied every move he made. From that point on, my life was utterly dominated by Reg Park. His image was my ideal. It was fixed indelibly in my mind.

I had this insatiable drive to get there sooner. Whereas most people were satisfied to train two or three times a week, I quickly escalated my program to six workouts a week.

With my desire and my drive, I definitely wasn't normal. Normal people can be happy with a regular life. I was different. I felt there was more to life than just plodding through an average existence.

I'd always been impressed by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon were names I knew and remembered. I wanted to do something special, to be recognized as the best.

My dreams went beyond a spectacular body. Once I had that, I knew what it would do for me. I'd get into the movies and build gymnasiums all over the world. I'd create an empire.

This inspired me to work even harder. When I felt my lungs burning as though they would burst and my veins bulging with blood, I loved it. I knew then that I was growing, making one more step toward becoming like Reg Park. I wanted that body and I didn't care what I had to go through to get it.

My weight room was not heated, so naturally in cold weather it was freezing. I didn't care. I trained without heat, even on days when the temperature went below zero.

From the beginning, I was a believer in the basic movements.

Most of the people I knew didn't really understand what I was doing at all.

My mind was totally locked into working out, and I was annoyed if anything took me away from it.

I started this practice early in my career and continued it for as long as it served to help me maintain a clear focus and drive myself toward a fixed point.

In two or three years I had actually been able to change my body entirely. That told me something. If I had been able to change my body that much, I could also, through the same discipline and determination, change anything else I wanted.

I know that if you can change your diet and exercise program to give yourself a different body, you can apply the same principles to anything else.

Every day I hear someone say, "I'm too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can't. I never seem to improve." I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak.

By observing the principles of strict discipline that bodybuilding taught me, I can prepare myself for anything.

My desire to build my body and be Mr. Universe was totally beyond their comprehension.

I listened only to my inner voice, my instincts.

Even people's ideas were small. There was too much contentment, too much acceptance of things as they'd always been.

I felt I was already one of the best in the world. Obviously, I wasn't even in the top 5,000; but in my mind I was the best.

At that point my own thinking was tuned in to only one thing: becoming Mr. Universe. In my own mind, I was Mr. Universe; I had this absolutely clear vision of myself up on the dais with the trophy. It was only a matter of time before the whole world would be able to see it too. And it made no difference to me how much I had to struggle to get there.

They paid and came to the gym. But it was a disgusting, superficial effort on their part. They merely went through the motions, doing sissy workouts, pampering themselves.

I went right down the line, trying to figure out who I might beat. I got to eighth or ninth place and figured I might have a chance if I tried hard enough. It was a loser's way of looking at it. I defeated myself before I even entered, before I'd even completed the year's training. But I was young. I hadn't yet pulled together my ideas about positive thinking and the powers of the mind over the muscles.

Once I was over the initial disappointment of losing, I began trying to understand exactly why I had lost. I tried to be honest, to analyze it fairly. I still had some serious weaknesses. For me, that was a real turning point.

I was relying on one thing. What I had more than anyone else was drive. I was hungrier than anybody. I wanted it so badly it hurt. I knew there could be no one else in the world who wanted this title as much as I did.

I had thought perhaps he had some special exercises, but that wasn’t true. He concentrated on the standard exercises. That was his "secret" —concentration.

Being around Yorton [the winner] backstage for a few minutes made me painfully aware of my own shortcomings.

They asked when I was going to get a real job, when I was going to become stable. "Is this what we raised," they asked, "a bum?"

I continued doing precisely what I knew I needed to do. In my mind, there was only one possibility for me and that was to go to the top, to be the best. Everything else was just a means to that end.

If I expected to make it big in the field, I had to become a showman.

I had a photographer take pictures at least once a month. I studied each shot with a magnifying glass.

I started training in an area where there were no distractions. That gave me enough time to concentrate and find out what bodybuilding was really all about.

I was determined and constant. I never wanted to pause or stop training.

I sacrificed a lot of things most bodybuilders didn’t want to give up. I just didn't care, I wanted to win more than anything. And whatever it took to do it, I did.

You are a winner, Arnold. I wrote this down and put it where I would see it. I repeated it a dozen times a day.

I had lists and charts of the things I needed to concentrate on pasted all over. I looked at them every day before I began working out. It became a twenty-four-hour-a-day job; I had to think about it all the time.

We made it a regular thing. We brought girls out there to cook. We made a fire outdoors and turned the whole thing into a little contest. We worked hard but we had a good time. After the muscle-shocking sessions we drank wine and beer and got drunk and carried on like the old-time weight lifters back in the 1800s or early 1900s. Sometimes it became pure insanity.

It was a great time. We cooked shish kebab, sat around the fire, and made love. We got into this trip that we were gladiators, male animals. We swam naked out in nature, had all this food, wine and women; we ate like animals and acted like animals. We got off on it so much it became a weekly routine-eating fresh meat and drinking wine and exercising.

It's important that you like what you do, and we loved it.

They weren't mentally prepared for intensive championship training; they weren't thinking about it. I knew the secret: Concentrate while you're training. Do not allow other thoughts to enter your mind.

When I went to the gym I got rid of every alien thought in my mind.

I knew that if I went in there concerned about bills or girls and let myself think about those things I'd make only marginal progress.

It was then I started seriously analyzing what happens to the body when the mind is tuned in, how important a positive attitude is.

53. I began looking at the difference between me and other bodybuilders. The biggest difference was that most bodybuilders did not think I'm going to be a winner. They never allowed themselves to think in those terms. I would hear them complaining while they were training, “Oh, no, not another set!" Most of the people I observed couldn't make astonishing advances because they never had faith in themselves.

They had a hazy picture of what they wanted to look like someday, but they doubted they could realize it. That destroyed them. It's always been my belief that if you're training for nothing, you're wasting your effort. Ultimately, they didn't put out the kind of effort I did because they didn't feel they had a chance to make it, And of course, starting with that premise, they didn't.

You talk yourself into it. You tell yourself you are going to be the hero.

I came in second. That did a little number on my mind. I went away from the auditorium overwhelmed, crushed. I remember the words that kept going through my head: "I'm away from home, in this strange city, in America, and I'm a loser." I cried all night because of it. I had disappointed all my friends, everybody, especially myself. It was awful. I felt it was the end of the world.

Business fascinates me. I get caught up in the whole idea that it's a game to make money and to make money make more money.

Now I had to reach out to the general public, to people who knew nothing about bodybuilding, and educate them to the benefits of weight training.

Working in the same way I had to build my body, I wanted to create an empire. I felt I was equipped to go ahead with my own enterprises.

I've come to realize that almost anything difficult, any challenge, takes time, patience and hard work, like building up for a 300-pound bench press. Learning that gave me plenty of positive energy to use later on. I taught myself discipline. I could apply that discipline to everyday life.

Gradually a conflict grew up in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She had thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off. But that's a concept that has no place in my thinking. For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

The same with business. I'm so determined to make millions of dollars that I cannot fail. In my mind I've already made the millions; now it's just a matter of going through the motions.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#192 Jim Casey (Founder of UPS)

19 juli 2021 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann.

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Casey pursued a Spartan business philosophy that emphasized military discipline, drab uniforms, and reliability over flash.

I had heard stories about the company's tireless founder. He was a living legend. Jim Casey started working from the age of eleven to support a family of five.

Casey began at the bottom. He speedily delivered messages and packages on foot. Casey learned about efficiency by doing.

Seconds saved become minutes over the day and a few minutes each day mean big dollars.

To outsiders the UPS regime has always seemed excessive.

People have always bought more than they could carry, and a hundred years ago they had no cars to help them out. When Jim Casey and his partners began their delivery service, it served only department stores, and the UPS role was to complete the stores' retail transactions.

Humility was one of Jim Casey's most strongly held values.

Our real, primary objective is to serve. To render perfect service to our stores and their customers. If we keep that objective constantly in mind, our reward in money can be beyond our fondest dreams.

Service is the sum of many little things done well.

Good management is taking a sincere interest in the welfare of the people you work with. It is the ability to make individuals feel that you and they are the company–not merely employees of it.

Jim Casey watched the streets carefully. He watched movement. He watched what people sold and what people bought. He was an eternal puzzle solver, his mind constantly preoccupied by every sensory detail involving his core business, packages. He gravitated to them, mesmerized by how they were wrapped and how they were delivered.

When traveling between meetings Casey would frequently tell his driver to stop when he saw a UPS delivery in progress. Without identifying himself, Casey would ask UPS drivers what they thought of their job. He'd listen carefully and consider their answers seriously. These informal "man on the street" interviews became an invaluable way for him to assess the efficiency of UPS delivery operations in a way that a UPS manager's filtered version could not.

Jim Casey's office was a small stark room, occupied only by a desk, several chairs, and a coat tree. His door was never closed.

His answer for sluggish layers of management was decentralization, and his attitude toward employees was an unwavering belief in and respect for the individual.

Money and prestige did not push him. Excellence did.

Casey's personal code was discipline.

Hardly a shining star, Jim Casey was more a steadily burning flame.

Distill Jim Casey's lifelong message to its essence and you get: Neatness, humility, frugality, dependability, safety, strong work ethic, integrity.

This unassuming ascetic with an iron will based his company and his every move on ethics that he learned as a child. Jim Casey's parents greeted hardship with grit and ingenuity.

Jim was by then old enough to apprehend his parents' mounting anxiety, to understand that his father was not healthy by comparison with other men. The worried atmosphere undoubtedly had effect.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the number of American children in the workforce reached staggering proportions. Over two million children worked in mines, factories, and sweatshops, many in appalling conditions.

For the Caseys, there was no alternative. It was critical. With two younger brothers to protect and a mother and an ailing father to support, eleven-year-old Jim Casey had developed a maturity that belied his age. His family was in precarious straits, and it was up to him to solve the problem.

He worked more than ten and a half hours a day, and longer on Saturdays, starting at $3 a week. [He is 11]

He picked up and delivered telegrams, mail, and packages —working from 7 P.M. until 7 A.M.

It wasn't all telegrams. Many of the night calls were drug addicts summoning a messenger to help replenish their stash.

During winters, it rained and rained. Jim was often cold and wet. Wealthy people could afford fancy hotels. Jim often looked with envy at them through the windows, as they sat in the big hotel chairs looking out onto the rain from warm lobbies.

Thompson shot and killed Moritz. [Jim’s partner]The cold-blooded murder left the other two boys stricken.

The company, founded in that six-by-seven-foot basement office, would eventually become United Parcel Service.

Jim wrote to the Chambers of Commerce of every American city with a population over 100,000, asking for names of local delivery firms. He accumulated the names and then initiated a communications link that he called the "Parcel Delivery Service Bureau." The bureau was a means of sharing new methods, ideas, or systems that worked in different cities. Every once in a while, the correspondence disclosed a gem of an idea, which Jim would hurry to implement. [Founders allows you to do the same]

Mr. Carstens told them that he would not fund their venture, but that they should not interpret his resistance as a disincentive. He finished with the words "determined men can gave do anything." That comment became an invocation; Jim Casey would use it as a rallying cry time and again.

We have nothing to sell except service.

Rather than paying up front with cash, they funded these acquisitions by pledging what they had, which meant shares of UPS stock. UPS was to use this strategy numerous times in coming years.

The vision beyond retail store delivery made sense to Casey and he later related “Think of the scores of millions of additional packages we would handle if we delivered all those going into each territory, rather than what goes out of the stores we happen to serve."

UPS would take on the ICC one city, state, or multistate area at a time.

Like Aesop's tortoise, UPS was sure and steady, plodding toward its objective of providing delivery service all over America, moving forward with perseverance and a humility that bordered on stealth. Big Brown was slowly but inevitably taking over the country.

As Jim Casey commented “Employee-ownership is credited by the people inside and outside the company with having done more than any other thing toward making our company and our people so notably successful financially and otherwise."

Fred Smith and his FedEx was sheer genius. That FedEx was established in 1973 as an airline, not a ground delivery company, is an important legal distinction, because the company was exempt from onerous common carrier regulations. Airlines fall under a different regulatory body (the FAA), not the ICC that regulated trucking companies.

And FedEx didn't intend to start up city by city as UPS always had. The concept was hatched nationwide, with its one hub, from the very beginning.

Most UPSers took the ostrich approach, ignoring the new company. Some denigrated it, saying, for instance: How are they going to deliver them on the ground? Their network's too small. People don't need that much delivered overnight. Costs are too high. They'll probably go under.

Business building, to Casey, depended on the hard work and loyalty that the stock ownership inspired. "The basic principle which I believe has contributed more than other to the building of our business as it is today, is the ownership of our company by the people employed in it."

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Transition seldom comes easily. Of course, we cannot clearly see all of the steps ahead. It is always easier to see difficulties than to develop methods of solving them. But first, let us take sight of a goal. The difficulties will be solved in ways we cannot now see.

First is the dream, then development, followed by improvement until the dream becomes a reality. Later a new dream makes the products of an earlier one obsolete. This has been the course of industrial history, and in its path have been the victims and the victors of progress. —Jim Casey

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#191 Naval Ravikant (A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)

13 juli 2021 | 66 min

What I learned from reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. Read the book online for free here.

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Naval has changed my life for the better, and if you approach the following pages like a friendly but highly competent sparring partner, he might just change yours.

Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.

If you don't know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Ignore people playing status games, They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers, Most people haven't figured this out yet.

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.

Fortunes require leverage.

Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.

An army of robots is freely available-it's just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it.

If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.

Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.

When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that is for another day.

Your summary says "Productize yourself"-what does that mean? “Productize" has leverage. “Yourself" has accountability.

Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.

When I talk about specific knowledge, I mean figure out what you were doing as a kid or teenager almost effortlessly. Something you didn't even consider a skill, but people around you noticed. Your mother or your best friend growing up would know.

No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

If you're not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is 100 percent into it will outperform you. And they won't just outperform you by a little bit-they'll outperform you by a lot because now we’re operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.

Escape competition through authenticity.

If you are fundamentally building and marketing something that is an extension of who you are, no one can compete with you on that.

The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of continuous learners in free markets.

The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.

If you don't own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom.

Find a position of leverage. We live in an age of infinite leverage.

Forget rich versus poor, white-collar versus blue. It's now leveraged versus un-leveraged.

The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication.

This newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made. The new generation's fortunes are all made through code or media.

Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay.

What you want in life is to be in control of your time.

Demonstrated judgment-credibility around the judgmentis so critical. Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility. He's been highly accountable. He's been right over and over in the public domain. He's built a reputation for very high integrity, so you can trust him. People will throw infinite behind him because of his judgment. Nobody asks leverage him how hard he works. Nobody asks him when he wakes up your or when he goes to sleep. They're like, "Warren, just do thing."

Being at the extreme in your art is very important in the age of leverage.

Spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you're with, and what you do.

Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I ask you to describe your real life to yourself, and you look back from your deathbed at the interesting things you've done, it's all going to be around the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did.

My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.

The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.

Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.

The more you know, the less you diversify.

Inversion. I don't believe I have the ability to say what is going to work. Rather, I try to eliminate what's not going to work. I think being successful is just about not making mistakes. It's not about having correct judgment. It's about avoiding incorrect judgments.

In the intellectual domain, compound interest rules.

Simple heuristic: If you're evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term.

What are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? Read a lot—just read.

The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower. We live in the age of Alexandria, when every book and every piece of knowledge ever written down is a fingertip away. The means of learning are abundant-it's the desire to learn that is scarce.

I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001 percent. I think that alone accounts for any material success I've had in my life and any intelligence I might have.

There is ancient wisdom in books. If you're talking about an old problem like how to keep your body healthy, how to stay calm and peaceful, what kinds of value systems are good, how you raise a family, and those kinds of things, the older solutions are probably better. Any book that survived for two thousand years has been filtered through many people. The general principles are more likely to be correct. I wanted to get back into reading these sorts of books.

A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned.

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.

All the real scorecards are internal.

You decide it's important to you. You prioritize it above everything else. You read everything on the topic.

No exceptions—all screen activities linked to less happiness, all non-screen activities linked to more happiness.

Self-discipline is a bridge to a new self-image.

Enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.

To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.

Health, love, and your mission, in that order. Nothing else matters.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#190 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

10 juli 2021 | 60 min

What I learned from reading The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn.

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Ford generally accepted the responsibilities of his celebrity-he'd worked diligently to cultivate it, realizing early on that his personal fame heightened demand for Model Ts.

Ford's Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford's innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled off the line every two and a half minutes.

Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any color Model T that you liked, so long as the color was black. Few realized that Ford insisted the cars come in that color because black paint dried quickest, meaning Model Ts could be whipped through the assembly line and off to dealerships at an even faster pace, saving additional time and labor related dollars.

The Model T alone would have established Henry Ford as a household name, but he'd further cemented his reputation as a friend of the working man with a stunning announcement. In an era when factory line workers were lucky to earn $2 a day for their labor and toiled through ten-hour shifts six days a week, Ford pledged to pay $5 a day, and to reduce workdays to eight hours. Everyone in America was talking about it.

Over the years, as Ford founded and failed with two auto manufacturing companies before succeeding with his third, he endlessly reminisced about the meeting and Edison's words of encouragement: “Young man, that's the thing. You have it. Keep at it.”

Ford was a cannier businessman than his hero, much wealthier.

They found themselves in complete agreement about the evils of Wall Street and the crass men there who cared only for profit and not for the public. Both were poor boys who made good. Neither had a college degree, and both were disdainful of those who believed classroom education was superior to hands-on work experience and common sense.

Like Edison, Ford didn't have many friends. Ford was a prickly man and also a complicated one, burning to make the world better for humanity as a whole while not enjoying personal contact with most individuals.

Ford never doubted his own beliefs and decisions, forbidding disagreement from employees and ignoring any from outsiders. Ford's hobby was work. He devoted almost every waking minute to it.

When he and the inventor quickly became the closest of friends, Ford felt energized again, thanks in great part to Edison's inspiration.

For all of Ford's professional life he'd had to overcome skepticism from other successful men. He had always been the outsider, the one with the crazy ideas and clumsy social graces. Edison sympathized, because in his earliest years of prominence he was criticized for some of the same traits. The inventor not only accepted Ford for the rough-edged man that he was, he recognized in him the fine qualities that offset the carmaker's obvious flaws.

Henry Ford was always a man of strong opinions, and one who absolutely trusted his own instincts. He especially disdained anyone identified as an expert: "If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job."

When prominent, better educated men and their hired experts insisted that the future of the automobile market was limited to manufacturing expensive cars for the wealthy, Ford believed that the real potential lay in sales of a modest but dependable vehicle to the growing American middle class; there would be less profit in individual transactions, but the sheer number of sales would yield greater cumulative returns. With the Model T, Ford was proved right, and he reveled in it.

Their main goal was to have a good time. But few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone. If rank-and-file consumers liked what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars and light bulbs and phonographs and tires would directly benefit, too.

Ford shocked America by resigning as company president. He was going to start an entirely new automobile manufacturing enterprise. Ford Motor Company stockholders assumed the threat was real, and within weeks agreed to sell Ford their shares at a whopping $12,500 a share. (James Couzens, who knew Ford best, held out and received $13,000 for each of his.) Though Ford had to borrow $60 million of the near $106 million total cost, he was still glad to do it. It had been an elaborate bluff, but he was now in complete control of Ford Motor Company.

Ford received thousands of letters with the general message that if he were an anarchist, then America needed more of them. Ford was the son of a Michigan farmer, and like most rural Americans of the time his formal education was limited to a few years in local schools and teachers who themselves had often not graduated high school. Then he had to leave school to make a living. Like Ford, many of his countrymen read only with difficulty, if at all. Their understanding of American history was limited. They, too, might not remember the exact date of the American Revolution, but they knew that Henry Ford introduced the $5 workday and a car that ordinary people could afford. They identified with Ford so strongly that newspaper attacks on him were taken as insults directed at them.

They were shocked to receive shipments of Model Ts that they hadn't ordered. The edict on these cars was the same-Ford Motor Company must be paid for them. Refusal would terminate the dealer-company relationship. If they refused to accept these additional Model Ts and were fired by Ford, they could be ruined. Or, as the parent company suggested, they could accept the cars, if necessary get loans from their own banks to pay Ford for them, and then aggressively keep trying to sell Model Ts and hang on until the national economic crisis was over. The dealers had little choice but to accept. That provided Ford with enough money to meet his immediate corporate debts-the dealers had to risk wrath from their banks instead.

She never complained when Ford spent most of his off-the-job hours trying to build a combustion engine in their kitchen. Clara encouraged Ford to pursue his dream of creating "a car for the great multitudes," remaining supportive when his first two companies failed, encouraging him during the difficult first years of Ford Motor Company, his third.

Ford fixated on even the smallest details.

Patience was never Ford's strength.

Ford had no interest in laurel-resting.

Ford’s cars were built to last. Never flashy, in every way efficient, always dependable, much like the man whose company assembled them. And, just as Ford never saw any reason to change himself, he felt no pressure to change the Model T.

Ford's stubbornness gave competitors the opening they needed. When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors in 1923, the new boss emphasized a marketing plan based on Americans wanting not just transportation, but selection. Enough people now owned cars so that ownership itself was no longer special. What was going to matter soon was driving a car that reflected the personality, the specialness, of the individual owner.

As individuals, Edison, Ford, and Firestone created the means for the "great multitudes" to enjoy leisure entertainment far beyond what was previously imagined. As the Vagabonds, their summer car and camping trips exemplified what they had helped make possible: See what we're doing? You çan do it, too. By their example, the Vagabonds encouraged countless ordinary Americans to pursue their own dreams.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#189 David Ogilvy (The book I've given as a gift the most)

5 juli 2021 | 59 min

What I learned from reading The Unpublished David Ogilvy by David Ogilvy.

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[0:01] Will Any Agency Hire This Man? He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college.

He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing, and has never written any copy. He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.

I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.

[2:39] Words were what made him. Reading this collection, one is struck, piece after piece by how David's words surprise and seduce, tease and provoke.

[2:58] His writing is opinionated, forceful, and urgent.

[4:24] David was building his first-class business in a first-class way.

[5:37] Every advertisement must tell the whole sales story.

[5:41] The copy must be human and very simple.Every word in the copy must count. Concrete figures must be substituted for atmospheric claims; clichés must give way to facts, and empty exhortations to alluring offers.

[6:08] Permanent success has rarely been built on frivolity. People do not buy from clowns.

[7:38] The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore.

[11:49] I have a new metaphor. Great hospitals do two things: They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. Ogilvy & Mather does two things: We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people. Ogilvy & Mather is the teaching hospital of the advertising world. And, as such, to be respected above all other agencies.

[12:44] I plead for charm, flair, showmanship, taste, distinction.

[16:42] Dear Ray: Nineteen years ago you wrote me the best job application letter I have ever received. I can still recite the first paragraph. The first paragraph read: "My father was in charge of the men's lavatory at the Ritz Hotel. My mother was a chambermaid at the same hotel. I was educated at the London School of Economics.

[18:04] I find extravagance esthetically repulsive. I find the New England Puritan tradition more attractive. And more profitable.

[21:14] So the time had come to give the pendulum a push in the other direction. If that push has puzzled you, caught you on the wrong foot and confused you, I can only quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today."

[22:01] I prefer a posture of confident authority.

[22:19] You have a first-class mind. Stretch it.

[22:38] David on how he lasted so long:

1. I have outlived all my competitors.

2. My obsessive interest in advertising has not dimmed.

3. My younger partners have tolerated my presence in their midst.

4. I had the wisdom to give them a free run. As a result, Ogilvy & Mather has outgrown its founder.

[27:02] An account manager wrote to David wondering what he considered his worst shortcomings. The reply:

I am intolerant of mediocrity – and laziness.

I fritter away too much time on things which aren't important.

Like everyone of my age, I talk too much about the past.

I have always funked firing people who needed to be fired.

I am afraid of flying and go to ridiculous lengths to avoid it.

When I was Creative Head in New York, I wrote too much of the advertising myself.

I know nothing about finance.

I change my mind – about advertising and about people.

I am candid to the point of indiscretion.

I see too many sides to every argument.

I am over-impressed by physical beauty.

I have a low threshold of boredom.

[28:09] Somebody recently asked me for a list of the most useful books on advertising – the books that all our people should read. Here is what I sent her:

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples.

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.

How to Advertise by Kenneth Roman and Jane Maas.

Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves.

The Art of Writing Advertising : Conversations with Masters of the Craft: David Ogilvy, William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, Rosser Reeves by Denis Higgins.

The 100 Best Advertisements by Julian Watkins.

[29:26] Don't be dull bores. We can't save souls in an empty church.

[31:28] What guts it takes, what obstinate determination, to stick to one coherent creative policy, year after year, in the face of all the pressures to "come up with something new" every six months.

[31:57] The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most favourable image, the most sharply defined personality, is the one who will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit – in the long run.

[32:05] We try to create sharply defined personalities for our brands. And we stick to those personalities, year after year.

[32:58] Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up tọ them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second-rate work.

[33:57] For Pete's sake write shorter memos. Cut your wordage in half.

[34:12] How does the OBM of 1962 compare with the agency I dreamed of in 1948? To tell you the truth, it looks a million times better than I ever dreamed it could look. I just cannot believe what a good agency this has grown to be. I am terribly proud, and terribly grateful.

[35:07] David is often astonished by working habits that differ from his own. Once, discussing a copywriter at another agency whom he admired in some respects, he said: "Listen to this - every day at precisely five o'clock that man gets up from his desk, puts on his hat and his coat, and goes home." Long pause to let it sink in. Then, leaning forward for emphasis: "Think of the extraordinary self-discipline that requires!"

[36:49] My old friend advised you to avoid excess in all things. Mr. Ashcroft used to say the same thing – avoid excess in all things. That is a recipe for dullness and mediocrity.

[38:09] I will begin with an old-fashioned affirmation in the supreme value of hard work. I believe in the Scottish proverb: “Hard work never killed a man." Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They never die of hard work.

[38:36] On the other hand, I believe in lots of vacations. Sabbaticals recharge batteries.

[39:18] Are we freewheeling entrepreneurs, ready to take risks in new ventures? Or are we too frightened of making mistakes? When the toy-buyer at Sears made a mistake which cost his company 10 million bucks, I asked the head of Sears, “Are you going to fire him?" “Hell no," he replied, “I fire people who don't make mistakes."

[41:06] It is the duty of our top people to sustain unremitting pressure on the professional standards of their staffs. They must not tolerate sloppy plans or mediocre creative work.

[41:30] If you ever find a man who is better than you are– hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

[41:56] Five characteristics for rapid promotion

He is ambitious.

He works harder than his peers – and enjoys it.

He has a brilliant brain – inventive and unorthodox.

He has an engaging personality.

He demonstrates respect for the creative function.

[42:56] The line between pride in our work and neurotic obstinacy is a narrow one.

[43:07] We have a habit of divine discontent with our performance. It is an antidote to smugness.

[43:50] Raise your sights! Blaze new trails! Compete with the immortals!

[48:13] Great leaders almost seem to exude self-confidence.

[49:13] Great industrial leaders are always fanatically committed to their jobs. They are not lazy, or amateurs.

[52:00] What would you have done differently if you could do it all over? I wouldn't have made so damn many mistakes, and most notably, I would not have sold so many of my Ogilvy & Mather shares.I was scared. We were being fantastically successful. I kept saying to myself: easy come, easy go. This thing could go up in smoke at any moment. I was frightened and I wanted to get the money out and put it into something safe.

[53:22] Did you ever think the agency was going to fail? Yes. Every day for years I thought it was going to fail. I was always scared sick-always a terrible worrywart when I was in my heyday at the agency. I remember saying one day: If this is success, God deliver me from failure.

[53:47] Personal dislike made me resign many accounts. I didn't like having to deal with the sonofabitch. Why should I? We pass this way only once.

[54:02] Anything you've always wanted that eluded you? A big family. Ten children.

[54:10] Retiring can be fatal.

[56:04] I was talking at my old school not long ago in Scotland and I gave them a little sermon on the subject of success. They should stop thinking about success entirely in terms of material achievements and careers and all that stuff and think of success in terms of their own happiness and the happiness of their family.

[56:45] I had to make my own bed. I was a very, very good salesman. And that's an important thing to be.

[58:22] I had a short period in my life, I think maybe ten years, when I was pretty close to being a genius and I can look back on that with interested curiosity and affection and some nostalgia. Then it ran out. But I was.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#188 Joe Coulombe (Founder of Trader Joes)

28 juni 2021 | 75 min

What I learned from Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe.

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[0:01] I wrote this book to help entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. That's why there's a lack of miracles and a surplus of marketing details including buying, advertising, distributing, and running stores; and lots of discussion of how we built a successful business on high wages.

[18:09] Chapter 11 was a possibility. But I was reading The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, with its implicit concept of multiple solutions to non-convex problems.

[19:07] This is my favorite of all managerial quotes: If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions. —Tex Thornton, cofounder of Litton Industries, quoted in the Los Angeles Times in the mid-1960s.

[22:33] The most basic conclusion I drew from her book was that, if you adopt a reasonable strategy, as opposed to waiting for an optimum strategy, and stick with it, you'll probably succeed. Tenacity is as important as brilliance.

[24:31] The one core value that I chose was our high compensation policies. This is the most important single business decision I ever made: to pay people well.

[30:30] The basic problem is that convenience store retailing is a commodity business that is hard to differentiate. What I needed was a good but small opportunity for my good but small company: a non-commodity, differentiated kind of retailing.

[33:38] As we evolved Trader Joe's, its greatest departure from the norm wasn't its size or its decor. It was our commitment to product knowledge, something which was totally foreign to the mass-merchant culture, and our turning our backs to branded merchandise.

[38:25] Most of my ideas about how to act as an entrepreneur are derived from The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset, the greatest Spanish philosopher of the twentieth century. I believe this book still offers the clearest explanation of the times in which we live. And I believe it offers a master “plan of action" for the would-be entrepreneur, who usually has no reputation and few resources.

[40:22] From the beginning, thanks to Ortega, I've been aware of the need to sell everybody. . . I took a cue from General Patton, who thought that the greatest danger was not that the enemy would learn his plans, but that his own troops would not.

[47:32] We assumed that our readers had a thirst for knowledge, 180 degrees opposite from supermarket ads. We emphasized "informative advertising," a term borrowed from the famous entrepreneur Paul Hawken, who started publishing in the Whole Earth Review in the early 1980s. These informative texts were intended to stress how our products were differentiated from ordinary stuff.

[52:09] All businesses have problems. It's the problems that create the opportunities. If a business is easy, every simple bastard would enter it. My point is that a businessperson who complains about problems doesn't understand where his bread is coming from.

[57:00] We violated every received-wisdom of retailing except one: we delivered great value, which is where most retailers fail.

[1:14:05] But do I regret having sold? Yes. I admit it. To mine own self I was not true when I sold. I regret not having had the guts to ride out the loss of the surtax exemptions, the employee ownership problem, the threat of death taxes, Carter's threat to eliminate capital gains preference, and all the other fears, real or phantom, of late 1978. I have to admit the truth, that I regret having sold Trader Joe's. And I have had to pay something for this, beyond the loss of my shadow.

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Other episodes mentioned in this episode:

#18 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

#20 Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

#89 Confessions of an Advertising Man

#107 Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator

#110 Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation (Henry Singleton)

#170 My Life in Advertising

#179 Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

#181 Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#187 Albert Einstein

22 juni 2021 | 85 min

What I learned from reading Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.

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[0:01] In a drama that would seem fake were it not so horrifying, Einstein’s brain ended up being, for more than four decades, a wandering relic.

[4:22] Einstein remained consistent in his willingness to be a serenely amused loner who was comfortable not conforming.

[6:49] “In teaching history,” Einstein replied, “there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.”

[8:33] It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.

[11:39] He had an allergic reaction against all forms of dogma and authority.

[14:37] It made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.

[20:24] It would be an astonishing nine years after his graduation and four years after the miracle year in which he upended physics before he would be offered a job as a junior professor.

[26:24] How To Win With People You Don't Like

[35:22] Had he given up theoretical physics at that point, the scientific community would not have noticed. There was no sign that he was about to unleash a remarkable year the like of which science had not seen since 1666, when Isaac Newton, holed up at his mother’s home to escape the plague developed calculus, an analysis of the light spectrum, and the laws of gravity.

[41:41] To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.

[44:30] He responded by saying that he planned to “smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company.”

[54:25] The whole affair is a matter of indifference to me, as is all the commotion, and the opinion of each and every human being.

[55:56] I am truly a lone traveler and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.

[1:10:47] When shown his office, he was asked what equipment he might need. "A large wastebasket so I can throw away all my mistakes.”

[1:18:57] I do not know how the Third World War will be fought but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth — rocks.

[1:22:26] Brief is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness.

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Other episodes mentioned in this episode:

#18 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

#25 Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson

#94 The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Henry Singleton)

#95 A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age

#110 Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation (Henry Singleton)

Bonus episode between #168 and #169 Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

Bonus episode between #179 and #180 Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#186 Phil Knight (Nike)

16 juni 2021 | 103 min

What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

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[2:02] I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all...different.

[6:18] So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Don't stop. Don't even think about stopping until you get there, and don't give much thought to where "there" is. Whatever comes, just don't stop. That's the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it's the best advice-maybe the only advice-any of us should ever give.

[10:32] They greeted my passion and intensity with labored sighs and vacant stares.

[16:48] Carter never did mess around. See an open shot, take it. I told myself there was much to learn from a guy like that.

[20:25] If I didn't, if I muffed this, I'd be doomed to spend the rest of my days selling encyclopedias, or mutual funds, or some other junk I didn't really care about.

[27:45] Bowerman was a genius coach, a master motivator, a natural leader of young men, and there was one piece of gear he deemed crucial to their development. Shoes. He was obsessed with how human beings are shod.

[32:30] Bowerman didn’t give a damn about respectability. He possessed a prehistoric strain of maleness. Today it’s all but extinct. He was a war hero, too. Of course he was.

[32:49] The most famous track coach in America, Bowerman never considered himself a track coach. He detested being called coach. He called himself a “Professor of Competitive Responses,” and his job, as he saw it, and often described it, was to get you ready for the struggles and competitions that lay ahead.

[35:40] In my mind he was Patton with a stopwatch. That is, when he wasn't a god.

[38:17] "Buck," he said, "how long do you think you're going to keep jackassing around with these shoes?" I shrugged. "I don't know, Dad."

[40:00] So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn't selling. I believed in running.

[1:00:57] My life was out of balance, sure, but I didn't care. In fact, I wanted even more imbalance. Or a different kind of imbalance. I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to Blue Ribbon. I'd never been a multitasker, and I didn't see any reason to start now. I wanted to be present, always. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered.

[1:05:40] I spent a fair portion of each day lost in my own thoughts, tumbling down mental wormholes, to solve some problem or construct some plan.

[1:10:40] More than once, over my first cup of coffee in the morning, or while trying to fall asleep at night, I'd tell myself: Maybe I'm a fool? Maybe this whole damn shoe thing is a fool's errand? Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

[1:23:10] I told myself, Don’t forget this. Do not forget. I told myself there was much to be learned from such a display of passion, whether you were running a mile or a company.

[1:36:50] When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is-you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping others to live more fully, and if that's business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.

[1:38:10] I asked myself: What are you feeling? It wasn't joy. It wasn't relief. If I felt anything, it was... regret? Good God, I thought. Yes. Regret. Because I honestly wished I could do it all over again.

[1:40:32] Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. And yet I know that this regret clashes with my secret regret that I can't do it all over again. God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing.

[1:40:50] I'd like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so that some young man or woman, somewhere, going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted. Or warned. Some young entrepreneur, maybe, some athlete or painter or novelist, might press on. It's all the same drive. The same dream. It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I'd tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I'd tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you've ever felt.

[1:42:22] Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn't mean stopping. Don't ever stop.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#185 César Ritz and Auguste Escoffier (The Hotelier and The Chef)

10 juni 2021 | 82 min

What I learned from reading Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr.

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[1:00] The words echoed in his head, even now. The idea that they should be seen as servants was the cruelest of insults. César Ritz, Auguste Escoffier, servants?

[11:28] He hasn't the least idea how much work and care, how much imagination and effort, go into the proper running of a hotel.

[20:44] This was the very heart of a world that had shaped him, a world of privilege and luxury in which he had forged a place for himself, against all odds. Ritz had not been born to this life. Raised in a tiny village (population 123) in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, he was the last of eleven children, and had left home at the age of twelve.

[21:04] He was a self-made man. And beneath his placid, imperturbable Swiss poise lay enormous ambition.

[22:26] Ritz knew better than anyone the importance of the kitchen in creating a truly luxurious hotel experience. He had built his success in the hotel business in tandem with the brilliant chef Auguste Escoffier.

[26:48] Ritz had spent years working for others and was now, finally, a hotel owner himself. Yes, his hotels were small, but they were his.

[27:48] Ritz was proud, but also full of insecurities: about his Swiss peasant family background, his lack of education.

[30:20] "You'll never make anything of yourself in the hotel business," his boss at one of his very first jobs had told him. "It takes a special knack, a special flair, and it's only right that I should tell you the truth: you haven't got it." Well, he'd got it now.

[40:18] Escoffier was not an educated man, but he had quickly discovered that he had a real talent for cooking, which he saw as both a science and an art.

[40:37] He had begun to establish a new ethos for the professional kitchen, one that depended on respect: respect for the chefs, respect for the ingredients, respect for the artistry of cooking.

[44:41] The food itself was less complicated than it had been, shorn of unnecessary ornamentation, inedible decoration, and too many sauces. "Above all, make it simple." was his motto.

[49:40] He was the elegant and cultivated César Ritz, mastermind of luxury, but he couldn't escape the feeling that he might be revealed, at any moment, to be an impostor, nothing more than a servant. The truth, he feared, was detectable in the size of his hands and feet. They were large, peasant-size hands and feet, he was convinced, and he did everything possible to keep them hidden. He wore his shoes a half size too small.

[53:39] The Provence was his and his alone. It was almost impossible to explain to Marie what that meant to him, how deep that feeling went. For Ritz, owning his own hotel was the signal achievement of his life, marking his escape from his past.

[1:02:07] The most damning charge in the entire letter was that Escoffier was taking kickbacks on all the food orders coming into the Savoy.

[1:05:11] Escoffier and Ritz had been fired.

[1:06:57] "The best is not too good," Ritz would say. This was his philosophy about everything.

[1:08:01] It should instead be "a work tool more than a book, a constant companion that chefs would always keep at their side." A book for working professionals.

[1:12:17]Again, a tiny detail, a solution to a problem no one had ever even put into words, but one that Ritz, in his obsessive way, had noted and now acted upon.

[1:14:35] Ritz was filled with overwhelming pride and, at the same time, a creeping sense of inadequacy.

[1:16:25] To think that his parents had lived and died in Niederwald, had never even left Switzerland, not once, and here he was, the proprietor of the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, the most famous hotelier in the world, and now he was opening a new property in London.

[1:18:29] They both looked back with amazement at what they had achieved together in the 1890s, how different the world was then, how they themselves had changed it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons)

6 juni 2021 | 77 min

What I learned from reading Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp.

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[0:01] When I built my first hotel I knew nothing about the hotel business.

[4:28] He refused to settle for the pragmatic dictum of maturity. Issy also skipped skepticism and "Let's be sensible." People said he was naïve, with a kind of glandular optimism. Perhaps. But as it turned out naïveté served him well.

[6:32] Early on he made some audacious statements that sounded like pipe dreams. He told me once that his aim was to make the name Four Seasons a worldwide brand, synonymous with luxury, like Rolls-Royce.

[8:39]Once, when Dad was excavating a basement with horse and plough, he broke his shoulder. But he shrugged it off and uncomplainingly kept on working, something I never forgot.

[26:52] I decided to go ahead. I foresaw only one difficulty, but it loomed large: How do you build a two-hundred-room resort without any money? This was literal fact. My earnings barely covered my rising family costs.

[35:23] I asked Sir Gerald Glover, "How do you keep your lawn so perfect?" “No problem”, he replied. “You just cut it every week for three hundred years.”

[43:48] I owe my success to my freedom. I think for me independence has an incalculable value.

[44:44] All business proceeds on belief: Trying to run a company without a set of beliefs is like trying to steer a ship without a rudder.

[56:03] The experience made me realize what I would really like to do: create a group of the best hotels in the world. And what we really want to do is usually what we do best.

[56:51] We will not be all things to all people. We will specialize.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#183 Johnny Carson

4 juni 2021 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin.

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[13:50] He often told me that all it took to turn the most electrifying film stars into dullards was to be around them for a while. But he felt that way around everybody. There were very few social scenes in which he was ever really comfortable.

[14:07] Johnny was comfortable in front of twenty million but just as uncomfortable in a gathering of twenty.

[15:44] Carson grasped that he owned the camera the way Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had grasped that they owned the microphone. That understanding made him more natural, more relaxed, cooler.

[21:29] Johnny continued. “If a doctor opened up my chest right now, he couldn’t find a heart, or any goddamn thing. Just a lot of misery. My mother made sure of that. She deprived us all of any real goddamn warmth."

[23:20] Facts revealed themselves. Curious facts. Disturbing facts. Like the fact that Johnny Carson wasn’t wealthy. Indeed, he had very little money. He had little money because the people around him, whom he trusted, were serving him poorly.

[28:43] I was shocked to realize that he owned no equity interest in the new company. Instead, half was owned by the manufacturer and half by Sonny Werblin. Carson, in effect, was paid a salary to wear clothes from the company that bore his name, while the man he had entrusted with his affairs lined his own pockets.

[29:39] “Look what’s going on,” I said. “His wife is cheating on him. His manager is screwing him, his agents are exploiting him, and his producer’s wife has been conspiring with Joanne to cuckold him. What a goddamn mess.”

[32:46] Johnny Carson lived comfortably in his own skin. He may have been troubled in certain areas, but he was never tormented by insecurity.

[42:57] Carson’s show was earning NBC between $50 and $60 million a year.

[45:45] Being a star in Hollywood was a fabulous thing, but the real money and power went to those who owned the companies that produced the programs. It was Aaron Spelling who called the shots and raked in the dough and lived like the sultan of Brunei. Or to put it another way, Merv Griffin, who was a rival of Carson’s but never his peer, was so much richer than Johnny because he owned the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

[49:14] He had too keen an appreciation for how much work and talent and discipline went into success to be flattered by praise and adulation.

[50:27] Like most oracles, Wasserman gave an opinion that was simple and sensible (but unambiguously presented, thank goodness). “It is not prudent,” replied Wasserman, “to ask people to change their nightly viewing habits. Once they are used to tuning in a given channel, they find it hard to make the move, no matter how good an alternative is being provided elsewhere.” Was that it? All of our thinking and talking and arguing and agonizing came down to the belief that Americans won’t change the dial? Wasserman’s advice sealed our decision.

[54:39] He liked performing. He liked being onstage, being the center of attention, and doing something he did with supreme excellence.

[57:27] To my surprise, the three girls were skinny-dipping in the rooftop swimming pool, while Johnny, wearing nothing but an apron, served them wine from a silver platter.

[1:00:31] Johnny Carson performed on television, but he didn’t watch it.

[1:09:37] Johnny Carson enjoyed the adulation of millions, but his mother could not love him. He carried that pain, and spread it, all his life.

[1:09:56] He has probably been funnier longer and more consistently than any other comedian who ever lived. Johnny just kept rolling on and on, never deviating, seldom surprising, seldom surpassing, but nearly always delivering.

[1:10:35] Once he got control of The Tonight Show he was earning so much that it was like Monopoly money. He was free to do literally whatever he wanted.

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#182 Warren Buffett (The Making of an American Capitalist)

29 maj 2021 | 73 min

What I learned from reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein.

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His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus on his work and shut out the world, yet those same qualities exacted a toll.

He emerged from those first hard years with an absolute drive to become very, very rich. He thought about it before he was five years old. And from that time on, he scarcely stopped thinking of it.

Most of us were trying to be like everyone else. I think he liked being different. He was what he was and he never tried to be anything else.

Warren disgustedly reported that he knew more than the professors. His dissatisfaction-a forerunner of his general disaffection for business schools-was rooted in their mushy, overbroad approach. His professors had fancy theories but were ignorant of the practical details of making a profit that Warren craved.

It seemed too good to be true; if the stocks were so cheap, Buffett figured, somebody ought to be buying them. But slowly, it dawned on him. The somebody was him. Nobody was going to tell you that an investment was a steal; you had to get there on your own.

Buffett knew more about stocks than anyone.

He was working virtually all the time, and loving every minute.

His talent lay not in his range—which was narrowly focused on investing—but in his intensity. His entire soul was focused on that one outlet.

He did not draw the usual line between "work" and other activities.

Wall Street's chorus, all reading the same lyrics, was chanting, "Sell." Buffett decided to buy. He put close to one-quarter of his assets on that single stock.

Buffett visited Walt Disney himself on the Disney lot. The animator was as enthusiastic as ever. Buffett was struck by his childlike enchantment with his work-so similar to Buffett's own.

It was virtually impossible to poke through the fog of his concentration.

Jack asked, "How do you do it?" Buffett said he read "a couple of thousand" financial statements a year.

He would go home and read a stack of annual reports. For anyone else it would have been work. For Buffett it was a night on the town. He did not merely do this nine-to-five. If he was awake, the wheels were turning.

As Buffett explained, Berkshire was something he intended never to sell. “I just like it. Berkshire is something that I would be in the rest of my life. It is public, but it is almost like the family business now.” Not long-term, but the rest of his life. His career-in a sense, his life-was subsumed in that one company. Everything he did, each investment, would add a stroke to that never-to-be-finished canvas. And no one could seize the brush from him.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#181 Paul Orfalea (Kinkos)

23 maj 2021 | 73 min

What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea.

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[4:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinker. It's often exhausting trying to keep up with him.

[5:21] I graduated from high school eighth from the bottom of my class of 1,200. Frankly, I still have no idea how those seven kids managed to do worse than I did.

[8:29] I also have no mechanical ability to speak of. There isn't a machine at Kinko's I can operate. I could barely run the first copier we leased back in 1970. It didn't matter. All I knew was that was I could sell what came out of it.

[10:24] Building an entirely new sort of business from a single Xerox copy machine gave me the life the world seemed determined to deny me when I was younger.

[13:04] The A students work for the B students, the C students run the companies, and the D students dedicate the buildings.

[23:02] I learned to turn a lot of busywork over to other people. That's an important skill. If you don't develop it, you'll be so busy, busy, busy that you can't get a free hour, not to mention a free week or month, to sit back and think creatively about where you want to be heading and how you are going to get there.

[24:07] There's no better way to stay "on" your business than to think creatively and constantly about your marketing: how you are marketing, who you are marketing to, and, always, how you could be doing a better job at it. You'd be amazed what kind of business you can generate by a seemingly simple thing like handing out flyers.

[26:18] The phone rang. It was one of our store managers calling to ask me how to handle a bounced check. I held the receiver away from my face and looked at it, flabbergasted. If every store manager needed my help to deal with a bounced check, then we really had problems.

[39:55] I never walked in the back door used by coworkers. I walked in the front door so I could see things from the customer's perspective.

[48:06] You had to remember he'd been picking up the best ideas from all around the country. (Founders is doing the same thing from the history of entrepreneurship)

[54:14] I believe in getting out of as much work as I possibly can.

[54:45] By now, you’d have to be as bad a reader as I am not to figure out that I have a dark side. You rarely hear people talk about their dark sides, especially business leaders, which is a shame because successful businesses aren't usually started by laid-back personalities. I don't hide the fact that I have a problem with anger.

[1:03:37] I'll give you an example of a corporate view of money. We used to sell passport photos at Kinko's and we advertised the service in the local Yellow Pages. It would cost us 75 cents to make a passport photo. I calculated that price jumped by $1 to $1.75 when you added in the cost of the Yellow Pages ads. We'd sell those photos for $13 a piece. You think this is a nice business? Shortly after we sold a controlling stake in Kinko's, the new budget people came in and, to make their numbers, they got rid of the Yellow Pages ads. They saw it as an advertising expense and didn't take into account how it affected the rest of our business. I used to go to the office and think, "Are they deliberately trying to be idiots?" These straight-A types drove me nuts. Then, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we abandoned our passport business. That is corporate dyslexia. There is a lot of corporate dyslexia going on out there.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#180 Jeff Bezos (Invention of a Global Empire)

17 maj 2021 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone.

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[1:47] Every interesting thing I've ever done, every important thing I've ever done, every beneficial thing I've ever done, has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures. I'm covered in scar tissues as a result of this.

[6:19] I absolutely know it's hard, but we'll learn how to do it.

[8:30] Thinking small is a self fulfilling prophecy.

[12:13] Begin any conversation about a new product in terms of the benefit it creates for customers.

[19:08] Bezos deployed his playbook for experiments that produced promising sparks: he poured gasoline on them.

[22:41] You can regulate yourself quite easily or think about what you're going to do with your existing resources. Sometimes, you don't know what the boundaries are. Jeff just wanted us to be unbounded.

[25:48] If I have to choose between agreement and conflict, I'll take conflict every time. It always yields a better result.

[27:19] Don't come to me with a plan that assumes I will only make a certain level of investment. Tell me how to win.

[35:50] He preached the wholesale embrace of technology, rapid experimentation, and optimism about the opportunities of the internet instead of despair.

[45:17] Bezos’ one constant edict: Go faster.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Jeff Bezos (Insights, Stories, and Secrets)

13 maj 2021 | 63 min

What I learned from Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr.

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[3:58] What is best for the customer? Do that: "Amazon believes that long-term growth is best produced by putting the customer first. If you held this conviction, what kind of company would you build?"

[7:05] Jeff skips the conferences and dinners: "95 percent of the time I spent with Jeff was focused on internal work issues rather than external events like conferences, public speeches, and sports matches."

[25:08] Don't encourage communication—eliminate it: "Jeff said many times that if we wanted Amazon to be a place where builders can build, we needed to eliminate communication, not encourage it. When you view effective communication across groups as a "defect," the solutions to your problems start to look quite different from traditional ones." (There is nothing conventional about Jeff)

[27:29] Why companies must run experiments: "Time and time again, we learned that consumers would behave in ways we hadn't imagined especially for brand-new features or products."

[30:16] Jeff on the importance of making decisions quickly: "Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you're probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you're good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure."

[30:48] Great anything is rare: "Great Two-Pizza team leaders proved to be rarities. Although we did identify a few such brilliant managers, they turned out to be notoriously difficult to find in sufficient numbers, even at Amazon."

[34:30] A simple tip from Jeff on how to produce unique insights: "Jeff has an uncanny ability to read a narrative and consistently arrive at insights that no one else did, even though we were all reading the same narrative. After one meeting, I asked him how he was able to do that. He responded with a simple and useful tip that I have not forgotten: he assumes each sentence he reads is wrong until he can prove otherwise. He's challenging the content of the sentence, not the motive of the writer.”

[35:12] Why Amazon works backwards: "Working Backwards is a systematic way to vet ideas and create new products. Its key tenet is to start by defining the customer experience, then iteratively work backwards from that point until the team achieves clarity of thought around what to build."

[40:00] Working backwards on Kindle: "We were working forward, trying to invent a product that would be good for Amazon, the company, not the customer. When we wrote a Kindle press release and started working backwards, everything changed. We focused instead on what would be great for customers. An excellent screen for a great reading experience. An ordering process that would make buying and downloading books easy. A huge selection of titles. Low prices. We would never have had the breakthroughs necessary to achieve that customer experience were it not for the press release process, which forced the team to invent multiple solutions to customer problems."

[43:58] Patience. Then bet big: Our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution. Once we had a clear vision for how these products could become businesses that would delight customers, we invested big. Patience and carefully managed investment over many years can pay off greatly.

[46:03] Have Steve Jobs level of belief in your products: "Jobs calmly and confidently told us that even though it was Apple's first attempt to build for Windows, he thought it was the best Windows application anyone had ever built."

[54:48] Amazon's Kindle strategy was influenced by Apple: "In digital, that meant focusing on applications and devices consumers used to read, watch, or listen to content, as Apple had already done with iTunes and the iPod. We all took note of what Apple had achieved in digital music in a short period of time and sought to apply those learnings to our long-term product vision."

[56:48] Good ideas are rare. When you find one bet heavily: "At some point in the debate, someone asked Jeff point blank: "How much more money are you willing to invest in Kindle?" Jeff calmly turned to our CFO, Tom Szkutak, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and asked the rhetorical question, "How much money do we have?"

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#179 Jeff Bezos

10 maj 2021 | 81 min

What I learned from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.

This is part one of a three part series on Jeff Bezos. The next two books are Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon and Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.

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(0:54) It may very well be that the absolute intensity of drive and focus is essential and incompatible with all of the nice management thought about consensus and gentle demeanor.

(2:07) Jeff’s clarity, intensity of focus, and ability to prioritize is unusual.

(4:05) As I read the Steve Jobs biography I even had an insight and question about myself, that maybe I haven’t begun to really find my own limits.

(10:49) You have to be able to think what you're doing for yourself.

(11:42) There is probably no limit to what he can do.

(12:34) People forget that most people believed Amazon was doomed because it would not scale at a cost structure that would work. It kept piling up losses. It lost hundreds of millions of dollars. But Jeff was very smart. He’s a classic technical founder of a business, who understands every detail and cares about it more than anyone.

(13:45) Bezos has proved quite indifferent to the opinions of others.

(13:58) Bezos is extremely difficult to work for.

(15:58) Amazon's internal customs are deeply idiosyncratic.

(16:15) He is highly circumspect about deviating from well established, very abstract talking points.

(18:08) The financial community knew very little about D. E. Shaw, and its polymath founder wanted to keep it that way.

(20:15) Jeff was not concerned about what other people were thinking.

(20:26) Bezos had closely studied several wealthy businessmen.

(21:13) Bezos was disciplined and precise.

(22:14) Bezos seemed to love the idea of the nonstop workday.

(22:23) The rest of Wall Street saw D. E. Shaw as a highly secretive hedged fund. David Shaw didn't view the company as a hedge fund but as a versatile technology laboratory who could apply computer science to different problems.

(25:51) Web activity had grown that year by 230,000%. Things just don't grow that fast Bezos said. It's highly unusual and that started me thinking what kind of business might make sense in the context of that growth?

(31:59) He swept me off my feet. He was so convinced that what he was doing was basically the work of God and that somehow the money would materialize. The real wild card was, could he really run a business? That wasn’t a gimme. Of course, about two years later I was going, Holy shit, did we back the right horse!

(34:05) Bezos plowed through them at a rapid clip, looking for someone with the same low regard for the usual way of doing things that Bezos himself had.

(34:46) Bezos looked right at Schultz and told him We are going to take this thing to the moon!

(35:16) Jeff was always a big believer that disruptive small companies could triumph.

(35:55) I think you are underestimating the degree to which established companies will find it hard to be nimble or to focus attention on a new channel.

(36:45) I brought him very bad news about our business and he got excited.

(37:28) I think our company is undervalued. The world just doesn't understand what Amazon is going to be.

(39:30) Bezos had imbibed Walton's book thoroughly and wove Walmart's founder's credo about frugality and a bias for action into the cultural fabric of Amazon.

(44:54) We were all running around the halls with our hair on fire thinking What are we going to do? But not Jeff. I have never seen anyone so calm in the eye of a storm. Ice water runs through his veins.

(53:20) Bezos met Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco. Sinegal explained the Costco model to Bezos. It was all about customer loyalty. I think Jeff looked at it and thought that was something that would apply to his business as well. Sinegal doesn’t regret educating an entrepreneur who would evolve into a ferocious competitor. I’ve always had the opinion that we have shamelessly stolen any good ideas.

(57:45) Perhaps Amazon’s founder realized he owed Sinegal a debt of gratitude, because he took the lessons he learned during that coffee in 2001 and applied them with a vengeance.

(59:37) He just never stopped believing. He never blinked once.

(1:00:09) Slow steady progress can erode any challenge over time.

(1:01:40) Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren’t working together in a close, organic way. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more.

(1:04:43) Like a warlord leaving the decapitated heads of his enemies on stakes outside his village walls, he was using the mounts as a symbol, and as an admonition to employees about how not to behave.

(1:06:29) I want you to understand that from this day forward, you are not bound by the old rules.

(1:12:46) I think the thing that blindsided Jeff and helped with the Kindle was the iPod, which overturned the music business faster than he thought.

(1:14:27) Bezos is not tethered by conventional thinking. What is amazing to me is that he is bound only by the laws of physics. He can’t change those. Everything else he views as open to discussion.

(1:15:01) Bezos learned that Zappos was advertising on the bottoms of the plastic bins at airport-security checkpoints. They are outthinking us! he snapped at a meeting.

(1:16:15) Companies that make things and companies that sell them have waged versions of this battle for centuries.

(1:19:04) Every anecdote from a customer matters. We research each of them because they tell us something about our metrics and processes. It’s an audit that is done for us by our customers. We treat them as precious sources of information.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

3 maj 2021 | 82 min

What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney.

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[4:43] Mike Ive influence on his son’s talent was purely nurturing. They were constantly keeping up a conversation about made-objects and hw they could be made better.

[6:39] I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.

[9:24] Take big chances. Pursue a passion. Respect the work.

[11:47] His designs were incredibly simple and elegant. They were usually rather surprising but made complete sense once you saw them. You wondered why we had never seen such a product like that before.

[15:52] Grind it out. You can make something look like magic by going further than most reasonable people would go.

[17:34] The more I learned about this cheeky, almost rebellious company (Apple) the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money.

[24:06] He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point for his designs.

[33:29] Jony was very serious about his work. He had a ferocious intensity about it.

[41:52] It is very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

[51:38] Jobs didn't want to compete in the broader market for personal computers. These companies competed on price, not features or ease of use. Jobs figured theirs was a race to the bottom. Instead, he argued, there was no reason that well-designed, well-made computers couldn’t command the same market share ad margins as a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Why not make only first class-products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?

[1:19:25] A great prompt for your thinking: What is your product better than? Are you just making a cheap laptop? Or are you making an iPad? Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook.

[1:20:32] It’s great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing but then to be able to practice that and be preoccupied with it is another.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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----

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----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#177 Robert Campeau (Junk Bonds and Retail Bankruptcy)

26 april 2021 | 69 min

What I learned from reading Going for Broke: How Robert Campeau Bankrupted the Retail Industry, Jolted the Junk Bond Market, and Brought the Booming Eighties to a Crashing Halt by John Rothchild.

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[0:01] A stranger comes to Wall Street, borrows nearly $4 billion to acquire a company that six months earlier he'd never even heard of. This transaction is scarcely settled before he's allowed to borrow $7 billion more to acquire a bigger company, making him a major force in retailing, an industry he knows nothing about.

[11:16] Just a few weeks back, Randall had figured that Bob might be interested in attracting a single Brooks Brothers store into one of his malls. Now in a great imaginary leap, Bob had vaulted himself into the ownership of all forty-five Brooks Brothers stores.

[15:01 Neither Bob nor his advisers really knew one investment bank from another. "It was basically a matter of looking up names in the Yellow Pages."

[19:42] Lehman Brothers was impressed by two things: the man's obvious, if naive, enthusiasm; and the absurdity of his proposition. Those who doubted Bob could acquire Allied had grown into a large crowd that included Bob's brain trust, his advisers in Toronto, his Toronto bankers, his advisers from Paine Webber and his lawyer.

[21:45] This was Citicorp's first clue they were dealing with a volatile character, who soon acquired the in-house nickname Mad Bomber.

[29:26] The M&A department they established at First Boston helped the firm to a record $125 million in earnings in 1985, a long way from the $1 million it had earned in 1978.

[33:45] He think's he's destined to take over Allied. His fortune-teller says so.

[41:28] Bob understood that Citicorp and First Boston, who together had invested in $1.8 billion in the Street Sweep and who were going to make hundreds of millions in fees if this deal closed, were not about to let the deal fall apart because he didn't pony up his equity. They had more of a vested interest in this deal than he did.

[42:53] His $4.1 billion acquisition included a whopping $612 million in fees, expenses, and financing charges.

[50:00] The purpose of business is profit, not a platform for your ego.

[53:24] Bob said, "Don't worry. If somebody lends a dollar, you take it. The ramifications can be handled later. There's always some way out." He goes bankrupt shortly thereafter.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#176 Linus Torvalds (Creator of Linux)

18 april 2021 | 53 min

What I learned from reading Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond.

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[0:01] From a party of one it now counted millions of users on every continent, including Antartica, and even outer space, if you count NASA outposts. Not only was it the most common operating system, but its very development model—an intricate web of its own, encompassing hundreds of thousands of volunteer computer programmers—had grown to become the largest collaborative project in the history of the world.

[1:08] Revolutionaries aren’t born. Revolutions can’t be planned. Revolutions can’t be managed. Revolutions happen. And sometimes, revolutionaries just get stuck with it.

[9:05] The Swedish language has no equivalent to the term “dysfunctional family.” As a result of the divorce, we didn’t have a lot of money. Mom would have to pawn her only investment—the single share of stock in the Helsinki telephone company. I remember going with her once and feeling embarrassed about it. Now I’m on the board of directors of the same company.

[10:13] Linus has no handlers, doesn’t listen to voice mail, and rarely responds to email.

[10:40] I found Linus to be unexpectedly knowledgable about American business history.

[13:19] Some of the smartest programmers out there are fifteen-year-old kids playing around in their rooms. It’s what I thought sixteen years ago, and I still suspect it’s true.

[13:46] Everybody has a book that has changed his or her life. As I read the book I started to understand. I got a big enthusiastic jolt. Frankly, it never subsided. I hope you can say the same about something.

[16:01] An ugly system is one in which there are special interfaces for everything you want to do. Unix is the opposite. It gives you the building blocks that are sufficient for doing everything. That’s what having a clean design is all about. It’s the same with languages. The English language has twenty-six letters and you can build up everything from those letters. Unix comes with a small-is-beautiful philosophy. It has a small set of simple basic building blocks that can be combined into something that allows for infinite complexity of expression.

[17:39] You should absolutely not dismiss simplicity for something easy. It takes design and good taste to be simple.

[27:42] You can do something the brute force way, the stupid, grind-the-problem-down-until-it’s-not-a-problem-anymore way, or you can find the right approach and suddenly the problem just goes away. You look at the problem another way, and you have this epiphany: It was only a problem because you were looking at it the wrong way.

[29:00] That was the point where I almost gave up, thinking it would be too much work and not worth it.

[50:52] It’s been well established that folks do their best work when they are driven by a passion. When they are having fun. This is as true for playwrights and sculptors and entrepreneurs as it is for software engineers.

[51:48] Survive. Socialize. Have fun. That’s the progression. And that’s also why we chose “Just For Fun” as the title of this book. Because everything we ever do seems to eventually end up being for our own entertainment.

[52:02] My theory of the meaning of life doesn’t actually guide you in what you should be doing. At most, it says “Yes, you can fight it, but in the end the ultimate goal of life is to have fun.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#175 Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

11 april 2021 | 80 min

#174 Bill Gates (Overdrive)

5 april 2021 | 48 min

What I learned from reading Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace.

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There would be an industry breakthrough unimagined at the time, and it would be made by a company that didn’t yet exist. [7:55]

Another corollary to Joys Law of Innovation was that the number of bright people in any company went down as the size went up. [10:47]

As Apple founder Steve Jobs liked to say: When you are at simplicity, there ain’t no complexity. [12:49]

Gates looks at everything as something that should be his. He acts in any way he can to make it his. It can be an idea, market share, or a contract. There is not an ounce of conscientiousness or compassion in him. The notion of fairness means nothing to him. The only thing he understands is leverage. [17:21]

I became convinced that Microsoft was building the last minicomputer. That the Microsoft Network was based on the notion that your competitors were the model — proprietary online services like America Online — and that the reality was that the Internet was going to be such a fundamental paradigm shift, that you needed to think about your strategies fundamentally differently. [28:08]

The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. — Zero to One [29:25]

Most college kids knew much more than we did because they were exposed to it. If I had wanted to connect to the Internet, it would have been easier for me to get into my car and drive over to the University of Washington than to try and get on the Internet at Microsoft. [31:12]

For years , Gates had Kahn in his sights. Kahn recalled that he once had found Gates at an industry conference in the late 1980s sitting alone in a corner, looking at a photograph in his hands. “It was a picture of me,” said Kahn. [41:16]

It’s not in Microsoft’s bones to cooperate with other companies. [42:47]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#173 Louis B. Mayer (MGM Studios)

28 mars 2021 | 69 min

What I learned from reading Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer by Bosley Crowther.

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The reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead. [0:50]

He is in that phalanx of men of aggressive bent who seized on the opportunities that an expanding civilization exposed. With them, he ascended to high places along an upwardly spiraling route that was there to be ascended by those who had the necessary stamina and drive. And, with some of them , he was unsettled and rendered dizzy by the heights, so that he could not control his footing when the road itself began to narrow and fall. [2:07]

His own recollections of his early childhood were mercifully meager and dim. They were mainly recollections of being hungry. That was the only memory Mayer had of himself as a little boy. [7:01]

How powerful and violent were the urges in the depths of the growing boy to break out of his immigrant encasement. [10:27]

One of his favorite maxims had to do with behavior in adversity. “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." [11:55]

He wanted to be a film producer. He wanted to get into that realm of fabrication and creation where glamour and excitement were. [27:00]

My unchanging policy will be great star, great director, great play, great cast. You are authorized to get these without stint or limit. Spare nothing, neither expense, time, nor effort. Results only are what I am after. [33:00]

It was not all sunshine and profits with Mayer’s company during these embryonic days. Mayer was far from being one of the top producers of Hollywood. He was a small, enterprising operator. There were many others like him, clawing to get minor stars and unattached directors to make their pictures and help them to get ahead. On some films they picked up profits, on others they definitely did not. The business was always a gamble for them, as it was for Mayer. [39:13]

The radical and profound transition (sound in movies) was spread over two or three years. Compulsion more than planning impelled it, against resistance within the industry. [49:57]

The system (sound) was not regarded as anything more than a novelty by the remainder of the industry. [54:45]

Mayer was no doubt a brilliant man, with vision and understanding in the business of manufacturing films as well as a fervor for investing in talent in every phase of production, to the point of extravagance, he was also a careless manager, a favorer with stubborn likes and dislikes, and a braggart who wasted his time and the time of others telling them what a great man he was. [1:01:33]

Mayer had a psychopathic need for power. [1:07:40]

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#172 Elon Musk (Early Days of SpaceX)

21 mars 2021 | 66 min

What I learned from reading Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger.

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[12:38] Numerous other entrepreneurs had tried playing at rocket science before, Musk well knew. He wanted to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them.

[20:55] He could be difficult to work for, certainly. But his early hires could immediately see the benefits of working for someone who wanted to get things done and often made decisions on the spot. When Musk decided that Spincraft could make good tanks for a fair price, that was it. No committees. No reports. Just, done.

[22:05] Most of all he channeled a preternatural force to move things forward. Elon Musk just wants to get shit done.

[27:42] The iterative approach begins with a goal and almost immediately leaps into concept designs , bench tests, and prototypes. The mantra with this approach is build and test early, find failures, and adapt. This is what SpaceX did.

[41:24] It is perhaps worth noting that those launch companies that succeeded also took their lumps along the way, Musk wrote in a postmortem. SpaceX is in this for the long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work.

[42:24] Musk’s management style: Don’t talk about doing things, just do things.

[43:15] If you’re trying to do something no other commercial company has ever done, you had better have some confidence.

[44:00] I make the spending decisions and the engineering decisions in one head. Normally those are at least two people. There’s some engineering guy who’s trying to convince a finance guy that this money should be spent. But the finance guy doesn’t understand engineering, so he can’t tell if this is a good way to spend money or not. Whereas I’m making the engineering decisions and spending decisions. So I know, already, that my brain trusts itself.

[45:37] He didn’t want to fail, but he wasn’t afraid of it.

[50:50] It’s not like other rocket scientists were huge idiots who wanted to throw their rockets away all the time. It’s fucking hard to make something like this. One of the hardest engineering problems known to man is making a reusable orbital rocket. Nobody has succeeded. For a good reason. Our gravity is a bit heavy. On Mars this would be no problem. Moon, piece of cake. On Earth, fucking hard. Just barely possible. It’s stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system. It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of humanity. That’s why it’s hard. Why does this hurt my brain? It’s because of that. Really, we’re just a bunch of monkeys. How did we even get this far? It beats me. We were swinging through the trees, eating bananas not long ago.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#171: Chuck Feeney (The Billionaire who gave all of his money away)

15 mars 2021 | 69 min

What I learned from reading The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery.

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He celebrated having divested himself personally of the vast wealth with which fate and his genius for making money had burdened him. [0:01]

Feeney was already showing a trait that would assert itself throughout his life: thinking big and aiming to achieve the best result, even if it seemed unattainable. [3:27]

I all of a sudden realized, shit, you can sell this to anybody, anywhere. [12:45]

Feeney believed that there could be more lucrative opportunities in the less crowded Pacific. [21:53]

Chuck lived out of his briefcase. Everything was connected with business. We did a lot of screwy things. I became part of what he called his ‘teen age frontier’ approach to business, because he surrounded himself with smart college youngsters, mostly single and aggressive ‘conquerors of the world.’ I was the oldest, always the damper, saying to him, "Are you out of your mind?" [25:44]

We hadn’t spent any time on corporate structuring or anything like that, we were just simply busy selling cars, duty — free liquor, making the cash, putting the cash in the bank, cash in, and cash out. [28:06]

They were on the verge of going bankrupt, perhaps already were. Feeney and Miller were almost back where they started. They could perhaps boost the cash flow from the duty free shops in Hong Kong and Hawaii to clear off the debts. Feeney had moments of despair. “Of course. It goes with the territory. But there wasn’t much we could do. It was something we had started, and we thought we were going to make a million dollars out of it. We had no choice but to salvage the company or go over the cliff.” [31:21]

The duty free shops began to make substantial profits, the owners agreed to take 90 percent of the dividends in cash, a practice that would continue for a quarter of a century. [44:54]

Paradoxically, while Feeney became more frugal, he was pushing himself ever harder to build up the business that was making him even richer. [48:26]

He brings a focus on business that I hadn’t experienced before. If something doesn’t work, he has four or so different thoughts. He has a multifaceted way of looking at business. He is detail oriented in his approach. [48:51]

His definition of success was not having all the money one desired, but being able to raise a happy, healthy family. “There has to be a balance in life. A balance of business, family, and the opportunity to learn and teach." [49:41]

They were offering to pay the State of Hawaii some $2 million every three days, for the next five years, just for the right to run a couple of stores. [58:38]

What only the four owners knew was that during that period (1978–1988), they had received cash dividends of $867 million, of which Chuck Feeney had got $334 million. [1:00:53]

A new divorce settlement was reached that gave Danielle an additional $60 million. Feeney insisted that Danielle get all the family homes, in Paris, London, the south of France, Connecticut, Hawaii, and New York. He took nothing himself from the family property. [1:03:33]

Nobody ever put a penny in the business. We took out $ 8 billion or whatever it was. Nobody is that smart. You have just got to have a lot of things going your way. [1:07:56]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#170 Claude Hopkins (A Life in Advertising)

8 mars 2021 | 79 min

What I learned from reading My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

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Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do. [0:19]

There are few pages in “My Life in Advertising” which do not repay careful study—and which do not merit rereading. Before your eyes, a successful advertising life is lived—with all that went to make it successful. The lessons taught are taught exactly as they were learned. They are dished up dripping with life. It is not a book, it is an experience—and experience has always been the great teacher. [2:49]

The man who does two or three times the work of another learns two or three times as much. He makes more mistakes and more successes, and he learns from both. If I have gone higher than others in advertising, or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability, but to exceptional hours. [11:00]

To poverty I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience. [15:16]

If a thing is useful they call it work, if useless they call it play. One is as hard as the other. One can be just as much a game as the other. [20:27]

A young man can come to regard his life work as the most fascinating game that he knows. And it should be. The applause of athletics dies in a moment. The applause of success gives one cheer to the grave. [23:16]

A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods, in print or in person, without samples. [27:02]

I consider business as a game and I play it as a game. That is why I have been, and still am, so devoted to it. [33:44]

I sold more carpet sweepers by my one-cent letters than fourteen salesmen on the road combined. [45:31]

No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. [50:10]

We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person. Center on their desires. [53:46]

Again and again I have told simple facts, common to all makers in the line—too common to be told. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary. He does not realize that the world at large might marvel at those methods, and that facts which seem commonplace to him might give him vast distinction. [56:57]

Serve better than others, offer more than others, and you are pretty sure to win. [57:45]

There are other ways, I know, to win in selling and in advertising. But they are slow and uncertain. Ask a person to take a chance on you, and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him, and the way is easy. [57:52]

So far as I know, no ordinary human being has ever resisted Albert Lasker. He has commanded what he would in this world. Nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him. So I yielded, as all do, to his persuasiveness. [1:00:07]

The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. [1:01:01]

It is curious how we all desire to excel in something outside of our province. That leads many men astray. Men make money in one business and lose it in many others. They seem to feel that one success makes them superbusiness men. [1:04:04]

I earned in commissions as high as $185,000 in a year. ($4,000,000 in today's dollars) All earned at a typewriter which I operated myself, without a clerk or secretary. [1:06:33]

Most success comes through efficiency. Most failures are due to waste. [1:10:22]

Human nature does not change. The principles set down in this book are as enduring as the Alps. [1:17:01]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#169 David Ogilvy (The King of Madison Avenue)

1 mars 2021 | 88 min

What I learned from reading The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman.

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One characteristic of geniuses, said Einstein, is they are passionately curious. Ogilvy’s great secret was an inquiring mind.In conversation, he never pontificated; he interrogated.

There were piles of books all over his house, most about successful leaders in business and government. He was interested in how they used their leadership. How they made their money. He was interested in people — people who had accomplished remarkable things.

Reading Ogilvy’s short autobiography is like having dinner with a charming raconteur.

His Scottish grandfather is portrayed as cold — hearted, formidable, and successful — and his hero.

When you write a book about advertising, you’re competing with midgets. When you write an autobiography, you’re competing with giants.

He took the occasion to remind everyone that he was not a big shot at school. I wasn’t a scholar. I detested the philistines who ruled the roost. I was an irreconcilable rebel — a misfit. In short, I was a dud. Fellow duds, take heart! There is no correlation between success at school and success in life.

If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope do you have of being able to advertise anything else?

Although he entered advertising to make money, Ogilvy had become interested — obsessively interested — in the business itself. He said he had read every book that had been written on the subject, and, as a young man, had reason to believe he would be good at it and would enjoy it. Since American advertising was years ahead of advertising anywhere else, he decided to study the trade where it was done best.

Nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times (Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins). Every time I see a bad advertisement, I say to myself, “The man who wrote this copy has never read Claude Hopkins.”

In print, it should lead with a headline that offers a consumer benefit. Often it should rely on long text packed with facts. “The more you tell, the more you sell,” as he would later preach.

David also learned something about writing from his time in the intelligence service. Stephenson was a master of the terse note. Memos to him were returned swiftly to the sender with one of three words written at the top of the page: YES, NO, or SPEAK, meaning to come see him.

Here Ogilvy describes himself as of the day he started the agency: “He is 38 and unemployed. He dropped out of college. He has been a cook, a salesman and a diplomat. He knows nothing about marketing and has never written any copy. He professes to be interested in advertising as a career and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year. I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

Like De Gaulle, he felt that praise should be a rare commodity lest you devalue the currency.

He had a near psychopathic hatred of laziness in all its forms. He was the least lazy person I have ever encountered. His advertising philosophy was shot through with intolerance of sloth. Lazy people accept mediocrity, which he hated.

You cannot bore people into buying. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they cannot create them. Compromise has no place in advertising. Whatever you do, go the whole hog. You can’t save souls in an empty church.

American Express built its business in part with an effective direct mail letter that started: “Quite frankly, the American Express Card is not for everyone.”

I am a lousy copywriter. But a good editor.

My crusade is in favor of advertising which sells. My war cry is: “We Sell. Or Else.” This has been my philosophy for 50 years, and I have never wavered from it, no matter what the temptations have been.

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#168 Larry Miller (Driven: An Autobiography)

21 februari 2021 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller.

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[1:01] I decided I had to be extremely good at something.

[2:47] I’m sorry to say, neglecting my family to do all of the above. I worked and worked and worked, day after day, night after night, dawn to bedtime.

[5:23] He owned movie theaters, auto dealerships, a motorsports park with a world-class racetrack, a movie production company, an advertising agency, ranches, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a real-estate development company, an NBA franchise, a professional baseball team, an NBA arena, sports apparel stores—nearly 90 companies in all, in six states, with 7,000 employees, all under the umbrella of The Larry H. Miller Group, which produces $3.2 billion in sales annually, ranking it among the 200 largest privately owned companies in the United States.

[7:23] The chain of events that began my entrepreneurial career was sparked by three failures: I dropped out of college, got laid off, and got demoted.

[35:22] It’s excellence for the sake of excellence. It just feels good being excellent, doing your best, learning everything you can about anything to which you apply yourself and then doing that thing well.

[38:40] The insanely long hours that I worked were driven by fear, but then the success became intoxicating. Clearly, my motivation to work like that shifted from fear-driven to success-driven.

[40:36] A bunch of people say, “I wanna have . . .” and “I wanna be . . .” but they’re not willing to pay the price. The price is time and effort and being a student of what you’re doing.

[48:15] https://patrickcollison.com/fast.

[56:15] Working all the time made me successful. It made me a failure, too. I missed most of my children’s youth. I missed ball games and science fairs and back-to-school nights. I missed the first day of kindergarten and playing catch in the yard. I missed dinner at home with my wife and kids.

[1:00:53] I try to pass these painful lessons to others who might be tempted by the allure of professional success. Mine is a cautionary tale.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#167 Jackie Cochran (Aviation)

19 februari 2021 | 57 min

What I learned from reading Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography by Jackie Cochran.

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[4:37] At the time of her death on August 9, 1980, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot, male or female, in aviation history. Her career spanned 40 years, from the Golden Age of the 1930s as a racing pilot, through the turbulent years of World War Il as founder and head of the Women's Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) program, into the jet age, when she became the first female pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. She was a 14-time winner of the Harmon trophy for the outstanding female pilot of the year and was accorded numerous other awards and honors in addition to the trophies she won with her flying skills.

[6:15] Jackie was an irresistible force. Time and time again in the many, many interviews I was so kindly granted, the repeated theme was "Jackie just could not be stopped." And indeed, this driving, cussed determination is signally evident in Jackie's own writings. Her unremitting persistence is clear in everything she did, from regaining the doll of which she was robbed at the age of six to her need to be the world's top aviatrix. Generous, egotistical, penny-pinching, compassionate, sensitive, aggressive -indeed, an explosive study in contradictions—Jackie was consistent only in the overflowing energy with which she attacked the challenge of being alive. Always passionately convinced of any viewpoint she happened to hold (nothing Jackie ever did was by halves), she raced through life, making lifelong friends and unforgetting enemies, surely breaking all records in the sheer volume of her living on this earth—as she did in the air.

[8:07] To live without risk for me would have been tantamount to death.

[14:16] Whenever I turned on a light, I'd think of how my foster family had been able to sit back and sit around that goddamn mojo lamp. Not me.

[16:39] I always knew I was different from the others.

[24:02] "What are you going to be when you grow up, Jackie?" they'd ask me. I never wavered in my response. "I'm going to be rich," I'd say, knowing even then that they thought I was silly or crazed. "I'll wear fine clothes, own my own automobile, and have adventures all over the world." They'd laugh. I was certain that's where I was going, I felt no embarrassment about my big dreams. No dreams, no future. They could laugh, but most of my mill friends wanted as little from life as they were destined to get.

[26:51] To get the best performance, to do better than anyone has ever done before, you've got to take chances.

[30:21] You almost had to have been there to know what such a range of existences did for me. Because of where I came from and then where I went, I ended up understanding intimately one very sustaining line of life: I could never have so little that I hadn't had less. It took away my fear. It pushed me harder than I might ever have pushed myself otherwise. The poverty provided me with a kind of cocky confidence and made me relatively happy with what I had at any given moment.

[42:05] Jackie always felt that there was nobody better than she was. She was equal to anybody and had as much confidence as anybody. That's why she was able to accomplish so much. If somebody else can do it, so can I. That was her theory, her motto.

[45:16] She could be ruthless when she wanted to pursue something, and she'd go at her goal with an intensity that wouldn't stop.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#166 Robert Noyce (Intel)

8 februari 2021 | 73 min

What I learned from reading The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin.

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[0:01] Bob Noyce took me under his wing,” Steve Jobs explains. “I was young, in my twenties. He was in his early fifties. He tried to give me the lay of the land, give me a perspective that I could only partially understand.” Jobs continues, “You can’t really understand what is going on now unless you understand what came before.”

[2:00] He inspired in nearly everyone whom he encountered a sense that the future had no limits , and that together they could , as he liked to say, “Go off and do something wonderful.”

[3:15] Warren Buffett , who served on a college board with Noyce for several years said: “Everybody liked Bob. He was an extraordinarily smart guy who didn’t need to let you know he was that smart. He could be your neighbor, but with lots of machinery in his head.”

[12:01] Noyce was slowly gathering experiences that would anchor his adult approach to life, which was not so much an approach as a headlong rush into any challenge with the unshakable assumption that he would emerge not only successful, but triumphant.

[14:18] Every night before he fell asleep, Noyce would mentally rehearse each of his dives in slow motion until he could see himself executing them perfectly. He called this habit “envisioning myself at the next level,” and he carried it with him throughout his life. In his mind’s eye, he could always see himself achieving something more.

[21:16] Bob was not the type to slow down for much of anything.

[33:02] His approach was to know the science cold and then “forget about it.” He did not slog or grind his way to ideas; he felt they just came to him. When he heard Picasso’s famous line about artistic creativity — “I do not seek; I find” — Noyce said that he invented in the same way.

[35:31] “I don’t have any recollection of a ‘ Boom! There it is!’ light bulb going off, ”Noyce later said of his ideas. Instead, he conceived of the integrated circuit in an iterative method he described thus: “[ I thought,] let’s see, if we could do this, we can do that. If we can do that, then we can do this. [It was] a logical sequence. If I hit a wall, I’d back up and then find a path, conceptually, all the way through to the end. [Once you have that path], you can come back and start refining, thinking in little steps that will take you there. Once you get to the point that you can see the top of the mountain, then you know you can get there.”

[45:48] We were a hard, young, hungry group. Our attitude was ‘We don’t give a damn what money you have to offer, buddy. We’re going to do this ourselves.’

[1:08:55] Noyce was invited to dinner at the home of an entrepreneur whose company the his fund had supported. After the dishes had been cleared and the children sent to bed, Noyce listened as the company founder explained that some day, if the business did well, he would like to move his family into a bigger, nicer house. Noyce looked up at him and said very quietly, “You’ve got a nice family. I screwed up mine. Just stay where you are.” Twenty - five years and a successful company later, the entrepreneur has not moved.

[1:09:45] His financial success directly benefited the entrepreneurs whose companies he funded, but the stories about Noyce’s success indirectly inspired many more. One entrepreneur put it this way: “Why do we love this dynamic environment? I’ll tell you why. Because we have seen what Steve Jobs, Bob Noyce, Nolan Bushnell [founder of Atari], and many others have done, and we know it can and will happen many times again. ”In other words, if they could do it, why couldn’t he? Such rationale functioned as a self - fulfilling prophecy in Silicon Valley, propelling the region forward on a self - perpetuating cycle of entrepreneurship and wealth. (This is what I hope Founders does.)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#165 William Shockley (Creator of the Electronic Age)

1 februari 2021 | 62 min

What I learned from reading Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel Shurkin.

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[1:19] Why would a man as unquestionably brilliant as he knowingly and deliberately destroy himself?

[5:04] Dear Jean: I am sorry that I feel I can no longer go on. Most of my life I have felt. that the world was not a pleasant place and that people were not a very admirable form of life. I find that I am particularly dissatisfied with myself and that most of my actions are the consequence of motives of which I am ashamed. Consequently, I must regard myself as less well suited than most to carry on with life and to develop the proper attitudes in our children. I hope you have better luck in the future. —Bill. He took out his revolver, put a bullet in one of the six chambers, put the gun to his head and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. He put the gun away and wrote a second note.

[13:36] “My elation with the group’s success was balanced by the frustration of not being one of the inventors. I experienced frustration that my personal efforts had not resulted in a significant inventive contribution of my own.” Apparently his involvement was too passive to provide Shockley with the credit he craved.

[16:29] I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climbing by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching and does not mean poor training but only a strong headedness.

[24:21] The rise and fall of Bill Shockley’s company took less than a year and a half. It profoundly affected Shockley, but had even more impact on the world around him and on our lives today. In all of the history of business, the failure of Shockley Semiconductor is in a class by itself.

[35:26] Shockley was often insulting, treating his employees the way he treated his sons, with no glimmer of sensitivity. His favorite crack, when he thought someone was wrong, was: ‘Are you sure you have a PhD?’ Worse of all, he could not keep himself from believing he was in competition with his employees. The very people he hired because they were so bright. He just didn’t want them to be as bright as he was. That his employees could come up with their own ideas did not register with him.

[46:07] Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore decided it was time to go and set up their own company. They raised the capital, based entirely on Noyce’s reputation, with one telephone call to Arthur Rock. They called the new company Intel. They lived Bill Shockley’s fantasy. They directed the flow of the technology and made billions.

[52:12] A genealogy of Silicon Valley showed that virtually every company in the valley could show a line leading directly to someone who worked at and eventually left Fairchild Semiconductor. Everyone from Fairchild originally came from Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley’s company was the seed of Silicon Valley.

[1:00:48] They called his personality “reverse charisma.”

[1:01:07] Alison read about her father’s death in the Washington Post. Emmy, obeying her husband’s last order, did not call her or Shockley’s sons. Emmy had her husband’s body cremated. She did not have a memorial service. It is not clear who would have come.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#164 Robert Goddard (Rocket Man)

25 januari 2021 | 65 min

What I learned from reading Rocket Man: Robert Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age by David A. Clary.

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[18:16] For even though I reasoned with myself that the thing was impossible, there was something inside me which simply would not stop working.

[20:08] Anything is possible with the man who makes the best use of every minute of his time.

[20:18] There are limitless opportunities open to the man who appreciates the fact that his own mind is the sole key that unlocks them.

[32:55] It’s appalling how short life is and how much there is to do. We have to be sports, take chances, and do what we can.

[35:57] There were limits to Goddard’s ability as a salesman, beginning with his failure to determine the interests of his potential customers.

[44:18] Goddard must be given his due. The first flight of a liquid-propelled rocket may not have looked like much but nothing like it had ever happened on Earth before.

[50:28] He explained his work was aimed at high-altitude research, not outer space. The Wright Brothers, he reminded his audience, did not try to cross The Atlantic the first time up.

[52:32] Emerson says, “If a man paint a better picture, preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than anyone else, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” I have had the misfortune not to be an artist, a preacher, or a manufacturer of mousetraps. I have never had any great talent for selling ideas.

[59:27] A boy of exceptional brilliance, of humble origins and poor health, who dreamed great dreams and pursued them throughout a dedicated life. He was a distinguished but absentminded professor, a saintly man of rich humor, an enthusiastic piano player and painter, loved by everybody who knew him. Although his own country failed to appreciate the importance of what he did, he continued in his work despite widespread ridicule and the attempts of others to steal it. He never complained, never evinced discouragement or frustration. Above all, he never gave up.

[1:04:04] Goddard was a complex and inscrutable individual. He had many admirable qualities, chief among them the patience, persistence, and iron will that helped him to overcome tuberculosis, then to pursue rocketry for three decades. Seldom expressing frustration or discouragement, he accepted failure as part of invention, and kept on working.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#163 Alfred Nobel

18 januari 2021 | 62 min

What I learned from reading Alfred Nobel: A Biography by Kenne Fant.

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[16:24] The self-awareness that would become so characteristic of him was awakening and with it the determination to be the master of every situation. He was not going to throw himself into the world and let luck or chance lead the way.

[26:26] When it comes to serious matters, I have adopted the rule of acting seriously.

[28:09] Alfred never forgot poverty.

[30:04] Financial pressure was accelerating his development as an inventor.

[39:15] Alfred asked her what she wished as a wedding present. The quick-witted young woman astonished him by replying without hesitation, “As much as Monsieur Nobel himself earns in one day.” Impressed and amused, Alfred agreed. The girl received a monetary gift of such size that she and her husband could enjoy it as long as their marriage lasted. The bank draft Alfred signed was for $110,000.

[47:33] It would take many years for Alfred to accept the idea that sometimes business failures were inevitable, that steps forward in one market were very often followed by a decline in another. Alfred learned to steel himself so that the disappointments would not depress him into inaction.

[51:18] Never do yourself what others could do better or equally well.

[57:26] Nobel had a soul of fire. He worked hard, burned with ideas, and spurred his collaborators on with his contagious energy.

[58:04] When he went somewhere he liked to get there fast.

[59:17] Whatever a human being manages to accomplish during his or her lifetime, there are so utterly few whose names will remain on the pages of history for any extended amount of time. Rarer still are those whose renown grows after their death. Alfred Nobel belongs among these.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#162 Chuck Yeager

11 januari 2021 | 80 min

What I learned from reading Yeager: An Autobiography by General Chuck Yeager.

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[10:14] I was a competitive kid. I always tried to do my best. I never thought of myself as being poor or deprived in any way. We managed to scrape by. Kids learned self-sufficiency. Mom and Dad taught us by example. They never complained. I had certain standards that I lived by. Whatever I did, I determined to do the best I could at it.

[13:22] The sense of speed and exhilaration makes you so damned happy that you want to shout for joy.

[17:15] In nearly every case the worst pilots die by their own stupidity.

[26:04] I sensed that he was a very strong and determined person, a poor boy who had started with nothing and would show the world what he was really made of.

[38:48] Every muscle in my body is hammering at me. I just want to let go of his guy and drop in my tracks—either to sleep or to die. I don’t know why I keep hold of him and struggle to climb. It’s the challenge, I guess, and a stubborn pride knowing that most guys would’ve let go of Pat before now.

[40:57] Chuck is the most stubborn bastard in the world, who doesn’t dabble in gray areas. He sees in black and white. He simply said, “I’m not going home.”

[45:26] The Germans began to come up to challenge us and ran into a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw.

[50:30] If you love the hell out of what you’re doing, you’re usually pretty good at it, and you wind up making your own breaks. I wasn’t a deep, sophisticated person, but I lived by a basic principle: I did only what I enjoyed. I wouldn’t let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren’t interesting to me.

[55:38] Yeager would rely on himself. I couldn’t teach him enough.

[1:03:31] My life was flying and pilots. I didn’t spend a whole helluva lot of time doing or thinking about anything else. We were an obsessed bunch, probably because we were so isolated.

[1:17:29] Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself; the trick is to enjoy the years remaining. And unlike flying, learning how to take pleasure from living can’t be taught. Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always high priority in whatever I was doing.

[1:18:22] I’ve never lost the curiosity about things that interest me. I’m very good at the activities I most enjoy, and that part has made my life that much sweeter. I haven’t yet done everything, but by the time I’m finished, I won’t have missed much. If I auger in tomorrow, it won’t be with a frown on my face. I’ve had a ball.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#161 Dr. Seuss

4 januari 2021 | 67 min

What I learned from reading Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones.

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[6:32] Both his parents would inspire and encourage Ted’s love for books. Reading was a pastime the entire family took seriously.

[9:24] Ted came to appreciate the considerable discipline and commitment it took to hone expertise.

[10:15] He was an inspiration. Whatever you do, he taught me, do it to perfection.

[10:53] No matter what discipline you are in there’s a common denominator in how we approach our craft. The attention to detail, the level of commitment. Those things are the same across the board. That is my message. Don’t look at what I did but how I did it. The how. And then you can transfer that over to any profession and any discipline. —Kobe Bryant.

[20:07] Unlike many of his classmates, Ted wasn’t entirely certain what to do next.

[22:51] You’re not very interested in the lecture she told him plainly —then leaned in and pointed at one of his drawings. I think that is a very good flying cow.

[23:04] Maybe the most important thing anyone ever said to him: You’re crazy to be a professor she told Ted. What you really want to do is draw.

[23:48] Ted’s notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him. Here was a man who could draw such pictures. He should earn a living doing that.

[26:57] I don’t know. But I know one thing. My policy is to laugh my god damned head off. Occasionally I depress myself and work myself into one of those delightful funks. And I seek out subway tracks on which to toss myself. And then it strikes me as very comical and I laugh instead.

[30:08] The money he earned through his advertising work would buy him his artistic freedom. What would eventually become the Dr. Suess empire would be laid on a foundation built and paid for with Standard Oil money.

[33:01] To his increasing distress, the responses were all negative. He would later recall being rejected by 27 publishers.

[45:12] We can live on $100 a week. If I could get $5,000 a year in royalties I’d be set for life.

[46:58] If you want to write good books spend a little time studying the bad ones.

[48:02] Your capacity for healthy, silly, friendly laughter was smothered. You’d really grown up. You’d become adults. Adults—which is a word that means obsolete children.

[49:28] Even after 9 books he still wasn’t earning enough from them to make a living.

[54:29] I’m subversive as hell! I’ve always had a mistrust of adults. And one reason I dropped out of Oxford was that I thought they were taking life too damn seriously, concentrating too much on nonessentials.

[1:02:47] For me, success means doing work that you love, regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it 8 hours. Though every day isn’t productive of course.

[1:03:08] All he wanted was for people to read:
The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you’ll go.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#160 Peter Cundill

28 december 2020 | 70 min

What I learned from reading Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist by Christopher Risso-Gill.

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Excellence as a goal in itself had been drummed into him from early boyhood.

I’m convinced that to achieve real greatness a person needs above all to have passion but at the same time immense discipline, concentration, patience and an unshakeable determination to become a master of his craft.

There is a choice of courses in life: either to seek equilibrium or to enjoy the heights and suffer the depths.

You need to get into some situations which make your gut tight and your balls tingle.

Do the unappealing things first.

Once you have done your homework properly and are absolutely convinced that an investment is right you should not hesitate or wait for others to share the adventure. The price at which you start buying will almost invariably be imperfect but that should never discourage you.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit. (Aristotle)

The more that I think about the way the Greeks, especially the Spartans, regarded the subject of exercise and the necessity of maintaining peak levels of physical fitness, the more I am convinced that the health of the mind and the spirit are either bolstered or hampered by the condition of the body.

Concentrate with absolute clarity on one thing at a time.

The mantra is patience, patience, and more patience. Think long term and remember that the big rewards accrue with compound annual rates of return.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#159 Andy Grove (Intel)

21 december 2020 | 70 min

What I learned from reading Swimming Across by Andrew S. Grove.

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[0:01] I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936. By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis’ “Final Solution,” the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.

[3:02] Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.

[8:05] A subtle and compelling commentary on the power to endure.

[10:03] He dedicates this book to his mom. He says: To my mother, who gave me the gift of life more than once.

[13:03] People avoided looking at us. Even people whom we knew wouldn’t meet our eyes. It was as if a barrier was growing between us and everyone else.

[14:01] My mother returned in a couple of hours, shaken up. She told me that the man who came for her was a policeman who arrested her along with the superintendent’s wife. Feeding Jewish people was against the law. The policeman told her that she should have bid me a more proper good-bye because she probably would not see me again.

[18:35] There was so much pressure in my chest that I could barely breathe. After a while, my mother came back for me. She was very tense and angry. She carried me to bed and we went to sleep. Later on that night, some more Russians came into our cellar. My mother yelled at them something about how all three of the women had already done it today.

[23:02] An emaciated man, filthy and in a ragged soldier’s uniform, was standing at the open door. I thought: This must be my father. His arms and legs were like sticks.

[25:49] There was nothing to be done. The Communist government called all the shots. They increasingly interfered with our daily life. They took away my parents’ business, they uprooted me from my school.

[28:09] I always had a tight feeling in my chest when we went by because by now I knew my relatives had been taken from that house to be killed.

[33:30] Life is like a big lake. All the boys get in the water at one end and start swimming. Not all of them will swim across. But one of them, I’m sure will. That one is Grove.

[37:28] In the middle of one bitterly cold winter night, my father’s battalion was made to strip naked and climb trees, and the guards sprayed them with water and watched and laughed as one after another fell out of the trees frozen to death.

[43:52] I thought I had made an important discovery. I realized that it’s good to have at least two interests in your life. If you have only one interest and that goes sour, there’s nothing to act as a counterbalance to lift your mood. But if you have more than one interest, chances are something will always go okay.

[52:11] I wished there were no mortars falling on our house and no Russian soldiers in our apartment. I wanted the trams to run again. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted life to go back to normal.

[56:24] After a while, we emerged from the woods. I could see some faint lights far across an open field. The man came close to us. “Those lights are Austria’, he whispered. ‘Head towards them and don’t take your eyes off them. This is as far as I go.’ And he was gone. I didn’t take my eyes off those lights. I trudged toward them as if they were a magnet.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#158 Walt Disney (Disneyland)

14 december 2020 | 52 min

What I learned from reading Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.

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[1:29] In Disney's Land, popular historian Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker's precision, an artist's conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.

[4:13] When he reached middle age it seemed that we were going to witness an all too familiar process—the conversion of the tired artist into the tired businessman. When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney. We were quite wrong. He had, instead, created his masterpiece.

[4:58] Walt Disney was an obsessive with soul in the game.

[5:26] Disney’s father didn’t believe children should have toys.

[14:50] One small enterprise did please him, though, and it had little to do with the art he had done so much to invent and of which he was the undisputed master.

[15:09] He was dismayed to find the man whose work he had long admired “seemed totally uninterested in movies and seemed wholly, almost weirdly concerned with the building of a miniature railroad engine and a string of cars. All of his zest for invention, for creative fantasies, seemed to be going into this plaything.”

[17:15] Disney on his nervous breakdown: “I had a hell of a breakdown. I went to pieces. I kept expecting more from the artists and when they let me down, I got worried. Costs were going up and it was always way over what they figured the picture would bring in. I just got very irritable. I got to a point that it couldn't talk on the telephone. I would begin to cry.”

[17:49] The money wasn't coming in. His last successful feature, Bambi, was six years in the past.

[22:19] Why would you want to get involved in an amusement park? They're so dirty, and not fun at all for grownups. Why would you want to get involved in a business like that? He fielded the question the way he would countless times during Disneyland's germination. "That's exactly the point. Mine isn't going to be that way."

[25:25] Disney’s friend’s reaction to hearing the plans for Disneyland: While he talked, becoming more and more enthusiastic by the minute, I began to grow more and more concerned. I hardly knew how to tell him that, for once, he was making what would probably be the biggest, most ruinous mistake of his life. What could I say? I knew he was wrong.

[28:00] He never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity, rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant perfectionist, imagination of his younger brother.

[38:48] You asked the question, What was your process like? I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the “Walt Period” of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all of these people who had never designed a theme park, never designed a Disneyland. So we’re all in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions.

[40:24] He told a parable. Two men are laying bricks. Somebody asked one of them what he's doing, and is told, “I’m laying bricks.” To the same question, the other man answers, “I’m building a cathedral.”

[47:32] Disney was asked what he thought was his greatest accomplishment. “To be able to build an organization and hang onto it.”

[48:00] The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It's something we can keep developing and adding to. . .I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We've got that in Disneyland.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

7 december 2020 | 58 min

What I learned from reading The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson.

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[0:29] This is the story of those pioneers hackers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Who they were, how their minds worked, and what made them so creative.

[8:41] She developed a somewhat outsize opinion of her talents as a genius. In her [Ada Lovelace] letter to Babbage, she wrote, “Do not reckon me conceited but I believe I have the power of going just as far as I like in such pursuits.”

[14:10] The reality is that Ada’s contribution was both profound and inspirational. More than any other person of her era, she was able to glimpse a future in which machines would become partners of the human imagination.

[16:37] Alan Turing was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience.

[20:15] If a mentally superhuman race ever develops its members will resemble John Von Neumann.

[23:40] His [William Shockley] tenacity was ferocious. In any situation, he simply had to have his way.

[28:38] Bob Noyce described his excitement more vividly: “The concept hit me like the atom bomb. It was simply astonishing. Just the whole concept. It was one of those ideas that just jolts you out of the rut, gets you thinking in a different way.

[29:06] Some leaders are able to be willful and demanding while still inspiring loyalty. They celebrate audaciousness in a way that makes them charismatic Steve Jobs, for example; his personal manifesto dressed in the guise of a TV ad, began, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes.” Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos has the same ability to inspire. The knack is to get people to follow you, even to places that they may not think they can go, by motivating them to share your sense of mission.

[38:26] As Grove wrote in his memoir, Swimming Across, “By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazi’s final solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.

[39:10] Grove had a blunt, no-bullshit style. It was the same approach Steve jobs would later use: brutal honesty, clear focus, and a demanding drive for excellence.

[39:40] Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

[40:24] Engineering the game was easy. Growing the company without money was hard.

[42:40] Vannevar Bush was a man of strong opinions, which he expressed and applied with vigor, yet he stood in all of the mysteries of nature, had a warm tolerance for human frailty, and was open-minded to change

[47:17] Gate was also a rebel with little respect for authority. He did not believe in being deferential.

[47:51] Jobs later said he learned some important lessons at Atari, the most profound being the need to keep interfaces friendly and intuitive. Instructions should be insanely simple: “Insert quarters, avoid Klingons.” Devices should not need manuals. That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person.

[48:47] Steve Jobs’ interesting way to think about a new market: My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them, there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.

Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. [57:21]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#156 Theodore Roosevelt

30 november 2020 | 57 min

What I learned from reading Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt

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[0:20] He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog.

[2:44] Not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore in odd moments read the whole of Anna Karenina.

[3:56] He impressed me and puzzled me. And when I went home I told my wife that I'd met the most peculiar, and at the same time, the most wonderful man I'd ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier.

[4:35] Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast:

#135 Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power
#139 The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
#142 The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism
#145 The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst

That piqued my interest and I knew I had to read a biography of him.

[7:53] The underlining theme would be the same as that of my earlier work—the creative effort, the testing, and the struggle, the elements of chance and inspiration involved in any great human achievements.

[9:22] Teddy Roosevelt had a life motto: Get Action!

[15:17] He is brimming full of mischief and has to be watched all the time.

[16:15] I felt great admiration for men who were fearless and I had a great desire to be like them.

[16:44] There runs a theme of the pleasure and pride in being the first to see or do something, an eagerness to set himself apart from the others, to distinguish himself, to get out ahead of them; or simply be alone, absorbed in private thoughts.

[18:15] He has learned at an early age what a precarious, unpredictable thing life is—and how very vulnerable he is. He must be prepared always for the worst. But the chief lesson is that life is quite literally a battle. And the test is how he responds, whether he sees himself as a helpless victim or decides to fight back.

[20:56] It was no good wishing to appear like the heroes he worshiped if he made no effort to be like them.

[21:26] He would charge off ruthlessly in chase of whatever object he had in view.

[24:48] Father was the shining example of the life he must aspire to; Father was the perfect example of all he himself was not. “Looking back on his life it seems as if mine must be such a weak, useless one in comparison.” He was engulfed by self-about.

[27:08] He’s not strong, but he’s all grit. He’ll kill himself before he’ll even say he’s tired.

[30:01] He was a rabid competitor in anything he attempted. He was constantly measuring his performance, measuring himself against others. Everybody was a rival, every activity a contest, a personal challenge.

[34:13] Nothing seemed to intimidate him. Though all of twenty-three, unmistakably the youngest member of the Assembly, he plunged ahead, deferring to no one, making his presence felt.

[35:33] Hunt and Theodore boarded in the same house. Hunt always knew when it was Theodore returning because Theodore would swing the front door open and be halfway up the stairs before the door swung shut with a bang.

[41:35] Theodore stood up and in quiet, businesslike fashion flattened a drunken cowboy who, a gun in each hand, had decided to make a laughingstock of him because of his glasses.

[43:36] By acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#155 Jeff Bezos (Shareholder Letters and Speeches)

23 november 2020 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson.

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[2:38] The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems, failures, things that don't work. You need to back up and try again. Each one of those times when you have a setback, you get back up and you try again. You're using resourcefulness; you're using self-reliance; you're trying to invent your way out of a box. We have tons of examples at Amazon where we’ve had to do this.

[4:08] I would much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid.

[5:51] I am often asked who, of the people living today, I would consider to be in the same league as those I have written about as a biographer: Leonardo da Vinci (#15), Benjamin Franklin (#115), Ada Lovelace, Steve Jobs (#5), and Albert Einstein. All were very smart. But that’s not what made them special. Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and imaginative. That’s what makes someone a true innovator. And that’s why my answer to the question is Jeff Bezos.

[8:26] One final trait shared by all my subjects is that they retained a childlike sense of wonder. At a certain point in life, most of us quit puzzling over everyday phenomena. Our teachers and parents, becoming impatient, tell us to stop asking so many silly questions. We might savor the beauty of a blue sky, but we no longer bother to wonder why it is that color. Leonardo did. So did Einstein, who wrote to another friend, “You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” We should be careful to never outgrow our wonder years—or to let our children do so.

[11:50] Jeff’s childhood business heroes were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. “I’ve always been interested in inventors and invention,” he says. Even though Edison was the more prolific inventor, Bezos came to admire Disney more because of the audacity of his vision. “It seemed to me that he had this incredible capability to create a vision that he could get a large number of people to share.”

[17:49] Keeping his focus on the customer, he emailed one thousand of them to see what else they would like to buy. The answers helped him understand better the concept of “the long tail,” which means being able to offer items that are not everyday best sellers and don’t command shelf space at retailers. “The way they answered the question was with whatever they were looking for at the moment. And I thought to myself we can sell anything this way.”

[19:26] Every time a seismic shift takes place in our economy, there are people who feel the vibrations long before the rest of us do, vibrations so strong they demand action—action that can seem rash, even stupid.

[22:00] “No customer was asking for Echo,” Bezos says. “Market research doesn’t help. If you had gone to a customer in 2013 and said, ‘Would you like a black, always-on cylinder in your kitchen about the size of a Pringles can that you can talk to and ask questions, that also turns on your lights and plays music?’ I guarantee they’d have looked at you strangely and said, ‘No, thank you’”

[24:14] We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.

[24:58] We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren’t meant to be easy.

[26:22] We are doubly blessed. We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying foundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.

[29:14] Start with the customer and work backward. That is the best way to create value.

[32:19] Amazon’s culture is unusually supportive of small businesses with big potential, and I believe that’s a source of competitive advantage.

[35:47] Seek instant gratification —or the promise of it—and chances are you’ll find a crowd there ahead of you.

[37:51] At a fulfillment center recently, one of our Kaizen experts asked me, “I’m in favor of a clean fulfillment center, but why are you cleaning? Why don’t you eliminate the source of dirt?” I felt like the Karate Kid.

[39:21] When we are at our best, we don’t wait for external pressures. We are internally driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by reaction to competition.

[42:48] Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a one hundred times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you are still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in awhile, when you step up to the plate, you can score one thousand runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#154 Charles Schulz (Charlie Brown)

19 november 2020 | 53 min

What I learned from reading My Life with Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz.

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[0:24] Beginning with the first strip published on October 2nd, 1950, until the last published on Sunday, February 13th, 2000, the day after his death, Schultz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered by hand every single one of the daily and Sunday strips to leave his studio, 17,897 in all for an almost fifty-year run.

[4:08] If there were one bit of advice I could give to a young person, it would be to do at least one task well. Do what you do on a high plain.

[5:54] Slow consistent growth over a long period of time:

Year / # of newspapers
1950 7
1952 40
1958 355
1971 1100
1975 1480
1984 2000

[12:00] There are certain seasons in our lives that each of us can recall, and there are others that disappear from our memories, like the melting snow.

[14:05] I used my spare time to work on my own cartoons. I tried to never let a week go by without having something in the mail working for me.

[21:03] You don’t work all of your life to do something so you don’t have to do it.

[22:09] On where ideas come from: Most comic strip ideas are like that. They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.

[25:03] When he is 73: People come up to me and say: “Are you still drawing the strip?” I want to say to them, “Good grief—who else in the world do you think is drawing it?” I would never let anybody take over. And I have it in my contract that if I die, then my strip dies.

[30:15] At the point he is writing this he is making $30 to $40 million a year. The total earning of Peanuts is well over $1 billion.

[32:37] But as the year went by, I could almost say that drawing a comic strip for me became a lot like a religion. Because it helps me survive from day to day. I always have this to fall back upon. When everything seems hopeless I know I can come to the studio and think: Here’s where I’m at home. This is where I belong —in this room, drawing pictures.

[40:01] If you should ask me why I have been successful with Peanuts, I would have to admit that being highly competitive has played a strong role. I must admit that I would rather win than lose. In the thing that I do best, which is drawing a comic strip, it is important to me that I win.

[44:26] To have staying power you must be willing to accommodate yourself to the task. I have never maintained that a comic strip is Great Art. It simply happens to be something I feel uniquely qualified to do.

[45:18] He is the most widely syndicated cartoonist ever, with more than 2300 newspapers. He has had more than 1400 books published, selling more than 300 million copies.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#153 Bill Bowerman (Nike)

12 november 2020 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore.

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[0:01] Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism. Say a freshman. Make it lift, or jump or run. Let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger or faster or more enduring. That's all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You would think any damn fool could do it, but you won't.

[0:25] You work too hard and you rest too little and get hurt.

[1:38] You cannot just tell somebody what’s good for him. He won’t listen. He will not listen. First, you have to get his attention.

[4:14] From the book Shoe Dog. Phil Knight on Bowerman: I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs. Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers, that he was making history, remaking an industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop and jump for generations. I wonder if he could conceive at that moment all that he'd done. All that would follow. I know I couldn't.

[8:02] Are you in this simply to do mindless labor or do you want to improve? You can’t improve if you’re always sick or injured.

[9:17] Bowerman was decades ahead of putting just as much of an importance on your recovery as you do on your training.

[12:11] In theory, as a coach, he should have been as interested in motivating the lazy as in mellowing the mad, but he wasn’t. “I’m sorry I can’t make them switch brains,” he said. But I can’t.” That left him free to be absorbed by the eager.

[17:00] One of the things that makes him so interesting is that he was willing to think from first principles. If he arrived at different collusion he thought was right it didn't matter if 90% of the people in his field were doing it another way.

[17:21] Bowerman understood that paradox—the need for both abandoned effort and ironclad control.

[18:47] He spent long hours in contented silence, solving a huge range of problems, and he was brutally eloquent when dissecting others’ psyches. Yet he kept the process of himself to himself.

[20:42] In his approach to the world, he would take stock, give nothing away, circle to different vantage points, and keep an eye out for a sign of something he might exploit.

[28:27] “Because of what he taught,” Bowerman would say, “I went from one of the slowest players to the second fastest. . . I learned from the master.”

[30:40] Bill Hayward was Bill Bowerman’s blueprint: He took from his scrapbook a photograph of Hayward. He had it framed behind glass, to preserve what Hayward had written on it: “Live each day so you can look a man square in the eye and tell him to go to hell!”

[32:29] Celebrate optimum rather than maximum.

[33:23] He killed a 7-foot rattlesnake with a clipboard.

[38:12] If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman. Not simply the shock, but the way to respond. He attached such honor to not giving up, to doing my utmost. Most kids didn’t have that adjustment of standards, that introduction to true reality.

[47:05] They shook hands on a partnership. Bill would test and design the shoes. Buck [Phil Knight] would run the company.

[47:40] Bowerman knew Knight would give the new venture the ceaselessness of a runner.

[49:45] Bowerman’s response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.”

[53:13] “I don’t believe in chewing on athletes,” he once said. “People are out there to do their best. If you growl at them and they’re not tigers, they’ll collapse. Or they’ll try to make like a tiger. But the tigers are tigers. All you have to do is cool them down a little bit so they don’t make some dumb mistake.” His view was that intelligent men will be taught more by the vicissitudes of life than by a host of artificial training rules.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post)

5 november 2020 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Personal History by Katherine Graham.

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[1:02] A few minutes later there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. It was so profoundly shocking and traumatizing —he was so obviously dead.

[3:56] Katherine Graham was the first-ever female CEO of a fortune 500 company.

[5:30] This book is the inner monologue of someone not at all comfortable with herself and where she fits in with others.

[8:55] Katherine's mom on having a second wind: The fatigue of the climb was great but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one’s second wind. I think that is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one’s mental efforts. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind. Whether mentally or physically occupied most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort.

[13:42] When an idea is right, nothing can stop it.

[17:47] Advice from her Father that she still remembers 60 years later: What parents may sometimes do in a helpful way is to point out certain principles of action. I do not think I would be helpful in advising you too strongly. I do not even feel the need of doing that because I have so much confidence in your having really good judgment. I believe that what I can do for you once in a while is to point out certain principles that have developed in my mind as sound and practical, leaving it for you yourself to apply them if your own mind grasps and approves the principles.

[26:14] Have a problem? Look at it from a different perspective: I had deplored the fact we had the bad luck to live in a world with Hitler, to which Phil responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a privilege to have to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history.”

[29:20] Reading biographies can give you the strength to not quit: Phil was finishing a book on the lives and careers of newspaper magnates. “You know, they put the company together when they were in their thirties. Now they’re in their sixties and I’m in my thirties. I think we can make it [successful] another way.”

[33:28] There is no doubt in my mind that the struggle to survive was good for us. In business, you have to know what it is to be poor and stretched and fighting for your life against great odds.

[37:26] Knowledge of that new generation—my children—was what led me, however hesitatingly, to the decision I made then: to try to hold on to the company by going to work.

[38:04] Sometimes you don’t really decide, you just move forward, and that is what I did—moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life.

[41:28] I made mistakes and suffered great distress from them, partly because I believed that if you just worked diligently enough you wouldn’t make mistakes. I truly believed that other people in my position didn’t make mistakes; I couldn’t see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience.

[46:19] Good luck was again on my side, coming just when I needed it. It was my great fortune that Warren Buffett bought into the company, beginning a whole new phase of my life.

[47:53] Writing a check separates conviction from conversation. —Warren Buffett

[52:05] My business education began in earnest—he literally took me to business school, which was just what I needed. How lucky I was to be educated by Warren Buffett, and how many people would have given anything for the same experience.

[55:56] Warren has done so many things for me, but among the most important are the inroads he has made on my insecurities. Warren is humanly wise. He once told me that someone in a Dale Carnegie course had said to him, “Just remember: We are not going to teach you how to keep your knees from knocking. All we’re going to do is teach you to talk while your knees knock."

[57:13] Warren later told me he subscribed to Charlie Munger’s “orangutan theory”—which essentially contended that, “if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her idea is, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana, and at the end of the conversation, the person explaining comes out smarter.” Warren claimed to be my orangutan. I heard myself talk when I was with him and I always got a better idea of what I was saying.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#151 Frederick Smith (FedEx)

29 oktober 2020 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble.

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[0:01] At age thirty Frederick Wallace Smith was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out. He had exhausted his father’s millions. He was in hock for 15 or 20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo jets and also his wife. His own board of directors had fired him as CEO. Now the FBI accused him of forging papers to get a $2 million bank loan and was trying to send him to prison. He thought of suicide.

[1:08] At any risk, at any cost, he refused to let his Federal Express dream die.

[6:23] I believe that a man who expects to win out in business without self-denial and self-improvement stands about as much chance as a prizefighter would stand if he started a hard ring battle without having gone through intensive training. Natural ability, even when accompanied by the spirit to win, is never sufficient.

[7:32] It was push and drive he inherited from his father. He had to be doing something all the time.

[9:19] Fred is one of those people who never gives up if he wants something and you say no. He just goes on and on and on.

[10:50] And one of the greatest qualities that he has, that anybody can have, is he’s a voracious reader. You could talk to Fred Smith about government or literature, a whole range of things kids his age didn’t know much about.

[11:38] Like Nike, the idea for FEDEX started as a term paper: There is no great mystery to the “hub and spoke” concept. As Smith visualized the plan, the “hub” would be located in a middle America location with “spokes” radiating out to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, and other cities. Fred Smith thought of his system as similar to the telephone network, where all calls are connected through a “central switchboard” routing process.

[18:40] He wanted to do something that nobody else had done. That was his main objective.

[20:18] Smith wasn’t traveling in a straight line himself. He tried first one project and then another. All of them were built around his idea of acquiring and operating a fleet of jets. It [FEDEX] didn’t start out as a package outfit.

[27:23] Fred Smith was learning not to be disheartened or dismayed by negative reactions.

[35:43] Fred was in such deep thought all the time. Constantly thinking. Sheer determination. You could walk in and he’d be thinking about something and literally wouldn’t know you were in the room. That is one sign of a great mind—the ability to concentrate. When I read that section it made me think of this great quote by Edwin Land: “My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had.”

[39:00] A great way to think about how hard FEDEX was to start: If you open a Wal-Mart store, and if that formula succeeds and you do well, you open a thousand of them. But you don’t open a thousand of them to take the first order. Which is what you had to do to start FEDEX.

[47:10] We were first-grade novices. And I think that really played to our advantage because we were not fully aware of the obstacles we faced or the difficulty in overcoming them. I look back on it now and think, Oh, my God, why in the world would anybody try to do something like this!

[53:18] Fred Smith himself said, “No man on earth will ever know what I went through in 1973-1974. When I read that I thought of this quote on Charlie Munger: “Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity. But instead to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.”

[1:01:30] Fred Smith: You have to be absolutely brutal in the management of your time.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#150 Sam Walton (America's Richest Man)

24 oktober 2020 | 54 min

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble.

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[3:11] Charlie Munger on Sam Walton: It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears, Roebuck? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all.

[4:46] Sam Walton was no ordinary man. He was a genius in business, with an iron mind —some say pig-headed—unwilling to compromise any of his carefully thought out policies and principles.

[5:08] To him, making money was only a game. A test of his imagination and expertise to see how far he could drive a business concept. Wall Street had a hard time getting the drift of that Sam's idea, he readily admitted was absurdly simple: Buy cheap. Sell low. Every day. And do it with a smile!

[9:23] No one in the Walton household worked harder, except his father. ‘The secret is work, work work,” said Thomas Walton. “I taught the boys how to do it.” He was a bear for work, and would not tolerate sons who were not likewise industrious, ambitious, and decent.

[12:08] Sam was optimistic all the time. He felt the world was something he could conquer.

[15:13] A lesson the founder of JC Penney personally taught Sam: Boys we don't make a dime out of the merchandise we sell. We only make our profit out of the paper and string we save.”

[21:42] The lawyer saw Sam clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at his hands. Sam straightened up. “No,” he said. “I’m not whipped. I found Newport, and I found the store. I can find another good town and another store. Just wait and see!”

[27:09] Sir, I never quarrel, Sir, but sometimes I fight, Sir, when I fight Sir, a funeral follows.

[28:27] Sometimes hardship can enlighten and inspire. This was the case of Sam Walton as he put in hours and hours of driving Ozark mountain roads in the winter of 1950. But the same boredom and frustration triggered ideas that eventually bought him billions of dollars.

[34:02] One of the basic lessons Sam Walton learned at JC Penny was not to be so smug you ignored your competitors, especially their successful policies and practices. “If they had something good, we copied it,” Sam always said with total candor.

[37:52] To these sophisticated and experienced businessmen in tailored suits and custom shoes, it looked like the tail was trying to wag the dog. What was that Arkansas country fellow’s experience with only a dozen or so stores compared to their thousand outlets and nearly a century of retailing know-how?

[42:28] His tactics later prompted them to describe Sam as a modern-day combination of Vince Lombardi (insisting on solid execution of the basics) and General George S. Patton. (A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.)

[43:43] I love this mindset: Move from Bentonville? That would be the last thing we do unless they run us out. The best thing we ever did was to hide back there in the hills and build a company that makes folks want to find us.

[44:13] The public conception of Sam as a good ol’ country boy wearing a soft velvet glove misses the fact that there’s an iron fist within.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#149 The Big Rich (Oil Billionaires)

18 oktober 2020 | 71 min

What I learned from reading The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough.

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[3:12] There's truth behind legend. There really were poor Texas boys who discovered gushing oil wells and became overnight billionaires, patriarchs of squabbling families who owned private islands and colossal mansions and championship football teams, who slept with movie stars and jousted with presidents and tried to corner and international market or two.

[9:55] Their success raised a tantalizing question. What if there really was another Spindletop out there, and what if it were discovered not by a large company but by a single Texan working alone? One well, one fortune, it was the stuff of myth, the Eldorado of Texas Oil, and as a new decade dawned, a hoard of young second-generation oilmen would begin trying to find it.

[14:53] He first headed to the Houston public library where he read every book he could find on the geology of oil.

[17:51] Let me get a shave and a bath. Tomorrow's another day he would tell her.

[19:35] This is a metaphor for a lot in life. Not just oil: The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was up near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil.

[25:45] What Clint lacked in physical appeal, he made up for with a mind that whirred like a Swiss timepiece. Headstrong and independent, disdainful of his father's stuffy ways, young Clint was Tom Sawyer with an abacus.

[32:21] “Daddy, you cheated me!” he exclaimed.“ “I did not,” his father said. “People will try to get at you any way they can, and you might as well learn now.”

[33:46] If that dunce can make so much money we’ll go too.

[42:07] H.L. Hunt was a strange man, a loner who lived deep inside his own peculiar mind, a self-educated thinker who was convinced —absolutely convinced— that he was possessed of talents that bordered on the superhuman.

[49:30] Great fortunes are built on great convictions.

[52:33] Hunt drilled wells like a madman. He worked from dawn till late in the evening seven days a week. Every cent he took in he plowed back into the search for more oil.

[58:50] The spigot of cash Texas oil opened in the early 1930s ranks among the greatest periods of wealth generated in American history.

[1:02:30] Sid Bass and his brothers had since achieved everything he hadn’t, that while the Basses were investing in Wall Street stocks and high tech startups, he had been snorting cocaine.

[1:10:30] A harking to the days when giants walked the oil fields, when men like Hunt and Clint and Sid and Roy helped build something unique in midcentury, Texas—an image and culture loud, boisterous, money-hungry and a bit silly, but proud and independent.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#148 John D. Rockefeller (Autobiography)

11 oktober 2020 | 57 min

What I learned from Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller.

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[0:16] These incidents which come to my mind to speak of seemed vitally important to me when they happened, and they still stand out distinctly in my memory.

[2:43] That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. — Charlie Munger

[3:07] On Founders #16 I covered the biography of Rockefeller. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller.

[3:19] Rockefeller prioritized silence and using the element of surprise by not telling people what he was up to.

[3:54] The book I read for Founders #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday.

[5:02] They woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud.

[5:35] He's attempting to buy out one of his competitors and he says, “I have ways of making money that you know nothing about.”

[6:00] One thing that he mentioned over and over again in this book is the importance of relationships. That relationships make life better.

[7:45] Having created an empire of unfathomable complexity, he was smart enough to see that he had to submerge his identity in the organization.

[13:01] We went pretty rapidly in those days. We had with us a group of courageous men who recognized the great principle that a business cannot be a great success that does not fully and efficiently accept and take advantage of its opportunities.

[15:52] It was a friendship founded on business, which Mr. Flagler used to say was a good deal better than a business founded on friendship, and my experience leads me to agree with him.

[18:09] Perhaps they will not be useless if even tiresome stories make young people realize how, above all other possessions, is the value of a friend in every department of life without any exception whatsoever.

[20:26] I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money’s sake.

[24:35] This casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me.

[28:07] I grew up watching Michael Jordan play. My generation saw the highlights. They saw the fancy stuff. What I saw was his footwork. I saw the spacing. I saw the timing. I saw the fundamentals of the game.

[30:58] Go to sleep on a win and you wake up with a loss: As our successes began to come, I seldom put my head upon the pillow at night without speaking a few words to myself in this wise: “Now a little success, soon you will fall down, soon you will be overthrown. Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head — go steady.” These intimate conversations with myself had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions.

[34:58] If the present managers of the company were to relax efforts, allow the quality of their product to degenerate, or treat their customers badly, how long would their business last? About as long as any other neglected business.

[38:04] Meet your troubles head-on: I have spoken of the necessity of being frank and honest with oneself about one’s own affairs. Many people assume that they can get away from the truth by avoiding thinking about it, but the natural law is inevitable, and the sooner it is recognized, the better.

[38:49] Don’t deceive yourself by trying to take shortcuts. You have to build a strong foundation for your business and for your life. And that takes time. If you do that correctly you're going to gain a level of efficiency that the people that are looking for shortcuts, and cutting corners, are never going to enjoy.

[40:48] We were gradually learning how to conduct a most difficult business.

[43:08] Focus. Study how the great fortunes were made. It wasn’t a scattershot approach: We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. The company never went into outside ventures but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization.

[44:01] Two people can run the same business and have vastly different results: Amp It Up.

[50:27] Don’t even think of temporary or sharp advantages. Don’t waste your effort on a thing which ends in a petty triumph unless you are satisfied with a life of petty success.

[54:42] Don’t do anything someone else can do. —Edwin Land: The one thing which such a business philosopher would be most careful to avoid in his investments of time and effort or money, is the unnecessary duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent in increasing needless competition as wasted.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#147 Sam Colt

5 oktober 2020 | 69 min

What I learned from reading Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America by Jim Rasenberger.

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[0:01] Sam Colt embodied the America of his time. He was big brash, voracious, imaginative, and possessed extraordinary drive and energy. He was a classic disruptor who not only invented a world-changing product but produced it and sold it in world-changing ways.

[1:59] He had solved one of the great technological challenges of the early 19th century.

[2:36] He was rich at 21. Poor at 31. Then rich again at 41.

[7:10] Sam Colt solved a 400-year-old problem. The guns of 1830 were essentially what they had been in 1430.

[7:53] There's a financial panic in 1819. This is a very important part in the life of Sam Colt. It may explain why he was such a hard worker, ruthless, and determined. The panic of 1819 bankrupts his family.

[10:48] What kind of person would do this voluntarily? He was set to embark on a 17,000-mile voyage across the Atlantic, around the horn of Africa, through the Indian ocean and to the city of Calcutta. Honeymoon was not quite the word to describe a 17,000-mile voyage to Calcutta in 1830.

[13:57] He bridled at being under any authority other than his own. His dogma was the gospel of self-determination. “It is better to be the head of a louse than the tail of a lion.”

[14:19] Self-determination took deep root in my heart and to has been the mark that has and shall control my destiny.

[16:14] Every cut of the jackknife an act of quiet vengeance not only against those who had flogged him but against the nameless forces that had snatched away his childhood with financial ruin and death.

[19:58] He saw a nation brimming with industry and ingenuity and hope. And at the same time, anxiety, fear and brutality.

[20:55] Nights went to [selling] nitrous oxide, days to improving his gun.

[22:31] This description of the book sold me on buying it: Brilliantly told, Revolver brings the brazenly ambitious and profoundly innovative industrialist and leader Samuel Colt to vivid life. In the space of his forty-seven years, he seemingly lived five lives: he traveled, womanized, drank prodigiously, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and supplied the Union Army with the guns they needed to win the Civil War. Colt lived during an age of promise and progress, but also of slavery, corruption, and unbridled greed, and he not only helped to create this America, he completely embodied it. By the time he died in 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut, he was one of the most famous men in nation, and one of the richest.

[27:19] But more important than Roswell’s money would be the contacts he helped Sam cultivate in coming months; and more important still would be the encouragement Roswell gave to the young entrepreneur.

[30:46] Why guns were the first mass-produced product in America: But the government was not in the business of sewing or telling time; it very much was in the business of preparing for war, even if there were no wars to be fought just then. As a result, guns were among the first, and by far the most important, mass-produced items in the United States. Because the government was the main buyer of guns, it dictated how the guns were made. And it had a deep interest in solving problems of gun manufacturing.

[37:23] I’m amazed at how much life Sam Colt fit into 47 short years.

[38:43] One of the main takeaways of the book is Everything sucks. I’m moving forward anyways.

[38:58] His refusal to admit defeat would appear almost delusional at times.

[39:34] The paradox of Sam Colt: One half of Sam Colt was the buncoing fabulist, the walking bonfire of other people’s money, the drinker and carouser; the other half was a truly gifted inventor.

[42:20] If you are in a great market the market will pull the product out of you.

[48:52] Sam Colt is extreme. This is him admonishing his younger brother for not being ambitious enough: Don’t for the sake of your own good name think again of being a subordinate. You had better blow out your brains at once & manure an honest man’s ground with your carcass than to hang your ambition on so low a peg.

[49:15] The anger and frustration was real and his desire to be his own master and master of others was sincere.

[52:27] I've spent the last 10 years of my life without profit in perfecting military inventions. How many people are willing to work this hard and not give up after a decade?

[54:17] The opening of a new market: [Sam] Walker had done a great deal for Colt in the weeks since they began exchanging letters in November. Most important, he had single-handedly persuaded the Ordnance Department to contravene its long-standing objection to Colt’s pistols.

[57:40] After his first business fails he is determined to control his second attempt: “I am working on my own hook and have sole control and management of my business. No longer subject to the whims of a pack of dam fools styling themselves a board of directors.

[1:07:19] He was metabolically wired for productivity. He is without exception the hardest working man that I know of.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#146 Milton Hershey (Chocolate)

27 september 2020 | 49 min

What I learned from reading Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams by Michael D'Antonio.

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[0:01] Perhaps the only thing about Milton Hershey that is absolutely certain is that he believed in progress. He was always moving.

[2:51] This blew my mind. Only six universities held larger endowments. Which meant that the Milton Hershey School was richer than Cornell, Columbia, or the University of Pennsylvania.

[4:14] Milton’s father was unrealized ambition personified.

[5:44] One of the biggest things Milton learned from his father and something he avoided. His father had 1,000 schemes and never stuck to any of them. He didn’t know what perseverance meant.

[7:25] Rockefeller had arrived in Oil City in the same year as Hershey, 1860. But unlike Henry, he was possessed of extraordinary energy, remarkable financial savvy, and an uncanny ability to remain focused on his goals.

[8:00] Henry’s had a preference for talking about things rather than doing them. Even neighbors could see that the man was lazy. Milton was the direct opposite of these traits.

[8:37] This gives you an insight into why Milton would leave a large fortunes to orphans: Milton was denied the kind of stability children need to feel secure. He had been moved from place to place, and he listened to his parents argue with increasing frequency and anger. Milton went without proper shoes and the little family didn’t have enough to eat.

[9:14] He learned to channel all of his energy and passions into a single outlet: work.

[10:47] The main takeaway from this book: Milton Hershey had perseverance in abundance.

[12:43] Hershey experiences multiple business failures before he founds his first successful company.

[14:34] Things start to go bad. He realizes he has another “me too” product. He faced intense competition from hundreds of other candy retailers and wholesalers in the city. He doesn’t find success unit he actually innovates. Milton finds a way to turn a luxury product — milk chocolate — into a mass produced, inexpensive product.

[16:37] This is an important part. He is being squeezed by suppliers. Later on in life he realizes if something is important to your business you must control it. He starts his own sugar plantation. He does this for other ingredients he needs to make his product.

[19:08] His simple idea: Caramel is really popular in Western states. The candy makers in Denver figured out how to make caramel that don’t go bad and taste very well. That was not happening where he was from. He decided to take that idea back east and build my own caramel empire. He sells that company for $1 million and uses that money to start Hershey Chocolate.

[22:34] Milton is doing exactly what you and I are doing right now. He is studying successful entrepreneurs.

[24:44] Bouncing back from defeat is essential for growth in any endeavor.

[25:00] Milton is at rock bottom. He is somewhat depressed and downtrodden. But there is something freeing about that. Because he realizes I can only go up from here.

[25:30] The main theme in the life of Milton Hershey is perseverance. He has been working in this industry for 14 years. He has had two gigantic business failures. He has borrowed money from everybody he possible can. He is tapped out. He is embarrassed. He is a failure. Yet he doesn’t quit.

[26:12] If failure is the best instructor he could argue that he had earned a doctorate. He intended to make candy no one else produced.

[29:48] This is the wild part. He had told me all. He did not conceal the bad part. He made no excuses for it. He was honest. I decided I would lend him the money. But I was afraid to present the bank that note with that story. To avoid the trouble I put my own name on the note. The banker takes out the loan for Milton —in his name!

[30:50] Milton tried to make small improvements over a long period of time.

[31:30] Small continuous improvements over many years produces miracles.

[31:54] No one alive visited more retail stores than Sam Walton. He was obsessed with studying and learning from other entrepreneurs. No one alive had gone into more confectionaries and candy shops than Milton Hershey.

[32:20] While visiting Europe he notices that companies were creating a big new industry serving low cost chocolate to the masses.

[33:54] He is constantly redesigning his manufacturing process, making it more efficient. It becomes so efficient no one else can compete with him.

[36:41] Only the Swiss had figured out how to mass produce milk chocolate. They aren’t going to tell Milton how to do it. He must experiment on his own. . . To do this he sets up a milk chocolate skunkworks.

[38:13] How many people are willing to put in this much work? Milton and about 18 workers would rise at 4:30a.m. to milk the herd of 78 cows. After breakfast they’d go to work. Sometimes they didn’t come out until the next morning.

[40:05] What Milton Hershey did for the mass production of chocolate is the same thing that Henry Ford did for the mass production of automobiles and its the same thing the McDonald’s brothers did for the mass production of fast food.

[46:15] This one act would create something unique in both philanthropy and capitalism. It made the school, under its trustees, the majority owners of a national company that was poised to double in size, many times over, in the decades to come.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#145 William Randolph Hearst

20 september 2020 | 66 min

What I learned from reading The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw.

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[0:20] There has never been —nor, most likely, will there ever again be — a publisher like William Randolph Hearst.

[0:26] Decades before synergy became a corporate cliche, Hearst put the concept into practice. His magazine editors were directed to buy only stories which could be rewritten into screenplays to be produced by his film studio and serialized, reviewed, and publicized in his newspapers and magazines. He broadcast the news from his papers over the radio and pictured it in his newsreels.

[1:42] Winston Churchill on William Randolph Hearst: “Hearst was most interesting to meet,” Churchill wrote. “I got to like him — a grave, simple child — with no doubt a nasty temper — playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always over spent: ceaseless building and collecting . . .two magnificent establishments, two charming wives; complete indifference to public opinion, a 15 million daily circulation, and extreme personal courtesy.”

[4:42] If public schools are rough-and-tumble they will do him good. So is the world rough-and-tumble. Willie might as well learn to face it. —George Hearst, William’s father.

[8:45] He didn’t care what the world thought. . .He was rather indifferent to the thoughts and feelings of people outside of his immediate family.

[10:20] Warren Buffett had this great idea that he came up with by observing his parents. Do you have an outer scorecard or an inner scorecard? Warren says you are going to have a hard time living a happy life if you don’t have an inner scorecard. His mom had an outer scorecard. She was very worried about what the outside world thought. Warren Buffett most admired his father. His father had an inner scorecard. If he could look himself in the mirror at the end of the day and say I’m comfortable with doing then he would accept it regardless if the people around him didn’t understand it. I think William Randolph Hearst had an inner scorecard.

[13:08] Hearst believed you had to pay for talent: The paper must be built up and cheap labor has been entirely ineffectual. The paper requires a head that has ability, enterprise, and experience. Let one of these things be absent and the paper will be a failure. Naturally such a man commands a high salary and you must reconcile yourself, either to paying it or giving up the paper.

[14:00] His father thought he was a quitter: Tell him to stand in like a man and stick to his studies to the end.

[15:00] Joseph Pulitzer was William’s blueprint: His evenings were devoted to the studying of the newspaper industry in preparation to take over his father’s newspaper. He text was Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He was reading it daily, studying every element in its makeup, and comparing it daily with the Examiner.

[17:45] Will was determined to escape the fate of a rich man’s son born a generation too late. His father’s generation had settled the West, cleared the land, built the railroads, discovered and mined the precious metals, and make their oversized fortunes.

[19:55] No one owns ideas. You can do this too: He intended to work a revolution in the sleepy journalism of the Pacific slope by importing the journalistic techniques, strategies, and innovations that Pulitzer had pioneered in New York City. He is not saying he is innovating here. He doesn’t need to. He is saying I am taking Pulitzer’s playbook and I am going to run it. And I am going to run it better than he did.

[22:15] If we hesitate a moment or fall back a step we are lost. Delay is as fatal as neglect. —Willam Randolph Heart

[25:12] Smart way to expand his market: Because San Francisco — a city of no more than 350,000 — had three strong morning paper, Hearst recognized that he would have to expand the Examiner’s circulation base by delivering papers by railway north to Sacramento and south to Santa Cruz and San Jose.

[27:54] Improve the quality of the product, and the profits will follow: He said that the reason that the paper did not pay was because it was not the best paper in the country. He said that if he had it he would make it the best paper and that then it would pay. Now I don’t think there is a better paper in the country. It is now worth upwards of a million dollars.

[30:13] When Ross Perot finally leaves the board of NeXT he tells Steve Jobs that he didn’t help him by giving him $100 million dollars. The money I gave you made it easy for you to not have any sense of urgency to make a profit.

[34:07] Hearst was able to poach Pulitzer’s staff by offering them something Pulitzer wouldn’t, job security: Hearst had to offer more than big salaries. He had to guarantee security in the form of large multiyear contracts. In the newspaper industry this was unheard of.

[36:37] I feel like everybody beefs with Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt tried to have Pulitzer arrested, he hated Hearst, and goes to war with J.P. Morgan. Hearst felt Roosevelt was his competition.

[37:23] What Hearst says after one of his reporters is shot during the war between Spain and Cuba: “I’m sorry you’re hurt but wasn’t it a splendid fight? We must beat every paper in the world.” This guy is really dedicated to being the world’s best publisher.

[38:01] Something that I want to highlight for you that is very common — but very surprising to people who don’t read biographies — is that these people experience periods of intense doubt. We all do. Hearst did as well: I feel like hell. I sit all day in one place in half a trance. I guess I am a failure.

[42:08] Hearst is deep in debt for half a century: He is an able newspaper man but does not look ahead in financial matters

[42:30] He listened to no one, trusted no one.

[42:49] Any kind of success arouses envy and hatred. The best punishment is to succeed more. —William Randolph Hearst

[43:05] When he saw an item he wanted, he bought it, regardless of whether he had the money to pay for it. His spending had always been extravagant but it ballooned out of all proportion to his income.

[46:14] Instead of retrenching until his newspapers began to earn money again, he had gone deeper into debt to finance his movie studio. The combination of debts made it impossible for him to seek further credit from the banks, which he required regularly to refinance his outstanding loans.

[50:46] The financial situation of your various companies is in an alarmingly serious condition. The Chief went blithely on, spending money like water.

[51:19] 70 years old, over leveraged, and going into the Great Depression: He was overextend with debt, bloated payrolls, real estate mortgages, construction and renovation costs, and huge bills to art dealers and auction houses on both sides of the Atlantic.

[55:37] The Chief had learned early that there was no shame in being in debt. Debt was, on the contrary, the magic ingredient that had made it possible to build his castles and buy his art collections. He didn’t believe in the Protestant ethic or trust in Poor Richard’s aphorisms. A penny saved might be a penny earned, but a penny borrowed was worth even more. The result of this: It had taken almost half a century, but his debts had finally grown to the point where no banker in his right mind would consider refinancing them.

[59:39] One of the great defenses against inflation is not to have a lot of silly needs in your life. You don’t need a lot of material goods. —Charlie Munger

[1:03:06] A benefit of incorrigible optimism: Hearst never regarded himself as a failure, never recognized defeat, He did not, at the end of his life, run away from the world.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#144 Ernest Shackleton

13 september 2020 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.

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[0:58] All the men were struck, almost to the point of horror, by the way the ship behaved like a giant beast in its death agonies.

[1:27] His name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the twenty-seven men he had watched so ingloriously leaving the stricken ship were the members of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

[2:02] Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected.

[2:52] Their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity: If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out.

[9:21] Shackleton returned to England a hero of the Empire. He was lionized wherever he went, knighted by the king, and decorated by every major country in the world.

[10:24] Making his primary argument for such an expedition, he wrote: It is the last great Polar journey that can be made. I feel it is up to the British nation to accomplish this, for we have been beaten at the conquest of the North Pole and beaten at the first conquest of the South Pole. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys—the crossing of the Continent.

[12:16] He was an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and swashbuckling.

[15:20] But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold. Perhaps it’s an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms.

[17:00] When you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees, and pray for Shackleton.

[17:15] The motto of his family: BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER.

[23:10] Shackleton said there once was a mouse who lived in a tavern. One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold. When the mouse had finished, he looked around arrogantly. “Now then,” he said, “where’s that damn cat.”

[25:15] From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.

[30:19] Of all their enemies—the cold, the ice, the sea—he feared none more than demoralization.

[32:00] Shackleton was not an ordinary individual. He was a man who believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy.

[43:15] It was pull or perish, and ignoring their sickening thirst, they leaned on their oars with what seemed the last of their strength.

[47:05] No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.

[48:34] The only thing to do was to hang on and endure.

[49:39] They were possessed by an angry determination to see the journey through—no matter what.

[54:33] I do not know how they did it, except they had to.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#143 Alfred Lee Loomis (the most interesting man you've never heard of)

6 september 2020 | 56 min

What I learned from reading Tuxedo Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by James Conant.

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[0:01] Few men of Loomis’ prominence and achievement have gone to greater lengths to foil history.

[0:17] Independently wealthy, iconoclastic, and aloof, Loomis did not conform to the conventional measure of a great scientist. He was too complex to categorize—financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, dilettante—a contradiction in terms.

[0:42] He rose to become one of the most powerful figures in banking in the 1920s.

[4:42] The smile was a velvet glove covering his iron determination to get underway without any lost motion.

[5:29] He would dedicate himself to overcoming Germany’s scientific advantage.

[7:19] He had amassed a substantial fortune, which allowed him to act as a patron.

[8:06] Loomis was a bit stiff, with the bearing of a four-star general in civilian clothes. He was strong and decisive.

[10:15] He was enthusiastic about American know-how and was not inclined to sit idly by until the miliary finally determined it was time to take action—particularly if just catching up with the Germans proved to be a monumental task.

[13:30] He carried himself with composure, but his politeness was merely a habit; he was preoccupied.

[16:56]When duty called he helped reinvent modern warfare.

[20:21] He became an enthusiastic champion of the new armored tanks. He became such an expert on tank construction, he built a scaled-down model in his garage in order to see if he could make further improvements in the design. When his cousin came to visit, Loomis rolled into the rail station in his light armored tank to meet the train, kicking up dust and causing quite a scene.

[26:54] Loomis would later maintain that everybody on the Street knew the crash was coming, the only difference was that he and Thorne refused to bank on its being inevitably delayed.

[31:20] After the shock of the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915, Thomas Edison said that Americans were “as clever at mechanics as any people in the world” and could defeat any “engine of destruction.:” Edison had advocated for preparedness without provocation, and to Loomis, it seemed as wise a course in the present as it had been then.

[40:58] For the next four years, he would drive himself and his band of physicists almost without break to develop the all-important radar warning systems based on the magnetron.

[43:44] He drew a striking parallel between the present international situation and the financial situation prior to the crash. He said that now people are asking him when we will enter the war just as in 1928 his friends were asking him when the stock market crash was coming. He said that in both cases such a question is quite beside the point. He said that once a person admitted a stock market crash was coming a prudent individual will immediately get out fo the stock market and not consider when the crash is coming and thereby try to hang on and make some more profits. Likewise, at the present time it is of secondary importance when we will get in; of first importance is the admission that we are going to get in, and our action accordingly should be that of preparing just as though we were actually in the war!

[48:55] Loomis had one important characteristic. His ability to concentrate completely on the chief objective, even at the cost of neglecting matters that appear to other people to be of equal importance.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan

30 augusti 2020 | 51 min

What I learned from reading The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield.

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[0:17] Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn’t the richest but that didn’t matter; he was commanding in a way none could match.

[0:38] Morgan had an aristocrat’s disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country’s advantage, no explanations necessary.

[0:50] Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself the public.

[1:04] Each [Morgan and Roosevelt] presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation’s course. Each expected deference from the other along the way.

[2:18] “I’m afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” Morgan said. “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do,” Roosevelt replied.

[5:24] Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career, even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was very much the creation of paternal influence.

[9:58] Morgan said he could do a year’s work in nine months, but not twelve. His impatience could be withering.

[10:17] Roosevelt adopted his father’s motto, “Get action.”

[10:35] Roosevelt never sat when he could stand. When provoked, he would thrust, and when he hit, he hit hard.

[11:11] Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat.

[12:09] When they attacked Roosevelt, he would fire back with all the venom imaginable. “He was the most indiscreet guy I ever met.”

[16:36] When one of the gentlemen complained later about Morgan’s interference in their roads, Morgan snapped: “Your roads? Your roads belong to my clients.”

[19:26] John D. Rockefeller said his company was efficient. Critics said it was untouchable.

[23:04] James J. Hill had built the Great Northern with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn’t need Morgan the way other railroad executives did.

[25:52] “A soft, easy life is not worth living, it impairs the fiber of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great.”, Roosevelt said.

[29:18] Harriman secretly bought up shares in Northern Pacific. This was revenge. Hill and Morgan had effective control over the Northern Pacific, but they didn’t own a majority of the shares. Morgan had never found it necessary to own a company outright in order to exert influence.

[35:02] The president had asked his attorney general to prosecute Northern Securities for violating the Sherman Act. Roosevelt should have warned him, Morgan grumbled. They could have worked out a deal in private. Presidents didn’t keep secrets from the captains of industry, and the House of Morgan had never before been surprised by the White House.

[37:29] After Morgan left, Roosevelt marveled at the financier’s imprudence. “That is the most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.”

[39:06] Roosevelt understood how panic could outrun reality.

[47:00] People will love Roosevelt for the enemies he has made.

[50:21] Morgan repeated the advice he had received from his father long ago: “There may be times when things are dark and cloudy in America, when uncertainty will cause some to distrust and others to think there is too much production, too much building of railroads, and too much development in other enterprises. In such times, and at all times, remember that the growth of that vast country will take care of all.”

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#141 Arnold Schwarzenegger (My Unbelievably True Life Story)

23 augusti 2020 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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I decided that the best course for independence was to mind my own business and make my own money.

I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead, the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.

I became absolutely convinced that I was special and meant for bigger things. I knew I would be the best at something - although I didn’t know what - and that it would make me famous.

I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mindset. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.” I pictured myself high up on the pedestal, trophy in hand. Everyone else would be standing below. And I would look down.

When you grow up in that kind of harsh environment, you never forget how to withstand physical punishment, even long after the hard times end.

I find joy in the gym because every rep and every set is getting me one step closer to my goal.

It gave Reg Park’s whole life story, from growing up poor in Leeds, England, to becoming Mr. Universe, getting invited to America as a champion bodybuilder, getting sent to Rome to star as Hercules, and marrying a beauty from South Africa. This story crystallized a new vision for me. I could become another Reg Park. All my dreams suddenly came together and made sense. I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in powerlifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing.

Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’

There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me.

It was the fact that I had failed—not my body, but my vision and my drive. I hadn’t done everything in my power to prepare. Thinking this made me furious. “You are still a fucking amateur,” I told myself. I decided I wouldn’t be an amateur ever again.

That night, despair came crashing in. I was in a foreign country, away from my family, away from my friends, surrounded by strange people in a place where I didn’t speak the language. I ended up crying quietly in the dark for hours.

I always wrote down my goals. I had to make it very specific so that all those fine intentions were not just floating around. It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there.

I came away fascinated that a man could be both smart and powerful.

Going to school, training five hours a day at the gym, working in the construction and mail-order businesses, making appearances, and going to exhibitions—all of it was happening at the same time. Some days stretched from six in the morning until midnight.

Nothing was going to distract me from my goal. No offer, no relationship, nothing.

People were always talking about how few performers there are at the top of the ladder, but I was convinced there was room for one more. I felt that, because there was so little room, people got intimidated and felt more comfortable staying on the bottom of the ladder. But, in fact, the more people that think that, the more crowded the bottom of the ladder becomes! Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.

Very few actors like to sell. I’d seen the same thing with authors in the book business. The typical attitude seemed to be, “I don’t want to be a whore. I create; I don’t want to shill.” It was a real change when I showed up saying, “Let’s go everywhere because this is good not only for me financially but also good for the public; they get to see a good movie!”

Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don’t get it out there, if people don’t know about it, you have nothing. It’s the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions. It always blew my mind that some of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo to van Gogh, never sold much because they didn’t know-how. They had to rely on some schmuck - some agent or manager or gallery owner - to do it for them.That wasn’t going to happen to my movies. Same with bodybuilding, same with politics - no matter what I did in life, I was aware that you had to sell it.

They couldn’t handle working every day. Lazy bastards. I wanted to be rich very quickly.

No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage. If you want to be good at skiing, you have to get out on the slopes all the time. If you play chess, you have to play tens of thousands of games. On the movie set, the only way to act together is to do the reps. If you’ve done the reps, you don’t have to worry.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#140 Bill Gates (the Making of the Microsoft Empire)

16 augusti 2020 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.

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Microsoft had become the first software company to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year.

Gates was the undisputed mastermind of that success, a brilliant technocrat, ruthless salesman, and manipulative businessman.

Gates had slammed his fist into his palm and vowed to put several of his major software competitors out of business. By 1991, many of those competitors were in full retreat.

I can do anything I put my mind to.

Aggressive and stimulated by conflict; prone to change mood quickly; a dominating personality with outstanding powers of leadership.

Mary Gates, in describing her son, has said that he has pretty much done what he wanted since the age of eight.

Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best.

Everything Bill did, he did to the max.

Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual.

Gates was immediately hooked. He found he had to compete for time on the computer with a handful of others who were similarly drawn to the room as if by a powerful gravitational force. Among them was Paul Allen.

Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went.

Gates and a couple of other boys broke into the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of time the computer showed they had used.

“It was when we got that free time that we really got into computers,” Gates said. “Then I became hardcore. It was day and night.” Gates was 13 years old.

Although he was only in the ninth grade, he already seemed obsessed with the computer, ignoring everything else, staying out all night.

He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures in history thought.

If you had asked anybody at Lakeside, ‘Who is the real genius among geniuses?’ everyone would have said ‘Bill Gates.’

He was obnoxious, he was sure of himself, he was aggressively, intimidatingly smart.

He had a hard-nosed, confrontational style. His intensity at times boiled over into raw, unthrottled emotion.

To those who knew him best Gates was hardly the social outcast he may have appeared to be from a distance. He had a sense of humor and adventure.

He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with.

He had an immense range of knowledge and interests and could talk at length on any number of subjects.

Although Gates may not have known what he was going to do with his life, he seemed confident that whatever he did would make him a lot of money. He made such a prediction about his future on several occasions.

He and Paul Allen began to talk about forming their own software company. They shared the same vision that one day the computer would be as commonplace in the home as a television set and that these computers would need software—their software.

Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed.

That Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep.

His habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza, and go back at it. And if that meant he was starting again at three o’clock in the morning, so be it.

Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane.

They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it.

Gates spent many hours sitting in his room “being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.”

Bill had a monomanical quality. He would really focus on something and stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought.

Gates eventually gave up any thought of becomming a mathematician. If he couldn’t be the best in his field, why risk failure?

Gates knew Allen was right. It was time. The personal computer miracle was going to happen.

The personal computer revolution had begun. Its prophets were two young men not yet old enough to drink, whose software would soon bring executives in suits from around the country to a highway desert town to make million-dollar deals with kids in blue jeans and t-shirts.

You’ve got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension.

His parents and grandparents had taught him to be financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft.

Bill always had the vision that Microsoft’s mission was to provide all the software for microcomputers.

They became known as the Microkids—high-IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade, kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance.

Gates’ tireless salesmanship, browbeating, and haggling had resulted in agreements to license BASIC to a number of computer companies.

He took one look at the long-haired, scraggly, 21-year-old and decided the legal battle against Microsoft was going to be easy. Roberts had warned Pertec that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy,” Roberts said. “It was a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.”

What sustained the company was not Gates’ ability to write programs. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship.

For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers, convincing them to buy Microsoft’s services and products.

When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, and took the phone calls.

I’ll tell you or anybody else, that by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I had ever dealt with.

Microsoft did not need venture capital; Gates was essentially hiring the firm’s expertise.

Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren’t as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you are going to win if you have fewer competitors.

If you talk to Bill about any software company there’s a very high probability that he will be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they are currently working on, what the problems are with their products. He’s very knowledgeable and prides himself on knowing what’s going on in the industry.

Hanson suggested a different product naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products.

The brand is the hero. People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that products come and go. But if you can create a halo around a brand name, when you introduce new products under that brand halo it becomes much easier to create momentum.

With few exceptions, they’ve never shipped a good product in its first version. But they never give up and eventually get it right. It was all part of Gates’ master plan. As General George S. Patton liked to say, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

He was a very clear thinker. But he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn’t win the battle, and he didn’t know that. He was very rich and very immature. He had never matured emotionally.

For the year that ended June 30, 1985, Microsoft had revenues of $140 million. Its profits had totaled $31.2 million.

All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock.

The combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Gates referred to as “being hardcore.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#139 J.P. Morgan

9 augusti 2020 | 68 min

What I learned from reading The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow.

[0:01] This book is about the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American banking empire—the House of Morgan.

[1:56] What gave the House of Morgan its tantalizing mystery was its government links. Much like the Rothschilds it seemed insinuated into the power structure of many countries, especially the United States.

[2:46] They practiced a brand of banking that has little resemblance to standard retail banking.

[3:43] They have weathered wars and depressions, scandals and hearings, bomb blasts and attempted assassinations.

[4:44] Contrary to the usual law of perspective, the Morgans seem to grow larger as they recede in time.

[5:41] I was struck that the old Wall Street—elite, clubby, and dominated by small, mysterious partnerships—bore scant resemblance to the universe of faceless conglomerates springing up across the globe.

[6:49] Only one firm, one family, one name rather gloriously spanned the entire century and a half that I wanted to cover: J.P. Morgan.

[8:13] I am a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. —Marc Andreessen

[12:22] He carried the scars of early poverty. Like many who have overcome early hardship by brute force, he was always at war with the world and counting his injuries.

[14:22] My capital is ample but I have passed too many money panics unscathed, not to have seen how often large fortunes are swept away, and that even with my own I must use caution.

[14:48] His annual savings were staggering. He spent only $3,000 of a total annual income of $300,000.

[18:05] J.P’s dad’s advice: You are commencing upon your business career at an eventful time. Let what you now witness make an impression not to be eradicated. Slow and sure should be the motto of every young man.

[18:40] Junius Morgan reminds me of Tywin Lannister.

[21:19] Perhaps the contrast between his own steady nature and Pierpont’s unruly temper made Junius fret unduly about his boy. With granite will, he began to mold Pierpont.

[23:03] The Rothschilds are mentioned 30 times in this book. They had an influence on how Junius wanted to set up the Morgan family.

[25:08] Junius lectured Pierpont: Never, under any circumstances, do an action which could be called in question if known to the world.

[25:55] The railroads were the Internet of their day: More than just isolated businesses, railroads were the scaffolding on which new worlds would be built.

[27:41] Not for the last time, Pierpont contemplated retirement. He would assume tremendous responsibility, then feel oppressed. He never seemed to take great pleasure in his accomplishments. He craved a restful but elusive peace.

[29:50] He made over $1 million, boasting to Junius: I don’t believe there is another concern in the country that can begin to show such a result.

[31:19] He believed that he knew how the economy should be ordered and how people should behave.

[32:24] He had trouble delegating authority and low regard for the intelligence of other people. “The longer I live the more apparent becomes the absence of brains.”

[33:48] Under his stern facade, Junius adored Pierpont; the obsessive grooming was a tacit acknowledgement of his son’s gifts.

[35:36] Pierpont was, by nature, a laconic man. He had no gift for sustained analysis; his genius was in the brief, sudden brainstorm.

[38:40] Pierpont found Jack soft and rather passive, lacking the sort of gumption he had as a young man.

[40:40] Pierpont was extremely attentive to details and took pride in the knowledge that he could perform any job in the bank. “I can sit down at any clerk’s desk, take up his work here he left it and go on with it. I don’t like being at any man’s mercy.” He never renounced the founder’s itch to know the most minute details of the business.

[41:31] The years change, but the point always remains the same: Morgan benefits from financial crises.

[42:14] Virtually every bankrupt railroad east of the Mississippi eventually passed through such reorganization, or morganization, as it was called. The companies’ combined revenues approached an amount equal to half of the U.S. government’s annual receipts.

[45:22] He has the driving power of a locomotive. He suggested something brutish and uncontrollable, but also something of superhuman strength.

[47:04] Carnegie celebrated too quickly. He later admitted to Morgan that he had sold out too cheap, by $100 million. Morgan replied, “Very likely, Andrew.”

[52:15] McKinley’s assassination would be a turning point in Pierpont’s life, for it installed in the presidency Theodore Roosevelt. Book: The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism

[53:05] The 1907 panic was Pierpont’s last hurray. He suddenly functioned as America’s central bank. He saved several trust companies and a leading brokerage house, bailed out New York City, and rescued the Stock Exchange.

[54:33] Contemporaries saw Morgan as the incarnation of pure will.

[1:02:39] This was Pierpont in a nutshell: He represented bondholders and expressed their wrath against irresponsible management.

[1:07:37] Andrew Carnegie after J. P. Morgan died: And to think he was not a rich man.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#138 Alexander Graham Bell

2 augusti 2020 | 61 min

What I learned from reading Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray.

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[0:01] I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone, let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night all night or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hand around, read novels and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work. But oh, do not do as you often do, stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement with “Alex, Alex, aren’t you coming to bed? It’s one o’clock, do come.” Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes and after a while I go to sleep, but the ideas are gone, the work is never done.

[1:20] Books are the original links: So many times Edwin Land referenced what he learned from studying the life of Alexander Graham Bell—from being motivated as Bell persevered through struggles to how to market a brand new product.

[3:06] Alexander Graham Bell had a lifelong passion for helping and teaching the deaf.

[4:13] Alex asserted his independence early. Exasperated by being the third Alexander Bell in a row, he decided to add Graham to his own name.

[4:32] He often retreated into solitude, particularly when he was preoccupied with a project.

[5:27] Alex’s school record was unimpressive. Chronically untidy and late for class, Alex often skipped school altogether. Outside the classroom he demonstrated the ingenuity and single-mindedness that would shape his later career.

[8:03] He complained of headaches, depression, and sleeplessness. Perhaps this wasn’t surprising considering the undisciplined intensity of his work habits. In a pattern that would last a lifetime, he would sit up all night reading or working obsessively on sound experiments.

[9:54] A note he left himself: A man’s own judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right.

[11:42] The problem Alexander was trying to solve that led to the invention of the telephone: Could they solve a puzzle with which amateur engineers all over the United States were grappling? Nearly thirty years after its first commercial application, the telegraph system was still limited to sending one message at a time. The race was on to increase its capacity. Alex was determined to join this race.

[12:39] Samuel Morse is mentioned over and over again in this book just like Alexander Graham Bell is mentioned over and over again in books on Edwin Land and just like Edwin Land is mentioned over and over again in books on Steve Jobs. This speaks to this instinctual nature that we have to want to learn from the life stories of other people— to collect that knowledge and push it down the generations.

[17:42] Other inventors were on the same track as he was. A professional electrician and inventor named Elisha Gray had successfully transmitted music over telegraph wires. Thomas Edison was already bragging that he was close to introducing the quadruplex telegraph.

[23:43] Inventor and Yankee entrepreneur had found one another. Alex was unaware that Gardiner Hubbard was on the hunt for a multiple telegraph device; Gardiner Hubbard had no idea that his daughter’s teacher [Alex] spent his nights crouched over a table covered with electromagnets and length of wire. Alex had the ideas Hubbard needed; Hubbard had the access to capital to finance them.

[25:06] It is a neck and neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician—but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is—so that I have an advantage here. The very opposition seems to nerve me to work and I feel with the facilities I have now I may succeed. I shall be seriously ill should I fail in this now I am so thoroughly wrought up.

[27:02] Thomas Watson on what it was like working with Alexander Graham Bell: His head seemed to be a teeming beehive out of which he would often let loose one of his favorite bees for my inspection. A dozen young and energetic workmen would have been needed to mechanize all his buzzing ideas.

[27:41] Alex meets with an older, wider inventor named Dr. Joseph Henry: He told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention. Since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge he asked Dr. Henry should he allow others to work out the commercial application. Dr. Henry didn’t pause for a minute. If this young Scotsman was going to get the commercial payoff from his invention, he simply had to acquire an understanding of electricity. “GET IT!” he barked at the twenty-eight-year-old.

[31:42] Drawing inspiration from the life of Samuel Morse: He was frustrated by his lack of technical knowledge that “Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.”

[35:09] Alexander Graham Bell’s personality: He put tremendous demands on himself. His tendency to work around the clock, and to alternate between states of fierce focus on one goal and an inability to concentrate on anything, suggest a lack of balance in his temperament. He was erratic in his habits and intellectually obsessive, but it was his unconventional mind that made him a genius. He refused to be hemmed in by rules. He allowed his intuition to flourish. He relied on leaps of imagination, backed by a fascination with physical sciences, to solve the challenges he set himself.

Comparing and contrasting Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell: Unlike Thomas Edison, the ruthless self-promoter who saw science as a Darwinian competition and who always announced his inventions before he had even got them working, Alex hated revealing anything until he was confident of its success. Edison was an ambitious self-made American; Alex was a cautious Scot more interested in scientific progress than commercial success. [I forgot to put this part in the podcast]

[40:22] Struggle: When will this thing be finished? I am sick and tired of the nature of my work and the little profit that arises from it. Other men work their five or six hours a day, and have their thousands a year, while I slave from morning to night and night to morning and accomplish nothing but to wear myself out. I expect that the money will come in just in time for me to leave it to you in my will! I am sad at heart, and keep my feelings bottled up like wine in a wine cellar.

[45:20] More struggle. Alex almost giving up again: Of one thing I am determined and that is to waste no more time and money on the telephone. Let others endure the worry, the anxiety and expense. I will have none of it. A feverish anxious life like that I have been leading will soon change my whole nature. I feel myself growing irritable, feverish, and disgusted with life.

[49:37] What’s most important to Alex: “Yes, I hold it is one of the highest of all things, the increase of knowledge making us more like God.” He had bought a set of the new Encyclopedia Britannica and had announced he was going read it from start to finish. Nothing would dampen his irrepressible urge to explore, discover, and improve.

[50:36] Alexander Graham Bell on parenting: He believed that play is Nature’s method of educating a child and that a parent’s duty is to aid Nature in the development of her plan.

[54:30] He never liked for anyone to knock on his door before entering the room. If he was following a train of thought and there was a tap on his door, his attention being diverted to the noise, he very often lost the thread and for days would not be able to pick it up again. Alex once said, “Thoughts are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.”

[55:20] Any disturbance was such anathema to Bell that he never had a telephone installed in his own study.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#137 P.T. Barnum

26 juli 2020 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson.

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[1:23] He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life. Less well known is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real-estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

[1:54] In all endeavors he was a promoter and self-promotor without peer, a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.

[3:16] Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams.

[3:54] He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing.

[5:36] Barnum’s was 16 when his father died, leaving his family with debts: Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery “to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us this side of the grave.”

[6:22] He knew even then that he would only be happy working for himself.

[7:56] Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise.

[8:16] He is running a lottery and learns something he will use later in his career: He began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.

[11:06] The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come. It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.

[13:48] Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him.

[14:15] His lottery business is outlawed by the state legislature. He is broke: He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to make money.

[17:03] I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.

[18:42] Up and Down, Down and Up: He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”

[20:03] Broke again at 31: Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want.”

[22:00] The clever way he is able to get the money to buy the American Museum: He decided to seek out the retired merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family (the current owners of the museum). This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do.

[23:52] The customers he wanted and how he positioned his product: Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class. They had more money and were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities, and with their higher rates of literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper advertising.

[28:05] How Barnum planned and publicized his show. The details and machinations are amazing.

[35:47] He doesn’t rest on his laurels. After becoming successful in America he decides to expand to Europe: The challenge was the new place itself, a place that had no notion of who P.T. Barnum was. Whether or not he would succeed in the land of his forebears would be a test for Barnum of his own worth, of how far he had come and how far he might yet go.

[38:05] Barnum told him that a person must “make thirty hours out of twenty-four or he would never get ahead.”

[40:40] His drinking became a problem, so he quit: Making a resolution not to drink and then keeping it took both discipline and self-awareness and constituted another serious effort to turn his marriage and himself around.

[42:54] We are all promoters. Estee Lauder was a promoter of beauty, Larry Ellison was a promoter of the efficiency gains of software and of winning, Henry Ford was a promoter of service, Claude Shannon was a promoter of following your own curiosity. Promoting is just sharing what you love.

[43:55] Barnum promoted wholesome, good, family fun and entertainment. He built a wonderful life for himself just off that very simple idea, that I am going to promote various forms of entertainment so people can enjoy their time. I think that is a very simple idea and if you take it to extremes like Barnum did you can build a life around that.

[44:29] Barnum is never focused on the obvious. He is always focused on 2nd order effects.

[47:49] Barnum’s house: Iranistan

[48:23] Barnum goes bankrupt at 50!: When his projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes in areas where he was less familiar, the results were uneven. I think this is a reminder of what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett told us: Stay within your circle of competence.

[50:26] Down and depressed: He added that he was “once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder.” He wrote that his “own constitution through the excitements of the last few months, has most seriously failed.” He was understandably if uncharacteristically, “in the depths.”

[52:02] I did it before. I’ll do it again: “I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family.” He was, and had every right to be, proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and the self-confidence that went with it were not likely to evaporate even in this moment of distress.

[54:34] To give you an idea of how world famous Barnum was in his day: His autobiography sold over a million copies. That’s insane!

[56:55] Mark Twain began an after dinner habit of reading from Barnum’s autobiography. The book made an impression on Twain, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as a public lecturer and writer.

[59:27] Barnum competes with Bailey and his impressed: Barnum was impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him, using his own methods. “Foes worthy of my steel,” he called them. The aging showman realized he had finally met his match, and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to compete with them.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#136 Estée Lauder

18 juli 2020 | 45 min

What I learned from reading A Success Story by Estee Lauder.

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You can probably reach out with comparative ease and touch a life of serenity and peace. You can wait for things to happen and not get too sad when they don’t. That’s fine for some but not for me. Serenity is pleasant, but it lacks the ecstasy of achievement. [0:10]

I’ve always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I never allowed my eye to leave the target. I always believed that success comes from not letting your eyes stray from that target. [1:10]

Beauty is an ancient industry: Women have always enhanced their looks. It has always been so. It will always be so. [4:18]

Lessons from here mother: The secret is to imagine yourself as the most important person in the room. Imagine it vividly enough and you will become that person. [6:01]

You could make a thing wonderful by enhancing its outward appearance. Little did I know I’d be doing the same thing, multiplied by a billionfold. [8:45]

Everything has to be sold aggressively. [9:05]

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and sell it hard. [9:39]

My drive and persistence were always there, and those are the qualities for building a successful business. [10:38]

The moment she realizes she could make beauty her life’s work: This is the story of bewitchment. Uncle John [a skin specialist] had worlds to teach me. Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams seriously? Teach her secrets? I could think of nothing else. [12:09]

The humble beginning of the Estee Lauder empire: This was my first chance at a real business. I would have a small counter in a beauty salon. Whatever I sold would be mine to keep. No partners. I would risk the rent, but if it worked, I would start the business I always dreamed about. Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. [15:30]

Sales technique of the century: Now the big secret. I would give the woman a sample of whatever she did not buy as a gift. I just knew, even though I had not yet named the technique, that gift with a purchase was very appealing. The idea was to convince a woman to try a product. She would be faithful forever. [16:30]

I didn’t need bread to eat but I worked as though I did, for the pure love of the venture. For me, teaching about beauty was an emotional experience. [18:52]

I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream. [21:01]

Despite all the nay sayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative. [22:12]

Word of mouth was what built the foundation of her business: Women were telling women. They were selling my cream before they even go to the salon. Tell-a-Woman was the word-of-mouth campaign that launched Estee Lauder Cosmetics. [22:41]

Great packaging does not copy or study. It invents. [24:50]

Sak’s Fifth Avenue placed an $800 order. This was her response: Breaking that first barrier was perhaps the single most exciting moment I have ever known. [26:16]

“Missionaries make better products.” — Jeff Bezos: I was a woman on a mission. I had to show as many women as I could reach how to stay beautiful. [28:07]

The free sample sales technique she pioneered in the beauty industry: The gift to the customer —the free something that would sell everything else. You give people a product to try. If they like the quality, they buy it. They haven’t been lured in by an advertisement but convinced by the product itself. [29:10]

We took the money we planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products. [30:00]

A great story about how Estee Lauder convinced more women to buy perfume. [32:59]

A great story about how Estee Lauder expanded into Europe. [36:31]

Be determined and sell!: It’s not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it. One woman with definite ideas, pride in her product, and a hands-on approach could lay the foundation for a strong business. [40:57]

Our unique style has come from years of trial and error. Truths have emerged that have worked for us. Let me share them with you. [41:24]

Keep an eye on the competition. This doesn’t mean copying them, as I’ve made clear. Being interested in other people’s ideas for the purpose of saying, “We can do it better,” is not copying. Innovation doesn’t mean inventing the wheel each time; innovation can mean a whole new way of looking at old things. [42:10]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#135 Joseph Pulitzer (Politics & Media)

12 juli 2020 | 67 min

What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris.

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[0:20] Joseph Pulitzer was the midwife to the birth of the modern mass media. Pulitzer’s lasting achievement was to transform American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence.

[3:04] He was the pioneer of the modern media industry.

[5:06] Teddy Roosevelt tried to have Joseph Pulitzer put in jail.

[7:11] How one of Pulitzer’s adult sons viewed him: One of the strange differences between us two is the fact that you have never come near learning how to enjoy life.

[9:42] Joseph favored reading works of history and biography.

[10:12] Joseph understood fully the extent of the calamity [his father’s death]. He had been 9 years old when his older brother died, 10 when his younger brother and sister died, 11 when his father died, and 13 at the death of his last sister.

[11:50] At 17 years old Joseph escapes to America. A group of wealthy Boston businessmen recruit thousands of young Europeans to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. This scheme became Pulitzer’s escape route.

[13:18] Describing how he came to the United States: He was friendless, homeless, tongueless, and guideless.

[14:05] One of the places he slept when he was homeless was in the lobby of a hotel. They kept kicking him out. Later in life he buys the hotel.

[14:44] What he said about his job of tending mules: Never in my life did I have a more trying task. The man who has not cared for 16 mules does not know what work and trouble are.

[15:18] Pulitzer was a voracious reader. When he was not working he spent every free minute improving his mind.

[17:12] Edwin Land said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess". Joseph Pulitzer would have agreed with that.

[19:15]He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. Pulitzer was unwilling to put forward anything but his best effort.

[25:10] In only 5 years he had grown from a bounty hunting Hungarian teenager to an American lawmaker.

[28:54] There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they have never happened before.

[38:10] He is 30 years old and depressed. In the best of circumstances the loss of one’s only surviving parent inspires self-reflection, for Joseph with no specific profession or even a home, such introspection was demoralizing.

[40:45] It is hard to understand how much money newspapers made, especially at this time. William Randolph Hearst’s net worth would be the equivalent of $30 billion today.

[48:34] One did not work with Pulitzer. For him, surely. Against him, often. But not with him.

[51:44] Pulitzer was extremely ambitious. He was not satisfied to be the 500th best newspaper. He wanted to be number 1.

[1:06:20] When we think that, a hundred years hence, not one of us now living will be alive to care or to know, to enjoy or to suffer, what does it all amount to? To a puff of smoke which makes a few rings and then disappears into nothingness and yet we make tragedies of our lives, most of us not even making them serious comedies.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

1 juli 2020 | 78 min

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein.

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[0:21] He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community has to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership in the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on Life’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century.

[1:35] In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land’s life was a manifestation of the indefatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.

[2:15] Land has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company.

[2:34] Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.

[3:30] Steve Jobs was one of Land’s most dedicated fans: “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. . . . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.”

[5:22] Land’s relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life’s work.

[6:19] He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand.

[6:31] The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor.

[8:56] He strongly believed that concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.”

[16:24] A way to describe Edwin Land: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”

[21:43] How to do something difficult: You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.

[24:34] Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it.

[28:14] Eisenhower wanted to know what the Russians were up to. Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”

[31:53] One of Land’s tenets: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”

[45:13] Land on why he had to sue Kodak: This would be our obligation even if one-step photography were but one component of our business. Where it is our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents.

[53:26] Kodak underestimated somebody you should never underestimate.

[59:47] A summary of Land’s philosophy on building a technology company: Creation of a new technology requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated system.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#133 Edwin Land (Polaroid and The Man Who Invented It)

25 juni 2020 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.

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[1:14] He was revered to an extraordinary extent by most of the people who worked for him.

[1:36] Land did not earn a college degree, yet he has received more medals and scientific honors than most living Americans.

[3:36] Land's life seemed to be primarily a life of the mind. His great dramas were largely self created, played on the stage of Polaroid, which he constructed for himself.

[4:14] All of the people that you and I are studying on this podcast created their own world within the world.

[5:55] The end this book made me think of this quote by Steve Jobs: Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[7:38] Peter [the author] worked with Edwin Land for 20 years. As a result this book —more than any other— has a lot of direct quotes from Land.

[7:50] “Nature doesn’t care.” By that he meant nothing in nature would help or hinder their progress to a solution except their own ingenuity. Nature offered no bar to the elegant solution over the awkward compromise if they had the imagination to seek it and the wit to discover it. Nature had no concern for the affairs of men.

[9:42] At 37 years old he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.

[10:55] This product, this innovation, this creation— of one of the most important products ever made— came at a time when the company was almost out of business.

[12:42] Land said running his company felt like he was a physics professor leading his students on a grand experiment.

[12:53] I really do believe that Edwin Land is one of the most important entrepreneurs that ever existed. The way his mind works is extremely unique.

[17:08] Land on his motivations in life: I find an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangibly embodied in a product or process.

[19:45] Edwin Land at 18: A secretive young man who was well-dressed but usually disheveled, often highly agitated, prone to long periods of intense activity, rarely volunteering any explanation of what he was trying to accomplish, eating haphazardly, his sleeves rolled up, his shock of dark hair falling in his face as he worked.

[20:31] Edwin Land on how to work: If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.

[24:52] An example of Land’s obsessiveness: They start at 8:30 and they work until 4:30. Then everything shuts down and they all go home. They don't work on Saturdays or Sundays.They keep telling me I should work for them. How could I get anything done?

[29:15]At this point we are 14 years into the story: Nothing told land that he had built a business that could survive, let alone grow.

[30:47] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron.

[35:56] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.

[39:15] Land hated to stop working. Once begun on a course of action, he wanted to experiment until the hypothesis was proved. He worked liked a predator, stalking a solution, with perpetual patience and energy. His intuitive leaps had landed him on the neck of his prey too often for him not to believe that he could do it the next time and the time after that.

[50:50] Land ran his company longer than any of America's great business leaders, longer than Thomas Edison, longer than Henry Ford, longer than George Eastman. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had done in his life.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#132 Edwin Land (Steve Jobs's Hero)

20 juni 2020 | 62 min

What I learned from reading The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker.

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[1:42] The word “problem” had completely departed from Edwin land's vocabulary to be replaced by the word “opportunity”.

[2:01] What was it about this man and his company that allowed such confidence and seeming lack of concern with the traditional top priorities of American business?

[2:38] There is something unique about Polaroid having to do both with the human dimension of the company, and with a unity of vision of its founder and guiding genius.

[3:36] Perhaps the single most important aspect of Land's character is his ability to regard things around him in a new and totally different way.

[4:14] Right from the beginning of his career Land had paid scant attention to what experts had to say, trusting his own instincts instead.

[4:49] Land has always believed that for any item sufficiently ingenious and intriguing, a new market could be created. Conventional wisdom has little capacity with which to evaluate a market that did not exist prior to the product that defines it.

[5:21] He feels that creativity is an individual thing. Not generally applicable to group generation.

[5:52] Land is a man deeply caught up in the creative potential of the individual.

[6:33] An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

[7:43] Apple founder Steve Jobs once hailed Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid and the father of instant photography, as "a national treasure" and once confessed to a reporter that meeting Land was "like visiting a shrine." By his own admission, Jobs modeled much of his own career after Land’s. Both Jobs and Land stand out today as unique and towering figures in the history of technology. Neither had a college degree, but both built highly successful and innovative organizations. Jobs and Land were both perfectionists with an almost fanatic attentiveness to detail, in addition to being consummate showmen and instinctive marketers. In many ways, Edwin Land was the original Steve Jobs.

[8:36] There's a rule that they don't teach you at the Harvard business school. It is, if anything is worth doing it's worth doing to excess.

[11:22] Steve Jobs: I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences. And I decided that's what I wanted to do.

[12:51] In a world full of cooks, Edwin Land was a chef. [Link to The Cook and The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce]

[19:34] Land was asked what he wanted to be when he was younger: I had two goals. To be the world's greatest scientist and to be the world's greatest novelist.

[21:28] Everyone acknowledged that the future of Polaroid corporation would be determined by what went on in the brain of Edwin Land.

[22:01] My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do.

[22:54] Fortunately our company has been one which has been dedicated throughout its life to making only things which others can not make.

[25:06] Land had far more faith in his own potential, and that of the company he inspired, than did any of the experts looking in from the outside.

[27:30] Polaroid failed to build a successful company by selling to other businesses: Each [product] would have involved millions of dollars in revenue for the company, but each invention involved a certain degree of transformation of an existing industry controlled by an existing power structure. From this Land realizes he needs to control the relationship with the customer. He realizes he needs to sell directly to the end user.

[36:16] Edwin Land is inspired by, and learned from, people that came before him. One example of this is Alexander Graham Bell. Edwin Land is not worried about the marketing [of a new product] because Bell went through the same thing: Land apparently lost little sleep over the initial situation, calling to mind that the same sort of reaction had greeted the public introduction of Bell's telephone, 70 years earlier. The telephone had been a dominant symbol in Land's thinking. He began making numerous connections between his camera and the telephone.

[40:16] Over the years, I have learned that every significant invention has several characteristics. By definition it must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.

[40:46] It is the public's role to resist [a new invention, a new product/service].

[41:29] It took us a lifetime to understand that if we're to make a new commodity —a commodity of beauty —then we must be prepared for the extensive teaching program needed to prepare society for the magnitude of our invention.

[45:12] Only the individual— and not the large group— can see a part of the world in a totally new and different way.

[48:08] Land's view is that a company should be scientifically daring and financially conservative.

[50:30] To understand more about every aspect of light, Edwin Land read every single book on light that was available in the New York City Public Library. That reminded me of one of my favorite lectures ever: Running Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love

[51:59] Land on the problem with formal education: Young people for the most part —unless they are geniuses— after a very short time in college, give up any hope of being individually great.

[54:16] Among all the components and Land's intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#131 Robert Friedland (Billionaire Miner)

14 juni 2020 | 64 min

What I learned from reading The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey’s Bay Hustle by Jacquie McNish.

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[0:04] Promoting a stock is like making a movie. You've got to have stars, props, and a good script.

[2:22] He had learned that there was nothing that Robert Friedland could not sell.

[2:50] This book is about how Robert Friedland accidentally discovers the largest nickel deposit in history. He winds up selling that discovery for over $4 billion.

[3:50] Robert Friedland and Steve Jobs were friends in college. Robert influenced Steve.

[4:50] Friedland grinned as if he had just won an award. But the prize being handed down was a two year jail sentence for selling drugs. Police confiscated 24,000 tablets of LSD valued at $125,000.

[7:01] He is a very complicated character. He was involved in a lot of shady stuff on the way to becoming a billionaire. I was struck by the contrast between how the book describes Friedland and how he comes off in this sales presentation: China Is About To Ban The Internal Combustion Engine. He comes off as extremely likable and knowledgeable.

[9:42] At Reed College Friedland’s drug conviction no handicap. The prison term only added to his mystique. Steve talks about the mind expanding experience that taking acid was. He felt it allowed him to approach product creation from a broader perspective. He said Bill Gates would be more interesting if he had dropped acid.

[10:28] Friedland starts a cult. Even when he is in his early 20s Friedland is able to influence the thoughts of the people around him.

[11:21] Frieland turns his uncle’s farm into a collective. The farm drew a steady stream of students. Including an introverted freshman named Steve Jobs. Steve devoted himself to reviving the farm’s Apple orchard. The orchard would later inspire the name of Apple Computer.

[12:17] Robert Freidland’s influence on Steve Jobs: Robert was very much an outgoing, charismatic guy. A real salesman. He'd walk into a room and you would instantly notice him. Steve was the absolute opposite. After he spent time with Robert, some of this rubbed off.

[12:57] Steve Jobs: Robert was the first person I met who was firmly convinced that this phenomenon of enlightenment existed.

[14:07] Friedland returns from India and reinvents himself again. He wore flowing robes and sandals. He embraced universal love and rejected material attachment. Friedland and his disciples practiced yoga, Buddhist meditation, they grew their own food. They had children with names like Silver Moon and Ashberry. Friedland said he was a guru and his name was now Sita Ram Dass.

[15:29] Steve Jobs: Robert walks a very fine line between being a charismatic leader and a con man. It started to get very materialistic. Everybody got the idea that they were working very hard for Robert's farm. And one by one, they started to leave. I got pretty sick of it and I left.

[18:12] By the late 1970s Friedland was creating another roll for himself. This time as a gold mining promoter on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.

[19:37] When he introduced Friedland to some of his colleagues, they dismissed him as a Jesus look alike who preached about gold as if it were a second coming. The 31 year old clearly knew nothing about mining or the stock market, but he had an unusual intensity.

[22:21] There is a lesson here. He thinks he is going to find diamonds in Canada and he winds up accidentally discovering the largest nickel deposit in history. The lesson is that sometimes trial and error is the best way to discover an opportunity you didn’t even know existed.

[24:43] Friedland constantly recreated his companies to bring himself closer to what was becoming his god: Money.

[26:46] Friedland is a really good salesman. He has some negotiating tactics that you and I can learn from.

[28:34] He never let failure stand in the way of his next venture and he operated in an environment where money was the only way of keeping score.

[29:26] Outside of work Friedland had few interests. Friedland had a consuming passion for mining deals. He spent most of his days traveling the world in search of prospects or working the phones from his office. There was no time for hobbies.

[31:45] They almost missed the greatest opportunity of their lives because they were distracted.

[34:02] He realizes that when you have an opportunity you need to go all in on it. Don’t dillydally.

[36:26] Friedland is definitely default aggressive.

[37:50] The stock crashed, vaporizing more than $250 million of shareholder money.

[40:06] I’m not worried about the details. This project is worth gigadollars. You’ve got to start drilling right away.

[41:19] He is aggressive and patient at the same time. He milks this discovery for everything its worth.

[43:11] I would say 25% of this book is Friedland negotiating and playing all these different companies against each other.

[49:34] This is something that appears in tons of books. You have to watch your costs. Go back to Henry Clay Frick when he said, “Gentlemen, watch your costs.” Andrew Carnegie, Johh D. Rockefeller --they built companies you could not compete with because they could make a profit at a price that you could not. It is a massive advantage.

[51:49] Steve Jobs focused on simple deals. This is what he told Bill Gates when he came back to Apple: So let’s figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success.” When I recounted to him what Jobs said, Gates agreed it was accurate. He had been negotiating with Amelio for six months, and the proposals kept getting longer and more complicated. “So Steve comes in and says, ‘Hey, that deal is too complicated. What I want is a simple deal. I want the commitment and I want an investment.’ And so we put that together in just four weeks.”

[1:00:17] Things can improve a lot faster than you think: Under Friedman's direction, Diamond fields has grown in less than 16 months from a dubious diamond play into the world's most sought after mining company, with a market value of more than $4 billion. His stake had suddenly become worth nearly $600 million. Not bad for a year's work.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#130 Walter Chrysler

9 juni 2020 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Life of an American Workman by Walter Chrysler.

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[0:56]The kitchen fire was the only heat we knew in the winter. Often I had to scamper barefoot across a floor where snow had drifted through the cracks of badly fitting windows.

[1:56] We never spent money on things we could get without spending.

[3:10] This book was written about a year before he had a stroke and about two years before he died. The book is full of memories of parents and friends long dead.

[3:29] The memories he chose to highlight made me think of this quote on books by Carl Sagan: What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

[4:10] And I think that is what this book is. It is Walter Chrysler speaking directly to you and I over 80 years after he died.

[5:18] On a few occasions his Dad would let him come to work with him [on the Union Pacific Railroad]. This is how Walt remembered that: The part of me that would be most tired would be my face. It was tired from grinning in my hours of ecstasy.

[6:35] He learned from his parents the need to be self sufficient. They built their own house. They raised their own food. They created their own jobs. If they wanted plumbing they made it themselves.

[7:00] He is very passionate about mechanics and understanding machines. He has to create his own tools because he is too poor to buy them.

[7:35] I went to work at 6 in the morning and was through at 10:30 at night.

[9:02] I was a cocky youngster and full of confidence.

[9:34] He really valued work and learning and the sense of self confidence you get from doing something well.

[10:01] A good workman was likely to mistrust any tool whose metal had not been tempered by himself. But I had an even better reason for making mine. I lacked the money with which to buy them. Years after I ceased to need them to earn a living, those tools I made were placed on display in a glass case on the observatory floor, 71 stories up in the tower of the Chrysler building. That is one of the most remarkable paragraphs in the entire book. Think about this: In one lifetime he goes from being so poor that he has to make his own tools—to having a skyscraper built for the company that he creates and that bears his name.

[10:42] Jeff Bezos has a quote that says, "We don’t choose our passions, they choose us."

[11:59] Walt couldn’t find the answers he needed in his small town so he wrote an abundance of letters to Scientific American: Whoever received the questions from subscribers must have thought that Walter P. Chrysler was a pen name for a dozen youths. At least half of whom were crazy. Yet many of my questions were answered.

[12:13] A great story about Walt’s lifelong association with Mr. Neubert.

[14:00] How Walt described himself at 22: I was cocky. I thought I was quite the kid. I had a sense of hurry. I had ambition and wanted to get ahead.

[17:48] It seemed to me I could not make anyone understand. I was ambitious. I dared to tell her [his future wife] that I intended someday to be a master mechanic. I realized I had a lot of learn before I could really hope to have that dream fulfilled. That is why I wanted to go to a bigger place so I could get more experience. Most of the time—even in my own mind—I was pretty vague about what I was going to do.

[20:08] Walt on his early 20s: I must confess I liked that sort of life. I liked the freedom, the sense of adventure, and the lack of responsibility.

[22:29] He eventually becomes the highest paid person in the entire automobile industry. When he goes to work at GM he starts at $6,000 a year. A few years later he is making $600,000 a year. But that is not happening yet. Walt at 26 was making 30 cents an hour.

[23:20] A great story about Old Man Hickey. There are a series of stories in this book where somebody took the time—usually someone a generation older—and took an interest in Walt and taught him a useful life lesson.

[30:14] Don’t let a fine opportunity slide by just because you are comfortable in a job that you have mastered. Don’t be afraid of your future.

[31:29] I was learning responsibility weighs more heavily than iron.

[33:11] Another passion grabs him: I saw this car. $5000! I had $700 to my name. I never stopped to ask myself if I should, if I could afford to go in hock to buy that car. All I asked myself was where could I raise the money?

[34:39] Walt understood the potential impact of the automobile industry before most other people: The automobile is transportation too. The railroads have made this a richer country. Ask yourself what this country will be like when every individual has their own private car.

[36:29] He does something really smart. He goes from working for the railroads to working for the manufacturer of the trains. He discovers there's a lot more money and pleasure in manufacturing.

[37:12] What was more important was the change in me. The fun I had experienced in making things as a boy was magnified a hundred fold when I began making things as a man. There is, in manufacturing, a creative joy that only poets are supposed to know. Someday, I'd like to show a poet how it feels to design and build a railroad locomotive.

[39:42] Making the jump to Buick. He goes from making $12,000 a year to $6,000: This is not the first time in his life that he will accept less money for a better opportunity, nor is it the last time.

[40:25] There is a great quote by Marc Andreessen: Best thing about startups is you only experience two emotions: euphoria and terror.

[42:40] Henry Leland had great respect for Walter Chrysler. He said that when he explained something to Walt he got it a lot quicker than everybody else.

[43:04] Walt compares and contrasts the mature locomotive industry to the new automobile industry.

[44:21] The result of continuous improvement: They go from making a car in 4 days to making one in 15 minutes.

[48:24] Walt is about to quit GM and go make his own car. This is what Billy Durant does to make sure that doesn’t happen: I’ll pay you $500,000 a year to stay on as President of Buick.

[50:16] He thought Billy Durant was a genius and one of the most important people that helped the automobile industry thrive, but he had a hard time working with him: That’s the kind of fellow he was. We’d fight and then he’d want to raise my salary. The automobile industry owes more to Durant than it has yet acknowledged. In some ways he has been its greatest man.

[53:36] Walt retires at 45. He is coaxed out of retirement with the high paying opportunity to turn around a failed automobile company: He says he will undertake the job for two years at $1 million a year. They say okay it is worth the risk of spending $2 million to see if this guy can get us back our $50 million.

[56:20] I remember leaving a meeting saying I would not touch this with a 10 foot pole. What I was saying I would not touch was later on to be revealed to be the greatest opportunity of my whole life.

[1:00:58] Walt’s great idea in response to not being allowed to showcase his car at the 1924 Automobile Show.

[1:03:48] Walt said buying Dodge was his greatest accomplishment. Other people at the time said he was buying a lemon. This is how Walt responded: That was the opinion of some minds that contained little understanding of industry and especially of the automobile industry. Buying Dodge was one of the soundest acts of my life.

[1:07:06] Every time we had a conversation, it seems to me, he shed tears yet always would start with them was thinking of the past when he was a poor young man. Sometimes, at first, I mistakenly supposed that he was feeling sorry for himself. Finally, I came to realize what it was that so deeply moved him when he contemplated his auspicious start, including those years of riding freight trains from town to town when he was hunting a chance to work and gain more experience. It was gratitude of course; gratitude to everything American that made possible his great success. He told his story in the hope it might inspire other lonely boys roving in the land to keep on trying.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#129 Felix Dennis (How to Get Rich)

4 juni 2020 | 59 min

What I learned from reading How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Dennis.

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[0:01] How Felix started his first business with no money.

[4:30] Human nature does not change. We are cooperative animals. Those who wish to start a company cannot expect a free ride, but they might be surprised at the number of people willing to help them to some degree or another.

[5:11] This book was one of the most requested books for me to cover on the podcast. I was hesitant to read it because of the title. After reading it I think a better title would be How I Got Rich.

[7:36] A large part of this book is philosophical. He is asking us, “Is this really what you want?” He opens up about his drug addiction. About his addiction to prostitutes. About how he blew 100 million dollars and almost died.

[8:13] How To Get Rich sets to tell you about how I did it. How I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital. It will expose the many errors I made along the way, which will contribute greatly to the length.

[10:51] My constant refrain when I was bumming rides from friends as a teenager was, “You don’t understand. I was born to be driven.”

[13:00] The key, I think, is confidence and an unshakeable belief that it can be done and that you are the one to do it. Tunnel vision helps. Being a bit of a shit helps. A thick skin helps.

[16:01] Nearly all the great fortunes acquired by entrepreneurs arose because they had nothing to lose. Nobody had bothered to tell them that such a thing could not be done or would be likely to fail. Or if they had told them then they weren’t listening. They were too busy proving those around them wrong.

[17:24] On trusting your instincts: The first few million dollars I ever made was the direct result of trusting my instincts— which were entirely at odds with conventional wisdom. I published a series of 8 full-page folded posters with articles printed on the back and charged the same price as magazines with 10 times the number of pages. I sold millions of copies around the world. Those magazines have earned me tens of millions of dollars in the last 25 years and are still earning me money today.

[19:50] If you could turn the clock back for me by 40 years I would willingly give you every penny and every possession I own in return. And I would have the better of the bargain.

[20:28] If I had my time again—knowing what I know today—I would dedicate myself to making just enough money to live comfortably.

[21:00] Making money was, and still is, fun. But at one time is wrecked chaos upon my private life. It consumed my waking hours.

[23:26] Think of fear—not as the King Kong of bogeymen—but as a mare. A mare, after all, is a horse. A horse can be tamed, bridled, saddled, harnessed, and eventually ridden. Harnessing the power of such a creature adds mightily to your own. Thus the nightmare of prospective failure provides you with the very opportunity you are seeking.

[26:16] There is a lot of money and opportunity in unglamorous industries: One of the richest self-made men I know digs a hole in the ground to dispose of household waste. That's not how his company describes itself in its annual report, but essentially that’s what it does, along with building incineration plants. Glamorous? No. But in a good year, he earns $20 to $30 million. That's a sensational result for a small, wholly owned private company.

[28:30] Advice John Lennon gave to Felix Dennis: “It won’t do, man. It’s not that you can’t sing. Sure you can do a fair imitation of Chuck Berry, but people don’t pay for imitations. You gotta find your own voice or stick to editing your magazines.”

[32:26] One of Felix’s lowest moments: The electricity had been turned off in my flat weeks ago. So had the gas. I couldn’t afford to pay the bill. I sat by an open fire, feeding broken furniture I had scavenged from the trash into my living room fireplace.

[33:00] If you happen to read biographies, as I do (scores of them every year), you will find a thread that runs through almost any story of success against the odds: They don’t give in.

[34:08] It is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich.

[35:06] This is how I interpret this book. He is writing to an earlier version of himself.

[40:24] Felix winds up in the hospital. The doctors tell him if you don’t get off the drugs, and the alcohol, and the nightlife, you are going to die.

[40:44] How Felix describes the person he was in the 80s and 90s: It is especially lethal to a coked up, overweight, cigarette smoking, malt whiskey swilling idiot with too much money who believe they are built of titanium.

[41:10] On Winston Churchill and the importance of self belief: The iron determination and self belief of this one old man meant more to Britain at that moment than all the other Kings and Queens and her long history.

[44:02] But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly. Do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and worse still, if you believe you never can believe, then by all means go on reading this book. But take it from me, your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.

[45:35] I may well have been able to put a few hundred million in the bank because I recognized that this getting rich malarkey is just a game. A delusion, if you will.

[48:19] Ownership is not the most important thing. It is the only thing that counts.

[54:17] The most important part of the book. I won’t take notes on it. You just have to read it or listen to me read it.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#128 Henry Leland (Cadillac)

31 maj 2020 | 70 min

What I learned from reading Master of Precision: Henry Leland by Ottilie Leland and Minnie Dubbs Millbrook.

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[0:17] Henry Leland laid the foundation for the future of American industry. He had established manufacturing procedures never previously so effectively employed and took a position of leadership. In the next decades would be comparable in statute with, although quite different from, William Durant, Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan.

[0:40] It should be pointed out that Leland's contribution to the development of the motor car was the establishment of high standards of manufacturing.

[2:33] Henry Leland always got deep satisfaction out of anything which was made right. He had—in high degree—the pride of craftsmanship that had marked the master workman down the centuries.

[3:07] He developed the Cadillac, the self-starter, The Lincoln car, held up high standards of performance for the industry, and established the first notable school of automotive mechanics.

[4:05] A lesson Henry Leland learned from his Father: He bequeathed a singularly trustful disposition to his son, who could never believe that other men were not inherently as good and honorable as he himself. He was several times to pay a stiff penalty for this faith in human nature.

[4:56] A lesson Henry Leland learned from his Mother: “There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Hunt for the right way and then go ahead.” This simple admonition was to become a creed that would govern all of his actions as he rose in industry.

[6:10] He lives through the beginning of two industries in his life: Manufacturing in general and the automobile industry in specific.

[7:24] Henry Leland was not sure he wanted to become an apprentice machinist. The hours were long—10 hour days, 6 days a week—and most factories did not pay high wages. Moreover, farming was still the traditional American operation, which offered a possibility of independence and did not shut a man indoors with noisy machinery.

[9:06] Henry was already discovering the education that could be mined from books. At first, the fond of reading, he had been attracted by cheap adventure novels, which he borrowed from the local library. One night a stranger there, seeing what he was taking out exclaimed, “Surely don't read that trash!” Henry replied, “What better use can I make of my time than to read?” The stranger answered, “It makes a lot of difference what you read,” and then suggested some better books. The episode was a revelation to young Leland and he was soon reading volumes that acquainted him with American genius in literature, government and invention.

[9:55] Abraham Lincoln was his idol. Lincoln Motor Company—which Henry founds when he is in his 70s— is named after Abraham Lincoln. If we want to continue the conversation that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were having [about who is history’s greatest person] in The Billionaire and The Mechanic—Jobs said Gandhi. Ellison said Napoleon. Leland’s answer would be Abraham Lincoln.

[12:05] Even if he experienced a financial penalty, Henry Leland wanted to do the honorable thing.

[12:44] Henry wanted to work where he could render the greatest service to his country [during The Civil War]. He had learned that the U.S. Armory needed expert mechanics, and he had determined to help with war production. The particular lesson he learned in the Armory was the value of order and neatness in a work shop. Everything was clean and systematic, a state of affairs not common in early factories.

[14:37] Precision was his god. His personal work was outstanding.

[14:56] The discipline and subordination of factory life ran counter to American individualism.

[16:31] A nervous breakdown drove him from the shop to the far for rest.

[16:48] His mind, independent and teaming with ideas, made it difficult for him to work with others. He longed for a business in which he might put his theories to work but he had no money, a family to support, and his father and mother were in need of aid.

[20:00] The manufacture of the hair clippers [which he invented and brought to market against the opposition of his bosses] was spirited and rose to an output as much as 300 daily. For this I received a ‘Thank you’ and 50 cents a day more in my pay envelope. That was on of the times I thought I ought to quit making other men rich and go to work for myself.

[20:41] Henry Leland was good at sales by not trying to be good at sales. He wanted to educate people. He was gifted at selling because he gave the customer useful advice.

[22:26] As usual there was little money left over for saving. And yet Henry Leland was more hopeful of going into business for himself than ever before. He had brought his skill and experience to the service of the ambitious industrialists of the west and they had shown him in return the financial method that had put them in business. Each had organized a company by selling stock. “Eureka,” said Henry Leland to himself, “I have found it,” for he had great experience and he was sure he could raise a little money. His dream of an independent business might come true after all.

[23:40] Henry Leland had a lifetime of experience before he starts his first company. He was 47 years old. He had been working in factories since he was a teenager.

[25:03] Leland was a missionary for precision. He held people to high standards.

[26:07] Horace Dodge trained directly under Leland for two years before starting a machine shop of his own.

[27:45] The building up of a business, which expands rapidly and must be financed primarily from its own earnings, is often a discouraging process.

[27:56] How Henry Leland advertised the services of his foundry: We appeal for business only to those who want the best. We do not attempt to compete with the average foundry on price. We believe no other foundry can successfully compete with us on quality.

[29:57] “There always was and there always will be conflict between Good and Good Enough. In opening up a new business one can count on meeting resistance to a high standard of workmanship. It is easy to get cooperation for mediocre work, but one must sweat blood for a chance to produce a superior product.” —Henry Leland

[35:10] Henry Leland founds Cadillac when he is almost 60 years old: Henry Leland now embarked on the great adventure of his life; he would play an important role in the organization of Detroit’s first successful automobile company.

[35:27] Cadillac was making $2 million per year in profit when Billy Durant buys Cadillac for $4.5 million.

[37:21] Other men had built cars for many reasons—for the fascination of creation, for the profits in it—but Henry Leland agreed to build a car because he did not want to see a pet engine unappreciated and unused.

[38:53] Henry Leland was an expert in a field where experts were still uncommon.

[41:13] We buy the best parts we can find. I have always contended price should be considered last by a manufacturer in selecting materials for his product.

[45:10] His theory was that the one essential ingredient of success was mastery of one’s self as well as one’s job.

[47:57] A story: If you do the right thing people will remember.

[52:10] Henry Leland is 77 years old when he starts Lincoln Motor Company

[54:21] Henry Leland did not believe in quitting: It was manifestly impossible for the Lelands, men of tender heart and unswerving integrity, to take a cold, dispassionate view of the financial straits of the Lincoln Company. Many automobile companies had had money troubles; some had undergone a variety of reorganizations, combinations and other stratagems to keep alive and their directors and management had not been considered dishonest or insensible of their trust even though investors may have lost a portion or all of their equity. But such a course was unthinkable for the Lelands; as long as there was breath in their bodies they would oppose it. They had invested everything they owned in the company.

[1:01:05] Henry Ford and Henry Leland were like oil and water: We see a difference in management culture. Leland led from the front. Ford beat you down from above.

[1:02:27] How Ford management described the Lincoln organization: The whole organization is unusually harmonious and uniformly competent.

[1:05:40] A letter from Henry Leland to Henry Ford: I cannot but feel certain that you intended to keep those pledges when you made them to me personally and, while I cannot understand the long delay on your part, I still hope and trust that you will not shake my life long faith in humanity.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#127 Larry Ellison (Oracle)

25 maj 2020 | 59 min

What I learned from reading The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson

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[1:06] You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison.

[1:45] That was the way Ellison’s mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire.

[3:01] I asked Ellison how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid. What he thought was going to happen to him. “You mean did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No. This is all kind of surreal. I don’t even believe it. When I look around I say this must be something out of a dream.”

[3:57] Ellison is the Charles Foster Kane of the technological age. He is bright, brash, optimistic, and immensely appealing, yet somehow incomplete.

[4:31] He worked in the computer industry for several years but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts.

[6:08] The stockholder who benefited the most from Oracle’s performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle always holding onto enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged.

[7:57] To him there was now power greater than the human mind.

[8:23] What Larry reminds me of is a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. There were very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin’s life when people found his conversations more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to—that led him being able to raise money for his business. It helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way.

[8:53] When hiring, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid, steady workers.

[10:52] If he hadn’t made me rich, I’d probably hate him because he is obnoxious. He is not nice to people.

[12:39] He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audiences with his colorful speeches. He was known for his healthy ego and often seemed deeply insecure. Many people learned to accept Ellison’s contradictory nature.

[14:01] In 1970 sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year.

[15:55] There is a book called The HP Way. I did a podcast on it (Founders #29)

[16:20] The Oracle Way was simply to win. How that goal was achieved was secondary.

[17:18] Ellison’s early life left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child, and continuing into his days in the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention.

[18:15] He wasn’t going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life. He was going to leap over them.

[20:13] Larry reads a lot of biographies. One person he admired the most was Winston Churchill. He had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students. Both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even ‘gods have moments of insecurity.’

[22:30] A description of Larry in his mid twenties: Ellison was extremely hard on himself. He had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be and he was not able to attain it.

[25:19] He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity.

[26:44] The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be.

[29:50] For Ellison Oracle was a holy mission.

[30:33] There was a problem. A sheet rock wall stood between the offices and the computer room. Scott said, “Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up?” “I'll show you how.” Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall. Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it.

[32:41] Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race, with Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose?

[35:14] He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it.

[35:47] The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. “How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from Coke once the market has been established?” he once asked rhetorically. “It's very expensive. This market is being established. If we don't run as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and then do it again twice as fast, it’ll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share.”

[36:14] Larry put marketing first and everything else second. Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day.

[39:17] My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else.

[40:46] I was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity. I was completely intolerant of a lack of effort. And I was fairly brutal in the way I expressed myself.

[41:16] Kobe Bryant: I had issues or problems with the people who don’t demand excellence from themselves. I won’t tolerate that.

[42:30] The guy that was in charge of Oracle’s advertising in the early days of the company: My ads attack like a pack of speed crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition that a full moon does on a werewolf.

[44:00] Larry fundamentally believed that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can’t imagine how far fetched those ideas sounded. He would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world. People were taken aback.

[45:32] Larry goes against consensus. Every single on of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that that would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future.

[46:21] There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There is no middle ground.

[48:03] Even when he was feeling his worst Ellison remained an optimist. A man who couldn’t help looking forward. He lived in the future.

[49:34] He was terrified he would fail, confirming his father’s dark predictions about him. There was a note in his voice that you didn’t usually hear with him—just scared, worried.

[56:30] I am very competitive, and sometimes, when somebody does something really great, I get upset because I just feel like that isn’t me. And my reaction to Steve [Jobs] wasn’t competitive at all. I felt what he had done was so wonderful, and I was so proud of him, and I love him so much, it was almost as if I had done it. I didn’t feel the least bit competitive. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it.

[57:38] The only things that are important in our lives are love and work. Not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. Both love and work conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. If we can get reasonably good at both of them, we are in really great shape.

[58:21] He’s got the same problem the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness. To figure out what makes him happy. Human beings are builders. He is going to have to find something he really wants to build. He is going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

20 maj 2020 | 69 min

What I learned from reading The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie.

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[0:01] Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs: I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it. I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.

[0:56] Larry’s choice for history’s greatest person could not have been more different from Gandhi (Steve Jobs’s choice): the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.

[3:15] Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model — four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great.

[3:47] Larry’s favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything.

[6:09] Now the book is technically about the America’s Cup race. But that is not really what it is about. This books gives insights into extreme winners.

[7:50] Steve and Larry had found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents. Both considered their adoptive parents their real parents. Both were “OCD,” and both were antiauthoritarian. They shared a disdain for conventional wisdom and felt people too often equated obedience with intelligence. They never graduated from college, and Steve loved to boast that he’d left Reed College after just two weeks while it took others, including Larry and their rival Bill Gates, months or even years to drop out.

[9:09] Steve Jobs: “Why do people buy art when they can make their own art?” Larry thought for a moment and replied, “Well , Steve , not everyone can make his own art. You can. It’s a gift.”

[10:46] What he (Steve Jobs) liked was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful and more beautiful.

[11:02] If Michael Jordan sold enterprise software he would be Larry Ellison. Larry is addicted to winning.

[12:38] An idea I learned from Steve was the further you get away from one the more complexity you are inviting in.

[13:20] Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history. He learned more about human nature, management, and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business.

[14:52] His adopted Dad said over and over again to Larry, “You are a loser. You are going to amount to nothing in life.”

[15:19] Larry treats life like an adventure.

[15:26] He envied how Graham’s parents supported him on his adventure, as this was the opposite of his own life. The story of Graham transported Larry from the regimentation of high school to the adventure and freedom of the sea. Here was a boy alone at sea for weeks at a stretch; dealing with storms, circling sharks, and broken masts; visiting exotic locales. Through it all he was his own navigator.That is definitely the way Larry approached his life.

[18:04] Why Larry uses competition as a way to test himself: He wanted to see just how much better a sailor he had become. It will be an interesting test. There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn’t be had in business. At Oracle he still wanted to beat the rivals IBM and Microsoft, but business was a marathon without end; there was always another quarter. In sports , the buzzer sounds and time runs out.

[18:50] It is not what two groups do a like that matters. It's what they do differently that's liable to count. —Charles Kettering

[22:20] Why test yourself: After the laughter died down Larry turned serious. “Why do we do these things? George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it’s there.’ I don’t think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It’s not because it’s there. It’s because we’re there, and we wonder if we can do it.”

[24:11] Larry’s personality: He didn’t like letting them have control. It was the same reason he didn’t have a driver, and it was why he liked to pilot his own planes and why he had been married and divorced three times. He didn’t like being told what he could and couldn’t do.

[26:04] With any new thing you do in your life, you are going to have to overcome people telling you that you are an idiot.

[28:08] While Ellison demanded absolute loyalty, he did not always return it. The people he liked best were the ones who were doing something for him. The people he hired were all geniuses until the day they resigned—when in Ellison's view— they became idiots or worse.

[29:44] What Larry is reading during the dot com bubble collapse: The books on his nightstand included Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir by Ernest Gann, The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith, and William Manchester’s multivolume biography of Winston Churchill.

[30:25] Whenever Larry felt remotely close to being at risk of failure he couldn’t stop working.

[30:58] I’m going to read you one of the funniest paragraphs I have ever read. The guy Larry is talking to is insane:

In the dot—com heyday he got a call from Farzad Nazem, who used to work at Oracle and was now a top executive at Yahoo.

Nazem told Larry, “Disney wants to merge with us. Why would we ever want to do something like that? What have they got?”

Larry answered his old friend,

“Gee , let me think. They have the most valuable film library in the world, the most valuable TV channels in world, and successful theme parks everywhere. Disney makes tons of money and they’re probably the most beloved brand on the planet.

Now, what have you got? A Web page with news on it and free e-mail.

Has everyone gone crazy ?”

[32:38] Oracle has been around for 40 years. How many companies can survive 40+ years?

[33:00] One of the key insights I took away from Larry is this idea about game within a game. I'm glad I'm reading these books about Larry Ellison at the same time I watched this 10 part documentary on Michael Jordan (The Last Dance) because I think both Jordan and Ellison figured out something that is fundamental to our nature.

I don't think hey were not setting out to try to figure out something fundamental about human nature. They did so in their own process of self discovery.

They hack themselves by creating games within games.

They understand over a long period of time that your motivations, your dedication, your discipline is going to ebb and flow and they had to find a way to hack themselves.

[38:19] There is one sentence that sums up Larry’s personality: “Winning. That is my idea of fun.”

[38:38] There are a lot of extreme winners on Larry’s team. That is one of the things I like most about the book. It gives you insights into their mindset, how they prepare for their sport—which I think is applicable to whatever you do for a living.

[40:00] Dixon said, “Larry, my advice is that we go out there tomorrow to try to win the race. We will probably get beaten and you should be prepared to lose gracefully.” Larry was stunned by the suggestion. After a long pause, he said that he could be gracious after losing, but wasn't capable of being gracious while he was losing, he had come here to win.

[42:00] The Vince Lombardi line Larry loves: Every team in the National Football League has has the talent necessary to win the championship. It's simply a matter of what you're willing to give up. Then Lombardi looked at them and said, I expect you to give up everything, and he left the room.

[42:25] Give me human will and the intense desire to win, and it will trump talent every day of the week.

[43:05] His lack of interest in marriage was not about fidelity, but had more to do with problems he had with authority. In marriage, he had to live a good part of his life the way the other person wanted him to live it. Larry wanted to live his life his way. This part reminds me of what we learned on the podcast I did on Frank Lloyd Wright.

[44:17] His favorite Japanese saying was, “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”

[44:44] Rafael Nadal asked how Larry had made his life such a success.

Larry launched into a long philosophical musing about how innovation in technology is quite often based on finding errors in conventional wisdom, and when you find an error you have to have the courage take a different approach even when everyone else says you’re wrong.

Then Larry abruptly stopped himself.

“Forget everything I just said. The answer is simple. I never give up.”

[46:09] He was incapable of waving the white flag.

[46:24] Kobe Bryant: A young player should not be worried about his legacy. Wake up, identify your weakness and work on that. Go to sleep, wake up, and do that all over again. 20 years from now, you'll look back and see your legacy for yourself. That's life.

[46:47] Larry is constantly willing to put himself in uncomfortable situations so he can improve.

[49:00] One of Larry’s favorite maxims was: “The brain’s primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.”

[49:07] How does his favorite Maxim relate to why he likes sports? Because in sports, you can't deceive yourself. He just said the brain's primary purpose is to deceive yourself—so he needs to hack himself. He needs to have his game within a game, so he is incapable of deceiving himself. Larry liked having opponents, even enemies. “I learn a lot about myself when I compete against somebody. I measure myself by winning and losing. Every shot in basketball is clearly judged by an orange hoop — make or miss. The hoop makes it difficult to deceive yourself.”

[49:56] The insight is if we do something really hard we won’t have any competition.

[52:26] The athletes Larry knew were obsessed with the game they played. They were like his friend Steve Jobs who worried about the color of the screws inside a computer.

[53:12] They reminded Larry of a line from Tombstone: Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday,“ What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?” Doc replies, “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” For better and worse, Larry had the same hole, and he tried to fill it by winning. But as soon as he closed in on one of his goals, he immediately set another difficult and distant goal. In that way, he kept moving the finish line just out of reach.

[54:31] Back home, standing by the lake where he and Steve had debated things great and small, Larry was certain that decades from now there would be two guys walking somewhere, talking about their icons. Steve would be mentioned.

He would be one of those “misfits, rebels, troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently,” words popularized in Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign. Steve would be remembered as one of those with “no respect for the status quo.”

[59:16] Those moments are my most cherished and enduring memories of my time with Steve. The four of us sitting together at Kona, eating papayas and laughing for no reason at all. I'll miss those times. Goodbye, Steve.

[1:00:00] Larry’s nightmare: In Larry’s mind, it fed into a culture based on a homogenized egalitarian ethos where everyone was the same, where there are no winners and no losers, and where there are no more heroes.

[1:02:21] Larry says something to Russell (the guy running his team). It echoes what Charles Kettering said last week: It is not what two people do the same that matters. It is what they do differently. Larry says, “You already have a job, Russell. You've got to figure out why we're so damn slow, our set another way. Why is New Zealand so fast? What are they doing that we're not?

[1:03:08] Don’t give up before you absolutely have to. Stay in problem solving mode: Larry was not happy when he heard that speeches were being written and plans being made for the handover of the Cup, but he ignored it all until he was asked to settle an argument over who was going to give the concession speech during the handover.

“Let me get this straight: people are fighting over who gets to give the concession speech? I don’t give a fuck who gives the concession speech. If we lose, everyone who wants to give a concession speech can give a concession speech. But we haven’t lost yet. Why don’t we focus on winning the next fucking race , rather than concession speeches.”

Larry, a licensed commercial pilot with thousands of hours flying jets, likened their situation to a plane in distress. When pilots have a serious emergency, they immediately go into problem solving mode, and they stay in that mode until the problem is solved — or until just before impact.

In that final moment, the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder captures the pilot’s brief concession speech. There are two versions of the speech, one secular, one not: “Oh God ” and “ Oh shit.” Larry had not yet reached his “Oh God” or “Oh shit” moment. Down 8 points to 1, he remained in problem solving mode.

[1:06:19] As Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” No one was going to live or die on the basis of these things. But contests were his best teachers. At some point, one person gets measured against another. They find out who wins and who doesn’t, and along the way they learn something about themselves. Larry had learned that he loved the striving, the facing of setbacks, and the trying again.

[1:07:56] It’s hard for me to quit when I’m losing — and it’s hard for me to quit when I’m winning. It’s just hard for me to quit. I’m addicted to competing.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#125 Charles Kettering (inventor, engineer, founder)

15 maj 2020 | 71 min

What I learned from reading Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd

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[3:06] If you had to summarize Charles Kettering this is the way you would do it: “As symbol of progress and the American way of life—as creator of ideas and builder of industries and employment—as inspirer of men to nobler thoughts and greater accomplishments—as foe of ignorance and discouragement—as friend of learning and optimistic resolve—Charles F. Kettering stands among the great men of all time.”

[3:36] He was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. He was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. He developed the world's first aerial missile. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries.

[4:42] This is Ket talking about why it is so important to approach your work with the mindset that you are a professional amateur: We are simply professional amateurs. We are amateurs because we are doing things for the first time. We are professional because we know we are going to have a lot of trouble. The price of progress is trouble. And I don’t think the price is too high.

[6:52] There is a quote from Thomas Edison that says “We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.” Ket has that same belief. This is Ket echoing Thomas Edison: “In reality, we have only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given us to dig out and use. We are like the two fellows who started to walk from New York to San Francisco. When they got over into New Jersey, one said: “We must be pretty nearly there. We have been walking a long, long time.” That is just how we are in what we know technically. We have just barely begun.

[9:57] I am enthusiastic about being an American because I came from the hills in Ohio. I was a hillbilly.

[10:21] I thought the only thing involved in opportunity was whether I knew how to think with my head and how to do with my hands.

[13:37] One lesson from his childhood that stuck with him his whole life is that you need to only worry about things you can control. One of the older men is teaching him this through a story: Besides learning about water power and flour mills, he got from the wise old miller some bits of philosophy which he stored in his young mind. “A lot of people are bound to worry,” the miller once told him. “If you can do something about it, you ought to worry. I would think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t. But if you can’t do anything, then worrying is just like running this mill when there is no grist to grind. All that does is to wear out the mill.”

[14:49] He is not interested in rote memorization. He wants to understand the principles behind the thing. He wants to know the why.

[18:12] The man from whom he learned most was Hiram Sweet, the wagon maker. But Sweet was more than a wagon maker. He was, as Kettering said long afterward, “an engineer of such keen ability as to be remarkable. You would no more think of running across such a man in a small town than you would of flying without a flying machine.” Hiram Sweet had invented and built a self-computing cash register which was in daily use at the drugstore. He had also made an astronomical clock. “Where did you find out all this?” Kettering asked Sweet. “I work in this wagon shop ten hours a day,” he replied, “from six-thirty in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon; and when I have no wagon work to do I work on Sweet’s head.” Years afterward, when Kettering had become a noted man, he recalled the days spent in Sweet’s wagon shop, “Letting him work on my head . . . I learned more from that old wagon maker than I did in college. The world was so wonderful and he knew so little about it that he hated to sleep.”

[20:22] Ket got what he said later was one of the important lessons he learned in college. He learned it from the eminent actor, Joseph Jefferson. Jefferson, together with his company, came to the university town to play his famous part of Rip Van Winkle.

One of the men asked him how often he had played the part of Rip Van Winkle.

The great actor told just how many hundreds of times he had played Rip.

“Don’t you get terribly tired doing it so often?” he was asked.

“Yes, I did get tired after a while. But the people wanted Rip. And so I went on playing him. I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t matter how you feel. Your job is to entertain the audience.’ Then I made up my mind that I would try to portray Rip Van Winkle just a little better each time. And that constant effort at improving the part has kept up my interest and enthusiasm.”

[23:15] There is a time during Henry Ford’s third attempt at building an automobile manufacturing company. And he comes to see Charlie Sorensen.

He's like, “You know what? We're about to run out of money. I guess I'm just not going be able to accomplish this goal.”

There's this conversation that takes place between Henry and Charlie and at the end, Ford is fired back up. Ford was like “I felt like quitting at the beginning of the conversation. Now I don't.”

A few short years later, he winds up attaining his life goal of building a car so inexpensively that the average person can have it. I think that’s important.

There's so many times in Ford’s life story that he wants to quit, that he's disheartened.

[26:44] The obstacle of not knowing how never kept him from undertaking anything he thought needed to be done. “It is a fundamental rule with me,” he said once, “that if I want to do something I start, whether I know how or not. . . . As a rule you can find that out by trying.”

[28:04] Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement.

[36:18] Remembering the loyal support she (his wife) gave him during that trying period and afterward, Kettering said of her, “She was a great help in those early struggles, for she never got discouraged.” After she passes away from cancer he says she was the only thing in his life that he never tried to improve.

[41:19] How Ket and his partner financed their company: To get even that small endeavor under way Kettering and Deeds had to put in all the money they could scrape up, and they mortgaged everything they had. Deeds put a mortgage on his house and Kettering on a lot that he owned. Both borrowed money on their life insurance policies. They also put up their patents and the contract with Cadillac as collateral for a loan from the bank. Cadillac paid them some money in advance. They sold some preferred stock, too, and raised money in every way possible.

[42:09] All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.

[45:29] Kettering admired The Wright Brothers and all they did in overcoming obstacles to successful flight. Those obstacles were psychological as well as physical, for it was commonly believed then that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. “The Wright Brothers,” Kettering said, “flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.”

[46:08] I have always had a rule for myself. Never fly when the birds don’t, because they have had a lot of experience.

[49:22] The destruction of a theory is of no consequence for theories are only steppingstones. More great scientific developments have been made by stumbling than by what is thought of as science. In my opinion an ounce of experimentation is worth a pound of theory.

[50:57] Ket hates committees: Mrs. Kettering read about Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, she said to her husband, “How wonderful that he did it all alone!”

“It would have been still more wonderful,” Kettering replied, “if he had done it with a committee.”

[51:30] We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won’t try the thing.

[54:42] New ideas are the hardest things in the world to merchandise.

[56:03] So great was his respect for independent thought and initiative in others that it was often difficult for those working on a project to find out just what he himself thought ought to be done in a given circumstance. He was careful not to stamp out a spark of fire in anyone. Instead, he would fan it to a bright glow.

[57:31] He has been an inspiration to me and to the whole organization, particularly in directing our thoughts and our imagination and our activities toward doing a better job technically and the tremendous importance of technological progress.

[1:00:07] You have to try things: Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.

[1:00:19] In putting out new things troubles are not the exception. They are the rule. That is why I have said on so many occasions that the price of progress is trouble.

[1:03:16] Let the competition think you are crazy. By the time they get it it will be too late: If you will help them keep on thinking that, we’ll not be bothered with competition during the years in which we are working out the bugs and developing a really good locomotive.

[1:05:14] It is not what two groups do alike that matters. It’s what they do differently that is liable to count.

[1:05:47] There are no places in an industrial situation where anyone can sit and rest. It is a question of change, change, change all the time. You can’t have profit without progress.

[1:06:18] We don’t know enough to plan new industries: You can’t plan industries, because you can’t tell whether something is going to be an industry or not when you see it, and the chances are that it grows up right in front of you without ever being recognized as being an industry. Who planned the automobile industry? Nobody thought anything of it at all. It grew in spite of planning.

[1:08:22] Because the field of human knowledge is so far from complete, he thinks our schools ought to teach that we know very little about anything.

[1:09:04] The greatest thing that most fellows are lacking today is the fool trait of jumping into something and sticking at it until they come out all right.

[1:09:54] He seems to have a complete absence of any timidity whatsoever.

[1:10:54] I can conceive of nothing more foolish than to say the world is finished. We are not at the end of our progress but at the beginning.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#124 Larry Ellison and Oracle

9 maj 2020 | 72 min

What I learned from reading Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds.

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[0:01] Although much of my time with him coincided with a period of adversity for Oracle, I never once saw Ellison downcast. His unquenchable optimism and almost messianic self belief never faltered.

[5:06] The single most important aspect of my personality is my questioning of conventional wisdom. My doubting of experts just because they are experts. My questioning of authority. While that can be very painful in terms of your relationships with your parents and teachers it is enormously useful in life.

[12:19] People — teachers, coaches, bosses — want you to conform to some standard of behavior they deem correct. They measure and reward you on how well you conform — arrive on time, dress appropriately, exhibit a properly deferential attitude — as opposed to how well you do your job. Programming liberated me from all that.

[16:34] I had always believed that at the top of these companies there must be some exceptionally capable people who make the entire technology industry work. Now here I was, working near the top of a tech company, and those capable people were nowhere to be found. The senior managers I saw were conformist, bureaucratic, and very reluctant to make decisions.

[23:08] Oracle’s first product reflected Larry Ellison’s desire to do something no one else was doing: The opportunity was huge. We had a chance to build the world’s first commercial relational database. Why? Because nobody else was even trying. The other relational database projects were pure research efforts. If we could build a fast and reliable relational database, we would have it made. I thought that relational was clearly the way to go. It was very cool technology. And I liked the fact it was risky. The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people will try to go there. We would surely lose if we had to face serious competition. But if we were all alone in pursuit of our goal of building the first commercial relational database system, we had a chance to win.

[26:03] Larry is a sprinter. Not a grinder: Although he always talked about technology and Oracle with passion and intensity, he didn’t have the methodical relentlessness that made Bill Gates so formidable and feared. By his own admission, Ellison was not an obsessive grinder like Gates: “I am a sprinter. I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again.” Ellison had a reputation for being easily bored by the process of running a business and often took time off, leaving the shop to senior colleagues.

[30:55] If you speak out in support of small, unimportant innovations that fly in the face of widely held beliefs—I do it all the time—you are likely to be dismissed as stupid or arrogant, and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, if you defend a really big idea that challenges widely held beliefs, you’re likely to generate a mass of hatred, and you just might pay for it with your life. When Galileo defended Copernicus, he was ridiculed, imprisoned, and then threatened with death unless he recanted. Charles Darwin cautiously postponed publishing On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man for more than twenty years, but that judicious delay did not save him from vicious personal attacks coming from all ranks of contemporary society.

[37:09] Ellison on mistakes he made before the near death experience of Oracle: I was interested in the technology. I wasn’t interested in sales or accounting or legal. If I wasn’t interested in something, I simply ignored it. I just wasn’t paying proper attention to my job. I was doing only the things that interested me. It was the same problem I had in school. But this happened in my forties. I wasn’t a kid anymore.

[38:40] Surviving Oracle’s near death experience made Larry Ellison stronger. It made him happier: After Oracle’s crisis, looking into the abyss and surviving, I felt emotionally strong enough to take a more realistic look at myself. I was tired of striving to be the person I thought I should be. If I was to have any chance at happiness, I had to understand and accept who I really was.

[42:12] Larry Ellison’s core business philosophy: Larry Ellison says he’s happy only when everyone else thinks he’s wrong. The core of his business philosophy is that you can’t get rich by doing the same thing as everyone else. “In 1977, everyone said I was nuts when I said we were going to build the first commercial relational database. In 1995, everybody said I was nuts when I said that the PC was a ridiculous device — continuously increasing in complexity when it needs to become easier to use and less expensive.”

[50:56] Larry’s great story about how duplication of effort costs Oracle a ton of money.

[53:13] Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives. —Charlie Munger: One of the worst ideas I can remember was when Ray decided we didn’t do enough selling through partners. The sales force convinced him that the way to fix this was to pay more money to the sales force if the deal went through a partner than if the deal came directly to Oracle. For example , if you sold a million - dollar deal directly, Oracle would get a million dollars and you would get a $ 100,000 commission. But if you sold a million - dollar deal through a partner, Oracle would get $ 600,000 and you would get a $ 120,000 commission. Needless to say, our sales force pushed as many deals as they could through partners that year, so the partners were happy. The sales force got higher commission payments for going through partners, so they were happy. The only loser was Oracle.

[57:57] Ellison’s strategy: 1. Pick a fight. 2.Burn the boats: Once I’m finally certain of the right direction, I pick a fight, as I did with Gates. It helps me make my point, and it makes it impossible to do an about—face and go back. Once a course has been plotted, I sail a long way off and burn my boats. It’s win or die.

[1:01:20] Larry Ellison on Bill Gates: Bill and I used to be friends, insofar as Bill has friends. Back in the eighties and early nineties , all the people in the PC software industry hated Bill because they feared Bill. But Oracle didn’t compete with Microsoft very much back then , so we got on pretty well. As I got to know Bill, I developed a great respect for the thoroughness of his thinking and his relentless, remorseless pursuit of industry domination. I found spending time with Bill intellectually interesting but emotionally exhausting; he has absolutely no sense of humor. I think he finds humor an utter waste of time — an unnecessary distraction from the business at hand. I don’t have anything like that kind of focus or single mindedness.

[1:06:13] Larry Ellison on why Larry Ellison does what Larry Ellison does: My sister told me that whenever I got too close to a goal I’d raise the bar for fear of actually clearing it. We’re endlessly curious about our own limits. The process of self—discovery is one of testing and retesting yourself. I won the Sydney—to—Hobart. Can I win the America’s Cup? I’ll find out. The software business is a more difficult test; it’s a much higher stakes game; there are more people playing this game; it’s a lot more interesting game; and it’s a lot more exciting. If I wasn’t doing this, I’m not sure what else I would be doing with my life.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#123 Albert Champion (Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon)

1 maj 2020 | 65 min

What I learned from reading The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal by Peter Joffre Nye.

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[0:01] A brief summary of the life of Albert Champion: Champion had been born in Paris April 2, 1878. By age twelve he was an errand and office boy for a Paris bicycle manufacturer. He became interested in bicycle racing, won the middle-distance championship in France, and went to the United States in 1899 for a series of races. He won the American and world championships, returned to France to study automobile manufacturing, and returned to the United States in 1900. He tried auto racing, almost lost a leg in a racing accident, and then organized the Champion company. His original backers kept the name and moved the company to Toledo at about the same time Champion joined Durant. In Flint, Champion became known as one of the most colorful and flamboyant figures in a town full of them. He lived to see both his new company, later named the AC Spark Plug Division (using his initials), and the company he had left, the Champion Spark Plug Company, become giants in their field. He was a multimillionaire when he died.

[2:55] His father dies at 47 years old: One of the turning points in Albert’s life is the early death of his father. He had to become the breadwinner of the family at 12 years old. The experience formed Albert’s character. For the rest of his life, he threw himself into work, forever escaping into the task at hand, keeping busy, always planning new projects, in time building up a business with factories in three countries and offices of his own.

[6:19] Albert Champion was a showman who was addicted to self-improvement: He was willing to put in the work necessary for self improvement. Champion practiced rising a unicycle everyday. He learned how to draw onlookers and hold their attention. Champion had discovered the value of self—improvement. He would apply that principle again and again.

[9:15] Adolphe Clement is a blueprint for Albert Champion: Clement goes from poor orphan to building a successful bicycle and automobile manufacturing company.

[13:46] How do you introduce a brand new product to a society that is resistant to change? You sell to those who would be willing to pay for improvement: Dunlop pneumatics faced a tough sell with a public forever wary about buying a new product —only persuasive evidence would sway the public to accept change. Clément could count on the rabid racing crowd to try anything they thought could give a competitive edge.

[15:53] What Albert Champion learns from watching a 750 mile bicycle race—tenacity is more important than talent: A chord struck with Champion that Terront came from nothing, a nobody. Yet through the force of willpower, keeping his wits under extreme physical demands that made Lavel give in, and drawing on the strength of his body, Terront turned into a grand winner. Perhaps Laval had more talent, which he showed as the first to reach Brest. Nevertheless, Terront had greater tenacity — and that difference made him the victor.

[22:17] Attaining glory motivated Albert Champion: Racing was about making money for the dual compelling needs that invigorated him. He gained financial support for his family and the ego endorsement enjoyed by entertainers and politicians. As his ego grew, he needed to impose himself on crowds of strangers and win their love. Each race he won was greeted immediately with audience approval followed by a bouquet of flowers, a victory lap, then a cash award.

[23:49] Lessons Albert Champion learned from his trainer Choppy Warburton: Warburton offered two axioms from his experience about competition that impressed Champion. No lead is too great to overcome, and you can’t win unless you think you can.

[25:01] Albert Champion on the benefits from the strenuous training regiment Choppy made him endure: But Choppy was doing something — he was educating me to take punishment, and whenever I began to tire in a race, the grueling training I had would permit me to overcome the fatigue and come out victorious time and time again. No matter what game a man is in, he is only as big as the amount of punishment he is able to take. He educated me on the importance of physical training, for as the old saying goes, you cannot be mentally fit unless you are physically fit.

[34:12] Albert Champion’s personality: Champion, quick—tempered as usual , grew disgusted with colleagues he saw riding with caution rather than daring.

[36:31] Albert Champion’s plan to raise money so he could start his own company: Champion felt the onus to create his own business to serve America’s mushrooming auto production. He considered forming a company , taking advantage of his name recognition, to import French auto parts, especially spark plugs. To get in the business, he needed capital. To acquire the needed capital, he would have to win frequently in his final season as a pro cyclist. He determined to go all out for one last campaign — not in America, but in France. The purses were much bigger there, and he could win the money he’d need in order to establish his own business. Albert staked his ambitious future on capturing the title en route to raising the money to create his place in the nascent US auto industry.

[43:40] Albert Champion on the importance of continuous learning: He told an interviewer that one of his constant efforts was to manage his time for more and better work. He explained that he always sought to improve everything he did. I remember a salesman one time telling me that he knew the game from A to Z. He stated that nobody could tell him anything about selling. That was to me the best proof possible that he knew nothing about selling because those who really understand merchandising, manufacturing, or anything else that is important in life are those who realize how little they really know about it and how much there is to learn every day.

[47:25] Billy Durant prioritized speed. Durant recruits Albert Champion to move to Flint the same day they meet: Durant sounded out Champion before nudging the focus toward recruiting him to Flint. Durant later recalled: If he were quite sure that he could make a plug that would answer our purpose, I suggested that we go to Flint, and if he liked the place and the layout, I would start an experimental plant, and if he could make good, I would give him an interest in the business. (this later makes Albert very, very rich) He had never been to Flint, knew nothing of the Buick, or the plans I had for the future.

[55:10] Albert Champion invested heavily in research and development. This is why: I spent a fortune on spark plug experiments at the start. My friends thought I was crazy. I knew I was right. He put prototypes through long and rigorous tests before submitting patent applications. More durable spark plugs would benefit passenger cars. He said: “Keep ahead of the race. That is what brings success. It makes the great racer. It makes the successful businessman. No champion ever arrived resting on the oars.”

[56:33] Albert Champion on the similarities of athletic competition and building a business: I have always felt that the education and training I received as a bicycle racer was a great help in business because it is a game in which you train to fight and win. He emphasized that experimenting and learning leads to progress: I always remember what a friend of mine once told me. He was a well—known chemist, an authority in the automobile world. He said that four times during his life he has had to scrap his knowledge of chemistry and begin again at the start. He was not only happy about it. He is ready to do the same thing over and over when he finds it necessary.

[1:03:20] The legacy of Albert Champion: His death closed a career as brilliant as that of any Horatio Alger hero, from errand boy in Paris, France, to millionaire automobile accessories manufacturer in America. The spark plug designs, dashboard speedometers, and companies Champion started have stood the test of time. Today the Champion Spark Plug and ACDelco brand names are recognized around the world. More than 200,0000 people a year attend performances at the Boston Center for the Arts, all passing the brass plate celebrating his Albert Champion Company, where he had made his first Champion spark plugs. Approximately 50 million vehicles operating in the United States are currently on the road with ACDelco spark plugs, filters, brakes, and other components. And every April at the Paris Classics bicycle race, another winner’s name is added to Albert Champion’s on the roster of legends.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#122 Alfred Sloan (General Motors)

26 april 2020 | 65 min

What I learned from reading My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan.

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[2:40] There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book: Henry talked to me on several occasions about a book by the former chairman of General Motors. He told me he had learned a very important concept from that book, which he wished to use in the growth of Teledyne. . .during a very difficult economic time of recession, General Motors had needed additional funds to finance their growth and had a plan to sell bonds to the general public. The bond sale was a complete failure, and the chairman (Sloan) had written in his book that it had taught him an important lesson. It was that for a corporation to grow and to have a strong financial base, it needed to have, as part of itself, an interest in substantial financially oriented institutions. So General Motors had started GMAC and invested in other financial groups. As a result of his interest in this idea, Henry had decided that at some point, he would seek out financial organizations we could acquire. We began acquiring a number of financial and insurance companies, which was a significant change from our usual aerospace, metals, industrial and consumer company acquisitions.

[5:45] Alfred Sloan had a singular focus: General Motors and the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, have been almost the sole interests of my business life.

[6:28] Alfred Sloan’s perspective on work: I simply took the view that we should go at the job vigorously and without hampering restrictions. I put no ceiling on progress.

[12:22] Billy Durant came up with the idea for General Motors. Alfred Sloan perfected it: Durant’s pioneer work has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. His philosophy was an emerging one in the Model T era and was afterward to be realized not by him but by others, including myself.

[19:08] The accumulated intelligence of mankind is what makes us special amongst all other species Everything is built upon the foundation before it: It has been called to my attention that Eli Whitney, long before, had started the development of interchangeable parts in connection with the manufacture of guns, a fact which suggests a line of descent from Whitney to Leland to the automobile industry.

[29:20] Alfred Sloan had a great perspective on problems. They are temporary and we can fix them: Economic declines have a way of shaking out the weak ones in business, and we had weaknesses. Some people cannot see beyond a slump, but I have never yielded to economic pessimism and in times of decline have kept in mind the eventual upturn of the business cycle and the long—range dynamics of growth. Confidence and caution formed my attitude in 1920. We could not control the environment, or predict its changes precisely, but we could seek the flexibility to survive fluctuations in business. I mention this because confidence is an important element in business; it may on occasion make the difference between one man’s success and another’s failure.

[33:15] Sloan on how difficult Henry Ford was to compete against: With Ford in almost complete possession of the low—price field, it would have been suicidal to compete with him head on. No conceivable amount of capital short of the United States Treasury could have sustained the losses required to take volume away from him at his own game.

[38:40] Alfred Sloan on committees: I have often been taxed, by people who do not know me, with being a committee man—and in a sense I most certainly am—I have never believed that a group as such could manage anything. A group can make policy, but only individuals can administer policy.

[44:20] General Motors was able to overtake Ford because they widened a niche: It was that plan, policy , or strategy of 1921—whatever it should be called— which, I believe, more than any other single factor enabled us to move into the rapidly changing market of the twenties with the confidence that we knew what we were doing commercially and were not merely chasing around in search of a lucky star. The most important particular object of that plan of campaign, which followed from its strategic principles, was, as I have said, to develop a larger place for Chevrolet between the Ford car below and the medium—price group above, a case of trying to widen a niche. That was all, in the beginning, despite the completeness of the plan with regard to the whole market.

[56:40] Alfred Sloan knew the car market was changing. You didn’t make sales by having the best car. You made sales by being different. David Ogilvy called this idea “a positively good product”: In the past, just about every advertiser has assumed that in order to sell his goods he has to convince consumers that his product is superior to his competitor’s. This may not be necessary. It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is positively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours. If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it. Sales will swing to the marketer who does the best job of creating confidence that his product is positively good.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

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#121 Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan (General Motors)

19 april 2020 | 82 min

What I learned from reading Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey.

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[0:01] They were oil and water in all respects. Billy Durant, the high school dropout, was the flamboyant dreamer and gambler, focused on personal relationships and risk. Alfred Sloan, the MIT engineer, was the stern organizer and manager, focused on data, logic, and profit.

[4:40] The paradox of this book in two sentences: Sloan’s most constant criticism of Durant was that he acted on instinct and whim rather than facts. Yet the achievements and decisions of Durant the dreamer were what made Sloan the manager’s spectacular career possible.

[6:50] Alfred Sloan telling us it is a lot harder to stay successful over a long period of time: “The perpetuation of an unusual success or the maintenance of an unusually high standard of leadership in any industry is sometimes more difficult than the attainment of that success or leadership in the first place.”

[10:45] Walter Chrysler left the highest paying job in the entire automobile industry because of Billy Durant’s wasted his time: More than once, Chrysler had been summoned by Durant only to be kept waiting then to discover that the urgent matter that needed to be discussed was nothing that couldn’t have been resolved quickly at the plant level rather than wasting top management’s time and brainpower.

[12:52] Sloan believed Billy Durant had no right to be distracted by the financial markets while Durant was supposed to be running General Motors: Sometimes I used to feel as if he were always holding a telephone in his hand. I think there were twenty telephones in his private office and a switchboard. He had private wires to brokers’ offices across the continent. In the same minute, he would buy in San Francisco, sell in Boston. It did not seem to me that the operating head of a corporation had any right to devote himself to the market, even if the stock of the corporation was involved.

[17:13] Billy Durant will remind you that everything is possible: What was it in Billy’s genes and character that had led the high school dropout from rural Michigan to even dream of building an empire that would change the world?

[20:30] Billy Durant would tell you to control the things that are important to your business: Billy Durant would never forget the bitter lesson of what he saw as Paterson’s treachery: Always control your own production and, whenever possible, all of the links in the supply chain.

[23:05] Unlike Durant, Alfred Sloan had a singular focus. His singular focus was General Motors: By the early 1930s, Alfred Sloan was widely considered to be one of the richest men in the world, but he had no known hobbies and had never sold a single share of General Motors stock. His only known investment of either time or money in anything beyond the domain of General Motors was the purchase of a yacht at the urging of friends and his wife.

[26:37] There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book: In Henry Singleton’s case that is literally true. Reading Sloan’s book had a multiple billion dollar effect on the outcome of Teledyne.

[29:04] Sloan would not tolerate any excuses: Sloan is kinda like Yoda. Do or do not. There is no try.

[29:48] A key ideological difference between Alfred Sloan and Billy Durant was how growth should be financed: What Alfred didn’t mention in his letter was that Hyatt’s growth had come from reinvestment of the company’s own profits, rather than the acquisition and stock market strategy mastered by Billy Durant. A divergence of fundamental strategy that would be at the core of the General Motors crisis and showdown of 1920.

[31:12] An important lesson from history is that new and important industries can start out looking like toys: In 1899 the automobile industry in America was no more than the strange and wild obsession of a few tinkerers and an amusing diversion for the wealthy investors who backed them. Cars were still widely considered impractical toys and dangerous nuisances by most people.

[34:35] Alfred Sloan admired and copied Henry Leland, founder of Cadillac and Lincoln: Of all the American automobile industry’s unique and colorful characters, the one whom Alfred Sloan most admired and emulated was Henry Leland. Leland was a perfectionist who expected and demanded higher standards than any of his peers. He accepted no excuses and suffered no fools. Sloan devoted more words and detail to what he learned from Leland than he did any other person.

[45:55] Alfred Sloan on why vertical integration was so important in the automobile industry: Every piece of the motor car is essential in the sense that the automobile is not complete unless every part is available. Delay in delivery of any part stops the work. A dependable supply of parts might well make the difference between success and failure.

[48:08] Henry Ford's ONE idea was different from every other automobile manufacturer: He was determined to concentrate on the low end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive costs down and at the same time feed even more demand for the product. It was a fundamental difference in philosophy.

[49:35] Comparing and contrasting Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan’s approach to growth: For him, the thrill was always in the next deal, not in the nuts and bolts of daily operations. In his mind, empires were built by conquest, not through internal growth. And the road to conquest was through other people’s money and other people’s confidence in his genius, rather than the quiet, conservative road of knowing the fundamentals of manufacturing and marketing, as was followed by the likes of Henry Leland and Alfred P. Sloan.

[56:05] Why Innovation is so important. We must arm the rebels! The automobile sparked not only the great oil boom it also sparked innovations in petroleum refining and metal alloys that led to further innovation in chemicals. It also spawned the motel industry as well as gasoline retailing. Thanks solely to the demand for gasoline to run the internal combustion engine automobile, crude oil production in the United States soared.The first gasoline pump appeared in 1905. By 1915, Standard Oil had developed the first chain of gasoline service stations. In 1916, the federal government began funding the interstate highway system. Ten years later, motels and road side restaurants were common in every state. Thanks to Henry Ford’s Model T, Billy Durant’s vision of a nation transformed by the automobile had become a reality.

[57:47] When most of your revenue comes from one or two major customers you are fragile. Or Why Alfred Sloan sold Hyatt Roller Bearing to Billy Durant: The problem for Alfred and his peers was that, compared with the manufacturers, the suppliers’ pockets were not nearly as deep. Expanding their production capacity meant investment in new plant and equipment, but there was no guarantee that the boom would continue once these commitments were made. Nor was there any guarantee from the manufacturers that they would not shift to a different supplier with lower cost at some point in the future, leaving Supplier A stuck with both excess capacity and the cost of the original expansion.

[1:14:23] How Alred Sloan positioned General Motors product line: Sloan developed a product strategy targeted at buyers’ specific aspirations. Its essence was to divide the market into price segments and offer cars with the most appeal and value in each segment. Sloan called it “a car for every purse and purpose.” No General Motors vehicle division or brand would compete against any other in any of the segments; each was to have a distinct identity and appeal to a distinct buyer.

[1:15:10] David Ogilvy on positioning your product: Now consider how you want to ‘position’ your product. This curious verb is in great favor among marketing experts, but no two of them agree what it means. My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’ I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later.

[1:16:48] Alfred Sloan —like Sam Walton—made it a priority to visit dealers: I made it a practice throughout the 1920s and early thirties to make personal visits to dealers. I went into almost every city in the United States, visiting from five to ten dealers a day. I would meet them in their own places of business, talk with them across their own desks in their closing rooms and ask them for suggestions and criticism concerning their relations with the corporation, the character of the product, the corporation’s policies, the trend of consumer demand, their view of the future, and many other things of interest in the business. I made careful notes of all the points that came up, and when I got back home I studied them.

[1:20:46] Billy Durant’s metaphor on the difference between him and Alfred Sloan: But, you see, this infantry captain didn’t have the disadvantage of a West Point education and he didn’t know he couldn’t do it, so he just went ahead and did it anyway.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#120 Billy Durant (Creator of General Motors)

11 april 2020 | 71 min

What I learned from reading Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin.

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[0:32] DURANT MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT AUTOMOBILE PIONEER: Of all the colorful men who propelled the United States into the automobile age, Billy Durant was perhaps the most unusual, and from an organizational standpoint in the pioneering era, the most important. Durant had a hand in shaping the beginnings of three of the four major American automobile manufacturing corporations that exist today.

[4:16] HIS LIFE STORY HAS A SURPRISING END: The guy founded General Motors, Chrysler, and Frigidaire. Three gigantic, successful companies. How does he die with no money?

[6:04] DURANT TRIED TO PROTECT HIS INVESTORS: He had an attitude, not a common among men of big money. He tried to protect the people who invested with him, even if this protection would break him. Finally, it did. And when he was unable to save the dollars of his supporters he plunged from multimillionaire to bankruptcy.

[10:29] DURANT WAS SKEPTICAL OF AUTOMOBILES: Durant starts out as an automobile skeptic. He builds the General Motors of horse-drawn transportation and then takes that same playbook and uses it again to do the same thing in the automobile industry once he gets over his skepticism.

[17:08] IF SOMETHING IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR BUSINESS YOU NEED TO CONTROL IT: We have seen this over and over and over and over again in these stories throughout the history of entrepreneurship. If something is important to your business, you need to control it. Durant line up a big contract for the buggies only to find that Patterson chanced upon the same buyer and told him that since the product was actually being made at his factory, the buyer could save money by buying directly from him. Durant that from then on they would build all their own vehicles.

[19:12] DURANT ON SALES: Assume that the person you are talking to knows as much or more than you do. Do not talk too much. Give the customer time to think. In other words, let the customer sell himself. That system works best when you have a good product. Look for a self - seller. If you cannot find one, make one.

[21:48] ON CONTROL. HENRY FORD REALIZED THIS. THE DODGE BROTHERS DID TOO: We started out as assemblers with no advantage over our competitors. We paid about the same prices for everything we purchased. We realized that we were making no progress and would not unless and until we manufactured practically every important part that we used. We proceeded to purchase plants and the control of plants, which made it possible for us to build up the largest carriage company in the United States.

[31:36] DURANT WAS AT THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME, WITH THE RIGHT SET OF SKILLS: For the first time, he began to see that the automobile had a future. The stockholders of Buick were so desperate that they were willing to turn over controlling interest to him. And perhaps most important, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company had a large, idle factory.

[39:11] IT WAS HARD TO RAISE MONEY FOR GENERAL MOTORS: I had a long, hot session with our friends in New York yesterday and was pretty nearly used up at the finish. If you think it is an easy matter to get money from New York capitalists to finance a motor car proposition in Michigan, you have another guess coming. Money is hard to get owing to a somewhat unaccountable feeling of uneasiness and a general distrust of the automobile proposition.

[44:25] BILLY DURANT’S MASTER PLAN FOR GENERAL MOTORS: Durant's aim was nothing less than to gain control of some of the biggest and best automobile companies in America. But he also wanted to get in on the ground floor with companies just starting. Durant: “They could be purchased by exchanging small amounts of stock, and who could tell what their patents, products, and inventions might bring? The automobile industry was in its infancy, the public was fickle, the only sure road to power and success was to have a wide range of products. I figured if I could acquire a few more companies like the Buick, I would have control of the greatest industry in this country. A great opportunity, no time to lose, I must get busy.”

[51:30] DON VALENTINE TEACHES YOU BUSINESS IN TWO MINUTES: There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes --you don't have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason- they run out of money." —Don Valentine

[55:10] GENERAL MOTORS RUNS OUT OF MONEY! DURANT IS FORCED OUT: The bankers demanded control of the company. Durant had no choice but to accept. Automotive historians have generally described the terms as exorbitant. And Durant, in his memoirs, fumed: “The $ 15 million loan finally offered had outrageous terms which I was forced to accept. Under the terms, I received $ 12,250,000 cash ( not $ 15 million ), for which I gave $ 21,600,000 of the best securities ever created — the enormous interest of $ 9,350,000.

[57:57] DURANT’S STRATEGY FOR CHEVROLET WAS TO FOCUS ON THE LOW PRICED MARKET BECAUSE IT HAD MORE DEMAND THAN SUPPLY : Henry Ford couldn't build enough cars to satisfy the entire demand for a low priced automobile.

[1:04:50] THE UNUSUAL HAPPENS, USUALLY. BILLY DURANT IS THE OPPOSITE OF HETTY GREEN OR MARK SPITZNAGEL: In 1920 the boom that had followed the end of WWI came to a rather abrupt halt and the United States slumped into a sharp recession. The price of GM stock began to decline steadily. GM sold 47,000 cars a month. By November monthly sales were down to 12,000. Durant realized GM needed money.

[1:10:26] BILLY DURANT’S LIFE SHOULD HAVE HAD A HAPPIER ENDING: All that can be said for certain about Durant’s last days at GM is that his activities in the stock market placed him in an extremely vulnerable situation. Louis Kaufman said in 1927 that had Durant not become involved in the market he would have been worth $500 million and still in charge of GM.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#119 The Dodge Brothers

5 april 2020 | 54 min

#118 Forty Years With Henry Ford

31 mars 2020 | 80 min

#117 : Chung Ju-yung founder of Hyundai (the most inspiring autobiography I've read)

26 mars 2020 | 80 min

#116 Sam Bronfman (Seagram's and the Bronfman family dynasty)

21 mars 2020 | 67 min

What I learned from reading Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram’s Mr. Sam by Michael R. Marrus.

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The story of Sam’s rise to fame and fortune from a hard life on the Canadian frontier is inherently dramatic and yet touches a familiar nerve in a broad spectrum of the population. There is something in Sam’s response to his disappointments that most people recognize in their themselves. [0:01]

I found out about the Bronfman family on Founders #53 Mike Ovitz when Mike Ovitz brokered a deal that led to Seagram buying MCA Universal for $5.7 billion. [2:58]

Generational Inflection Point: A single individual that changes the trajectory of his entire family for generations to come [3:35]

Why did his family have to flee Russia? [6:42]

Sam was ashamed of the poverty is family endured and NEVER forgot it [10:45]

Sam starts running his own hotel at 23 [14:35]

Sam figures out a new plan to overcome the powerful temperance movement / The good ones know more. — David Ogilvy [18:00]

The advantages of Sam’s mail order strategy + Copying and improving on his competitors [20:12]

Some people just want it more [22:23]

Sam would tell you to focus on the long term [24:26]

Sam would tell you don’t waste any opportunity and be a learning machine [31:50]

Sam would tell you to learn from the best [35:44]

Sam would tell you to think big and appeal to interest [37:20]

Sam’s view on money / Go First Class [42:04]

After prohibition is lifted Sam goes on a buying spree / Default aggressive [48:53]

Sam does something brilliant: He repositions whiskey as a luxury product [53:02]

Sam’s personal curriculum [57:30]

How Sam’s business survived WWII [59:00]

The company proved to be one of Sam’s shrewdest moves; bought with only $50 million in borrowed cash it was sold [by his heirs] in 1980 for $2.3 billion [1:03:35]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#115 Ben Franklin: An American Life

16 mars 2020 | 46 min

What I learned from reading Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson.

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He was, during his 84 year long life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist. [0:01]

On Founders #62 I covered Ben Franklin’s autobiography [4:10]

The family produced dissenters and nonconformists who were willing to defy authority, although not to the point of becoming zealots. They were clever craftsman and inventive blacksmiths with a love of learning. Avid readers and writers, they had deep convictions, but knew how to wear them lightly. [5:00]

The industrialist Thomas Mellon, who erected a statue of Franklin in his banks headquarters, declared that Franklin had inspired him to leave his family's farm and go into business. "I regard the reading of Franklin's Autobiography as the turning point of my life. Here was Franklin, poorer than myself, who by industry, thrift, and frugality, had become learned and wise, and elevated to wealth and fame. The maxims of poor Richard exactly suited my sentiments. I read the book again and again, and wondered if I might not do something in the same line by similar means." [13:10]

Franklin is learning how to deal with people and to change his behavior to get the outcome he desires: Being argumentative, he concluded, was a very bad habit because contradicting people produced disgusts and perhaps enemies. Later in his life he would wryly say of disputing: "Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it.”[17:50]

Ben Franklin understood marketing [22:10]

Ben Franklin would tell you to keep reading and learning so you are more interesting to talk to. This produces positive externalities. [23:50]

Franklin’s plan for his business and how to overcome an entrenched competitor [30:00]

Franklin would tell you it is foolish to avoid all criticism [33:28]

The Ben Franklin method for making difficult decisions [34:15]

As Franklin is building his business he is focused on self improvement: A list of 12 virtues he thought desirable [35:56]

Most of Poor Richard's saying were not totally original as Franklin freely admitted. "They contained the wisdom of many ages and nations. Not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own." / Picasso had a saying good artists copy; great artists steal. we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas --Steve Jobs [38:25]

Franklin telling you how to turn adversaries into allies. [41:38]

Halfway through his life, Franklin realizes he has enough: "Lost time is never found again." [43:25]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time

9 mars 2020 | 80 min

What I learned from reading The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Timeby Michael Craig.

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Some Texas banker was playing poker with over $15 million on the table. 15 million on the table? This much cash would weigh over 250 pounds. [0:01]

Founders #38 Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos [4:12]

Poker players are misfits / Poker as a capital intensive business / How to avoid going over the edge [6:51]

The early life and personality traits of Andy Beal [12:20]

Other founders mentioned in this episode:

#59 Howard Hughes: Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters; The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire.

#65 Kirk Kerkorian: The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became The Greatest Deal Maker In Capitalist History.

#67 Conrad Hilton: The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

[19:24]

Professional poker players were the ultimate independent businessmen. They had no bosses, no employees, and no set hours. [20:36]

He came. He saw. He was conquered. [26:01]

The entrepreneurial emotional roller coaster + Bet on yourself [28:20]

A young Andy Beal’s adventures in entrepreneurship [36:30]

Beal Aerospace [49:45]

How Andy Beal finds an edge in poker [55:04]

The difference between knowing and doing [1:07:49]

The benefits of facing tough competition: Andy had played abasing the best poker players in the world for nearly 300 hours. It was impossible to stick around against this level of competition and not improve. How can we simulate an environment like this for ourselves? [1:09:45]

What a bizarre, nonchalant way to start an important day [1:14:20]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#113 A.G. Gaston (Black Titan and the Making of a Black American Millionaire)

5 mars 2020 | 68 min

What I learned from reading Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner Hines

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The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million [0:01]

A 10 year old’s first business idea [5:35]

A.G. finds a blueprint to follow: A.B. Loveman [9:00]

The remarkable story of Carrie Tuggle and The Tuggle Institute [12:10]

The influence of Booker T. Washington [13:35]

The power of positive examples [15:27]

Joining the army for discipline and opportunity / Lessons from World War I [18:32]

Keep your eyes open. Study the people around you. How do they live? What makes them tick? What do they need? [25:05]

A. G. Gaston was relentless [27:20]

The parallels between Andrew Carnegie and A. G. Gaston [30:26]

Exhausted, depressed, and hopeless right before his big breakthrough [33:38]

And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under — Benjamin Franklin / Both Benjamin Franklin and A. G. Gaston valued industry and frugality [38:00]

A fundamental change in philosophy for a young entrepreneur [44:30]

A.G. starts a funeral insurance company / Inspiration from the life of Booker T. Washington [46:40]

CAP YOUR DOWNSIDE! [51:41]

Personality: Focus on only on what you can control and have a bias for action [54:00]

A.G. starts The Booker T. Washington Business College to help train potential employees [56:00]

A.G’s singular focus is on mastering his craft [57:50]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#112 Frank Lloyd Wright

24 februari 2020 | 81 min

What I learned from reading Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright by Paul Hendrickson.

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[0:01] Frank Lloyd Wright suffered a personal catastrophe that would have destroyed a man of lesser will and lesser ego.

[7:20] Ben Franklin writing about vanity 250 years ago: Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor.

[12:38] He held a press conference on Christmas Day to explain his actions. He said ordinary people can not live without rules to guide his conduct. He - Frank Lloyd Wright - is not ordinary.

[13:44] Frank Lloyd Wright had a single minded pursuit of his own potential.

[18:50] Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

[19:30] Find something you love to do and don’t stop until you die.

[23:00] Everything is malleable. Including the truth.

[25:25] All Frank Lloyd Wright had was a complete faith in himself.

[31:57] Frank Lloyd Wright had a point of view—a conviction— and he tied his point of view to larger ideas.

[35:29] Frank Lloyd Wright was terrible with money: So long as we had the luxuries, the necessities could pretty well take care of themselves.

[36:20] The early career of Frank Lloyd Wright / his mentor was one of the greatest architects ever

[39:30] You are going to go far. You’ll have a kind of success; I believe the kind you want. Not everybody would pay the price in concentrated hard work and human sacrifice you’ll make for it.

[50:05] Wright turned down a fantastic opportunity. He preferred to bet on himself.

[53:28] Wright’s mid life crisis and the abandonment of his family.

[56:00] We’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets. We’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows—we can’t earn any money that way. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him you do that—and uh—forget the money. If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time...

You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid! It is absolutely stupid! Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is—somebody is interested in everything—anything you can be interested in, you will find others who are...

But, it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track. See, what we are doing is, is we’re bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living—in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life, by bringing up their children, to bring up "their" children, to do the same thing. So, it’s all retch and no vomit—it never gets there. Therefore, it’s so important to consider this question...

"What do I desire?" —Alan Watts

[1:01:50] The volume of work Wright completed after the age of 60 was astonishing. A third of his total output came after the age of 80!

[1:17:30] What the tumultuous relationship of his parents gave Frank Lloyd Wright: “A will and inner strength that seems unquantifiable.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#111 David Geffen

16 februari 2020 | 83 min

What I learned from reading The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King.

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He told me he had recently read Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Buffett was Geffen's hero.

Geffen—with searing focus, unyielding drive, and outlandish nerve—had devised and implemented strategies to propel himself to the top of the heap of Hollywood powerbrokers.

I used to have phone conversations with David that would leave me sweaty.

David might not have realized it, but he was being educated by a master entrepreneur. Batya succeeded in teaching him the value of hard work and the possibilities of life under even the most difficult circumstances. She was a brilliant businesswoman who could account for every penny that went into and out of the enterprise. She kept her overhead low by driving hard bargains with her suppliers and by closely monitoring her expenses.

His mother determinedly drilled into him the same advice she often repeated to herself. "You may not be very tall, but you will stand head and shoulders above everyone," she declared. "You think of yourself as head and shoulders above everyone else, and you will be."

Arriving in Hollywood for the first time, David thought he had found paradise. It was even more intoxicating than he had imagined. His life's ambition was soon established after he read a new biography of MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer called Hollywood Rajah. "I want this job," he thought to himself.

He simply did not have the attention span that college required. He was eager to get into the real world.

She told Geffen that some of the brightest lights in the entertainment business had gotten their start in the mailrooms of the major talent agencies. Although it was not a glamorous job, it was a way to get a foot in the door.

Having tossed aside all notions of right and wrong, David Geffen simply lived by different rules than did the rest of society around him. Unconstrained by traditional ideas of acceptable social behavior, he was free to use all of the resources at his fingertips to achieve his lofty goals.

Geffen simply worked harder than anyone else.

The music department, he said, was the place where a young agent could make a name for himself. Brandt's advice had a profound impact on Geffen. He at once rejiggered his career plans.

It was not an undying passion for music that made him decide to try to make his fortune in the business; he did it because he might get rich quickly.

Geffen recognized that publishing was one of the areas in the music business where the real money was being made. Long after an artist's star has faded, publishers benefit financially for years to come, pocketing royalties whenever a group records a song or sheet music is sold.

Having studied Clive Davis, he decided that he, too, had the savvy to make it in the record industry. It was not much of a stretch for him to envision David Geffen, the music mogul.

He remained unsettled and plagued by feelings of insecurity and dissatisfaction. He was driven by a devil that constantly told him he needed to be bigger, more, and something else. He simply was not the kind of man who was going to stand in one place for very long.

While he saw himself most of the time as the smart, fast-rising star he had become, there seemed to be fleeting, dreadful moments when his confidence shattered and he was gripped with fear.

The way Geffen saw it, there was a natural synergy in owning both a record company and a management company. They could use the management company to book and promote the acts it was recording on the label and vice versa. Controlling both sides of the business. But the real advantage, Geffen explained, was that they could use the record deal, which came complete with Atlantic financing, to cover the overhead at the management company.

From the day he opened his new business, Geffen had his eye fixed on the bottom line. He had the foresight to avoid the pitfalls that had proved fatal to so many others who had launched record labels before him. He was overhead averse and did not feel the urge to redecorate or to hire a large staff.

For all his money, David Geffen was turning out to be rather frugal. He well understood that the delicate balance between profit and loss can be upset if expenses are high.

Playing fair, Geffen had learned, was difficult and time-consuming; lying, on the other hand, was easy and effective.

Just thirty, he claimed that his net worth was about twelve million dollars. But he was surprised to realize that the millions of dollars he had just banked and the trappings he had been able to acquire with it did not make him happy. It hit him when he was in London on a business trip, lying on a bed in a posh hotel, smoking a joint, and staring at the ceiling. All his life he had dreamed of being a multimillionaire, thinking that money would solve his problems. It had not, and he fell into a deep depression.

Geffen saw immediately that Katzenberg had the hustler-like qualities that he himself had displayed at that age.

Used to the relatively quick turnaround of record production, the slow-moving nature of the movie business made him agitated, nervous, and bored. Key to his recipe of success had been his ability to move quickly; but in the movie business, that same pacing proved to be a detriment, and it began to drive him crazy.

It was to be the most important negotiation of Geffen's life, and he successfully extracted an extraordinary deal that within a few years helped make him one of the wealthiest men in the country. In pulling off the deal, he showed himself to be a shrewd, remarkably focused strategist. He had an uncanny ability to understand people, recognize their weaknesses, and capitalize on them. The negotiation also showed once again that Geffen had that rare ability to envision success: He clearly understood his power and knew how to get what he wanted.

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There was one thing Calvin Klein did not tell Geffen: His privately held fashion empire was on the brink of bankruptcy. Geffen surmised that the company should be transformed from a manufacturing firm to a design, marketing, and licensing company.

"You guys stink at manufacturing," he said. "You need to get out of that business."

Instead, Geffen continued, the company needed to focus on what it really knew: how to design and market the Calvin Klein brand name.

"Calvin, you should only be focusing on the aesthetics," Geffen said. "You should just be designing the clothes and overseeing the marketing and advertising."

Geffen reprimanded Klein and Schwartz for excesses they could not afford. Among other things, he told them to sell their company jet which cost them $2.5 million a year to maintain. He also told Klein to fire his chief financial officer and helped him hire Richard Martin, a top executive at Price Waterhouse, the accounting firm he himself used.

Here was the "fixer" in action: David Geffen was now involved in the kind of problem solving that energized him more than anything else.

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The idea of Geffen joining Katzenberg and Spielberg seemed a bit odd. For one thing, Geffen was Hollywood's greatest entrepreneur and nearly all of his successes were ones in which he alone had made the decisions.

"If I have to sit and convince somebody why I'm enthusiastic about something, I'm already depressed." The idea of himself as a partner was a strange one for David Geffen.

I've been working on myself, and my demons and my nonsense and my fucked-up-ness for a long, long time. Which is not to say that I'm still not a little fucked up. I think you get better and better in tiny increments, and you die unhealed.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#110 Henry Singleton (Teledyne)

10 februari 2020 | 86 min

What I learned from reading Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts.

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Henry was much more than a salesman, mathematician, engineer, inventor, and chess champion. He was a student. An observer of the history of manufacturing, of the progress and growth of corporations from the days of Henry Ford, the growth of General Motors, the manner of successful corporations in growing by acquisition. [0:01]

Henry reminds me of de Gaulle. He has a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he is going to do. [2:00]

Henry spent time doing exactly what we are doing — learned from entrepreneurs and great people of the past. [3:45]

According to Buffett, if one took the top 100 business school graduates and made a composite of their triumphs, their record would not be as good as that of Singleton, who incidentally was trained as a scientist, not an MBA. / Here is a direct quote from Buffett: The failure of business schools to study men like Singleton is a crime. / "Henry Singleton of Teledyne has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business.” —Warren Buffett [8:30]

Genius is an oft-misused word, but it cannot be denied that Henry Singleton brought exceptional brilliance to the creation and development of the enterprise he undertook. . .Many of these strategies, new at the time, have now become commonplace in the business world. [12:57]

My only plan is to keep coming to work each day. I like to steer the boat each day rather than plan ahead way into the future. —Henry Singleton [14:36]

Within eight years of founding Teledyne had bootstrapped their startup investment of $450,000 into a company with annual sales of over $450 million. [17:24]

Henry’s early faith that semiconductors would become the dominant factor in future electronics, even while this was still being debated by others in the industry. [31:15]

Henry’s three great ideas

Recognizing the future importance of digital semiconductors when this technology was in its infancy.

Acquiring and organizing a selection of financial companies to provide a strong financial base [The idea Henry learned by reading Alfred Sloan’s of GM’s book]

His innovative strategy for stock buybacks [40:30]

Henry knew where he could create the most value and focused on that. Are you doing the same? [50:16]

There is no speed limit: In the company’s first six years net income rose from $58,000 to $12,035,000 [52:20]

There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book. [56:10]

Henry Singleton the teacher / Claude Shannon on being smart and quiet [1:06:45]

By 1977 Teledyne was the largest shareholder in nine Fortune 500 companies. But Henry didn’t want control. He didn’t even want a board seat. [1:13:40]

There are companies that will sell one division and buy another because today this divisions generally sports a low multiple and the one they’re buying has a high multiple. That absolutely turns me off. The whole concept is repulsive. We don’t do things like that. We look at the economic long term possibilities. —Henry Singleton [1:17:05]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#109 Adi Dassler (Adidas)

3 februari 2020 | 73 min

What I learned from reading Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and The Family Feud That Forever Changed The Business of Sports by Barbara Smit.

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This story begins at a time in history when money and sports were still two separate worlds [0:01]

A family business struggling to survive / drafted into WWI / Adi Dassler’s EXTREME resourcefulness and personality / [3:15]

Early distribution and marketing of sports shoes [10:06]

The Dassler Brothers were opposites: Adi was the quiet craftsman with soul in the game. Rudolf was ostentatious and loud. [12:46]

The chronicle and biography of Adi Dassler: A story about someone obsessed with making high quality products [14:00]

Was Adi Dassler a Nazi? / My experience with the totalitarianism of the Castro regime / tearing up thinking of having to risk the lives of your children [24:30]

Adi Dassler reminds me of Henry Royce [29:30]

The difficulties of building a business during World War II [32:15]

Adi starting over at the age of 46 / How the Adidas stripes came about [38:15]

Athletes start requesting bribes to wear Adidas / How the payoffs happened [46:00]

Breaking into a new market was a slow, labor intensive process [50:45]

While Adidas and Puma are distracted fighting each other, opportunity opens up for Phil Knight and Nike / pursue your crazy idea / famous last words: “it’s just a toy”, “jogging isn’t a real sport”, “Nike is not a threat because we have more demand than we could service” [55:05]

If you have a business that makes you miserable, somewhere along the line you lost the plot. [1:06:45]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#108 Jim Simons (Money Printer)

26 januari 2020 | 67 min

What I learned from reading The Man Who Solved The Market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman

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The story of the greatest moneymaker of all time [0:01]

Simons prefers to move in silence [1:40]

Unknown Unknowns > Known Knowns / Wise people always know exactly why something won’t work. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. —Henry Ford [2:42]

A one word summary of the book: PERSISTENCE [4:15]

Simons’ early life / Only the arrogant are self-confident enough to push their creative ideas on others. —Nolan Bushnell [4:44]

Advice from his father: Do what you like in life, not what you feel you should do. [6:16]

Personality: Jim had a persistent and burning desire to be wealthy [7:20]

A seed has been planted + Jim’s existential crisis [9:55]

Lessons from codebreaking that Jim applies to his business later [14:08]

Jim Simons at 29 years of age: Fired, father of 3 young children, no idea what his future holds [20:00]

Jim Simons at 33 years of age: Genius and madness are next-door neighbors [21:44]

Jim Simons at 40 years of age: Jim finally makes the jump. Only misfits understand misfits [22:55]

Jim’s first trading style [28:00]

We all go through times like this: DON’T QUIT! [29:15]

Jim Simons at 44 years of age / Jim’s partner doesn’t see the point in developing automated trading system / Giant success followed by giants failures [34:30]

Back to being filled with self-doubt [37:15]

Our mind loves playing tricks on us [38:00]

Jim Simons studied the past to gain an information advantage [41:00]

Finally, the new strategy starts working! / Even with wild success people will tell you that you are wrong [46:55]

Business is like nature, it doesn’t care if you arrive at the right answer from the wrong reasoning. [52:50]

Emperors want empires [57:02]

Life advice from an 82 year old Jim Simons [1:02:40]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#107 Sol Price (Costco)

20 januari 2020 | 69 min

#106 Bill Walsh (The Score Takes Care of Itself)

12 januari 2020 | 66 min

What I learned from reading The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh.

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[0:01] I believe it’s much the same in one’s profession: Superb, reliable results take time.

[4:55] How Jack Dorsey describes The Score Takes Care of Itself: He took at team that was at the bottom and brought them to the top. He focused on the details. He didn’t say you need to win games. He said you need to tuck in your shirts. You need to clean your lockers. This is how we answer the phones here. He set a new standard of performance.

[6:53] Bill Walsh on his father / What he learned from his early life

[10:15] Bill Walsh on why should you care about your standard of performance: Pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous, and produce agonizing failure along the way, but achieving those goals is among life’s most gratifying and thrilling experiences.

[14:15] A great description of the book: Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership.

[16:20] Bill Walsh built a new culture. He calls it his Standard of Performance.

[20:30] Make a commitment to be the best version of yourself— even when your current external results may not warrant that belief

[26:16] The prime directive was not victory

[28:45] Winners act like winners before their winners

[32:20] Bill Walsh experiences the entrepreneurial roller coaster

[37:00] An incredible story about his idea of the west coast offense

[46:20] Be unswerving in moving towards your goal

[47:25] Sweat the little details but the right little details

[49:00] Don’t focus on your competitors —spend that time making yourself better so it is harder for them to compete against you

[50:00] Don’t let anybody call you a genius / If you sleep on a win you’ll wake up with a loss / Success Disease

[54:15] Without a healthy ego you’ve got a big problem

[58:05] There is no mystery to mastery

[1:03:05] A pretty package will not sell a crappy product

[1:04:16] Avoid burnout: Can you imagine how burned out you must be to wait fourteen years to return to doing something you love?

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#105 Les Schwab (Charlie Munger recommended this book)

5 januari 2020 | 79 min

What I learned from reading Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab.

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16 ideas from the book:

Intensity is the price of excellence —Warren Buffett

I am 68 years old now. And I've run it in overdrive my whole life. I've always wanted to be the best tire dealer, not necessarily the largest tire dealer.

The people serving your customers are the most important people in your company:

We have had over the years some people in the office that sometimes think they are more important than the stores. The office serves only one purpose, and that is to serve the stores. Some of our office people sometimes wonder about this. But I’ve warned them, don’t bitch to me because that is the way I want it. If you want to go out and start at the bottom changing tires and work into a manager job, then hop right to it. If it weren’t for those men in the stores working their butts off in all kinds of weather, missing meals, God awful hours, etc. you wouldn’t even have a job.

If you’re not serving the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don’t need you. —Sam Walton

Let the people at the store level and your manager know you are behind them. They are the ones who make you successful, not the person in a nice office who has nothing to do today but to send out another damn directive. If it doesn't help the store, tear it up and tell the store to tell the office to go to hell.

There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. —Steve Jobs

People are the success of our company. Most anyone can sell tires. The only difference between a Les Schwab Tire Centre and most any tire dealership is the people working there.

Sharing profits with your employees is a way to build people. Be unselfish for good reasons.

We share 50% of our profits with all the employees in the store. My thinking has always been if I give away half the profits I still have half. If I share $10 million with people I still have $10 million left over. I don’t understand why businessmen can’t do this. It is being unselfish for good reasons. It helps a lot of people.

Helping others succeed provides deep satisfaction:

Success in life is being a good husband, a good father and you end up being a second father to hundreds of other men and women. Last night I attended a wedding of a young man from our office. This young man told me that two men had influenced his life, his father and me. That’s worth more than money.

Promote from within —There’s no problem you can’t solve if you know your business from A to Z

In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside, nor have we ever hired an assistant manager directly to that job. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management jobs by working up.

Most businesses are poorly run. If you are on the ball you can beat them.

We are different from most American corporations, as we think the most important people in the company are the people on the firing line; the ones who sell, do the service work and take care of the customer. Most American corporations have the fat salaries for the top people and treat the people at the end of the line as peons. I guess that is why, if you are on the ball, you can beat them on any type of fair competitive basis.

Decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level:

A company starts, it grows, and as it grows, more and more of the decision making moves to the main office. And this is one hell of a big mistake. The decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level. Give your manager the authority to make his own daily decisions, under certain guidelines of course, but let him run his show.

You can innovate by doing the exact opposite of your competitors

Most tire businesses had a small showroom and all the tires were hidden in the warehouse. My thinking was to reverse —to make the showroom the warehouse.

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”—Charlie Munger One benefit of sharing profits with employees —less theft from within:

Now that we share with all people, if any one employee sees another employee steal they are a weak kitten if they don’t report it. Why? Because this man is stealing from them, from his children. If he won’t fight for his children, he can’t be very much. For a company as large as ours we have very little dishonesty.

Pay the highest wages possible

The company paid low wages and had a lower overhead. The flaw was they didn’t get —with the low pay— near the quality of employees we had.

Get out of your office

If the store manager runs his store right, he doesn't have to spend hours and hours looking at the office reports; if he's doing okay the records will show it. In fact if he spends too much time in his office reading the mail, it is a sure thing his store will suffer. Sell tires, give service, keep expenses low, make sure everything is billed out, keep good communications with employees, be careful with credit, watch for leaks —do these things and you'll come out all right.

Stay out of your office

Stay out of a store for 30 days and you've forgotten 50 percent of what you know.

Once you get on the ball, stay on the ball. OR as Sam Walton said when asked how he built Wal Mart. “We just got after it and *stayed* after it.”

If we think there is a free lunch, if we rely on last year's results and ask for pay for non-productive items, then this company will turn the corner, too, and then we too will start down the hill. And once you start down, it is mighty hard to turn around. If we become complacent, brother it's all over with.

There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. It is: If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess. —Edwin Land

Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat.

Time Stamps:

[0:01] I hope to pass on some of my theories of business. Should we fail to follow these policies, I would prefer that my name be taken off the business.

[1:55] "If you want to read one book that will demonstrate really shrewd compensation systems in a whole chain of small businesses, read the autobiography of Les Schwab, who has a bunch of tire shops all over the Northwest. And he made a huge fortune in one of the world’s really difficult businesses by having shrewd systems. And he can tell you a lot better than we can.” —Charlie Munger

[8:55] The meeting between James Sinegal (the founder of Costco) and Jeff Bezos in 2001 and how it changed Amazon.

[13:23] Les Schwab’s early life/ his father’s alcoholism / on his own at 16

[18:10] How Les Schwab made more money in high school than his principal. During the Great Depression!

[21:00] Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

[25:55] How Les Schwab starts his business at 33 years old

[28:22] Les Schwab’s unique ideas on profit sharing / being good at sales is like being a magician

[34:45] I had made up my mind to do it differently

[36:30] Determined to be independent / early days full of struggle / modest initial goals

[39:09] Cap your downside and don’t build a business on someone else’s property

[45:20] My thinking was to reverse it. / The idea of a tire showroom

[48:28] How to get the incentives right

[57:03] Be kind. We are all temporary. The death of his son.

[59:30] Falling out with his partners over money

[1:02:44] Unselfish for good reasons

[1:06:00] Life is hard for people who think they can take a shortcut

[1:09:17] The company isn’t for sale. The stock will remain in the family / What would I do with the money?

[1:11:55] Success in life is being a good husband, a good father and you end up being a second father to hundreds of other men and women. Last night I attended a wedding of a young man from our office. This young man told me that two men had influenced his life, his father and me. That’s worth more than money.

[1:15:00] Most companies put the emphasis on the wrong part

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#104 Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA)

30 december 2019 | 82 min

#103 Hetty Green (The Richest Woman in America)

22 december 2019 | 62 min

What I learned from reading The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach.

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[0:10] She was the smartest woman on Wall Street, a financial genius, a railroad magnate, a real estate mogul, a Gilded Era renegade, a reliable source for city funds.

[0:19] “I have had fights with some of the greatest financial men in the country. Did you ever hear of any of them getting ahead of Hetty Green?”

[1:10] I go my own way, take no partners, risk nobody else’s fortune.

[1:29] She was considered the single biggest individual financier in the world.

[1:58] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

[2:55] Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.

[3:31] Don’t close a bargain until you have reflected on it overnight.

[4:00] I am always buying when everyone wants to sell, and selling when everyone wants to buy.

[4:51] I never set out for anything that I don’t conquer.

[5:55] To live content with small means; To seek elegance rather than luxury, And refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich.

[7:27] Her father’s advice: Never owe anyone anything.

[9:44] By the time she is 13 she is the family bookkeeper.

[11:53] She paid attention when he (her father) repeated again and again that property was a trust to be taken care of and enlarged for future generations. She obeyed when he insisted that she keep her own accounts in order and later praised the experience. “There is nothing better than this sort of training,” she said.

[13:28] Hetty hungered for money itself.

[14:08] List of financial panics discussed in the book: Panic of 1857, Panic of 1866, The Long Depression 1873-1896 which had several panics within, (Panic of 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893) Panic 1901 and Panic of 1907.

[16:18] She was a master at studying what happened before her.

[16:31] The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by TJ Stiles. (Founders #54) and Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)

[17:15] Clever men like Russell Sage, a future role model for Hetty, kept substantial amounts of cash on hand and used it to buy stocks at rock-bottom prices. John Pierpont Morgan told his son there was a good lesson to be learned from other people’s greed and good bargains to be found in the aftermath. In future times, Hetty would always keep cash available and use it to buy when everyone else was selling. Much later, Warren Buffett would do the same. But most people watched their money wash away in the flood.

[23:57] This was the start of the contrary investing she followed for the rest of her life: buying when everyone else was selling; selling when everyone else was buying. “I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business,” she said.

[26:46] Hetty, like Claude Shannon, Warren Buffett, and Ed Thorp, collected a lot of information. Hetty read more and studied more than most other people.

[28:07] The opportunities were enormous for those with the stomach to take the risks.

[30:25] The markets may change, the methods may be revamped, but as long as human beings are propelled by greed and ego, they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

[31:11] She had a pile of cash when others were scouring for pennies, but she also had a deft mind and the colossal courage to push against the crowd.

[36:17] Hetty’s investments were not always known: she purchased property under fictitious names, bought stocks under other identities, and was praised by shrewd observers for how closely she held her positions.

[37:41] Williams greeted his new customer with all the courtesy and respect due a woman of her wealth. “I have observed that many a tattered garment hides a package of bonds and that gorgeous clothing does not always cover a millionaire,” he told his colleagues.

[44:14] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #37)

[45:52] Hetty didn't like the idle rich. She respected authentic achievement.

[48:48] Companies who stocks had skyrocketed collapsed when their lack of capital was revealed.

[49:22] The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. (Founders #29)

[49:30] More companies die from indigestion than starvation. —David Packard

[50:58] She used her intelligence to increase her wealth, her independence to live as she wished, and her strength to battle anyone who stood in her way.

[55:24] They sought her out to sell off their possessions. As rates rose, more and more of “the solidest men in Wall Street,” she said, from “financiers to legitimate businessmen,” came to call, begging to unload everything from palatial mansions to automobiles. “They came to me in droves,” she recalled.

[59:30] When it comes to spending your life, there have to be some things neglected. If you try to do too much, you can never get anywhere.

[59:53] You see this advice over and over again. You just got to figure out what that thing is that you want to focus on. No one can answer that question for you.

[1:00:14] I think the key to a happy life is getting to the end of your life with the least amount of regrets as possible.

[1:00:24] She prized the life she led. “I enjoy being in the thick of things. I like to have a part in the great movements of the world and especially of this country. I like to deal with big things and with big men. I would rather do [this] than play bridge. Indeed, my work is my amusement, and I believe it is also my duty.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#102 Akio Morita (Sony)

15 december 2019 | 76 min

What I learned from reading Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita.

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[0:01] Forty years ago, a small group gathered in a burned-out department store building in war-devastated downtown Tokyo. Their purpose was to found a new company, their optimistic goal was to develop the technologies that would help rebuild Japan's economy.

[5:00] I was born the first son and fifteenth-generation heir to one of Japan's finest and oldest sake-brewing families. The Morita family has been making sale for three hundred years. Unfortunately, the taste of a couple of generations of Morita family heads was so refined and their collecting skills so acute that the business suffered while they pursued their artistic interests, letting the business take care of itself, or, rather, putting it in other hands. They relied on hired managers to run the Morita company, but to these managers the business was no more than a livelihood, and if the business did not do well, that was to be regretted, but it was not crucial to their personal survival. In the end, all the managers stood to lose was a job. They did not carry the responsibility of the generations, of maintaining the continuity and prosperity of the enterprise and the financial well-being of the Morita family.

[8:18] Tenacity, perseverance, and optimism are traits that have been handed down to me through the family genes.

[9:25] I was taught that scolding subordinates and looking for people to blame for problems—seeking scapegoats—is useless. These concepts have stayed with me and helped me develop the philosophy of management that served me very well.

[10:28] I had to teach myself because the subjects I was really interested in were not taught in my school in those days.

[14:09] The emperor, who until now had never before spoken directly to his people, told us the immediate future would be grim. He said that we could “pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come," but we had to do it "by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable."

[23:58] When some of my relatives came to see me, they were so shocked by the shabby conditions that they thought I had become an anarchist. They could not understand how, if I was not a radical, I could choose to work in a place like that.

[24:28] Ibuka and I had often spoken of the concept of our new company as an innovator, a clever company that would make new high technology products in ingenious ways.

[29:36] We were engineers and we had a big dream of success. We thought that in making a unique product, we would surely make a fortune. I then realized that having unique technology and being able to make unique products are not enough to keep a business going. You have to sell the products, and to do that you have to show the potential buyer the real value of what you are selling.

[32:20] There was an acute shortage of stenographers because so many people had been pushed out of school and into war work. Until that shortage could be corrected, the courts of Japan were trying to cope with a small, overworked corps of court stenographers. We were able to demonstrate our machine for the Japan Supreme Court, and we sold twenty machines almost instantly! Those people had no difficulty realizing how they could put our device to practical use; they saw the value in the tape recorder immediately.

[38:03] Marketing is really a form of communication. We had to educate our customers to the uses of our products.

[39:15] We would often have the market to ourselves for a year or more before the other companies would be convinced that the product would be a success. And we made a lot of money, having the market all to ourselves.

[40:20] The public does not know what is possible, but we do. So instead of doing a lot of market research, we refine our thinking on a product and its use and try to create a market for it by educating and communicating with the public.

[42:33] Everybody gave me a hard time. It seemed as though nobody liked the idea [the Walkman]. “It sounds like a good idea, but will people buy it if it doesn't have recording capability? I don't think so." I said, “Millions of people have bought car stereo without recording capability and I think millions will buy this machine.”

[46:38] "We definitely want some of these. We will take one hundred thousand units." One hundred thousand units! I was stunned. It was an incredible order, worth several times the total capital of our company. When he told me that there was one condition: we would have to put the Bulova name on the radios. That stopped me. We wanted to make a name for our company on the strength of our own products. We would not produce radios under another name. When I would not budge, he got short with me. "Our company name is a famous brand name that has taken over fifty years to establish," he said. "Nobody has ever heard of your brand name. Why not take advantage of ours?" I understood what he was saying, but I had my own view. “Fifty years ago," I said, “your brand name must have been just as unknown as our name is today. I am here with a new product, and I am now taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise you that our name will be just as famous as your company name is, today."

[49:04] When I attended middle school, discipline was very strict, and this included our physical as well as our mental training. Our classrooms were very cold in winter; we didn't even have a heater; and we were not allowed to wear extra clothes. In the navy,I had hard training. In boot camp every morning we had to run a long way before breakfast. In those days I did not think of myself as a physically strong person, and yet under such strict training I found I was not so weak after all, and the knowledge of my own ability gave me confidence in myself that I did not have before. It is the same with mental discipline; unless you are forced to use your mind, you become mentally lazy and you will never fulfill your potential.

[52:06] Norio Ohga, who had been a vocal arts student at the Tokyo University of Arts when he saw our first audio tape recorder back in 1950. He was a great champion of the tape recorder, but he was severe with us because he didn't think our early machine was good enough.He was right, of course; our first machine was rather primitive. We invited him to be a paid critic even while he was still in school. His ideas were very challenging. He said then, "A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique."

[54:21] Nobody can live twice, and the next twenty or thirty years is the brightest period of your life. You only get it once. When you leave the company thirty years from now or when your life is finished, I do not want you to regret that you spent all those years here. That would be a tragedy. I cannot stress the point too much that this is your responsibility to yourself. So I say to you, the most important thing in the next few months is for you to decide whether you will be happy or unhappy here.

[59:40] My argument again and again was that by saving money instead of investing it in the business you might gain profit on a short-term basis, but in actual fact, you would be cashing in the assets that had been built up in the past.

[1:00:00] One must prepare the groundwork among the customers before you can expect success in the marketplace. It is a time-honored Japanese gardening technique to prepare a tree for transplanting by slowly and carefully binding the roots over a period of time, bit by bit, to prepare the tree for the shock of the change it is about to experience. This process, called Nemawashi, takes time and patience, but it rewards you, if it is done properly, with a healthy transplanted tree. Advertising and promotion for a brand-new, innovative product is just as important.

[1:01:19] If Japanese clients come into the office of a new and struggling company and see plush carpet and private offices and too much comfort, they become suspicious that this company is not serious, that it is devoting too much thought and company resources to management's comfort, and perhaps not enough to the product or to potential customers. Too often I have found in dealing with foreign companies that such superfluous things as the physical structure and office decor take up a lot more time and attention and money than they are worth.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#101 Warren Buffett (The Tao of Warren Buffett)

8 december 2019 | 42 min

What I learned from reading The Tao of Warren Buffett by David Clark and Mary Buffett.

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[0:01]The more I heard Warren speak, the more I learned. Not only about investing, but about business and life.

[4:02] The great personal fortunes in this country weren’t built on a portfolio of fifty companies. They were built by someone who identified one wonderful business.

[5:45] It is impossible to unsign a contract, so do all your thinking before you sign.

[8:35] I don’t try to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.

[14:27] The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

[19:00] My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.

[22:14] When management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

[23:07] Managing your career is like investing—the degree of difficulty does not count. So you can save yourself money and pain by getting on the right train.

[24:55] There is a huge difference between the business that grows and requires lots of capital to do so and the business that grows and doesn’t require capital.

[27:00] I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they’re going to look like in ten or fifteen year; time. Take Wrigley’s chewing gum. I don’t think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum

[28:50] You want to learn from experience, but you want to learn from other’s people’s experience when you can.

[29:20] The really good business manager doesn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘This is the day that I am going to cut costs,’ any more than he wakes up and decides to practice breathing.

[30:07] A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought / A story from a young Steve Jobs

[31:55] The business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

[32:42] If you let yourself be undisciplined on the small things, you will probably be undisciplined on the large things as well.

[35:15] George Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: Himself.

[41:15] No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#100 Warren Buffett (The Snowball)

1 december 2019 | 86 min

What I learned from reading The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder.

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[0:01] What he was teaching were the lessons that had emerged from the unfolding of his own life

[4:35] The dichotomy of Warren Buffett

[9:20] Warren Buffett wants to be remembered as a teacher

[11:52] Buffett’s idea of Inner scorecard vs Outer scorecard

[13:49] Warren Buffett’s early family life

[18:03] Learning to avoid the habit of thinking in only one direction (18:03),

[24:30] Warren’s WHY

[29:58] A young troublemaker and how Warren’s dad convinced him to change his behavior

[32:20] Warren did what you are doing right now: Since a young age Warren had studied the lives of men like Jay Cooke, Daniel Drew, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.

[33:48] Turning a rejection into one of the best things to ever happen to him

[38:30] Mimicry instead of independent thought: Warren didn’t understand why they couldn’t see what was right before their eyes.

[42:20] One of the most inspiring things about reading biographies is you are constantly reminded that we all have the ability to improve. A young Warren Buffett was so afraid of public speaking he would vomit.

[48:06] Warren learning from and working with his idol: Ben Graham

[52:20] Warren’s advice for everyone: Sell yourself an hour a day

[57:28] Intensity is the price of excellence and examples of people Warren wanted to do business with

[1:01:08] Warren Buffett is an obsessive/Munger would later call Buffett an implacable acquirer, like John D. Rockefeller in the early days of assembling his empire, who let nobody and nothing get in his way. (1:01:08),

[1:13:10] Warren Buffett on his biggest mistake

[1:16:11] What Buffett valued in the lives of others/His idea about claim checks

[1:19:25] His “Twenty Punches” approach to investing

[1:22:38] Warren’s answer to the question, “What has been your greatest success and greatest failure?”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#99 Carroll Shelby (My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business)

24 november 2019 | 78 min

What I learned from reading Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography by Rinsey Mills.

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[3:27] I love everything about this person. I like the way he thought. I like the way he lived his life.

[3:38] It is almost unbelievable all the different events that could happen in one human lifetime.

[3:52] He lived to 89 years old and he used every single year that he was alive.

[5:22] He could talk his way out of anything.

[6:40] He knew what he wanted. He didn't want anybody else telling him what to do.

[7:41] He had a love for anything that would go fast.

[10:48] He didn’t know what to do with his life.

[15:54] Follow your natural drift. —Charlie Munger

[17:00] I can't work for anybody.

[18:42] He has fun his entire life. As soon as they stop being fun he runs away.

[22:20] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #93 and #222)

[24:17] Money only solves money problems.

[26:32] Scratching around doing insignificant races with inferior machinery wasn't an option in which he could see any future.

[27:26] Whatever setbacks he encountered he was invariably able to bounce back through a combination of self-belief and an aptitude for making other people believe in him.

[27:45] Enthusiasm and passion are universal attractive traits.

[28:05] Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97) and Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte. (Founders #98)

[30:29] The Purple Cow by Seth Godin

[32:22] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

[32:38] Having extreme focus in the information age is a superpower.

[36:13] Racing was a means to an end. He wanted to build his own car. That was his main goal.

[42:34] He still didn't know quite how he was going to do it but if he was finally going to produce his own sports car.

[53:48] All big things start small.

[58:31] 12 months after Shelby was deeply depressed his life is completely different and the Shelby Cobra starts to take shape.

[1:00:06] A summary of the early days of Shelby Automotive: Everything had to be done tomorrow and by the cheapest method possible.

[1:01:12] It wasn't uncommon for them to work until two or three in the morning and be back down there at 7:30 the next morning.

[1:02:22] There's just something special about a group of highly talented, smart people working together for a common goal.

[1:03:48] Shelby hates company politics. That is why he wanted to run a smaller company.

[1:17:30] My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#98 Enzo Ferrari (the making of an automobile empire)

18 november 2019 | 63 min

#97 Enzo Ferrari (Ferrari vs Ford)

10 november 2019 | 55 min

What I learned from reading Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A. J. Baime.

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[0:01] Racing was the most magnificent marketing tool the industry had ever known.

[2:42] Founders vs Managers

[3:43] Founders Podcasts on Henry Ford: #9, #26, and #80.

[4:29] The passion Enzo Ferrari had for his products

[5:50] The same broad features keep recurring over and over again/ In their detailed appearance these broad features are never twice the same.

[8:09] Steve Jobs on passion.

[12:00] Steve Jobs on building the Macintosh/ Artisans have soul in the game.

[13:05] Enzo Ferrari’s schedule at 58 years old / His early life

[17:08] Ferrari’s 3 principles for winning

[20:20] How Enzo Ferrari started his company / Racing as marketing / Ferrari’s personality and his philosophy on building a business

[24:49] Enzo Ferrari’s extreme level of dedication

[25:48] How Enzo Ferrari described his product

[26:54] How and why the Ford/Ferrari negotiations begin

[35:37] How Enzo Ferrari described the process of building a product

[38:07] The advantage founder led companies have / I made a mistake here. I said Les Miles when I meant Ken Miles. Les Miles is a football coach. Ken Miles is a race car driver.

[40:58] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

[42:06] Enzo Ferrari on why he doesn’t have a social life.

[42:57] You don’t understand. When I go in there, if I don’t really and truly believe I am the best in the world, I had better not go in at all.

[49:05] Enzo Ferrari played chess while everyone else was playing checkers.

[52:20] It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#96 James J. Hill (Empire Builder of the Northwest)

4 november 2019 | 59 min

#95 Claude Shannon

27 oktober 2019 | 65 min

#94 Henry Singleton (The Outsiders)

20 oktober 2019 | 81 min

#93 Ed Thorp (A Man for All Markets)

13 oktober 2019 | 68 min

What I learned from reading A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward Thorp.

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[0:01] Ed Thorp’s memoir reads like a thriller—mixing wearable computers that would have made James Bond proud, shady characters, great scientists, and poisoning attempts. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and, not least of all, fun. Thorp is also known to be a generous man, intellectually speaking, eager to share his discoveries with random strangers.

[1:23] Ed Thorp is the first modern mathematician who successfully used quantitative methods for risk taking—and most certainly the first mathematician who met financial success doing it.

[3:19] Ed was initially an academic, but he favored learning by doing, with his skin in the game. When you reincarnate as practitioner, you want the mountain to give birth to the simplest possible strategy, and one that has the smallest number of side effects, the minimum possible hidden complications.

[4:33] As Warren Buffet said: “In order to succeed you must first survive.” You need to avoid ruin. At all costs.

[6:48] It is vastly less stressful to be independent—and one is never independent when involved in a large structure with powerful clients. It is hard enough to deal with the intricacies of probabilities, you need to avoid the vagaries of exposure to human moods. True success is exiting some rat race to modulate one’s activities for peace of mind.

[7:51] Read the forward by Nassim Taleb

[9:14] Ed’s 4 rules for learning

First, rather than subscribing to widely accepted views—such as you can’t beat the casinos—I checked for myself.

Second, since I tested theories by inventing new experiments, I formed the habit of taking the result of pure thought—such as a formula for valuing warrants—and using it profitably.

Third, when I set a worthwhile goal for myself, I made a realistic plan and persisted until I succeeded.

Fourth, I strove to be consistently rational, not just in a specialized area of science, but in dealing with all aspects of the world. I also learned the value of withholding judgement until I could make a decision based on evidence.

[11:15] I admired the heroes who, through extraordinary abilities and resourcefulness, achieved great things. I may have been inspired to mirror this in the future by using my mind to overcome obstacles.

[14:29] They told us that my aunt Nona and her husband had been beheaded in front of their children.

[16:45] At its core, this is a book about how to live well.

[17:55] Ed develops simple systems for everything in his life.

[20:37] If anyone knew whether physical prediction at roulette was possible, it should be Richard Feynman. I asked him, “Is there any way to beat the game of roulette?” When he said there wasn’t, I was relieved and encouraged. This suggested that no one had yet worked out what I believed was possible. With this incentive, I began a series of experiments.

[21:15] “Try to figure out what your skill set is and apply that to the markets.” Thorp likes to stay within his circle of competence. This is a hallmark of people who are rational. In that sense, Thorp reminds me of Warren Buffett. A Dozen Things I learned from Ed Thorp

[21:50] I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those gambling games or make those investments where I have an edge.

[23:50] He wrote a book that sold over a million copies: Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One

[26:48] In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them.

[27:52] Ed’s philosophy on life: My thoughts then were much like I expected his to have been: that acknowledgment, applause, and honor are welcome and add zest to life but they are not ends to be pursued. I felt then, as I do now, that what matters is what you do and how you do it, the quality of the time you spend, and the people you share it with.

[30:01] Even though the Goliath I was challenging had always won, I knew something no one else did: He was nearsighted, clumsy, slow, and stupid, and we were going to fight on my terms, not his.

[33:09] A good defense keeps other people from taking your money.

[36:39] History doesn’t repeat, human nature does: The frauds, swindles, and hoaxes, a flood reported almost daily in the financial press, have continued unabated during the more than fifty years of my investment career. But then, hoaxes, scams, manias, and large-scale financial irrationalities have been with us from the beginnings of the markets in the seventeenth century.

[40:24] You are unlikely to have an edge on anything you hear in the news.

[46:24] As we chatted about compound interest, Warren gave one of his favorite examples of its remarkable power, how if the Manhattan Indians could have invested $24, the value then of the trinkets Peter Minuit paid them for Manhattan in 1626, at a net return of 8 percent, they could buy the land back now along with all the improvements. Warren said he was asked how he found so many millionaires for his partnership. Laughing, he said to me, “I told them I grew my own.”

[52:07] How Ed selected employees: For this to work, I needed people who could follow up without being led by the hand, as management time was in short supply. Since much of what we were doing was being invented as we went along, and our investment approach was new, I had to teach a unique set of skills. I chose young smart people just out of university because they were not set in their ways from previous jobs. Better to teach a young athlete who comes fresh to his sport than to retrain one who has learned bad form.

[57:13] Life is really about spending time well.

[1:01:45] When Princeton Newport Partners closed, Vivian and I had money enough for the rest of our lives. Though the ending of PNP was traumatic for us all, and the future wealth destroyed was in the billions, it freed us to do more of what we enjoyed most: spend time with each other and the family and friends we loved, travel, and pursue our interests. Taking to heart the lyrics of the song “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think),” Vivian and I would make the most of the one thing we could never have enough of—time together. Success on Wall Street was getting the most money. Success for us was having the best life.

[1:04:30] I learned at an early age to teach myself. This paid off later on because there weren’t any courses in how to beat blackjack, build a computer for roulette, or launch a market-neutral hedge fund.

[1:07:19] As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Time is the stuff life is made of,” and how you spend it makes all the difference.

[1:07:37] Whatever you do, enjoy your life and the people who share it with you, and leave something good of yourself for the generations to follow.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#92 Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon

7 oktober 2019 | 82 min

What I learned from reading Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone.

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Claude Shannon was as close to a sure thing as existed [2:53]

The beginning of information theory [7:11]

Project X [9:09]

introduction to Ed Thorpe [15:05]

using math and physics to beat Las Vegas [18:03]

Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon meet [20:45]

testing Thorpe’s Blackjack theory [26:00]

The core of John Kelly’s philosophy of risk can be stated without math. It is that even unlikely events must come to pass eventually. Therefore, anyone who accepts small risks of losing everything will lose everything, sooner or later. The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails. [28:23]

I’d be a bum in the street with a tin cup if the markets were efficient. —Warren Buffett [44:30]

how Claude Shannon begins studying the stock market [46:45]

Claude Shannon and Henry Singleton [48:16]

why and how Ed Thorp started investing in stocks [49:49]

Thorp starts a hedge fund and starts working remotely [52:49]

Ed Thorp meets Warren Buffett [54:20]

An acid test of Princeton/Newport’s market neutrality came in the Black Monday crash of October 19, 1987. The Dow Jones index lost 23 percent of its value in a single day. Princeton/Newport’s $ 600 million portfolio shed only about $ 2 million in the crash. Princeton Newport’s return for the year was an astonishing 34 percent. [59:36]

the implosion of Long Term Capital Management [1:07:00]

The thing you should do is the opposite of what you feel you should do. –Jim Clayton [1:09:10]

A quote from 1738: A man who risks his entire fortune acts like a simpleton, however great may be the possible gain. — Daniel Bernoulli [1:13:00]

Claude Shannon: A smart investor should understand where he has an edge and invest only in those opportunities. The methods Claude Shannon used to invest [1:17:10]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#91 Jim Clayton (Sold to Warren Buffett)

29 september 2019 | 61 min

#90 Charlie Munger (Poor Charlie's Almanack)

22 september 2019 | 97 min

What I learned from reading Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.

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Cicero, learned man that he was, believed in self-improvement so long as breath lasts.

In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables-like the discount warehouses of Costco.

"Invert, always invert." It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward.

It's quite interesting to think about Wal-Mart starting from a single store in Arkansas-against Sears with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears? And he does it in his own lifetime-in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than else. Walton anyone invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart. So he blew right by them all.

Charlie's redundancy in expressions and examples is purposeful: for the kind of deep "fluency" he advocates, he knows that repetition is the heart of instruction.

He enjoyed challenging the conventional wisdom of teachers and fellow students with his ever-increasing knowledge gained through voracious reading, particularly biographies.

He never forgot the sound principles taught by his grandfather: to concentrate on the task immediately in front of him and to control spending.

I would say everything about Charlie is unusual. I've been looking for the usual now for forty years, and I have yet to find it. Charlie marches to his own music, and it's music like virtually no one else is listening to. So, I would say that to try and typecast Charlie in terms of any other human that I can think of, no one would fit. He's got his own mold.

Charlie Munger has spent a professional lifetime studying lives that have worked well and others that have glitches or have experienced failures.

Despite his healthy self-image, Charlie would prefer to be anonymous.

I am a biography nut myself. And I think when you're trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personalities of the people who developed them. I think you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among 'the eminent dead,' but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education. It's way better than just giving the basic concepts.

His underlying philosophical view was one of deep and realistic cynicism about human nature, including a distaste for pure mob rule and demagogues.

Find out what you're best at and keep pounding away at it. This has always been Charlie's basic approach to life.

Take a simple idea and take it seriously.

Charlie likes the analogy of looking at one's ideas and approaches as "tools." “When a better tool (idea or approach) comes along, what could be better than to swap it for your old, less useful tool?Warren and I routinely do this, but most people, cling to their old, less useful tools."

Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business...if one took the 100 top business school graduates and made a composite of their triumphs, their record would not be as good as Singleton's.

You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don't, you're going to lose. And that's as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you've got an edge. And you've got to play within your own circle of competence.

The other aspect of avoiding vicarious wisdom is the rule for not learning from the best work done before yours. . .There once was a man who assiduously mastered the work of his best predecessors, despite a poor start and very tough time. Eventually, his own work attracted wide attention, and he said of his work: “If I have seen a little farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants."

In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time-none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads-and at how much I read.

There is no better teacher than history in determining the future. There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#89 David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man)

15 september 2019 | 81 min

#88 Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letters— All of them!

8 september 2019 | 181 min

#87 Thomas Watson (IBM)

1 september 2019 | 72 min

#86 Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber (A Genius and a Doomed Tycoon)

25 augusti 2019 | 81 min

#85 Walter and Olive Ann Beech (Aviation Legends)

18 augusti 2019 | 69 min

#84 Aristotle Onassis

11 augusti 2019 | 88 min

#83 Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World

4 augusti 2019 | 110 min

#82 David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)

28 juli 2019 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy.

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In my Confessions of an Advertising Man I told the story of how Ogilvy & Mather came into existence, and set forth the principles on which our early success had been based. What was then little more than a creative boutique in New York has since become one of the four biggest advertising agencies in the world, with 140 offices in 40 countries. Our principles seem to work.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.

When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’

Does old age disqualify me from writing about advertising in today’s world? Or could it be that perspective helps a man to separate the eternal verities of advertising from its passing fads?

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

All I do is report on how consumers react to different stimuli.

I ask you to forgive me for oversimplifying some complicated subjects, and for the dogmatism of my style – the dogmatism of brevity. We are both in a hurry.

I have seen one advertisement actually sell not twice as much, not three times as much, but 19½ times as much as another. Both advertisements occupied the same space. Both were run in the same publication. Both had photographic illustrations. Both had carefully written copy. The difference was that one used the right appeal and the other used the wrong appeal.

Do your homework You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework. I have always found this extremely tedious, but there is no substitute for it.

On product positioning: Now consider how you want to ‘position’ your product. This curious verb is in great favor among marketing experts, but no two of them agree what it means. My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’ I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later.

When asked what was the best asset a man could have, Albert Lasker – the most astute of all advertising men – replied, ‘Humility in the presence of a good idea.’ It is horribly difficult to recognize a good idea. I shudder to think how many I have rejected.

Make the product the hero.

There are no dull products, only dull writers.

The idea of a positively good product: It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is positively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours. ‘If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it.

Repeat your winners If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.

You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.

The good ones know more. I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition?’ This willful refusal to learn the rudiments of the craft is all too common.

For 35 years I have continued on the course charted by Gallup, collecting factors the way other men collect pictures and postage stamps. If you choose to ignore these factors, good luck to you. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they are found in oak forests.

Most good copywriters all into two categories poets and killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both killer and poet, you get rich.

Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him.

Be personal, direct and natural. You are a human being writing to another human being. Neither of you is an institution. You should be businesslike and courteous, but never stiff and impersonal.

Don’t get a job in advertising unless it interests you more than anything in the world.

St Augustine had this to say about pressure: To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

Any service business which gave higher priority to profits than to serving its clients deserved to fail.

Here I go, boasting again. There are better copywriters than I am, and scores of better administrators, but I doubt if many people have matched my record as a new business collector.

Focus on value not price: They want to know what commission you will charge. I answer, ‘If you are going to choose your agency on the basis of price, you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. What you should worry about is not the price you pay for your agency’s services, but the selling power of your advertising.

Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.

If you are lucky enough to have some news to tell, don’t bury it in your body copy, which nine out of ten people will not read. State it loud and clear in your headline.

Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another.

All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short.

I suspect that there is a negative correlation between the money spent on producing commercials and their power to sell products. My partner Al Eicoff was asked by a client to remake a $15,000 commercial for $100,000. Sales went down.

Don’t dawdle. Most big corporations behave as if profit were not a function of time.

When Jerry Lambert scored his breakthrough with Listerine, he speeded up the whole process of marketing by dividing time into months. He reviewed progress every 30 days, with the result that he made a fortune in record time.

Pricing is guesswork.

Advertising is a production cost: I have come to regard advertising as part of the product, to be treated as a production cost, not a selling cost. It follows that it should not be cut back when times are hard, any more than you would stint any other essential ingredient in your product.

What did these six giants have in common? All six of them were American. All six had other jobs before they went into advertising. At least five were gluttons for work, and uncompromising perfectionists. Four made their reputations as copywriters. Only three had university degrees.

Advertising is salesmanship in print. A definition that has never been improved.

Albert Lasker made more money than anyone in the history of the advertising business.

Lasker held that if an agency could write copy which sold the product, nothing else was needed.

He once defined an administrator as somebody without brains.

He once said: I didn’t want to make a great fortune. I wanted to show what I could do with my brains.

After the war I decided to try my luck in advertising, but I stood in such awe of Young & Rubicam that I did not dare apply to them for a job. As I thought they were the only agency where I would like to work, I had no choice but to start my own. In one of his last letters before he died, Rubicam wrote, ‘We knew you before you started your agency. How come we missed you?’ By that time we had become great friends. ‘Friends’ is not the right word. He was my patron, inspiration, counselor, critic and conscience. I was his hero-worshipping disciple.

He didn’t leave behind a list of rules. He did leave behind an aphorism: resist the usual. In advertising, the beginning of greatness is to be different, and the beginning of failure is to be the same.

His attitude to the creative process can be summed up in three things he said:

1 There is an inherent drama in every product. Our No. 1 job is to dig for it and capitalize on it.

2 When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.

3 Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.

Claude Hopkins’ book Scientific Advertising changed the course of my life.

It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five to ten times over.

Bill was asked what changes he expected in advertising in the eighties. He replied: Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion years. Only the superficial things have changed. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#81 Henry Royce (Founder of Rolls-Royce)

22 juli 2019 | 72 min

#80 Henry Ford (Today and Tomorrow)

14 juli 2019 | 46 min

#79 Charlie Munger (The Complete Investor)

7 juli 2019 | 73 min

#78 Charlie Munger (the Tao of Charlie Munger)

30 juni 2019 | 59 min

What I learned from reading Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark

How is it that Charlie—who trained as a meteorologist and a lawyer and never took a single college course in economics, marketing, finance, or accounting—became one of the greatest business and investing geniuses of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Therein lies the mystery. [0:44]

Charlie Munger was learning this important investment skill while playing poker with his army buddies. That’s where he learned to fold his hand when the odds were against him and bet heavy when the odds were with him, a strategy he later adapted to investing. [11:12]

Charlie thought a lot about business during that time. He made a habit of asking people what was the best business they knew of. He longed to join the rich elite clientele his silk-stocking law firm served. He decided that each day he would devote one hour of his time at the office to work on his own real estate projects, and by doing so he completed five. He has said that the first million dollars he put together was the hardest money he ever earned. It was also during that period that he realized he would never become really rich practicing law; he’d have to find something else. [12:18]

Warren, in summing up Charlie’s impact on his investment style over the last fifty-seven years, said, “Charlie shoved me in the direction of not just buying bargains, as Ben Graham had taught me. This was the real impact that he had on me. It took a powerful force to move me on from Graham’s limiting view. It was the power of Charlie’s mind.” [15:33]

Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant. [17:39]

“People are trying to be smart—all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it’s harder than most people think.” [17:58]

All good things in life come from compounding. [19:34]

This important investment philosophy assumes that one is better off buying a business with exceptional business economics working in its favor and holding it for many years than engaging in a lot of buying and selling. [19:42]

Charlie knows that time is a good friend to a business that has exceptional economics working in its favor, but for a mediocre business time can be a curse. [20:25]

Andrew Carnegie says in his autobiography you should study how the great fortunes are made. It's not a scattershot approach. They identified the best business possible and they put all their energy and effort into it. That's certainly what Andrew Carnegie did. [22:39]

Charlie makes the point that Berkshire Hathaway probably has the most successful investment record in humanity. That is a hell of a statement and he is probably right. [26:10]

Charlie advocates keeping $10 million in cash, and Berkshire keeps $72 billion sitting around in cash, waiting for the right deal to show up. The lousy return their cash balances are getting is a trade-off—poor initial rate of return in exchange for years of high returns from finding excellent businesses selling at a fair price. This is an element of the Munger investment equation that is almost always misunderstood. Why? Because most investors cannot image that sitting on a large pool of cash year after year, waiting for the right investment, could possibly be a winning investment strategy, let alone one that would make them superrich. [27:11]

“I think that, every time you see the word EBITDA, you should substitute the word ‘bullshit earnings.’ ” [28:52]

You have to wait for the right company—one with a durable competitive advantage—that is selling at the right price. And when Charlie says wait, he means wait as long as it takes, which can mean years. Warren got out of the stock market in the late 1960s, and he waited five years before he found anything he was interested in buying. [31:10]

When Charlie and Warren say that they intend to hold an investment forever, they mean forever! Who on Wall Street would ever make such a statement? That’s one of the reasons Charlie and Warren have never worried about anyone mimicking their investment style—because no other institution or individual has the discipline or patience to wait as long as they can. [31:46]

Charlie and Warren’s theory is that a company with a durable competitive advantage has business economics that will expand the underlying value of the business over time, and the more time passes, the more the company’s value will expand. Thus, once the purchase is made, it is wisest to sit on the investment as long as possible, because the longer we own the company, the more it grows in value, and the more it grows in value, the richer we become. [34:48]

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: ‘It’s the strong swimmers who drown.’ ” [36:14]

One is actually better off reading a hundred business biographies than a hundred books on investing. Why? Because if we learn the history of a hundred different business models, we learn when the businesses had tough times and how they got through them; we also learn what made them great, or not so great. [38:44]

“In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables—like the discount warehouses of Costco.” [41:53]

“If you’re not willing to react with equanimity to a market price decline of 50% two or three times a century you’re not fit to be a common shareholder and you deserve the mediocre result you’re going to get compared to the people who do have the temperament, who can be more philosophical about these market fluctuations.” [46:23]

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day—if you live long enough—most people get what they deserve.” [48:42]

He implemented a self-education regime for one hour a day to learn such things as real estate development and stock investing. It was slow going at first, but after a great number of years and thousands of books read, he started to see how different areas of knowledge interplay with each other and how knowledge, like money, can compound, making one more and more aware of the world in which he or she lives. He has often said that he is a much better investor at ninety than he was at fifty, a fact he attributes to the compounding effect of knowledge. [49:09]

There is another point that I’ve noticed with men and women who truly excel at their craft or profession: they keep on learning and improving themselves long after most people would have retired. [54:02]

“Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading. If you want wisdom, you’ll get it sitting on your ass. That’s the way it comes.” [54:16]

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads—and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.” [55:04]

“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy, does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” [55:22]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#77 Steve Jobs (The NeXT Years)

23 juni 2019 | 98 min

#76 Steve Jobs: The Early Years of Apple

16 juni 2019 | 73 min

#75 Henry Clay Frick: Andrew Carnegie's Partner

9 juni 2019 | 83 min

#74 The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

2 juni 2019 | 55 min

#73 Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick: The Bitter Partnership That Changed America

26 maj 2019 | 92 min

#72 Stan Lee: Founder of Marvel

19 maj 2019 | 59 min

#71 Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters

12 maj 2019 | 108 min

#70 Mark Spitznagel: The Dao of Capital

6 maj 2019 | 59 min

#69 Charles Goodyear: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly

28 april 2019 | 73 min

#68 Daniel Ludwig: The Invisible Billionaire

21 april 2019 | 87 min

What I learned from reading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.

The cameraman was excited and more than a little nervous. In a matter of moments he would enjoy a unique opportunity: the chance to snap the first unposed picture ever taken of the richest man in the world. The strange thing was that most Americans had never even heard of Daniel Keith Ludwig.

How could a man in these days of mass media coverage and public obsession with world records, manage to accumulate a $3 billion fortune with hardly anyone becoming aware of it?

Obsessed with privacy, he reportedly pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.

Daniel Ludwig is a man nobody knows yet his tanker fleet rivals those of the fabulous Greeks whose names are symbols of wealth. His empire began with shipping, grew big with shipbuilding, is branching out now into other fields.

With Ludwig, work is almost an obsession. Spartan in personal habits, business gets almost 100% of his attention.

Once a project begins Ludwig doesn't rest easy until completion date.

Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.

He is interested in achievement, not fame.

I'm in this business because I like it. I have no hobbies.

D.K. was strictly a solo act. His zest for these operations is that of the lone wolf. He shares neither the rewards nor the risks with anyone.

Ludwig doesn't drink much, he doesn't smoke at all, he doesn't entertain lavishly. He counts cakories religiously. His only bad habit is work and that he can't stop.

Even as a boy Daniel exhibited a strong drive toward the acquisition of money.

During the mid-to-late-1920s Ludwig was more involved in buying and selling ships than he was in operating them.

The result was that hundreds of government-owned vessels, built at taxpayers' expense, were being sold off at well below cost both to legitimate shippers and to speculators who did the minimum required renovation work and then sold the ships for a quick profit.

He never liked spending money unless there was a good chance that it would make him more.

The advantage of bulk carriers was versatility; these ships were to be designed in such a way that they could haul either dry cargo (coal or metal ores) or liquids (petroleum or gasoline) without expensive, time-consuming structural conversion. If the oil market fell off, a bulk carrier could haul ore for a while. Or it could haul oil in one direction and coal or ore on the voyage home.

Ludwig needed a way to obtain ready money without either taking partners or assuming heavy mortgages. His early experiences with partnerships had been costly, and borrowing to finance ship renovation was no better. It was at this time that D.K. came up with the "two-name paper" arrangement he later said was the chief reason for his wealth. It all sounded so simple: go to an oil company; get it to sign a long-term charter to ship so much oil on a regular basis; take the charter to a bank and, using it as collateral, obtain a loan to build or renovate a ship to haul the oil to fulfill the charter. The plan was legal, logical, and ingenious.

He was able to start his climb toward being the world's biggest shipper mainly because he had finally managed to hook into the big time. He was now hauling oil for the Rockefeller empire.

One of the main reasons he had been buying old ships was to salvage and sell the parts removed during renovation. When he purchased a surplus ship he could recoup much of his investment by selling off the old engine and other machinery. Marine salvage was as familiar to D.K. as his own face in the mirror.

Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"

D.K.'s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.

Most of Ludwig's shipbuilding innovations were aimed toward a single goal: increasing payload without increasing cost. He was ever on the lookout for ways to reduce tanker design to the bare-bones minimum. His ships had much thinner decks than the industry standard. A modification that meant less weight and a smaller fuel bill.

D.K.'s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."

He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.

Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.

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Before starting construction, however, D.K. had a little chore to perform, one that he intended to do personally. Twice he had trusted the word of specialists, and twice he had been burned. He had believed them when they told him he could bring fully loaded 60,000 ton ore carriers down the Orinoco without running them aground.

And his geologists had failed to discover, until after considerable work was done, that the coral rock underlying Grand Bahama Island was too fragile to support giant supertankers.

These episodes had cost D.K. considerable time and expense, so before building a refinery in Panama, he decided to check out the site himself. Dressed in baggy work clothes, he caught a night flight out of New York to Panama City and arrived at Tocumen Airport just about dawn.

He sauntered into a little village store at the bay's edge just as it was opening, casual as any gringo tourist down for a holiday and a bit of fishing. Pulling a quarter out of his pocket, he paid for his purchases: a heavy bolt costing a nickel and a twenty-cent ball of string. As a few loiterers watched with amused curiosity, he unwound the string, measured it out in six-foot lengths, and tied a knot at each interval. Then he made a slip knot at one end and drew it tight around the bolt.

This done, he went outside, made arrangements with the dock owner to rent a motorboat, and spent the rest of the morning and afternoon puttering around the bay, checking with his weighted line the accuracy of every sounding marked on a nautical chart he had brought along. Only when he had satisfied himself that the water was as deep as the chart said did he fly back to New York and give the signal to begin construction.

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An engineer by training and temperament, he much preferred machines to men. Humans were unreliable and had far too many needs. With a machine, you only had to give it a little fuel and maintenance occasionally and it would perform faithfully and uncomplainingly until it wore out. It didn't ask for food, shelter, clothing, or higher wages.

I do not have anything to say to anybody. I do not give press interviews. To hell with you. I'm busy.

A clever, mechanically inventive mind committed to the principle of getting the maximum utility and profit from the minimum expenditure of time, space, energy, and money. Plus an ambition that seemingly knows no limits. Plus a decided preference for deeds over words, machines over men. Plus a high degree of ruthlessness.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty

14 april 2019 | 86 min

#66 Henry Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West

7 april 2019 | 85 min

#65 Kirk Kerkorian: Penniless Dropout became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History

31 mars 2019 | 70 min

What I learned from reading The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History by William C. Rempel.

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[0:16] He was a humble man privately proud of his accomplishments, a business genius who ignored his MBA advisers, a daring aviator and movie mogul, a gambler at the casino and on Wall Street who played the odds in both houses with uncanny skill.

[4:34] Kirk believed there was no point in placing small bets.

[16:48] He was a day laborer at MGA studios. He made $2.60 a day. Thirty years later he owned MGM and his investment was returning $260,000 a day.

[21:27] His low tolerance for mistakes and recklessness made him a demanding instructor. He often repeated the mantra: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots—but there are no old, bold pilots.

[46:54] He still relished big risks. And he subscribed to the logic of his friend and casino owner Wilbur Clark of the Desert Inn: “The smaller your bet, the more you lose when you win.” Besides, what’s the point—where’s the thrill—winning a small wager? Betting the limit became Kirk’s trademark.

[53:26] Kirk was now sitting on stock worth more than $66 million, a vast fortune by any measure. And no one was more surprised than he was.

[1:09:03] Kirk blamed Kirk. He had let himself become vulnerable. He hated that. He hated feeling helpless and at the mercy of forces beyond his control. He vowed never to let anything like that happen again.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#64 Coco Chanel: Her Life and Secrets

24 mars 2019 | 58 min

#63 The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

10 mars 2019 | 84 min

#62 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

4 mars 2019 | 67 min

#61 Malcom McLean: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

25 februari 2019 | 90 min

#60 Yvon Chouinard: What We've Learned from Patagonia's First 40 Years

18 februari 2019 | 72 min

#59 Howard Hughes: The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire

11 februari 2019 | 111 min

#58 John Bogle: Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

4 februari 2019 | 58 min

#57 John Bogle: Stay the Course: The Story of Vanguard and the Index Revolution

28 januari 2019 | 90 min

#56 The Biography of Herb Kelleher

22 januari 2019 | 70 min

#55 Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

14 januari 2019 | 83 min

#54 The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

8 januari 2019 | 90 min

#53 Who Is Michael Ovitz?

1 januari 2019 | 107 min

#52 The Republic of Tea: The Story of the Creation of a Business, as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders

25 december 2018 | 91 min

#51 Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic

17 december 2018 | 87 min

#50 Marc Andreessen's Blog Archive

11 december 2018 | 65 min

What I learned from reading The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen.

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[0:01] In this series of posts I will walk through some of my accumulated knowledge and experience in building high-tech startups.

[3:15] Great things about doing a startups:

Most fundamentally, the opportunity to be in control of your own destiny — you get to succeed or fail on your own, and you don’t have some bozo telling you what to do. For a certain kind of personality, this alone is reason enough to do a startup.

The opportunity to create something new — the proverbial blank sheet of paper. You have the ability — actually, the obligation— to imagine a product that does not yet exist and bring it into existence, without any of the constraints normally faced by larger companies.

The opportunity to have an impact on the world — to give people a new way to communicate, a new way to share information, a new way to work together, or anything else you can think of that would make the world a better place.

The ability to create your ideal culture and work with a dream team of people you get to assemble yourself. Want your culture to be based on people who have fun every day and enjoy working together? Or, are hyper-competitive both in work and play? Or, are super-focused on creating innovative new rocket science.

And finally, money —startups done right can of course be highly lucrative. This is not just an issue of personal greed — when things go right, your team and employees will themselves do very well and will be able to support their families, send their kids to college, and realize their dreams, and that’s really cool. And if you’re really lucky, you as the entrepreneur can ultimately make profound philanthropic gifts that change society for the better.

[5:15] However, there are many more reasons to not do a startup.

[5:28] First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.Over and over and over.

[6:04] Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

[6:42] The best thing about startups: you only ever experience two emotions, euphoria and terror, and I find that a lack of sleep enhances them both.

[7:09] In a startup, absolutely nothing happens unless you make it happen.

[8:19] As a founder of a startup trying to hire your team, you’ll run into this again and again: When Jim Clark decided to start a new company in 1994, I was one of about a dozen people at various Silicon Valley companies he was talking to about joining him in what became Netscape. I was the only one who went all the way to saying “yes” (largely because I was 22 and had no reason not to do it). The rest flinched and didn’t do it. And this was Jim Clark, a legend in the industry who was coming off of the most successful company in Silicon Valley in 1994 —Silicon Graphics Inc. How easy do you think it’s going to be for you?

[10:50] The fact is that startups are incredibly intense experiences and take a lot out of people in the best of circumstances.

[14:03] And so you start to wonder—what correlates the most to success— team, product, or market? Or, more bluntly, what causes success? And, for those of us who are students of startup failure—what’s most dangerous: a bad team, a weak product, or a poor market?

[15:16] If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which of team, product, or market is most important, many will say team. This is the obvious answer, in part because in the beginning of a startup, you know a lot more about the team than you do the product, which hasn’t been built yet, or the market, which hasn’t been explored.

[16:32] Personally, I’ll take the third position — I’ll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup’s success or failure. Why? In a great market — a market with lots of real potential customers— the market pulls product out of the startup. The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along.

[17:33] Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn’t matter—you’re going to fail.

[18:53] You can obviously screw up a great market — and that has been done, and not infrequently—but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.

[19:32] Markets that don’t exist don’t care how smart you are.

[20:15] The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

[21:00] Lots of startups fail before product/market fit ever happens. My contention, in fact, is that they fail because they never get to product/market fit.

[22:59] The most important thing you need to know going into any discussion or interaction with a big company is that you’re Captain Ahab, and the big company is Moby Dick. When Captain Ahab went in search of the great white whale Moby Dick, he had absolutely no idea whether he would find Moby Dick. What happened was entirely up to Moby Dick. And Captain Ahab would never be able explain to himself —or anyone else— why Moby Dick would do whatever it was he’d do. You’re Captain Ahab, and the big company is Moby Dick.

[29:30] A startup’s initial business plan doesn’t matter that much, because it is very hard to determine up front exactly what combination of product and market will result in success. By definition you will be doing something new, in a world that is a very uncertain place. You are simply not going to know whether your initial idea will work as a product and a business, or not. And you will probably have to rapidly evolve your plan —possibly every aspect of it — as you go.

[30:03] It is therefore much more important for a startup to aggressively seek out a big market, and product/market fit within that market, once the startup is up and running, than it is to try to plan out what you are going to do in great detail ahead of time. The history of successful startups is quite clear on this topic.

[38:38] The point is this: If Thomas Edison didn’t know what he had when he invented the photograph while he thought he was trying to create better industrial equipment for telegraph operators. . .what are the odds that you—or any entrepreneur— is going to have it all figured out up front?

[40:00] The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career. The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. Career planning = career limiting.

[40:46] The second rule of career planning: Instead of planning your career, focus on pursuing opportunities.

[41:06] Opportunities that present themselves to you are the consequence— at least partially — of being in the right place at the right time. They tend to present themselves when you’re not expecting it —and often when you are engaged in other activities that would seem to preclude you from pursuing them. And they come and go quickly — if you don’t jump all over an opportunity, someone else generally will and it will vanish.

[42:40] I am continually amazed at the number of people who are presented with an opportunity and pass. There’s your basic dividing line between the people who shoot up in their careers like a rocket ship, and those who don’t — right there.

[42:58] I am also continually amazed at the number of people who coast through life and don’t go and seek out opportunities even when they know in their gut what they’d really like to do. Don’t be one of those people. Life is way too short.

[43:17] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.

[50:44] There may be times when you realize that you are dissatisfied with your field — you are working in enterprise software, for example, but you’d really rather be working on green tech or in a consumer Internet company. Jumping from one field into another is always risky because your specific skills and contacts are in your old field, so you’ll have less certainty of success in the new field. This is almost always a risk worth taking– standing pat and being unhappy about it has risks of its own, particularly to your happiness. And it is awfully hard to be highly successful in a job or field in which one is unhappy.

[52:52] Finally, pay attention to opportunity cost at all times. Doing one thing means not doing other things. This is a form of risk that is very easy to ignore, to your detriment.

[53:33] Marc’s final takeaway for thinking about opportunities: If you really are high-potential, you’re naturally going to be seeking out risks in your career in order to maximize your level of achievement.

[55:46] Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife.

[56:19] Don’t worry about being a small fish in a big pond—you want to always be in the best pond possible, because that is how you will get exposed to the best people and the best opportunities in your field.

[58:26] Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable.

[56:52] Seek to be a double/triple/quadruple threat. . .The fact is, this is even the secret formula to becoming a CEO. All successful CEO’s are like this. They are almost never the best product visionaries, or the best salespeople, or the best marketing people, or the best finance people, or even the best managers, but they are top 25% in some set of those skills, and then all of a sudden they’re qualified to actually run something important.

[1:00:50] Learn how to sell. I don’t mean, learn how to sell someone a set of steak knives they don’t need — although I hear that can be quite an education by itself. I mean, learn how to convince people that something is in their best interest to do, even when they don’t realize it up front.

[1:06:06] In my opinion, it’s now critically important to get into the real world and really challenge yourself — expose yourself to risk— put yourself in situations where you will succeed or fail by your own decisions and actions, and where that success or failure will be highly visible. Why? If you’re going to be a high achiever, you’re going to be in lots of situations where you’re going to be quickly making decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information, under intense time pressure, and often under intense political pressure. You’re going to screw up — frequently — and the screwups will have serious consequences, and you’ll feel incredibly stupid every time. It can’t faze you — you have to be able to just get right back up and keep on going. That may be the most valuable skill you can ever learn. Make sure you start learning it early.

[1:07:20] When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#49 Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life by Richard Branson

3 december 2018 | 41 min

#48 Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography by Richard Branson

26 november 2018 | 76 min

#47 Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way

19 november 2018 | 73 min

#46 I Love Capitalism: An American Story

13 november 2018 | 71 min

#45 Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion

5 november 2018 | 80 min

#44 A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft

30 oktober 2018 | 83 min

What I learned from reading Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen

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I was 21 years old and at loose ends (0:01)

how Paul Allen works (4:09)

coming up with the idea for Microsoft (4:48)

admiring Bill Gates' bravado (7:56)

advice from his father: do something you love (12:30)

"Paul is an 'enthusiast' and when in the grip of an enthusiasm is almost totally irresponsible in other areas. How can one help such a student to see the error of his ways ? I don't know. He could even be more right than we, who knows ?" (18:30)

Going deep on subjects that interested him (20:56)

Paul's first jobs (24:14)

Paul Allen and Bill Gates first business (26:44)

New Mexico and the start of Microsoft (31:37)

We were certain that the tech establishment was wrong and we were right (34:40)

Unequal cofounders (37:29)

Starting to grow Microsoft (39:00)

Unequal cofounders part two (41:00)

Early Microsoft culture: When I talk about the early days at Microsoft, it's hard to explain to people how much fun it was.( 46:43)

Turning down a millions of dollars from Ross Perot (53:37)

Unequal cofounders part 3 (56:54)

The deal that led to Microsoft becoming the largest tech company of its day (58:00)

Health crisis and Paul Allen leaves Microsoft (1:05:30)

His most important realization (1:09:27)

How Paul makes $75 million from AOL (1:13:00)

I start from a different place , from the love of ideas and the urge to put them into motion and see where they might lead (1:18:10)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#43 Ray Dalio: Principles: Life and Work

22 oktober 2018 | 63 min

What I learned from reading Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

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Whatever success I've had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know [0:01]

Ray's first principle and why [5:35]

Ray's key to success [8:07]

The similarities between investors and entrepreneurs [9:27]

Shift your mindset from I know I am right to How do I know I am right? [13:05]

Systemize your decision making [14:09]

Ray on his life story [17:30]

the quality of your decisions determine the quality of your life [19:50]

Like a lot of Founders, Ray was bad at school [21:45]

More about his personality: stubborn and determined + his first jobs [22:45]

Hungry for knowledge he could actually use [24:28]

Terrible is better than mediocre [25:03]

What we think to be true that is not: The future is a slightly modified version of the present [25:30]

Steve Jobs [26:30]

A pivotal lesson for Ray: The same things happen over and over again [28:02]

the founding of Bridgewater [32:33]

the humble beginning of Bridgewater [35:15]

If you know your business A to Z there is no problem you can't solve – Sam Zemurray [36:06]

Watching the richest man in the world go broke [38:00]

Ray loses everything and has to start all over again [40:30]

Successful people change in ways that allow them to continue to take advantage of their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses and unsuccessful people don't [45:10]

The new Bridgewater: Systematizing his decision making process [47:35]

Developing more products and out teaching his competition [48:11]

The results of systematized thinking guided by principles that are written down and adhered to [53:30]

Counterintuitive thoughts on public success [55:19]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#42 One From Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

16 oktober 2018 | 87 min

What I learned from reading One From Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock

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Walking away at the pinnacle of success was the hardest thing I have ever done (0:01)

Through the years, I have greatly feared and sought to keep at bay the four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper – Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition. In 1984, I severed all connections with business for a life of isolation and anonymity, convinced I was making a great bargain by trading money for time, position for liberty, and ego for contentment – that the beasts were securely caged. –Dee Hock (4:14)

Visa was little more than a set of unorthodox convictions about organization slowly growing in the mind of a young corporate rebel (9:03)

Dee's first jobs (21:44)

Learning how mechanistic, Industrial Age organizations really function (28:17)

Useful questions to ask in your organization (34:30)

A failure at 36 years old (38:33)

The environment from which Visa emerged (46:41)

Healthy vs Unhealthy Organizations (55:19)

Focus on how your product or company "ought to be" and nothing else. (57:30)

I had held fast to the notion that until someone has repeatedly said "no!" and adamantly refuses another word on the subject, they are in the process of saying "yes" and don't know it yet. –Dee Hock (1:03:55)

His biggest regret: The fight against duality (monopoly) (1:04:35)

How Dee Hock dealt with stress (1:07:00)

His biggest regret: The fight against duality (monopoly) continued (1:09:52)

Dee's surprising conclusion about his work (1:16:50)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#41 The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

8 oktober 2018 | 60 min

#40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

2 oktober 2018 | 69 min

What I learned from reading Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid

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If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it, and don’t think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; if you just think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream. [0:01]

Edwin Land was a pioneer whose inventions were dismissed, and yet he created a great company by dint of pure stubbornness. [2:33]

He [Steve Jobs] didn't yet have the skills to build a great company, but he admired those who had pulled it off and he would go to great lengths to meet them and learn from them. [3:03]

Steve admired many things about Land: his obsessive commitment to creating products of style, practicality, and great consumer appeal. His reliance on gut instinct rather than consumer research and the restless obsession and invention he brought to the company he founded. [4:07]

Recounting his life is a meditation on the nature of innovation. [5:15]

We use bull’s eye empiricism. We try everything but we try the right things first. [6:06]

Land clearly did not wish to waste his powers on me too innovations [6:34]

Don’t do anything that someone else can do. Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible. [6:55]

He held that the business of business was something different, making things that people didn’t know they wanted until they were available. [7:26]

He thought and acted on a large stage. [8:34]

Over and over he talked about his obsessions: autonomy, learning, education, vision, perception, the mind, and the mining of exhausted veins of knowledge for new gold. [9:14]

Land on the problem with formal education: A student would get a message that a secret dream of greatness is a pipe dream. That it would be a long time before he makes a significant contribution, if ever. [13:18]

From this day forward, until the day you are buried, do two things each day. First master a difficult old insight and second, add some new piece of knowledge to the world. [17:12]

Edwin Land on perseverance: I was totally stubborn about being blocked. Nothing or nobody could stop me from carrying through the execution of the experiments. [18:04]

Edwin Land on the difference between individuals and groups: Intelligent men in groups are —as a rule—stupid. [18:15]

There's a rule they don't teach you at Harvard business school. It is, if anything is worth doing it's worth doing to excess. [20:02]

Steve Jobs expressed his deep admiration for Edwin Land, calling him "a national treasure". [23:33]

Steve Jobs: I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences. And I decided that's what I wanted to do. [24:27]

A shareholder asked Land about his goals when he had been a great student: I wanted to become the world’s greatest novelist and I wanted to become the world’s greatest scientist. [35:40]

Inventors sometime experience a fevered paranoia just after they had a great idea. It seems so clear and burns so bright that they are sure someone else will come up with the same thing at any moment. [41:56]

Land had suggested that Polaroid might be able to sell 50,000 cameras per year, far more than anyone else imagined possible. It turned out that even the visionary had low balled himself. By the time the product was retired in 1953, 900,000 units had been sold. [46:27]

My point is that we created an environment where a man was expected to sit and think for two years. Not was allowed to, but was expected to. [49:25]

My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had. [51:53]

If the product was right, not just economically, but also morally and emotionally, the selling would take care of itself. Marketing is what you do if your product's no good. [59:45]

Walt Disney: We are innovating. I’ll let you know the cost when we are done. [1:00:28]

Kodak got him all wrong. Kodak terribly miscalculated his personality. One of the reasons he put his heart and soul into the lawsuit was that he was outraged. Land said: We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents. [1:04:36]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#39 Walt Disney: An American Original

24 september 2018 | 96 min

#38 The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

17 september 2018 | 90 min

What I learned from reading The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos by Christian Davenport.

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[0:54] Musk and Bezos were the leaders of this resurrection of the American space program, a pair of billionaires with vastly different styles and temperaments. Always audacious, Musk had plowed far ahead, his triumphs and failures commanding center stage. Bezos remained quiet and clandestine, his mysterious rocket venture kept hidden behind the curtain.

[1:36] Musk, the brash hare, was blazing a trail for others to follow, while Bezos, the secretive and slow tortoise, who was content to take it step by step in a race that was only just beginning.

[13:46] “How is the situation in the year 2000 different from 1960? What has changed?” he said. “The engines can be somewhat better, but they’re still chemical rocket engines. What’s different is computer sensors, cameras, software. Being able to land vertically is the kind of problem that can be addressed by those technologies that existed in 2000 that didn’t exist in 1960.”

[17:33] He started a company called Zip2 that would help print newspapers get their content online, and it immediately had customers lining up, from the New York Times to Hearst. Musk sold the company to Compaq in 1999 for about $300 million. His next venture was called X.com, an online bank that merged with PayPal. The online financial payment system grew fast, gaining a million customers within two years. eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, netting Musk $180 million. He was thirty-one years old.

[20:27] Musk, a ravenous reader of science fiction, had expected that by this point in his life there’d be a base on the moon and trips to Mars powered by the robust space program built on the Apollo lunar missions. If in the 1960s, the United States could send a man to the moon in less than a decade, surely there were more great things to come. He was overcome with what he called a “feeling of dismay.” “I just did not want Apollo to be our high-water mark,” he said. “We do not want a future where we tell our children that this was the best we ever did. Growing up, I kept expecting we’re going to have a base on the moon, and we’re going to have trips to Mars. Instead, we went backwards, and that’s a great tragedy.”

[21:09] Musk had read every book he could find on the subject, as Beal had. And he came away convinced that the best way to acquire a rocket was to build it himself, no matter how many times friends told him he was crazy.

[23:54] He wasn’t just selling his rocket, but what it represented—the crazy idea that a small startup could succeed in space.

[25:59] Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure.”

[26:38] Most of us struggle with fear. We dread looking dumb. I found Elon fearless in this regard. He’s not afraid to ask a question that proves he doesn’t understand something.

[29:53] SpaceX’s mantra was to set audacious, nearly impossible goals and don’t get dissuaded. Head down. Plow through the line.

[33:38] The turtle was Blue Origin’s mascot, the embodiment of another of Bezos’s favorite sayings, one derived from US Navy SEAL training: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

[40:07] Every summer Bezos was shipped off to his grandfather’s ranch. It was rural and isolated, a place where Bezos learned the value of self-reliance from his grandfather.

[43:20] “I was very difficult to punish for my parents because they would send me to my room, and I was always happy to go to my room because I would just read” Bezos said.

[45:42] Blue Orgin’s “Jobs” page ad was less welcoming, even arrogant. Applicants needed to be “highly qualified and dedicated individuals who meet the following criteria: “You must have a genuine passion for space. Without passion, you will find what we’re trying to do too difficult. There are much easier jobs. “You must want to work in a small company. If you can happily work at a large aerospace company, you’re probably not the right person. “Our hiring bar is unabashedly extreme. We insist on keeping our team size small (measured in the dozens), which means each person occupying a spot must be among the most technically gifted in his or her field. “We are building real hardware—not PowerPoint presentations. This must excite you. You must be a builder.”

[50:33] Death was more likely a “when, not if” outcome, an unavoidable fact that they should confront and plan for. But death shouldn’t stop them. It shouldn’t get in the way. Progress was not possible without it. That was true in space as it was in all manner of expeditions, from crossing the Atlantic, to exploring the poles, to opening up the West.

[53:31] Elon on space exploration: “The thing that actually gets me the most excited about it is that I just think it’s the grandest adventure I could possibly imagine. It’s the most exciting thing—I couldn’t think of anything more exciting, more fun, more inspiring for the future than to have a base on Mars,” he once said. “It would be incredibly difficult and probably lots of people will die and terrible and great things will happen along the way, just as happened in the formation of the United States.”

[56:13] Elon added: “For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”

[1:08:04] The result: a system that met the air force’s requirements, for a tenth of the cost. “We had to be super scrappy,” Musk said. “If we did it the standard way, we would have run out of money. For many years we were week to week on cash flow, within weeks of running out of money. It definitely creates a mind-set of smart spending. Be scrappy or die: those were our two options. Buy scrap components, fix them up, and make them work.”

[1:12:50] For a while the company had been using a toxic cleaner for its engine nozzles, which it intended to reuse. But that cleaner was expensive and difficult to handle—it had to be used in a separate, clean room because it was so toxic. Then someone discovered that citric acid worked just as well. So, the company started buying it by the gallon, an easier, less expensive solution that worked better. “Now I’m the largest purchaser of lemon juice in the country,” Bezos told her, letting loose one of his trademark cackles.

[1:21:45] “The vast majority of people at the company today have only ever seen success,” Elon said. “You don’t fear failure as much.” And so, when he sent out his e-mail before each launch, asking people to come forward, it didn’t “resonate with the same force” as it had when the company was small and scrappy and feared going out of business. But now even the uninitiated knew the driving power of failure—and fear—“and we’ll be the stronger for it,” he said.

[1:25:12] “The things that you work hardest for, for the longest periods of time, always bring you the most satisfaction,” Bezos explained.

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#37 The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

9 september 2018 | 81 min

What I learned from reading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.

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When he arrived in America in 1891 at age fourteen, Zemurray was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and the owner of plantations on the Central American isthmus. He batted and conquered United Fruit, which was one of the first truly global corporations. [0:01]

Zemurray’s life is a parable of the American dream. It told me that the life of the nation was not written only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real. [0:31]

How Sam Zemurray started: He’d arrived on the docks at the start of the last century with nothing. In the early years, he’d had to make his way in the lowest precincts of the fruit business, peddling ripes, bananas other traders dumped into the sea. He worked like a dog and defied the most powerful people in the country. [2:26]

He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top. [3:35]

He believed in staying close to the action—in the fields with the workers, in the dives with the banana cowboys. You drink with a man, you learn what he knows. There is no problem you can’t solve if you understand your business from A to Z. [4:33]

His real life began when he saw that first banana. He devised a plan soon after: he would travel to where the fruit boats arrived from Central America, purchase a supply of his own, carry them back to Selma, and go into business. [6:24]

See opportunity where others see nothing: The bananas that did not make the cut were designated “ripes” and heaped in a sad pile. These bananas, though still good to eat, would never make it to market in time. As far as the merchants were concerned, they were trash. Sam grew fixated on ripes, recognizing a product where others had seen only trash. [6:54]

As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade. Zemurray stumbled upon a niche: overlooked at the bottom of the trade. [8:08]

His business grows rapidly: Because Zemurray discovered a patch of fertile ground previously untilled, his business grew by leaps and bounds. In 1899, he sold 20,000 bananas. Within a decade he would be selling more than a million bananas a year. [9:30]

An interesting story about Why was Zemurray’s company so profitable so quickly? Hint: No expenses. [13:47]

Was there a precursor? Of course there was. The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again. [17:59]

If you looked into his eyes you would see the machinery turning. Part of him is always figuring. You listen to a man like that. He knows something that can’t be taught. [20:19]

Study those that came before you. Avoid their fate: He paid special attention to the old-timers who had been in the trade since the days of wind power. They were former big timers now just trying to survive. [20:40]

Zemurray goes deep into debt to buy as much land as possible: There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them when he cannot afford to. [23:13]

He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body. [26:07]

Unlike most of his competitors, he understood every part of the business. He was contemptuous of banana men who spent their lives in the North, far from the plantations. Those schmucks, what do they know? They’re there, we’re here! [26:21]

These banana companies were so powerful that they overthrew presidents. Multiple times. [27:47]

Pretend you are Sam Zemurray. You’ve been summoned to Washington, called to account by the Secretary of State, warned. What do you do? Put your head down, shut up? Sit in a corner? No Sam Zemurray. [29:57]

He disdained bureaucracy, hated paperwork. He ran his entire business in his head. He will telephone division managers in half a dozen countries, correlate their reports in his head and reach his decision without touching a pencil. [34:06]

He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. He had worked on the docks, on the ships and railroads, in the fields and warehouses. He had ridden the mules. He had managed the fruit and money, the mercenaries and government men. He understood the meaning of every change in the weather, the significance of every date on the calendar. There was not a job he could not do, nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret to his success. He refrained from anything that took him away from his work. [37:46]

Manager vs Maker Schedule [39:43]

He began to visit boatyards. He wanted to build a fleet so he would never again be dependent on other companies to haul his product. He wanted control. In everything. [40:32]

It was a contrast of styles: the executives who ran United Fruit had taken over from the founders and were less interested in risking than in persevering. Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error, ready to gamble it all. [42:53]

Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, if you’re going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it’s because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I’m describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop. [46:42]

Two different approaches to buying land. One entrepreneurial, one the opposite: United Fruit did what big bureaucracy-heavy companies always do, hired lawyers and investigators to find the identity of the true owner. This took months. In the meantime, Zemurray simply bought the land from them both. He bought it twice—paid a little more, yes, but if you factor in the cost of all those lawyers, probably still spent less than United Fruit and came away with the prize. [47:50]

Why the book is called The Fish That Ate The Whale [49:46]

The greatness of Zemurray lies in the fact that he never lost faith in his ability to salvage a situation. Bad things happened to him as bad things happen to everyone, but unlike so many he was never tempted by failure. He never felt powerless or trapped. He was an optimist. He stood in constant defiance. For every move there is a countermove. For every disaster, there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency. [51:45]

You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I’m going to straighten it out. [58:07]

Sam’s defining characteristic was his belief in his own agency, his refusal to despair. No story is without the possibility of redemption; with cleverness and hustle, the worst can be overcome. I can’t help but feel that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray. [1:04:05]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#36 Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent

3 september 2018 | 45 min

What I learned from reading Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell.

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A pong is a piece of advice designed to help enhance creativity. It applies to only where the advice is helpful. Unlike a rule which thinks itself applicable to every situation. (4:36)

Cherish the pink-haired. (16:53)

Hire the obnoxious: Steve Jobs believed he was always right and was willing to push harder and longer than other people who might have had equally good ideas but caved under pressure. (19:07)

Expect to be criticized. Everyone said Atari was nuts. When I explained Chuck E Cheese they laughed. "The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." President of Michigan Savings Bank, advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in Ford Motor Company, 1903 (20:23)

One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question: What books do you like? (24:15)

When your company establishes that anyone can and should contribute, you will end up hearing some very good suggestions coming from unlikely places. (26:03)

I strongly believe that everyone who wants to be creative must find a place where their mind can be alone and untouched any the insanity of complexity. (30:20)

Champion bad ideas: WD-40 is called that because the first 39 versions of the product failed. WD-40 stands for “Water Displacement, 40th formula.” (32:11)

Any idiot can say no. There’s no mental process there. If you don’t like something, the trick is to think of something better. (37:04)

Invent haphazard holidays. Unplanned days off for the entire company (38:00)

Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had a good idea. The thing that matters is what you do with the idea once you get out of the shower. So if there’s only one thing you take from this book, it’s this: You must act! Do something! (41:29)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#35 George Lucas: A Life

26 augusti 2018 | 82 min

What I learned from reading George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones.

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Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself.

“What we’re striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released, and be completely free to express ourselves,” explained Lucas. “That’s very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money in order to have the power to be free.”

George looked at it like a businessman, saying, ‘Wait a minute. The studios borrowed money, took a 35 percent distribution fee off the top. This is crazy. Why don’t we borrow the money ourselves?' Some of the bravest and/or most reckless acts were not aesthetic, but financial.

My thing about art is that I don’t like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit, and I equate those two directly. I don’t think of myself as an artist, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie.

You couldn’t pay me enough money to go through what you have to go through to make a movie. It’s excruciating. It’s horrible. You get physically sick. I get a very bad cough and a cold whenever I direct. I don’t know whether it’s psychosomatic or not. You feel terrible. There is an immense amount of pressure, and emotional pain. But I do it anyway, and I really love to do it. It’s like climbing mountains.

I was seriously, seriously depressed at that point because nothing had gone right. Everything was screwed up. I was desperately unhappy. That was a very dark period for me. We were in dire financial straits. I was in debt to my parents, in debt to Francis Coppola, in debt to my agent; I was so far in debt I thought I’d never get out.

He was fascinated not only by Scrooge McDuck’s exploits but also by his conniving capitalist ways. “Work smarter, not harder,” was Scrooge’s motto, and his stories were full of inventive schemes that, more often than not, made him even richer and more successful. In Scrooge’s world, hard work paid off, yes — but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had ever thought of before. The lessons Lucas learned from Uncle Scrooge would shape the kind of artist and businessman he would become in the future: conservative and driven, believing strongly in his own vision and pursuing it aggressively.

I sit at my desk for eight hours a day no matter what happens, even if I don’t write anything. It’s a terrible way to live. But I do it; I sit down and I do it. I can’t get out of my chair until five o clock or five-thirty. It’s like being in school. It’s the only way I can force myself to write. Most days, no words would be written at all. At 5:30 he would tromp downstairs to watch the evening news, glaring with anger over a TV dinner as he stewed about the blank pages he’d left upstairs.

Sitting next to him was a thirty-one-year-old independent filmmaker from northern California named John Korty. When he digressed into the details of his filmmaking Lucas really took an interest. For the past three years, Korty had been running his own filmmaking facility out of his barn at Stinson Beach, a small ocean resort town just north of San Francisco. He had privately raised the $100,000 for Crazy Quilt by hitting up friends, colleagues, and even his actors for money, shot the movie locally, then edited it on his own equipment. At the film’s premiere, it received a lengthy standing ovation, and Hollywood executives fell over themselves scrambling to distribute it and recruit Korty. But Korty was having none of it. “From what I saw of Hollywood, they can keep it right now,” Korty said. “I would rather work for myself. In Hollywood you have a producer breathing down your neck. Here in northern California I am happier working with less money. The risk of failure is far less . We can complete a film in maybe a year, getting the results we want.” This was exactly what they had in mind for themselves. “Korty inspired us both,” said Coppola. “He was a real innovator.”

How many people think the solution to gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special effects company?” Ron Howard said admiringly. “But that’s what he did.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#34 Creativity Inc: The Autobiography of the founder of Pixar

20 augusti 2018 | 88 min

#33 Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World

12 augusti 2018 | 80 min

#32 Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built

9 augusti 2018 | 108 min

#31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

2 augusti 2018 | 158 min

What I learned from reading Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

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Culture Eats Strategy [1:45]

Conspiracy as a metaphor for a company [3:56]

It is a story of poetic justice on a grand scale plotted silently for nearly a decade [6:02]

Something in these pages planted itself deep into Thiel's mind when he first read it long ago [15:25]

It was ruthless efficiency and hyper-competence. [21:40]

You were driven to entrepreneurship because it was a safe space from consensus and from convention. [34:36]

What if I do something about this? What might happen? What might happen if I do nothing? Which is riskier, to act or to ignore? [38:52]

Sometimes these books teach us what not to do. [59:06]

Unknown unknowns > known knowns [1:11:10]

How you do one thing is how you do all things. [1:25:47]

He had always been aggressive. He wouldn't have gotten where he was in life if he wasn't. [1:30:35]

Companies routinely focus on silly things. [1:32:38]

The greatest sin of a leader.[1:37:17]

How resourceful is Peter Thiel?[1:41:37]

Just keep asking why.[1:47:29]

Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you for the laws too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt. [1:53:37]

Brilliant thinking is rare but courage is even in shorter supply [1:58:50]

The business version of our contrarian question is: What valuable company is nobody building? [2:01:39]

This Twisted logic is part of human nature, but it's disastrous in business. If you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you're already saner than most. [2:16:11]

Steve Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning. Not by listening to focus groups feedback or copying others success. [2:19:53]

You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of chance. [2:21:05]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#30 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

9 juli 2018 | 38 min

What I learned from reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.

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I don't want to be the person who ever has to compete with Elon (0:47)

Musk expects you to keep up (2:45)

Short of building an actual money-crushing machine, Musk could not have picked a faster way to destroy his fortune. He became a one-man, ultra-risk-taking venture capital shop (4:41)

Revisit old ideas (5:22)

It was not unusual for him to read ten hours a day (7:49)

His approach to dating mirrors his approach to work (9:32)

Humans are deeply mimetic (10:59)

Thinking from first principles (14:37)

What it is like to work with Elon Musk (17:40)

He would place this urgency that he expected the revenue in ten years to be ten million dollars a day and that every day we were slower to achieve our goals was a day of missing out on that money (19:28)

What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn't just survive. He kept working and stayed focused (23:29)

A tenet of Elon's companies: make as many things yourself as possible (25:39)

The power of the individual in an age of infinite leverage (27:31)

The Internet taught me nearly everything I know. It is the modern day equivalent to the library of Alexandria, except it's much harder to burn to the ground. It is indispensable for realizing human rights, combating inequality, accelerating development, and quickening the pace of human progress (29:37)

Focusing on the endpoint (30:19)

Grand Theft Life (32:00)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#29 The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company

2 juli 2018 | 39 min

#28 The Wright Brothers

25 juni 2018 | 42 min

#27 A Truck Full of Money: Coding, Mania, Love, Genius: The Life of an American Entrepreneur

15 juni 2018 | 85 min

#26 My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford

2 maj 2018 | 53 min

#25 Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson

22 april 2018 | 86 min

What I learned from reading Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson

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I am a creator of products, a builder of things. [0:01]

This book is the story of 15 years of struggle to finally invent, own, and sell his own product. [1:35]

This is the exposition of a business philosophy which is very different from anything you might have encountered before. [2:11]

The first 75% to 80% of the book is just struggle after struggle. [2:47]

Dyson had a bunch of people that he looked up to that motivated him as a young man. Thomas Edison is one of those people. [4:51]

Such reverence has been accorded to the miserable wheel —that perhaps that alone can account for the fact it was never improved. Perhaps millions of people in the last few years had ideas for improving it. All I did was take things a little further than just having an idea. [6:10]

The look of the product —the intangible style that sets one thing apart from another—is still closest to my heart. [7:04]

After the idea there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked. [8:09]

The greatest lesson for aspiring inventors was yet to come. The actual making of money. Paper stuff in thick wads which they finally give to you because you have done something good. [8:40]

The best kind of business is one where you could sell a product at a high price with a good margin and in enormous volumes. That type of investment is long term, high risk, and not very British. Or at least it looks like a high-risk policy. It is not so likely to prove hazardous to one’s financial health as simply following the herd. [9:25]

Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because is must be better. From the moment the ideas strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. [10:39]

This is not even a business book. If anything it is a book against business, against the principles that have filled the world with ugly, useless objects. [11:37]

Everybody told James over and over and over again “Who are you to think that you could invent a better vacuum cleaner? If that was possible Hoover would have done it already." [12:44]

We all want to make our mark. We all want to make beautiful things and a little money. We all have our own ideas about how to do it. What follows just happens to be my way. [13:15]

I have been a misfit throughout my professional life, and that seems to have worked for my advantage. Misfits are not born or made. They make themselves. [13:45]

I took on the big boys at their own game, made them look very silly, just by being true to myself. [15:56]

There was no dad to teach me how to run. There was no dad to tell me how great I was. Herb Elliot was a big name [in running] at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes. This suited me fine. I would get up at six in the morning and run dunes for hours, or put on my running kit at ten o’ clock at night and not reappear until after midnight. Out there alone on the dunes I got a terrific buzz knowing that I was doing something that no one else was—they were all tucked away in bed. I knew I was training myself to do something better than anyone else would be able to do. [18:14]

Running is a wonderful thing. It isn’t like a team sport where you depend on other people. There is no question of your performance being judged. You either run faster than everyone else or you do not. In running your performance is absolute. I was out there [on the sand dunes] learning how to do something, and getting a visible result. [19:34]

As I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it [run sand dunes] more and more because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something else no one else was doing. They were all running around the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was making me come in first. [20:50]

I was learning about the physical and psychological strength that keeps you competitive. I was learning about obstinacy. I was learning how to overcome nerves, and as I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind, I trained harder to stay in front. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, that keeps me working at success. [21:31]

The only way to make a genuine breakthrough was to pursue a vision with single-minded determination in the face of criticism. [22:26]

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been done before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible—he was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was. And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on. [22:55]

I have told myself, when people tried to make me modify my ideas, that the Great Western Railway could not have worked as anything but the vision of a single man, pursued with dogged determination that was nothing less than obsession. Throughout my story I will return to Brunel, and to other designers and engineers, to show how identifying with them, and seeing parallels with every stage of my own life, enabled me to see my career as a whole and to know that it would all turn out the way it has. [24:59]

Remember that I am celebrating only my stubbornness. I am claiming nothing but the virtues of a mule. [25:42]

So my dream was to be a Isambard Kingdom Brunel. [26:40]

The public has been easily convinced by advertising, and receptiveness to revolution has dwindled. Such ‘invention’ as is now allowed is the prerogative of multinationals, not people. Where are our Wright Brothers? Where have the Edisons gone? And the Henry Fords? They are not here. We have broken new frontiers, but where are the names? Who invented the space shuttle? The nuclear submarine? The wind farm? When you go for backing for your crazy scheme it is not enough to be a man, you have to be a group of men. And where is the fun in that? [26:56]

I learnt a crucial business principle: The only way to make real money is to offer the public something entirely new, that has style value as well as substance, and which they cannot get anywhere else. [28:03]

College had taught me to revere experts and expertise. Jeremiah Fry ridiculed all that; as far as he was concerned, with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible. It was mind-blowing. And as we proceeded I could see that we were getting on extremely quickly. The more I observed his method, the more it fascinated me. [31:07]

I learned one of the most crucial business lessons of my life; to stint on investment in the early stages, to try to sell a half-finished product, is to doom from the start any project you embark on. [32:13]

People do not want all-purpose; they want high-tech specificity. [34:11]

You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. [34:20]

Only by trying to sell the thing that you have made yourself, by dealing with consumers’ problems and the product’s failings as they arise, can you really come to understand what you have done. Only the man who has brought the thing into the world can presume to foist it on others, and demand a heavy price, with all his heart. [35:52]

It was an interesting lesson in psychology, teaching me that the entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer. [36:26]

Editorials are the very best way of convincing the public. One decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements. [39:20]

One fo the strains of this book is about CONTROL. If you have the intimate knowledge of a product that comes with dreaming it up and then designing it, then you will be the better able to sell it and then, reciprocally, to go back to it and improve it. From there you are in the best possible position to convince others of its greatness. To see it through all the way to its optimum point. To total fruition, if you like. [42:04]

I was stopped by one of them with the words I was to hear over and over and over again for the next ten years. ‘But James, your idea can’t be any good. If there were a better kind of vacuum cleaner, Hoover would have invented it.' [48:07]

We always want to create something new out of nothing, and without research, and without long hard hours of effort. But there is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence—and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap. [51:38]

A vacuum cleaner designed entirely by me, incorporating innovations up to the very latest point at which my technology had arrived, to be produced and marketed and sold under my own exclusive direction was, to be frank, what this whole thing had been all about. [1:02:48]

It was a fantastic environment to work in, for it was just engineers and designers, and no one to mess us around. There were no salesmen, no advertising people, no marketing managers, to interfere and try to guide us in their direction. We had nothing to do but deduce our own dream product. [1:04:48]

Everyday products sell. Although it is harder to improve a mature product, if you succeed there is no need to create a market. Try out current products in your own home, and make a list of things that you don’t like about them. I found about 20 things wrong with my Hoover Jr. at the first attempt. [1:07:19]

Total control. From the first sprouting of the idea, through research and development, testing and prototyping, model making and engineering drawings, tooling, production, sales and marketing, all the way into the homes, it is most likely to succeed if the original visionary (or mule) sees it right through. [1:11:43]

On 2 May 1992, I found myself looking at the first, fully operational, visually perfect, Dyson Dual Cyclone. I was thirty-one years old when I tore the bag off my Hoover and stuck a cereal packet in the hole. 2 May 1992 was my forty-fifth birthday. [1:12:24]

We were selling more vacuum cleaners than anyone else despite costing twice as much. [1:14:32]

In other words: if you make something, sell it yourself. And so we did. And absolutely nothing went bang. Except, of course, everyone else’s market slice. [1:17:57]

Encourage employees to be different, on principle. This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are, rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can’t be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think. [1:21:18]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#24 No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet

15 april 2018 | 75 min

#23 The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

7 april 2018 | 62 min

#22 How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

20 mars 2018 | 63 min

#21 Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

1 mars 2018 | 89 min

What I learned from reading Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner.

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[0:35] For a new generation, Carmack and Romero personified an American dream: they were self-made individuals who had transformed their personal passions into a big business, a new art form, and a cultural phenomenon.

[1:19] His (John Carmack) game and life aspired to the elegant discipline of computer code.

[1:40] Romero wants an empire. I just want to create good programs.

[3:07] No matter what Romero suffered he could always escape back into games.

[4:55] Romero’s stepdad smashed Romero’s face into the machine as punishment for playing video games.

[5:24] He beat Romero until the boy had a fat lip and a black eye. Romero was grounded for two weeks. The next day he snuck back to the arcade.

[7:40] One afternoon his father left to pick up groceries. Romero wouldn't see him again for two years.

[8:53] Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark. (Founders #32)

[10:20] Arcade games were bringing in $5 billion a year. Home systems were earning $1 billion. His stepfather did not believe game development to be a proper vocation. You'll never make any money making games he often said.

[11:28] A business is just an idea or service that makes somebody's life better. —Richard Branson

[12:58] Richard Garriott came to fame in the early eighties through his own initiative + Explore/Create: My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott.

[13:20] Ken and Roberta Williams also pioneered the Ziploc distribution method, turning their homemade graphical role-playing games into a $10 million–a–year company.

[14:19] Carmack quickly distinguished himself when he was only seven years old. He scored nearly perfect on every standardized test placing himself at a ninth grade comprehension level.

[15:03] The Cook and The Chef by Tim Urban

[16:05] Carmack had never worked on a computer before but took to the device as if it were an extension of his own body.

[16:39] All they desired is be able to create their own world.

[17:08] The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. (Founders #14)

[17:44] He read the passage about computers in the encyclopedia a dozen times.

[18:36] He relished this ability to create things out of thin air. As a programmer he didn't have to rely on anyone else.

[18:54] A book that inspired John Carmack: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Stephen Levy

[20:35] When Carmack finished the book he had one thought: I'm supposed to be in there.

[21:09] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.” —Let My People Go Surfing (Founders #18)

[22:48] Carmack was sentenced to one year in juvenile detention. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II.

[24:24] Carmack knows what he wants to do with his life and then he eliminates everything else that’s not that.

[24:32] Carmack relished the freelance lifestyle. He was in control of his time, slept as late as he wanted, and, even better, answered to no one.

[27:16] How id Software was born.

[31:26] Super Mario Brothers 3 sold 17 million copies. The equivalent of 17 platinum records —something only artists like Michael Jackson had pulled off.

[33:20] Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition. He kept nothing from the past—no pictures, no records, no games, no computer disks. He kept nothing but what he needed at the time. His bedroom consisted of a lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and a stack of books. There was no mattress.

[35:58] Shareware dated back to a guy named Andrew Fluegelman. In 1980, Fluegelman wrote a program called PC-Talk and released it online with a note saying that anyone who liked the wares should feel free to send him some “appreciation” money. Soon enough he had to hire a staff to count all the checks. Fluegelman called the practice “shareware,” “an experiment in economics.”

[37:42] Then he got an idea. Instead of giving away the entire game, why not give out only the first portion, then make the player buy the rest of the game directly from him? No one had tried it before, but there was no reason it couldn’t work.

[38:26] There was no advertising, no marketing and virtually no overhead except for the low cost of floppy discs and Ziploc bags, because there were no other people to pay off. Scott could price his games much lower than most retail title. $15 to $20 as opposed to 30 to 40 for every dollar he brought in Scott was pocketing 90 cents. By the time he contacted Romero, he had earned $150,000 by word of mouth alone.

[38:54] I just love the fact that he could do it on his own. By himself. He doesn't have to ask permission. He doesn't have to deal with publishing. He just makes something people like and then they can pay him directly.

[39:50] They didn’t need any help getting motivated. Carmack seemed almost inhumanly immune to distraction.

[40:45] All of science and technology and culture and learning and academics is built upon using the work that others have done before.

[41:23] They start spending nights and weekends developing their own games. They still have day jobs.

[42:19] The first Keen trilogy was now bringing in fifteen to twenty thousand dollars per month. It wasn’t just pizza money anymore, it was computer money. Carmack was only twenty years old, Romero, twenty-three, and they were in business.

[43:31] Carmack’s maxim on problem solving: Try the obvious approach first; if that fails, think outside the box.

[44:45] They didn’t seem to have a business bone in their bodies. When they told Williams how much they were making he blurted out “You’re telling me you’re making fifty thousand dollars a month just from shareware?”

[50:30] I think it takes a certain level of discipline to have a company that's making millions of dollars a year and yet not expand out and try to add all these unnecessarily expenses. (A mistake made a lot in the history of entrepreneurship)

[53:39] The more business responsibilities they had, things like order fulfillment and marketing, the more they would lose their focus —making great games.

[53:55] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[55:28] Innovate, optimize, then jettison anything that gets in the way.

[58:49] The more shareware was distributed, the more potential customers ID would be able to collect. We don't care if you make money off the shareware demo they told the retailers. Move it in mass quantities. The retailers couldn't believe their ears. No one had ever told them not to pay royalties.

[59:23] Take the money that you might have given me in royalties and use it to advertise the fact you're selling Doom.

[1:02:19] Even though only an estimated 1% of people who downloaded shareware bought the remaining game, $100,000 worth of orders were rolling in every day.

[1:05:56] Why, they wanted to know, did they need GTI? Ron didn’t relent. “Look,” he said, “maybe you’ll sell a hundred thousand copies of Doom in shareware, but I believe if you give me a retail version of Doom and, let’s call it for lack of a better term, Doom II, I think I could sell five hundred thousand or more units.”

[1:08:16] For Carmack it wasn't the cash that was intriguing. It was the opportunity to get back into the trenches.

[1:10:53] Romero spelled out his new life code: It was time to enjoy ID’s accomplishments, no more crunch mode, no more bloodshot nights, no more death schedules. Carmack remained quiet.

[1:14:06] Carmack said Romero was pushed out of ID because he wasn't working hard enough.

[1:14:21] The main point of conflict between Carmack and Romero: Romero wants an empire. Carmack just wants to create good programs.

[1:24:15] He's just making colossal mistake after colossal mistake. Not adhering to anything that had previously made him successful.

[1:25:50] All those things Carmack had berated him about: The hyperbole, the lack of focus, the dangers of a large team— had come back with vengeance.

[1:27:56] My favorite paragraph in the book: “In the information age, the barriers just aren’t there. The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.”

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#20 Danny Meyer (The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business)

6 februari 2018 | 43 min

#19 Becoming Steve Jobs

19 januari 2018 | 74 min

What I learned from reading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

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Learning from great company-builders (0:30)

Steve Jobs verbal mastery (5:00)

The failed negotiations between NeXT and IBM (10:00)

"But how can he be a turnaround expert when he eats his lunch alone in his office, with food served to him on china that looks like it came from Versailles?" (18:00)

"You can't go to the library and find a book titled The Business Model for Animation. The reason you can't is because there's only one company [Disney] that's ever done it well, and they were not interested in telling the world how lucrative it was." (22:00)

Bill Gates on Steve's simplicity (29:00)

Steve Jobs on being an artist (33:00)

Apple pays half billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs (34:00)

"The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that is incredibly powerful." (38:00)

Unlocking secrets (42:00)

Who gives a fuck about the channel? (45:00)

"It's not about how fast you do something, it's about doing your level best." (52:00)

Deep Restlessness (55:00)

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." (59:00)

Bill Gates on the negotiations between Pixar and Disney (1:08:00)

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#18 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

8 januari 2018 | 57 min

What I learned from reading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.

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I had always avoided thinking of myself as a businessman. I was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier, and a blacksmith. We simply enjoyed making good tools and functional clothes. [0:01]

One day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time. I knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business; I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from this pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms. [0:32]

One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing. [1:00]

Work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. [1:18]

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percent. I like to throw myself passionately into an activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different. [4:05]

Tom Brokaw on Yvon: It’s been helpful to me to be Yvon’s friend. He makes me think about things in new ways. [5:36]

Can a company that wants to make the best-quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike? Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables? The question haunted me throughout the 1980s as Patagonia evolved. [7:35]

I continued to practice my MBA theory of management, management by absence, while I wear-tested our clothing and equipment in the most extreme conditions of the Himalayas and South America. [10:13]

Throughout the book he’s has a really beautiful idea of comparing business and organizing human labor, to nature. Part of this idea is he intentionally puts Patagonia through a lot of stress because he feels you need stress to grow. [11:42]

Doing risk sports had taught me another important lesson: Never exceed your limits. You push the envelope, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. The same is true for business. The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to have it all, the sooner it will die. [18:05]

I did not yet know what we would do to get our company out of the mess it was in. But I did know we had to look to the Iroquois and their seven-generation planning, and not to corporate America, as models of stewardship and sustainability. As part of their decision process, the Iroquois had a person who represented the seventh generation in the future. If Patagonia could survive this crisis we had to begin to make all our decisions as though we would be in business for a hundred years. [19:12]

The first part of our mission statement, “Make the best product,” is the cornerstone of our business philosophy. “Make the best” is a difficult goal. It doesn’t mean “among the best” or the “best at a particular price point.” It means “make the best,” period. [24:05]

The functionality driven design is usually minimalist. Or as Dieter Rams maintains, “Good design is as little design as possible.” Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved. Take the difference between the Ferrari and the Cadillac of the 1960s. The Ferrari’s clean lines suites its high-performance aims. The Cadillac really didn’t have any functional aims. It didn’t have steering, suspension, aerodynamics, or brakes appropriate to its immense horsepower. All it had to do was convey the idea of power, creature comfort, of a living room floating down the highway to the golf course. So, to a basically ugly shape were added all manner of useless chrome: fins at the back, breasts at the front. Once you lose the discipline of functionality as a design guidepost, the imagination runs amok. Once you design a monster, it tends to look like one too. [25:53]

When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can’t be sold on its merits. I’d be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. I’d much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition. [27:15]

There are different ways to address a new idea or project. If you take the conservative scientific route, you study the problem in your head or on paper until you are sure there is no chance of failure. However, you have taken so long that the competition has already beaten you to market. The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process. [32:40]

Nonfiction marketing. Our branding efforts are simple: tell people who we are. We don’t have to create a fictional character. Writing fiction is so much more difficult than nonfiction. Fiction requires creativity and imagination. Nonfiction deals with simple truths. [34:00]

It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise, you’re just crazy. [36:19]

Quality, not price, has the highest correlation with business success. Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality. [37:37]

We never wanted to be a big company. We want to be the best company, and it’s easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company. [40:20]

We don’t hire the kind of people you can order around. We don’t want drones who will simply follow directions. We want the kind of employees who will question the wisdom of something they regard as a bad decision. We do want people who, once they but into a decision and believe in what they are doing, will work like demons to produce something of the highest possible quality. [43:57]

Systems in nature appear to us to be chaotic but in reality are very structured, just not in a top-down centralized way. A top-down centralized system like a dictatorship takes an enormous amount of force and work to keep the hierarchy in power. All top-down systems eventually collapse, leaving the system in chaos. A familial company like ours runs on trust rather than on authoritarian rule. [44:52]

The lesson to be learned is that evolution (change) doesn’t happen without stress, and it can happen quickly. Just as doing risks sports will create stresses that lead to a bettering of one’s self, so should a company constantly stress itself in order to grow. [50:29]

I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. The more you know, the less you need. [56:01]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#17 Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

1 januari 2018 | 64 min

#16 Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller

8 december 2017 | 64 min

What I learned from reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow.

[0:01] Rockefeller was a unique hybrid in American business, both the instinctive first-generation entrepreneur who founded the company and the analytical second-generation manager who extends and develops it.

[0:30] Having created an empire of unfathomable complexity, he was smart enough to see that he had to submerge his identity in the organization.

[0:43] Don’t say that I out to do this or that. We ought to do it. Never forget that we are partners. Whatever is done for the general good is done for the good of us all. —John D. Rockefeller.

[0:55] He preferred outspoken colleagues to weak-kneed sycophants.

[1:14] That he created one of the first multinational corporations, selling kerosene around the world and setting a business pattern for the next century, was arguable his greatest feat.

[2:48] The spot chosen for the new refinery tells much about Rockefeller’s approach to business. . . Able to ship by water or over land, Rockefeller gained the critical leverage he needed to secure preferential rates on transportation which was why he agonized over plant locations throughout his career.

[6:02] This is before the invention of the car. Kerosene was the main byproduct of oil. People used it to have lighting in their houses. Before Rockefeller, only rich people were able to do this. After Rockefeller, everyone could do it.

[6:41] There’s a lot of people making money in refining. People hear about other people making money in refining. They follow in like lemmings and this causes refining capacity to be triple the amount that is actually needed. By then 90% of refineries were operating in the red.

[7:46] “So many wells were flowing that the price of oil kept falling, yet they went right on drilling.” — John D. Rockefeller.

[8:08] “Often-times the most difficult competition comes, not from the strong, the intelligent, the conservative competitor, but from the man who is holding on by the eyelids and is ignorant of his costs, and anyway he's got to keep running or bust!” —John D. Rockefeller

[8:57] As someone who tended toward optimism, seeing opportunity in every disaster, he studied the situation exhaustively instead of bemoaning his bad luck.

[10:55] Rockefeller is hated for the creation of a cartel. He is hated for succeeding at it. There are many people trying to do very similar things. They would criticize Rockefeller for what they were attempting to do themselves.

[14:46] From the outset, Rockefeller’s plans had a wide streak of megalomania. He said, “The Standard Oil company will someday refine all the oil and make all the barrels.”

[15:35] Rockefeller decided that the leading men [executives] would receive no salary but would profit solely from the appreciation of their shares and rising dividends which Rockefeller thought a more potent stimulus to work.

[17:10] He was pretty crazy. He had three daughters and a son. By the time he had his son, he had more money than he could spend in a lifetime. His son remembers growing up and only wearing dresses because his dad refused to buy new clothes.

[17:38] Rockefeller never allowed his office decor to flaunt the prosperity of the business, lest it arouse unwanted curiosity.

[19:33] His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, and then move briskly onto the next conquest.

[19:54] The year revealed both his finest and most problematic qualities as a businessman: His visionary leadership, his courageous persistence, his capacity to think in strategic terms, but also his lust for domination, his messianic, self-righteousness, and his contempt for those shortsighted mortals who made the mistake of standing in his way.

[20:50] Rockefeller had such a fanatical desire to control expenses. He’d show up to work at 6:30 in the morning and leave at 10 at night and the entire time he was rooting out inefficiencies. If he could save a penny he would. As a result, even if someone was in the same business Rockefeller’s business was much more profitable —even before he built his cartel.

[23:34] Rockefeller was extremely secretive. He equated silence with strength. He didn’t like people who bragged or told other people what their intentions were.

[25:06] The depressed atmosphere only strengthened his resolve.

[28:57] One Rockefeller biographer called the drawback an instrument of competitive cruelty unparalleled in industry.

[30:55] One other factor tempted the railroads to come to terms with Rockefeller. In a far-sighted, tactical maneuver he had begun to accumulate hundreds of tank cars —what you would ship oil in if you don't want to use barrels—which would be in perpetual and perpetually short supply.

[32:05] One of Rockefeller’s strengths in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and crafted mutually advantageous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper albeit in a way that fortified his own position.

[37:57] This is the insane part. Between February 17th and March 28th, Rockefeller swallowed up 22 of his 26 competitors. This makes him the world’s largest oil refiner at 31 years old.

[40:32] Rockefeller was dedicated to secrecy: Many of these competitors didn’t even know they were being bought by Standard Oil.

[47:24] Rockefeller would constantly overpay for competitors just to knock them out of the business.

[47:58] He was now living a fantasy of extravagant wealth that would have dwarfed the most feeble daydreams of his father. Few people beyond the oil business had ever heard of him.

[48:26] It is very hard to compete with somebody you don’t even know exists.

[48:56] It is a lot smarter to make money quietly so you don’t invite competition.

[49:11] The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

[49:52] Books are the original links: If you read Sam Walton's book you realize he was the Jeff Bezos of his day. Or said another way Jeff Bezos is the Sam Walton of his day. Bezos read Sam Walton’s book, was inspired, and outright copied a lot of Sam’s ideas.

[50:51] The reason I think it is so interesting to explore the history of entrepreneurship is that you see the same ideas over and over again just applied in different fields.

[56:53] Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed.

[57:10] Many employees said he never lost his temper racist voice, uttered a profane or slang word, or acted discourteously.

[57:20] Rockefeller seldom granted appointments to strangers and preferred to be approached in writing.

[57:25] He constantly expounds on this idea that you shouldn't waste time nor money. That they were very much interrelated. He didn't waste his time talking to people...what people call networking now. He just worked. He came up with his ideas and then worked every day to enact those ideas.

[58:08] He wants the sort of person to persist in a flawed situation.

[58:15] Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.

[59:51] Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed.

[1:00:02] A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.

[1:01:00] Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration--the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography

17 november 2017 | 47 min

#14 The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal

17 september 2017 | 38 min

#13 Elon Musk and Why SpaceX Will Colonize Mars

27 augusti 2017 | 55 min

#12 Elon Musk & How Tesla Will Change The World

20 augusti 2017 | 41 min

#11 The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk's Secret Sauce

13 augusti 2017 | 45 min

#10 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

27 juli 2017 | 65 min

What I learned from reading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.

The best teacher I ever had, one of the finest men I ever knew, spoke of the Oregon Trail often. It’s our birthright, he’d growl. Our character, our fate—our DNA. “The cowards never started, the weak died along the way—that leaves us.” [0:35]

Some outsized sense of possibility mixed with a diminished capacity for pessimism. [1:03]

I found it difficult to say what or who exactly I was, or might become. Like all my friends I wanted to be successful. I didn’t know what that meant. [2:11]

Deep down I was searching for something else, something more. I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know. And I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all . . .different. [2:35]

I asked myself: What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing? [4:23]

The only answer was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed like a good fit, and chase it with a single-minded dedication and purpose. [4:47]

Maybe my Crazy Idea just might . . . work? Maybe. No, no, I thought. It will work. By God, I’ll make it work. No maybes about it. [5:29]

So much about those days has vanished. Faces, numbers, decisions that once seemed pressing and irrevocable, they’re all gone. [6:39]

What remains is this one comforting certainty, this one anchoring truth that will never go away. At 24 I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and doubts about myself, as all young men and women in their mid-twenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most — books, sports, democracy, free enterprise — started as crazy ideas. [7:03]

So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy. Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there. Whatever comes, just don’t stop. [7:45]

That is the advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice — maybe the only advice — any of us should ever give. [8:08]

I knew Japanese cameras had made deep cuts into the camera market, which had once been dominated by Germans. I argued in my paper that Japanese running shoes might do the same thing. [9:00]

He was impressed. It took balls to put together an itinerary like that, he said. Balls. He wanted in. [12:01]

Carter never did mess around. See an open shot, take it—that was Carter. I told myself there was much I could learn from a guy like that as we circled the earth. [12:14]

What Phil was doing was looked upon by most of his family as crazy and extremely dangerous. [12:37]

Go home, a faint inner voice told me. Get a normal job. Be a normal person. Then I heard another faint voice equally emphatic, “No. Don’t go home. Keep going. Don’t stop.” [14:15]

Bill Bowerman was a genius coach, a master motivator, a natural leader of young men, and there was one piece of gear he deemed crucial to their development. Shoes. He was obsessed with how human beings are shod. [15:55]

He always had some new scheme to make our shoes softer and lighter. One ounce sliced off a pair of shoes is equivalent to 55 pounds over one mile. [16:42]

Lightness, Bowerman believed, directly translated into less burden, more energy, and more speed. Lightness was his constant goal. [17:11]

Frugality carried over to every part of the coach’s makeup. [17:56]

Bowerman didn’t give a damn about respectability. He possessed a prehistoric strain of maleness. Today its all but extinct. He was a war hero, too. Of course, he was. [18:47]

Bowerman never considered himself a track coach. He detested being called coach. He called himself a professor of competitive responses. His job, as he saw it, was to get you ready for the struggles and competitions that lay ahead. [19:41]

In my mind, he was Patton with a stopwatch. [20:00]

He had tested me. He had broken me down and remade me just like a pair of shoes. [23:31]

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. [23:57]

He always went against the grain. Always. He was the first college coach to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work. [24:12]

He [his Dad] said he hadn’t sent me to Oregon and Stanford for me to become a door to door shoe salesman. How long do you think you’re going to keep jackassing around with these shoes? I shrugged. I don’t know, Dad. [26:19]

My sales strategy was simple. I drove all over to various track meets. Between races, I’d chat up the coaches and runners, and show them my wares. The response was always the same. I couldn’t write orders fast enough. [28:17]

I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed if people got out and ran a few miles every day the world would be a better place. And I believed these shoes were better to run in. People sensing my belief wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief is irresistible. [28:44]

Johnson believed that runners are God’s chosen, that running, done right, in the correct spirit and with the proper form, is a mystical exercise, no less than meditation or prayer, and thus he felt called to help runners reach their nirvana. [33:18]

Not even the Yahweh of running, Bowerman, was as pious about the sport as Blue Ribbon’s Part-Time Employee Number Two. [33:43]

I shook my head. I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic, and he responds by begging for a berth in first class. [35:58]

At the time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about generals, samurai, shoguns, along with biographies of my three main heroes—Churchill, Kennedy, Tolstoy. . . I wasn’t that unique. Throughout history, men have looked to the warrior for a model of Hemingway’s cardinal virtue, pressurized grace.[37:03]

Each new customer got his, or her own index card. Each index card contained that customer’s personal information, shoe size, and shoe preferences. He had hundreds and hundreds of customer correspondents, all along the spectrum of humanity, from high school track starts to octogenarian weekend joggers. [40:17]

In all the world there had never been such a sanctuary for runners, a place that didn’t just sell them shoes but celebrated them and their shoes. [42:54]

I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time. [45:29]

I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to blue ribbon. I’d never been a multitasker and I didn’t see any reason to start now. [45:59]

If my life was to be all work and no play, I wanted my work to be play. [46:15]

Phil Knight is in his 5th year in business and still has a full-time job. How many people would be willing to do that? [46:51]

Right before my thirty-first birthday I made the bold move and went full-time at my company. [48:21]

When you read this book you really feel like you get to know Phil Knight and you were there throughout his struggles. [49:39]

I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They’ve all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging the past, mapping out the future. I remember that we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal. [49:50]

For the first eight years of Blue Ribbon they are selling other people’s shoes. [54:00]

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. No more selling someone else’s brand. No more working for someone else. If we are going to succeed or fail we should do so on our own terms. [56:05]

How he felt after the IPO: I asked myself. What are you feeling? If I felt anything, it was . . . regret. Good God, I thought. Yes. Regret. Because I honestly wished I could do it all over again. [59:31]

Above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. [1:01:42]

God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing. [1:02:01]

I’d like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so that some young man or woman, somewhere, going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted. Or warned. Some young entrepreneur, maybe, some athlete, or painter, or novelist, might press on. It’s all the same drive. The same dream. [1:02:06]

I’d tell men and women in their mid-twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt. [1:02:34]

I’d like to warn the best of them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bulls-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bulls-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s the law of nature. [1:03:10]

I’d like to remind them that America isn’t the entrepreneurial Shangri-La people think. Free enterprise always irritates the kinds of trolls who live to block, to thwart, to say no. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. They’ve always fought uphill, and the hill has never been steeper. America is becoming less entrepreneurial, not more. A Harvard Business School study recently ranked all the countries in the world in terms of their entrepreneurial spirit. America ranked behind Peru. [1:03:27]

Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. [1:04:23]

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#9 I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford

10 juli 2017 | 71 min

#8 The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

20 juni 2017 | 61 min

#7 Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's

27 maj 2017 | 63 min

#6 Sam Walton

14 maj 2017 | 64 min

#5 Steve Jobs

30 april 2017 | 96 min

#4 The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

19 april 2017 | 57 min

#3 The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Edison Invented The Modern the Modern World

24 mars 2017 | 87 min

#2 Walt Disney

10 oktober 2016 | 78 min

#1 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, & the Quest for a Fantastic Future

19 september 2016 | 58 min

What I learned from reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

The conventional wisdom of the time said to take a deep breath and wait for the next big thing to arrive in due course. Musk rejected that logic by throwing $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into SolarCity. Short of building an actual money crushing machine, Musk could not have picked a faster way to destroy his fortune. He became a one-man-ultra-risk taking venture capital shop and doubled down on making super-complex physical goods in two of the most expensive places in the world, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. [2:13]

What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. [9:17]

The life that Musk has created to manage all of these endeavors is preposterous. [9:53]

He felt as if the public had lost some of its ambition and hope for the future. [14:34]

His fears that mankind had lost much of its will to push the boundaries were reinforced one day when Musk went to the NASA website. He expected to find a detailed plan for exploring Mars and instead found bupkis. [14:58]

The men were heading to Russia at the height of its freewheeling post-Soviet days when rich guys could apparently buy space missiles on the open market. [24:32]

Musk wheeled around and flashed a spreadsheet he’d created. “Hey guys, I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” [27:53]

Some of these people had spent years on the island going through one of the most surreal engineering exercises in human history. They had been separated from their families, assaulted by the heat, and exiled on their tiny launchpad outpost— sometimes without much food — for days on end as they waited for the launch windows to open and dealt with the aborts that followed. So much of that pain and suffering and fear would be forgotten if this launch went successfully. [32:17]

It took six years-about four and half more than Musk had once planned — and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen. [34:38]

Well that was freaking awesome. There are a lot of people who thought we couldn’t do it. There are only a handful of countries on Earth that have done this. It’s normally a country thing, not a company thing. My mind is kind of frazzled, so it’s hard for me to say anything, but this is definitely one of the greatest days in my life. [35:19]

To avoid bankruptcy Musk made a last-ditch effort to raise all the personal funds he could and put them into the company. “It was like the fucking Matrix,” Musk said, describing his financial maneuvers. [42:53]

The 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was on the verge of having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met. What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” [48:37]

----

Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Founders

Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs.

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#377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

#376 Jensen Huang: Founder of Nvidia

#375 The Single Biggest Individual Financier In The World. The Richest Woman In America: Hetty Green

The Most Inspiring Autobiography I've Read: Chung Ju-yung Founder of Hyundai

#374 Rare Jeff Bezos Interview

#373 Breakfast with Brad Jacobs + How To Make A Few Billion Dollars

#372: Amancio Ortega: The Genius Behind the Inditex Group

#371 James J. Hill: The Empire Builder

#370 The Founder of IKEA: Ingvar Kamprad

#369 Elon Musk and The Early Days of SpaceX

Steve Jobs and Edwin Land

#368 Rockefeller's Autobiography

#367 Inside the Contrarian Mind of Sam Zell

#366 Mr. Beast Leaked Memo

#365 Nick Sleep's Letters: The Full Collection of the Nomad Investment Partnership Letters to Partners

#364 Nick & Zak's Excellent Adventure: How Nick Sleep and Qais Zaharia Built Their Investment Partnership

#363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett

#362 Li Lu

#361 Estée Lauder

#360 Robert Kierlin: Founder of Fastenal

#359 The Russian Rockefellers: The Nobel Family Dynasty

#358 I had dinner with John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods

#357 Haruki Murakami

#356 How The Sun Rose On Silicon Valley: Bob Noyce (Founder of Intel)

#355 Rare Bernard Arnault Interview

#354 Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man

#353 How To Be Rich by J. Paul Getty

#352 J. Paul Getty: The Richest Private Citizen in America

#351 The Founder of Rolex: Hans Wilsdorf

#350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs

#349 How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple

Michael Jordan In His Own Words

#348 The Financial Genius Behind A Century of Wall Street Scandals: Ivar Kreuger

#347 How Walt Disney Built His Greatest Creation: Disneyland

#346 How Walt Disney Built Himself

#345 George Lucas

Steven Spielberg

#344 Quentin Tarantino

#343 The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness: David Ogilvy

#342 The Lessons of History (Will & Ariel Durant)

#341 Cornelius Vanderbilt (Tycoon's War)

#340 Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant

Jay Z's Autobiography

#339 Joseph Duveen: Robber Baron Art Dealer

#338 Monty Moncrief Texas Oil Billionaire

#337 Napoleon's Maxims and Strategy

#336 How To Lose A Few Billion Dollars: Samuel Insull

#335 How To Make A Few Billion Dollars: Brad Jacobs

#334 Oprah

#333 Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac Founder: Dietrich Mateschitz

#332 Jesus

#331 Christian Dior

#330 Les Schwab (Charlie Munger recommended this book)

#329 Charlie Munger (the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack)

Reflections from my dinner with Charlie Munger

#328 Tom Murphy (Buffett's favorite manager)

#327 Ted Turner

#326 Anna Wintour

#325 Larry Gagosian (Billionaire Art Dealer)

#324 John D. Rockefeller (38 Letters Rockefeller Wrote to His Son)

Mike Bloomberg

#323 Jimmy Buffett

#322 Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

#321 Working with Jeff Bezos

#320 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 2

Sam Zemurray (The Fish That Ate the Whale)

#319 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 1

The best interview I've ever done about Founders

#318 Alistair Urquhart (Listen to this when you’re stressed)

#317 Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar)

#316 Bugatti

#315 Balenciaga

#314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work)

#313 Christopher Nolan

#312 Mark Twain

#311 James Cameron