30: David Senra - The Clarity of Commitment

[00:00] The value prop of founders is very easy. 40-year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40-year career that learned all these lessons. Somebody put it into a book. Probably took them a couple years to write. So 40-year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. [00:12] That's it. And if you want more, go check. [00:14] read the book if you want less listen to less of the podcast i don't know what to tell you and the reason i say 45 minutes is because a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed i'm a purist i listen on 1x you're 1xer that's crazy 1x because i actually love the medium i love podcasts you can rush through sex that's probably not the point it's probably your goal when you're going to make love to whoever you're making love to these days is probably not let's see if i can get this over in two minutes people think this is crazy [00:41] I think it's crazy that you don't do this.

So when my Spotify rap comes out this year, my top podcasts will be founders. I listen to... [00:50] To be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator spot of my rap. This is the consumer. I remember it was like 7 m. on a Saturday and I text him like, this whole game is for the taking. There's nobody else. There's just like the work ethic's not there. It's just bad news. This is fait accompli. [01:11] As long as I don't stop like blue ocean. And he texts me back.

He's like, [01:15] First of all, he's like in, I think, like Nantucket with his fam. What the fuck are you doing on a Saturday morning? But he was just like out of all the people I know, and he knows a lot of people, he's like, you are the person. [01:27] that wakes up every day the most sure about what they want to do. I thought that was a great like response. And so Gagosian is like that. Sam Walton is like that. Steve Jobs was like that. Phil Knight was like that.

Elon Musk. They're all like that. It's like they're not sitting there wondering like, how do I feel today? What should I do? It's like they it's like blinders on. Wake up. Go. Welcome to Dialectic Episode 30 with David Semra. I don't think there's somebody [01:57] who's been a huge inspiration to me and help as I get dialectic off the ground. David is one of the most energizing and enthusiastic people I've ever met, and you can get that as he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs on his podcast Founders, where he reads biographies.

[02:12] and teaches the rest of us their best lessons, [02:14] And now you can also get that when he talks to the greatest living entrepreneurs with his new podcast, David Senra. [02:20] It just launched. The first episode is with Spotify CEO Daniel Ack. [02:24] And I really hope you give it a listen. [02:27] My goal for this episode was to have a conversation that felt like so many of those I've had with him over the last few years. And I think I did that. It's wide ranging. We go to a whole bunch of different places.

You get Max David energy, enthusiasm, and you also get so much of the wisdom that David has amalgamated over the course of reading and doing founders. David's work is embodied by the advice he follows from one of his favorite people, Charlie Munger. [02:51] Take a simple idea and take it seriously. [02:53] I hope you are inspired to do the same. [02:56] and to commit to something. [02:57] worth your days and your years. [03:00] With that. [03:01] Here's David Semra. [03:02] Somebody tweeted about this. It's like coffee is good for like the beginning of the day when you need to like work and matcha or green tea is good for like being with other people.

[03:11] I don't like being with other people. [03:14] That's our opener. I'm not kidding. The guy that sits in a room by himself reads books for decades. What a shock. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. You can have your green tea day. Your actions express your priorities. What's going on there? Well, my dinner with Andre, which I brought up, it looks like it's just a dinner. The whole movie is just these two guys having dinner, waxing, philosophical, whatever. But it was directed by this famous French director. [03:41] not done in a restaurant they built a set and it's like the most meticulous so many different frames they've like got the guys in the mirror so it's it's a cool inspiration if you wanted to get inspiration for like a really intimate kind of like conversational setting on video uh it's made in like 1980 yeah because if you think about um like the best nights of your life they're not like sitting in a studio light on makeup it's just like oh dinner with friends you don't know what you're going to talk about before it's like rambling yeah you're eating good food you're [04:11] hour dinner and there's bottles of wine.

I can't have like short dinners. [04:15] I can't have short conversations. Every single time, especially if we're interested in the same person or interested in the same things, you're going to talk for like [04:23] three four five jeremy the first time we ever met one of the only times we've ever hung out we literally had a five hour first he told me it was 10 hours it was close i got the preview of he went on o'shaughnessy a month later and i got i was like this is the same thing i already got this i was badgering him for hours today i was like do you understand how few people are actually good at podcasting you went on [04:42] you know, one of the most important shows, one of the biggest shows, it was the most downloaded episode that year.

That is a sign that people like the way you think. And you're really good. The thing about Jeremy is he's quick witted and quick with it. And so he's able to package and brand ideas really interesting. So they're like memorable. Yeah. And so part of what I was telling him today for like an hour is just hounding him about like, you really dropped the ball here, you should find a format that suits you. And it's not a format him. He should not be interviewing [05:12] saying yes you and you don't want an hour of him you want like you have this tweet the idea i gave him was like okay [05:18] I don't like reading Twitter.

You have some of my favorite tweets. You stop tweeting, right? Because now he's got like a real job and everything else. Right, right. You probably tweet 100 times. [05:27] Pick the 10 that resonated the most and just expound on them in two to five to seven minute episodes. That'd be cool. And that's the whole thing. [05:34] One of my favorite podcasts to listen to, one of the ones I listen to most is Dithering with John Gruber and Ben Thompson. Yeah. And it's fine. Like, I like John and Ben. [05:43] It's 15 minutes twice a week, and it's exactly 15 minutes.

I think that's a huge... I mean, TVPN's kind of cracked this a little bit, but there's so much room for... You got these guys doing two and a half hour long conversations. It's a nightmare. You don't even get to the end. Those are very valuable, but very few people are actually interested in [05:59] to have a conversation with right or to hear speak for many many hours so like you know i this is going to sound very like disrespectful i don't mean this way but like a lot of people reach out to me and like hey i need help with my podcast and like i'll listen to it and they're like what do you think i was like it sucks [06:12] And they're like, well, what should I do?

I was like, make it better. Like all the clips and everything you're trying to do is like, you have to make something good first. And then I just asked them, I go podcast, podcasting is straight energy transmission. That's all it is. Okay. So the, when I listened to your podcast, it's like very similar to the conversations and the walks we've had and the dinners we've had. And so I'll ask them, I was like, Hey, when you have dinner, [06:31] Like, are the people captivated by you? And they're like, what do you mean?

I was like, do they desire more of your presence? Are they engaged? Do they have a good time? Do you see them again? And they're like, not really. I was like, because you have the charisma of a cardboard box. [06:44] So you can't podcast to go right or do. There's other mediums, but like this is not the one. Do you have to be charismatic to have good podcasts? [06:50] I think charisma wins in almost every area. Like, is Dan Carlin amazingly charismatic? Yes, for sure. Okay, for sure. I don't know if he's charismatic in person, but on the show, he's a master storyteller.

So it's funny you bring him up because I'm always interested in studying, like, who influenced the influencers, right? So, like, it's not enough for me to be like, oh, I like Steve Jobs. Like, no, no, I need to know every single person that he studied and then every single person they studied. You just realize these ideas started 200, 300, 500. And they're just repackaging them and using them. [07:20] solo. [07:22] history podcast is because of Dan Carlin. I think Dan Carlin is the greatest podcaster to ever live. [07:28] And my own personal view on this is I liked him a lot better when he used to do like he does these multiple series like Ghost of the Dallas Front, Wrath of the Khans.

You know, these are Blueprint for Armageddon. These are some of the best podcasts ever created. And they were like five part series, but they were like an hour and a half long as his career progressed. [07:45] He now does five-part series, but they're five hours on. Yeah, that's crazy. And I get lost in it. I actually think the product was better back then. It's actually an interesting conversation. One of my favorite podcasts that came out, I would say, in the last two or three years, [07:57] is Rick Rubin, who is a phenomenal listener.

[08:00] Phenomenal listener. Turns out that's what he did for his job, right? He did this episode with Jimmy Iovine. [08:06] And he talks about, they talk about on that episode, the first time that they met each other. And Jimmy's like 10 years ahead of Rick and everything. They produce the same people, all their accomplishments Jimmy did beforehand. And they talk about that, but, [08:19] Rick plays Rick's just starting out plays him the song and Jimmy's like, man, that's really good. I wish I could do something that simple. [08:26] And Rick didn't understand as a young man, like, what does that mean?

Like, of course you could do something that simple. Like, you're better than I am. You have more experience than I do. But a lot of people make the mistake is the more experience they have, the more complications they let in. And I think that's what happened with Dan, where it's like, this was perfect. [08:41] It wasn't, you didn't need, you told the story in an hour and a half. Now you're taking five hours. Like you're taking more time. It's, it's, it's the old saying where it's like, oh, I would have wrote you a, you know, a short letter, but I didn't have enough time.

So I wrote you a long one. Has founders become simpler or more complicated? Oh, for sure. No, way simpler. And so this is actually interesting. I think I'm actually going to do an episode because I get so many people ask me, it's like, hey, how do you like make the show? And they're interested in like the process behind it, which is fascinating. And this is actually, um, this is a principle I think is really important for entrepreneurs [09:11] to market or to sell something. [09:13] is people buy stories, right? Money flows as a function of stories.

And what, [09:19] If you go back and study like the great advertising agency founders from like the heyday area in the 50s and 60s on Madison Avenue, they would all study like the copywriters from the early 1900s. And what the copywriters would do is like there's this guy named Claude Hopkins, probably the greatest copywriter of all time. OK, he was alive in the early 1900s. He works with Albert Lasker. Albert Lasker was an advertising agency founder. OK, he made more money. [09:42] than any single other person in the agency business.

And his business was simple. He's like, we write copy that sells product and we don't do anything else. We don't do art. We don't do visuals. We don't do any other shit. We write copy. Those words make the cash register ring. And the basis of his business was the copywriting work of Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote this book called Scientific Advertising, where it lays out exactly like he learned through experimentation. So history doesn't repeat, human nature does. He would just run these experiments and see, [10:12] I put this in front of 1,000 people.

This is how humans reacted. And then he would just constantly iterate and adjust. So he wrote this, and he's like, hey, I have a book here. And Albert's like, yeah, that's how I built my business. And he took the book from Claude Hopkins and didn't allow him to publish it. He literally locked it in a safe for 20 years. Wow. And now to this day, you can go and buy Claude Hopkins' autobiography, which I think is called My Life in Advertising. It's probably like episode 170 or something like that. It comes with scientific advertising for free.

[10:40] So the reason I bring that up is because one of his clients was like a distiller, like a beer company. I think it was called Schlitz Beer. And they were like... [10:48] fifth or sixth market share. So we're doing well. They're like, Hey, we need help here. And so Claude is a big believer in research, spends a lot of time with the executives. He tours the distillery, sees the process. He's like, this is magic. Like I love beer. I had no idea how you made it. Like, and she's like, I'm going to, I'm going to describe that.

That's what our ads are going to be. The ads are going to be what goes into making the product, the product. And then once you understand it, you'll have a better understanding and a love of that product. [11:18] He's like, yeah, but the difference is no one else is telling them. So you have to educate. So they wind up educating the public on how they make their beer, which is the same process as all the other distillers are making. And it shot them up from like fifth to second or first.

Wow. When was this? That would be probably 19, somewhere 1910, 1920, 1930. So ahead of the time. And so – [11:40] One of the reasons it's like normal to me, and I'll answer your question, how I've simplified it. It's so it's like normal to me, but abnormal to other people. And so I realized like, oh, if I just like make an episode where I talk for like 20 minutes, like this is what goes into it. [11:55] If you if you get to the end of that episode, you'll have a further appreciation for you'll like the episodes more, just like James Dyson rereading his autobiography for the fifth time now.

And he's got this great idea where he's like, yeah, you walk in. I make vacuum cleaners. You walk in, you see five different vacuum cleaners. Mine looks different. [12:13] on purpose because he thought that was important but more important than that would help the cells he would put this little flyer on like a piece of string on like the handle and in 200 words he would say [12:25] Dyson, this is who Dyson is. It's a person. This is how I make it. This is what makes it different. Really simple. And if you read that, [12:32] The likelihood that you would choose that one...

[12:34] Over the one next to it that's half the price was a lot. People buy stories. [12:38] Also, there's a thread there, though, that is like the Yvonne Chouinard, like nonfiction marketing thing, which is it's not like rocket science. It's not like clever. It's like various. There's there's a broad sort of Internet advice. Now, Sam Hickey's talking about this. Others have, too, which is just like you have specific knowledge that other people don't have. And 90 percent of people just like don't think what they have is special and don't say it.

And the people who do have giant followings for the most part. And it's pretty obviously within reason. [13:08] actually know disproportionately well. But you're like, it's not that novel. It's not that interesting. [13:13] Yeah, and you're afraid to repeat yourself. Yeah. Or it's just like, they're like, no, I need a new idea. Like, you kind of see this with like, Peter Thiel goes and gives these talks on like the Antichrist and all this other stuff. It's like, really, what we want from him is just like, repeat zero to one over and over and over and over and over again.

Because that, if you only read one book on startups, it's obviously the book. There's nothing but this desire, humans crave novelty, this desire to like, no, now, like, I've created great ideas or I've packaged these great ideas and I have to do something new. [13:43] have to repeat it over and over again actually there's just i'm obviously fascinated with people that do things for a long period of time right i'm not interested in all in the start cell start scale cell it was a good go do that and like i'll just keep dominating for decades and that's fine um [13:58] But what I what I so I contemplate is like what causes things to last and endure for a long period of time?

[14:04] There's this great line in Poor Charlie's Almanac of that. Charlie's son says that he thought that his dad thought durability was a first rate virtue. [14:13] And I was like, that's a fucking powerful idea. Durability is a first-rate virtue where everybody, this modern environment, we fetishize growth at the expense of durability, which I think is a massive mistake. Also mentioned by Peter Thiel in Zero to One, by the way. [14:24] And so then I'm like, OK, so what lasts like a long time? Right. We know what like a human life lifetime is typically is.

How long do companies last? How long do countries last? And I was like, well, what is the things that are created by humans that endure the longest? And my answer is like religion. [14:39] And so then I analyze, like I grew up like fundamentalist Christian, right? [14:42] it's probably like how why founders is the way it is. I didn't even understand this by myself. It's like, [14:47] like jumping up and down preaching. I'm very familiar with the church. I'm very familiar with religions. And it's like, well, what do they do?

First, they have a shared base of knowledge. [14:56] Right. And it's usually in the form of written text that has been around for thousands of years. And then they gather with. [15:03] like-minded people with fellow believers at regular intervals right just analyze what religions do even if they believe different things they do very similar things yeah it's almost it's a scaffold it's like a social scaffolding yeah and so then now what happens we went to church on wednesdays and sundays right the preacher didn't get up there and be like okay today we're gonna talk about jesus and sunday we're gonna talk about some other guy it's like no it's like we're gonna repetition is persuasive yeah you repeat repeat repeat and by [15:33] there is like, this is the most important thing.

[15:35] We are going to keep we're going to talk about Jesus every weekend forever. Yes. And if you actually analyze the people that last a long time, like if you analyze, like what has Buffett been talking about for 60 years? What is Michael Dell been important to Michael Dell for 40 years? What is Elon Musk? I just did this crazy episode on Elon. Right. And you wouldn't expect him. You think he's running seven companies obsessed with technology. He says he repeats the same thing so much that the executives in the meeting can mouth the words before he says it.

[15:58] so why the fuck are you jumping around idea after idea after idea you have to identify a handful of timeless principles and repeat them and work on them and make the center of your work for decades that's how greatness is built [16:11] What makes durable products? [16:13] I don't know. [16:15] I really don't know. Because if you think like the products that what let me flip that question back on you. What's the product that you use for the longest time? [16:24] The first thing that comes to mind is Nike shoes.

[16:27] which I don't. [16:28] super actively wear, but I've always had a real fun. Are those Nikes? They aren't. [16:34] I've used an iPhone for a long time. That's not very interesting. iPhone, MacBook, these types of utilities... [16:39] So we've been using the iPhone for what? [16:42] 15 years? Yeah, it came out in 2007. [16:45] I haven't had one that long, but something like that. [16:49] I think like for most people, it's probably like a deodorant or underwear or like T-shirt or things like that. Like these. I think there's actually an interesting principle here.

You read Jeff Bezos to share a whole lot of letters. And once he realized he had a winning system that if you started using Amazon, you kind of stayed in Amazon and then you're going to buy books. But you really buy anything. He said he got this great email one time where he realized, oh, like this has no limits to what we can do. Because the guy emailed him. He's like bought some books. He was happy. He's like, hey, do you sell windshield wipers? [17:14] Because, oh, if this guy wants a windshield wiper, he'd buy it for me.

They'll buy anything. And one of the most important things I think people skip over in the early Amazon shareholder letters is the fact that he says we and Bezos repeats this. And he's adamant about this. Like, we're going to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. And why? Because what you just picked up, people are habitual. You know, I don't I order a ton of books, more books than probably 99.99% of people on the planet. I don't go shopping for price or like something else. Like Amazon got me and they just got me and they've had me.

[17:44] you know, for 20 years. Yeah. People are much more habitual than we take them for. Even in software, people are like, well, I have a, you know, unless it's drastically different or a lot better. And like, well, I'm a little cheaper. It's like, yeah, but I don't want to switch. It's just like a, it's a headache. Maybe a part of it is trust. Like trust is the thing that's feeding that habituality. Like you think about, I mean, in theory, the reason somebody's still listening to founders in 20 years. Yeah.

Like if we're like, you always talk about this, like very tangibly, the only conceivable way that makes sense. [18:13] He is. [18:13] that you have built enough trust that just says, come follow me. [18:18] to as far as I want to go. I think the way I think about, the best way I've heard to describe is Buffett says that a brand is a promise. [18:26] And I think in three words, it's like, I know what I'm getting with Apple products. Like I had a iPhone before I had a MacBook, but I was like, oh, the iPhone's good.

So if you're making something else, that's probably good too. And I just met. [18:37] I think this was yesterday. My life's a blur right now. But they're like, [18:43] And basically what the person that I met that was a fan of the podcast was describing to me is just like, thank you for introducing me to people like spectacular people I didn't even know exist. This is what I'm saying. Yes. So it's like this is Rogan. Go down the list. Yes. Any modern person with influence, they are usually this, which is I trust you.

I'm going to sit. I get to sit in the seat that wrote like Rogan's my avatar. Yeah. And I get to just have a conversation he has. And I trust him. I trust his taste. [19:08] Yeah, so they might come in for like jobs or Rockefeller or Bezos. But then like, what about this Ferrero guy? What about Del Vecchio? Like, what about Sam Zemuri, like overthrew the Nicaraguan government twice? Like, how is that even possible? Like, what did he do? Daniel Ludwig was the richest person in the world. No one even knew who he was.

He beat up the guy that tried to take his photograph when he was 80 years old. Like, what is going on here? There's all these crazy stories. And the bar for founders, like the unfair advantage I have is like, you know, they're good because they were so good at their job. Somebody wrote a book about their life. How many? Come on. [19:38] an episode, it's a multiplier on that. Well, this just happened. And this will probably be in the episode I do on how I make the show. It's like, [19:46] They're, you know, I'm trying to do one a week.

It's always late. And part of that is because I read a lot of books that never make it. And it takes a long time to read. And it got even worse like two weeks ago. [19:58] two or three weeks ago, I read the book, did the outline, which we'll go back to why it's [20:02] We can go back to that too. Recorded the episode. [20:07] And then listen to it back. And I'm like, this isn't good enough. This is not good enough. So I fucking threw it out. That is hardcore.

And that's like, you're talking about like 60 hours at least. [20:17] Maybe a little less because it was in the edit process where I realized, oh, this is not going to happen. And what I realized wasn't good enough is... [20:23] I was taking an hour... [20:25] to tell really 15 minutes of good information. [20:28] You were making it more complex. Yeah. And it's like I was talking to my friend Justin Mares and he's just like, just make it 15 minutes then. [20:37] And so I might go back and like edit it down.

Yeah. You know, there's no rule that it has to be an hour, 90 minutes or anything else. There is a good ideas here, but I didn't like how long it was taking me to actually tell. Do you cling to those rules you make for yourself? This is something that I've run into a lot is I'm 30 episodes in a tiny, tiny fraction. But there are certain ways I chose to do something probably arbitrarily. And a lot of times I find myself like, oh, I have to do it this way because this is how it was done.

No, no. I'm addicted to the best people in the world of what they do are addicted to continuous improvement. [21:07] continuous improvement unless you're willing to throw out like what used to be good like uh we just met uh one of uh i think her name was grace out there and she was very complimentary to the michael dole episode i did at the time i put it out i thought it was one of my best episodes i listened to it again myself yesterday so my this is people think this is crazy [21:23] I think it's crazy that you don't do this.

So when my Spotify rap comes out this year, my top podcast will be founders. I listen to. [21:33] To be clear, this is not the artist spot or the creator spot of my rap. This is the consumer. Yes. So the reason that is because. [21:42] The reason that is right is, first of all, I've done. I've been working for 10, almost 10 years, nine years. There's like 400 episodes. And I listened to that past ones because one, I think of it more as a tool than I like a [21:53] also like i forget a lot of the great ideas so just like if you go to church you have to remind yourself repetition right all the prayer exactly and so then what i also do is it's like it's like a basketball playing watcher game tape you think curry's like oh no i'm sorry i can't look at me shoot a three no he knows exactly so i have to listen to it and so when that came out which was probably i don't know six months ago five months ago something like that i thought great

[22:17] I hear it now. I'm like, [22:19] You fucked that up. There was an easier way to say that. Should have cut that part. What is that? Why did you leave that in? Like, I see all the flaws, which I know if I did it today, it would be better. [22:28] So to go back to the question, and maybe I'll add a piece to it, which it sounds like you're getting simpler and you're getting better. Does that feel linear? Like, are you getting like, is episode 400 better than episode 390?

[22:39] Certainly episode 400 is better than 100. Yeah, for sure. I don't think it's linear like that. [22:46] Because some of these things you don't even understand what you're doing. It's much more experimental. So let me give you an example. I just re-listened to the Steve Jobs, Make Something Wonderful, you re-released. That episode is incredible. Yeah, so, okay, this is... [22:59] Some of the stuff I shouldn't even say because it's like I repeat it over again and people don't use it, but it's also an unfair advantage. So one of the main principles is that you're not advertising to standing army or advertising to moving parade.

OK, that is Ogilvy quoting Hopkins. So this is like this one hundred and now twenty seven year old idea that I use. And so when I smoked that episode where I was like, I spent 60 hours, that means I can't really. I don't have more time in the week to make another episode up to my standards. So I have to republish an old one. [23:27] So I think $2.99, I republish as $3.98 or something like that. I had... When I do that, I usually... [23:35] Like put, say at the beginning, hey, this came out.

[23:38] re-listen to it again because it's timeless. You should. But if not, you need to listen to it right now. I forgot... [23:43] I wrote it out. I forgot to add that part. Okay. [23:47] That episode ripped. And then I had people sending me like five paragraph essays about, I've listened to hundreds of a hundred of your episodes. I thought that Steve jobs one was the best one. It's like, [23:57] They didn't even realize it. [23:59] You're not advertising to staying or you're advertising to moving parade. [24:04] I guarantee you, me and Jeremy just had this conversation on the walk over here.

[24:07] I guarantee you there are people... [24:09] Right. Because I told him, I was like, you need to tweet more. Like he's like, well, I don't have anything. I go go on advanced Twitter search and put that out right now. This is Will Manidus did this recently. I do it. No, I do it all the time. I do it all the time. I had a second exact idea of this tweet about coffee, the most engagement I've ever gotten. I did it again. Exact same thing. [24:26] Because people aren't paying. Think about how much information.

So I guarantee you. The TikTok mindset. This is what I said to Jeremy in the walkover. I guarantee you there's people that listen to that Steve Jobs episode when it came out. [24:36] Two years have passed. I forgot it. They listened to it again and didn't even realize the same episode. And I'm not trying to be duplicitous. Yeah. That's not what I'm trying to do. I usually, and in the show notes, I put, because I forgot to add the intro to it. You know, I originally put publishers, et cetera, whatever.

But people vastly overestimate how much people are paying attention and just how much information people are consuming. You think that every single person is paying attention to every single thing you're doing, and nobody is. You're the only person doing that. That is why, so I talked to my friend Ben Wilson, who does the How to Take Over the World podcast. [25:06] And I think Ben is really, really talented. And what I would say is like he wasn't doing enough volume because I remember we were sitting there one night and he's asking me advice on podcasts.

And me and Cliff Whiteson were talking about it because we were both fans of his podcast. And then like 20 minutes in, I go, wait a minute, you don't number your episodes. So like how many have you done? And he's like 90. [25:23] I'll... [25:24] There's nothing to fucking talk about. When I did 90 episodes, nobody was listening. Go do 200 more and then we'll talk about this. So he needs volume. But also I would say like he doesn't know how talented he is. And I think I would rather have more confidence, self-belief than less.

He sent me this like Twitter thread where he was changing something about his podcast where he was like adding sound effects. And he's like, I don't know what to do here. Like the feedback that I'm getting is like conflicting. So I go and click on it. And it's like one person's like, I love the sound effect. And I'm just like, I hate it. [25:54] why are you even reading this shit? He's like, what do you want to do? What do you think is great? Stephen King said, I'm not just a writer.

I'm the first reader. [26:03] So when I'm the first listener, if I listen to that podcast and it sucks, I'm going to [26:08] You'll never hear it. [26:09] Because it didn't make my standards. And then you just keep doing that. And you're eventually, the internet is big enough, you'll find people that like the same stuff that you like. [26:18] We can go back to the simplicity thing briefly if you want to. Yeah. So my thing is, again, I didn't understand this. I just followed like my natural drift and my natural star.

And like, this was just like my own session, you know, for five and a half years, I was just doing it. And very few people were listening. The people that were listening were really impressive. So that's why I was like, oh, I might be on something. There's two things I figured. Like one, it was a subscription podcast. And so I saw the email addresses, the people that were listening, which is very rare. Yeah. And even though it was like only a couple thousand people was like. [26:48] murderer's row. Yeah. So like, oh, this is interesting.

And then as I read more biographies, I realized, oh, the greats of every era studied the greats that came before them. And that's an enduring human principle. And if you can just be the best at doing that, you're going to have the best audience in the world because I've met [27:03] If you've just even seen how I've spent the last few weeks spending hours and hours talking to you, like some of the wealthiest. Were you self-confident before that? [27:10] Yeah. I was born with Tom Ford syndrome. [27:16] I'm not kidding.

[27:17] Do you know what that is? No. I have a sense, but... Let me pull up because I want to get the exact thing. Hold up. [27:26] Okay, so... [27:27] Tom Ford was interviewed by GQ and he was asked, didn't you always feel like a freak growing up? And he says, I thought I was fabulous and everyone else was stupid. [27:36] And so I obviously didn't think everyone else was stupid, but I think because I grew up in an uneducated family, didn't have any money, like, and I had, like, I knew I didn't want, I basically just saw bad examples.

So I was like, oh, like, that's a good path not to take. And so to say that I'm going to change the trajectory of, like, multiple generations on both sides of my family, you have to be, I would even say, like, arrogant. But you did a lot of things prior to this. Yeah, but not on a world-class level. [28:06] you've done plenty of other things you've always been self confident that's not the issue [28:11] That's kind of what I was trying to ask. You fight against it. So the conversation we just had out there where it sounds so almost like cliche and cheesy, but when we were talking about Michael Dell's infectious enthusiasm 41 years into his business, he's giddy to tell you about new products.

How many products has this guy made in his life? It doesn't matter. He's still just enthusiastic about what's in front of him than he's ever been. And I mentioned when we were talking to Grace, it's like, well... [28:38] when Kobe Bryant was asked, like, what, [28:40] Combine what is all the people he knows are great at what they do. What do they have one common? He goes, Oh, it's simple. It's like love. Like we have a deep love. [28:49] of what we're doing. And so this is why, you know, I see a lot of bad advice on Twitter and they're like, oh, don't, you know, people say you should be passionate about that's bad, bad idea.

You should get like a, you know, just a normal, like buy, you know, dry clean or some shit like that. Or like the David Goggins thing of just like, like grind yourself. No, I, yeah, but you'll have superpowers if you love, love it. And you still have the discipline and grind. I work, if my eyes are open, I think I'm thinking about podcasts. [29:15] It's not an exaggeration. Sometimes when your eyes are closed, apparently, too. Yeah, you dream about it. Well, this is another common thing. I just talked to Todd Graves recently.

[29:22] I had Raising Cane's last night in his honor. Yeah, so he's been working on his company for 30 years. [29:29] He... [29:29] owns over 90% of it. He's worth at least $20 billion. The guy's going to be worth $60 billion. His menu has not changed since day one. [29:37] And we were talking about this because I was having trouble sleeping. Something that I've been doing, like the Giro Ono episode, the sushi chef is on this documentary called Giro Dreams of Sushi. He was so addicted to his work, he was dreaming about it.

Then I'm reading about Michelin Brothers. They were selling fucking tires. They're dreaming about tires. The Ferrero chocolate guy was dreaming about chocolate. It's a very common thing that you're just obsessed with it. [30:07] - Yeah. [30:07] and other things. But my point being is like, if you love it, it's so much easier to just give yourself... [30:13] And essentially, like, let yourself be consumed by your craft and the love of what you're doing. I would say, like, that doesn't mean you can't have a family doesn't you can't have friends me can have fun.

But the level of detail and obsession is like, there's only one way to describe this like they're consumed by their craft. [30:30] So I don't know if I answered your question about the simplicity part, though. [30:34] So to tie that back together, it's like something I accidentally discovered in addition to like all the greats want to learn from the greats. Every single person, like when I meet somebody, it's, you know. [30:44] Crazy. [30:45] uh crazy sysel michael dell charlie munger sam zell daniel act just list goes on and on and on it's like they all have like this historic base of knowledge in their head you go to their houses you look at their libraries they're reading biographies they're obsessed with history then you pick up the biography and the person that's the pro profiling the biography is also reading biographies and history and so if you want uh wanted a high value audience which i stumbled upon just because i i have a like a low threshold for fluff like you know think about like [31:15] guessing?

There's no intro music. It just goes right into it. It just kind of ripped through ideas that, you know, 1.5 X speed for an hour, an hour and a half. So, [31:25] If you're like a Michael Dell or Brad Jacobs or any of these these people that, you know, tweet and talk about the fact that they like the podcast and, you know, that they get a lot of value out of it. It's like how much information, how much time do you think they have to ingest content a day? [31:40] Like, I think Brad Jacobs has one hundred and forty thousand employees.

Like, so the shorter, the better. You're probably the I don't want to make too many assumptions, but at least for some of these people, you're probably the only like regular media they consume outside of like news and Twitter and things. I wouldn't be shocked at that. Like they're probably not watching Netflix, first of all. And then I would assume they're probably not listening to a lot of other podcasts. Yeah, this this just happened with the Human Lab because I'm close with those guys. [32:10] and they do the standard like super long deep dive into one health topic, and it might be two or three hours, and they put that on Mondays.

They've been doing it for a few years, and then they realize like, hey, we have this like kind of timeless content, and what we should do is they created this new SKU called Essentials. They put it on Thursdays, and it's a three-hour podcast. [32:29] edited down 30 minutes. [32:31] You know how many high value people I've talked to that say that they only listen to essentials? Hmm. [32:37] Because what is an hour of like Michael Dell's time worth? It's not an exaggeration to say like the it can have effect a swing of ten million dollars one direction or another.

Like it's whatever the number is. You can argue over. No, that's less David's more is fine. The number is giant. And he's giving you an hour of your time and he will continue to do it because you don't waste any of his time. And they're smart enough. Like it was like they're smart enough if they want the full story. [33:02] they can read the whole book. So I'm curious on this. You don't make 15 minute podcasts. We also live in a world where like no one, kids can't sit through movies.

They, nobody can read books. Like we watch three minute or 30 second videos. Um, [33:16] And so you've you describe this sort of gradual path of simplifying the show, but it's also still 45 minutes to an hour and a half. [33:23] there's some bar. And like, so I'm curious what that, like what that tension feels like. What is, what is, [33:29] like... [33:31] There's no fluff, but also I'm going to demand a lot of you. I'm actually going to say that there's an hour worth of content here that no matter how busy you are, you could get this much, much shorter in a classic Instagram video that gives you the global...

No, I think spending some level more time with it's not necessarily bad. Right, right. I just think about the distalization. The distalization. I don't know how to say that word. I don't know how to pronounce anything. Everybody that listens to the podcast knows this. People leave me comments like, you mispronounced this. Where do you think my vocab came from? [34:01] think I heard these words or I read them? Like, come on, man, pay attention. So the value prop of founders is very easy. 40 year career. Somebody had a phenomenal 40 year career that learned all these lessons.

Somebody put it into a book, probably took them a couple of years to write. So 40 year career, 40 hours of reading so that you can listen to in 45 minutes. [34:18] That's it. And if you want more, go... [34:20] read the book. If you want less, listen to less of the podcast. I don't know what to tell you, but I think that's a pretty, like, it's going to be hard to like top that kind of value prop. And the reason I say 45 minutes is because a lot of these psychos are listening on 1.5 or 2x speed.

I'm a purist. I listen on 1x. You're 1xer. That's crazy. 1x because I actually love the medium. I love podcasts. I'm not trying to write, write, you can rush through sex. That's probably not the point. It's probably your goal when you're going to make love to whoever you're [34:50] Let's see if I can get this over in two minutes. Yes. [34:53] That's not the point. [34:55] One... [34:56] The thing I don't think you've ever talked about that I was really curious is our friend Tammy has this line that a biography says as much about the biographer as the person being profiled.

She said that on your podcast. Maybe it was. [35:10] You've read more biographies than anyone, and you talk extensively about these amazing people that are being profiled for good reason. What makes a good biography and biographer? [35:20] Maybe especially because you've read, there's a lot of these people like Steve Jobs, as an example, you read a bunch of biographies on them. [35:26] Okay. [35:27] I'm not dodging the question. [35:29] Something I didn't understand about myself. [35:32] that I guess I picked, like my life's work kind of picked me, I guess, is I kept, the people like, you read a lot.

So they're like, give me a great book recommendation, right? And so I give them a book recommendation. And they're like, that was the most boring shit I've ever read. And this kept happening over and over again. And then somebody literally tweeted this a couple of days together. Like, I just finished the book, the Red Bull biography. It was a piece of shit. Yet David's episode- This is the one that's translated from German? [36:02] But it wasn't a piece of shit to me. And so what I realized. I have a higher threshold.

For boredom when it comes to reading. Than almost anybody else. [36:13] because like i really subject matter that the distilled subject matter somewhere down there is what you really care about no not even that it's just like it wasn't boring to me like i'm recommending this book everybody's like this sucks the amount of people that send me messages they're like i'm so glad you did an episode on elon on the walter isaac book because they didn't like that book and i'm just like they're like did you hate it i'm like i didn't hate it i was just like look what i made after reading it so obviously like there has to be some of these that you love more than others

[36:43] There is – what I – [36:45] find [36:46] objectionable in all, it doesn't matter what the product is, it's a book, a company, it's like a lack of like taste and craft. And you can just tell if somebody cares about like what they're doing or not. It's very similar. And that's not even my idea. It's like essentially parroting what Jobs would say about like Microsoft's. He's like, I don't, you know, I'm glad they're successful, but their products have no soul. And, you know, it's just like, I couldn't, I wouldn't use them.

I don't want them in my house. I don't want them in my presence, that kind of thing. So yeah, like I think, [37:16] Very few people in the world should be allowed to write a thousand page biography. I've read several of them. A 900 page biography, there's exactly one person living there. [37:26] that I would exclude from that role, and that's Robert Carroll. He's obviously the greatest biographer living by, like, [37:32] There's nobody even close to him. I think most of the books shouldn't be 600 pages. It should be 250 pages.

But that's the problem. Like most people don't actually understand like what's important. Even like think about. So one way I find books to answer your question. [37:46] I will read them and they'll be fine. Like everybody's read Titan, the Rockefeller biography by Ron Chernow, right? But what I will do is I'll go through all the bibliographies of every book that I read and I will find so much great source material [38:00] Books are made out of books. And so then I'll order like 15 books from the back of the bibliography.

I don't even care. I'll look at the title. [38:07] And just like order, order, order. I'm not like I'm very promiscuous when it comes to this stuff. And so in the back of there, I found this book. It's called John D. The Founding Fathers of the Rockefeller. So when I bought it, it was like six bucks and I make an episode on it. And then it goes up to like two thousand dollars because there's only like five copies in the world. It was published in 1970 and it's 250 pages or 224 or something like that instead of seven, eight hundred, whatever Titan is.

And it's hyper focused. [38:32] on what I'm actually interested in, which is how he built Standard Oil and the methods and how he thought about his business. There is a section... [38:39] I think it was in Titan. It might have been a book that I literally... Because sometimes I get so induced into a state of rage... [38:45] No, this is a Picasso book. I still have not found a good biography of Picasso. And I remember the one, the definitive one everyone recommends. It's like a three-part series. I can picture it.

It's at my house. It's like a blue cover with white letters. [38:59] But I got to the point where there was a bar that he would hang out in and they were describing in detail... [39:04] where the, how the furniture was made in the bar. [39:07] And I was like, this is unacceptable. No one is reading this because they give a shit about a chair that is in a bar that, like, I'm never going to go to. And I literally, like, threw the book across the room and never read it again.

Because that's, like, a sign of somebody not understanding, like, why people are picking up the book. Maybe this guy had a fetish for chairs. I don't know. But he's like, I wasn't going to take time to find out. There's probably people who love that book, by the way. I'm almost certain. I'm sure. I'm sure there is. Yeah. I also think people, like... [39:34] Yeah. [39:35] I think when they read, they, like, skip over things. I, like, read every page. Yeah. [39:38] Yeah. [39:39] And I'll know this because like I'll talk to people that like read the book and you have to memorize everything.

[39:43] But there's big chunks of stories that doesn't register on their face. I'm like, you own the book. It's on your bookshelf. I don't know. One of the things I've found, you talked about this a little bit. I've found that if I watch a movie or read a book and it's been two years or more and I've only seen it once, [40:00] The plot's new. [40:01] We forget that we forget. I'm rereading. I've read Dyson's autobiography, both of them, but the first one four or five times. I just finished reading it cover to cover.

[40:11] Again. [40:12] And I'm like... [40:13] I don't remember that at all. Like, how is that possible? Again, why repetition is so important, why you should stop jumping from idea to idea. And when you just study, people are great at what they do. It's like, you know, Steph Curry's not like, hey, I mastered a three-point shot. Let me go, like, you know, work on something else. Like, he's just shooting threes over and over again. You know, Tiger's working his putt over and over again. Elon's repeating the algorithm over and over again.

You know, Jeff Bezos in 23 years of his shareholder talking about obsessing over customers over and over and over again. [40:43] I just think it's a super important idea that you it's, I guess the level of its importance and how frequent you see repetition is, it's completely like off kilter to me. It just doesn't make any sense. Like very important and no one talks about it. Right. Cause it, it goes against human nature. We just like novel seeking, you know, primates. [40:59] Yeah, there's some, you also talked about like the order in which you learn things or study things.

Like we aren't the same, even if the book's staying the same, even if, even taking the memory part away. [41:10] uh, [41:11] Whether it might be that you studied somebody else and now you're connecting the dots or even just like you've changed. I find that like coming back to stuff can be. [41:21] It's like, it's totally new. Even if I remember what the story was about. The words don't change, but you, the paper, words on paper don't change, but you do. This happens like when I do podcasts so we can record today.

And then I'm just going to talk about, I mentioned Dyson a bunch of times because I'm reading Dyson right now. Talking about Steve Jobs because that just happened. We record a year from now, I'm going to be talking about whoever I'm talking about then. Yeah. That's why it's like so important to go back to these things. And this is why I said, it's like, I don't consider, I'm not, I don't have a media company. I'm not even making media. I think of podcasting as building relationships at scale. [41:51] And I think of it much as like I'm building a tool for somebody.

You are a super successful person. This is what Todd Graves told me. He's just like, your work is very important and it becomes more important the bigger my company gets. [42:01] because the effect of the decision. And if I can hear like one little idea... [42:05] If I can do a 1% improvement on a $20 billion company, [42:09] That's a huge level. Exactly. And so it's like irresponsible. I want to get to the point where it's like, listen, I'm covering so much valuable information in 45 minutes. If you're not listening, it's irresponsible.

[42:17] You've said the reason to read biographies over business books is the human element. [42:21] Can you say more about that? That's not even my idea. Again, this is what I love. It's like, Hinky, you know, always talks about this because he's a very funny person. And I do think... [42:34] I think he would consider me a close friend and I consider him a close friend. He's kind of like an older brother. But I think I frustrate the hell out of him. [42:42] I really do. I think I frustrate everybody that deals with me.

It's very much an acquired taste, for sure. But Sam, I think Sam kind of likes to be frustrated a little bit. He finds these frustrated people. And he just likes, he gave me one of the best mental models in terms of who to spend time with. He's just like, I like people that are so interested in what they're, like, [43:04] so intensely interested in whatever it could be. It doesn't matter. It could be reading, podcast, investing. But he's like, he never reaches the end. He does this thing with his hands.

I see him doing it. There's just no bottom to it. His idea, he's like, the advantage that you have is that [43:19] You are now by association, right? [43:22] you're going to automatically be associated with like the Steve Jobs and the Johnny Rockefellers and everything else. And then it's even worse because their ideas are coming out of your mouth. So it's like, David's so wise. I'm like, no, I just read a lot. Like, it's funny. I was many years ago, I somehow found myself sitting next to her across from Naval Ravikant.

Yeah. And I told him something that I had heard from Tim Ferriss. And he's like, that's such a great idea. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's your friend Tim's idea. And he's like, well, it's yours now. [43:52] So the biography thing was the way – the first thing I was – I was introduced to that by – Charlie Munger is the one that framed it the best for me. But Elon Musk was the one that introduced me for the first time. So, like, I didn't know anything about tech when I was younger.

And I got introduced to tech by this guy named Kevin Rose, who's the founder of Digg. Oh, Digg? Yeah, it was like Web 1.0, 2.0, whatever it was called back then. [44:22] a couch and like go over the top stories on com right bring it back maybe it's already back yeah well i think that the lightning's you can't put lightning back in the bottle but like they had for a moment of time you know and this is the dangerous thing about all these people that jump around because kevin had this super high quality video podcast called foundation 2012 and he's [44:41] Best guest.

[44:42] Best shot. And he stopped. And this is the thing. It's like most people, the advice that Michael Dell gave me is like you're not going to be taken out by – most entrepreneurs aren't taken out by competition. They just sabotage themselves. They like either like they get to the point where like they want to go – they don't love the activity for the sake of itself. So they'd rather be at their vacation home and they're rich now. So they don't want to do it. I saw Michael recently and then also last month I had like a five-hour dinner with him.

[45:07] And I was like, what the hell are you doing in Austin in July? This sucks to be here. You have to be in Italy. No, he's got that. He's got like a crazy house in Hawaii. Okay. And his answer is simple. He's like, I just love my business. This is where my business is. It's like very, you know, straightforward and simple. So, [45:24] Kevin Rose, though. [45:26] had this show called Foundation, and he interviews Elon on the factory floor of Tesla. And I think this is right when they were starting the Model S production.

So Elon looks totally different. You know, this is, I don't know, 15 or 12 years ago, however long. And he's just asking, like, all these questions. Great, like, 40-minute interview. It's a short interview. I looked it up the other day. I think it only has, like, a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube. [45:50] It's remarkable. He was just asking, like, how did you like learn? Like you come from Canada, you go from South Africa to Canada, then you wind up in the Bay Area. Like you start companies really young. You know, people had forgotten because of Tesla SpaceX that, you know, he had Zip2 before PayPal and everything, all the stuff he was doing in his 20s.

Like how you so Kevin's like, how did you learn? [46:08] like how to build a company did you read like a lot of business books did you have a lot of mentors and he was like no i didn't uh [46:15] I didn't read business books. I read a lot of biographies. I thought they were helpful. And so he says, I didn't have mentors. So I looked for mentors in historical context. I was like, [46:24] That's a really interesting idea, looking for mentors in a historical context. Because if you read enough about a person, you kind of understand how they think.

Yes. And then you can kind of like have this inner monologue with yourself. Like, oh, I'm in this situation. Like you mentioned Yvonne Chouinard earlier in nonfiction marketing. I have a good model in my head because I've read that book two or three times. I've read every single other book he wrote. And like if I'm faced with a problem and I say and I would say, hey, what would Yvonne Chouinard tell me to do in this situation? He would tell you to increase quality. [46:50] Because his response to any problem in his company was, our quality is not good enough.

So increase quality. It doesn't mean it's the right answer for your specific situation, but you should be able to pull that from your head. But having that in the context of his story, by the way, is way more textured than like some business vice. So that's why I started reading biographies. I discover Buffett. And then Buffett keeps talking about this Munger guy. And then I fall in love with Munger. Munger is still the wisest person. If I could only learn from one person for the rest of my life, it would be Munger just over and over and over again.

Just the way he frames ideas, the way he's just very wise. [47:20] All the greatest people in the world living came and came to his house. They went to him in that very modest house in A. and sought his counsel. What does that tell you? He wasn't the richest, but all the richest guys were like, he's the one. The guy. I want to talk to him. So his thing about this, he understood human nature maybe better than anybody else I've ever come across. He's just like, you need to read biographies because it helps to tie the ideas to the personality to develop them.

[47:45] And you'll understand why they came up with the idea, why it was important to them. Yeah, they can't be out of context. So this is what... Less useful out of context. Yeah, so we were just talking about our mutual friend Jeremy Gaffan, who walked over here with me. And he's really good at getting to the essence of things. We should cut this part because I don't want him to feel good about himself. I want him to feel bad about himself. But he kind of nailed this really fast when we started becoming friends, I don't know, four years ago or however long it's been.

[48:10] And he's like, yeah, it's pretty obviously what you're doing. He's like, you're a psychopathically obsessed personality. You didn't have any good mentors. So you just – you're doing – like, that's what Founders is. So going back to Tammy's idea, it's not for you – [48:25] It's for me. [48:26] It's just you needed that kind of personality type to do it. And then the act of sitting down and recording it makes an act of service to the world and to other people that they can benefit from this activity you'd be doing.

[48:36] Even in a lesson that's based in love. [48:38] Yeah. [48:40] And fear, probably. [48:42] Fear of failure, fear of being a loser, like definitely more like that's a very I think that's a very common motivator for anybody that has an unusual, like extreme career. If you we talked about confidence earlier, you have this amazing I can find it. You have this amazing line from Kobe about fear. The greatest fear you have is yourself. It's scary to accept that dream you have. It's scary to say what you want, less you fail.

[49:12] of moving forward. [49:13] On one hand, you have this radical self-confidence and the love of the thing. Do you experience... [49:19] Any kind of fear or have you have there been periods of fear with founders? [49:23] Yeah, I feel fear every day. So I don't like... [49:28] It's weird for me because this is... Okay, well, I guess to back up, it's also bizarre. It's like some people get into what they're doing for different reasons, right? And... [49:37] One of the things that. [49:39] I started podcasting where it's extremely low status.

[49:42] Like it was like a dorky thing to do, especially to do it by yourself with a hundred dollar microphone in a kitchen. Like it's just a weird paid only. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's just a weird like what is going on here? It's just like something I was obsessed with for years. [49:57] uh like a very long period of time and then uh i've become close with a lot of people at spotify and i've spent a lot of time i've traveled to stockholm twice this year alone just because i think they're geniuses and they're very like generous with their insights and time for me and they were talking about the fact that like they one of their biggest mistakes was like when they were signing all these people they started the beauty of podcasting is like you can it's like angie human says like punk rock [50:20] It's like you can start in like a garage, right?

And you come up with like, there's no money and equipment. You're just doing it for love and you get better, right? Spotify, what they said is like, we signed like, [50:30] celebrities that are expensive. Meghan Markle. And then we had expensive production and they're like, we should have [50:37] Partnering with people like you. [50:38] that like came up with, because of the love. It's the whole story of content on the internet broadly, by the way, YouTube, go down. Yeah. And so there's a lot of people that start podcasting because like, they want like fame.

Right. And so, [50:49] I don't have guests, so I don't like it's just a solo thing. And like it's one of the few podcasts in the world that is made by one person. [50:57] So like, I think that's why Daniel, like he'll, he'll be interviewed. He says over and over again, like his favorite show is founders. And he's very generous with his insights and advice to me. And one of the things he does, like when I'm, when we've been together, like he'll introduce me and we'll talk, talk about the podcast.

And he goes, [51:11] He does everything himself. He's like Prince. He's playing every single instrument. Because it's very unusual to read... [51:20] Record. [51:21] Edit. I'm updating the transcripts now. [51:24] So like the amount of time that you're writing them. No, after the fact, because now I had this idea of like these beautiful captions I did for like the Elon episode. I think it's just better than my face. Yeah. And like, there's other ideas. I wanted to talk about that when you said you still like kill, you hold on to, I used to do it X way.

So I have to keep doing X. I'm like, no, I'm going to do what I feel is best today. The fear basically,