SPEAKER_03
I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of how good of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy and then I have some friends that had built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side and they're like, shut the f*** up.

SPEAKER_00
Stop telling people, oh, the s***.

SPEAKER_04
Alright, everyone. Today's podcast is special. The guy's name is David Senra.

He's got a podcast called Founders. I've listened to dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes. He basically breaks down different biographies that he read about business people, artists, whatever.

Anyone who's the 1% of their field. And on the pod today, we talked about the difference between people who are somewhat successful and the people who are absolute killers and what traits they have and what the commonalities. So it's super fascinating to hear from someone who's read literally three or four hundred biographies and studies this for a living.

He talks about the commonalities of these killers, whether that's UFC fighters or billionaires. It's really fascinating. I think you're going to dig it.

My favorite part is when we talk about, he has this really cool quote from Joe Rogan describing John Jones, who's this amazing UFC fighter and the difference between John and the rest of the people. And then somehow David weaves that in with business people and he lists out all the business people who he says are the 1%, the 1%, the killers of the killers. And he talks about what traits they have and what you can learn.

I think you'll dig it. Check it out. Talk soon.

Yeah, you know, it's up. I understand why you live in Miami if your family's there. I don't love like New York, but I'm eventually going to move there for family.

So the family supersedes all the other stuff.

SPEAKER_03
That's the only reason we stay here. My wife is Colombian. So 70% of Miami D.

County is Hispanic. All her families here, like I've been traveling a lot more for work. And like the day I leave, my kids wake up, her mom is here, her grandmother's here.

So like from my kids' perspective, like Colombians are, they, with South Americans general, what they do is like they're very, I like their multi-generational like housing. My wife grew up in a house connected to her grandparents' house. Yeah, I dig that too.

Oh, that's incredible. Like I didn't have nothing like that when I was a kid. And so I was like, man, I really want to live in California, but I'm just going to stay here for family and then, you know, spend my summers in California.

SPEAKER_04
What did you do before Founders Pod?

SPEAKER_03
I've done a shit ton of businesses, like since I was like 18 years old, like I think me and you were around the same age. I might be a few years older than you. The business I was working on right before actually started Founders while I was doing it was this thing called RoboDB, which is a way to track the original, the true origination points of Robocalls through the payment network.

And it was just like a business that was like kind of like a clever hack, but I wasn't interested in it the way I was podcasting. So like I was obsessed with podcasting for years. I remember my friend Eric, he invited me over to his house one time.

It's like 2010. He's like, dude, you got to come over and watch this new podcast. Do you remember the guy from Fear Factor? And I'm like, yeah, I watched Fear Factor when I was in like high school.

And we went to his house and it's like when Joe Rogan was on like the white couch and he was on like Ustream and then he'd have like, there'd be like things falling down. He'd have like, you know, the cheesy kind of like, there'd be stars or sparkles and stuff like that. I'm like, what is this? He's like, oh, you can also listen to it on your phone anytime you want.

And that just blew my fucking mind. I could not believe that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04
But were you successful or were you kind of like a struggling entrepreneur? And then this is like, is this your first like breakout?

SPEAKER_03
This is the first thing that's going to make like, I'll make a lot more money. I was like making like dentist or doctor money for like a long time, you know, like not struggling, not nearly like, you know, what a podcast could could do like a successful podcast could do.

SPEAKER_04
How big is the pod now in terms of listenership?

SPEAKER_03
It fucking crazy right now. We a few weeks ago, I just cracked over 100,000 individual listeners per episode. No, no, overall, like so when I signed into like my podcast host and says like unique listeners last seven days, that's the only I don't I'm not big on metrics like I don't pay attention at all.

I just try to make what I want and then put out into the world. But the one number I want to see grow is that number because founders is also weird. We're like, you could discover it now.

And because the back catalogs evergreen, evergreen, like I'll talk to people that listen to like the first latest episodes and then they'll go back and listen to shit that I did like six years ago, five years ago.

SPEAKER_01
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All right, back to the show.

SPEAKER_04
And it's just you, right? Like, because you're part of what Colossal is at it? Colossus. Colossus, sorry. And so they like sell your ads and they take a cut.

And so is it just you and a producer or what?

SPEAKER_03
Nothing, just me. So, um, patch, I love, we were talking a little bit about this yesterday. Like, um, the one thing I love about podcasting industry is how positive some everybody is.

So I listened to Pat podcast, Patrick's podcast for years. Like, uh, I was taking those as podcasts. I went back and look since like 2019.

And last year in May, uh, my podcast, this is a subscription podcast, right? You could listen to the first 30 minutes, you can listen to all of it for the first six years of its existence. You had to pay to upgrade, right?

SPEAKER_04
I had no words. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, wait, oh, I didn't know you. So you've been doing this for six years.

Yeah. So in 2016. Oh, wow, that's crazy.

I to, to me, like you just got on my radar like a year ago, maybe

SPEAKER_03
everybody was like that. So Patrick played, played a big role in that, uh, the David and Ben from required. They played a big role that was just on your, uh, your podcast.

Um, but what happened was, um, Patrick just randomly treated it out. You know, he's got, you know, this massive, very valuable audience, like in size, in terms of size and then average net worth. Like he's got one of the most, I would argue he's got the most valuable business podcast audience in the world, right? If you find, if you keep, if you, uh, like the fact the, the average net worth of his audience is extreme.

And, uh, he just randomly treated out like last May, Hey, um, I never find new podcasts to listen to. I think David center's founders podcast is excellent. You should listen.

And I was like, what the f***? Like, I know you dude. Like I watched this to your podcast. This was crazy.

And so I had become friends with this guy named Sam Hinkes. Sam Hinkes, the former general manager that's filled up the 76ers. Now he's an investor in Silicon Valley.

And I knew he knew Patrick. And so I screenshot it. That was like, Oh shit, look what your friend Patrick said.

And then Sam immediately put me in a group chat with Patrick. He's like, you too should know each other. And so Patrick, we, the first time we talked, we talked for like an hour and a half.

We had like the same interest for addicted podcast, addicted history, addicted entrepreneurship, all social stuff. And so we were just friends for a long time. And then, uh, I had several people, Rob Moore being one of them.

We should probably talk

SPEAKER_04
about, uh, David Benfler fired Rob's been hooking me up constantly. Like I'll talk to him and we'll email back and forth. He's always helping me.

SPEAKER_03
Okay. So this is the positive some nature of podcasting. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04
For those who don't know Rob Moore, Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman are partner, are partners

SPEAKER_03
on the pod. Rob is the co-founder of the human live package. So okay, there is, this is the interesting thing.

One of my favorite quotes, I've read every single thing I could find on Steve Jobs, right? And one of my favorite quotes that really describe, uh, Steve's, one of his superpowers was that Steve was gifted at finding markets full of secondary products. And what you, what you guys realize, I think as well as like people, people have essentially like when you're inside podcasting, the perception inside of it is completely different than what it's outside of it. It's like, everybody's like, there's too many of home.

Uh, it's too late to get in and like you need to start a long time ago. And what happens is like, everybody starts podcast quits, right? And when you get in there, podcasting general are full of secondary products. Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman, uh, and I put David and Ben up here with as well as like their first, their first class products and a first class approach to building their business.

So Rob, I've never talked to Rob less than two hours. Every single time we talk, he, look, dude, look what I have on my desk. Like, what's that? Oh, Rob, is that a Huberman tweet? Yeah, it's Rob and Andrew have been so relentless with supporting me for no, like they have no benefit, right? They just, they keep like every time Andrew treats about me, the fact that he was one of his favorite podcasts, his founders, he says we have to church just from his tweets.

And so Rob's like, Hey, um, we have this new studio next time you're in California, next time you're in California, come out and like, I'd love to give you a tour. And our mutual friend, Andrew Wilkinson had invited me to Victoria. So I was like, Oh, I'm actually flying to Victoria like next week, that's a pain in the ass to get to for Miami.

I'll just stop in California for a few days and see you. We, I meet up with Rob. We talked Rob and LA is Robin LA.

Yeah, yeah. Rob's in Malibu. I met up with Rob.

We talked podcasting for seven straight hours. That's crazy. Literally, we meet up to have lunch.

We stayed the same spot. They're like, uh, it's dinner now. We're like, let's have dinner.

And then we stayed the whole time. And then he's like, let's go to the studio. They are like, to me, I think, uh, not only he ruins the size of his audience, it's crazy.

But if you break down on how they think about the quality of the product, how they think what's quality of the business model, like there's ideas I got from Rob that I told Andrew or that I told, um, Ben and David that they're now using that it's going to wind up making them millions of dollars. Like the way they set up their business, their ads, everything, they're just fucking in first class dudes.

SPEAKER_04
Are you, uh, I see that you're always tweeting out. It looks like a screenshot from Kindle. Uh, how many books a month are you reading to, to pull this off? Okay.

So I think this

SPEAKER_03
is, um, me and you were talking about the advantage. I think you have at Hampton, which is really fucking special. Um, and it's an echo of what Bloomberg used to build his very unique business.

Like your business is going to produce a lot of proprietary information. It's extremely valuable to other founders. And then you can repurpose them.

Dude, you don't know any fucking people I've had dinner with that tell me about the Hampton blog and

SPEAKER_04
you guys just, just launched. Oh really? I think we just, we just, we just like, I, I threw it together like, I think two weeks ago, I heard about some guy doing concrete

SPEAKER_03
or some shit or he was like searching. They told me that he was like searching through

SPEAKER_04
like, uh, like war dogs. Uh, yeah. Like looking for new, look at, do a database of government

SPEAKER_03
contracts and seeing what he can fulfill. Yeah. So what I realized is when I text you that are, uh, yesterday was I'm doing similar things. So, um, I realized what, and this is the magic of you said something that was really smart where you're like rich people read a lot and it's very true.

Our mutual friend, Angel, who could just tweeted out. He's like, I wish I could short entrepreneurs that don't read. And that's what I found as well.

It's like not only if the people I studied, like they had, they were so good at what they did that somebody wrote a book about them. Like that's fucking crazy. Right. And then you read their books and they're constantly reading biographies, studying great work that came before them. And so the Bloomberg idea was like, he, his business is fundamentally, he's like, I want to sell you like a $27,000 year subscription or whatever it is.

Uh, my business, his business collects a bunch of unique information and he made like a bunch of atomic pieces of content sort of media company as a way to get his brand. And so 90% of the people that read his media will never buy subscription, but his media is spread around everywhere. Just like there's a ton of people are going to read your Hampton blog.

You know, obviously I think you should do a podcast. If you do fucking short form, whatever, it's like, that's going to be spread out like that. And then, you know, 1%, 5% of those are going to convert to members.

And like the more members you have, the more data you have, the more data you have, the more members you have and just keeps going. So to answer your question, I just hit episode 300. I've read over 300 biographies of entrepreneurs so far.

Uh, I have that's over a hundred thousand pages. What I realized is like over time I'd input all my highlights into this app called read wise. And so everything you see externally are just, uh, they're essentially, uh, highlights that I like the one I posted yesterday, we were talking about Bloomberg and I was like, Oh fuck, let me go and, uh, read back through my highlights on Bloomberg.

And I found one where he said that like, you know, if you should try to love what you do, cause you love what you do, you do a lot. And then, you know, that compounds everything. And I put that out and like immediately these hit and then people discover the podcast and they started listening.

And so me and you and Bloomberg are kind of running the same idea, but in, you know, different, uh, different

SPEAKER_04
industries or different like, dude, I use up until like, so two years ago, up until two years ago, I was reading a ton. And then I, uh, so I like to listen to books. I like to listen.

I'll listen. I have one that I'm listening to and one of that I read at night and I like to listen while I'm on walks. And there's this one narrator who I love.

Have you ever listened to Titan or Vanderbilt's book, uh, Tycoon, he, uh, the narrator is awesome. And so I was like, I love this narrator. He's so good.

So I went and found books just by that narrator and I started scrolling through and I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's done 1500 books or something like that that he's narrated. And it's like how to win friends and influence and like all these like businesses, self-help books. And then I go and looked at his LinkedIn and I'm like, huh, he's reading all these books.

Why is it anymore successful? And I'm like, I'm like, huh, I done work. So I got angry. So now I, now I read mostly for fun.

And if I don't like something, I, I, I brush it off. I put it away. Uh, and so I quit reading nonfiction books.

Now I strictly read biographies or history.

SPEAKER_03
So your friend Ryan Holiday has a great post where he shared like his top 25, um, biography recommendations and his, the, the intro to that post is excellent. Cause he's like, listen, you go to the most successful people in the world, look at their bookshelves. They read a lot of shit.

They all read biographies at all of them without exception. He's like some of the most high value, um, reading you can do. You notice that as you read through the biographies, like they're all doing this.

Now here's the thing. Um, this, uh, this actually clicked for me the other day. Uh, you know, Eric Jorgensen, right?

SPEAKER_04
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He helped Naval write the thing.

SPEAKER_03
Yep. So he gave me this fantastic book recommendation that I had missed despite it's getting Peter Beveland and he kind of, it's a book on Buffett and Munger. It's called, uh, it's just all I want to know is where I'll die.

So I don't go there. And there was something that Buffett and Munger were saying in that book that really clicked for me. They kept saying, it's like, listen, we're going to share everything we know with you guys.

We know that most of you are just going to listen or read it and never do anything. And I thought about that for a long time. I was like, Oh, so learning is not memorizing information.

Like the guy you were just describing learning is changing your behavior. If you don't change your behavior, then you're didn't actually learn. And so therefore I'm not applying the lessons I'm learning in this book for my own business.

Then that means I'm just wasting my whole fucking life because I'm, I'm working on the seven days a week. Like I'm giving a lot of my life better sheet to this. And I think that's the important part is it's like not just people didn't just fucking read.

They took this idea like, okay, how can I apply it to my business? And then they actually changed their fucking behavior, which is like the key.

SPEAKER_01
All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you should check out on the HubSpot Podcast Network. It's called the product boss.

It is a podcast where it's like almost like a workshop style strategy hour around social media and marketing strategies that you can use to up level yourself in terms of sales and in your marketing strategies. So there's a couple of episodes that you could check out. There's one called why being ready is a lie, which is don't wait for, don't wait to take action.

You'll never take action. You know, if you keep waiting, the truth is you'll never be ready. And they talk about why it's important to take that leap of faith and trust that new doors will open for you if you just go ahead and take action.

So check out this podcast. Go listen to the product boss wherever you get your podcasts.

SPEAKER_04
No, and I've done that a ton. I mean, I'll, I'll, what I, my, the reason I read biographies is I look for patterns and I say, what mistake did this person make? And how do I avoid it? And where did they win? And how do I like lean in on that? And then like the way that I kind of, this sounds really lame, but we make a joke that I'm, I call myself a manifest cowboy because I'm a little redneck. But the reason being is I'm pretty good at like setting five year and 10 year goals and staying focused and working backwards to achieve it.

And like I can like, there's this one book called how to get rich by Felix Dennis. Love them. And like I like listened, I was like, all right, what, and he, and he was, uh, he had a cancer, I believe, or, uh, I don't know if he had a cancer when he wrote it, but he died soon after.

And he was like, if I could do it all over again, I would try to be financially secure by age 35 and then just putz around. And I was like, okay, let's do that. And so I like just worked backwards.

So like, how do you just like have like the bills handled and then everything else is just, you know, icing on the cake. And so I'm pretty good at that. But I,

SPEAKER_02
I think you read it.

SPEAKER_04
I read it all the time. I refer, I use it like a textbook. So like when I think about like, um, equity and how much to pay people, I go and read the sections that he talks about.

So I have it, if you just Google how to get rich free PDF, there's like a website that has it. So I bought many copies and, uh, I have a bunch of his biographies, but I'll just like refer to that all the constantly. I'm like, all right, what did he say about this? And he gives like pretty practical advice, like on company credit cards, like how do you issue your company credit cards and like, uh, office space.

And so I refer back to it constantly.

SPEAKER_03
Andrew Wilkinson gave me advice. He's like, uh, what he did, he's like, I read the book before I got rich and then you read it after you get really rich. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was really great advice.

SPEAKER_04
We, uh, so you and I are both UFC fans. Yes. And I was asking you, I was like, what should we talk about? And I was like, I want to talk about the difference between the people who are pretty good and absolute killers. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, that's just like a new FC. That's kind of the same way.

But I, because I'm fascinated with like, I listened to your, uh, I think his name is Sam Bronfman, the guy who started Seagrams, which eventually turned into like all these other things. And then I was fucking savage. He's a savage, you know, like he almost reminded me of myself, not in the savage sense, but he did a few funny things.

He, uh, he was like a hermit and he like didn't go anywhere unless his wife went with him. And I'm the same way. I'm like, I don't go out unless my wife comes up with me because I have like some social anxiety a little bit.

And like, but when it came to business, he was like pretty brash and, um, uh, like told people exactly what he thought, uh, except like when it came to social situations, he was like super not confrontational. If I go to the grocery store and I don't see what I'm looking for, I leave. I don't ask, you know what I mean? I'm like, I'm like, dude, I just don't even want to ask for help because it bothers me.

Um, but anyway, I listened to him and then I listened to Napoleon. That one was really good.

SPEAKER_03
Oh, look at this book. Sorry. Uh, Sam Altman said the best book he's read in the last few years is this one. It's really hard to find.

It's first published in 1955. Is that the concise history one? I can't see. No, no, no.

I'm about, I'm going to do this in like two, um, two, probably two episodes called the mind and Napoleon. It's, it's Napoleon's old fucking words. And that's cool.

Yeah. So, cause they're gonna say everybody's obsessed with Sam Altman right now because of chat GPD. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but Napoleon's well, Napoleon had this amazing

SPEAKER_04
thing. I forget if I heard it from you or Ben Wilson, but it was something like, um, uh, he was talking to someone. He goes, you and I are not the same.

I am born of a people of conquerors or something like that. Like he had this, like, uh, like this, he felt like he was just like, I'm here to conquer, get out of my way. And he had that at a young age and I thought that was really insightful.

SPEAKER_03
Um, there is something that you picked up on where people, it's fascinating how like, uh, you'll listen to founders or you read a bunch of biographies and you realize like the most successful people in the world, you're like, Oh, I don't, I don't want their life. And that's the way I feel like, For sure. Add of like exact, first of all, you said something that was really smart too.

It's like people dis like manifestation or visualization. And they think it's like, like Willie Pufu nonsense. Okay, that's fine.

I can just tell you pops up in the books over and over and over again. I told you yesterday I'm reading this fucking insane biography of Tiger Woods. This dude is like eight years old listening to motivational tapes, writing it out and on his wall.

It's like, I am powerful. I will achieve my goals like over and over and over again. And you see this from Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder, Bob Noyce founder of Intel Arnold Schwarzeger.

Have you read the education? I want to send you, I was going to ask you for your address to send you his book, but I think he might have already read it. Did you ever read the education of a bodybuilder?

SPEAKER_04
I've heard about it. I've never read it.

SPEAKER_03
The first 113 pages is it functions as a as a autobiography of Arnold when he's 30. And like the visualization thing, seeing things and like he said, he's like, he would lay in bed at night and just picture himself on the stage holding the trophy of the Mr. Universe or whatever in his hand.

Everybody's like essentially like bowing down to him. He's a conqueror to use like that example. What I find is that a lot of the people that um, like even Felix Dennis, man, I think his, the advice he gave was wise.

Like that guy had a hole in his heart that could never fill. He spent $100 million in a decade, 10 million a year on cocaine, alcohol and prostitutes. You know, like that's a fucking crazy story in that book.

And what I love about autobiographies, much first, usually they write them towards and they're like, they don't hide shit. They're like, I was fucked up. I was a bad father.

I cheated on my wife. I, whatever, you know. Um, so the, the, the tie this into like the UFC thing and the, and the like the conquering is that quote.

SPEAKER_04
Um, I think it's a, I am of the race that founds empires is what it is.

SPEAKER_03
So I want to read this quote that you and I were discussing where I think Joe Rogan is obviously like the world, the world's leading expert on, you know, MMA, like the stuff I wish I could talk to that guy. Just, I hope I get a chance just to ask him. I wouldn't, I just want to talk about MMA and all the shit that's in his brain.

And I was very curious what was going to happen with this John Jones, surreal, surreal game fight.

SPEAKER_04
Right. And if you don't know, John Jones is this very controversial character at age like 22, 23. He was like the first UFC fighter sponsored by Nike.

He was the golden boy. He was the champion when he was 20 or something. And he's just a killer, never lost.

But he, you know, has hit his girlfriend before he's gotten arrested for drinking and driving. He's a mess. He's a killer on and off the field.

SPEAKER_03
Did you ever see the video of him where, remember like during the pandemic, people were like lighting shit on fire. There's all these riots and they did it in Albuquerque where he's at. And he stopped him.

And he, yeah, You saw that? Could you imagine if those two guys, there's two small guys, like young kids or like spray painting and analyzing shit. And John is just walking around and like, give me the can, give me the can, give me the can. Like, dude, if you know who that is, you'll give him the can.

SPEAKER_04
John Jones is like six, two, probably, well, now he weighs 260 pounds. I mean, he's like one of the scarier people you could ever see. And he's athletic.

The guy's a freak. He's a freak. And but he comes off.

This is why this is interesting. He, he, he tries to come off like a nice guy a lot of times in interviews. And he, and when you listen to him talk, you think, or at least I think this is learned behavior.

And you are actually a little more sociopathic than you are not. And you will kill someone easily and sleep like a baby at night.

SPEAKER_03
So this is the fascinating thing about studying history. So this is what Joe, Joe, really said about John Jones, which I think is going to remind me like a young Bill Gates, which we can talk about. He says Joe, Joe's like, listen, there's human beings that have a ruthless competitive drive that is terrifying to the ordinary person.

John Jones is a bad guy who is trying to be a good guy. If he were living 1000 years ago, he'd be on a horse with a battle axe chopping the heads off of everyone and everyone would be running. These dominators have always existed.

He's a fucking conqueror. That is the thing that's inside of him that leads him to be the goat greatest of all time. Without that, you don't get there.

There's a thing inside of some people that's a driving force that allows them to overcome the greatest people around them. When I heard that, I wasn't thinking about John Jones. I was thinking like, that's Michael Jordan.

That's Jeff Bezos. That's a young Bill Gates. That's Edward Lan.

That's John Rockefeller. That's Carnegie. That's all of them.

They had, they have this ruthless competitive drive. To me, there are different species than an average person. The example of that is I did this excellent biography of the young Bill Gates.

In my opinion, the perfect biography, I don't need to know what their great grandfather did for a living. It's like, tell me the struggle. The reason we're like, give me a little background to what family they were born into, then tell me the struggle.

Then once they're rich, end the book. There's a book called Hard Drive, Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire that covers the first 35 years of Bill Gates' life. It ends right after the Microsoft IPO.

I'm obsessed. The reason I have a solo podcast is because my podcast idol is Dan Carlin, Hardcore History.

SPEAKER_04
Is he by himself?

SPEAKER_03
100%. He's got a giant audience. We should actually talk about podcasting if you're interested in that.

A lot of people share numbers. He had said, don't let me forget the thread on Bill Gates, by the way. He had said the latest episode, this is like two years ago, that got published.

He had 19 million downloads on. Then he said, oh wait. It turns out some of them were double counted.

In any case, cut it in half. He's got an audience of probably 10 million people that listen to him.

SPEAKER_04
That would be one of the biggest episodes of the year for most every podcast. The big dogs get a million or 1.5 per episode.

But rarely, Joe Rogan, if he interviewed Bernie Sanders or someone like that, that maybe got five or eight or something like that.

SPEAKER_03
Joe's audience, and Joe has more data than anybody else does, and all the Spotify exclusives have more data than anybody else does. He said, remember when they tried to cancel him? This is also the magical podcasting man, which I know we had to be careful here because we had to talk about it forever. The problem is, if you listen to Joe, I listen to you and fucking Sean forever.

Even before we met, I know who you guys are. I know Manifest Cowboy, I know the fucking terminology. We have an idea of who you are.

The person before you meet them, right? That's the magical podcasting. We're not creating content. We're creating relationships at scale, which is very fucking powerful.

Most people don't. They underestimate how powerful this is. What happens, you have people saying, Joe Rogan's racist.

They cut the clip, and then he's anti-vaxx, everything else. They try to cancel him. Somebody's been listening to him for fucking 10 years and listens to him 10 hours a week.

He's like, you're not going to tell me anything about Joe that I don't know. What happens is, he said his audience added 2 million people. I think it went from 12 million subscribers to 14 million subscribers on Spotify.

That's crazy. Those are the numbers I've heard. Yeah. It speaks to this, he's still the biggest by far because even the top humans and everybody else, you're 1.5 without YouTube and everything else.

They're still just crazy how big and successful Joe's show is. But what about Bill? I like the Bill. Bill Gates is, I was doing an episode on him, and I had just been listening to Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Con series on Gang of Con for the 15th time.

Bill Gates, who you think he is, is like, this is Gang of Con in a Mr. Rogers costume. He's in a disguise and he is unbelievably relentless.

This is guy named Michael Moritz who was, now he's a billionaire. He's one of the guys that helps scale Sequoia, but at the time he was just a journalist. This is a perfect example.

He's giving, just a journalist, I think he's writing for Time Magazine, and he's meeting Bill. Bill's probably, maybe 28, something like that. They're doing an interview.

Bill's like, hey, I'll give you a ride to the airport. They get in Bill's car and Michael's like, oh, shit, somebody broke into your car. What happened here? He's like, what are you talking about? He goes, your radio.

It's like somebody stole your radio. He's like, no, I ripped it out. He's like, why would you do that? He's like, from my house to Microsoft's office is seven minutes.

That's 14 minutes a day from Microsoft's office to the airport. I go there three times a week. That's 15 minutes around trip, you know, 30, 30 minutes, 15 minutes each way, 30 minutes around trip.

And he adds this up. He's like, so that's like two hours in the car. And if I have a radio, then I'd listen to it.

And then I'm spending two hours not thinking about Microsoft. And there's all these fucking crazy stories because somebody asked the other day, like, what's the largest bootstrap business of all time? And Paul Graham answered Microsoft. And people are like, oh, they took VC.

No, no, they were printing money. And they sold a million shares of Microsoft for a million dollars to a VC. They did not need the money right before they went public to get expertise.

That was a bootstrap business. The year before, this is 1980 money, the year before Microsoft IPOs, they did 140 million in revenue and 38 million profit. That's insane, right? He's like, and then so this extreme with John Judd's the serial game thing, when you hear about how he thinks about his fucking competitors, it's not just enough that he needs to win.

He's like, I have to fucking destroy you. So there's this spooky fucking on this spooky story that's in one of Bill Gates biographies, number two of them. And Bill would be able to tell you like in the software industry, he's like, I know the CEO of every single software company, I know what the revenue was, I know what their where their product is right now.

I know everything about them. And so they all they had a bunch of like frenemies. He's like, I wanted to destroy you, but he would talk to you.

And a lot of them were getting customers at these early days of like these, these software conventions, which is very, like very new. And so this guy, Philippe Kahn, that he was trying to fucking destroy, he literally wants to put you out of business, because he told his employees like if I if we lose a $50,000 contract, that's not 50,000. That's 100,000 because we lost 50 and our fucking enemy got 100 got 50.

So you just caught $300,000. He was like that's psychotic about it. And so Philippe goes over sees Bill sitting by himself in like a foldable chair, just looking at something.

Philippe walks up to him, and he goes say hi to Bill. And he realizes what Bill is looking at. He's looking at a picture of Philippe Kahn.

He's in public in a fucking corner of a convention center staring at a fucking picture of his enemy. Like what Joe said about John 1000 years ago, we lived at zero sum. If you want to build wealth, what'd you do? Like you took their land or took their research? Somebody else.

Yes. Yeah. So 1000 years ago, that personality type, Bill Gates would have been, he would have been at a polling. He would have been leading an army.

It just so happens that this thing personality type that is that exists today has existed forever will exist forever in the future, can run companies and build wealth. And when you when you study the personalities of these people, it's like they're all like that. Thank God we are living a free market economy or else they'd be they'd be pillaging and raping and doing everything else.

SPEAKER_04
Well, that's why my favorite era of American history is like 1890. So that's 30 or 20 years after the Civil War. So we're America's kind of getting back to it up until like 1920, because in 1920, like the Sherman Act, which was the anti monopoly act started coming about.

And then the SEC was invented. And so between like 1890 and 1920, America was really the wild west, where we had some technology, you know, we had cars, we had, I think phones were coming about telegraphs. So we could railroads, railroads, we could in the stock market existed.

So we could like make wealth. But there was a few things that you could do. So for example, Andrew Carnegie and who's his partner, Frick, Henry Clay Frick.

Yeah, like when people would when the union workers would boycott and protest, they killed them. Like they hired a private police team and they went around a private army and they literally beat like 10 of them to death. And I don't think anything happened.

I don't know if anything happened. No, because they also in the politicians. Yeah. And it was wild. And then like there was a time where J.

P. Morgan loaned the US government money. And and then there was a time a lot of people don't know this, but JFK, John, John F.

Kennedy, the president, his father Joe Kennedy was like the seventh richest man in America at one point. He got rich from insider trading. Then after he was already rich, he created or he was the first head of the SEC that made insider trading illegal.

Like it was like hardcore crony capitalism. That's one of the reasons why I like reading about John Rockefeller is because of all the things he did, he was dishonest once or twice. But for the most part, he was a ruthless competitor and he didn't lie and he was honest other than one big time he lied.

But besides that,

SPEAKER_03
he was pretty straight. And how crazy was it that his employees, like he never, we never heard him raise his voice and he never said an unkind word to us. Now his competitors, different story, he's completely boosted us with them.

But inside of his, you're not going to find anybody that worked inside of standard oil and then obviously they hid all the things they owned. This is actually an idea I stole from Rockefeller.

SPEAKER_04
By the way, his competitors, he wasn't really, I mean, he was ruthless, but he would go to them. He goes, Hey, I'd like to buy you. This is a very fair price.

Come and join me and I'll make you rich, which many did and they got rich. And he said, if you don't join me, I'm going to destroy you. So let me know if you, so to me that's like, he's like, look, we can work together or I'm going to end you.

You can pick, but he wasn't like necessarily

SPEAKER_03
like rude about it. Yeah. So the one thing he said was so badass. He was trying to buy somebody out.

They were resisted. He's like, I have ways to make money that you know nothing about. He was, I always say, like, there's a, there's a very common theme that common themes are reappear in the history of entrepreneurship.

And so I have maxims for a bunch of these, like my favorite one is excellence is a capacity to take pain. It's just like, you're not going to achieve large success without being able to tolerate pain for extended periods of time. Right. Another one is bad boys move in silence. Like they find an advantage and they shut up about it.

This is what Steve Jobs realized when he was trying to build Pixar. He's just like, we can't get any fucking data on how profitable because they're transitioning from selling hardware to just pure animate, they're trying to build the first computer animated movie. And Steve Jobs is like, I don't get why we can't get any information on this.

And then he realized he's like, Oh, the reason that you can't go to the library and check out a book that says like the business model of animation is because there's only one company ever did a well and it's Disney and they don't want anybody else to know how lucrative it is. And so he realized that because they had made like Snow White like 60 years before and right when he's doing negotiations with Pixar and Disney, they re-released it and we're selling like VHS tapes. And I think that they might have had DVDs at this point.

And they're like, wait a minute, you sold 28 million copies of a movie you made 60 years ago. That's all profit. And they made two A's that they made a quarter billion in profit on that one movie releasing it for the like this new technology.

And so I actually took an idea from John D Rockefeller, Rob Moore plays a role in this is like what what Rockefeller would do is like he had the secret allies, right? And so he entered into an industry where he thought was very disorganized. And so he wound up building relationships and allies with all the people in the oil number, the oil business when he jumps in, it's not what we think it's oil. He was he was like, we're fine.

It was a refiner. He was selling kerosene for fucking like lighting and stuff. He made up he actually made more money in retirement because after he retired, he still owned a shit ton of equity goes back to Felix Dennis.

And then the ambition of the core. And so now like, oh, this this my my stock is even worth more. But what he would do is he'd go around and he'd organize all the other people in the industry.

So like, I do this a bunch of podcasters like me and you just started doing this like texting about this is just like, you just share information. Like you build secret allies, and you just say, Hey, this guy figured out this for your podcast, you should use it. And like everybody in the podcast industry is extremely positive.

So I listened to your interview with Brandon Shaw. He said the same thing about he's like, Joe told us we have an obligation to help each other out. And so for business podcasters, like they're all kind of like satellites and like loosely defined.

And so me and Patrick have been going around building relationships to people and just sharing information. Like I was at the choir guys house in San Francisco a few weeks ago, they're like, we get Patrick, they have one of the most profitable. The Ben and David who are fantastic.

I'm actually wearing their merch right now. They have one of the most profitable podcasts and compared to audience size and how much they make. And they're like, well, Patrick told us that we weren't charging enough.

So we tripled our prices. Then we and then we still sold ads and then we tripled them again. And then it's like, holy shit, he was right.

And so that idea is like, we're no gatekeeping, just share information and try to help people as much as possible. That's an idea from Rockefeller.

SPEAKER_04
When you read about some of these killers, do you think they are different than me? Or do you start becoming that? Like, do you think that just surrounding yourself with them is going to change your behavior? Or is it just like aliens exists and I am not them?

SPEAKER_03
No, here's the thing. I don't know if we recording. I like how you guys just jump right in, by the way.

So I don't I think most of our discussion was caught on the recording. But I am very glad that I have a wife and two kids up and down. Like here's here's my thing.

It's like the thing that I don't like in this very present in all these books is like, if you're an adult, it's your job to figure it out and like that let people take advantage of you, right? So if like, John D Rockefeller gives you a bad price and for your business, you accepted that's on you. What I'm and you hear this on the podcast, like, I'm induced into state of rages when people fuck with kids, I can't stand that. And so up and down my family tree, like I was the first person to graduate high school, my family, much less college.

I'm the first male in my three generations not to go to jail, right? And so like up and down both sides of my family tree, I just see a lot of like terrible parenting. And this is not necessarily my parents, they did the best they can consider both sets of their parents for shitty people. But like I saw drug abuse, I saw sexual abuse, I saw people go into jail, cocaine, all this crazy shit, right? And so I was like, if I'm going to have kids, I'm not going to be a shit father.

And I think the fact that I have a kid and a wife that like we get along really well, it saves me from not I think if I didn't have that, I would literally work from the time my eyes open the morning till the time they close. And I would just fucking like, I think the scary part is like I and I try to compare myself to, you know, you can't compare myself to rock fellas. But like, I have a little bit that in me too.

And I think I hear from a ton of people listen. They're like, I think like that too. The whole thing is like learning from their experience like, Hey, but they get to their life, they're not necessarily happy.

You know, like, so I don't want that. I don't want to destroy everything around me because I chased professional success. But I think men in general, you know, type a aggressive men, like that's what successful people super successful people are crazy.

Like they're not normal humans. And it's probably one to 5% of the population that are borderline sociopathic, you know, nothing motor people. That's that's a little extreme, but like they're willing to do whatever they can if you get

SPEAKER_04
in their way. And so I, I've been lucky that as we've, it's funny that I as a person, I think it's funny that as we've, I've gotten more popular for like content and business shit. A lot of people in different fields who I previously looked up to, like for example, a Lance Armstrong or someone like that, they'll like message me and I'll get an opportunity to hang out with them.

And this isn't about Lance, but this is, I've been lucky that it's been a bunch of different people and I'll go and hang out with them a couple of times. And then I think I don't want to be around you ever again. Like, and so like, I don't enjoy being around them.

And so I've had a bunch of people who, if you told me when I was 12 that these people want to talk to me, I'd be like, that is sick. Now I just, I'm just like, I don't like being around you. It's actually not enjoyable being around some of these people because it feels like, well, I don't know exactly how it feels like, like it feels like we, we're in a pissing match when we're with each other.

I simply don't enjoy it. And so now I have, I have a rule in my household, which is no new friends. So I default whenever I talk to someone, I default to I'm not going to be friends until it's like, all right, maybe after a while we can, we can, we can cross the threshold.

But by default it's, I don't trust you and I'm not going to let you in. Whereas before it was like, Oh, anyone who wants to holler at me. Yeah, I'm in.

And then I go and hang out with some of these ballers and these killers. And I think, Oh, this is, this is a very unenjoyable hang. You know, there's a bunch of people who maybe Ben might know who we're talking about.

But there's like a couple of people that are like some of the most famous and successful people in the world. And we've been lucky to hang out with them. And then we'll go hang out with them after the pod.

And I'm like, Oh, this is just miserable. I don't want to be around you at all. And so my point being is for the, to what, what you said about the most successful people being crazy, not only are they crazy, I don't want to be around them.

It's not fun. They're not fun to be around. And so you really see that there's a price to pay, which is you are in the 1% tile or 99% tile of this, of these other traits, which usually not always means you're going to be lacking in a handful of other traits.

And sometimes that's like, whatever the traits are of you wanting to be near someone, I guess, like physically and hanging out with someone.

SPEAKER_03
That's my big everybody's like, Okay, like, are you doing all this? Or you want to run like the next Apple? Like, what are you doing this for? And I'm like, no, like the 300 people that I've studied, the person that I want to be the most like is the closest person that I've studied and read about that has come to mastering life is a guy named Ed Thorpe. Right. And so it's up who's he? This is a fucking crazy story. So it's episode 222.

And the crazy thing is like, usually the episode title is just the book I read, right? This says my personal blueprint, right? And because what he did is like, first of all, he's a Ed Thorpe is one of, he was the guy that made the first quantitative hedge fund. Right. The reason I liked him is because what I think you were talking about earlier, like you have buried interests, right? Where you need a balance because I've also heard you speak enough for him, like, okay, he's clearly Taipei and driven. And like, if you didn't have your wife or you didn't have these other things, I could also see you going not sociopathic, but like, you know, no limits of the kind of empire you want to build, you have a chip on your shoulders is like all of them.

I do too. So I see that. Ed Thorpe essentially like what he does, like he made a ton of money as a quantitative investor, right? But once he had more money, like he didn't need to worry about money anymore.

He refused to trade time to make more money because he understood he's like more money is not going to make me happy. But by time is limited. He was a good father.

He was a good husband. He was he followed his own intellectual interests, like he had fun. He, Tim Paris just interviewed him.

And I would highly recommend going to YouTube and just type in Tim Paris at Thorpe and look at that guy's picture and tell me how old you think he is. I've done this a bunch. I did it with my wife.

I go, how old do you think he is? She's I don't know, 65. He's fucking 90 because he learned when he was really young that physical fitness was really important. And so he gave me the best heuristic for health.

He goes, I view every hour in the gym as one less day I'll spend in the hospital at the end of my life. And the guy's still doing like pull ups. He looks fucking fantastic, right? He's like not I think it might be like 92.

And so this whole balance of like your friend Ryan Holiday actually I learned this from his content was like, what it means to be a completed human. We've known that forever. We just get distracted.

It's like you want work that has meaning. You want good relationships. You want to have fun and you want to make sure that your body's healthy and you should feel good.

That's it. There isn't anything else. I love what you just said because the same thing when you have a successful podcast, you get hit up on all kinds of fucking crazy experiences, which is actually, you know, huge benefit.

But it's like, man, I'm not going to build a thousand relationships that are like an inch deep. I just talked to the same people over and over and over and over again. It's like you have a limited amount of people you can actually be friends with.

And yet we're all connected. So like we're hugely distracted. So I was like, okay, I'm not smart as a door.

He's way smarter than me. So I'll just fucking copy his blueprint. I'll write that down.

I'll be a good father. I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of my health.

I'll have work that I'm really fucking obsessed with, but I pick guard rails on right. And like I'm not going to keep trading money or time, which I'm going to run out of for more money when I'm not even spending the money I have.

SPEAKER_04
I want to, um, I want to ask you some more questions about history, but a story really quick. I have a friend who's 40 low forties worth a billion dollars has a publicly traded company. And he was telling me the story about how he had this phrase called it's never enough.

And he was telling me a story about how he went to one guy's home who was worth 50 million. And the guy was complaining about how he lives in this fancy neighborhood and he can't, his home is his $6 million home is less good than is worse than the other people in the neighborhood. Then he's like, I went to another guy who's worth like half a billion.

And he was saying like, yeah, but you know what? I don't have a super yacht. And then there was another guy who had like one or two billion. And this guy was complaining.

He's like, can't get a sports team though. It's not enough. And so I don't want to be

SPEAKER_03
around people. I think you hit it. Don't be like, I don't want to be around people like that.

SPEAKER_04
It's never enough. And that's what I've also learned because like I've thought that when I've hit certain points, I'm like, well, I won't want anymore. It's you always want more.

It's a very challenging thing.

SPEAKER_03
It doesn't have to be that way though. I had the advantage because like this is the crazy thing about podcasts you just said, like you never know who's listening. So I got invited to have a two hour lunch with Sam Zell, right? And that's fucking crazy.

It came inbound. Sam had listened to the podcast I made on his autobiography and he's like, I want to meet that guy.

SPEAKER_04
Sam Zell, Sam Zell is a real estate guy. He's got a great book called, Am I Being Loud Enough? Am I Being Subtle? Am I Being Subtle Enough? Yeah. Am I Being Subtle Enough? He's probably close to 90 now.

He's kind of got this blue color-ish vibe about him, but he's worth probably five or $10 billion, something like that. He owned all these real estate things. He created the REIT, I think.

Then he like owned Schwinn Bicycles. He owned the LA Times, I think, or the Tribune, something like that. So he's like a tycoon.

SPEAKER_03
And you'd fucking love him. So he's 81 years old. He sold his real estate company for $38 billion to Black Roark or Blackstone.

I don't fucking know. They're all being the same. And so how often do you get to meet somebody that sells their company for $40 billion? And I couldn't believe this is going to happen.

I thought, oh, this is going to happen. Then I was like, oh, maybe it's going to be like a lunch I'm invited to and there's like 20 people there. He sat eye to eye for two fucking hours and he's not like that.

The reason I got back after the lunch and I told my wife, I go, I want that. I want that. I want to be 81 years old, completely still, unbelievably curious about the world around him, still doing deals, doesn't give a fuck.

He's not one of these like media trade guys, right? He only wears blue jeans, I think. He takes credit. He's like, I invented business casual.

I'm like, Sam, I don't know if you invented business casual. It was fucking hilarious that you would say that you invented business casual. Will not wear a suit, still rides a motorcycle, still I think smoked weed.

It's fucking crazy. But the thing, the advice that he gave me, he's like, David, he's like, the richer you get, what you realize is one, he goes, you'd be shocked at how many rich guys I know that aren't having fun, which is describing exactly what you're saying. You go to their house and they're talking about other people or what other people have.

I'd run the other truck away. Sam didn't talk about that. He goes, listen, he goes, money, he's like, there's very few true luxuries in life.

The richer he got, he's like, then I just kept just buying nicer of the same shit. So I'd buy a house, then I'd buy a richer, then I'd buy another house. This was fucking stupid.

So he's like, I basically own nothing. He has a place in Chicago and he has a compound in Malibu. That's his words, by the way.

He's like, I have a compound in Malibu. He's like, the advice he gave me over and over again, he said five or six times every two hours, he's like, optimized for freedom. If you get freedom, you get to choose what you do and then you'll have fun.

And if you have fun, you'll be really good at it and the money will come. But do not give up your freedom for money, which so many rich dudes do. It's fucking crazy.

And then he goes, the one thing he's like, none of that shit matters. I could buy everything I want. He goes, I rent a bunch of shit, which reminded me of you because I know you fucking hate owning a house.

And so he's like, he's like, don't own a bunch of shit, just rent it when you need it. Like, because if you own it, then you got to take care of it. This is advice from the guy that, you know, obviously own assets.

He was buying, he's still buying a ton of businesses. The day before I saw him, he's like, he's dude, he's 81. He's just his eyes lit up.

He's like, I just spent $300 million buying 75% of this company makes 50 million a year or some shit. Like he just loves the deal. He's like, I'm going to be doing deals so I died just because he likes the game.

He's like, he treats it like a game. But he's like, there's only one true luxury in life. He goes, try to get the private jet money.

SPEAKER_04
Really? What was it like meeting Charlie Munger?

SPEAKER_03
So that was fucking crazy too. And again, because like Andrew and his partner, Chris, it was fascinating because I heard your podcast where you guys had met Chris and spent time with him. And I got to have the few hours before we had dinner with Charlie Munger.

I had like a super long lunch one on one with Chris. And that dude is fascinating. I wonder if he'd ever come

SPEAKER_04
on your podcast. I'm going to hang out with him tonight. I want to be with him tonight.

SPEAKER_03
Okay. Yeah. I know he's more private. He's another guy where I think he knows, like one of the things I loved about Chris is he's wicked smart.

But one of the things I thought was so cool is like he showed me his calendar when we had lunch. He's like, look at my calendar. It's like every day at three o'clock, I'm picking mine.

I think it's his son, his son up from school. Like he's not going to be, you know, he's like, obviously rich and successful will continue to be more rich and more successful as he carries on. But he's not doing it at the detriment of being a shitty dad, which is like I admire a lot.

I fucking hate shitty dads. So what was Munger like? He was he was present. So Munger was, he has this line where he's like, Oh, I didn't succeed in life because of intelligence.

I succeeded because of a long attention span. Definitely has a long attention span. But that dude is way smarter than me.

Like if anybody's even even at 98 or what how old is he 95? So he's 99. Anybody is going to have some level of cognitive decline at 99. And so all I could think about is like, if that is who he is at 99, imagine trying to compete with that dude 30 years ago.

What was his house like? I had to be careful because I got into a little bit of like, they want me to keep some of that stuff private. So like, I can't answer that question.

SPEAKER_04
Was it fancy? Was it? Was it as you'd expect, which is very, very, very nice.

SPEAKER_03
No, he lit. He's very authentic. He if you read Munger and talk about Munger, he's like, Hey, don't have a lot of silly needs in your life.

His whole thing is like, I truly believe that he just wanted to show what he could do with his brain so he could make a ton of money with his mind because he's really smart. He like, where's like, you know, he loves flannel in your in your picture, I think like flannel from Amazon. So the Costco like his one of the state entrepreneurs, Jim Cinnagall, I love a lot too.

And one of his favorite companies, Jim Cinnagall, or Costco, because of that Costco could have made more money, but pass the benefit of their group buying onto the customer. And so Charlie is who he says he is. Like he's not, doesn't have fancy watch, doesn't have fancy clothes.

He just buys books as far as I can tell and talks to interesting people and makes a ton of money. But he's not in it for the money. He just won it.

He says, he's like, I didn't want the

SPEAKER_04
Ferraris. I wanted the independence. Who all that you've so besides Ed Thorpe, who all have you, who have you listened to or spoken about that you think is like in your top five people of like, they will conquer the world if given the chance.

Like they are, they are the top, they are the

SPEAKER_03
1% of the 1%. I mean, I think the selection here is that every single person is in the top, you know, 0.0001% because you're only to get on founders, you have to libelize from work, somebody would book about it.

What I would say is like, I just got done reading James Dyson's autobiography for the fourth time. And it is my number one book recommendation by far for entrepreneurs. And he's written two autobiographies, the second one's fine.

There's nothing wrong with that. I'm done with the first one, because the first one he writes after 14 years of struggle, like what I admire so much about this guy is like, he's not necessarily like a conqueror in a sense like he's going to go around. I don't think he'd be like an Napoleon and other kinds.

But what I love is like my favorite entrepreneurs are very adamant about what they want to do in life and how they want to run their business. It's not formulaic. They're not going around asking people advice like, what do you think I should do? What is my product look like? What is, how should I run the business? Like, no, I have a very set mindset of like how I want to build the product, how I want to build my business, how I want to, to like spend my time.

You know what I call that? I call

SPEAKER_04
that they bend reality to their, to their will. You know, they kick their dent in the universe. That's what I always call that.

I'm like, they know what they want and they bent reality to fit

SPEAKER_03
what they wanted. Read that, dude, you can read his autobiography in a weekend. It'll fucking blow your mind because it's like, why is this guy not quitting? Well, what is, what is happening here? He's barring, he's got two mortgages on every single house.

He's got these crying at the end of the night. Everything is going to be successful and he just won't quit. And what happens is like, you fast forward now, James Dyson is 75 years old.

He owns 100% of Dyson company. He's like, you know, one, that company's probably worth $20 billion. It makes supposedly, you know, a couple billion a year for profit for his family that like they take out of the company.

What I love is, um, he, the company he owned before Dyson Backing, it was this thing called a ballbarrow, which looks like a wheelbarrow with a ball at the front. And he goes and rents, does a photo shoot for the ballbarrow at this like massive estate that has been in England for like 300 years, 25 years later, he buys it.

SPEAKER_04
He's like, this is my shit now. Like, dude, I've talked to a lot of people who love that book. One thing that, one thing, so I remember like, when I've just got started in my career, I was like firmly in the, in the field of like, I'm going to pull myself up from my bootstraps and I'm going to, I'm going to make this into existence.

And then I remember when we were selling our company and everything got done. And that was the first time in my life where I thought, luck is so important. And even though I, I think I'm a badass and that I would, and I think that I could will myself to a very, I think I could will myself to a really nice amount of success, but in order to have the Uber success, which we'll describe as like liquid hundreds of millions of dollars, there's lots of people who are these types of killers who do have these attributes, attributes, but one or two things both in their control and out of their control went wrong or right.

And that can absolutely change things. Like it could be like, like, you know, John Rockefeller didn't know that a car was going to be invented. Or like with, with Zuckerberg, like he would have kicked ass no matter what, but it just so happened that like the phone came out and that like has helped a ton.

Or, you know, someone like, you know, I'm sure we've seen a lot of fortunes get created during a pandemic. Like luck is real. Like when we sold our company, and that was my first big win, the CEO, Brian, got into a nearly fatal accident afterwards.

And I'm like, dude, if that happens like four weeks prior, I don't know if this would have gone through. And I still think I will be very successful. But imagine if I was selling my company for a billion or $2 billion and the CEO of the buyer got killed or quit.

Do you think that with these guys,

SPEAKER_03
luck is real? Of course. You said something great on the acquired podcast. You're like, I've met a lot of these guys is like, they're 20 times richer, but they're not 20 times smarter.

Yeah. And a lot of Rockefeller is a great example, right? Like, so the best way to describe it is like, moderate level success, like, you know, you could probably get to tens of millions of dollars in net worth. That's like playing poker, right? It's like, that's a skill set you can get.

But like to like Jeff Bezos, like the funniest thing I had dinner last night with two founders was like, you guys know that Jeff Bezos was private jet has a private jet. Like he takes off and there's another one like that level of shit, like there's so many things that got a break. The idea is like, he knew he was going to do everything.

Why does he have a second private jet? I'd love to ask him. I don't know. Like, so you know how this is like people track private jets now.

Some YouTuber made a video and they notice that every time Jeff's playing, maybe it's like the people who does the one on his plane. I don't look, I know, but like, there's a jet that follows his other jet around and like it's somebody put all this together from public information. So that level of success, like he knew, okay, the internet's growing.

The everything store was a code name in the hedge fund. He, for Amazon, they were going to incubate it in the hedge fund. He was working for David Shaw, a billionaire hedge fund guy in New York.

And so he knew it's like, we could sell books and then he also knew he could sell all those things, but likely, but he didn't know like he could invent AWS. Like there was no like all that stuff that happens. Rockefeller's a great

SPEAKER_04
example. Well, Bezos, when he pitched the first investors, he goes, I think this can make 100

SPEAKER_03
million dollars a year for Lucky. Yeah, he, he took him 50 meetings for venture capitalists to get his first million dollars. And he said the most common question he's asked is what is the internet? Yeah, he's a fucking sad.

He is the closest to me. Bezos reminds me so much of Rockefeller. Like if you read Bezos, his shareholder letters are excellent because he's telling you what he's just like the Arnold books that I recommended earlier.

Arnold says, this is my blueprint. This is when we do, he calls a shot and then he goes and does it. Bezos does the same thing.

But the Rockefeller 20 times richer, but not 20 times smarter thing. I think it's obviously you're talking about randomness, you're talking about luck. Rockefeller was going to be successful no matter what.

Like the business he was in, as you know, it's like he was, they were wholesaling like produce and other stuff, right? They were just traders. And one thing that he did that think is really smart is like he's worked, he's like 19 years old working for two founders. He's just an employee.

He goes back and read all of their books, goes back and studies their entire company history, memorizes all the finances, everything, and then knew more about the business than the founders said. Like that kind of personality is going to win wherever he's going to go. Now, he could have stayed in that business and made millions of dollars.

Is he going to build the arguably the most successful company of all time if it wasn't for the random discovery of oil? No. Like he didn't control the fact that he was in the, what I always say in the podcast, it's like you find these people that the right person, right set of skills at the right place at the right time. If you're missing any of those, you're not going to build a trillion dollar company or 200 billion dollar or $200 billion net worth.

You need things to break through for you that are outside

SPEAKER_04
of your. What do you think you're going to do next? Like, what's your blueprint for 10 years?

SPEAKER_03
Okay. So this is where I start talking reckless because I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy and then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts.

I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side and they're like, shut the f*** up. Stop

SPEAKER_04
telling people, oh, the s***. What's an example of a great business build on the back of a pod?

SPEAKER_03
I'll tell you, I'll tell you off. I can't like, there's, okay. So there's one that I don't have any intimate knowledge on.

I can give you an example of that because there's some of that have intimate knowledge. So I'm not sure what I know that could speak public and adult, but like Butcher Box Bootstrap $500 million of revenue largely expanded from podcasting. And there's a ton of those industry buying podcast ads.

Yes. Got it. Yes. And then look at this is something I actually learned on your podcast, which I think you guys do an excellent job with was when you guys were talking about how Unilever came and bought on it. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't I didn't know that happened. I knew about on it and knew about Joe.

I knew he owned like 30% rumored to be owned 30% of the company. But they were like Joe has a ton of ads slots, just that one ad slot that he randomly put in. He probably added just on that ad slot, I don't know, $75 million, like depending on what the actual purchase price was.

Joe. So this idea is like, I started talking shit where like, people like, everybody knows because of Mr. Beast thing.

Oh, yeah, there's going to be, I could see why there's going to be like some billionaire YouTubers, right? Like that. I think that is obvious now, given where Mr. Beast, highly likely that dude, unless he dies, he's going to hit that.

My point is like, that's the deep relationship people have with podcasters is not comparable to the relationship they have with YouTubers. It's not at all comparable. And this is not at all new.

What like what anything that what do you mean people are deeply are more,

SPEAKER_04
they like podcasts, there's more like there's more affinity. It's so do you know Blake Robbins from

SPEAKER_03
he's a benchmark? No, he has this. Okay, so he'd be actually interested, somebody interested in doctor. He's the one that gave me the spectrum idea.

He's helped incubate. What's the what's the professional call duty team 100 thieves or 40 thieves? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know you mean they went from zero to like 80 million revenue, I think like 18 months or some shit like this. So they shot was developed an audience on, you know, Twitch streaming.

And so, so Blake has this spectrum and this comes to you like, there's people out there that have heard you and Sean talk way more than they've heard their best friends voice. There's a ton of them. Yeah, because when

SPEAKER_04
they when they put the headphones in, it's just us and them and it's usually for 50 or an hour minutes, you know, 60 minutes at a time. Whereas a YouTube video, it's maybe eight. I've heard you

SPEAKER_03
talk for 100 hours. Like so, like we've taxed exchange investors online, but never talk in person. I was like, Oh, I fucking know same.

Like I know what he's into. We have the same interests. Like, I think we'll be able to talk about a bunch of shit, a bunch of shit, right? So his whole point is like on the spectrum is like, how much do people how much time do people spend with you? He's like, on the far end, all the way to left is like, TikTok dancers, right? TikTok dancers, you know, they might have millions, millions of followers, but they spent 30 seconds.

And if they try to like sell tickets, they can't even fill a room with like 3000 people, even if there's thousands, you know, millions followers on the far end of the spectrum, all the way to the right is Twitch streamers. People spend literally 40 hours a week with their favorite Twitch streamer, right? Or 30 hours a week or 20 hours. He goes, David, podcast and you, you're just one, one, one, one step towards the left.

He goes, there's going to be people who have listened to you speak for hundreds of hours. And that parasocial relationship is unbelievably deep and comprehensive to like, you saw this, I saw people had said that you're doing a public meetup, I think in Austin, right? And or a show and there's people flying in from fucking Dubai. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Okay, so think about that.

Like they're not flying in to Dubai to watch like a TikTok dancer, they're not flying in and your podcast is technically a business, you have all this other stuff you could do is like, how many brands do people identify with so much that they'll fly across the world? I just did this, I'm introverted as fuck, right? Yeah, you seem like it. Yeah, so yeah, or you see like, yeah, but on one on one, but with groups, I hate it. So Shane Parrish from Knowledge Project Burnish Street was in Miami, he's like, dude, let's do a public meetup.

I'm like, oh, fuck. And I agree just because he's did it. How many people came? Like 70, like I think around like 70 people came.

It's awkward, right? It's not awkward. I don't think I'd do it again. But like, this is the thing, like the only thing I did to promote it, Shane was supposed to set it out to his newsletter, never did.

Thanks, Shane. But I just made like this one minute I was like, in like five days before the event or something, I uploaded to my podcast, I was like, hey, you happen to be in Miami area, we're going to do this, here's where we're going to be. And like, I'm like, all right, there's no like, my audience is in like, you know, California, New York, there's like, Miami's not like the spot for it.

People flew down from New York, Washington, D.C. drove for hours. And I'm like, what are you in town for? Like this, I'm like, why? What are you talking about? And so it's this deep level relationship.

So here's your question, like, my 10 year plan is just like, I'm going to be making podcasts till I fucking die. I love doing it. It's the best job in the world.

I think Sean tweeted out something that he's like, podcasting is the best job in the world. It's like, you get to be curious to learn all the time. And then you package up what you learn and you send it out to the world and all this good benefit comes back to you, you know, relationships, investment opportunities, businesses, you can launch whatever case is.

And so I'm just going to run the same playbook that like Rockefeller does like right now, you scale with ads, people pay a very hard

SPEAKER_04
dollar amount because your audience is valuable. And thank you for promoting Hampton on your pot.

SPEAKER_03
That was more than my first car, buddy. That's for free. I appreciate it.

Hey,

SPEAKER_04
look, hopefully you get more, hopefully you get more than enough value.

SPEAKER_03
That's a perfect example. I did it. You wouldn't have to ask me to do that because I got so much value from you.

The weird thing that you probably experienced too, that people do the conversation you have with podcasters, you can if you're not on this side, you don't understand. A listener does not understand the shit that like why every single person you talk to that's podcaster has successful podcast is like, I'm never fucking not going to quit. Like I'm never not going to do this.

This thing is it's like magic. And so when when I was a dude, I think Hampton, first of all, is a great idea because entrepreneurs have to be around other entrepreneurs. Like we do not think like anybody else you go to you're going to have you said you're going to have a family once you start having kids, you go to these birthday parties and then you're back into your outside of your bubble and now you're in like random distribution of people.

And every time I'm like, where's the where's the entrepreneur in the room? And it's not a tree. I got a leaf. Like you have to be around them.

Paul Graham has that great line where he's like ambitious people are star to be around other ambitious people. If you put them together, they bloom like dying plants with water, which is exactly what you do with Hampton. The funny thing is like, oh, thanks for doing that.

I was like, no, thank you for making your fucking podcast. I said, every day I get messages like thank you for doing it. I was like, dude, if you didn't listen, like I get to read books for a living.

I need to be thanking you. So that's the power of podcast. So the answer question is like, I'm going to vertically integrate.

What's that mean? So like product. By next year at this time, like you're not going to be no one's going to be able to buy an adult founders, right? So and this is the crazy thing about having a podcast. So like, you have all you hit on it.

You're like, super successful people read all the time. They also listen to business podcasts all the time. And you were able to build relationships with them where like, I just met like, you know, when I talked to Chris and Andrew, I was like, you guys can advertise for as long as you want.

But eventually, like what you I think ideally is like, find a business, you guys buy businesses for a living, you hire managers for a living, like will partner up on distribution, as opposed to like just doing an ad. You have people like Patrick Shaughnessy from invest like the best, like literally saying, hey, whether we have to buy a company, we scale it, or we incubate a company, like basically he's like, we need to found, we need to find founders version of Tigis. Right. And what does that mean? This is something that I think is public now. So I don't think I get in trouble for saying this.

SPEAKER_04
I've heard about this. You know, I can say it so you can know you don't get in trouble if you want. So this is just rumors.

So here, let me tell you the rumors that I heard. So there's this company and you can let me know. So this way you won't get in trouble for revealing anything.

Tigis is a company where I think what they do is if you wanted to talk to an expert, you pay them money and they connect you with an expert, but they record all the conversations and transcribe them. And so instead of paying money to talk to an expert, you could just read the transcriptions they had with any other the experts, whatever. I heard that they advertised on Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast and he saw how good it was going and he goes, screw this, I want some type of equity and I'll invest a little bit, but I want to add a sweetheart deal.

And it was a sweetheart deal and he continued sending them tons of customers to the point where his equity holding in the company has been worth tens of millions of dollars. Is that

SPEAKER_03
roughly accurate? So I don't know the prices. I know he says this publicly, he put 20 million into his company. He's got a giant fund too.

My point is like, I don't know the valuations. I'm sure if I asked Patrick, he would tell me, but you know, it's none of my business. My point is that like, okay, Michael Elnick, who's a co-founder of Teaguez, the CEO and a fucking savage, like he is like the guys we study, right? I was talking to him one time and he was just telling me like, what do you do? Like decompress like you're in a, like he's building an incredibly valuable company.

He's got a like, and he's completely dedicated to it. And him and his brother both ran track of Brown. So like they blow off stress by like running like Phil Knight did in Nike.

And then you ask him, he's like, Oh, so like, how much do you work? He's like, Oh, no, I take time off. Like, I think Saturday morning is off. And it's like, let's hit.

Oh, Saturday morning. So he's on it. I love his intensity.

But he said, he's just like, one at one podcast, they only advertised they had their first few customers from like, you know, word of mouth or their network. But, you know, the first probably 50 to $60 million of revenue, whatever it is, like Patrick's podcast, because of who's in his audience, help them scale. And as a result, like, then there's just a relation, there's a million things you could do.

So in Patrick's case, he's running a fund, like you can do equity. I'm not an investor. You said the other day when you were talking to Kim or review or interviewing, like you don't like investing in people's companies,

SPEAKER_04
like you want to like build your own shit. Yeah, investing doesn't entirely give me a dopamine rush. Like I'm in the game for adventure and that and I'm searching like, like a little bit of a rush and I find it to be very, it's so boring.

You give someone money and you don't hear from them for

SPEAKER_03
six years. I'm the same way. I'm like, I'm not interested.

I get so much deal flow like, Hey, do you want to angel about something like, no, like, why I would just like do my own shit. And people say I'm stupid. I'm doing that.

And they have to understand, like, I'm not also running my life to maximize for most dollars, mate. Like that doesn't make any like, if we talked about learning is not just memorizing information, changing behavior. How many fucking times you get to these super rich people that do things they don't like for money and then get money and they wonder why they're not happy anymore.

All that matters is how you

SPEAKER_04
spend your time. So what's going to be your teagas though? What's going to be your product?

SPEAKER_03
I don't know what that's the thing is like, we have a conversation with two founders about the last night. The good thing is like, we have some ideas. Obviously, like, we'll show that when time comes.

But like, I have all these really smart, successful people that like the podcast that want to help, you know, like Andrew and Chris, the tiny, I just met with their EIR. I think they have more than one, but I just had a conversation with their EIR. Patrick's trying to help me.

The guy that connected me with Sam Zell, he's got like $20 billion of assets under management. He's just like, well, we can fucking buy a company, we can do whatever you want. You know, he's also has investments to some companies to scale up podcasting.

So he understands power, and he just likes the product. So the point being is like, that's where I'm going, but I'm not doing it for money. I'm doing it because I'm completely obsessed with podcasting.

I think it's a miracle. Like when I say I start talking to you about podcasts, I'm like, podcasting is fucking, to me, it's like the printing press for the spoken word. It's like as big a revolution as Gutenberg's fucking printing press.

And it's just like, it's on-demand audio that you can educate yourself anytime you want all over the world. That's fucking crazy. They didn't exist when you and I were kids.

It didn't exist. I had to fucking, I remember like being obsessed with talk radio and just having to listen to whatever was on the three or four dials at the time it was on. And then they go from that to like streaming it in the browser.

I remember when that happened, I was a fucking grown man. I was like, oh, this is amazing. And then when my friend Eric's like, oh no, you can listen to Joe's podcast anytime you want.

Like what the fuck did you just say? What the fuck did you just say? That's crazy. And think about that. Like if somebody like, this is a young kid.

So me and you both know Michael Seekin.

SPEAKER_04
Who's Michael Seekin? From our future. Oh, our future. Yeah. Dude, he's in my phone as Michael Future. And I never referred to him as Seekin his last name.

Never. I was like Seekin. I don't

SPEAKER_03
I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Dude, he's at my house. He's at my house like

SPEAKER_04
twice a week. And I just call Michael Future. I love how arrogant I had a guy in my wedding.

And I didn't even I barely even do how to say is I didn't even know his last name. I just,

SPEAKER_03
I just called him C. A. V. Russia. I love Michael's confidence. And my point being is like imagine being you know, 20, 20, because he would call DM both me and you.

And yeah, he's really good at it. He sent me a DM. He's like, Hey, I love your podcast.

I took an idea that I got for your podcast, made a video about it, and it got 10 million views. Can we talk? I go, you did what?

SPEAKER_04
What the fuck? Yeah, it's impossible message not to dude, I always tell him he's at my house all the time. And like, I'm not old, I'm 33. But he's 23.

I mean, whatever he's first. No, I'll come young. And he'll come over and me and Sarah will be like, Michael, just tell me what's what are the young kids doing nowadays? And he'll literally just sit there for two hours and just tell Sarah and I like all these phrases and words and I'm just I'll just listen.

I don't even say a thing. I just say just talk just tell me like what's up with young people in these like we'll just tell me and I'll ask him about his dating life. He just taught and so I always try to, this sounds always weird whenever I say this, I always try to sell surround myself with young like younger people.

And I'm like, just tell me, I just want to listen to tell me what's going on.

SPEAKER_03
And he always does that to me. He's like, you treated at a one time, he says, I'm like, Oh, what are you gonna be doing in 10 years? I'm gonna be landing my helicopter on your lot or something. But like, I love his confidence because like you at the one time he said, he goes,

SPEAKER_04
got some really bad news today, just got back from the chiropractor. They said that the chip on my

SPEAKER_03
shoulders permanent. He actually gave me a really good book record, but he texted me yesterday that I never had found. It's like all these like, I'm, which one was it? The ones that I'm obsessed with the history of the American West and like all that personality type that's like, Oh, no, fuck the East Coast.

I'm going to go across and do this crazy journey. It was the one where I

SPEAKER_04
fill up Antwits or Antwa, the guy who owns the biggest ticketing company in the world or something. It's called like a w e whatever it is. It's like one that every everyone knows.

I think they own ticket master, I think something like that. Lakers and the Coachella, he says, I don't know if that's true, but it's probably I'll wear the West begins. Yeah. And they own Coachella. Anyway, this guy, Phillip, a lot of people don't know this.

It only has 10 reviews on Amazon. This 80 year old, 20 billion dollar guy, he has a book about the West. Yeah. And I already ordered it. The reason I

SPEAKER_03
brought up Michael though is because one, I think it's smart to be like, I think we have an epidemic of people that don't believe themselves. People think we have an epidemic of arrogance. I believe the complete opposite.

There's so many more people that can create businesses because the best description of what a business is came from Richard Branson. I've ever heard came from Richard Branson. He goes, a business is just an idea that makes somebody else's life better.

And if you look at it from there, there's limitless opportunity. And so to have the belief that you can do that, something that pops up in these books all the time is that belief comes before a building. But society wants you to show me that you should prove that you should have your confidence to deserve.

It's like, no, no, you don't actually understand. It's like the belief comes before

SPEAKER_04
a building. And that's why a lot of people were like amongst my entrepreneurial friends, they watched the Billy McFarland Fire Festival documentary and they were like, yeah, he did the wrong things, but it almost worked. And the reason why like a lot of my entrepreneurial friends were like, we're like, Oh, forgiving of him was it's like, yeah, but I've been there.

I've faked it until I made it type of vibe. And like, because I remember I did this for my conferences too, I would kind of fib I tell these 15 speakers individually, the other 14 had already confirmed, which they hadn't. And luckily I got them all to confirm and it worked out so it wasn't and it didn't end up being a lie.

But there's like so many examples where I promised something that wasn't real, where I'm like, Oh, shit, I got I hope I can deliver on

SPEAKER_03
these things. You know, that happens a lot. The point I was making with Michael though is imagine being his age, right, and being able to listen to every single episode of my first million, every single episode of founders or what are how to take over the world, we got to give Ben a shout out because fucking I think what he's doing is incredible.

And like, for example, I was like, dude, you should just make as many episodes as possible, because like you have missed you have Sam Parr saying your shit is really good, right, which is fucking incredible. And you have Mr. Beast literally the biggest creator on the fucking internet saying only listen to one podcast.

So I hope that like lights up a fire and Ben as well. But like, just see a built like I would kill I would have fucking killed. That's why I think podcast is a miracle.

I don't want to do anything else. Let's say I never launched any businesses to ensure tenure plan, which I don't see how that's even possible because there's a ton of entrepreneurs I know that like want to partner on these things. But even if I just made podcasts, and I just continue to grow the audience, and I just made money on ad revenue, like, whatever, I fucking, that's that's plenty fine for me.

That's the way I like to live my life. You ever read, do you ever heard Chuck Eager? Chuck, is that the guy who broke the somber? Yes. So the fucking crazy thing is the miracle books is like you never know like when you're going to read some random sentence that you never

SPEAKER_04
everyone loves that guy's book. All business people love his book. So I didn't know who the

SPEAKER_03
fuck he was. I kept noticing this this old guy on Twitter in a in a pilot suit talking hell of shit, like unfiltered. I fucking love these people that like really talk who they are.

They're authentic. And I read his book, it turns out he fucking it sold like 5 million copies the first year came out in the 80s. Like it's one of the most successful autobiographies of all time.

Well, he was famous

SPEAKER_04
back then when he did that. I think he broke the sound barrier. Is that right? So he broke two or

SPEAKER_03
something. He was the first pilot to break the sound barrier. And I think he was the first pilot to become ace in a day in World War Two.

He's like, I love killing Nazis. He says like, one of my favorite things to do is kill Nazis. And so yeah, he there's a great line in his book where he's like from this like this is what I also love is like great can come from anywhere.

He lived in like this rural. What's that area in West Virginia? It's like Appalachian where there's like a yeah, yeah. So he lived in like the Appalachian's completely like isolated, right? And so he describes the way he describes in his book about killing all these Nazis.

He he shot down five to become an ace in a day at the shootout of five enemy planes. And he goes, the Nazis came up into the skies and they met a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw. This is the way he described himself.

But he gave me another blueprint. Let me see if I can get the quote exactly right. This is the magic of having read wise to because I could just think of something and pull it up immediately.

It's like a giant search engine for everything I've read. And he gave me this idea where it's like, it's how you and I should avoid what you just described, you get around all these rich guys, they never it's never enough. They don't seem to be enjoying life, which is what's the point of being rich at that point.

They it seems to be surprising to them that they're not enjoying life because they don't actually like what they do day to day, but they make a ton of money. So why the fuck how the fuck could you take one third of your life is going to be spent working, right? You hate what you do. You think how is it possible that you think you're going to get to enter your life and like your life? It's impossible.

And so he says he goes, I wasn't a deep sophisticated person, but I live by a basic principle. I did only what I enjoy and here's the part. If I wouldn't let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren't interesting to me.

And so it took me years. Isn't that funny how that's like,

SPEAKER_04
business people say it, pilots say it, it doesn't matter. Like people, a lot of people who I talked to, they asked me what my pot is, if it's all about business. I'm like, not really because like, I don't give a shit if you're an artist as long as you're like kicking ass and you've like defined what successes and you've achieved it.

I think that's, I think that's dope. It's all the same

SPEAKER_03
personality type just applied to different things. Like I could show you this, I don't know if you can see on the camera, but like this is one of my favorite dudes. He's my fucking watch.

His name is Ernest Shackleton. I love reading about polar explorers. I like reading about athletes.

SPEAKER_04
That's the best book I've read in probably three years.

SPEAKER_03
Endurance? Yeah. Yeah, it's excellent. I love, I'm going to make a shirt and I might sell it, but I'll just make it for myself with that fucking picture where he's just like covered in snow and looking like shit.

And I love the fact that he came up with his own motto, buy endurance, we conquer. And he's like, we're just going to win because we're never going to quit. And I think that could be applied to everything that you fucking do, assuming that you like to do it.

But um, yeah, I think Chuck Ears is smart. We're like, so many people buying to this, this, I feel prestige is a myth, right? Where they're like, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to do activity acts because it'll give me prestige.

And what prestige is, is you think other people are thinking about you. And no one is thinking about you. You like humans are self absorbed.

That is our human nature. So like think about the person you, I listened to your aerial Hohani interview. Your, I love your Hohani.

Your big benefit is how much of your life is spent thinking about your huge fan. You buy all the shit, you listen to stuff less than two tenths of one million percent of your life. Right. I wish people understood it's how few people are thinking about them. And therefore you wouldn't chase prestige because prestige doesn't act.

All the matters is like the people around you, do they, do they think you're a good person? Do they approve of what you're doing? And then your work, all that really matters is like your own opinion, right? Ben texted me the other day about an idea for his podcast. And I was like, dude, because he's like, he added music, Ben, do you care if I say this? Okay. So Ben added music.

He's like, what do you think of it? And I was like, I don't love it and I don't hate it. I don't care about it at all. I thought your episode was fantastic.

It was excellent. I shared it with friends. But I was like, he's like, well, the reviews are mixed.

So you go, I saw that I went to the tweets and it's like, some people like, this is great. Some people like, this is bad. Exactly.

Fucking exactly. All the matters is what you like. If you like the music and they don't, then let him go find another fucking podcast.

Listen to dude, his music,

SPEAKER_04
though, on that first on his on how to think over the world. That's the best intro song. That intro song has helped make make his podcast popular.

The UFC, like that going back to the

SPEAKER_03
UFC thing that connected us to like go, like, I know you have, but like everybody out there needs to go talk about manifest cowboy. Conor McGregor is that he is literally in the documentary. The fact that he was had somebody film him when he was flat broke living in his moms, he owed money to every single fucking agency in Ireland.

And he's like, I'm going to be fucking world champion one day. He's like literally manifesting this shit. Remember when he got the double belts and he's like, he chose interviewing him.

He's like, I saw this in my mind. He goes, oh, look at that. He's like, I dream he's like, I literally saw it and I fucking made it real.

Yeah, that's why people like him. That documentary is fucking incredible. It's a because he called his shot.

It's like

SPEAKER_04
this just ruins it by doing it. He ruins it by doing all the other dumb stuff though, but it certainly he's he's he's a he's a I have he's I have a love hate relationship with them where it's like, you've got all this amazing stuff. I admire you so much.

And I also can't stand some of this

SPEAKER_03
other behavior. You know what I mean? I think that's where your wisdom is. He's like, okay, I sold my company.

Like I'm rich as fuck. You're still like you have a massive advantage. Like, you can launch businesses, you work on whatever you work on.

But you're realizing this like, but I also like, take care of my health. I want to spend time with my wife. I'm one out of a family.

I want to like be able to like have freedom. I've heard you describe like, what's important to you. And this is like, yeah, that's that's how I feel too.

Because like, it's my issue is like, I'm not impressed by somebody six up a per year, five years, 10 years. It's like, I like the people that fucking never fucked it up. And there's a great line of Charlie Munger studies, like it's not getting rich that you have to worry about.

It's staying sane. He's like, it's not part in this is in a book. It's not normal to human nature to have unlimited resources or be so much rich, richer, and then not fuck it up through draw.

He says, through ladies leverage and liquor is usually how rich men go broke. That's a monger said. Yeah, what did it sit in his book? He didn't say in person.

But um, what point being is like, I think there's a sense of wisdom there where it's like, okay, I already have this, how do I keep building on it? People like Connor and Kanye West is in this example too. It's like they're gifted at a young age. And then their superstar success is so disorienting that like, again, it's not getting rich.

You get to worry about it staying sane. They weren't able to stay sane. I want to stay sane, dude.

I want to get to them in my life when I'm trying to make decisions like when I'm 80 years old, my like, I knew for a fact, part of the reason I felt comfortable like jump all in on the podcast, even though I didn't know if I was going to make it success or not was that when Jeff Bezos is like, well, well, I was making a ton of money as this hedge fund. I was 30 years old. I had an apartment on the Upper West Side, best friends with a billionaire who's like mentoring me like he's already set for life, right? But he's like, I knew if I quit now and forgo my quarterly bonus and move across the country, Seattle, I'm going to sell books on the internet.

He's just like, I feel that the internet is a life changing technology and I want to play a role in that technology. And the 30 year old self, you can confuse yourself with like, oh, it's as prestigious as working in a hedge fund. I'm going to miss out on, you know, a couple million dollar bonus, whatever it is.

He's like, your 85 year old self is going to be like, you had a shot to play a role on the internet and you didn't do it. That's how I feel about podcasting is just like, I believe it's a miracle. I want to play a role and therefore like I want to get to them in my life.

I know 80 years like, and David, I'm glad you fucking risked it. I'm glad you did that.

SPEAKER_04
I'm glad you did that. I'm happy you came on here. You're very fascinating to me.

I've listened to dozens of your episodes. I'm very eager to see what you become. I think it's cool.

I didn't know that you're doing it for six years. I know that I've listened to like episode like number 10 as well as like 300. So I guess I should have done the math, but like congratulations on your success.

It seems like you're kicking ass. It seems like you're in the groove and like, it's really cool to see someone like it's really fun to see someone like right when it's happening. And that's like kind of the cool thing about podcasting and like Twitter and all this stuff is like you can catch stuff in the middle, not before and not after, but as it's happening.

That's where you are right now. And I appreciate you doing this. Where what do you what do you promote? Just founders.

I call it Founders Pod. It's a founders podcast founders. Twitter, your founders.

You're

SPEAKER_03
always tweeting good shit. I want to say thank you for having me on. Like seriously, I've loved your fucking podcast.

I would just say that one thing that podcasters like it's obvious who has the magic. And I've been telling people way before I ever fucking message you. It was like, you need to watch what Sam and Sean are doing.

It's clear they have the magic. They have insane chemistry. I remember listening to you guys were like, oh, I'm only getting 60,000 downloads in episode, which is still super impressive.

And now you guys are fucking blue right past that. It's extremely obvious that you guys are really good at it. I hope you like do a ton of it.

I swear. And I know you might not be interested in this, but like, there's a there's a massive hole in podcasting for like the Pat McAfee version of business podcasts. I agree.

And I think you and Sean, you and Sean, like, like, dude, there is going to be a business podcast where you have Pat McAfee gets paid like 30 million a year by whatever his presenting sponsor is, whatever, like, I forgot what is. Dan Lebatard got that $50 million contract from like Drap Kings. You see Spotify gave Alex Cooper 20 million a year.

The reported number for Joe Rogan is way bigger than it's reported. But my point being is like, there's a gap in the fucking business podcast space, which I think you and Sean have the best way to like, if you did it every day, just like you did, like your hour show is a perfect length, the research, the it feels like you're hanging out with your smart friends and you guys are brainstorming together. There's nothing else

SPEAKER_04
that's like what you guys are fucking doing. Hey, Spotify, if you're listening, I'm, I'm easy to contact you just DM me on Twitter. We can talk.

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate you inviting me on. That was fucking super cool of you.

I appreciate you doing this. And yeah, it means a lot. And yeah, it was awesome.

That's a pod. That's the pod.

SPEAKER_00
All right, everyone, my first million episode done. However, I've got good news. You see,

SPEAKER_04
we have another podcast and by we, I mean the HubSpot podcast network, it's called Marketing Against the Grain. One of the hosts, his name is Kip and he's the CMO of HubSpot, you know, $20 billion company. So he kind of knows what he's talking about.

And they talk all about what's going on in the world of marketing. They give really, really cool behind the scenes information and stories. I'm actually on one of the podcasts.

If you search marketing against the grain, Sam Parr, you'll find it. I go like really, really, really depth about how I research different business ideas, but he's has a ton of really, really cool guests. Check it out.

Marketing against the grain.