David Senra: Podcasts With Billion-Dollar Potential, What Separates Good From Great, and More

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

Shut the f Oh. Stop telling people all the shit. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to 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 You know, the one percent of the one percent of their field. And on the pod today we talked about the difference between people who are like somewhat successful And the people who are absolute killers and what traits they have.

And with 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 You have sea fighters or billionaires. It's really fascinating. I think you're gonna dig it. My favorite part is when we talk about um He has this really cool quote.

from Joe Rogan describing uh John Jones, who's this like amazing UFC fighter and the difference between like John and the rest of the people. And then somehow David weaves that in with business people and he li lists out all the business people who he says are the The one percent, the one percent, 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 uh

I um I understand why you'd live in Miami if your family's there. That I that's I don't love like New York, but I'm eventually gonna move there for family. So I The f family pr s you know, supersedes all the other stuff. That that's the only reason we stay here. My wife is Colombian. So seventy percent of Miami D County's Hispanic. All her family's 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 what 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 had nothing like that when I was a kid. Uh And so I was like, Man, I really want to live in California. But I'm just gonna stay here for family and then you know, spend my summers in California. What'd you do before Founders Pod?

Uh I've w done a t a shit ton of businesses like since I was like eighteen years old. Like I think me and you are around the same age, I might be a few years older than you. Um 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

uh the origin the true origination points of Robocalls to the payment network? Um And It was just like a 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 For years. I remember my friend Eric He invited me over to his house one time. This is like two thousand ten. He's like, dude You gotta come over and watch this new podcast. Do you remember the guy from uh from Fear Factor? I'm like, yeah, I watched Fear Factor when I was in like high school.

Uh, and we went to his house and it's like when Joe Rogan was on like the white couch. And he was on like U stream and then he'd have like There'd be like Things falling down. He'd have like, you know, the cheesy kind of uh 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 any time you want. And that just blew my fucking mind. I could not believe that. Yeah. Were you successful or w were you kinda like a struggling entrepreneur and then this is like the is this your first like

Breakout. This is the first thing that's gonna 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, but not nearly like Yeah. Could do. Like a successful podcast could do. How big's the pod now in terms of listenership? It

Fucking crazy right now. Uh we A few weeks ago I just cracked. uh over a hundred thousand Individual listeners. Uh per episode.

No, no, overall. Like so when I sign into like my podcast host and it 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 it out into the world. Um but the one number I want to see grow is that number. Because founders is also weird. You could discover it now.

And because The back catalogs evergreen evergreen. Like I'll talk to people to listen

The latest episodes? And then they'll go back and listen to shit that I did like six years ago, five years ago. Uh It's just you, right? Like'cause you're part of uh what uh col Colossal, is that it? Coloss the Colossus. Colossus, sorry. Uh, and so they like sell your ads and they take a cut. And so is it just you and a producer or what?

Nothing. Just me. So Um Patch, I I love we were talking a little bit about this yesterday. Like um The one thing I love about podcasting industry

is how Uh positive sum everybody is. So I listen to Pat. Podcast uh Patrick's podcast for years. Like uh

I was taking notes on this podcast. I went back and looked. Since like two thousand nineteen. And last year in May Uh, my podcast is a subscription podcast, right? You could listen to the first thirty minutes, you want to listen to all of it. the first six years of it in its existence. You had to pay to upgrade.

Right. I had no y wait, oh I don't know you so you've been doing this for six years. Yeah, starting two thousand sixteen. Oh wow, that's crazy. I to me, like you just got on my radar like a year ago, maybe. Everybody was like that.

So Patrick play a played a big role in that. Uh the David and Ben from Mire. They played a big role. That was just on your pod uh your podcast. Um but what happened was Um

Patrick just randomly tweeted it out. You know, he's got you know, the 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 of the world. Right. If you feel if you keep if you uh

Like the fact that The average word of his audience is Stream. And Uh he just randomly tweeted 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 Watch listen to your podcast. This is crazy.

And so I become friends with this guy named Sam Hinkey. Sam Hinky's the former general manager of the uh Philadelphia seventy sixers, now he's an investor. In Silicon Ba Valley. And I knew he knew Patrick.

And so I screenshotted that Oh shit, look what your friend Patrick said. And then Sam immediately put me in a group chat with Patrick. He's like you two should know each other. And so Patrick, we w the first time we talked.

We talked for like an hour and a half. We have like the same interest for addicted podcasts, addicted history, addicted entrepreneurship, all sorts of stuff. And so we were just friends for a long time. And then uh I had uh several people, Rob Moore being one of them, we should probably talk about Uh uh Rob's been ho hooking me up constantly. Like I'll talk to him and we'll email back and forth. He's always helping me.

Okay, so This is the positive sum nature of Podcasting. I'm sorry. Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman are part are

Partners on the pod. R Rob is the co founder of the Human Live Podcast. So okay. There is this is the interesting thing. One of my favorite quotes. I've read every single thing I could find on C Jobs, right? And one of my favorite quotes that really describe Uh Steve's one of his super powers was that Steve

I was gifted at finding markets full of second rate products. And what you What you guys realized, I think, as well, is 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 them.

Uh it's too late to get in. And Like you needed a story a long time ago. And what happens is like Everybody such a podcast quits, right?

And when you get in there Podcasts in general are full of secondary products. Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman. Uh and I put David and Ben up here which as well as like There

First they have 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 Lo dude look what I have on my desk. Like what's that? Oh uh is that a Tiverman tweet?

Yeah. Rob and Andrew have been so Relentless. With Supporting me.

For no like they have no benefit. Right. They keep like every time Andrew tweets about me. He was one of his favorite podcasts, his founders.

He sends me up to church. Just from his tweets. It's crazy, right? Rob's like hey, um We had this new studio.

Next time you're in Califor uh, 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 you for Miami. I'll just stop in California for a few days to see you.

We I meet up with Rob. We talk about. Rob S Malibu. I met up with Rob. We've talked podcasting for seven straight hours.

That's crazy. Literally we meet up to have lunch. We stay at the same spot. They're like uh it's dinner now. We're like Let's have dinner. And then we stayed there the whole time and then he's like let's go to the f studio. They are

Like to me, I think Uh, not only is he wins the size of his audience crazy. But if you break down on how they think about the quality of the product, how they think about the 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's gonna wind up making them millions of dollars. Like the the way they set up their business, their ads, everything. They're just fucking first class dudes. Are you um 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 is um Me and you were talking about the advantage I think you have at Hampton, which is really fucking special. Um And it 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. D you don't fucking people I've had dinner with that tell me about the Hampton blog and you guys just Just launched it. Oh really? We 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 or some shit or gravel or something. He was like searching they told me that he was like searching through like uh Like war dogs. Uh like looking for gov looking through a database of government contracts and seeing what he can fulfill. Yeah, so what I realize is when I text you that are uh yesterday Was I'm doing similar things. So Um

I realize what and it this is the 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 Wilkins had 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 study is 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 twenty seven thousand dollar 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 ninety percent 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 that gotta read your Hampton blog. I you know, obviously I think you should do a podcast. If you do fucking short form whatever, it's like That's gonna be spread out like that. And then you know one percent, five percent of those are gonna 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 it just keeps going. So to answer your question. I just hit episode three hundred. I've read Over three hundred 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 BreadWise. And so everything you see externally Or just

Uh there essentially uh highlights that I like the one I I 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 Blueberg. And I found one where he said that like, you know, if you you should try to f love what you do'cause you love what you do, you do a lot.

And then you know, that compounds and everything. And I put that out and like immediately These hit and then people discover the podcast and they start listening. And so me and you and Bloomberg are kind of running the same idea, but in Yeah, different. Uh different industries or different like Up until like

I 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 I like to listen. I'll I'll listen I have one that I'm listening to and one 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 uh

Vanderbilt's book. Uh Tycoon. T 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 businessy self helpy books. And then I go and look at his LinkedIn. And I'm like Huh. If he's reading all these books, why isn't he more successful?

The Huh. I've done worse. So I got angry. So now I s I uh now I I read mostly for fun. And if I don't like something I I I I

Brush it off. I put it away. Uh, and so I I quit reading nonfiction books. Now I strictly read biographies or history. So your friend Ryan Holiday has a great post where he shared like his top twenty five um Biography recommendations and his the 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 they read a lot of shit. They all read biographies. 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? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He helped Naval write the thing. Yep. So he gave me this fantastic book recommendation that I had missed just by this game, Peter Beblin, and he Kind of it's a book on Buffett amonger. It's called uh

It's just all I wanna know is where I'll die so I don't go there. And there was something that Buff and Munger were saying in that book that really clicked for me. They kept saying it's like listen, we're gonna share everything we know with you guys. We know that most of you are just gonna listen or read it and never do an And w 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 That you didn't actually learn. And so therefore I'm not applying the lists I'm learning in this book for my own business. And that means I'm just wasting my whole fucking life. 'Cause I'm I'm working on the seven days a week. Like I'm giving a lot of my life energy to this.

And I think that's the important part. These people didn't just fucking read. They took this idea like okay, how can I apply it to my business? And then they actually change their fucking behavior, which is like the key. No, I 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

Uh, what mistake did this person make and how do I avoid it? And where do they win and how do I like lean in on that and then Like the way that I kinda uh This sounds really lame, but we make a joke that I'm I call myself a manifest cowboy'cause I'm a little bit of a redneck. But the reason being is I'm pretty good at like setting five year and ten year goals and staying focused and working backwards to achieve it.

And Like I can like there's this one book uh called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. Love that. And like I I like listen I was like all right, what and he and he was uh he had cancer, I believe, or Uh I don't know if he had a cancer when he wrote it, but he Who died soon after.

And He was like if I could do it all over again. I would try to be financially secure by age thirty five and then just putz around. And I was like, Okay.

Let's do that. And so I like just worked backwards to like how do you just like have like the bills handled? And then everything else is just, you know. I see on the cake and and so I'm pretty good at that.

But I uh read it. I read it all the time. I refer I I use it like a textbook. So like w 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've bought many copies and uh I have his 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. 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. 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 wanna talk about the difference between

The people who are pretty good. And absolute killers. Yeah. And you were like oh that's just like an UFC, that's kinda the same way. But I'cause I'm fascinated with like I listened to your s uh I think his name is Sam Braffman, the guy who started Seagroms, which eventually turned into like all these other things.

And then I'm not sure. He's a savage. You know, like He almost reminded me of myself, not in the savage sense, but he 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 to me because I'm I have like some social anxiety a little bit. And like but when it came to business, he was like pretty uh 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 can't I'm I just don't even want to ask for help'cause it bothers me. Um, but anyway I listened to him and then I listened to Napoleon. That one was really good. Oh dude, 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 nineteen fifty five. Is that the concise history one? I can't see. No, no, no. I'm about I'm gonna do this in like two um Two probably two episodes. It's called The Mind of Napoleon. It's it's Napoleon's own fucking words. And

That's cool. Uh yeah. So'cause they're saying everybody's obsessed with Sam Hultman right now because of chat GPD. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but Napoleon's Well Napoleon had this amazing saying. I forget if I heard it from you or or Ben Wilson, but it was something like um Uh You he 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. Um, there is something that you picked up on where

People it's 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 I don't want their life. And that's the way I feel. Like sure. Out of like I Exact first of all, you said something that's really smart too. It's like

People diss like manifestation or visualization. And I think it's like w Like Willy Poo Foo nonsense. Okay, that's fine. I can just tell you it 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. Este Lauder. Uh, Bob Noyce, founder of Intel, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have you read The Education? I want to send you. I was gonna ask you for your address to send you this book, but I think he might have already read it. Did you ever read? The education of a bodybuilder? I've heard about it.

I've never read it. It the first hundred and thirteen pages is it functions as a As a Autobiography of Arnold when he's thirty. And like the visualization thing, seeing things in it 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. Uh, I think his the advice he gave was wise. Like that guy had a hole in his heart that could never fill. He spent a hundred million dollars in a decade.

Ten million a year on cocaine, alcohol, and prostitutes. Yeah. That's a fucking crazy story in that book. And he I what I love about autobiography is much for us, usually they write him towards end of their life. 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 and the like the conquering. Is

That quote um I think it's uh I am of the race that found empires is what it is. So I I wanna read this quote that you and I were

Uh discussing where I think Joe Rogan is obviously like The world the world's leading expert on You know. M M A. Like the the stuff I wish I could talk to that guy. Just I hope I get that.

I hope I get the chance just to ask him. I wouldn't I just want to talk about MA and all the shit that's in his brain. And I was very Curious. what was gonna happen with this John Jones surreal game fight, right? So for those who don't know

John Jones is this very controversial character at age like twenty two, twenty-three. He was like the first UFC fighter sponsored by Nike. He was the golden boy, he was the champion when he was twenty or something, and he's just a killer, never lost. But K 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 uh the field.

Did you ever see the video of him? Where remember like during the the pandemic people were like lighting shit on fire, there's all these riots and they did it in uh 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 are like spray painting and vandalizing shit, and John is just walking around like give me the can. Give me the can, give me the can I'm like

Dude, if you know who that is. You'll give him the can. John Jones is like Six two, probably. Well now he weighs two hundred and sixty 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 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 Right, at least I think This is learned behavior. And you are actually a little more sociopathy than

You are not And You will kill someone easily and sleep like a baby at night. Hundred per so this is the the fascinating thing about studying history. So This is what Joe J Joe Rogan said about John Jones, which I think

is gonna rema it reminds me like a young go 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 a thousand 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 is a fucking conqueror. That is the thing that's inside 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 Arn uh 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. Um And so the example of that is like I did this uh uh this excellent biography of uh young go Gates, right? In my opinion, the perfect biography

It's like I don't need to know What their great grandfather did for a living. Right. It's like

Tell me the struggle. The reason we're lurk like give me a little background to what family they were born into. Then tell me the struggle and then once they're rich, end the book. And so there's a book called Hard Drive. Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft Empire.

That covers the first thirty five years of Bill Beat's life. Right. So ends right after the the Microsoft IPO. And I'm Obsessed. The reason I have a solo podcast. Uh, is because my podcast idol is Dan Carlin Hardcore History.

Right. And is he by himself? Hundred percent. He's got a giant audience. Um We should actually talk about podcasting if you're interested in that.

He he a lot of people don't share numbers. He had said uh don't let me forget the thread on the gates, by the way. Um He had said The latest episode this is like two years ago. Uh

That got published. He got nineteen million downloads on. And then he said, Oh wait. Then he said, Oh wait. Uh it turns out some of them were double counted.

Yeah. In any case. Cut it in half. He's got an audience of probably ten million people that listen to him. That would be one of the biggest episodes of the year for most every podcast. You know, the big dogs get a million or one point five per episode, but rarely you know, Joe Rogan, if he interviewed like Bernie when he b interviewed Bernie Sanders or someone like that, that maybe got five or or eight or something like that. So Joe 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, uh remember when they tried to cancel him? This is also the magic of podcasting man. Uh Which I know we don't like Yeah, We have to be careful here'cause we talk about it forever.

Um E the problem is is like you you have people that don't if you listen to Joe or you listen like I listen to you and fucking Sean forever. I know even before we met, I like I know who you guys are. I know Manifest Cowboy, I know the fucking Terminology, we have an idea of who you are. Like the personality before you meet them, right? That's the magic of podcasting. It's like we're not creating content, we're creating relationships of scale.

Which is very fucking powerful. And still on People most people Don't they they underestimating how powerful this is. Um and so what happens like you have, you know, people saying Joe Bogan's racist.

You know, th they they cut the clip and then you know, he's anti vax, everything else. And so they try to cancel them. And then somebody's to listen to him for fucking ten years and listen to him ten hours a week. It's like you're not gonna tell me anything about Joe that I don't know. And so what happens is He said his audience added two million people. I think we've from twelve million subscribers to fourteen million subscribers on Spotify.

Those are the numbers I've heard. Yeah. Um it speaks to like this he still The biggest by far because Even like the top.

You know. humans and everybody else. So like yours one point five without YouTube and everything else. So If still Just crazy how big and successful Joe's show is. Um

But what about Bill? The back to Bill. Uh so Bill Gates is w I was doing an e episode on him. And I had just been listening to Dan Carlin's uh Wrath of the Cons series on Gang of Khan. For like the fifteenth time. And

Who you think he is. It's like this is Genghis Khan in a Mr. Rogers costume. He's in a disguise. And he is unbelievably relentless. So There's this guy named Michael Moritz, who was uh now he's a billionaire. Uh he's one of the guys that helped scale Sequoia, but at the time he was just a journalist. This is a perfect example.

He's giving uh he just a journalist, I think he's writing for Time Magazine. And he's meeting Bill. Yeah. Bill's probably Yeah, twenty eight, something like that.

They do 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 I ripped it out. He said, Why would you do that? He's like From my house to Microsoft off office is seven minutes. That's fourteen minutes a day. From Microsoft's office to the airport.

I go there three times a week. That's fifteen minutes around trip, you know, thirty thirty minute or Fifteen minutes each way, thirty minutes round trip. He has 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 V C no. No, they were printing money. And they sold a million shares of Microsoft for a million dollars. To a V C They did not need the money right before they went public to get expertise.

That was a bootstrap business. The year before this is in nineteen eighty money, the year before Microsoft IPOs They did a hundred forty million in revenue and thirty eight million profit. That's insane, right? This is it.

And then so this extreme the John Jones the the zero 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 a this spooky fucking um The spooky story that's in one of Bill Gate's biographies. I've read two of them. And

Uh 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 their revenue was, I know what their where their product is right now. I know everything about them.

And so They all they he had a bunch of like frenobies. He's like, I wanna destroy you, but he would talk to you and a lot of them were Getting customers at these In the early days of like these uh The software

Uh Conventions, which is very Like very new. And so this guy Philippe Khan that he was trying to fucking destroy, he he literally wants to put you out of business because he's he told his employee, he's like, If I if we lose a fifty thousand dollar contract That's not fifty thousand.

That's a hundred thousand because we lost fifty and our fucking enemy got a hundred got fifty. So you just cost me a hundred thousand dollars. She was like that psychotic about it. And so Falique goes over, sees Bill sitting by himself in like a foldable chair, just looking at something. Polite walks up to him. And

He goes say hi to Bill. And he realizes what Bill's looking at. He's looking at a picture of Philippe Khan. He's in public in a fucking corner of a convention center staring at a fucking picture of his enemy. Like

The what Joe said about John A thousand years ago. We lived at a zero sum. If you want to build wealth, what'd you do? Like you

took their land or took their resources to somebody else. Consider. Yeah. So A thousand years ago, that personality type, Bill Gates, would have been leak, he would have been a Napoleon. He would have been leading an army.

It just so happens that this same 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 there'd be ch they'd be pillaging and raping and and doing everything else.

Well that's why My favorite era of American history is like Um eighteen ninety, so r that's uh uh thirty or twenty years after the Civil War. So we're America's kinda getting back to it. Uh up until like nineteen twenty. Because in nineteen twenty, um

Like the Sherman Act, which was the anti monopoly act, uh, started coming about. And then the SE C was invented. And so between like eighteen ninety and nineteen twenty, America was really the wild west where we had some technology, you know, we had cars, we had Uh I think phones were coming about, telegraph so we could really

Railroads we could and the stock market what existed So we could like Make wealth. But There's a few things that you could do. So for example, Andrew Carnegie and um

Uh who's his partner, Frick. Henry Clayfrick. Yeah, like when people would uh when the union workers would Boycott and protest. They killed them. Like they they hired a a private police team

And they went on. A private army and and they literally beat like ten of'em to death. And I don't think anything happened. I don't know if anything happened. No, because they also own the politicians. Yeah, and it was wild. And then like there was a time where JP Morgan loaned the US government money. And and then there was a time a lot of people don't know this, but J F K

John John F. Kennedy, the uh 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 uh one big time he lied. But besides that, he was pretty straight. And how crazy was it that his employees never he they 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 boostless with them. But inside of his

You're not gonna find any that worked inside of Standard oil and then obviously they they hid all the things they owned. This is actually an idea I stole from uh Rock of the way, his competitors He wasn't really I mean, he was ruthless, but he would go to them, he goes, Hey, I would like to buy you This is a very fair price. Come and join me and I'll make you rich. Of which many did, and they got rich. And he said, If you don't join me,

I'm gonna destroy you. So let me know if you it's so to me that's like He's like, Look, we can work together or I'm gonna end you. You can pick. But he wasn't like necessarily like rude about it. Yeah, so the I I 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 that reappear in the history of entrepreneurship. And so I have maxims for a bunch of these like

My favorite one is excellence is capacity to take pain. It's just like you're not gonna achieve large success without being able to tolerate paint 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 um Steve Jobs realized when he was built trying to build Pixar. He's just like

We can't get any fucking data on how profitable You just have to transitioning from selling hardware. to just pure animate like trying to build the first computer animated movie. And Steve Jobs, like I don't get why like 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 uh company ever did it 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 They made Like Snow White, like sixty years before and right when he's doing negotiations with Picks are in Disney.

They re-released it and were 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 twenty eight million copies. Of a movie you made sixty years ago. That's all profit. And they made two he said they made a quarter billion in profit. On that one movie. Releasing it for the like the just new technology.

And so I actually took an idea from Johnny Rockefeller, Rob Moore plays a role in this. Is like um What what um Rockefeller would do is like he had the secret allies, right? And so he

Entered into an industry that he thought was very disorganized. And so he wind up building relationships and allies with all the people in the oil member. The oil business when he jumps in. It's not what we think is oil. He was he was like refin he was a refiner. He was selling kerosene. For fucking like lighting and stuff.

He made uh he we actually made more money in retirement because After he retired, he still owned a shit ton of um Equity goes back to Felix Dennis. Uh and then the and bitch of the core. And so now like oh this this my my stock's even worth more.

Uh, but what he would do is he'd go around and he'd organize all the other people in the industry. So like I did this with bunch of podcasts, like me and you just started doing this, like texting about this. It's 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 um your interview with Brandon Shaw.

He said the same thing about He's like Jo told us we have an obligation. To help each other out. And so for business podcasts it's 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 Oh, I was at the choir guy's house in San Francisco a few weeks ago. They're like, We give Patrick They have one of the most profitable

Fantastic. I'm actually we wearing a merch right now. Um they have one of the most profitable Podcasts and compared to audience size to how much they make. And they're like, Well Patrick told us that we weren't

Charging enough, so we triple our prices. Then we try And then We still sold ads and then we triple 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. Um that's an idea from Rockefeller. 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 uh just surrounding yourself with them is gonna change your behavior? Or is it just like Aliens exist and I am not them. No, here's the thing. We I don't know if we were recording I I like how you guys just jump right in, by the way. Uh um so I don't I think most of our discussion was Caught on the recording. But um

I am very glad. That I have a wife And two kids. Um Up and down like here's here's my thing. It's like the the thing that I don't like and it's very present in all these books is like

If you're an adult It's your job to figure it out and like not let people take advantage of you, right? So if like John D Rockefeller gives you a bad price and for your business, you accept it, that's on you. What I'm in you hear this on the podcast like I'm induced into the state of rage when people fuck with kids. I can't stand.

And so up and down my family tree, like I was the first person to graduate high school in my family, much less college. I'm the first. uh 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'cause they're Both so their parents were shitty people? But like I saw drug abuse abuse, I saw sexual abuse, I saw people going to jail, cocaine, all this crazy shit, right? And so I was like, if I'm gonna have kids, I'm not gonna 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 I Eyes open in the morning till the time they close. And I would just fucking Like I think

The scary part is that I and I'm trying to compare myself. So you know, you can't compare myself to Brockfell. But like I have a little bit of 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 the life they're not necessarily happy. You know, like so I don't want that. Um, I don't want to destroy everything around me.

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 five percent of the population that are borderline sociopathic, you know, nothing motor people. That's that's a little bit extreme, but like They're willing to do whatever they can if you get in their way. And so I

I'm I've been lucky. That As we've g it it's 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. uh 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 uh 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 I don't enjoy being around them. And so I've had a bunch of people who if you told me when I was twelve 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. Um because it feels like

Well I don't know exactly how it feels like. Like It feels like we um we're in a pissing match when we're when we're with each other. Um I I simply don't enjoy it. And so now I have I have a rule in my household, which is no new friends. Um so I default. Whenever I talk to someone, I default to I'm not gonna be friends.

Until it's like all right, maybe after a while we're we we can we can we can cross the threshold. But by default it's I don't trust you and I'm not gonna let you in. Um, 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 a this is a very unenjoyable hang. You know, there's a bunch of people who

Maybe Ben might know who we're talking about. Um, but there's like a couple 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 to what what you said about the most successful people being crazy? Not only are they crazy. I don't wanna be around him. 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 one percentile or ninety nine percentile of this of these other traits, which

Usually not always means you're gonna 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. That that's my big everybody's like, okay, uh like are you doing all this? Are you gonna you wanna run like the next Apple? Like what are you doing this for? And I'm like No, like out of the three hundred people that I've studied, the the person that I want to be the most like

is the the closest person that I've studied, read about, that has come to mastering life is a guy named Ed Thorpe Right. And so it's up to you. Uh this is a fucking crazy story.

So it's episode two twenty two, and the crazy thing is like Usually the episode titles are 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 Got it. be the first quantitative hedge fund. Right. Uh the reason I liked him is because

What I think you were talking about earlier, like you have varied interests, right? Where You need a balance because I've also heard you speak enough where I'm like, Okay, he's clearly type A 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 I'm not sociopathic, but like

You know. No limit to the kind of empire you want to build. You have a chip on your shoulders, it's like all of them. I do too. So I see that.

Um And Thorpe. Essentially like what he did is like He made a ton of money. uh 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 the industry's like More money's not gonna 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. But he he had fun. He

Yeah. Um 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 like, I don't know, sixty five. He's fucking ninety. Because he learned when he was real young. That physical fitness was really important and so he gave me the best heuristic Uh 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 nine I think he's might be like ninety two. Um And so this whole balance of like Your friend Ryan Holiday actually I I learned this from h his content.

was like what it means to be a competed human. We've known that forever. We just get distracted. It's like You want work that has meaning. You want good relationships.

You wanna have fun and you wanna make sure that your body's healthy and you 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

Yeah, huge benefit. But it's like, man, I'm not gonna 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 we're 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 put guardrails on. Right. And

Like I'm not going to keep trading. money or time, which I'm gonna run out of, for more money when I'm not even spending the money I have. I wanna um I wanna ask you some more questions about history, but a story really quick. I I have a friend who's Forty, low forties, worth a billion dollars, um as a publicly traded company.

And he was telling me the story about how He w 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 fifty million and the guy was complaining about how he lives in this fancy neighborhood and he can't His home is his six million dollar home is less good than or is 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 it's not enough. And so Yeah. I don't want to be around people. I I think you hit it. Don't be like I don't wanna be around people like that.

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 any more. It's you always want more. It it's a very challenging thing. It doesn't have to be that way, though. I had the advantage because like this is the crazy thing about podcast you just said, like you never know who's listening. So

I got uh invited to have uh two hour lunch with sam cell. Right. And that's fucking crazy. Um, it came inbound. Sam had listened to the podcast I made on his autobiography and he's like

I want to meet that guy. So Sam Zell Sam Zell's a real estate guy. He's got a great book called Uh Am I Being Loud Enough? Am I Being Subtle? Am I being set off? Yeah. Am I being subtle enough? He's uh he's probably close to ninety now. He's kind of eighty one. He's kinda got this blue collar ish vibe about him, but he's worth probably

five or ten billion dollars, something like that. He owned a Uh, all these real estate things. He created the Reet, I think. Then he like owned Schwin Bicycles. He owned the LA Times, I think, or the Tribune, something like that. He so he's like a a a Tycoon. You're and you'd fucking love him. So he's eighty one years old. He sold his his real estate company for thirty eight billion to Black Roark or Blackstone. I don't fucking know. You know, they're all named the same.

And so you know Who the f how how often do you get to meet somebody that sells their company for forty billion dollars? And I couldn't believe this was gonna happen. I thought it was like oh like this isn't really gonna happen. Now I was like, Oh, maybe it's gonna be like a lunch I'm invited to and it's like Like twenty people there's like no, he sat.

Eye to eye for two fucking hours. And He's not like that. You would the reason I I got back after that lunch and I told my wife, I go, I want that. I want that. I want to be eighty one years old.

Completely still Unbelievably curious about the world around him, still doing deals. Doesn't give up Fuck. He's not one of these like media trade guys, right? He only wears blue, I think.

He invented he he takes credit. He's like, I invented business casual. I'm like, Sam, what the fuck? I don't know if you should invented business casual. It's 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. Like it's fucking crazy. But the thing the 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 fucking way. 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 get richer, then buy another house. Like 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, because he's like I have a compound in Malibu.

Um he's like just 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. One 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'cause I know you fucking hate owning a house.

And like renting, yeah. He's like, Don't own a bunch of shit. Just rent it when you eat it. Like and just'cause if you own it, then you gotta take care of it. This advice from fucking the guy that Yeah. obviously on assets, he was buy he's still buying a ton of businesses. The day before I saw him, he he's like He dude, he was eighty one, he just his eyes lit up. He's like I just spent three hundred million dollars

Buying seventy five percent of this company makes fifty million a year or some shit. Like he just loves the deal. He's like, I'm gonna be doing deals till I die 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.

Ha ha. Really? What was it like meeting Charlie Munger? So that was fucking crazy too. Um and again

Because like Andrew and his partner Chris Um It was fascinating because uh I heard your podcast where you guys had met Chris and spent time with him. Um And I get to have uh the the the

Uh few hours before. We had dinner at 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 on your podcast. I'm gonna hang out with them tonight. I'm gonna be with them tonight. Okay, yeah. Like you should I I w

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 now is his 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 counters like every day.

At three o'clock. I'm picking my I think it's his son, his son out 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 he carries on.

Um, but he's not doing it at the detriment of being a shitty dad, which like I admire a lot. I fucking hate Shitty dads. So it was Munger like. He he was he was present. So Munger was Uh He has this line where he's like, Oh, I didn't succeed in life because of intelligence, I succeeded because of a long detention span.

Definitely has a long intention, man. But that dude is way smarter than me. Like Yeah. Anybody's even even at ninety eight or what how old is he? Ninety five?

So he's ninety nine. Anybody is gonna have uh some level of cognitive decline at ninety nine. And so all I could think about is like If That is who he is at ninety nine. Imagine trying to compete with that dude.

Thirty years ago. What was this house like? Uh I had to be careful'cause 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. Was it fancy? Was it what uh was it as you'd expect?

Which is very, very, very nice. No. He li 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. Uh His whole thing is like I I truly believe

That he just wanted to show you 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 Yeah.

You there's flannel in your in your picture, I think. Like flannel from Amazon. So the Costco Like his one of save entrepreneurs, Jim Sinegal, who I I love a lot too. And one of his favorite companies, Jim Cynical, are is Costco because of Yeah.

Costco could have made more money, but pass the the benefit of their group buying on to the customer. And so Charlie's Who he says he is. He's like he's not doesn't have a 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 wanted he's in it. He says he's like I didn't want the Ferraris, I wanted the independents. Who all that you've so besides Ed Thorpe.

Who all have you Who have you listened to or uh 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 the the the top they are the one percent of the one percent. I mean

I think the selection here is that every single person is in the top you know, point zero zero zero one percent because you're only the only to get on founders you have to live like some work. Most of you wrote a 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 I'm talking about the first one because the first one he writes after fourteen years of struggle. Like What I admire so much about this guy is like he's not necessarily like a conqueror in the sense like he's gonna go Around I don't think he'd be like a Napoleon in other times.

What I love is like My favorite entrepreneurs. Or 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 Uh mindset of like how I wanna build the product, how I wanna build my business, how I wanna To uh to like spend my time.

You know what I c I call it. 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 what they wanted. Read that d d you could read his bi 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 he's crying at the end of the night never think he's gonna be successful and he just won't quit. And what happens is like

You fast forward now. James Dyson is seventy five years old. He owns a hundred percent of Dyson Company. He's like You know, w that company's probably worth twenty billion dollars. It makes supposedly, you know, a couple of billion a year for profit for his family.

Like they take out of the company. What I love is um he the the company he owned before Dyson Vacuums, it was this thing called a ball barrow, which looks like a wheelbarrow with a a ball at the front. And Goes and

Rinse. Uh does a photo shoot for the ball barrow. At this like massive estate. that has been in in England for like three hundred years. Twenty five years later he buys it.

Like this is my shit now. Dude I I've talked to a lot of people who love that book. 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 gonna pull myself up from my bootstraps and I'm gonna I'm gonna 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 can 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 attribute attributes. But one or two things, both in their control and out of their control, went wrong or right, and that can it could absolutely change things. Like it could be like Like, you know, John Rockefeller didn't know that a car was going to be invented.

Uh 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 Uh, you know, someone like w you know, I'm sure we've seen a lot of fortunes get created during a pandemic. Like Luck is real. Like w when we sold our company That was my first big win.

The CEO, Brian nearly fatal accident afterwards and I'm like Dude, if that happened 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 two billion dollars and the CEO of the buyer got Kill the work.

Clip. Do you think that with these guys luck is real? Of course. You you said something great on the Acquired podcast. You're like, I've met a lot of these guys'cause like They're twenty times richer, but they're not twenty times smarter. Yeah.

And a lot of you Rockefeller's a great example, right? Like So Uh 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 Sure. Like Jeff Bezos. Like the funniest thing, I had dinner last night with two founders. So it's like Do you guys know the Jet Basos 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 I gotta break. The idea is like he knew he was gonna 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 th this is like people track private jets now? Some YouTuber made a video and they noticed that every time Jeff's Play maybe it's like the people who just want on his plane. I don't quick'em now. We're like

There's a jet that follows his other jet around. And like it's somebody put all this together from public information. So Uh that level of success. Like he knew okay The internet's growing. We the everything store was a code name in the hedge fund that he Amazon that.

they were gonna incubate it in the hedge fund. He was working for David Shaw, a billionaire Uh hedgehog guy in New York. And so he knew it's like we could sell books and then you also knew he could sell other things more 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 example. Bezos when he pitch the first investors. He goes, I think this could make a hundred million dollars a year if we're lucky.

Yeah, he uh he hi it took him fifty meetings for venture capitalists to get his first million dollars, and he said the most common question he was asked is what is the internet? Yeah, he's a fucking savage. He is the closest to me. Bezos reminds me so much of Rockefeller. Like if you read Bezos' shareholder letters are excellent. Uh, because he's he's telling you what he's just like the the Arnold books that I recommended earlier. Arnold says, this is my blueprint, this is what I'm gonna do. He calls a shot and then he goes and does it.

Basically says the same thing. But the Rockefeller twenty times Richer, but not twenty times smarter thing. I think it's obviously You're talking about randomness, you're talking about luck. Uh Rockefeller.

was gonna be successful no matter what. Like the 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 I think is really smart is like he's work he's like nineteen years old working for two founders. He's 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 and the founder said.

Like that kind of personality is gonna win wherever he's gonna go. Now he could have stayed in that business and made millions of dollars. Is he gonna build the Arguably the most successful company of all time. If it wasn't for the 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 are the right Right person. Right set of scales at the right place at the right time. If you're missing any of those, you're not gonna

build you know a trillion dollar company or uh you know, two hundred billion dollar or two hundred billion dollar net worth. You need things to break for for you that are outside of your What do you think you're gonna do? Next. Like where you know, where what's your blueprint for ten years? Okay, so this is where

I start talking reckless. Because um I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good bus of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy and then uh I have some friends. Uh

that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week. And they literally pull me to the side and they're like Shut the f Oh. Stop telling people the shit. W what's an example of a great business build on the back of a pot. I'll tell you.

I'd take it. I'll tell you why, off. I can't like there's a there's okay, so there's one that I don't have any intimate knowledge on. Uh, I can give you an example of that. Um 'Cause there's some of that have intimate knowledge so I'm not sure what I know that I can speak public and don't but like butcher box.

Bootstrap, five hundred million dollars in revenue. Largely expanded from podcasting. And there's a ton of those uh industry. Buying podcast ads. Yes.

Got it. Yes. Um and then Look at I mean this is something I actually learned on your podcast, which I think you guys did an excellent job with, was uh 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. I knew about Joe. I I knew he owned like thirty percent rumored to be owned thirty percent of the company. But think about it like Joe has a ton of um

Ad slots. Just that one ad slot that he randomly put in. He probably had it just on the ad solid around seventy five million dollars, like depending on what your actual purchase price was. Um, Joe so this idea is like I start talking shit where like Everybody knows'cause of Mr. B Sing going, Oh yeah, there's gonna be

I could see why there's gonna 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 gonna hit that. My point is just like That's

The the the the the deep relationship people have with podcasters is not comparable. to the relationship they have with YouTubers. Is not at all comparable. And this is not at all new what like what anything that people are deeply are more uh they they like podcasters more, like there's more affinity. It's so Blake Robbins from the Uh he's a benchmark. He has this Okay, so um he'd be actually interested somebody interested in talking. He's the one that gave me the spectrum idea. He's uh helped incubate

Uh What's the what's the uh professional Call duty team. Hundred thieves or forty thieves? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know what you mean. So

Day Cha was uh developed an audience on, you know, Twitch streaming. And so So Blake has a spectrum and this comes to you, like Uh

There's people out there that have heard you and Uh Sean Talk. Way more. Then They've heard their best friend's voice.

Yeah, because when they when they put the headphones in, w it's just us and them, and it's usually for fifty or an hour minutes, uh, you know, sixty minutes at a time, whereas a YouTube video It's Yeah, maybe eight. I've heard you talk for a hundred hours. Like so.

Like we've text exchange messages online, but never talk in person. It's like Oh, I fucking know Sam. Like I know what he's into, we have the same interests, like I think we'll be able to talk about a lot of shit a bunch of shit, right? So his whole point is like on the spectrum is like How much do peop how much time do people spend with you? He's like on the far end all the way to the left is like TikTok dancers, right? TikTok dancers You know, they might have millions and millions of followers, but they spent thirty seconds and if they try to like sell tickets, they can't even fill a room with like three thousand people, even if there's

thousand you know, millions of dollars. On the far end of the spectrum, all the way to the right, is Twitch streamers. People spend literally Forty hours a week with their favorite Twitch streamer. Right, or thirty hours a week or twenty hours. He goes, David.

Podcast at you. You're just one Uh one One step Towards the left.

He goes, there's gonna be people who have listened to you speak for hundreds of hours. Right. And that parasocial relationship is unbelievable. Deep and comprehensive. to like you saw that I saw um people had said that you're doing a a public meetup, I think in Austin, right?

And or a show. And there's people flying in from Bucking Dubai. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Okay, th so think about that. Like they're not flying in to Dubai to watch like a TikTok dancer. They're not flying

And your podcast is technically a business, you have all this other stuff you could do. It's like how many brands do people identify with so much that they'll fly across the world? I just did this. I'm introvert as fuck, right? Yeah, you seem like it. Yeah, so

Yeah, or you seem like an eternal one. Yeah, but on one on one, but with groups, I hate it. So Uh Shane Parish from Knowledge Project Fern Street was in Miami. He's like, dude, let's do a public meetup. I'm like Fuck. And I agree just'cause he did it.

How many people came? Uh like Seventy, like I think around like seventy people came. It's awkward, right? It's not awkward.

Uh I don't think I'd do it again. But like This is the thing. Like I the only thing I did to promote it

Shane was supposed to send it out to his newsletter, never did. Thanks Shane. But um I just made like this one minute I uh I was like five days before the event or something I I uploaded to my I guess we was okay. You happen to be Miami area. We're gonna do this, here's where we're gonna be.

And like I'm like all right, there's no like my audience isn't like You know, California, New York. There's like Miami's not like the spot for it. Yeah. People flew down from New York, Washington, DC, drove for hours, and I'm like, What are you in town for? Like this. I'm like, Why?

What what are you talking about? And so it's this deep level relationship. So Here's your question, like My tenure plan is just like I'm gonna 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. 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.

Um And so I'm just gonna run the same playbook that like Rockefeller does. Like right now, um you scale with ads. People pay a very high dollar amount because your audience is valuable. Yeah.

And thank you for uh for promoting Hampton. Uh on your part of that. That was more than my first car, but I for free. I but I appreciate that. Hey. I I look hopefully you get more hopefully you get uh more than enough value uh that's That's a perfect example. I did it.

You wouldn't you didn'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 p this is people Dude, the conversation you have with podcasters. You can't 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 a podcaster has a successful podcast is like I'm never fucking not gonna quit. Like I'm never not gonna do this. This thing is It's like magic.

Um And so When when I was like, dude, I think Hampton, first of all, is a great idea. Because um Entrepreneurs have to be around other entrepreneurs.

Like we do not think like anybody else. You go to you're gonna have uh you said you're you're have a family once you start having kids, you go to these Birthday parties. And then you're back into You're 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 ones for in the room? And if it's not a shader, I gotta leave. Like it 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're doing with Hampton. The funny thing is like Oh, thanks for doing it, it's like No Thank you for making your fucking podcast. I s

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 thinking you. So that's the power of podcast. So the answer question is like I'm gonna vertically integrate Uh w what's that mean?

So like the product you're gonna create. By by next year at this time. Um Like you're not gonna be no one's gonna be able to buy and out on founders. Right. Um

So And this is the the crazy thing about having a podcast. So like You have all you you hit on it, you're like, uh super successful people read all the time. Um they also listen to business podcasts all the time. And you were able to build relationships with them. Where like

Uh I just met like you said, well, 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 he's like

Find a business. You guys buy businesses for a living? You hire managers for a living? Like We'll partner up on distribution. As opposed to like just doing an ad.

Uh, you have people like Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best. Like literally saying hey Uh 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 Tegus. Right. And what does that mean? This is something.

I think it's public now, so I don't think I'll get in trouble with for saying this. I've heard about this. You want I can say it so you can you don't get in trouble if you want. So This is just rumors. So here, uh let me tell you the rumors that I heard. So there's this company and you could let me know. So this way you won't get in trouble for revealing anything. Tigas 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 uh uh 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 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 hold holding in the company has been worth is worth tens of millions of dollars. Is that roughly accurate? So I I I don't know the prices. I know he he says this publicly. He put twenty million into his company. He's got a giant fund, too. Um My point is Like I don't know the valuations I I'm sure if I asked Patrick he would tell me, but you know, it's none of my business. Um

My point is that like Okay, Michael Elnik, who's a co founder of Tegus, the CEO, and a fucking savage. Like he is he is like the guys we study, right? I was we we talked. I was talking to him one time and um He was just telling me like oh like a what do you do like decompress like you're in a like he's building an incredibly valuable company and he's got a like and he's completely dedicated to it.

And it him and his brother both ran track at 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 take Saturday mornings off. Yeah. Let's say Oh.

Sound anymore. So he's on it. I love his intensity. But he said he's just like One ac one podcast they only advertised they had the Their first two customers.

from like, you know, word of mouth or their network. But You know, the first probably fifty to sixty million dollars of revenue, whatever it is, like Patrick. podcasts because of who's in his audience help them scale.

And As a result, like Then There's just a relationshi there's a million things you could do. So in Patrick's case, he's running a fund, like you can do equity. Um

I'm not an investor. You said the other day when you were talking to um Can we interviewing? Like you don't like investing. in p in people's companies. Like you want to like build your own ship. Yeah, investing doesn't entirely give me a dopamine rush. Like I I'm I'm in the game for adventure and that d and I'm searching like uh 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 six years.

I'm the same way. I I'm like I'm not interested. I get so much deal flow like hey do you want to angel bust? I'm like, no. Like I why? I would just like do my own shit. And people say I'm stupid on doing that. And they have to understand it's like I'm not also running my life to maximize for most dollars, mate. Like that doesn't make any like It we talked about learning is not just memorizing information, it's 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 how you spend your time. So what's your what's gonna be your Tigus though? What's gonna be your product? I don't know what that see that's the thing is like We I was having a conversation with two founders about this last night. The the good thing is is like I we have some ideas.

Uh obviously like We'll share that when time comes. But like I have all these really smart successful people that like the podcast that wanna help. You know, like Andrew and Chris A Tiny. Uh I just met with their E I. R I think they have more than one, but I just had a conversation with their uh E IR. Um

Uh Patrick's trying to help me. The guy that connected me with Sam Zell, he's got like twenty billion dollars 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 in 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 shit about podcasts, I'm like Podcasting's fucking sh uh it's 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 exists. I had to fucking walk I 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 then think about that, like if somebody like this is um a young kid, so me and you both know Michael Second.

Who's Michael Smar Future? Oh or 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 know.

I don't think you're pronouncing it correctly. Dude, he's at my house. He's at my house like twice a week and I just call him Michael Future. I like I love how arrogant. Dude, I had a guy at my wedding And I didn't even I barely even knew how to say his I didn't even know his last name. I just I just called him Sieva Russia. I love

Michael's confidence and My point being is like imagine being, you know, twenty twenty because he he would call DM both me and you. And he he's really good at it. He sent me a DM. He's like, Hey, I love your podcast. I took a uh an idea that I got for your podcast, made a video about it, and it got ten million views. Can we talk? I go.

You did what? What the fuck is that? Dude, I always tell he's at my house all the time and like I'm not old. I'm thirty three. But he he's twenty Three may I mean whatever, he's first just in college. Yeah, 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. And he's like, Well, just tell me and and and I'll ask him about his dating life. He just talked and so Well I always try to this sounds always weird whenever I say this. I I always try to so surround myself with young like younger people and I'm like just tell me. I just want to listen. Just tell me what's going on. And he always does that to me. He's like you you treated that him one time, he says something like oh what are gonna be doing in ten years I'm landing my helicopter. on your lawn or something. But like I love his confidence'cause like you at the end of the year. He goes Got some really bad news today. Just got back from the Kyrefractor.

They said that the chip on my shoulder is permanent. He actually gave me a really good b book record that he actually text me yesterday that I never had found. It's like all these like um I Which one was it? The ones that um I'm obsessed with the the history of the American West. And like all that personality type that's like, Oh no, fuck the East Coast. I'm gonna go across and do this crazy one real quest. Philip Anschwitz or Anschwit the guy who owns um 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 Ticketmaster, I think.

Something like that. Yeah, I'll wear the West again. Yeah, and they own um uh Coachella. Anyway, this guy, Philip A lot of people don't know this. It only has ten reviews on Amaz Amazon, this eighty year old

twenty billion dollar guy. He has a book. About the West. Yeah. And I'm I already ordered it.

The the reason I brought up Michael though is because one, I think it's smart to be like I I think we have a uh an epidemic of people that don't believe themselves. People think we have an epidemic of arrogance. I I believe the complete opposite. It's like there's so many more people that can create businesses. 'Cause like the best description of a 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, like there's limitless opportunity. And so

To to have the belief that you can do that. something that you that pops up these books all the time is that belief comes before building. But society wants you to show me that you're you should have like show prove that you should have your confidence to deserve. It's like no no you don't under actually understand. It's like They the belief comes before the building. Then that's why a lot of people

We're like a 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 were like uh forgiving of him

Well, 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 would tell these fifteen speakers.

individually, the other fourteen had already confirmed, which they hadn't, and luckily I got'em 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 gotta I hope I can deliver on these things. You know what I mean? That's that happens a lot. The the 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 or how how to take over the world. We gotta 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'cause like you have mist you have Stamp Par 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 d only listen to one podcast. So I hope that like lights up a fire under uh Ben as well. But like Just the ability like I would kill. I would have fucking killed for that's why I think podcasting a miracle. I don't want to do anything else.

Let's say I never launch any businesses to ensure tenure. Plan. Which I I I I don't see how that's even possible'cause there's a ton of entrepreneurs I know that like want to partner on these things. Um, but even if I just made podcasts and I just continue to grow the audience and I just made money on AdBrapp, like Whatever.

I fucking That's that's plenty fine for me. That's the the way I like to live my life. Do you ever read Uh, do you ever hear of Chuck Eager? Uh Chuck is that the guy who broke the uh sound bearers?

So the fucking crazy thing is the the miracle uh books is like you never know like when you're gonna read some random sentence that you never find. Everyone loves that guy's book. All business people love his book. So I didn't know who the fuck he was. I kept noticing this this old guy on Twitter in a in a pilot suit talking hella shit. Like unfiltered. I fucking love these people that like really talk who they are. They're authentic. And I s I read his book, and it turns out he fucking it sold like

five million copies the first year it came out in the eighties. Like it's one of the most successful autobiographies of all time. Well he was famous back then when he did that. He I think he broke the sound barrier, is that right? So he broke two or 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. uh in World War Two, he's like, I love killing Nazis. He says he's like one of my favorite things to do is kill Nazis. And so

Yeah, he w there's a great line in his book. Where um he's like from this like this is what I also love. It's like great can come from anywhere. He lived in like this rural, um What's that area in Vin West Virginia? It's like uh Appalachian where there's like a So he lived in like the Appalachians completely like isolated, right? And so he describes the way he describes in his book about killing all these Nazis, he k he shot down five to become an ace in a day, it's to shoot down five enemy planes.

And he goes. The Nazis came up. uh into the skies and they met a goddamn West Virginia buzzall. Just the way he described himself. But he gave me a another blueprint. Um let me see if I can get the quote exactly right.

This is the magic of having read wise too, because I can just Think of something and pull it up immediately. It's like a giant search engine for everything I've read. Um And he gave me this idea Where it's like

It's how you and I should avoid Well, you just describe. You 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. Um they

it seems to be surprising to them that they're not enjoying life'cause they don't actually like what they do day to day. But they make a ton of money, so why the fuck One third of your life is gonna be spent working. Right.

You you hate what you do. You think how is it possible that you think you're gonna get your end of your life and like You're late. 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. Business people say it, pilots say it, it don't matter. Like people a lot of people who I talk to they they they ask 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 success is and you've achieved it. I think that's I think that's dope.

It's all the same 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's Ernest Shackleton. I love reading about polar explorers. I like reading about athletes. I that's the best book I've read in in probably three years. Endurance.

Yeah. Yeah, it's excellent. I love I'm gonna make a shirt and I might sell it, but I 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. By endurance we conquer.

It's like we're just gonna win because we're never gonna 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 I think Chuck Ear is just smart where like So many people buy into this this I feel prestige is a myth.

Right. Where they're like, I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna do activity X 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 Ariel Hawani uh interview. You're about to page it. I love Arahney. You're you're a big fan of his. How much of your life is spent thinking about you're a huge fan. You buy all shit, you listen to stuff.

Lesson. Two tenths of one millionth percent of your life. Right. I wish people understood is how few people are thinking about that. And therefore you wouldn't chase prestige because prestige doesn't act all that matters is like The people around you do they D 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. The Ben text me the other day about an idea for his podcast. And I was like, dude. 'Cause he's like he added music. Ben, do you care if I say this?

Okay. So Ben added music and 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 the the reviews are mixed. So you go, I saw the I went to the tweets. It's like some people like this is great. Some people like this is bad. Exactly.

Fucking exactly. All that matters is what you like. If you like the music and they don't, then then go find another fucking podcast listen to. Did his music though on that first on his uh on how to take over the world That's the best intro song. Yeah. Guessing. Uh that that intro song has helped make uh make his podcast popular. The UFC Like that.

Going back to the UFC thing that that connected us too. Like Go wat like I know you have. But like everybody out there needs to go talk about Manifest Cowboy. Connor McGregor is it he is literally in the documentary, the fact that he was f had somebody film him when he was flat broke living in his mom's

He owed money to every single fucking agency in Ireland. And he's like, I'm gonna be the fucking world champion one day. He's like literally manifesting the shit. Remember when he got the double belts and he's like He Joe's 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'em. That documentary is fucking incredible. It's a because he called his shot. It's like this. 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 other behavior. You know what I mean? I think that's where your wisdom is. Like I'm rich as fuck.

Uh you're still like you have a massive advantage, like Uh you can launch businesses Do we w work on whatever you work on. But you're realizing this like, but I also like take care of my health. I wanna spend time with my wife. I wanna have a family. I wanna 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 successful per year. Five years. Ten years.

It's like I like the people that fucking never fucked it up. And Um, there's a great line of Charlie Mugger said he's like it's not getting rich that you have to worry about. It's staying sane. He's like, it's not part and 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. to draw he's he he says uh Through Ladies leverage and liquor is usually how rich men go broke.

That's a mic. Yeah. Well it's in it's in his book. He didn't say it in person, but um Well, point being is like I think there's a w sense of wisdom there where it's like, Okay I already have this. How do I

Keep building on it. People like Connor. And and Kanye West is in in this example too. It's like they're gifted at a young age. And then their their superstar success is so disorienting. They're like, again, it's not getting riches you have to worry about. It's staying sane. They weren't able to stay sane. I want to stay sane, dude.

I'm gonna get to the end of my life. When I'm I'm trying to make decisions like When I'm eighty years old, it might like I knew for a fact. Uh part of the reason I I I felt comfortable like jump all in on the podcast even though I didn't know if I was gonna make it a success or not.

Was that Jeff Azos is like well I was making a ton of money as this hedge fund. I was thirty years old. I had an apartment on the upper west side. Um 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 Forego my quarterly bonus. And move across the country to Seattle and try 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 thirty year olds off, you can confuse yourself and think, Oh, it's our she as prestigious as working at a hedge fund. It I'm gonna miss out on you know couple of million dollar bonus, whatever it is. He's like your eighty five year old self is gonna be like

You had a shot. to play a role on internet and you didn't do it. That's how I feel about podcasting is like I believe it's a miracle. I wanna play a role. And therefore, like I wanna get to that in my life. I know eighty year old is like

And David, I'm glad you fucking Risk it. I'm glad you did that. I'm happy you came on here. You're um

You're very fascinating to me. I've listened to Dozens. Of your episodes. Um 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 ten as well as like three hundred. 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 Um 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 um What do you what do you promote? Just founders. I call it founders pod. It's a founders podcast, founders. the Twitter, your founders, uh always tweeting good shit.

Um I wanna say thank you for having me on. Like Seriously, I'd love your fucking podcast. I would just say that um one thing that podcasters uh Like It's obvious who has the magic.

And I've been telling people way before I ever fucking message you, I 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 when you're like Oh, I'm only getting sixty thousand downloads an episode, which still super impressive, and now you guys are fucking blew right past that. Um 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're not might not be interested in this, but like There's a there's a massive hole in podcasting. for like the Pat Pat McAfee version of business podcasts. I agree. And I think you and Sha uh you and Sean

Like Dude. There is going to be a business podcast where you have Pat McAfee gets paid like thirty million a year by whatever his presenting sponsor is, whatever like I prep what is. Um Dan Levitar got the fifty million dollar contract from like DraftKings.

You see Spotify gave uh Alex Cooper, twenty million a year. the 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 uh 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. That's like what you guys are fucking doing. Hey, Spotify, if you're listening. I'm I'm I'm easy to contact. Thanks. So yeah, I appreciate I appreciate you inviting me on. That was fucking super cool of you. I appreciate you doing this and uh Yeah, it means a lot.

And uh Yeah, it was awesome. That's the part. That's the part. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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