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They're like, "Would you be interested in selling your company?"
Search this video
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Their response was, "Fuck you.
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This is a family heirloom."
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Okay, so what we're talking about today is basically I don't listen to any business podcasts other than Founders.
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It's the only business podcast I listen to.
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I listen to Founders and I listen to MMA and true crime. That's pretty much it.
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And so like I I I view you as my friend, but I also am a fan of yours.
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And you tweeted out this amazing thing.
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It was about the anti-business person, the anti-businessman billionaire.
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So the first tenant of these anti-business billionaires is they have high levels of disagreeableness.
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This is very important because everybody around you I just use reference of Michael Dell.
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Michael Dell could be on this list, too.
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I'm reading his autobiography like and I got to the point where they're like he's he's taking the company private.
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And they're just it's so difficult what he's trying to do and everybody's like, "Why don't you just give up, Michael? You're already rich.
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You could start another company."
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He's like, "I don't want to start another company.
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I want this this is my first and last company."
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In his case like that's very rare to have your first company be your last company. He's my last company.
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But then he has a line he goes, "I'm going to care about this company after I'm dead."
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And I was like, "Oh, that's a different level."
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So the disagreeableness like if we use the three people within the clip which is like Steve Jobs, James Dyson, and Yvon Chouinard.
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It's like they are hell-bent on making the world they don't bend to the world, right?
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They make the world bend to them.
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And they refuse to compromise on the product quality even when it seems absurd.
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And like James Dyson, I got to tell you a crazy story about James Dyson because you know everybody's like, "Oh yeah, Dyson the guy that like I wash my hands and like dries my it's a hand dryer in the bathroom everywhere."
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And it's that cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
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It's like no, the guy has built one of the most successful companies of all time.
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I think it's one of the largest privately owned companies in the world.
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You want to hear some crazy So there's always rumors, right?
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And again privately held so you don't have to tell.
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And everybody's like, "Oh yeah, you know, he's probably worth like 10 or 20 billion."
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And I was like, "You're off by like a lot."
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So a friend of mine happens to know somebody that works for it.
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And usually you can find you can find hints, you know, if you look at their family office, right?
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And a friend of mine knows somebody at the family office where they're just like, "Man, we have a big problem."
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Like they have to deploy like four to five billion dollars every year. All right, okay.
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And so they're like they you look and he's like, "James Dyson now is like the largest producer of green peas in Europe.
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He owns the most sheep in the entire world."
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Like you see all these crazy So like why where's the four or five billion dollars coming from?
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He's like the rumor is that he's been taking out, you know, four five six seven billion dollars a year in dividends.
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Retaining the enterprise value obviously cuz he never sold off the company. Still owns 100% of it.
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So I was just this like super fancy private investor only conference, right?
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There's only a handful of people there.
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One guy controls a [ __ ] ton of capital and he listens to the podcast.
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So we were talking and he has a problem where like the more assets under management you have, the bigger you have to probably talks about this over and over again.
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Like to move the needle they have to just be just so large.
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And so they were buying like smaller family companies maybe in like the billion to two billion range.
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And so now he's like, "I have too much too many assets under management.
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I have to like I have to swing bigger."
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So they go to approach Dyson.
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Okay, I'm going to paraphrase.
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The response back from Dyson is going to answer your question about high levels of disagreeableness, right?
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They're like, "Would you be interested in selling your company?"
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Their response was, "Fuck you.
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This is a family heirloom."
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So it's like again he's not doing it for money.
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He's run out of the money he will ever spend.
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He's doing it cuz he loves it.
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He wants to You just talked about maybe if your kids want to work in the business. You see that a lot.
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They they're doing it cuz they want to pass it on to the next generation.
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They want to die still owning this thing.
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There is not You can't go to him and be like, "I'll give you two trillion." It doesn't matter.
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It's just there's no amount of money that you could give James Dyson to stop working on Dyson.
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Just like there would have been no amount of money you could have gave Steve Jobs to stop.
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If you go up to Steve Jobs imagine going to Steve Jobs and be like, "Hey, this iPhone you created you created the the most successful consumer product of all time.
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How much could I would I have to pay you to not do this?"
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There's just no Could you There's no number that you could have spit out that you'd be like, "Okay, yeah, I'll retire."
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He's like, "I just this is what I like to do."
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Who's the most disagreeable person you've ever studied? Ooh. That's a good question.
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Um I mean James Dyson's got to be up there because uh if you see the bookshelves that's in back of me, it's in order by episode number uh starting in the upper left-hand corner.
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So it goes all the way down.
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And so I'm I'm going to hit like 400 uh biographies read uh this this year.
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This is going to be my first And my number one recommendation is still his first autobiography.
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He wrote a an autobiography when he was 45 and he wrote another autobiography when he was 75.
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They're both great, but the first one's really great.
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Be The reason I recommend that one is because it's all struggle.
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The 90% of the book is just him failing over and over and over again and him refusing to give up.
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And and and and what's he obsessed with?
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Like because obsessing over vacuums is strange.
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So he would describe himself as an inventor and an engineer.
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Definitely as an inventor.
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And so I think what I would say is what he's obsessed with is is making the world bend to what he wants to happen.
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And so in many cases if you look at the his early career, he was inventing a bunch of other successful inventions and they were like taken from him because he didn't uh keep control of the company.
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There's like all these little things that are happening to him that cause him a lot of emotional pain that before he had the idea is like he's kind of in similar to Steve Jobs and Yvon Chouinard.
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They're offended at the mediocrity of most of everything around us.
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They always talk about like, "Why is every product we use suck?"
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They talk about over and over and over again.
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And so his idea is like, "I bought a vacuum cleaner from Hoover.
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It it gets clogged after the first time I use it because it has a bag. This is stupid.
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Why do all vacuum cleaners have bags?"
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And then from that thought it's 14 years 5,127 prototypes till he has a the world's first cyclonic vacuum up to his incredibly difficult standards that he owns 100% of.
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When does having that trait of high disagreeableness go too far?
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Well, that's a good question. I don't know.
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Does his family love him?
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Like do they like do is does he have a good relationship with his children?
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Cuz like Steve Jobs did did not.
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Um and so can you be highly disagreeable and still loved by your children?
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Can you be highly disagreeable and still be proud of how you treat one another?
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So there there is a devastating line in Steve Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson cuz Walter was collaborating with him as he was dying.
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And he told Walter one of the reasons he wanted to do this biography is because he wanted his kid He sacrificed so much of his time at Apple that he wanted his kids to know the kind of person he was and what was important to him.
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That's a devastating line.
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Dyson from what I understand has great relationships with He's still married to the same wife.
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Has great relationships with his kids.
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Some of them work inside the company, some don't.
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Um but yeah, again I spend a lot of the as you know cuz you listen to the podcast I spend a lot of time talking about their childhood, their relationship with their father.
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Dyson's dad passed away when Dyson was like nine.
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And he said, you know, he's writing a biography when he's 75 and he still cries and gets sad that his dad he didn't get to know his dad as an adult.
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His dad didn't get to see him grow up, see his success, meet his grandchildren.
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And so I think having that experience was just like, "Man, I want to make sure my kids don't have that massive hole that I had in my life."
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Not at any fault of his own.
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His dad died of cancer from a at a young age.
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No, so I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but yeah, you you you definitely see a lot of these highly disagreeable people.
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Like James Cameron is probably the best podcast I've ever done in in terms of like what I like craft and I'm really proud of that episode I did like two or three years ago.
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And I start the episode kind of, you know, giving you a hint of the highly disagreeable personality where I'm like reading from this GQ article and it's like, "James Cameron has moved to New Zealand with his fifth wife."
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And it's just like nobody could have a fifth wife without That's that that should tell you if you're reading between the lines.
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That's a difficult person to deal with.
7:53
All right, a few episodes ago I talked about something and I got thousands of messages asking me to go deep or into explain.
8:00
And that's what I'm about to do.
8:01
So I told you guys how I use Chat GPT as a life coach or a thought partner.
8:06
And what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information.
8:09
So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, different books that I like, issues going on in my personal life and businesses.
8:18
I uploaded so much information.
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And so the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having issues with in my life.
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Like how should I respond to this email?
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What's the right decision knowing that you know my goals for the future? Things like that.
8:33
And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process showing the audience showing you the software that I use to make this, the information that I had Chat GPT ask me, all this stuff.
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So it's super easy for you to use.
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And like I said, I use this like 10 or 20 times a day.
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It's literally changed my life.
8:49
And so if you want that, it's free. There's a link below.
8:53
Just click it, enter your email, and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes.
8:58
And I'll show you how I use it again 10 or 20 times a day.
9:00
Um all right, so check it out.
9:02
The link is below in the description. Back to the episode.
9:08
All right, number uh two.
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They have extreme self-confidence and they do what works for them.
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So what's an example of that?
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So that line that they do what works for them, there's this guy named Tim Grover who was the trainer of both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
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And he wrote a book all about comparing and contrasting them.
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It was really fascinating.
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And he says what they had in common was that they do what works for them regardless of what other people do.
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Like they were indifferent.
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There's another great line in that book that I think is a lot of people that you and I are going to talk about have in common where it's like everyone wanted to be like Mike.
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Mike didn't want to be like anybody else.
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And so in in situations like that where it's like they are I would say there's this line in in Dyson's book where he calls his method of invention, his method of company building, he calls it the Edison principle of design.
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He is not a big, "Hey, I have a master plan."
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He's like, I'm going to just do an experiment, get immediate feedback, and do a constant set of iterations.
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There's this great book that I I'd I've read three times.
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I think every single entrepreneur on the planet should read it.
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It's called Creative Selection.
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It is written by Ken Kocienda.
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He was a programmer who demoed Jobs.
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And in that book is the most detail.
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He helped He was the one that that programmed the initial Safari browser and then he created Safari browser and then the keyboard for the first iPhone.
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What he shows in there is like it was just all the great products that came out of Apple were just a series of iterative demos to Steve and Steve applying his personal taste.
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This is why I think when I you talk to a lot of investors and to me when I talked to them I'm like, man, you you think about business way too academically.
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You know, like if as if you could sit at a whiteboard and like plan and master plan everything.
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I don't know it's like I don't see that in the books I read.
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It's like these little a series of just small decisions every day, getting a bunch of feedback, and then essentially just changing course slightly every single day.
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And then doing that over a long period of time and constantly improving, you get to amazing products and amazing businesses.
10:57
Are the people who have extreme self-confidence, were they self-confident at a young age or did something happen like I guess born versus becoming that? All three of those.
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So if we're if if Yvon Chouinard, Steve Jobs, and James Dyson excessively self-confident at a young age.
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And I think part of this has to do and I'm speaking for my own personal experience is like you grow up with almost like you were seeking revenge for the circumstances in which you've been born in.
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You know, Steve Jobs was adopted, Yvon Chouinard had no his family didn't have any money, James Dyson doesn't have a dad, and you just like everybody's around you is like, oh, you're not good enough.
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You're like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm better than you are and I will show you and I'm willing to work and make sure to prove what I believe.
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I always say belief comes before ability.
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And you know, I I see this over and over again.
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People are like, you shouldn't be confident, you should generate evidence first.
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I'm like, no, you have that completely backwards.
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They believe that they can do great things way before the like there's any proof in the physical world.
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Let me give you an example.
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In the Michael Dell book, he hits the Fortune 500 when he's like 26 years old.
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And basically for the listener, Michael Dell, I believe at the age of 16, 17, 18 in college in a college dorm, he was selling computer parts to help people assemble computers, right?
12:12
He was He started Dell in as a really the prehistory of Dell really happened when he's like 16, 17.
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He officially started as a freshman in his freshman dorm at University of Texas.
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But the the Fortune 500 thing is important because it's like, yeah, he goes, could the kid that grew up reading Fortune magazine possibly predict that I'd start a company that broke into the Fortune 500? He goes, yeah. I always thought big. He doesn't try to hide.
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He's like, yeah, I had a lot of confidence.
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Like I knew I could do this.
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I believed I could do this.
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Now he did he think he'd hit it at 26?
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Probably not, but he he got there even faster. That's the point.
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He had the belief first and then he demonstrated the ability.
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You also say that the So the third principle is they're obsessed with product quality.
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And I hear people say this a lot, but I've because I've never had a job, I've never been able to like intern or apprentice at one of these folks who are obsessed with product.
13:04
I've never been able to see firsthand what they're like on a day-to-day basis.
13:08
Can you give me an example of what they do each day in order to actually be product obsessed?
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You know, I I love that you framed that question like that.
13:20
What do they do each day?
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I was thinking about this this morning.
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I was thinking about the conversation we're going to have today.
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And I think what all the the the entrepreneurs I admire have in common is how they want to spend their time is working on their company.
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So like I get invited to a lot of things.
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I say no to most of them because like everything that's not working on the podcast is a giant distraction.
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And so if you go and actually look, Tim Cook said this after Steve Jobs died.
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He's like, if you took an inventory of how Steve spent his time, he was at Apple and then when he was at Apple, he was at home with his family.
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He wasn't going to conferences, he wasn't trying to be on the scene.
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Yvon Chouinard, what is he doing?
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He's working on product and he's testing the product.
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James Dyson, 75, the guy's probably worth a hundred billion dollars if we're being honest. And where is he at?
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He's on the front he he's on literally the factory floor and then he's with the design team.
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The important thing and you see this this is the problem with modern-day entrepreneurship industry is they like like everything except actual what their company actually does.
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So if you can find love, right, in the activity itself, you're able to do it for a long time.
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I got to have this is the main thing.
14:21
I had lunch with Sam Zell, who we could talk about, too.
14:24
That 2-hour lunch changed my life, right?
14:27
And his main advice to me was never relinquish the freedom on what you work on.
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He goes, the the the more successful you you become, people are going to try to constantly dangle opportunities that are distractions in front of you and they're going to do that for two reasons.
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They're going to try to offer you more money and more status.
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He's like, retain your freedom.
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And he said something that was [ __ ] brilliant. He goes, go for freedom.
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If you have freedom, you can control with what what you work on.
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If you control what you work on, you can choose to work on what you love.
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If you love it, you'll do it all the time.
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If you do it all the time, you'll get good at it and money will come as a result of that.
15:00
And so all of the people that I admire, it's like they don't want to go, you know, they're not trying to go out fundraising, they're not trying to like go party all the time.
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They're literally like just obsessed with what they're doing.
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And so everything that like the if you take the inventory of their time, it's like the time is just spent on the company cuz I like that.
15:17
Let me give you my example for me, right?
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You know this because you have a podcast.
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You can log into our podcast host right now and change you can charge charge.
15:24
You could change the name of My First Million, right, to to Sam's Club, right?
15:27
You change it whatever you want.
15:29
I can change Founders whatever I want.
15:30
The thing you cannot change is the RSS, the URL slug that for the for you the first time you set up your RSS feed, right?
15:39
And that URL slug will have the first name of your podcast.
15:41
My podcast went through multiple names.
15:42
The first one was Autotelic.
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The definition of Autotelic is an activity done for the sake of itself.
15:48
I was telling you right from the rip, I don't care if no one listens. I'm going to do this.
15:52
I It is in inside of me and I have to get it out. I'm going to do this.
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I would be reading these books and talking about history and entrepreneurship and founders and crazy psychotic people cuz that's what I love to do.
16:04
I'd be doing it if no one listened.
16:07
I love hearing you talk about this.
16:07
Do you think that you've gotten more crazy and more obsessed reading about these people? For sure. For sure.
16:13
So first of all, you know this cuz we've talked about podcasting a bunch and and a lot of people like try to like part-time it.
16:19
I think literally like podcasting is a miracle.
16:22
The idea that anything you want to learn, right?
16:24
Me and you grew up similarly.
16:26
We didn't have a lot access to a lot of money.
16:27
We didn't I don't think you went to an Ivy League school.
16:29
Like I couldn't go to an Ivy League school at all, right?
16:31
My wife went to an Ivy League school and when I met her and she told me first I she said she went to Penn and I was like, is that where that football rapist coach guy goes?
16:41
And she's like, no, it's like a she's like it's like it's like a it's like a big school. It's like a big shot.
16:44
Like we're like we're part of the Ivy League.
16:46
I was like, what the [ __ ] is Ivy League? Is that Hogwarts?
16:49
I don't know what that means.
16:51
Dude, I I I I have a rather embarrassing story.
16:54
Like first of all, not only did my parents never graduate college, they never graduated high school.
16:57
So the entire time I was growing up, they never mentioned the word college to me one time.
17:01
And so I remember being in high school and they're like, what colleges are you applying to?
17:04
I'm like, what the one I can drive to cuz I got to go to school night cuz I got to work full-time during the day.
17:09
Like what are you talking about?
17:10
I I moved in I went to student housing and I my roommate was from like Colorado or somewhere.
17:14
That was the first time I ever knew and this is really embarrassing that people didn't work and go to school.
17:20
Like he just went to classes. That's all he did.
17:22
Like he had nothing else.
17:24
I I couldn't even fathom that.
17:26
So the reason I'm so obsessed with podcasting and everything else is like you have all any subject you want to learn about, you have somebody that is usually to spend 5, 10, you know, 10 plus years studying that and you can learn from them for free on demand anytime you want to.
17:39
How could you not be absolutely obsessed with that? So here's your question.
17:45
The reason I started reading this and I didn't even understand this.
17:46
A friend of mine is the one that told me this.
17:47
He he visited me in Miami and he's like, it's pretty this is like 2 years ago.
17:50
And he's like, it's pretty obvious what you're doing. I go, what?
17:53
He goes, you didn't have any mentors or any good good examples.
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So if you're like how you are, which is kind of like psychopathically obsessed.
18:00
He's like, so you just started reading and trying to find like good examples for yourself.
18:04
And so there's a line there's this guy named Larry Gagosian who built this like multi-billion dollar art business that he controls 100% of.
18:11
And on the the profile that I read to make the episode, there's a line about him.
18:19
It says he got so good at selling art to the masters of the universe that he became one.
18:26
He starts out literally selling art in a parking lot.
18:27
And he got so successful, he's now a peer.
18:29
So the reason I'm doing this is like I'm trying to build the best product for the best people in the world.
18:34
And so yeah, I like it is, you know, I I take a lot of the ideas from the podcast and just apply it to my own business, which just happens to be the podcast where I derive the the insights from to begin with.
18:44
The next one is retention of total control.
18:48
What are the tradeoffs of owning everything and being maniacal about the details versus delegation?
18:53
Because often times, for example, my favorite author business author is Felix Dennis.
19:00
He wrote the book how how to get rich.
19:02
He's not nearly as serious as these other guys.
19:06
He's like kind of like a Mick Jagger and Richard Branson combined.
19:11
He's like a rock and roll partier, but he became a billionaire.
19:16
He says that delegation is the reason why he's anything.
19:18
He's like, I'm a master delegator, which I imagine a Richard Branson type of person would say a similar type of thing, whereas you have Elon Musk or maybe Coco Chanel or a couple other folks where they are good examples of being in total control and maniacal about the details.
19:37
I think Estee Lauder, I believe she was a pretty nutty.
19:43
What are the pros and cons and tradeoffs and which do you prefer?
19:45
I love that you you asked this question because this is the the great thing about entrepreneurship is like you get to decide what's best for you.
19:54
Like there is not one way.
19:57
There's not one right way.
19:59
I could give you examples of people I covered that delegated everything and people that delegated nothing. I just did Todd Graves.
20:03
Have you ever ate at Raising Cane's?
20:04
He used to used to live in Austin.
20:05
You're you're a fellow fat boy.
20:09
Well, I was former fellow fat boy.
20:13
But I saw him talk I think I'm Theo Von or something like that and I was like, "Wow, you're amazing."
20:18
And so I went to Raising Cane's and started eating it just because he was maniacal.
20:21
Like you don't think of a fast food restaurant as being focused on the product, but there is a a need for it for sure.
20:29
But he was like, "We only do these types of fries. We only do chicken.
20:33
We only And like it's the simplest thing where I'm like, "How hard could this possibly be that you need 30 years to master this? Let's go figure it out."
20:40
I so I just did an episode on him which I think is going to be one of the most popular episodes ever just because I when people would ask me like who's I you study dead entrepreneurs like what about the living ones that you like and I bring up Todd Graves and like, "The chicken finger guy?"
20:51
I'm like, "No, no, he's got a he's got a he's got a he's got a really relatable demeanor.
20:57
Yeah, you want to hang out with him, but also I'm even if I was even if he was a jerk, the way he built his business, you know, he owns over 90% of a business that's worth at least $10 million that's growing 30% year over year and he's been doing the same thing, you know, for 30 years.
21:09
And I just love everything I'm obsessed with simplicity.
21:11
I just love everything about him.
21:12
But the funny thing is in one of the interviews I found with him, he literally says, "You know, people told him when he was younger, you're you're you're a micro-manager. You have to delegate.
21:19
You can't possibly do the stuff you're doing now." And he has a great line. He goes, "Delegate?
21:25
What kind of word is that?"
21:27
Like he just like that that doesn't even make sense to me.
21:28
And he goes, "And all the people the experts that gave me that advice, I'm bigger than they are now."
21:33
And so he's literally giving this interview and they interrupt the interview because they had some event and his social media team was showing them the reel of the video reel that was about to come out.
21:42
This guy's, you know, running a business he has 50,000 employees, 800 stores, you know, unbelievable amount of responsibility and he's like it doesn't go out until I approve it.
21:53
He's approving every single Steve Jobs did the exact same thing.
21:55
He wouldn't let Apple go out without approving it.
21:58
He there's a there's another thing every single location I approve every single new location.
22:05
You mentioned Elon Musk or leading SpaceX.
22:09
He personally Elon personally interviewed the first 3,000 employees of SpaceX.
22:12
Sam Walton go back even further.
22:14
He approved he picked out I think the first few thousand Walmarts.
22:16
So a lot of them are I would consider micro-managers.
22:21
There are some that, you know, delegate widely.
22:24
What's more important than that though is like it depends on your personality type.
22:27
Like for me, I am a complete micro-manager.
22:29
I'm one of the only podcasters still like still making podcast that actually edits his own podcast.
22:35
Everybody every other every other podcaster tells you you're [ __ ] idiot. Why are you doing that?
22:38
And it's just like I'm completely obsessed with it and I hate it, but I love it at the same time.
22:44
I it's the part about podcasting I like the least, but it's so important for me to completely control the final product.
22:50
So again, I don't think there's one right way here.
22:54
It's just like really you have to think about like how do you want to run your business?
22:58
Another thing that you said was that they refused to make me two products.
23:00
Is there a story that you have where standing out by having a different product was key to them winning or also nearly ruined them?
23:15
Let's I don't know about anyway ruined them.
23:17
Let's use the the the prehistory of Patagonia, right?
23:21
Which is worth a couple million dollars, privately held company, you know, and as you know because it's in the book in the episode, it's like he didn't he was kind of like a communist.
23:28
He didn't even want to start a business.
23:30
He was a he calls himself a dirtbag.
23:32
He was like I was a dirtbag climber. I lived in a van.
23:33
I traveled around just trying to climb mountains and, you know, Which by the way, that it there's a dichotomy there.
23:42
If you want if you're a communist, why do you fully own your company versus giving out equity?
23:45
Cuz he's obsessed with exactly.
23:48
There's a it's almost like a paradox, right?
23:52
The yeah, cuz he's obsessed with control.
23:53
So that that go all ties back to control.
23:55
Now sometimes you can maintain control public company.
23:57
Zuck Mark Zuckerberg has complete control of Facebook public company.
24:00
Steve Jobs had complete control of Apple public company.
24:03
Dyson obviously private, Bloomberg private, you know, Patagonia private.
24:07
But if you start there it's like his his whole thing was just like, "Hey, I'm my life is literally hangs in the balance of these clips that people use for mountain climbing."
24:17
He's like, "These clips are plastic. They suck. They break. This is not good."
24:20
And they they they would optimize for for cost cuz most dirtbag climbers had no money.
24:24
And so they would be like 75 cents each. And what did he do?
24:27
You ask him what his profession is.
24:29
He's like, "I'm a blacksmith."
24:29
Cuz that was his his trade his craft.
24:31
He's like, "Hey, I could do a better job than this."
24:34
He starts using higher end steel and now he sells what it used to cost 75 cents cuz it's differentiated for $4.
24:42
More than 4x what what the market is used to paying.
24:44
And he wound up sealing up like 80 to 90% market share because his was so much better.
24:48
So they if they feel that the they're not starting companies just to start companies, they're starting companies to make products and so therefore they're not going to make a product if somebody else is already doing that.
24:58
No one made the products that Steve Jobs made.
25:00
No one made the products that James Dyson made.
25:02
No one made the products that Yvon Chouinard made.
25:04
And I talk to founders all the time and even podcasters and I'm like, "Man, why are especially in in in our trade, it's like why aren't podcasters thinking more about differentiation?
25:12
When I started my podcast in 2016, one I thought it was too late, right?
25:17
It was like, "Oh my god, I missed the boat."
25:20
But then I looked around and was like, "What is everybody doing?"
25:21
Everybody's doing the same thing.
25:22
It's like two people one person interviewing another.
25:25
This is why my first million first came on my radar when I came on your podcast two years ago.
25:29
I mentioned that I listened over 100 hours of it cuz it was truly differentiated.
25:32
It's like two guys have great chemistry. They're funny.
25:36
They're both entrepreneurs and sometimes they're going to just shoot the [ __ ] and talk about ideas and brainstorm.
25:40
Sometimes they'll bring people in.
25:40
Like it was a very unique format.
25:41
You've seen since then obviously cuz the success of the show. Like what happens?
25:44
Like you have a bunch of people trying to do it and then none of them achieve the same success because they're not First of all, they're they're not they're the copiers.
25:51
They're not the ones that actually came up with the format and came up with the idea.
25:54
So one thing I would just say is it's like it if the product already exists, a giant hole and a way to like make it better.
26:01
In the case of James Dyson, there's everybody had a vacuum cleaner.
26:04
They were all crappy compared to his.
26:04
I paid Listen, I you can go on Amazon right now and buy a vacuum cleaner for for 40 bucks. I have a Dyson. It was $600.
26:11
It's literally the best it's the best.
26:14
Do you think that there's a common theme amongst so everyone most most of the people who you've named and of maybe most of the people you cover on Founders, they're creating higher end products where the margins are probably a bit higher. So I have a $600 Dyson.
26:28
I have you know, Patagonia now is more mid-tier maybe.
26:36
But you've covered a lot of, you know, luxury brands and I think that a lot of like LVMH like luxury brands tend to be the biggest and best businesses that appears. Yeah.
26:46
Is there a commonality of you being different and thus being able to charge more and profit more?
26:54
I don't like the one person if if you ask like my own personal Mount Rushmore of like history's greatest entrepreneurs, it's they actually had like some of them obviously have big margins like Apple, right?
27:02
But then like think of Sam Walton.
27:04
Like Sam Walton had the tiniest margins. Why?
27:06
Because like his idea was like, "Hey, I'm going to be totally committed to this one simple idea which is like everyday low price."
27:13
And so the margins are small.
27:13
Raising Cane's one of my favorite entrepreneurs.
27:17
His margin's like less than 10%.
27:17
So yeah, I don't I I think these ideas can work for really just depends on the industry and the business, but like you see them appear over and over again whether it's a high margin business, a low margin business, if it's physical goods, if it's luxury goods, if it's software, it's just like the kind of the same personality type over and over again.
27:35
I'm going to combine the last two which is the the first of the two was they wouldn't sell at any price and this is the second one their exit strategy is death. Which I love. I absolutely love.
27:47
Is this particularly with AI?
27:52
I don't know if you've seen.
27:53
I know you're not like with it when it because you're so focused.
27:57
Like you I think you've said you don't pay attention to the news.
27:58
You don't pay attention to social media too much.
28:01
There's this thing called vibe coding.
28:03
Have you seen vibe coding? It's basically Yeah.
28:06
So it's like young kids of which we've had a few of them on who in a matter of 6 months can go from zero to a million a month in revenue because it's so fast and easy to make apps. Yeah.
28:19
Do you think that people today are thinking shorter term than before or has there always been a gap of a very few amount of people are willing to think long term versus short term? I think both.
28:30
I think yeah, undoubtedly more larger percentage of humanity is thinking short term and then we've always as a species been wired to be short term.
28:36
Jeff Bezos has a great idea of this is why why he would be constantly willing to have a longer term view.
28:41
His point was that like if you're planning on a year if you're investing in a product that may not, you know, reap any benefits over a year, you have a lot of competition.
28:48
5 years, less competition.
28:50
10 years, no competition.
28:53
Like just nobody is thinking that long term.
28:55
So if we have a long I think he calls it long term orientation.
28:56
If we have a long term orientation, then I want to do that because we just have by default by sheer numbers I have less amount of competitors. Now I need to back up.
29:05
I am only interested in people that do things for a long term and I'm interested in your last business.
29:08
I am not interested in your, you know, your startup, your first business.
29:12
In many cases what I'm interested is like what is the thing that is going to like the reason I become so close with the founders of Ramp is because and we have this deep partnership.
29:20
It's like one of the things I love is I talk to Karim.
29:24
I'm actually seeing him tonight who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp one of the most brilliant technical minds that I know.
29:29
And one of the things way before we became friends way before we became partners, he's just like, "Ramp's the last my last business.
29:37
Like like this is I have all, you know, 98 99% of my net worth into it. I spend all my days.
29:42
I'm not thinking about anything else."
29:43
It's like that's what I'm very interested in.
29:45
And many cases to get to that last business, you usually have to serve.
29:48
Cream had already started starting sold a company.
29:50
Like usually have to go through a ton.
29:52
It's very rare for like the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Michael Dells, you know, even Steve Jobs, like to to be your for your first company to be your last company.
29:59
Which is what I had, I think.
30:01
And I did it because I saw a theme that a lot of the people who had who I had admired had a hit in their 20s or 30s that allowed them to think longer term. That that is key, right?
30:14
One, I think it's a mistake if you ever sell your best idea, whether you have money or not.
30:17
So never sell your best idea.
30:19
But in in the case you're describing, it's like if you can relieve, you know, financial pressure mean you grew up with financial pressure. It feels it's real.
30:28
Like It it's it it destroys you. You can't sleep.
30:32
people who can overcome and just go all in at a young age.
30:34
In general, it seems it's easier when you have a wealthy parent or when you have some type of you don't need to worry about rent for three or four years.
30:44
That that is it is easier that way.
30:47
So so to get that like hey, I'm not going to have to worry about feeding, taking care of my wife, my kids, feeding myself, and give yourself the room to breathe, and then you're able to step back and be like here's the thing, a lot of this is just self-exploration.
30:59
Like dude, I know myself so much better now than I did.
31:04
Think about when you're like you're supposed to be picking your career when you're in high school cuz then you got to figure out what you're going to major in.
31:08
It's like the stupidest thing ever.
31:09
Like nobody if you're the same person you were at 18, it's very bizarre.
31:13
And so like I I just think part of picking a successful company and a successful career you can do for a long period of time is like you have to go through this exploration of who you are as a person and what your true interests are.
31:22
The problem is with humans like we think oh like vibe coding's really cool.
31:26
I like these kids are making money.
31:29
But eventually through all these experiments, they might discover what they actually, you know, truly want to dedicate their lives to.
31:34
Um so I think it's like a an overall good thing.
31:36
Um but yeah, I I think the advantage that if you as an entrepreneur, as a podcaster, as a writer, as an athlete, whatever the case is, like if you can think long you just have a massive advantage if you could just have a longer term perspective than other people.
31:48
And this is the important thing is like when I'm able to choose what I work on, I'm not worried about what like my downloads today or like my audience size today.
31:56
It's just like as long as I do this forever, right?
31:58
And I keep focusing on adding value to other people's lives cuz money comes naturally as a result of service, then I'll get as long as I wake up every day, read a biography of history's greatest entrepreneurs, and sit down once a week and talk about what I learned, and do that forever, I'll let the the score take care of itself.
32:11
The chips will fall where it is.
32:12
Like I will get everything I actually deserve.
32:13
I don't want the listener to think long-term means it's it's okay if I don't kick ass today.
32:21
And a lot of people will justify this and say, well, it's a marathon, not a sprint.
32:26
And to them I say, yeah, but have you ever ran a like a 100 m at the world record marathon pace?
32:34
It's going to feel like a sprint to you.
32:36
Like you have to be able to run fast for a long period of time.
32:42
And what I and what I and what I mean by that is that doesn't excuse day-to-day lack of urgency.
32:48
You still need to be impatient on a daily level, but patient on an annual level.
32:53
Additionally, can you tell me the people who thought long-term, they were still maybe you can give me examples, but that doesn't mean that they were broke five or 10 years into starting their company, or that they didn't have traction. Or did they? Am I wrong?
33:11
So the the to like close the loop on what you just said, I agree completely.
33:15
If you think of like there's not any entrepreneurs that had a longer term perspective than Jeff Bezos, and his line about this was like yeah, we have long term, but like we're going to take step by step ferociously was his motto.
33:23
Step by step ferociously.
33:26
Not like oh, we're going to lollygag. It's like no, no, no.
33:27
I'm fine being, you know, you know, we're going to be the company we want 10, 15 years from now.
33:33
But every day for the next 10 to 15 years, like we're pushing the pace and we're doing as much as we can.
33:38
People that were broke five or 10 years in, Jet James Dyson for sure.
33:40
He was literally going to sleep covered in dirt because he's trying to build a vacuum cleaner for the entire time going going going inside crying himself to sleep as his kids are small and then his kids are completely grown up.
33:54
He was in massive amounts of debt.
33:56
He couldn't find no one The reason he owns 100% of his company is cuz no one would would would actually want the equity, which is hilarious considering how valuable it is now.
34:04
But also he was like he had second loans out of on his his second mortgage on his home.
34:07
He was crying himself to sleep.
34:09
So he was he was nearly bankrupt at some point. He was Oh, yeah, yeah.
34:12
For for And if it's not the full 14 years, it was a good chunk because then he started licensing it.
34:16
He had he had some small wins where he could actually pay his bills, but he was not like a a wealthy man.
34:22
Steve Jobs, rich from the get-go, you know, App He builds the first Apple in his garage.
34:26
Four years later, he's worth 100 million dollars and the company's public.
34:30
Like it was pretty crazy.
34:30
Yvon Chouinard, broke for an excessively long period of time.
34:33
Like there isn't like a you know, it just it's a case-by-case basis.
34:37
Jeff Bezos, already wealthy.
34:37
He worked for this hedge fund in New York called D. E.
34:41
Shaw, and he quit that and gave up a huge bonus to move to Seattle.
34:48
But he was already, you know, able to live in Manhattan.
34:49
He was working for a billionaire. Sam Walton.
34:52
Now here's an another idea.
34:54
I think Amazon had like 100 million in sales like four years in or something. Super fast. Super fast.
34:58
He was like by the time he was 30, so he starts the company at 30, I think by 35 he's a billionaire.
35:03
I tracked him on this when I like had my I had this sheet where I tracked probably 300 people, and I had timelines for each of them of when they were born, when they started the thing that allowed them to be a little bit financially free, when that period ended, and then when they started the thing that made them huge.
35:19
And he started Amazon at 32, and between the ages of like 24 or whenever you graduate college to 32, presumably he was making some amount of money like the equivalent of 250 to 500,000 dollars a year today. Yes. For sure, for sure.
35:34
Sam Walton, his first this is an interesting thing.
35:37
Cuz there is an idea a principle I've noticed is like go slow now so you can go faster later.
35:43
And what I mean by that is like Sam Walton, greatest retailer of all time, undoubtedly.
35:50
He had one store for five years.
35:50
And so he was obsessively learning everything he possibly could about retail, doing all these experiments.
35:57
And so then you fast forward, you know, one store for five years, then you fast forward, let's say 25 years into his career.
36:02
He has the idea, he's already has Walmart, but he's like hey, he meets this guy named Sol Price, who I've done episodes on before. years do you say? 25?
36:09
Well, let's say 25 years into his career, right?
36:11
So so the first five years of his career, it's one store.
36:15
25 years in, let's say around there, he he's got Walmart.
36:17
But then he he has this idea for Sam's Club, which he got he's took from other people.
36:20
He took from this guy named Sol Price, who's he came up with the warehouse club idea.
36:27
The founder of Costco was Sol Price's mentee.
36:28
When he was like Jim Sinegal was like 18 working for Sol Price.
36:31
That's where he got the idea for Costco.
36:32
Sam Walton sees that he's like oh, this is a great idea.
36:35
I'm going to do it immediately.
36:35
So 25 years into his career, he didn't have to stick with one store for five years.
36:39
Cuz when he launched Sam's Club, within the first five years he gets to like 105 stores and like 7 billion dollars in revenue.
36:47
Same period, when he started out, he could only master one tiny little store in Arkansas.
36:51
But the your skill set and your resources and everything compounds. That's the point.
36:55
Todd Graves talks about, you know, I think he by the time he gets to like he's 10 the the Raising Cane's guy.
37:00
He I think he's 10 to 12 years into his career, he's got 28 stores.
37:04
Sounds like a lot, right?
37:07
He opens like 150 stores a year right now, or 100 between 100 and 150 stores a year.
37:12
Go slow at the beginning to go faster later.
37:14
He's learning, and he's going to apply that is this is the important thing about not jumping from business to business to business because if you jump from business to business to business, all you're doing is interrupting compounding.
37:25
Was it clear a lot of these, you know, the world's greatest entrepreneurs, was it clear that their TAM was big enough to achieve their ambitions? No, absolutely not. No.
37:35
Like for example, you'd be like look, this chicken finger thing, that's maybe silly, but I guess McDonald's is huge.
37:40
I guess you could be kind of like McDonald's.
37:45
I think he's a if he did think of anything, he thought of In-N-Out.
37:49
In-N-Out was founded in 1948.
37:49
If you look at In-N-Out's menu, looks looks like Todd Graves.
37:53
I mean there's other people before him, but it's like to me, Todd Graves is just Harry Snyder reincarnated, who was the founder of In-N-Out, but instead of doing burgers, he does he does chicken fingers.
38:01
But no, like I I just went over this because I'm going through the Michael Dell episode right now.
38:06
Like there's just like no way.
38:08
Like you knew computers were like Most people didn't even see a computer.
38:12
And like he was just completely obsessed with it.
38:13
So there's no way he could predict the financial success he was going to have and the the how big the market could actually get.
38:17
You know he started with Dell with $1,000. No venture capital. $1,000.
38:21
And his main competitor was Compaq, who started with like 25 million in venture capital.
38:25
And Michael Dell's super competitive, but nice.
38:29
The The book's called Play Nice and Win.
38:31
Play Play Play Nice, But Win.
38:33
But he's like he's constantly contrasting.
38:34
He's like I started with a thousand.
38:35
They started with 25 million. I'm kicking their ass. It's really funny.
38:39
And Dell would tell you that having the constraints of limited capital was really good at the beginning because it it forced him to innovate into in a way that you wouldn't if you had money.
38:48
And I was like oh, wow, that's interesting.
38:49
So I go and pull my highlights from Sam Walton.
38:51
Sam Walton says the same thing.
38:52
Kmart existed before Walmart.
38:54
Kmart was dominating the big cities.
38:56
Cuz if you're going to start retail, where are you going to go?
38:57
You're going to go Chicago, you're going to New York, you're going to all these other places.
38:59
So he's like well, I can't go there. I don't have any money.
39:00
So he starts going in these little towns in rural Arkansas.
39:03
And what he learned, he goes oh, constraints are your friend because if we were if we were better capitalized, I would have never went out into these tiny little communities.
39:11
And what I discovered is in these tiny little communities, there's far far more business than could we could have ever predicted.
39:20
Perfect example to your to your question. You're the man, David.
39:23
I appreciate you doing this.
39:24
I could just like I think the listener will notice this is probably the podcast that I've spoken the least amount of of all 700.
39:30
I I've I've listened to uh hundreds of your episodes.
39:38
I think you're at like what, 400?
39:40
I think I've listened to half of them now. I appreciate that. I appreciate you. That's it. That's the pod.