it surprised none who knew him well that in old age Rockefeller compared himself to Napoleon the Revelation came while vacationing in France not far from a spot where the general had won a great Victory a casual remark from a companion led to an extraordinary Soliloquy rockefeller's longest on record this is what he said it is hard to imagine Napoleon as a businessman but I have thought that if he had applied himself
to Commerce he would have been the greatest businessman the world has ever known my what a genius for organization he also had what I've always regarded as the prime necessity for large success in any Enterprise that is a thorough understanding of men and ability to inspire in them confidence in him and confidence in themselves see the men he picked as Marshals and the heights to which they Rose under his inspiration
and Leadership It Is by such traits as these that men get the work of the world done it is all a battlefield Napoleon without the able Marshall he had about him would not have been the master of his age he went into a battle with the
knowledge that his Marshals could be dependent on that in a given situation they could be relied upon to do the Necessary Things their Devotion to him coupled with their enthusiasm that's another great attribute and the
qualities with which his influence upon them brought out won the fight another thing about Napoleon was his Humanity I mean Humanity in the broad sense of course he came Direct from the ranks of the people there was none of that stagnant blood of nobility or royalty in his veins that's where he had the advantage over the monarchs of Europe to begin with he could think quicker and along more individual and original lines
than any of them the men whom he had to combat didn't understand either him or the people and it is always hard to successfully control what you don't understand Napoleon didn't play the game as they understood it and then coming to
direct from the people he had their sympathy he appealed to their imaginations Europe had not yet been educated to the fact that it could get along without any Kings at all leaders of Their Own Kind were few and that made
it easier for Napoleon to rise to the heights with which he attained a Napoleon would be impossible in our day there are too many able and ambitious Rivals to hold in check one who aimed too high that is not an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today that is actually an from a book that I read a few months ago it's all the way back on episode 254 it is called John D the founding fathers of the
Rockefellers and it was written by David Freeman Hawk the book that I'm going to talk to you about today is Napoleon a concise biography and it was written by David a bell and real quick before I jump into the book I'm doing an in-person Meetup in Miami with Shane Parish from the farum street blog and the knowledge project podcast it is going to be on the night of April 18th Shane set up a landing page where you
can enter email if you are interested in attending and I will leave that link Down Below in case you want to come okay so I want to start with the inside cover of the book because I think it gives a fantastic overview of Napoleon and the
author's perspective of Napoleon and he writes Napoleon's astounding life and Military genius have captured imaginations for two centuries that ex I just read to you where Rockefeller is commenting on his admiration for
Napoleon he said that over 100 years ago and among History's Greatest entrepreneurs Rockefeller is not alone in his admiration for Napoleon the reason I'm reading this biography and this is probably going to be the first of many biographies of Napoleon and Reed is because Napoleon's mentioned so many times in a bunch of other biographies that I've read for the podcast anywhere from Henry Kay Frick to Edison to Larry
Ellison to Julio Lobo which is the last billionaire uh in Cuba before Castro took over to aristot anasis to Bill Gates to Andrew Carnegie the list of Founders and entrepreneurs from history that study Napoleon is very very long so
back to this Napoleon's a sounding life and Military genius have captured imaginations for two centuries now award-winning historian David Bell provides this ascct An Elegant portrait offering an original and Lively account
of Napoleon's dazzling career and firmly situating him in the historical context of the Revolutionary of revolutionary France this book is 113 pages long and the author tells us later why he chose to do such a concise biography of Napoleon Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility for both good and Ill that Napoleon represented by his late 20s he was already one of the greatest Generals in European history at
30 he had become absolute master of Europe's most powerful country in his early 40s he ruled a European Empire mightier than any since Rome fighting Wars that changed the shape of the continent but his fall was epic as well leading him to spend his last years in miserable Exile out of Bell's engaging analysis emerges the image of an ambitious and charismatic man one who affirmed his right to rule in the name
of of the Revolutionary principles of popular sovereignty and Civic equality but also as a Conquering Hero highlighting the importance of the 1789 French Revolution ution in Napoleon's political formation this concise biography offers a new interpretation of his life and rule the revolution made possible Napoleon's unprecedented concentration of political Authority and his success in mobilizing human and
material resources that's actually an important part uh that that we'll talk about in a little bit you can actually think about that in the context of building a business today what is damaging traditional hierarchies and opening new ways to climb fast back to this overview it also gave birth to a radically new intense form of War Warfare without the massive political upheaval of the Revolution Napoleon could not have fought his Wars without
the wars he could not have seized and held on to power though he betrayed much of the Revolutionary Heritage of Liberty and equality and ultimately ruled as an autocrat his life and career were indeed revolutionary so the book starts out saying hey there's a ton of biographies of Napoleon why do we need another one why did you choose to write another one and his reason uh David Bell's reason for writing is why I'm doing the book it
says it is hardly surprising that over the past two cent CES Napoleon has attracted Legions of biographers his life was enormously important endlessly fascinating and connected to some of the most controversial and constantly reinterpreted events in the world history it was also an extraordinarily well-documented life so why then this book while the current crop of biographies as many virtues concision is not among them and then he goes and
lists some examples of some popular recently written biographies of Napoleon one's 1,600 Pages another one's a th000 Pages one's 600 pages and so then it says not only do many readers not have the time and patience for such TOS but it's all too easy to get lost in the Welter of details my book has been written for readers who want an accurate readable portrait of Napoleon that incorporates the results of recent
research but is also concise and so this is something that un I have talked about in the past I love biographies I love reading them I'm a biography nut to use the word of Charlie Munger but at the same time I think you can drastically expand the amount of biographies that people read by making them shorter there's a writer named Paul Johnson who I just found out uh sadly passed away recently I've read three or four books
for of his on the podcast one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast was actually his biography of Churchill Churchill also has a ton of biographies written about him and yet Paul's biography of Churchill was
fantastic I think it's like 180 190 pages that was episode 225 I also read Paul's uh biography on Socrates which is episode 252 and his biography on Mozart which is episode 240 I think every single one of his biographies was around
200 pages and so what I think these books do is they give you a reasonable time commitment you can see hey if you're once you finish this book you know you can read it in a weekend Say Hey I want to learn more about Napoleon which is the how I feel it's like okay well then I can go on to these 500 I actually have a a biography of Napoleon haven't read yet I think it's like close to 700 pages and so I hope to see a
bunch of other biographies like this written let's jump into a bit of Napoleon theater that's going to take place between his two different Exiles so before this Napoleon had been removed from Power exiled on island then he decides he's going to escape and he's going to take back his throne and that's where we pick it up on the other side of the fight is a slightly larger number of men dirty tired and hungry who have
spent the past week marching more than 200 mil from the coast and who have the seemingly absurd ambition of making it all the way to Paris and seizing control of the country their chances of success would appear minimal but they have one enormous Advantage he is in their midst wearing an old gray army jacket speaking French with a thick corsac accent he is the man that all the men on the field from both sides had once sworn to die
for Napoleon bonapart it had been the better part of a year since Napoleon fell from power but the French are having a hard time forgetting him he is after all the man who born in obscurity acquired the greatest military reputation of any European military commander in centuries while still in his 20s at 30 he ruled France and at 40 he dominated Europe as no individual had since Charlamagne the wars he fought had
changed the map of Europe forever but his fall had been as spectacular and Swift as his rise and his 45th birthday saw him in Exile on a tiny Italian island and so let me just interrupt this real quick the reason I'm reading all
this to you is because Napoleon controlled the message inside and outside his organization it reminded me of what we learned about Julius Caesar uh that actually that was a book written by Paul Johnson too that was all uh this
book called heroes from Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and deal that was episode 226 and Napoleon lik Caesar before him knew the power of stories and he made sure to control the story that what uh the author is going to consider what Napoleon's about to do here he calls it stage management and it was very effective because this is a story that has been told over and over again for the past 200 years and so it's
known that he he meets up with this other his former French army and as the armies are facing each other Napoleon goes to the front of the crowd and appears to be willingly to sacrifice his life and so what we found out later is that he knew that the opposing Army was never going to shoot at him so let me read this part to you as the armies face each other Napoleon orders his men to lower their weapons he steps forward out
in front of his own troops and within 20 ft of the opposing army soldiers of the fifth he cries out to them I am your Emperor acknowledge me he walks a few more steps and in a dramatic gesture opens his coat exposing his chest as a Target if there is any Soldier among you who wants to kill his Emperor here I am somewhere in the opposing lines a voice can be heard ordering men to open fire but no one does and then a different cry
is heard long live the emperor a single voice at first but immediately repeated by others the entire Battalion is shouting the words and as they do they throw down their weapons Napoleon Smiles at his small army which has just doubled in size he prepares to move onward and so it says this stage management is important for understanding Napoleon's life from his first campaigns he knew the importance of actively crafting His
Image in all available media so what is the available media in the late 1700s early 1800s when this is all taking place print painting sculpture oratory and even architecture it is no coincidence that so many images of the man have achieved iconic status and even though I've never read a biography of Napoleon before I've heard so many remarkable stories repeated about him over the years 200 years after they occurred Napoleon crafted all these
images quite deliberately he was a product of the first great Modern Age of celebrity and he understood viscerally how to manage celebrity in the service of power and this point is so important that the author immediately repeats it it is vital to understand this point about Napoleon from the start because it is all too easy to see him as a pure force and freak of nature who imposed himself on the world through sheer
boldness and Brilliance bold and Brilliant he was but he was also shrewd and so at this point in history you're seeing for the first time political figures actually learning to appeal directly to ordinary citizens to gain power these are the re revolutionaries trying to replace the monarchs the way I would compare this to today is our ability to talk directly to our customers and so Napoleon did this obviously externally right to the people
that he's trying to rule but he also did this internally to the political military organization that he was trying to build the one that actually gave him power and so when I get to this point where it says Hey political figures learn to appeal directly to ordinary citizens to gain power uh there's there's another guy I'm going to skip over his name was not the only prominent revolutionary who used the printing
press right the technology of their day the printing press to forge intense bonds of attachment with his father followers and so something that comes up again and again in these biographies I read is the importance of having a shared base of knowledge with your team and in many cases that's sharing information uh that's reading the same books that's the memos and letters that you write your team but the thought that
popped to my mind right when they use the word hey they're using uh the printing press to forge intense bonds of attachment with his followers what I wrote down is company should have private internal podcast I believe that
podcasting is this is the printing press for the spoken word when building intense bonds of attachment with your team voice is going to be a lot more powerful than the written word so then they go into what they call the defining
experience of Napoleon's childhood and that is when he is sent to an austere military boarding school at the age of nine and this is in France he says he spent 5 years at the school without once returning home The Hazing he received from his fellow students on account of his accent his Fierce loyalty to Cora and a first name unfamiliar to French ears Scholars have speculated endlessly about the effects of the experience on
his character and it is indeed likely that he derived considerable resilience and self-sufficiency from it there was another effect like countless lonely children before and after Napoleon found comfort and companionship in books and so this is a habit that Napoleon shared with many of History's Greatest entrepreneurs this habit of intense reading by adolescence the habit of intense Reading had already become
deeply ingrained I live like a bear always alone in my small room with my books he said they were my only friends he kept copious reading notes in a file of obscure words that might lend weight to his own writings and in some of these writings there's definitely a bit of irony considering what he becomes later in life uh one of his Works uh one of his written works contain lines that coming from one of the most ambitious
men in history appear more than a little ironic he wrote ambition like all disordered passions is a violent and unthinking delirium like a fire fed by a pitless wind it only burns out after having consumed everything in its path
that sounds like a young Napoleon is describing an told Napoleon so after graduating school he receives his first post in the French army uh he received his first posting where he read obsessively in his room and even by this
young age people around him including his family members who hadn't seen him for a while uh knew that he was different and that he had an intensity in a drive that was in any ways abnormal and superhuman uh so his father dies he has to go home to Corsica and settle the Affairs and it says the family soon came to recognize him uh rather than recognize him rather than his gentle older brother as it's real leader indeed
his younger brother soon grasped the intensity of Napoleon's drive this is what his brother said about Napoleon when he's in his early 20s I've always detected a Napoleon an ambition he seems inclined to be a tyrant and I think that he would be one if he were King what made it possible for Napoleon to follow the path of overweening ambition was the French Revolution there's a great line in Game of Thrones where Littlefinger
says chaos as a ladder the French Revolution Causes Chaos that Napoleon's going to use as a ladder to climb so it says in an instant everything had changed from the depths of this nation an electric spark had exploded the Revolution was overturning age-old hierarchies and giving worldwide prominence to previously obscure figure sounds like what the internet is doing today doesn't it and so in 1792 to 1783
so he'd be around 23 24 years old the the time it says Napoleon gained his first taste of combat and then it continued over the next two to three years uh they proved crucial for Napoleon Napoleon showed political ruthlessness immediately that word ruthlessness and ruthless has probably said I don't know half a dozen times to described Napoleon in various time various different states of his life like uh ages of his life and in
different activities not only in the battlefield but also in the political Arena as well that is a something that the author repeats over and over again just the the depth of the ruthlessness that Napoleon possessed he also demonstrated his tremendous energy and Military Acumen by effectively reorganizing the artillery identifying a crucial weak Port weak point in his opponent's defenses and leading the attack against it personally he
demonstrated genuine physical courage receiving a bayonet wound to the thigh and having a horse shot out from under him he was just 24 years old so then to go on describing other bottles and other tactics that Napoleon used and again we see that word once again the combination of skill energy and ruthlessness and sheer luck had served Napoleon so well and so he wins a series of battles over the next few years by the time he's 26
he's named to the command of the third smallest Army in France and so he's reflecting on this point of his life later on and listen to how he describes his his mid 20 self more than 20 years after defeating the Austrian Army Napoleon confided uh to the tiny group of people that were accompanying him in Exile that only after that battle quote did I believe myself to be a superior man and did the ambition come to me of
executing the great things which so far had been occupying my thoughts only as a fantastic dream so this idea where it's like before I saw this is just this crazy you know farfetched dream to no I'm going to go and make it a reality
leads to this very few human beings have ever experienced what Napoleon did between mid 1796 and late 1799 at the start of this period just 26 years old he was already an important French General but still just one of several
three and a half years later he was without exaggeration the new Caesar and this reminded me of the the quote from Littlefinger from Game of Thrones chaos is a ladder and this is the French Revolution is the ladder that he's going to use it was the French Revolution that made this Stupify Ascent possible the revolution badly damaged the traditional hierarchies of French society opening the door to radically new forms of
social Mobility so his case it's social Mobility it's political power it's war in our case how can we use this for to build businesses today that could not have existed previously and I love this part because you and I have talked about this over and over again that and many times in these stories we see it's the right place the right person the right place with the right set of skills at the right time in history and that's
exactly the case with Napoleon but history is not a matter of impersonal forces and nothing ensured that an individual would come along to exploit the changes as fully and spectacularly as Napoleon many are the historical
opportunities that have been lost for lack of Talent OR Vision in Napoleon's case the man met his hour and then it goes into the description the fact that his genius was of two sorts he was a military and a political genius he was
uh he had genuinely extraordinary mental abilities a nearly photographic memory the ability to visualize the positions of thousands of men's in in battle details about Munitions and supplies he could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect a double underline that sentence let me read it to you again he could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect a classic Napoleonic tactic
involved dividing his resources into a number of groups 10 mil or more distant from each other followed by rapid forced marches to bring them together at a single strategic spot these moves disrupted enemy operations the goal was not simply to outmaneuver enemies but to smash their armies entirely Napoleon's genius in this respect depended in turn on a ferocious stamina which he possessed in abundance this is how Ralph
Waldo Emerson described Napoleon Napoleon was a man of stone and iron that is a crazy description about a human being he was a man of stone and iron and we'll see that he was also paying attention to the details you could even say maybe a bit of a micromanager uh in these two years 1796 and 1797 alone Napoleon wrote or dictated nearly 2,000 letters on everything from the number of carts needed to carry a regiment's paperwork
to the position of of drummer boys in a marching column he required little sleep routinely Rising soon after midnight and working through the next working through to the next evening with only a short nap to refresh himself his political genius was just as important Napoleon understood far better than his Rivals that in a newly Democratic age political success depended on forging a bond with ordinary people this is what you and I
have talked about a few times so far in this podcast I would also note what I wrote down when I got to the section the first time uh that I read this book the idea that Napoleon understood far better than his Rivals that in a newly Democratic age political success depended on forging a bond with Ordinary People Rockefeller noted this about Napoleon 2 then a few pages later goes into how he managed in his organization
he made frequent addresses directly to his his troops to his people praising their bravery he doled out medals by the barle he distributed 100 specially engraved Sabers for Valiant acts of heroism he knows Human Nature he knows we all go what did Mary K Ash right who who founded her cosmetic Empire don't worry I'm going to read a biography of her soon I think her autobiography as a matter of fact she built this gigantic
uh cosmetic Empire and she said everybody goes through life with an invisible sign around their neck that says make me feel important make me feel special this is exactly what Napoleon is doing at this point in history he
distributes a 100 specially engraved Sabers for Valiant acts he appealed to the solders sense of Pride and Destiny the Fatherland has the right to expect great things of you all of all of you wish to be able to say with pride Upon
returning to your Villages I was part of the Conquering Army of Italy and so I want to pause in that one line I want to go back to it real quick it says he appealed to the soldier sense of Pride and Destiny I've actually seen this uh two other times came to mind when I read this book Jeff Bezos and General Patton if you haven't gone and and I've watched General's uh Patton's speech his speech to the third third Army no joke uh
hundreds of times I shouldn't admit this publicly but sometimes I start my day with it to get me fired up but at the end of the speech he talks about he's like listen when you get home from this war right many years from now you're going to be sitting there with your grandson on your lap and you're going to be able to tell him what you accomplished right he uses different language Patton uses vastly different
language than than what I just said there but that's the the general like uh like what he's appealing to he like you know you're making a sacrifice now as a young man just think of when you're old like you survive and you're an older man and uh your your grandson's sitting on your lap and you tell him that you know you rode with General Pat in the third Army and this is what you accomplish Jeff Bezos also says this in Amazon he's
like listen we're trying to build something here the building of Amazon uh something that we can be proud of so proud of that we're going to tell our grandchildren about it and he says his follow-up line is fantastic he's like such things are not meant to be easy and so we see Napoleon's version out here he's appealing to their sense of Pride and Destiny the Fatherland has the right to expect great things of you all of you
wish to be able to say with pride Upon returning to your Villages I was part of that it goes on Napoleon took care to remain personally approachable by his soldiers Napoleon ensured that everyone back home knew of his exploits and appreciated his Brilliance this is goes back to the stage what do they call it stage craft this idea that he utilized all forms of media controlled the message make sure that that his version
of events got spread far and wide and to accomplish this goal there's a great sentence here that just blew my mind it says Napoleon founded two French language newspapers to report on his Conquest I got that's crazy he founded
two French language newspapers to report on his Conquest on the back cover of the book They're describing another book that uh that David Bell wrote and I think it applies to this book too it says he has a gift for storytelling and
a flare for the weird unfamiliar fact I love the weird unfamiliar facts those are the ones that you tend to remember and so over the next several years he has wild success but then we start to see remember he has he has a strategic this like uh parabolic rise and then this Swift fall from Power and part of the problem was he started getting high on his own Supply so he winds up conquering Egypt and listen to how he's
talking uh Napoleon was utterly inance with Egypt here he was not yet 30 years old standing in Triumph where Alexander and Caesar had stood before him and this is what he said in Egypt I found myself freed from the obstacles of the of an irksome civilization I was full of dreams I saw myself founding a religion marching into Asia riding an elephant already in his mind he's passed from Soldier to General to Emperor and now he
is a Godlike figure in his own mind and so he goes back to France they overthrow the government he's going to be in charge uh he's actually on a it says it would they would replace a regime with three temporary executive what they called councils uh Napoleon is one of the three and it says these three men then oversaw the drafting of yet another constitution for the batter Republic the coup was the fourth coup in more than in
a little more than two years yet no single political figure in France possessed anything like Napoleon's personal appear appeal and Cor Charisma Napoleon was something new and The keenest Observers understood it and so they go more into detail about this part a few years after and this is what I meant he his one of his fatal flaws is getting high on his own Supply I'm going to pull out one sentence here that that
really jumped out of me I'll get there in one second but the fall of 1799 the French had lived through a solid decade of revolutionary turmoil large scale violence with a total death toll of more than 300,000 a change of regime every nearly every year repeated bouts of hyperinflation and near economic collapse threats of foreign Invasion Napoleon with his Instinct and genius for propaganda exploited the his achievements for everything that they
were worth talked about spreading the message through poets songwriters painters sculptors the propaganda worked and the problem was the propaganda starts working on his own mind and so he starts out as revolutionary and then turns into a monarch he insisted on yet another new constitution the 5ifth in 11 years which transformed him into conso for life and gave him the ability to choose his successor it was a clear move
towards monarchy and many times times the author makes the point that that Napoleon starts to it's almost like uh animal farm by George Orwell where what you're seeking to replace you wind up morphing into over time so it says the regime he created between 1799 and 1804 was authoritarian illiberal and undemocratic and another mention that he's getting high on his own Supply he had a self-confidence that had long ago
pass the boundaries of huis and this this is where he takes it one step further he's like well I'm not going to be a king I'm going to be an Emperor Napoleon took a step that forever changed his relationship to his country and To His Image in history he literally put a crown on his head he became not a king but an emperor it is worth remembering that even more than a decade after the French Revolution Europe remained dominated by conservative
monarchies to have them treat him as an honorable equal Napoleon genuinely believed that he had to become a monarch himself and we already discussed the fact that Napoleon knew that symbolism was a very powerful thing we also discussed the fact that he was a reader of uh an intense reader of History constantly preparing uh comparing himself to people like Caesar Charlemagne Alexander the Great and we see that again when this coronation
ceremony that he's placing for himself he actually goes and gets a pope to play a role in the coronation says Pope Pas iith took part so as to highlight the comparison no Napoleon wanted to draw between himself and another emperor of the West Charlamagne who was crowned by a pope a thousand years before Napoleon and so now that he's the emperor listen to how he's talking an empire was infinitely more expandable in ways that
a nation state was not signaling that Napoleon's Ambitions as a conqueror had with the resumption of War increased by yet another degree of magnitude as he would later confide I wanted to rule the world who wouldn't have in my place amid the glitter of the coronation ceremony this is very fascinating actually amid the glitter of the coronation ceremony one Glimpse one glimpse of the older less pompous Napoleon could still be
found he turned to his brother Joseph and whispered if po grinning he was smiling when he says this if Papa could see us now now but in coming years this older Napoleon would be seen less and less and so there's just two paragraphs here and really what jumps out of me there's two quotes uh I thought of one my one of my favorite uh books I can't believe I like randomly if I remember correctly stumbled upon it in a book
bookstore it is actually a uh it's episode 251 it's called the founding Ben Franklin and George Washington the founding partnership or Franklin and Washington the founding uh the founding partnership and what was so interesting about it was a focus on the constant intersection of the lives between Ben and George Washington and so there's something in there's a story in that book of this battle that George Washington was involved in in his early
career that is going to make me think about Napoleon picking a fight that he can't possibly win here I'll get there in a minute so it says the Fatal disadvantage France had at Sea in comparison with Great Britain Napoleon could build ships he could put men in Sailor uniforms but developing a powerful navy required another ingredient expertise and here France fell terribly short even the lowest ranking sailor in
the age of sale required far more skill and experience than an ordinary land soldier in order to serve effectively officers so naval officers required years of specialized training British naval officers generally started when they were young boys if you're an elephant you can't jump in the ocean and think that you're going to beat them France with a far less developed Maritime tradition simply could not match the British in this crucial Arena
and so this idea where you should only be competing or building a business around where you have an edge so there's actually the know left on that page and then I'll get to the Washington and Franklin thing uh was something I learned from Ed Thorp this is all the way back on episode 222 in his fantastic autobiography A man for all markets and he talks about what he learned as 50 years as an entrepreneur and investor
and he says the shest way to get rich is to play games to play those games or make those Investments where you have an edge Napoleon and the French do not have an edge at Sea against Britain and what it made me think of was there's the American war with the Native Americans so you have like the British col colonists at the time this is before America was America and they're fighting the Native Americans that are there and
I think at this time is happening Washington is like 21 or 22 years old and so he winds up Surviving one of these battles he comes back and is telling the people the British the British are sending their soldiers over to fight uh the Native Americans and they're in like full regalia they're like marching through the woods they're doing they're they're fighting Wars as they fought in Europe and Washington's like you guys can't do that you're going
to die this is a completely different game over here you can't just say hey I'm good at European land Warfare and I'm going to export it to the frontier of America at this point and so they don't heed his warnings and they get absolutely routed and destroyed and there's a line in that book is just absolutely fantastic writing and it reminds me to only compete where I have an edge you might as well send a cow in
pursuit of a rabbit the Indians were accustomed to these Woods can you build an edge an advantage over your competitors to the point where competing with you is so futile is as futile as a cow pursuing a rabbit another tactic that Napoleon used a few times was that he would fake weakness to lure his competitor into a trap appear weak to conceal a strength that's a very interesting idea it was here that Napoleon won perhaps his most brilliant
Victory after surveying the field the day before he deliberately weakened his right flank in the hope of drawing a massive attack by the Allies that would leave their Center vulnerable the next morning the Allies took his bait by the end of the day the French had completed a ruthless there's that word again completed a ruthless destruction of the enemy forces at this point in the story he is 36 years old and he is not concealing
the fact that complete European domination is his goal I must make all the peoples of Europe into a single people and Paris the capital of the world it was a stunning ambition Napoleon is the opposite of most people most people put artificial limits limits that don't actually exist on themselves in their lives Napoleon appears to not believe he had any limits at all in fact it made me think of one of my favorite quotes by Bruce Lee it
used to be the wallpaper on my laptop if you always put limits on everything you do it will spread into your work and into your life there are no limits there are only plateaus and you must not stay there you must go beyond them and then what I found interesting is this is during his like rapid expansion he's Emperor he's he's fighting Wars on multiple fronts but the the the author makes the point a few times that I think
is important to like pause and and really think about what he what he's saying here because he mentions this over and over again that things are not as they appear from the outside we see this with large companies they look like oh they can't possibly they have so many resources they have so many people they can't possibly be competed with or even overtaken and the history of business and history of Entrepreneurship is very
clear about that as they grow they get more bureaucratic they open up a larger surface area for like small focused teams to to attack and so I just want to read this part and then it brought to mind something I heard Jeff Bezos say that I think is really um interesting impressive as it was from the outside the empire was increasingly coming to resemble a skyscraper built in haste without a proper Foundation it did not
help that Napoleon after his victories of 1805 and 1806 felt himself virtually invincible and what I thought of was like well you see this sometimes with companies where they grow so fast but they're really it's they're it's a shaky foundation and one thing that History's Greatest entrepreneurs have in common is the fact that they build for durability they they want to build a company that is around for a long time and so Jeff
Bezos has this speech where he says great things take time he says we know from our past experiences that big things start small the biggest Oak starts from an acorn if you want to do anything new you've got to be willing to let the acorn grow into a little sapling and then into a small tree and then maybe one day it'll be a big business on its own you can't skip steps you have to put one foot in front of the other
things take time there are no shortcuts but you want to do those steps with passion and ferocity and so he's expanding way too fast uh he's unbelievably arrogant he thinks he's like you know going to be emperor of the entire world and then you add on another disadvantage and all these disadvantages are going to compound in the next five years he's going to be thrown out of like this when his fall happens and one
of the uh disadvantages is his physical decline this physical decline is I'll read you quotes in in in a few minutes this physical decline directly leads to his downfall later on you have to take care of your body you have to take care
of your health uh Larry Miller episode 168 he wrote this fantastic autobiography as he was dying his body was literally shutting down as he's writing the book uh it's called driven an autobiography I think everybody
should listen to episode 168 because it's a cautionary tale it's what happens when you don't take care of your health you don't have any fun you prioritize work over personal relationships and you're one of the richest people and in fact I think he might have been the richest person in the state of Utah at the time he's writing the book and yet he's like hey don't do what I did that's a crazy story like that book is
absolutely it's a must read in my opinion but anyways this IDE idea of you have to take care of your health Napoleon was now 40 years old and was growing slower the once nervously thin revolutionary was getting Stout and he suffered from increasingly severe urinary infections and possible pituitary disorder as well as What Might Have Been mild epileptic epileptic fits and a few pages later the author brings up this idea it's like hey this is a
shaky from the outside it looks like it's it's it's looks like the Empire is formidable it's actually on Shaky Ground if you and you really think about what's happening it's like one he's creating something that's too large to manage right and then he's becoming more like what he replaced this reminded me of like how startups successful startups then eventually transform into large bloated companies and then eventually
they're overtaken by a startup and like the cycle just goes on and on and on and we're just kind of replaying old ideas and old scenarios over and over again with new generations so it says the empire was continuing to expand the need to mobilize even larger populations uh to staff and Supply the ever more bloated armies armies fed the unsteady expansion of the area under direct Imperial control Napoleon system was
springing new holes faster than he could plug them however large and Powerful his Empire looked from the outside and however great the conquest it was already trying to digest it was certain that Wars would continue and oh my goodness on the next few pages is the most highlights and uh notes that I have for the entire book and this is where he decides to invade Russia and so the first note I have is poor reading comprehension do not get
high off your own Supply it is not you it is the work so what does that mean what did I read to spawn that thought when Napoleon crossed into Russian territory he brought along some potentially disturbing reading voltaire's history of Charles iith it told the story of a king of Sweden the most admired military leader of his time which is exactly what Napoleon is at this point in his life right who had invaded Russia a century before but
Charles Army weakened by disease and sheer exhaustion after an 18 18 month Trek through hostile territory came to grieve to grief came to grief in the decisive battle which proved so disastrous that it sealed Sweden's decline as a military power presumably Napoleon took voltar's work with him or book with him in the hope of avoiding Charles mistakes at one point early in the campaign he told an aid we shall not
repeat the Folly of Charles I 7 but he does that's what I meant by poor reading comprehension but in the end he proved a very bad reader second mistake do not give competition time to prepare Bad Boys move in silence unfortunately Napoleon had given the Russians a long time to prepare as early as 1810 so that's what two two and a half years before he invades right as early as 1810 they had foreseen the coming Invasion
and Ponder the most likely means of defeating it note number three do not let other people dictate your game if it's good for your competitors avoid it what does that mean the Russians wrote a planning memo the key to defeating Napoleon they said was to plan and pursue a war exactly cont to what the enemy wants in other words to avoid a the sort of major battle that could destroy the Russian army this is what
they do instead there's a fantastic it's it's remarkable how many times uh this repeats so you got Charles iith 100 years earlier running into same tactics then you have Napoleon in the 19 what is this excuse me 18 12 Dan Carlin of Hardcore History has a fantastic podcast called The Ghost of osr very similar tactics that the Germans that the Russians used on the Germans in World War II as well and so what did they do uh instead of
direct combat right uh the goal was gaining time and drawing out the war as long as possible if Napoleon came the Russians would Retreat into the depths of their vast country destroying supplies as they went and the Russians had competent commanders including the legendary 66-year-old male there's no way you know I'm you know I'm not pronouncing his name correctly I'm just going to call him male so he's 66 years
old he's he's first of all successful and survived so you know he has something like there's knowledge in his head even though the fact that he took a Bullet to the Head despite the fact that a musketball had passed clean through his head nearly 40 years before he had formidable tactical skills note number four this is all on the same page this is remarkable uh Napoleon went from being young quick and agile to old fat
and slow businesses do this too Napoleon faced other obstacles the very size of his army made it harder for him to control and maneuver than the forces he had commanded earlier in his career the problems of ruling a huge and trouble
Empire pressed in on him distracting him from the campaign another note I left on the other page the distracted do not beat the focus that's not going to happen and his health hobbled him more and more this is what I mentioned
earlier you got to take care of your health that this these disadvantages are going to compound and lead to his downfall and his health hobbled him more and more Napoleon was virtually incapacitated in several battles against the Russians the weather finally posed a variety of problems from the start uh Dan Carlin in that fantastic FC podcast series The Ghost of osr talks about they call the Russian winter General winter
they thought it was one of their best military assets the fact that it was just so cold there back to this idea that Napoleon went from being young quick and agile to old fat and slow uh so he finally confronts the main Russian Force he was shaking with fever and urinary pain he remained behind the lines and directed his forces with a caution that the younger Napoleon would have scorned after that battle the
French March into Moscow and find it largely deserted between disease and death Napoleon had already lost more than a third of his men the Russians also light fire to Moscow on purpose the fire left Moscow uninhabitable forcing the French army to withdrawal Napoleon made the matters much worse by delaying the Army's departure for nearly a month believing his men had plenty of time before winter set in set in instead one
of the coldest winters on record began earlier than usual this is crazy temperatures fell up lower than 35 degrees below zero the French Retreat from Moscow has deservedly gone down in history as one of the greatest military catastrophes of all time Napoleon's forces were ill prepared for the murderous cold this is the crazy thing that I thought of when I got to this part and Anno myself it's like success is never permanent think about this the
same person that built the Empire destroyed it and so let's go into a description of the murderous cold frostbite seized appendages snow glare induced temporary blindness each morning the sun rose on the frost covered corpses of men who had fallen asleep and frozen solid in the night horses dead and living were devoured raw while desperate soldiers sought warmth in the animals eviscerated bellies of the original
650,000 strong force barely 85,000 men made it back out of Russia Napoleon's Aura of invincibility had disappeared and eventually Napoleon is forcibly removed from power and we see by his actions that if you love what you do the only exit strategy is death Napoleon now had no choice but to abdicate unconditionally a few days later seized by despair he tried to kill himself by swallowing a satchet of poison he had carried with him since the
Russian campaign but the drugs had lost their potency and succeeded only in making him violently ill the former master of Total War had finally become its victim yet he still had one act to perform his most remarkable of all the hundred days less than a year after leaving France Napoleon would return in secret rally his supporters and seize power for a second time he would restore the empire resuscitate his Grand Army and march
across the frontier to confront his enemies only after his defeat at waterl would his fall from Power become permanent and that is where I leave it for the full story I highly recommend picking up this wonderfully concise biography you can read it in a weekend if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player you'll be reporting this podcast at the same time if you haven't yet signed up for Founders premium I'm
making AMA episodes on this private podcast feed I'm recording the fourth one that should be out a few days after you hear this and you can access those episodes by using the link that's in the show us your podcast player and available at Founders podcast.com if you want to join my free email newsletter where I email my top 10 highlights of every book that I read that link is also down below and available at Founders
podcast.com that is 294 books down 1,000 ago and I'll talk to you again soon okay so all the way back on episode 227 I read this fantastic book called The essays of Warren Buffett so all the way back on episode 88 I read every single one of Warren's shareholder letters but what this book that was put together by Lawrence Cunningham uh called the essays of Warren Buffett uh did that was so smart is that he took the shareholder
letters and instead of organizing them by year which is standard he organized them by topic and so in the original podcast I did on this book which again is episode 227 1 hour and 28 minutes into the podcast or thereabouts I go over this letter that I'm about to read to you now it's under the heading titled on selling one's business and the reason I'm bringing this up is because one of the sponsors of this episode is Tiny and
one way that tiny has been described is that they're building the birkshire of the internet and you can go to tiny.com and read the testimonials and see all the founders that have sold their business to Tiny and how their main
differentiation just like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is there's no yes we're going to make this transaction as simple and easy as possible where a lot of people that buy businesses make you jump through hoops and it's just a
headache and so if you think about what Warren is doing here in this letter is his business is buying businesses and so his customer or Founders or managers of businesses and so he is essentially writing a letter to a guy so he wrote
this letter in uh 1991 to a guy who indicated he might want to sell his family business and so I'm just going to pull out a few highlights here and really think about what Warren's doing is he is differentiating his services
from other people that also buy businesses he says if you if you should decide to sell I think birkshire hathway offers some advantages that most other buyers do not practically all of these buyers will fall into one or two categories and so now Warren is going to describe his competition if you go to tiny.com you'll see they described their compet in some ways their competition which is typically VCS or private Equity
companies okay so Warren says number one a company located elsewhere but operating in your business or in a business someone Akin somewhat akin to yours such a b buyer no matter what promises are made will usually have managers who feel they know how to run your business operations and sooner or later will want to apply some Hands-On and he puts the word help in quotation marks obviously Warren does not think
that the managers they're going to install in that business are actually going to be helpful at all the second other option a financial maneuverer invariably operating with large amounts of borrowed money who plan to resell either to the public or to another Corporation as soon as the time is favorable frequently this buyer's major contribution will be to change accounting methods so that earnings earnings can be presented in
the most favorable light just prior to his bailing out and then listen to this persuasion technique that he uses cuz he's writing to somebody that he knows it's a family business which means they put a lot of their time and life energy into so he says if the sole motive of the present owner is to cash their chips and put their business behind them and plenty of sellers do fall into this category either type of the buyer that I
just described to you is satisfactory but if the seller's business represents the creative work of a lifetime and forms an integral part of their personality and sense of being buyers of either type have serious flaws so he's just described his competitive landscape he says listen there's option one there's option two but then there's a new Option something that's completely different and better and he's describing
the services that he provides to Founders right so he says birkshire is another kind of buyer a rather unusual one we buy to keep tiny does too by the way all of the businesses we own are run autonomously to an extraordinary degree when we buy a business the sellers go on running it just as they did before the sale we adapt to their methods rather than vice versa and tin's case it's up to the founder if they want to stay or
if they want to go Tiny's fine with either solution and then Warren does something fantastic he's like listen you know who the P the past businesses that we bought in fact I'm including in this letter a list of every single person we've ever bought a business from Tiny does something very similar on their website which you can go see you know some of our past purchases I'm enclosing a list of everyone from whom we have
ever bought a business and I invite you to check with them as to our performance versus our promises and then Warren says hey I'm going to keep it simple with you if you should decide to do a business do business with birkshire we would pay in cash tiny says the exact same thing on their website your business would not be used as collateral for any loan by birkshire there would be no Brokers involved Warren also says you deal with
me and finally you would know exactly with whom you are dealing you would not have one executive negotiate the deal only to have someone else in charge a few years later or have the president regretfully tell you that his board of directors required this change or that change and because Warren has hacked away at the unessential all that is left is Simplicity and his pitch is simple do you want a great home for your business
then call me and I will do a cash transaction really fast same thing that tiny does I will not pester you if you have any possible interest in selling I would appreciate your call I would be extraordinarily proud to have birkshire along with the key members of your family own blank so he took out any identifying information of who he's writing to okay I believe we would do very well financially and I believe you
would have just as much fun running your business over the next 20 years as you have during the past 20 sincerely Warren Buffett I think reading the entire letter is worth your time if you buy the book it's on pages 230 through 233 and
make sure you go back and listen to episode 227 the essays of Warren Buffett if you have not done so already and if you have a business that you're interested in selling now or in the future make sure you go to tiny.com