Founders

#158 Walt Disney (Disneyland)

What I learned from reading Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. ---- [1:29] In Disney's Land, popular historian Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker's precision, an artist's conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.  [4:13]  When he reached middle age it seemed that we were going to witness an all too familiar process—the conversion of the tired artist into the tired businessman. When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney. We were quite wrong. He had, instead, created his masterpiece.  [4:58] Walt Disney was an obsessive with soul in the game.  [5:26] Disney’s father didn’t believe children should have toys.  [14:50] One small enterprise did please him, though, and it had little to do with the art he had done so much to invent and of which he was the undisputed master.  [15:09] He was dismayed to find the man whose work he had long admired “seemed totally uninterested in movies and seemed wholly, almost weirdly concerned with the building of a miniature railroad engine and a string of cars. All of his zest for invention, for creative fantasies, seemed to be going into this plaything.”  [17:15] Disney on his nervous breakdown: “I had a hell of a breakdown. I went to pieces. I kept expecting more from the artists and when they let me down, I got worried. Costs were going up and it was always way over what they figured the picture would bring in. I just got very irritable. I got to a point that it couldn't talk on the telephone. I would begin to cry.” [17:49] The money wasn't coming in. His last successful feature, Bambi, was six years in the past.  [22:19] Why would you want to get involved in an amusement park? They're so dirty, and not fun at all for grownups. Why would you want to get involved in a business like that? He fielded the question the way he would countless times during Disneyland's germination. "That's exactly the point. Mine isn't going to be that way." [25:25] Disney’s friend’s reaction to hearing the plans for Disneyland: While he talked, becoming more and more enthusiastic by the minute, I began to grow more and more concerned. I hardly knew how to tell him that, for once, he was making what would probably be the biggest, most ruinous mistake of his life. What could I say? I knew he was wrong.   [28:00] He never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity, rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant perfectionist, imagination of his younger brother.  [38:48] You asked the question, What was your process like? I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the “Walt Period” of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all of these people who had never designed a theme park, never designed a Disneyland. So we’re all in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions.  [40:24]  He told a parable. Two men are laying bricks. Somebody asked one of them what he's doing, and is told, “I’m laying bricks.” To the same question, the other man answers, “I’m building a cathedral.”  [47:32] Disney was asked what he thought was his greatest accomplishment. “To be able to build an organization and hang onto it.”   [48:00]  The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It's something we can keep developing and adding to. . .I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We've got that in Disneyland.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

What I learned from reading The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. ---- [0:29] This is the story of those pioneers hackers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Who they were, how their minds worked, and what made them so creative.  [8:41] She developed a somewhat outsize opinion of her talents as a genius. In her [Ada Lovelace] letter to Babbage, she wrote, “Do not reckon me conceited but I believe I have the power of going just as far as I like in such pursuits.”  [14:10] The reality is that Ada’s contribution was both profound and inspirational. More than any other person of her era, she was able to glimpse a future in which machines would become partners of the human imagination.  [16:37] Alan Turing was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience. [20:15] If a mentally superhuman race ever develops its members will resemble John Von Neumann.  [23:40] His [William Shockley] tenacity was ferocious. In any situation, he simply had to have his way.  [28:38] Bob Noyce described his excitement more vividly: “The concept hit me like the atom bomb. It was simply astonishing. Just the whole concept. It was one of those ideas that just jolts you out of the rut, gets you thinking in a different way.  [29:06] Some leaders are able to be willful and demanding while still inspiring loyalty. They celebrate audaciousness in a way that makes them charismatic Steve Jobs,  for example; his personal manifesto dressed in the guise of a TV ad, began, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes.” Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos has the same ability to inspire. The knack is to get people to follow you, even to places that they may not think they can go, by motivating them to share your sense of mission.  [38:26] As Grove wrote in his memoir, Swimming Across, “By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazi’s final solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.  [39:10] Grove had a blunt, no-bullshit style. It was the same approach Steve jobs would later use: brutal honesty, clear focus, and a demanding drive for excellence.  [39:40] Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”  [40:24]  Engineering the game was easy. Growing the company without money was hard.  [42:40] Vannevar Bush was a man of strong opinions, which he expressed and applied with vigor, yet he stood in all of the mysteries of nature, had a warm tolerance for human frailty, and was open-minded to change  [47:17] Gate was also a rebel with little respect for authority. He did not believe in being deferential.  [47:51] Jobs later said he learned some important lessons at Atari, the most profound being the need to keep interfaces friendly and intuitive. Instructions should be insanely simple: “Insert quarters, avoid Klingons.” Devices should not need manuals. That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person.  [48:47]  Steve Jobs’ interesting way to think about a new market: My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them, there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.  Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. [57:21] ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#156 Theodore Roosevelt

What I learned from reading Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt ---- [0:20] He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog.  [2:44] Not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore in odd moments read the whole of Anna Karenina.  [3:56] He impressed me and puzzled me. And when I went home I told my wife that I'd met the most peculiar, and at the same time, the most wonderful man I'd ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier.   [4:35]  Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast: #135 Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power #139 The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance#142 The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism#145 The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst That piqued my interest and I knew I had to read a biography of him.  [7:53] The underlining theme would be the same as that of my earlier work—the creative effort, the testing, and the struggle, the elements of chance and inspiration involved in any great human achievements.  [9:22] Teddy Roosevelt had a life motto: Get Action!  [15:17] He is brimming full of mischief and has to be watched all the time.  [16:15] I felt great admiration for men who were fearless and I had a great desire to be like them.   [16:44] There runs a theme of the pleasure and pride in being the first to see or do something, an eagerness to set himself apart from the others, to distinguish himself, to get out ahead of them; or simply be alone, absorbed in private thoughts.  [18:15] He has learned at an early age what a precarious, unpredictable thing life is—and how very vulnerable he is. He must be prepared always for the worst. But the chief lesson is that life is quite literally a battle. And the test is how he responds, whether he sees himself as a helpless victim or decides to fight back.  [20:56] It was no good wishing to appear like the heroes he worshiped if he made no effort to be like them.  [21:26] He would charge off ruthlessly in chase of whatever object he had in view.   [24:48] Father was the shining example of the life he must aspire to; Father was the perfect example of all he himself was not. “Looking back on his life it seems as if mine must be such a weak, useless one in comparison.” He was engulfed by self-about.  [27:08]  He’s not strong, but he’s all grit. He’ll kill himself before he’ll even say he’s tired.  [30:01]  He was a rabid competitor in anything he attempted. He was constantly measuring his performance, measuring himself against others. Everybody was a rival, every activity a contest, a personal challenge.  [34:13] Nothing seemed to intimidate him. Though all of twenty-three, unmistakably the youngest member of the Assembly, he plunged ahead, deferring to no one, making his presence felt.   [35:33] Hunt and Theodore boarded in the same house. Hunt always knew when it was Theodore returning because Theodore would swing the front door open and be halfway up the stairs before the door swung shut with a bang.  [41:35] Theodore stood up and in quiet, businesslike fashion flattened a drunken cowboy who, a gun in each hand, had decided to make a laughingstock of him because of his glasses.   [43:36] By acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#155 Jeff Bezos (Shareholder Letters and Speeches)

What I learned from reading Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson. ---- [2:38]  The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems, failures, things that don't work. You need to back up and try again. Each one of those times when you have a setback, you get back up and you try again. You're using resourcefulness; you're using self-reliance; you're trying to invent your way out of a box. We have tons of examples at Amazon where we’ve had to do this.  [4:08] I would much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid.  [5:51]  I am often asked who, of the people living today, I would consider to be in the same league as those I have written about as a biographer: Leonardo da Vinci (#15), Benjamin Franklin (#115), Ada Lovelace, Steve Jobs (#5), and Albert Einstein. All were very smart. But that’s not what made them special. Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and imaginative. That’s what makes someone a true innovator. And that’s why my answer to the question is Jeff Bezos.  [8:26] One final trait shared by all my subjects is that they retained a childlike sense of wonder. At a certain point in life, most of us quit puzzling over everyday phenomena.  Our teachers and parents, becoming impatient, tell us to stop asking so many silly questions. We might savor the beauty of a blue sky, but we no longer bother to wonder why it is that color. Leonardo did. So did Einstein, who wrote to another friend, “You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” We should be careful to never outgrow our wonder years—or to let our children do so.  [11:50] Jeff’s childhood business heroes were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. “I’ve always been interested in inventors and invention,” he says. Even though Edison was the more prolific inventor, Bezos came to admire Disney more because of the audacity of his vision. “It seemed to me that he had this incredible capability to create a vision that he could get a large number of people to share.”  [17:49] Keeping his focus on the customer, he emailed one thousand of them to see what else they would like to buy. The answers helped him understand better the concept of “the long tail,” which means being able to offer items that are not everyday best sellers and don’t command shelf space at retailers. “The way they answered the question was with whatever they were looking for at the moment. And I thought to myself we can sell anything this way.” [19:26] Every time a seismic shift takes place in our economy, there are people who feel the vibrations long before the rest of us do, vibrations so strong they demand action—action that can seem rash, even stupid.  [22:00] “No customer was asking for Echo,” Bezos says. “Market research doesn’t help. If you had gone to a customer in 2013 and said, ‘Would you like a black, always-on cylinder in your kitchen about the size of a Pringles can that you can talk to and ask questions, that also turns on your lights and plays music?’ I guarantee they’d have looked at you strangely and said, ‘No, thank you’” [24:14] We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.   [24:58] We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren’t meant to be easy.  [26:22] We are doubly blessed. We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying foundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.  [29:14] Start with the customer and work backward. That is the best way to create value.  [32:19] Amazon’s culture is unusually supportive of small businesses with big potential, and I believe that’s a source of competitive advantage.  [35:47] Seek instant gratification —or the promise of it—and chances are you’ll find a crowd there ahead of you. [37:51] At a fulfillment center recently, one of our Kaizen experts asked me, “I’m in favor of a clean fulfillment center, but why are you cleaning? Why don’t you eliminate the source of dirt?” I felt like the Karate Kid.   [39:21] When we are at our best, we don’t wait for external pressures. We are internally driven to improve our services, adding benefits and features, before we have to. We lower prices and increase value for customers before we have to. We invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by reaction to competition.  [42:48] Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a one hundred times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you are still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in awhile, when you step up to the plate, you can score one thousand runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#154 Charles Schulz (Charlie Brown)

What I learned from reading My Life with Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz.  ---- [0:24] Beginning with the first strip published on October 2nd, 1950, until the last published on Sunday, February 13th, 2000, the day after his death, Schultz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered by hand every single one of the daily and Sunday strips to leave his studio, 17,897 in all for an almost fifty-year run.  [4:08] If there were one bit of advice I could give to a young person, it would be to do at least one task well. Do what you do on a high plain.  [5:54] Slow consistent growth over a long period of time: Year  / # of newspapers1950     71952    401958    3551971     11001975    14801984    2000  [12:00] There are certain seasons in our lives that each of us can recall, and there are others that disappear from our memories, like the melting snow.  [14:05] I used my spare time to work on my own cartoons. I tried to never let a week go by without having something in the mail working for me.  [21:03] You don’t work all of your life to do something so you don’t have to do it.  [22:09] On where ideas come from: Most comic strip ideas are like that. They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.  [25:03] When he is 73: People come up to me and say: “Are you still drawing the strip?” I want to say to them, “Good grief—who else in the world do you think is drawing it?” I would never let anybody take over. And I have it in my contract that if I die, then my strip dies.  [30:15] At the point he is writing this he is making $30 to $40 million a year. The total earning of Peanuts is well over $1 billion.  [32:37] But as the year went by, I could almost say that drawing a comic strip for me became a lot like a religion. Because it helps me survive from day to day. I always have this to fall back upon. When everything seems hopeless I know I can come to the studio and think: Here’s where I’m at home. This is where I belong —in this room, drawing pictures.  [40:01] If you should ask me why I have been successful with Peanuts, I would have to admit that being highly competitive has played a strong role. I must admit that I would rather win than lose. In the thing that I do best, which is drawing a comic strip, it is important to me that I win.  [44:26] To have staying power you must be willing to accommodate yourself to the task. I have never maintained that a comic strip is Great Art. It simply happens to be something I feel uniquely qualified to do.  [45:18] He is the most widely syndicated cartoonist ever, with more than 2300 newspapers. He has had more than 1400 books published, selling more than 300 million copies.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#153 Bill Bowerman (Nike)

What I learned from reading Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore.  ---- [0:01] Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism. Say a freshman. Make it lift, or jump or run. Let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger or faster or more enduring. That's all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You would think any damn fool could do it, but you won't. [0:25] You work too hard and you rest too little and get hurt.  [1:38] You cannot just tell somebody what’s good for him. He won’t listen. He will not listen. First, you have to get his attention.   [4:14] From the book Shoe Dog. Phil Knight on Bowerman: I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs. Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers, that he was making history, remaking an industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop and jump for generations. I wonder if he could conceive at that moment all that he'd done. All that would follow. I know I couldn't.  [8:02] Are you in this simply to do mindless labor or do you want to improve? You can’t improve if you’re always sick or injured.  [9:17] Bowerman was decades ahead of putting just as much of an importance on your recovery as you do on your training.   [12:11] In theory, as a coach, he should have been as interested in motivating the lazy as in mellowing the mad, but he wasn’t. “I’m sorry I can’t make them switch brains,” he said. But I can’t.” That left him free to be absorbed by the eager.  [17:00] One of the things that makes him so interesting is that he was willing to think from first principles. If he arrived at different collusion he thought was right it didn't matter if 90% of the people in his field were doing it another way.  [17:21] Bowerman understood that paradox—the need for both abandoned effort and ironclad control.  [18:47] He spent long hours in contented silence, solving a huge range of problems, and he was brutally eloquent when dissecting others’ psyches. Yet he kept the process of himself to himself.  [20:42] In his approach to the world, he would take stock, give nothing away, circle to different vantage points, and keep an eye out for a sign of something he might exploit.  [28:27] “Because of what he taught,” Bowerman would say, “I went from one of the slowest players to the second fastest. . . I learned from the master.”   [30:40] Bill Hayward was Bill Bowerman’s blueprint: He took from his scrapbook a photograph of Hayward. He had it framed behind glass, to preserve what Hayward had written on it: “Live each day so you can look a man square in the eye and tell him to go to hell!”  [32:29] Celebrate optimum rather than maximum. [33:23] He killed a 7-foot rattlesnake with a clipboard.  [38:12] If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman. Not simply the shock, but the way to respond. He attached such honor to not giving up, to doing my utmost. Most kids didn’t have that adjustment of standards, that introduction to true reality.   [47:05] They shook hands on a partnership. Bill would test and design the shoes. Buck [Phil Knight] would run the company.  [47:40] Bowerman knew Knight would give the new venture the ceaselessness of a runner.  [49:45]  Bowerman’s response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.”  [53:13] “I don’t believe in chewing on athletes,” he once said. “People are out there to do their best. If you growl at them and they’re not tigers, they’ll collapse. Or they’ll try to make like a tiger. But the tigers are tigers. All you have to do is cool them down a little bit so they don’t make some dumb mistake.” His view was that intelligent men will be taught more by the vicissitudes of life than by a host of artificial training rules.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post)

What I learned from reading Personal History by Katherine Graham.  ---- [1:02] A few minutes later there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. It was so profoundly shocking and traumatizing —he was so obviously dead.  [3:56] Katherine Graham was the first-ever female CEO of a fortune 500 company.  [5:30] This book is the inner monologue of someone not at all comfortable with herself and where she fits in with others.  [8:55] Katherine's mom on having a second wind: The fatigue of the climb was great but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one’s second wind. I think that is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one’s mental efforts. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind. Whether mentally or physically occupied most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort.  [13:42] When an idea is right, nothing can stop it.  [17:47] Advice from her Father that she still remembers 60 years later: What parents may sometimes do in a helpful way is to point out certain principles of action. I do not think I would be helpful in advising you too strongly. I do not even feel the need of doing that because I have so much confidence in your having really good judgment. I believe that what I can do for you once in a while is to point out certain principles that have developed in my mind as sound and practical, leaving it for you yourself to apply them if your own mind grasps and approves the principles.  [26:14] Have a problem? Look at it from a different perspective: I had deplored the fact we had the bad luck to live in a world with Hitler, to which Phil responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a privilege to have to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history.”   [29:20] Reading biographies can give you the strength to not quit: Phil was finishing a book on the lives and careers of newspaper magnates. “You know, they put the company together when they were in their thirties. Now they’re in their sixties and I’m in my thirties. I think we can make it [successful] another way.”  [33:28] There is no doubt in my mind that the struggle to survive was good for us. In business, you have to know what it is to be poor and stretched and fighting for your life against great odds.  [37:26] Knowledge of that new generation—my children—was what led me, however hesitatingly, to the decision I made then: to try to hold on to the company by going to work.  [38:04] Sometimes you don’t really decide, you just move forward, and that is what I did—moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life.  [41:28] I made mistakes and suffered great distress from them, partly because I believed that if you just worked diligently enough you wouldn’t make mistakes. I truly believed that other people in my position didn’t make mistakes; I couldn’t see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience.  [46:19] Good luck was again on my side, coming just when I needed it. It was my great fortune that Warren Buffett bought into the company, beginning a whole new phase of my life.  [47:53] Writing a check separates conviction from conversation. —Warren Buffett  [52:05] My business education began in earnest—he literally took me to business school, which was just what I needed. How lucky I was to be educated by Warren Buffett, and how many people would have given anything for the same experience.  [55:56] Warren has done so many things for me, but among the most important are the inroads he has made on my insecurities. Warren is humanly wise. He once told me that someone in a Dale Carnegie course had said to him, “Just remember: We are not going to teach you how to keep your knees from knocking. All we’re going to do is teach you to talk while your knees knock."  [57:13] Warren later told me he subscribed to Charlie Munger’s “orangutan theory”—which essentially contended that, “if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her idea is, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana, and at the end of the conversation, the person explaining comes out smarter.” Warren claimed to be my orangutan. I heard myself talk when I was with him and I always got a better idea of what I was saying. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#151 Frederick Smith (FedEx)

What I learned from reading Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble. ---- [0:01] At age thirty Frederick Wallace Smith was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out. He had exhausted his father’s millions. He was in hock for 15 or 20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo jets and also his wife. His own board of directors had fired him as CEO. Now the FBI accused him of forging papers to get a $2 million bank loan and was trying to send him to prison. He thought of suicide.  [1:08] At any risk, at any cost, he refused to let his Federal Express dream die.  [6:23] I believe that a man who expects to win out in business without self-denial and self-improvement stands about as much chance as a prizefighter would stand if he started a hard ring battle without having gone through intensive training. Natural ability, even when accompanied by the spirit to win, is never sufficient.  [7:32] It was push and drive he inherited from his father. He had to be doing something all the time.  [9:19] Fred is one of those people who never gives up if he wants something and you say no. He just goes on and on and on.  [10:50] And one of the greatest qualities that he has, that anybody can have, is he’s a voracious reader. You could talk to Fred Smith about government or literature, a whole range of things kids his age didn’t know much about.  [11:38] Like Nike, the idea for FEDEX started as a term paper: There is no great mystery to the “hub and spoke” concept. As Smith visualized the plan, the “hub” would be located in a middle America location with “spokes” radiating out to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, and other cities. Fred Smith thought of his system as similar to the telephone network, where all calls are connected through a “central switchboard” routing process.  [18:40] He wanted to do something that nobody else had done. That was his main objective.  [20:18] Smith wasn’t traveling in a straight line himself. He tried first one project and then another. All of them were built around his idea of acquiring and operating a fleet of jets. It [FEDEX] didn’t start out as a package outfit.  [27:23] Fred Smith was learning not to be disheartened or dismayed by negative reactions.  [35:43] Fred was in such deep thought all the time. Constantly thinking. Sheer determination. You could walk in and he’d be thinking about something and literally wouldn’t know you were in the room. That is one sign of a great mind—the ability to concentrate. When I read that section it made me think of this great quote by Edwin Land: “My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had.”  [39:00] A great way to think about how hard FEDEX was to start: If you open a Wal-Mart store, and if that formula succeeds and you do well, you open a thousand of them. But you don’t open a thousand of them to take the first order. Which is what you had to do to start FEDEX.  [47:10] We were first-grade novices. And I think that really played to our advantage because we were not fully aware of the obstacles we faced or the difficulty in overcoming them. I look back on it now and think, Oh, my God, why in the world would anybody try to do something like this!  [53:18] Fred Smith himself said, “No man on earth will ever know what I went through in 1973-1974. When I read that I thought of this quote on Charlie Munger: “Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity. But instead to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.”  [1:01:30] Fred Smith: You have to be absolutely brutal in the management of your time. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#150 Sam Walton (America's Richest Man)

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble. ---- [3:11] Charlie Munger on Sam Walton: It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears, Roebuck? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all.  [4:46]  Sam Walton was no ordinary man. He was a genius in business, with an iron mind —some say pig-headed—unwilling to compromise any of his carefully thought out policies and principles.  [5:08] To him, making money was only a game. A test of his imagination and expertise to see how far he could drive a business concept. Wall Street had a hard time getting the drift of that Sam's idea, he readily admitted was absurdly simple: Buy cheap. Sell low. Every day. And do it with a smile!  [9:23]  No one in the Walton household worked harder, except his father. ‘The secret is work, work work,” said Thomas Walton. “I taught the boys how to do it.” He was a bear for work, and would not tolerate sons who were not likewise industrious, ambitious, and decent.  [12:08] Sam was optimistic all the time. He felt the world was something he could conquer.  [15:13] A lesson the founder of JC Penney personally taught Sam: Boys we don't make a dime out of the merchandise we sell. We only make our profit out of the paper and string we save.”  [21:42] The lawyer saw Sam clenching and unclenching his fists, staring at his hands. Sam straightened up. “No,” he said. “I’m not whipped. I found Newport, and I found the store. I can find another good town and another store. Just wait and see!”   [27:09] Sir, I never quarrel, Sir, but sometimes I fight, Sir, when I fight Sir, a funeral follows.  [28:27] Sometimes hardship can enlighten and inspire. This was the case of Sam Walton as he put in hours and hours of driving Ozark mountain roads in the winter of 1950. But the same boredom and frustration triggered ideas that eventually bought him billions of dollars.  [34:02]  One of the basic lessons Sam Walton learned at JC Penny was not to be so smug you ignored your competitors, especially their successful policies and practices. “If they had something good, we copied it,” Sam always said with total candor.  [37:52] To these sophisticated and experienced businessmen in tailored suits and custom shoes, it looked like the tail was trying to wag the dog. What was that Arkansas country fellow’s experience with only a dozen or so stores compared to their thousand outlets and nearly a century of retailing know-how?  [42:28] His tactics later prompted them to describe Sam as a modern-day combination of Vince Lombardi (insisting on solid execution of the basics) and General George S. Patton. (A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.)  [43:43] I love this mindset: Move from Bentonville? That would be the last thing we do unless they run us out. The best thing we ever did was to hide back there in the hills and build a company that makes folks want to find us.  [44:13]  The public conception of Sam as a good ol’ country boy wearing a soft velvet glove misses the fact that there’s an iron fist within.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#149 The Big Rich (Oil Billionaires)

What I learned from reading The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough. ---- [3:12] There's truth behind legend. There really were poor Texas boys who discovered gushing oil wells and became overnight billionaires, patriarchs of squabbling families who owned private islands and colossal mansions and championship football teams, who slept with movie stars and jousted with presidents and tried to corner and international market or two.  [9:55] Their success raised a tantalizing question. What if there really was another Spindletop out there, and what if it were discovered not by a large company but by a single Texan working alone? One well, one fortune, it was the stuff of myth, the Eldorado of Texas Oil, and as a new decade dawned, a hoard of young second-generation oilmen would begin trying to find it.  [14:53] He first headed to the Houston public library where he read every book he could find on the geology of oil.  [17:51] Let me get a shave and a bath. Tomorrow's another day he would tell her.  [19:35] This is a metaphor for a lot in life. Not just oil: The trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface. If it was up near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil.  [25:45] What Clint lacked in physical appeal, he made up for with a mind that whirred like a Swiss timepiece. Headstrong and independent, disdainful of his father's stuffy ways, young Clint was Tom Sawyer with an abacus.  [32:21] “Daddy, you cheated me!” he exclaimed.“ “I did not,” his father said. “People will try to get at you any way they can, and you might as well learn now.”  [33:46] If that dunce can make so much money we’ll go too.  [42:07] H.L. Hunt was a strange man, a loner who lived deep inside his own peculiar mind, a self-educated thinker who was convinced —absolutely convinced— that he was possessed of talents that bordered on the superhuman.  [49:30] Great fortunes are built on great convictions.  [52:33] Hunt drilled wells like a madman. He worked from dawn till late in the evening seven days a week. Every cent he took in he plowed back into the search for more oil.  [58:50] The spigot of cash Texas oil opened in the early 1930s ranks among the greatest periods of wealth generated in American history.  [1:02:30] Sid Bass and his brothers had since achieved everything he hadn’t, that while the Basses were investing in Wall Street stocks and high tech startups, he had been snorting cocaine.  [1:10:30] A harking to the days when giants walked the oil fields, when men like Hunt and Clint and Sid and Roy helped build something unique in midcentury, Texas—an image and culture loud, boisterous, money-hungry and a bit silly, but proud and independent.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#148 John D. Rockefeller (Autobiography)

What I learned from Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller.  ---- [0:16] These incidents which come to my mind to speak of seemed vitally important to me when they happened, and they still stand out distinctly in my memory.  [2:43] That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. — Charlie Munger  [3:07] On Founders #16 I covered the biography of Rockefeller. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller.  [3:19] Rockefeller prioritized silence and using the element of surprise by not telling people what he was up to.  [3:54] The book I read for Founders #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday.  [5:02] They woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud.  [5:35] He's attempting to buy out one of his competitors and he says, “I have ways of making money that you know nothing about.”  [6:00] One thing that he mentioned over and over again in this book is the importance of relationships. That relationships make life better.  [7:45] Having created an empire of unfathomable complexity, he was smart enough to see that he had to submerge his identity in the organization.  [13:01] We went pretty rapidly in those days. We had with us a group of courageous men who recognized the great principle that a business cannot be a great success that does not fully and efficiently accept and take advantage of its opportunities.  [15:52] It was a friendship founded on business, which Mr. Flagler used to say was a good deal better than a business founded on friendship, and my experience leads me to agree with him.  [18:09] Perhaps they will not be useless if even tiresome stories make young people realize how, above all other possessions, is the value of a friend in every department of life without any exception whatsoever.  [20:26] I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money’s sake.  [24:35] This casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me.  [28:07] I grew up watching Michael Jordan play. My generation saw the highlights. They saw the fancy stuff. What I saw was his footwork. I saw the spacing. I saw the timing. I saw the fundamentals of the game.  [30:58] Go to sleep on a win and you wake up with a loss: As our successes began to come, I seldom put my head upon the pillow at night without speaking a few words to myself in this wise: “Now a little success, soon you will fall down, soon you will be overthrown. Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head — go steady.” These intimate conversations with myself had a great influence on my life. I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions.  [34:58] If the present managers of the company were to relax efforts, allow the quality of their product to degenerate, or treat their customers badly, how long would their business last? About as long as any other neglected business.  [38:04] Meet your troubles head-on: I have spoken of the necessity of being frank and honest with oneself about one’s own affairs. Many people assume that they can get away from the truth by avoiding thinking about it, but the natural law is inevitable, and the sooner it is recognized, the better.  [38:49] Don’t deceive yourself by trying to take shortcuts. You have to build a strong foundation for your business and for your life. And that takes time. If you do that correctly you're going to gain a level of efficiency that the people that are looking for shortcuts, and cutting corners, are never going to enjoy.  [40:48] We were gradually learning how to conduct a most difficult business.  [43:08] Focus. Study how the great fortunes were made. It wasn’t a scattershot approach: We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. The company never went into outside ventures but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization.  [44:01] Two people can run the same business and have vastly different results: Amp It Up.  [50:27] Don’t even think of temporary or sharp advantages. Don’t waste your effort on a thing which ends in a petty triumph unless you are satisfied with a life of petty success.  [54:42] Don’t do anything someone else can do. —Edwin Land: The one thing which such a business philosopher would be most careful to avoid in his investments of time and effort or money, is the unnecessary duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent in increasing needless competition as wasted.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#147 Sam Colt

What I learned from reading Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America by Jim Rasenberger. ---- [0:01] Sam Colt embodied the America of his time. He was big brash, voracious, imaginative, and possessed extraordinary drive and energy. He was a classic disruptor who not only invented a world-changing product but produced it and sold it in world-changing ways.  [1:59] He had solved one of the great technological challenges of the early 19th century.  [2:36] He was rich at 21. Poor at 31. Then rich again at 41.  [7:10] Sam Colt solved a 400-year-old problem. The guns of 1830 were essentially what they had been in 1430. [7:53] There's a financial panic in 1819. This is a very important part in the life of Sam Colt. It may explain why he was such a hard worker, ruthless, and determined. The panic of 1819 bankrupts his family.  [10:48] What kind of person would do this voluntarily? He was set to embark on a 17,000-mile voyage across the Atlantic, around the horn of Africa, through the Indian ocean and to the city of Calcutta. Honeymoon was not quite the word to describe a 17,000-mile voyage to Calcutta in 1830.  [13:57] He bridled at being under any authority other than his own. His dogma was the gospel of self-determination. “It is better to be the head of a louse than the tail of a lion.” [14:19] Self-determination took deep root in my heart and to has been the mark that has and shall control my destiny.  [16:14] Every cut of the jackknife an act of quiet vengeance not only against those who had flogged him but against the nameless forces that had snatched away his childhood with financial ruin and death.  [19:58] He saw a nation brimming with industry and ingenuity and hope. And at the same time, anxiety, fear and brutality.  [20:55] Nights went to [selling] nitrous oxide, days to improving his gun.  [22:31] This description of the book sold me on buying it: Brilliantly told, Revolver brings the brazenly ambitious and profoundly innovative industrialist and leader Samuel Colt to vivid life. In the space of his forty-seven years, he seemingly lived five lives: he traveled, womanized, drank prodigiously, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and supplied the Union Army with the guns they needed to win the Civil War. Colt lived during an age of promise and progress, but also of slavery, corruption, and unbridled greed, and he not only helped to create this America, he completely embodied it. By the time he died in 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut, he was one of the most famous men in nation, and one of the richest. [27:19] But more important than Roswell’s money would be the contacts he helped Sam cultivate in coming months; and more important still would be the encouragement Roswell gave to the young entrepreneur.  [30:46] Why guns were the first mass-produced product in America: But the government was not in the business of sewing or telling time; it very much was in the business of preparing for war, even if there were no wars to be fought just then. As a result, guns were among the first, and by far the most important, mass-produced items in the United States. Because the government was the main buyer of guns, it dictated how the guns were made. And it had a deep interest in solving problems of gun manufacturing.  [37:23] I’m amazed at how much life Sam Colt fit into 47 short years. [38:43] One of the main takeaways of the book is Everything sucks. I’m moving forward anyways.  [38:58] His refusal to admit defeat would appear almost delusional at times.  [39:34] The paradox of Sam Colt: One half of Sam Colt was the buncoing fabulist, the walking bonfire of other people’s money, the drinker and carouser; the other half was a truly gifted inventor.  [42:20] If you are in a great market the market will pull the product out of you.  [48:52] Sam Colt is extreme. This is him admonishing his younger brother for not being ambitious enough: Don’t for the sake of your own good name think again of being a subordinate. You had better blow out your brains at once & manure an honest man’s ground with your carcass than to hang your ambition on so low a peg. [49:15] The anger and frustration was real and his desire to be his own master and master of others was sincere.  [52:27] I've spent the last 10 years of my life without profit in perfecting military inventions. How many people are willing to work this hard and not give up after a decade?  [54:17] The opening of a new market: [Sam] Walker had done a great deal for Colt in the weeks since they began exchanging letters in November. Most important, he had single-handedly persuaded the Ordnance Department to contravene its long-standing objection to Colt’s pistols.  [57:40] After his first business fails he is determined to control his second attempt: “I am working on my own hook and have sole control and management of my business. No longer subject to the whims of a pack of dam fools styling themselves a board of directors.  [1:07:19] He was metabolically wired for productivity. He is without exception the hardest working man that I know of. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#146 Milton Hershey (Chocolate)

What I learned from reading Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams by Michael D'Antonio. ---- [0:01] Perhaps the only thing about Milton Hershey that is absolutely certain is that he believed in progress. He was always moving.  [2:51] This blew my mind. Only six universities held larger endowments. Which meant that the Milton Hershey School was richer than Cornell, Columbia, or the University of Pennsylvania.    [4:14] Milton’s father was unrealized ambition personified.   [5:44] One of the biggest things Milton learned from his father and something he avoided. His father had 1,000 schemes and never stuck to any of them. He didn’t know what perseverance meant.  [7:25] Rockefeller had arrived in Oil City in the same year as Hershey, 1860. But unlike Henry, he was possessed of extraordinary energy, remarkable financial savvy, and an uncanny ability to remain focused on his goals.  [8:00] Henry’s had a preference for talking about things rather than doing them. Even neighbors could see that the man was lazy. Milton was the direct opposite of these traits.  [8:37] This gives you an insight into why Milton would leave a large fortunes to orphans: Milton was denied the kind of stability children need to feel secure. He had been moved from place to place, and he listened to his parents argue with increasing frequency and anger. Milton went without proper shoes and the little family didn’t have enough to eat.  [9:14] He learned to channel all of his energy and passions into a single outlet: work. [10:47] The main takeaway from this book: Milton Hershey had perseverance in abundance.  [12:43] Hershey experiences multiple business failures before he founds his first successful company.   [14:34] Things start to go bad. He realizes he has another “me too” product. He faced intense competition from hundreds of other candy retailers and wholesalers in the city. He doesn’t find success unit he actually innovates. Milton finds a way to turn a luxury product — milk chocolate — into a mass produced, inexpensive product.   [16:37]  This is an important part. He is being squeezed by suppliers. Later on in life he realizes if something is important to your business you must control it. He starts his own sugar plantation. He does this for other ingredients he needs to make his product.  [19:08]  His simple idea: Caramel is really popular in Western states. The candy makers in Denver figured out how to make caramel that don’t go bad and taste very well. That was not happening where he was from. He decided to take that idea back east and build my own caramel empire. He sells that company for $1 million and uses that money to start Hershey Chocolate.  [22:34] Milton is doing exactly what you and I are doing right now. He is studying successful entrepreneurs.   [24:44] Bouncing back from defeat is essential for growth in any endeavor.  [25:00] Milton is at rock bottom. He is somewhat depressed and downtrodden. But there is something freeing about that. Because he realizes I can only go up from here.  [25:30] The main theme in the life of Milton Hershey is perseverance. He has been working in this industry for 14 years. He has had two gigantic business failures. He has borrowed money from everybody he possible can. He is tapped out. He is embarrassed. He is a failure. Yet he doesn’t quit.  [26:12] If failure is the best instructor he could argue that he had earned a doctorate. He intended to make candy no one else produced.   [29:48] This is the wild part. He had told me all. He did not conceal the bad part. He made no excuses for it. He was honest. I decided I would lend him the money. But I was afraid to present the bank that note with that story. To avoid the trouble I put my own name on the note. The banker takes out the loan for Milton —in his name!  [30:50] Milton tried to make small improvements over a long period of time.   [31:30] Small continuous improvements over many years produces miracles.  [31:54] No one alive visited more retail stores than Sam Walton. He was obsessed with studying and learning from other entrepreneurs. No one alive had gone into more confectionaries and candy shops than Milton Hershey.   [32:20] While visiting Europe he notices that companies were creating a big new industry serving low cost chocolate to the masses.   [33:54] He is constantly redesigning his manufacturing process, making it more efficient. It becomes so efficient no one else can compete with him.  [36:41]  Only the Swiss had figured out how to mass produce milk chocolate. They aren’t going to tell Milton how to do it. He must experiment on his own. . . To do this he sets up a milk chocolate skunkworks.  [38:13]  How many people are willing to put in this much work? Milton and about 18 workers would rise at 4:30a.m. to milk the herd of 78 cows. After breakfast they’d go to work. Sometimes they didn’t come out until the next morning.  [40:05] What Milton Hershey did for the mass production of chocolate is the same thing that Henry Ford did for the mass production of automobiles and its the same thing the McDonald’s brothers did for the mass production of fast food.  [46:15] This one act would create something unique in both philanthropy and capitalism. It made the school, under its trustees, the majority owners of a national company that was poised to double in size, many times over, in the decades to come.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#145 William Randolph Hearst

What I learned from reading The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw. ---- [0:20] There has never been —nor, most likely, will there ever again be — a publisher like William Randolph Hearst.  [0:26] Decades before synergy became a corporate cliche, Hearst put the concept into practice. His magazine editors were directed to buy only stories which could be rewritten into screenplays to be produced by his film studio and serialized, reviewed, and publicized in his newspapers and magazines. He broadcast the news from his papers over the radio and pictured it in his newsreels.  [1:42]  Winston Churchill on William Randolph Hearst: “Hearst was most interesting to meet,” Churchill wrote. “I got to like him — a grave, simple child — with no doubt a nasty temper — playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always over spent: ceaseless building and collecting . . .two magnificent establishments, two charming wives; complete indifference to public opinion, a 15 million daily circulation, and extreme personal courtesy.”  [4:42] If public schools are rough-and-tumble they will do him good. So is the world rough-and-tumble. Willie might as well learn to face it. —George Hearst, William’s father.  [8:45] He didn’t care what the world thought. . .He was rather indifferent to the thoughts and feelings of people outside of his immediate family.  [10:20] Warren Buffett had this great idea that he came up with by observing his parents. Do you have an outer scorecard or an inner scorecard? Warren says you are going to have a hard time living a happy life if you don’t have an inner scorecard. His mom had an outer scorecard. She was very worried about what the outside world thought. Warren Buffett most admired his father. His father had an inner scorecard. If he could look himself in the mirror at the end of the day and say I’m comfortable with doing then he would accept it regardless if the people around him didn’t understand it. I think William Randolph Hearst had an inner scorecard. [13:08]  Hearst believed you had to pay for talent: The paper must be built up and cheap labor has been entirely ineffectual. The paper requires a head that has ability, enterprise, and experience. Let one of these things be absent and the paper will be a failure. Naturally such a man commands a high salary and you must reconcile yourself, either to paying it or giving up the paper.  [14:00] His father thought he was a quitter: Tell him to stand in like a man and stick to his studies to the end.  [15:00] Joseph Pulitzer was William’s blueprint: His evenings were devoted to the studying of the newspaper industry in preparation to take over his father’s newspaper. He text was Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He was reading it daily, studying every element in its makeup, and comparing it daily with the Examiner.  [17:45] Will was determined to escape the fate of a rich man’s son born a generation too late. His father’s generation had settled the West, cleared the land, built the railroads, discovered and mined the precious metals, and make their oversized fortunes.  [19:55] No one owns ideas. You can do this too: He intended to work a revolution in the sleepy journalism of the Pacific slope by importing the journalistic techniques, strategies, and innovations that Pulitzer had pioneered in New York City. He is not saying he is innovating here. He doesn’t need to. He is saying I am taking Pulitzer’s playbook and I am going to run it. And I am going to run it better than he did.   [22:15] If we hesitate a moment or fall back a step we are lost. Delay is as fatal as neglect. —Willam Randolph Heart  [25:12] Smart way to expand his market: Because San Francisco — a city of no more than 350,000 — had three strong morning paper, Hearst recognized that he would have to expand the Examiner’s circulation base by delivering papers by railway north to Sacramento and south to Santa Cruz and San Jose.  [27:54] Improve the quality of the product, and the profits will follow: He said that the reason that the paper did not pay was because it was not the best paper in the country. He said that if he had it he would make it the best paper and that then it would pay. Now I don’t think there is a better paper in the country. It is now worth upwards of a million dollars.  [30:13] When Ross Perot finally leaves the board of NeXT he tells Steve Jobs that he didn’t help him by giving him $100 million dollars. The money I gave you made it easy for you to not have any sense of urgency to make a profit.   [34:07] Hearst was able to poach Pulitzer’s staff by offering them something Pulitzer wouldn’t, job security: Hearst had to offer more than big salaries. He had to guarantee security in the form of large multiyear contracts. In the newspaper industry this was unheard of.  [36:37] I feel like everybody beefs with Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt tried to have Pulitzer arrested, he hated Hearst, and goes to war with J.P. Morgan. Hearst felt Roosevelt was his competition.  [37:23] What Hearst says after one of his reporters is shot during the war between Spain and Cuba: “I’m sorry you’re hurt but wasn’t it a splendid fight? We must beat every paper in the world.” This guy is really dedicated to being the world’s best publisher.  [38:01] Something that I want to highlight for you that is very common — but very surprising to people who don’t read biographies — is that these people experience periods of intense doubt. We all do. Hearst did as well: I feel like hell. I sit all day in one place in half a trance. I guess I am a failure.  [42:08] Hearst is deep in debt for half a century: He is an able newspaper man but does not look ahead in financial matters  [42:30] He listened to no one, trusted no one.  [42:49]  Any kind of success arouses envy and hatred. The best punishment is to succeed more. —William Randolph Hearst  [43:05] When he saw an item he wanted, he bought it, regardless of whether he had the money to pay for it. His spending had always been extravagant but it ballooned out of all proportion to his income.  [46:14] Instead of retrenching until his newspapers began to earn money again, he had gone deeper into debt to finance his movie studio. The combination of debts made it impossible for him to seek further credit from the banks, which he required regularly to refinance his outstanding loans.  [50:46] The financial situation of your various companies is in an alarmingly serious condition. The Chief went blithely on, spending money like water.  [51:19] 70 years old, over leveraged, and going into the Great Depression: He was overextend with debt, bloated payrolls, real estate mortgages, construction and renovation costs, and huge bills to art dealers and auction houses on both sides of the Atlantic.  [55:37] The Chief had learned early that there was no shame in being in debt. Debt was, on the contrary, the magic ingredient that had made it possible to build his castles and buy his art collections. He didn’t believe in the Protestant ethic or trust in Poor Richard’s aphorisms. A penny saved might be a penny earned, but a penny borrowed was worth even more. The result of this: It had taken almost half a century, but his debts had finally grown to the point where no banker in his right mind would consider refinancing them.  [59:39] One of the great defenses against inflation is not to have a lot of silly needs in your life. You don’t need a lot of material goods. —Charlie Munger  [1:03:06]  A benefit of incorrigible optimism: Hearst never regarded himself as a failure, never recognized defeat, He did not, at the end of his life, run away from the world.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#144 Ernest Shackleton

What I learned from reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. ---- [0:58] All the men were struck, almost to the point of horror, by the way the ship behaved like a giant beast in its death agonies.  [1:27]  His name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the twenty-seven men he had watched so ingloriously leaving the stricken ship were the members of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.  [2:02] Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected.  [2:52] Their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity: If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out.  [9:21] Shackleton returned to England a hero of the Empire. He was lionized wherever he went, knighted by the king, and decorated by every major country in the world.  [10:24] Making his primary argument for such an expedition, he wrote: It is the last great Polar journey that can be made. I feel it is up to the British nation to accomplish this, for we have been beaten at the conquest of the North Pole and beaten at the first conquest of the South Pole. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys—the crossing of the Continent.  [12:16] He was an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and swashbuckling.  [15:20] But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold. Perhaps it’s an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms.  [17:00] When you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees, and pray for Shackleton.  [17:15] The motto of his family: BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER.  [23:10] Shackleton said there once was a mouse who lived in a tavern. One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold. When the mouse had finished, he looked around arrogantly. “Now then,”  he said, “where’s that damn cat.” [25:15] From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.  [30:19] Of all their enemies—the cold, the ice, the sea—he feared none more than demoralization.  [32:00] Shackleton was not an ordinary individual. He was a man who believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy.  [43:15] It was pull or perish, and ignoring their sickening thirst, they leaned on their oars with what seemed the last of their strength.  [47:05] No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.  [48:34] The only thing to do was to hang on and endure.  [49:39] They were possessed by an angry determination to see the journey through—no matter what.  [54:33] I do not know how they did it, except they had to.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#143 Alfred Lee Loomis (the most interesting man you've never heard of)

What I learned from reading Tuxedo Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by James Conant. ---- [0:01] Few men of Loomis’ prominence and achievement have gone to greater lengths to foil history.  [0:17]  Independently wealthy, iconoclastic, and aloof, Loomis did not conform to the conventional measure of a great scientist. He was too complex to categorize—financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, dilettante—a contradiction in terms.  [0:42] He rose to become one of the most powerful figures in banking in the 1920s.  [4:42] The smile was a velvet glove covering his iron determination to get underway without any lost motion.  [5:29] He would dedicate himself to overcoming Germany’s scientific advantage.  [7:19] He had amassed a substantial fortune, which allowed him to act as a patron.  [8:06] Loomis was a bit stiff, with the bearing of a four-star general in civilian clothes. He was strong and decisive.   [10:15]  He was enthusiastic about American know-how and was not inclined to sit idly by until the miliary finally determined it was time to take action—particularly if just catching up with the Germans proved to be a monumental task.  [13:30] He carried himself with composure, but his politeness was merely a habit; he was preoccupied.  [16:56]When duty called he helped reinvent modern warfare. [20:21] He became an enthusiastic champion of the new armored tanks. He became such an expert on tank construction, he built a scaled-down model in his garage in order to see if he could make further improvements in the design. When his cousin came to visit, Loomis rolled into the rail station in his light armored tank to meet the train, kicking up dust and causing quite a scene.  [26:54]  Loomis would later maintain that everybody on the Street knew the crash was coming, the only difference was that he and Thorne refused to bank on its being inevitably delayed.  [31:20] After the shock of the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915, Thomas Edison said that Americans were “as clever at mechanics as any people in the world” and could defeat any “engine of destruction.:” Edison had advocated for preparedness without provocation, and to Loomis, it seemed as wise a course in the present as it had been then.  [40:58] For the next four years, he would drive himself and his band of physicists almost without break to develop the all-important radar warning systems based on the magnetron.   [43:44] He drew a striking parallel between the present international situation and the financial situation prior to the crash. He said that now people are asking him when we will enter the war just as in 1928 his friends were asking him when the stock market crash was coming. He said that in both cases such a question is quite beside the point. He said that once a person admitted a stock market crash was coming a prudent individual will immediately get out fo the stock market and not consider when the crash is coming and thereby try to hang on and make some more profits. Likewise, at the present time it is of secondary importance when we will get in; of first importance is the admission that we are going to get in, and our action accordingly should be that of preparing just as though we were actually in the war!  [48:55]  Loomis had one important characteristic. His ability to concentrate completely on the chief objective, even at the cost of neglecting matters that appear to other people to be of equal importance.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#142 Teddy Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan

What I learned from reading The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield.  ---- [0:17] Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn’t the richest but that didn’t matter; he was commanding in a way none could match.  [0:38] Morgan had an aristocrat’s disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country’s advantage, no explanations necessary.  [0:50] Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself the public.  [1:04] Each [Morgan and Roosevelt] presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation’s course. Each expected deference from the other along the way. [2:18] “I’m afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” Morgan said. “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do,” Roosevelt replied.  [5:24] Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career, even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was very much the creation of paternal influence.  [9:58] Morgan said he could do a year’s work in nine months, but not twelve. His impatience could be withering.  [10:17] Roosevelt adopted his father’s motto, “Get action.”  [10:35] Roosevelt never sat when he could stand. When provoked, he would thrust, and when he hit, he hit hard.  [11:11] Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat.  [12:09] When they attacked Roosevelt, he would fire back with all the venom imaginable. “He was the most indiscreet guy I ever met.”  [16:36] When one of the gentlemen complained later about Morgan’s interference in their roads, Morgan snapped: “Your roads? Your roads belong to my clients.”  [19:26] John D. Rockefeller said his company was efficient. Critics said it was untouchable.  [23:04] James J. Hill had built the Great Northern with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn’t need Morgan the way other railroad executives did.  [25:52] “A soft, easy life is not worth living, it impairs the fiber of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great.”, Roosevelt said.  [29:18] Harriman secretly bought up shares in Northern Pacific. This was revenge. Hill and Morgan had effective control over the Northern Pacific, but they didn’t own a majority of the shares. Morgan had never found it necessary to own a company outright in order to exert influence. [35:02] The president had asked his attorney general to prosecute Northern Securities for violating the Sherman Act. Roosevelt should have warned him, Morgan grumbled. They could have worked out a deal in private. Presidents didn’t keep secrets from the captains of industry, and the House of Morgan had never before been surprised by the White House.  [37:29] After Morgan left, Roosevelt marveled at the financier’s imprudence. “That is the most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.”  [39:06] Roosevelt understood how panic could outrun reality.  [47:00] People will love Roosevelt for the enemies he has made.  [50:21] Morgan repeated the advice he had received from his father long ago: “There may be times when things are dark and cloudy in America, when uncertainty will cause some to distrust and others to think there is too much production, too much building of railroads, and too much development in other enterprises. In such times, and at all times, remember that the growth of that vast country will take care of all.”  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#141 Arnold Schwarzenegger (My Unbelievably True Life Story)

What I learned from reading Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. ---- I decided that the best course for independence was to mind my own business and make my own money.I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead, the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.I became absolutely convinced that I was special and meant for bigger things. I knew I would be the best at something - although I didn’t know what - and that it would make me famous. I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mindset. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.” I pictured myself high up on the pedestal, trophy in hand. Everyone else would be standing below. And I would look down.When you grow up in that kind of harsh environment, you never forget how to withstand physical punishment, even long after the hard times end. I find joy in the gym because every rep and every set is getting me one step closer to my goal. It gave Reg Park’s whole life story, from growing up poor in Leeds, England, to becoming Mr. Universe, getting invited to America as a champion bodybuilder, getting sent to Rome to star as Hercules, and marrying a beauty from South Africa. This story crystallized a new vision for me. I could become another Reg Park. All my dreams suddenly came together and made sense. I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in powerlifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing.Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’ There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me.It was the fact that I had failed—not my body, but my vision and my drive. I hadn’t done everything in my power to prepare. Thinking this made me furious. “You are still a fucking amateur,” I told myself. I decided I wouldn’t be an amateur ever again. That night, despair came crashing in. I was in a foreign country, away from my family, away from my friends, surrounded by strange people in a place where I didn’t speak the language. I ended up crying quietly in the dark for hours. I always wrote down my goals. I had to make it very specific so that all those fine intentions were not just floating around. It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there. I came away fascinated that a man could be both smart and powerful. Going to school, training five hours a day at the gym, working in the construction and mail-order businesses, making appearances, and going to exhibitions—all of it was happening at the same time. Some days stretched from six in the morning until midnight.Nothing was going to distract me from my goal. No offer, no relationship, nothing. People were always talking about how few performers there are at the top of the ladder, but I was convinced there was room for one more. I felt that, because there was so little room, people got intimidated and felt more comfortable staying on the bottom of the ladder. But, in fact, the more people that think that, the more crowded the bottom of the ladder becomes! Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.Very few actors like to sell. I’d seen the same thing with authors in the book business. The typical attitude seemed to be, “I don’t want to be a whore. I create; I don’t want to shill.” It was a real change when I showed up saying, “Let’s go everywhere because this is good not only for me financially but also good for the public; they get to see a good movie!”Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don’t get it out there, if people don’t know about it, you have nothing. It’s the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions. It always blew my mind that some of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo to van Gogh, never sold much because they didn’t know-how. They had to rely on some schmuck - some agent or manager or gallery owner - to do it for them.That wasn’t going to happen to my movies. Same with bodybuilding, same with politics - no matter what I did in life, I was aware that you had to sell it. They couldn’t handle working every day. Lazy bastards. I wanted to be rich very quickly. No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage. If you want to be good at skiing, you have to get out on the slopes all the time. If you play chess, you have to play tens of thousands of games. On the movie set, the only way to act together is to do the reps. If you’ve done the reps, you don’t have to worry.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#140 Bill Gates (the Making of the Microsoft Empire)

What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.  ---- Microsoft had become the first software company to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year. Gates was the undisputed mastermind of that success, a brilliant technocrat, ruthless salesman, and manipulative businessman. Gates had slammed his fist into his palm and vowed to put several of his major software competitors out of business. By 1991, many of those competitors were in full retreat. I can do anything I put my mind to. Aggressive and stimulated by conflict; prone to change mood quickly; a dominating personality with outstanding powers of leadership. Mary Gates, in describing her son, has said that he has pretty much done what he wanted since the age of eight. Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual. Gates was immediately hooked. He found he had to compete for time on the computer with a handful of others who were similarly drawn to the room as if by a powerful gravitational force. Among them was Paul Allen. Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went. Gates and a couple of other boys broke into the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of time the computer showed they had used. “It was when we got that free time that we really got into computers,” Gates said. “Then I became hardcore. It was day and night.” Gates was 13 years old. Although he was only in the ninth grade, he already seemed obsessed with the computer, ignoring everything else, staying out all night. He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures in history thought. If you had asked anybody at Lakeside, ‘Who is the real genius among geniuses?’ everyone would have said ‘Bill Gates.’He was obnoxious, he was sure of himself, he was aggressively, intimidatingly smart. He had a hard-nosed, confrontational style. His intensity at times boiled over into raw, unthrottled emotion. To those who knew him best Gates was hardly the social outcast he may have appeared to be from a distance. He had a sense of humor and adventure.  He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with.  He had an immense range of knowledge and interests and could talk at length on any number of subjects. Although Gates may not have known what he was going to do with his life, he seemed confident that whatever he did would make him a lot of money. He made such a prediction about his future on several occasions. He and Paul Allen began to talk about forming their own software company. They shared the same vision that one day the computer would be as commonplace in the home as a television set and that these computers would need software—their software. Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed. That Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep. His habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza, and go back at it. And if that meant he was starting again at three o’clock in the morning, so be it. Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it. Gates spent many hours sitting in his room “being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.”Bill had a monomanical quality. He would really focus on something and stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought. Gates eventually gave up any thought of becomming a mathematician. If he couldn’t be the best in his field, why risk failure? Gates knew Allen was right. It was time. The personal computer miracle was going to happen.The personal computer revolution had begun. Its prophets were two young men not yet old enough to drink, whose software would soon bring executives in suits from around the country to a highway desert town to make million-dollar deals with kids in blue jeans and t-shirts. You’ve got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension. His parents and grandparents had taught him to be financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft. Bill always had the vision that Microsoft’s mission was to provide all the software for microcomputers. They became known as the Microkids—high-IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade, kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance. Gates’ tireless salesmanship, browbeating, and haggling had resulted in agreements to license BASIC to a number of computer companies. He took one look at the long-haired, scraggly, 21-year-old and decided the legal battle against Microsoft was going to be easy. Roberts had warned Pertec that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy,” Roberts said. “It was a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.” What sustained the company was not Gates’ ability to write programs. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers, convincing them to buy Microsoft’s services and products. When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, and took the phone calls. I’ll tell you or anybody else, that by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I had ever dealt with. Microsoft did not need venture capital; Gates was essentially hiring the firm’s expertise. Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren’t as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you are going to win if you have fewer competitors. If you talk to Bill about any software company there’s a very high probability that he will be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they are currently working on, what the problems are with their products. He’s very knowledgeable and prides himself on knowing what’s going on in the industry. Hanson suggested a different product naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products.The brand is the hero. People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that products come and go. But if you can create a halo around a brand name, when you introduce new products under that brand halo it becomes much easier to create momentum. With few exceptions, they’ve never shipped a good product in its first version. But they never give up and eventually get it right. It was all part of Gates’ master plan. As General George S. Patton liked to say, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. He was a very clear thinker. But he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn’t win the battle, and he didn’t know that. He was very rich and very immature. He had never matured emotionally. For the year that ended June 30, 1985, Microsoft had revenues of $140 million. Its profits had totaled $31.2 million. All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock. The combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Gates referred to as “being hardcore.” ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#139 J.P. Morgan

What I learned from reading The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow.  [0:01] This book is about the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American banking empire—the House of Morgan.  [1:56] What gave the House of Morgan its tantalizing mystery was its government links. Much like the Rothschilds it seemed insinuated into the power structure of many countries, especially the United States.  [2:46] They practiced a brand of banking that has little resemblance to standard retail banking.  [3:43] They have weathered wars and depressions, scandals and hearings, bomb blasts and attempted assassinations.  [4:44] Contrary to the usual law of perspective, the Morgans seem to grow larger as they recede in time.  [5:41] I was struck that the old Wall Street—elite, clubby, and dominated by small, mysterious partnerships—bore scant resemblance to the universe of faceless conglomerates springing up across the globe.  [6:49] Only one firm, one family, one name rather gloriously spanned the entire century and a half that I wanted to cover: J.P. Morgan.  [8:13] I am a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. —Marc Andreessen  [12:22] He carried the scars of early poverty. Like many who have overcome early hardship by brute force, he was always at war with the world and counting his injuries.  [14:22] My capital is ample but I have passed too many money panics unscathed, not to have seen how often large fortunes are swept away, and that even with my own I must use caution. [14:48] His annual savings were staggering. He spent only $3,000 of a total annual income of $300,000. [18:05] J.P’s dad’s advice: You are commencing upon your business career at an eventful time. Let what you now witness make an impression not to be eradicated. Slow and sure should be the motto of every young man.  [18:40] Junius Morgan reminds me of Tywin Lannister.  [21:19] Perhaps the contrast between his own steady nature and Pierpont’s unruly temper made Junius fret unduly about his boy. With granite will, he began to mold Pierpont.  [23:03] The Rothschilds are mentioned 30 times in this book. They had an influence on how Junius wanted to set up the Morgan family.  [25:08] Junius lectured Pierpont: Never, under any circumstances, do an action which could be called in question if known to the world.  [25:55]  The railroads were the Internet of their day: More than just isolated businesses, railroads were the scaffolding on which new worlds would be built.  [27:41]  Not for the last time, Pierpont contemplated retirement. He would assume tremendous responsibility, then feel oppressed. He never seemed to take great pleasure in his accomplishments. He craved a restful but elusive peace.  [29:50] He made over $1 million, boasting to Junius: I don’t believe there is another concern in the country that can begin to show such a result.  [31:19] He believed that he knew how the economy should be ordered and how people should behave.  [32:24] He had trouble delegating authority and low regard for the intelligence of other people. “The longer I live the more apparent becomes the absence of brains.” [33:48] Under his stern facade, Junius adored Pierpont; the obsessive grooming was a tacit acknowledgement of his son’s gifts. [35:36] Pierpont was, by nature, a laconic man. He had no gift for sustained analysis; his genius was in the brief, sudden brainstorm.  [38:40] Pierpont found Jack soft and rather passive, lacking the sort of gumption he had as a young man.  [40:40] Pierpont was extremely attentive to details and took pride in the knowledge that he could perform any job in the bank. “I can sit down at any clerk’s desk, take up his work here he left it and go on with it. I don’t like being at any man’s mercy.” He never renounced the founder’s itch to know the most minute details of the business. [41:31] The years change, but the point always remains the same: Morgan benefits from financial crises.  [42:14] Virtually every bankrupt railroad east of the Mississippi eventually passed through such reorganization, or morganization, as it was called. The companies’ combined revenues approached an amount equal to half of the U.S. government’s annual receipts.  [45:22] He has the driving power of a locomotive. He suggested something brutish and uncontrollable, but also something of superhuman strength. [47:04] Carnegie celebrated too quickly. He later admitted to Morgan that he had sold out too cheap, by $100 million. Morgan replied, “Very likely, Andrew.”   [52:15]  McKinley’s assassination would be a turning point in Pierpont’s life, for it installed in the presidency Theodore Roosevelt. Book: The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism [53:05] The 1907 panic was Pierpont’s last hurray. He suddenly functioned as America’s central bank. He saved several trust companies and a leading brokerage house, bailed out New York City, and rescued the Stock Exchange.  [54:33] Contemporaries saw Morgan as the incarnation of pure will.   [1:02:39] This was Pierpont in a nutshell: He represented bondholders and expressed their wrath against irresponsible management.  [1:07:37]  Andrew Carnegie after J. P. Morgan died: And to think he was not a rich man.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#138 Alexander Graham Bell

What I learned from reading Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray. ---- [0:01]  I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone, let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night all night or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hand around, read novels and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work. But oh, do not do as you often do, stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement with “Alex, Alex, aren’t you coming to bed? It’s one o’clock, do come.” Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes and after a while I go to sleep, but the ideas are gone, the work is never done.  [1:20]  Books are the original links: So many times Edwin Land referenced what he learned from studying the life of Alexander Graham Bell—from being motivated as Bell persevered through struggles to how to market a brand new product.  [3:06] Alexander Graham Bell had a lifelong passion for helping and teaching the deaf.   [4:13]  Alex asserted his independence early. Exasperated by being the third Alexander Bell in a row, he decided to add Graham to his own name.  [4:32] He often retreated into solitude, particularly when he was preoccupied with a project.   [5:27] Alex’s school record was unimpressive. Chronically untidy and late for class, Alex often skipped school altogether. Outside the classroom he demonstrated the ingenuity and single-mindedness that would shape his later career.   [8:03] He complained of headaches, depression, and sleeplessness. Perhaps this wasn’t surprising considering the undisciplined intensity of his work habits. In a pattern that would last a lifetime, he would sit up all night reading or working obsessively on sound experiments.  [9:54] A note he left himself: A man’s own judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right.  [11:42] The problem Alexander was trying to solve that led to the invention of the telephone: Could they solve a puzzle with which amateur engineers all over the United States were grappling? Nearly thirty years after its first commercial application, the telegraph system was still limited to sending one message at a time. The race was on to increase its capacity. Alex was determined to join this race.  [12:39] Samuel Morse is mentioned over and over again in this book just like Alexander Graham Bell is mentioned over and over again in books on Edwin Land and just like Edwin Land is mentioned over and over again in books on Steve Jobs. This speaks to this instinctual nature that we have to want to learn from the life stories of other people— to collect that knowledge and push it down the generations. [17:42] Other inventors were on the same track as he was. A professional electrician and inventor named Elisha Gray had successfully transmitted music over telegraph wires. Thomas Edison was already bragging that he was close to introducing the quadruplex telegraph.   [23:43]  Inventor and Yankee entrepreneur had found one another. Alex was unaware that Gardiner Hubbard was on the hunt for a multiple telegraph device; Gardiner Hubbard had no idea that his daughter’s teacher [Alex] spent his nights crouched over a table covered with electromagnets and length of wire. Alex had the ideas Hubbard needed; Hubbard had the access to capital to finance them.  [25:06] It is a neck and neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician—but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is—so that I have an advantage here. The very opposition seems to nerve me to work and I feel with the facilities I have now I may succeed. I shall be seriously ill should I fail in this now I am so thoroughly wrought up.  [27:02] Thomas Watson on what it was like working with Alexander Graham Bell: His head seemed to be a teeming beehive out of which he would often let loose one of his favorite bees for my inspection. A dozen young and energetic workmen would have been needed to mechanize all his buzzing ideas.  [27:41] Alex meets with an older, wider inventor named Dr. Joseph Henry: He told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention. Since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge he asked Dr. Henry should he allow others to work out the commercial application. Dr. Henry didn’t pause for a minute. If this young Scotsman was going to get the commercial payoff from his invention, he simply had to acquire an understanding of electricity. “GET IT!” he barked at the twenty-eight-year-old.   [31:42] Drawing inspiration from the life of Samuel Morse: He was frustrated by his lack of technical knowledge that “Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.”  [35:09] Alexander Graham Bell’s personality: He put tremendous demands on himself. His tendency to work around the clock, and to alternate between states of fierce focus on one goal and an inability to concentrate on anything, suggest a lack of balance in his temperament. He was erratic in his habits and intellectually obsessive, but it was his unconventional mind that made him a genius. He refused to be hemmed in by rules. He allowed his intuition to flourish. He relied on leaps of imagination, backed by a fascination with physical sciences, to solve the challenges he set himself.  Comparing and contrasting Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell: Unlike Thomas Edison, the ruthless self-promoter who saw science as a Darwinian competition and who always announced his inventions before he had even got them working, Alex hated revealing anything until he was confident of its success. Edison was an ambitious self-made American; Alex was a cautious Scot more interested in scientific progress than commercial success. [I forgot to put this part in the podcast]  [40:22] Struggle: When will this thing be finished? I am sick and tired of the nature of my work and the little profit that arises from it. Other men work their five or six hours a day, and have their thousands a year, while I slave from morning to night and night to morning and accomplish nothing but to wear myself out. I expect that the money will come in just in time for me to leave it to you in my will! I am sad at heart, and keep my feelings bottled up like wine in a wine cellar.  [45:20] More struggle. Alex almost giving up again: Of one thing I am determined and that is to waste no more time and money on the telephone. Let others endure the worry, the anxiety and expense. I will have none of it. A feverish anxious life like that I have been leading will soon change my whole nature. I feel myself growing irritable, feverish, and disgusted with life.  [49:37] What’s most important to Alex: “Yes, I hold it is one of the highest of all things, the increase of knowledge making us more like God.” He had bought a set of the new Encyclopedia Britannica and had announced he was going read it from start to finish. Nothing would dampen his irrepressible urge to explore, discover, and improve.  [50:36]  Alexander Graham Bell on parenting: He believed that play is Nature’s method of educating a child and that a parent’s duty is to aid Nature in the development of her plan.  [54:30] He never liked for anyone to knock on his door before entering the room. If he was following a train of thought and there was a tap on his door, his attention being diverted to the noise, he very often lost the thread and for days would not be able to pick it up again. Alex once said, “Thoughts are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.”   [55:20] Any disturbance was such anathema to Bell that he never had a telephone installed in his own study.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#137 P.T. Barnum

What I learned from reading Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson.  ---- [1:23] He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life. Less well known is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real-estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.  [1:54] In all endeavors he was a promoter and self-promotor without peer, a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.   [3:16] Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams.  [3:54] He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing.   [5:36] Barnum’s was 16 when his father died, leaving his family with debts: Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery “to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us this side of the grave.”   [6:22] He knew even then that he would only be happy working for himself.  [7:56] Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise.  [8:16] He is running a lottery and learns something he will use later in his career: He began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.   [11:06] The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come.  It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.   [13:48] Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him.  [14:15] His lottery business is outlawed by the state legislature. He is broke: He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to make money.   [17:03] I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.   [18:42] Up and Down, Down and Up: He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”   [20:03]  Broke again at 31: Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want.”  [22:00] The clever way he is able to get the money to buy the American Museum: He decided to seek out the retired merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family (the current owners of the museum). This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do.  [23:52] The customers he wanted and how he positioned his product: Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class. They had more money and were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities, and with their higher rates of literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper advertising.   [28:05] How Barnum planned and publicized his show. The details and machinations are amazing.  [35:47]  He doesn’t rest on his laurels. After becoming successful in America he decides to expand to Europe: The challenge was the new place itself, a place that had no notion of who P.T. Barnum was. Whether or not he would succeed in the land of his forebears would be a test for Barnum of his own worth, of how far he had come and how far he might yet go.  [38:05]  Barnum told him that a person must “make thirty hours out of twenty-four or he would never get ahead.”  [40:40] His drinking became a problem, so he quit: Making a resolution not to drink and then keeping it took both discipline and self-awareness and constituted another serious effort to turn his marriage and himself around.  [42:54] We are all promoters. Estee Lauder was a promoter of beauty, Larry Ellison was a promoter of the efficiency gains of software and of winning, Henry Ford was a promoter of service, Claude Shannon was a promoter of following your own curiosity. Promoting is just sharing what you love.   [43:55]  Barnum promoted wholesome, good, family fun and entertainment. He built a wonderful life for himself just off that very simple idea, that I am going to promote various forms of entertainment so people can enjoy their time. I think that is a very simple idea and if you take it to extremes like Barnum did you can build a life around that.  [44:29] Barnum is never focused on the obvious. He is always focused on 2nd order effects.   [47:49] Barnum’s house: Iranistan   [48:23] Barnum goes bankrupt at 50!: When his projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes in areas where he was less familiar, the results were uneven. I think this is a reminder of what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett told us: Stay within your circle of competence.   [50:26] Down and depressed: He added that he was “once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder.” He wrote that his “own constitution through the excitements of the last few months, has most seriously failed.” He was understandably if uncharacteristically, “in the depths.”   [52:02]  I did it before. I’ll do it again: “I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family.” He was, and had every right to be, proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and the self-confidence that went with it were not likely to evaporate even in this moment of distress.  [54:34] To give you an idea of how world famous Barnum was in his day: His autobiography sold over a million copies. That’s insane!   [56:55]  Mark Twain began an after dinner habit of reading from Barnum’s autobiography. The book made an impression on Twain, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as a public lecturer and writer.  [59:27] Barnum competes with Bailey and his impressed: Barnum was impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him, using his own methods. “Foes worthy of my steel,” he called them. The aging showman realized he had finally met his match, and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to compete with them.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#136 Estée Lauder

What I learned from reading A Success Story by Estee Lauder. ---- You can probably reach out with comparative ease and touch a life of serenity and peace. You can wait for things to happen and not get too sad when they don’t. That’s fine for some but not for me. Serenity is pleasant, but it lacks the ecstasy of achievement. [0:10] I’ve always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I never allowed my eye to leave the target. I always believed that success comes from not letting your eyes stray from that target.  [1:10] Beauty is an ancient industry: Women have always enhanced their looks. It has always been so. It will always be so. [4:18]  Lessons from here mother: The secret is to imagine yourself as the most important person in the room. Imagine it vividly enough and you will become that person. [6:01]  You could make a thing wonderful by enhancing its outward appearance. Little did I know I’d be doing the same thing, multiplied by a billionfold. [8:45] Everything has to be sold aggressively. [9:05] I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and sell it hard. [9:39]  My drive and persistence were always there, and those are the qualities for building a successful business. [10:38]  The moment she realizes she could make beauty her life’s work: This is the story of bewitchment. Uncle John [a skin specialist] had worlds to teach me. Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams seriously? Teach her secrets? I could think of nothing else. [12:09] The humble beginning of the Estee Lauder empire: This was my first chance at a real business. I would have a small counter in a beauty salon. Whatever I sold would be mine to keep. No partners. I would risk the rent, but if it worked, I would start the business I always dreamed about. Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. [15:30] Sales technique of the century: Now the big secret. I would give the woman a sample of whatever she did not buy as a gift. I just knew, even though I had not yet named the technique, that gift with a purchase was very appealing. The idea was to convince a woman to try a product. She would be faithful forever.  [16:30] I didn’t need bread to eat but I worked as though I did, for the pure love of the venture. For me, teaching about beauty was an emotional experience. [18:52] I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream. [21:01]  Despite all the nay sayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative. [22:12] Word of mouth was what built the foundation of her business: Women were telling women. They were selling my cream before they even go to the salon. Tell-a-Woman was the word-of-mouth campaign that launched Estee Lauder Cosmetics. [22:41] Great packaging does not copy or study. It invents. [24:50] Sak’s Fifth Avenue placed an $800 order. This was her response: Breaking that first barrier was perhaps the single most exciting moment I have ever known. [26:16]  “Missionaries make better products.” — Jeff Bezos:  I was a woman on a mission. I had to show as many women as I could reach how to stay beautiful. [28:07]  The free sample sales technique she pioneered in the beauty industry: The gift to the customer —the free something that would sell everything else. You give people a product to try. If they like the quality, they buy it. They haven’t been lured in by an advertisement but convinced by the product itself. [29:10] We took the money we planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products. [30:00]  A great story about how Estee Lauder convinced more women to buy perfume. [32:59]  A great story about how Estee Lauder expanded into Europe. [36:31]  Be determined and sell!: It’s not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it. One woman with definite ideas, pride in her product, and a hands-on approach could lay the foundation for a strong business. [40:57]  Our unique style has come from years of trial and error. Truths have emerged that have worked for us. Let me share them with you. [41:24]  Keep an eye on the competition. This doesn’t mean copying them, as I’ve made clear. Being interested in other people’s ideas for the purpose of saying, “We can do it better,” is not copying. Innovation doesn’t mean inventing the wheel each time; innovation can mean a whole new way of looking at old things. [42:10]  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#135 Joseph Pulitzer (Politics & Media)

What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. ---- [0:20]  Joseph Pulitzer was the midwife to the birth of the modern mass media. Pulitzer’s lasting achievement was to transform American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence.  [3:04] He was the pioneer of the modern media industry.   [5:06] Teddy Roosevelt tried to have Joseph Pulitzer put in jail.   [7:11] How one of Pulitzer’s adult sons viewed him: One of the strange differences between us two is the fact that you have never come near learning how to enjoy life.  [9:42] Joseph favored reading works of history and biography.   [10:12] Joseph understood fully the extent of the calamity [his father’s death]. He had been 9 years old when his older brother died, 10 when his younger brother and sister died, 11 when his father died, and 13 at the death of his last sister.  [11:50] At 17 years old Joseph escapes to America. A group of wealthy Boston businessmen recruit thousands of young Europeans to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. This scheme became Pulitzer’s escape route.  [13:18] Describing how he came to the United States: He was friendless, homeless, tongueless, and guideless.   [14:05]  One of the places he slept when he was homeless was in the lobby of a hotel. They kept kicking him out. Later in life he buys the hotel.  [14:44] What he said about his job of tending mules: Never in my life did I have a more trying task. The man who has not cared for 16 mules does not know what work and trouble are.   [15:18] Pulitzer was a voracious reader. When he was not working he spent every free minute improving his mind.   [17:12]  Edwin Land said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess". Joseph Pulitzer would have agreed with that.  [19:15]He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. Pulitzer was unwilling to put forward anything but his best effort.  [25:10] In only 5 years he had grown from a bounty hunting Hungarian teenager to an American lawmaker.   [28:54] There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they have never happened before.   [38:10] He is 30 years old and depressed. In the best of circumstances the loss of one’s only surviving parent inspires self-reflection, for Joseph with no specific profession or even a home, such introspection was demoralizing.   [40:45] It is hard to understand how much money newspapers made, especially at this time. William Randolph Hearst’s net worth would be the equivalent of $30 billion today.   [48:34] One did not work with Pulitzer. For him, surely. Against him, often. But not with him.   [51:44] Pulitzer was extremely ambitious. He was not satisfied to be the 500th best newspaper. He wanted to be number 1.   [1:06:20] When we think that, a hundred years hence, not one of us now living will be alive to care or to know, to enjoy or to suffer, what does it all amount to? To a puff of smoke which makes a few rings and then disappears into nothingness and yet we make tragedies of our lives, most of us not even making them serious comedies.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein.  ---- [0:21] He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community has to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership in the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on Life’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century.   [1:35]  In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land’s life was a manifestation of the indefatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.  [2:15] Land has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company.   [2:34] Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.   [3:30] Steve Jobs was one of Land’s most dedicated fans: “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. . . . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.”  [5:22] Land’s relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life’s work.   [6:19] He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand.   [6:31] The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor.   [8:56] He strongly believed that concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.”  [16:24] A way to describe Edwin Land: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”   [21:43] How to do something difficult: You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.   [24:34] Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it.   [28:14] Eisenhower wanted to know what the Russians were up to. Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”   [31:53] One of Land’s tenets: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”   [45:13] Land on why he had to sue Kodak: This would be our obligation even if one-step photography were but one component of our business. Where it is our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents.   [53:26] Kodak underestimated somebody you should never underestimate.  [59:47] A summary of Land’s philosophy on building a technology company: Creation of a new technology requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated system.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#133 Edwin Land (Polaroid and The Man Who Invented It)

What I learned from reading Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. ---- [1:14] He was revered to an extraordinary extent by most of the people who worked for him.   [1:36] Land did not earn a college degree, yet he has received more medals and scientific honors than most living Americans.   [3:36]  Land's life seemed to be primarily a life of the mind. His great dramas were largely self created, played on the stage of Polaroid, which he constructed for himself.  [4:14] All of the people that you and I are studying on this podcast created their own world within the world.   [5:55] The end this book made me think of this quote by Steve Jobs: Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.  [7:38] Peter [the author] worked with Edwin Land for 20 years. As a result this book —more than any other— has a lot of direct quotes from Land.   [7:50] “Nature doesn’t care.” By that he meant nothing in nature would help or hinder their progress to a solution except their own ingenuity. Nature offered no bar to the elegant solution over the awkward compromise if they had the imagination to seek it and the wit to discover it. Nature had no concern for the affairs of men.  [9:42] At 37 years old he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.   [10:55]  This product, this innovation, this creation— of one of the most important products ever made— came at a time when the company was almost out of business.  [12:42] Land said running his company felt like he was a physics professor leading his students on a grand experiment.   [12:53] I really do believe that Edwin Land is one of the most important entrepreneurs that ever existed. The way his mind works is extremely unique.   [17:08] Land on his motivations in life: I find an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangibly embodied in a product or process.  [19:45] Edwin Land at 18: A secretive young man who was well-dressed but usually disheveled, often highly agitated, prone to long periods of intense activity, rarely volunteering any explanation of what he was trying to accomplish, eating haphazardly, his sleeves rolled up, his shock of dark hair falling in his face as he worked.   [20:31] Edwin Land on how to work: If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.   [24:52] An example of Land’s obsessiveness: They start at 8:30 and they work until 4:30. Then everything shuts down and they all go home. They don't work on Saturdays or Sundays.They keep telling me I should work for them. How could I get anything done?   [29:15]At this point we are 14 years into the story: Nothing told land that he had built a business that could survive, let alone grow. [30:47] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron.   [35:56] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.   [39:15] Land hated to stop working. Once begun on a course of action, he wanted to experiment until the hypothesis was proved. He worked liked a predator, stalking a solution, with perpetual patience and energy. His intuitive leaps had landed him on the neck of his prey too often for him not to believe that he could do it the next time and the time after that.   [50:50] Land ran his company longer than any of America's great business leaders, longer than Thomas Edison, longer than Henry Ford, longer than George Eastman. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had done in his life.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#132 Edwin Land (Steve Jobs's Hero)

What I learned from reading The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker.  ---- [1:42] The word “problem” had completely departed from Edwin land's vocabulary to be replaced by the word “opportunity”.  [2:01] What was it about this man and his company that allowed such confidence and seeming lack of concern with the traditional top priorities of American business?  [2:38] There is something unique about Polaroid having to do both with the human dimension of the company, and with a unity of vision of its founder and guiding genius.   [3:36] Perhaps the single most important aspect of Land's character is his ability to regard things around him in a new and totally different way.   [4:14] Right from the beginning of his career Land had paid scant attention to what experts had to say, trusting his own instincts instead.   [4:49] Land has always believed that for any item sufficiently ingenious and intriguing, a new market could be created. Conventional wisdom has little capacity with which to evaluate a market that did not exist prior to the product that defines it.  [5:21] He feels that creativity is an individual thing. Not generally applicable to group generation.  [5:52] Land is a man deeply caught up in the creative potential of the individual.  [6:33] An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.  [7:43] Apple founder Steve Jobs once hailed Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid and the father of instant photography, as "a national treasure" and once confessed to a reporter that meeting Land was "like visiting a shrine." By his own admission, Jobs modeled much of his own career after Land’s. Both Jobs and Land stand out today as unique and towering figures in the history of technology. Neither had a college degree, but both built highly successful and innovative organizations. Jobs and Land were both perfectionists with an almost fanatic attentiveness to detail, in addition to being consummate showmen and instinctive marketers. In many ways, Edwin Land was the original Steve Jobs.   [8:36] There's a rule that they don't teach you at the Harvard business school. It is, if anything is worth doing it's worth doing to excess.  [11:22] Steve Jobs: I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences. And I decided that's what I wanted to do.   [12:51] In a world full of cooks, Edwin Land was a chef. [Link to The Cook and The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce]   [19:34] Land was asked what he wanted to be when he was younger: I had two goals. To be the world's greatest scientist and to be the world's greatest novelist.  [21:28] Everyone acknowledged that the future of Polaroid corporation would be determined by what went on in the brain of Edwin Land.  [22:01] My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do.   [22:54] Fortunately our company has been one which has been dedicated throughout its life to making only things which others can not make.   [25:06] Land had far more faith in his own potential, and that of the company he inspired, than did any of the experts looking in from the outside.   [27:30] Polaroid failed to build a successful company by selling to other businesses: Each [product] would have involved millions of dollars in revenue for the company, but each invention involved a certain degree of transformation of an existing industry controlled by an existing power structure. From this Land realizes he needs to control the relationship with the customer. He realizes he needs to sell directly to the end user.  [36:16] Edwin Land is inspired by, and learned from, people that came before him. One example of this is Alexander Graham Bell. Edwin Land is not worried about the marketing [of a new product] because Bell went through the same thing: Land apparently lost little sleep over the initial situation, calling to mind that the same sort of reaction had greeted the public introduction of Bell's telephone, 70 years earlier. The telephone had been a dominant symbol in Land's thinking. He began making numerous connections between his camera and the telephone.   [40:16] Over the years, I have learned that every significant invention has several characteristics. By definition it must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.   [40:46] It is the public's role to resist [a new invention, a new product/service].  [41:29] It took us a lifetime to understand that if we're to make a new commodity —a commodity of beauty —then we must be prepared for the extensive teaching program needed to prepare society for the magnitude of our invention.  [45:12] Only the individual— and not the large group— can see a part of the world in a totally new and different way.   [48:08] Land's view is that a company should be scientifically daring and financially conservative.  [50:30] To understand more about every aspect of light, Edwin Land read every single book on light that was available in the New York City Public Library. That reminded me of one of my favorite lectures ever: Running Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love [51:59] Land on the problem with formal education: Young people for the most part —unless they are geniuses— after a very short time in college, give up any hope of being individually great.  [54:16] Among all the components and Land's intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#131 Robert Friedland (Billionaire Miner)

What I learned from reading The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey’s Bay Hustle by Jacquie McNish. ---- [0:04] Promoting a stock is like making a movie. You've got to have stars, props, and a good script.  [2:22] He had learned that there was nothing that Robert Friedland could not sell.  [2:50] This book is about how Robert Friedland accidentally discovers the largest nickel deposit in history. He winds up selling that discovery for over $4 billion.   [3:50] Robert Friedland and Steve Jobs were friends in college. Robert influenced Steve.  [4:50] Friedland grinned as if he had just won an award. But the prize being handed down was a two year jail sentence for selling drugs. Police confiscated 24,000 tablets of LSD valued at $125,000.  [7:01] He is a very complicated character. He was involved in a lot of shady stuff on the way to becoming a billionaire. I was struck by the contrast between how the book describes Friedland and how he comes off in this sales presentation: China Is About To Ban The Internal Combustion Engine. He comes off as extremely likable and knowledgeable.   [9:42] At Reed College Friedland’s drug conviction no handicap. The prison term only added to his mystique. Steve talks about the mind expanding experience that taking acid was. He felt it allowed him to approach product creation from a broader perspective. He said Bill Gates would be more interesting if he had dropped acid.   [10:28] Friedland starts a cult. Even when he is in his early 20s Friedland is able to influence the thoughts of the people around him.   [11:21] Frieland turns his uncle’s farm into a collective. The farm drew a steady stream of students. Including an introverted freshman named Steve Jobs. Steve devoted himself to reviving the farm’s Apple orchard. The orchard would later inspire the name of Apple Computer.  [12:17] Robert Freidland’s influence on Steve Jobs: Robert was very much an outgoing, charismatic guy. A real salesman. He'd walk into a room and you would instantly notice him. Steve was the absolute opposite. After he spent time with Robert, some of this rubbed off.   [12:57] Steve Jobs: Robert was the first person I met who was firmly convinced that this phenomenon of enlightenment existed.   [14:07] Friedland returns from India and reinvents himself again. He wore flowing robes and sandals. He embraced universal love and rejected material attachment. Friedland and his disciples practiced yoga, Buddhist meditation, they grew their own food. They had children with names like Silver Moon and Ashberry. Friedland said he was a guru and his name was now Sita Ram Dass.   [15:29] Steve Jobs: Robert walks a very fine line between being a charismatic leader and a con man. It started to get very materialistic. Everybody got the idea that they were working very hard for Robert's farm. And one by one, they started to leave. I got pretty sick of it and I left.   [18:12]  By the late 1970s Friedland was creating another roll for himself. This time as a gold mining promoter on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.  [19:37] When he introduced Friedland to some of his colleagues, they dismissed him as a Jesus look alike who preached about gold as if it were a second coming. The 31 year old clearly knew nothing about mining or the stock market, but he had an unusual intensity.  [22:21]  There is a lesson here. He thinks he is going to find diamonds in Canada and he winds up accidentally discovering the largest nickel deposit in history. The lesson is that sometimes trial and error is the best way to discover an opportunity you didn’t even know existed.  [24:43] Friedland constantly recreated his companies to bring himself closer to what was becoming his god: Money.   [26:46] Friedland is a really good salesman. He has some negotiating tactics that you and I can learn from.  [28:34] He never let failure stand in the way of his next venture and he operated in an environment where money was the only way of keeping score.   [29:26] Outside of work Friedland had few interests. Friedland had a consuming passion for mining deals. He spent most of his days traveling the world in search of prospects or working the phones from his office. There was no time for hobbies.  [31:45] They almost missed the greatest opportunity of their lives because they were distracted.  [34:02] He realizes that when you have an opportunity you need to go all in on it. Don’t dillydally.  [36:26] Friedland is definitely default aggressive.   [37:50] The stock crashed, vaporizing more than $250 million of shareholder money.   [40:06] I’m not worried about the details. This project is worth gigadollars. You’ve got to start drilling right away.   [41:19] He is aggressive and patient at the same time. He milks this discovery for everything its worth.   [43:11] I would say 25% of this book is Friedland negotiating and playing all these different companies against each other.   [49:34] This is something that appears in tons of books. You have to watch your costs. Go back to Henry Clay Frick when he said, “Gentlemen, watch your costs.” Andrew Carnegie, Johh D. Rockefeller --they built companies you could not compete with because they could make a profit at a price that you could not. It is a massive advantage.    [51:49] Steve Jobs focused on simple deals. This is what he told Bill Gates when he came back to Apple: So let’s figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success.” When I recounted to him what Jobs said, Gates agreed it was accurate. He had been negotiating with Amelio for six months, and the proposals kept getting longer and more complicated. “So Steve comes in and says, ‘Hey, that deal is too complicated. What I want is a simple deal. I want the commitment and I want an investment.’ And so we put that together in just four weeks.”  [1:00:17] Things can improve a lot faster than you think: Under Friedman's direction, Diamond fields has grown in less than 16 months from a dubious diamond play into the world's most sought after mining company, with a market value of more than $4 billion. His stake had suddenly become worth nearly $600 million. Not bad for a year's work.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#130 Walter Chrysler

What I learned from reading Life of an American Workman by Walter Chrysler. ---- [0:56]The kitchen fire was the only heat we knew in the winter. Often I had to scamper barefoot across a floor where snow had drifted through the cracks of badly fitting windows. [1:56] We never spent money on things we could get without spending.  [3:10] This book was written about a year before he had a stroke and about two years before he died. The book is full of memories of parents and friends long dead.  [3:29] The memories he chose to highlight made me think of this quote on books by Carl Sagan: What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.  [4:10] And I think that is what this book is. It is Walter Chrysler speaking directly to you and I over 80 years after he died.  [5:18] On a few occasions his Dad would let him come to work with him [on the Union Pacific Railroad]. This is how Walt remembered that: The part of me that would be most tired would be my face. It was tired from grinning in my hours of ecstasy.   [6:35]  He learned from his parents the need to be self sufficient. They built their own house. They raised their own food. They created their own jobs. If they wanted plumbing they made it themselves.  [7:00] He is very passionate about mechanics and understanding machines. He has to create his own tools because he is too poor to buy them.   [7:35] I went to work at 6 in the morning and was through at 10:30 at night.  [9:02] I was a cocky youngster and full of confidence.  [9:34]  He really valued work and learning and the sense of self confidence you get from doing something well.  [10:01] A good workman was likely to mistrust any tool whose metal had not been tempered by himself. But I had an even better reason for making mine. I lacked the money with which to buy them. Years after I ceased to need them to earn a living, those tools I made were placed on display in a glass case on the observatory floor, 71 stories up in the tower of the Chrysler building. That is one of the most remarkable paragraphs in the entire book. Think about this: In one lifetime he goes from being so poor that he has to make his own tools—to having a skyscraper built for the company that he creates and that bears his name.   [10:42] Jeff Bezos has a quote that says, "We don’t choose our passions, they choose us."  [11:59] Walt couldn’t find the answers he needed in his small town so he wrote an abundance of letters to Scientific American: Whoever received the questions from subscribers must have thought that Walter P. Chrysler was a pen name for a dozen youths. At least half of whom were crazy. Yet many of my questions were answered.  [12:13] A great story about Walt’s lifelong association with Mr. Neubert.   [14:00] How Walt described himself at 22: I was cocky. I thought I was quite the kid. I had a sense of hurry. I had ambition and wanted to get ahead.  [17:48] It seemed to me I could not make anyone understand. I was ambitious. I dared to tell her [his future wife] that I intended someday to be a master mechanic. I realized I had a lot of learn before I could really hope to have that dream fulfilled. That is why I wanted to go to a bigger place so I could get more experience. Most of the time—even in my own mind—I was pretty vague about what I was going to do.   [20:08] Walt on his early 20s: I must confess I liked that sort of life. I liked the freedom, the sense of adventure, and the lack of responsibility.  [22:29] He eventually becomes the highest paid person in the entire automobile industry. When he goes to work at GM he starts at $6,000 a year. A few years later he is making $600,000 a year. But that is not happening yet. Walt at 26 was making 30 cents an hour.  [23:20] A great story about Old Man Hickey. There are a series of stories in this book where somebody took the time—usually someone a generation older—and took an interest in Walt and taught him a useful life lesson.   [30:14]  Don’t let a fine opportunity slide by just because you are comfortable in a job that you have mastered. Don’t be afraid of your future.  [31:29] I was learning responsibility weighs more heavily than iron.   [33:11] Another passion grabs him: I saw this car. $5000! I had $700 to my name. I never stopped to ask myself if I should, if I could afford to go in hock to buy that car. All I asked myself was where could I raise the money?   [34:39] Walt understood the potential impact of the automobile industry before most other people: The automobile is transportation too. The railroads have made this a richer country. Ask yourself what this country will be like when every individual has their own private car.  [36:29] He does something really smart. He goes from working for the railroads to working for the manufacturer of the trains. He discovers there's a lot more money and pleasure in manufacturing. [37:12] What was more important was the change in me. The fun I had experienced in making things as a boy was magnified a hundred fold when I began making things as a man. There is, in manufacturing, a creative joy that only poets are supposed to know. Someday, I'd like to show a poet how it feels to design and build a railroad locomotive.   [39:42]  Making the jump to Buick. He goes from making $12,000 a year to $6,000: This is not the first time in his life that he will accept less money for a better opportunity, nor is it the last time.  [40:25] There is a great quote by Marc Andreessen: Best thing about startups is you only experience two emotions: euphoria and terror.   [42:40] Henry Leland had great respect for Walter Chrysler. He said that when he explained something to Walt he got it a lot quicker than everybody else.  [43:04]  Walt compares and contrasts the mature locomotive industry to the new automobile industry.   [44:21] The result of continuous improvement: They go from making a car in 4 days to making one in 15 minutes.   [48:24] Walt is about to quit GM and go make his own car. This is what Billy Durant does to make sure that doesn’t happen: I’ll pay you $500,000 a year to stay on as President of Buick.  [50:16] He thought Billy Durant was a genius and one of the most important people that helped the automobile industry thrive, but he had a hard time working with him: That’s the kind of fellow he was. We’d fight and then he’d want to raise my salary. The automobile industry owes more to Durant than it has yet acknowledged. In some ways he has been its greatest man.  [53:36] Walt retires at 45. He is coaxed out of retirement with the high paying opportunity to turn around a failed automobile company: He says he will undertake the job for two years at $1 million a year. They say okay it is worth the risk of spending $2 million to see if this guy can get us back our $50 million.   [56:20] I remember leaving a meeting saying I would not touch this with a 10 foot pole. What I was saying I would not touch was later on to be revealed to be the greatest opportunity of my whole life.  [1:00:58] Walt’s great idea in response to not being allowed to showcase his car at the 1924 Automobile Show.  [1:03:48] Walt said buying Dodge was his greatest accomplishment. Other people at the time said he was buying a lemon. This is how Walt responded: That was the opinion of some minds that contained little understanding of industry and especially of the automobile industry. Buying Dodge was one of the soundest acts of my life.  [1:07:06] Every time we had a conversation, it seems to me, he shed tears yet always would start with them was thinking of the past when he was a poor young man. Sometimes, at first, I mistakenly supposed that he was feeling sorry for himself. Finally, I came to realize what it was that so deeply moved him when he contemplated his auspicious start, including those years of riding freight trains from town to town when he was hunting a chance to work and gain more experience. It was gratitude of course; gratitude to everything American that made possible his great success. He told his story in the hope it might inspire other lonely boys roving in the land to keep on trying.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#129 Felix Dennis (How to Get Rich)

What I learned from reading How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Dennis. ---- [0:01] How Felix started his first business with no money.  [4:30] Human nature does not change. We are cooperative animals. Those who wish to start a company cannot expect a free ride, but they might be surprised at the number of people willing to help them to some degree or another.  [5:11] This book was one of the most requested books for me to cover on the podcast. I was hesitant to read it because of the title. After reading it I think a better title would be How I Got Rich.  [7:36] A large part of this book is philosophical. He is asking us, “Is this really what you want?” He opens up about his drug addiction. About his addiction to prostitutes. About how he blew 100 million dollars and almost died.  [8:13] How To Get Rich sets to tell you about how I did it. How I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital. It will expose the many errors I made along the way, which will contribute greatly to the length.  [10:51] My constant refrain when I was bumming rides from friends as a teenager was, “You don’t understand. I was born to be driven.”  [13:00] The key, I think, is confidence and an unshakeable belief that it can be done and that you are the one to do it. Tunnel vision helps. Being a bit of a shit helps. A thick skin helps.  [16:01] Nearly all the great fortunes acquired by entrepreneurs arose because they had nothing to lose. Nobody had bothered to tell them that such a thing could not be done or would be likely to fail. Or if they had told them then they weren’t listening. They were too busy proving those around them wrong.  [17:24] On trusting your instincts: The first few million dollars I ever made was the direct result of trusting my instincts— which were entirely at odds with conventional wisdom. I published a series of 8 full-page folded posters with articles printed on the back and charged the same price as magazines with 10 times the number of pages. I sold millions of copies around the world. Those magazines have earned me tens of millions of dollars in the last 25 years and are still earning me money today.  [19:50] If you could turn the clock back for me by 40 years I would willingly give you every penny and every possession I own in return. And I would have the better of the bargain.  [20:28] If I had my time again—knowing what I know today—I would dedicate myself to making just enough money to live comfortably.  [21:00] Making money was, and still is, fun. But at one time is wrecked chaos upon my private life. It consumed my waking hours.  [23:26] Think of fear—not as the King Kong of bogeymen—but as a mare. A mare, after all, is a horse. A horse can be tamed, bridled, saddled, harnessed, and eventually ridden. Harnessing the power of such a creature adds mightily to your own. Thus the nightmare of prospective failure provides you with the very opportunity you are seeking.  [26:16] There is a lot of money and opportunity in unglamorous industries: One of the richest self-made men I know digs a hole in the ground to dispose of household waste. That's not how his company describes itself in its annual report, but essentially that’s what it does, along with building incineration plants. Glamorous? No. But in a good year, he earns $20 to $30 million. That's a sensational result for a small, wholly owned private company.  [28:30] Advice John Lennon gave to Felix Dennis: “It won’t do, man. It’s not that you can’t sing. Sure you can do a fair imitation of Chuck Berry, but people don’t pay for imitations. You gotta find your own voice or stick to editing your magazines.”  [32:26] One of Felix’s lowest moments: The electricity had been turned off in my flat weeks ago. So had the gas. I couldn’t afford to pay the bill. I sat by an open fire, feeding broken furniture I had scavenged from the trash into my living room fireplace.  [33:00] If you happen to read biographies, as I do (scores of them every year), you will find a thread that runs through almost any story of success against the odds: They don’t give in.  [34:08] It is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich.  [35:06] This is how I interpret this book. He is writing to an earlier version of himself.  [40:24] Felix winds up in the hospital. The doctors tell him if you don’t get off the drugs, and the alcohol, and the nightlife, you are going to die.  [40:44] How Felix describes the person he was in the 80s and 90s: It is especially lethal to a coked up, overweight, cigarette smoking, malt whiskey swilling idiot with too much money who believe they are built of titanium.  [41:10] On Winston Churchill and the importance of self belief: The iron determination and self belief of this one old man meant more to Britain at that moment than all the other Kings and Queens and her long history. [44:02] But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly. Do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and worse still, if you believe you never can believe, then by all means go on reading this book. But take it from me, your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.  [45:35] I may well have been able to put a few hundred million in the bank because I recognized that this getting rich malarkey is just a game. A delusion, if you will.  [48:19] Ownership is not the most important thing. It is the only thing that counts.  [54:17] The most important part of the book. I won’t take notes on it. You just have to read it or listen to me read it.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. 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