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

I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I started talking crazy and then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side and they're like, shut the fuck up. Stop telling people all this shit. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road. All right, everyone. Today's podcast is special. The guy's name is David Senra. He's got a podcast called Founders. I've listened to dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes. He basically breaks down different biographies that he read about business people, artists, whatever, anyone who's, you know, the 1% of the 1% of their field. And on the pod today, we talked about the difference between people who are like somewhat successful and the people who are absolute killers and what traits they have and what the commonalities. So it's super fascinating to hear from someone who's read literally 3 or 400 biographies and studies this for a living. He talks about the commonalities of these killers, whether that's UFC fighters or billionaires. It's really fascinating. I think you're going to dig it. My favorite part is when we talk about, um, he has this really cool quote from Joe Rogan describing, uh, Jon Jones, who's this like amazing UFC fighter, and the difference between like Jon and the rest of the people. And then somehow David weaves that in with business people and he lists out all the business people who he says are the 1% of the 1%, the killers of the killers. And he talks about what traits they have and what you can learn. I think you'll dig it. Check it out. Talk soon. Yeah, you know what's up. I understand why you'd live in Miami if your family's there. I don't love like New York, but I'm eventually going to move there for family. So the family, you know, supersedes all the other stuff.

That's the only reason we stay here. My wife is Colombian. So 70% of Miami-Dade County is Hispanic. All her family's here. Like I've been traveling a lot more for work and like the day I leave, my kids wake up, her mom is here, her grandmother's here. So like from my kids' perspective, like Colombians are, they, with South Americans in general, what they do is like, they're very, I like their multi-generational, like housing. My wife grew up in a house connected to her grandparents' house.

Yeah, I dig that too.

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

What'd you do before FoundersPod?

I've done a shit ton of businesses, like since I was like 18 years old, like I think me and you are around the same age. I might be a few years older than you. The business I was working on right before I actually started Founders while I was doing it was this thing called RoboDB, which is a way to track the origin, the true origination points of robocalls through the payment network. And it was just like a business that was like kind of like a clever hack, but I wasn't interested in it the way I was podcasting. So like I was obsessed with podcasting for years. I remember my friend Eric, he invited me over to his house one time. It's like 2010. He's like, dude, you gotta come over and watch this new podcast. Do you remember the guy from Fear Factor? And I'm like, yeah, I watched Fear Factor when I was in like high school. And we went to his house and it's like when Joe Rogan was on like the white couch. And he was on like Ustream and then he'd have like, there'd be like things falling down. He'd have like, you know, the cheesy kind of, uh, like there'd be stars or sparkles and stuff like that. I'm like, what is this? He's like, oh, you can also listen to it on your phone anytime you want. And that just blew my fucking mind.

I could not believe that. Yeah. But were you successful or were you kind of like a struggling entrepreneur? And then this is like, is this your first like breakout?

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

How big is the pod now in terms of listenership?

It's fucking crazy right now. Uh, we, a few weeks ago, I just cracked, uh, over 100,000 individual listeners.

Per episode?

No, no, overall. Like, so when I sign into like my podcast host, it says like unique listeners last 7 days. That's the only, I don't, I'm not big on metrics. Like I don't pay attention at all. I just try to make what I want and then put it out into the world. But the one number I want to see grow is that number because Founders is also weird because like you could discover it now and because the back catalog's evergreen, evergreen. Like I'll talk to people, they'll listen to like the first, the latest few episodes and then they'll go back and listen to shit that I did like 6 years ago, 5 years ago.

And it, it's just you, right? Like, cause you're part of, uh, what, uh, Colossal?

Is that it? Colossus.

Colossus.

Sorry.

Uh, and so they like sell your ads and they take a cut. And so is it just you and a producer or what?

Nothing. Just me. So, um, Patrick, I love, we were talking a little bit about this yesterday. Like, um, the one thing I love about podcasting industry is how, uh, positive sum everybody is. So I listened to Pat podcast, uh, Patrick's podcast for years. Like, uh, I was taking notes on his podcast. I went back and looked since like 2019. And last year in May, uh, my podcast is a subscription podcast, right? You could listen to the first 30 minutes. You're going to listen to all of it for the first 6 years of it and its existence. You had to pay to upgrade, right?

I had no—

Yours?

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, wait. Oh, I didn't know you. So you've been doing this for 6 years.

Yeah. Started in 2016.

Oh, wow. That's crazy. I, to, to me, like you just got on my radar like a year ago, maybe.

Everybody was like that. So Patrick played, played a big role in that. Uh, the David and Ben from Acquire, they played a big role that was just on your pod, uh, your podcast. Um, but what happened was, um, Patrick just randomly tweeted it out. You know, he's got, you know, this massive, very valuable audience, like in size, in terms of size and then average net worth. Like he's got one of the most, I would argue he's got the most valuable business podcast audience in the world, right? If you fact, if you keep, if you, uh, like the fact the, the average net worth of his audience is fucking extreme. And, uh, he just randomly tweeted out like last May, hey, um, I never find new podcasts to listen to. I think David Senter's Founders Podcast is excellent. You should listen.. And I was like, what the fuck? Like, I know you, dude. Like, I watch, listen to your podcast. Like, this is crazy. And so I had become friends with this guy named Sam Hinkie. Sam Hinkie is the former general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. Now he's an investor in Silicon Valley. And I knew he knew Patrick. And so I screenshotted that. I was like, oh shit, look what your friend Patrick said. And then Sam immediately put me in a group chat with Patrick. He's like, you two should know each other. And so Patrick, we, the first time we talked, we talked for like an hour and a half. We had like the same interest for addictive podcasts, addictive history, addictive entrepreneurship, all sorts of stuff. And so we were just friends for a long time. And then, uh, I had several people, Rob Moore being one of them, we should probably talk about.

Uh, yeah, Rob, uh, Rob's been hooking me up constantly. Like I'll talk to him and we'll email back and forth. He's always helping me.

Okay. So this is the positive sum nature of podcasting. I'm starting to understand.

And for those who don't know, Rob Moore, Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman are part of our partners on the pod.

Rob is the co-founder of the Human Lab Podcast. So, okay. There is, this is the interesting thing. One of my favorite quotes, I've read every single thing I could find on Steve Jobs, right? And one of my favorite quotes that really described Steve's, one of his superpowers was that Steve was gifted at finding markets full of second-rate products. And what you, what you guys realize, I think as well as like people, people have essentially like when you're inside podcasting. The perception inside of it is completely different than when it's outside of it. It's like, everybody's like, there's too many of them. Uh, it's too late to get in. And like, you need to start a long time ago. And what happens is like, everybody starts a podcast, quits, right? And when you get in there, podcasts in general are full of second-rate products. Rob Moore and Andrew Huberman, uh, and I put David and Ben up here as well. It's like, they're first, they have first-class products and a first-class approach to building their business. So Rob, I've never talked to Rob less than 2 hours. Every single fucking time we talk, he, dude, look what I have on my desk.

Like, what's that? Oh, uh, uh, Rob, is that a Lieberman tweet?

Yeah, it's Rob and Andrew have been so fucking relentless with supporting me for no, like they have no benefit, right? They just, they keep like every time Andrew tweets about me, the fact that He listens, one of his favorite podcasts is Founders. He sends me up to church just from his tweets. And so Rob's like, hey, um, we had this new studio. Next time you're in California, uh, next time you're in California, come out and like, I'd love to give you a tour. And our mutual friend, Andrew Wilkinson, had invited me to Victoria. So I was like, oh, I'm actually flying to Victoria like next week. That's a pain in the ass to get to from Miami. I'll just stop in California for a few days and see you. We, I meet up with Rob.

We talked— Is Rob in LA? Is Rob in LA?

Yeah. Yeah. Rob's in Malibu. I met up with Rob. We talked podcasting for 7 straight hours.

That's crazy.

Literally, we meet up to have lunch. We stay at the same spot. They're like, uh, it's dinner now. We're like, let's fucking have dinner. And then we stayed there the whole time. And then he's like, let's go to the fucking studio. They are like, to me, I think, uh, not only is Huberman's, the size of his audience is fucking crazy, but if you break down on how they think about the quality of the product, how they think about the quality of the business model. Like there's ideas I got from Rob that I told Andrew or that I told, um, Ben and David that they're now using that it's going to wind up making them millions of dollars. Like the way they set up their business, their ads, everything. They're just fucking first class dudes.

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

Okay. So I think this is, um, me and you were talking about the advantage I think you have at Hampton, which is really fucking special. And it's an echo of what Bloomberg used to build his very unique business. Like your business is going to produce a lot of proprietary information. It's extremely valuable to other founders. And then you can repurpose them. Dude, you know how many fucking people I've had dinner with that tell me about the Hampton blog and you guys just, just launched it.

Oh, really? I think we just, we just, we just like, I threw it together like, I think 2 weeks ago.

I heard about some guy doing concrete or some shit or gravel or something. He was like searching. They told me that he was like searching through like, Like War Dogs.

Yeah. Like looking for the— looking through a database of government contracts and seeing what he can fulfill.

Yeah. So what I realized is when I text you that yesterday was I'm doing similar things. So I realized what— and this is the magic of— you said something that was really smart where you're like, rich people read a lot. And it's very true. Our mutual friend, Andrew Wilkinson, just tweeted out. He's like, I wish I could short entrepreneurs that don't read. And that's what I found as well. It's like, not only if the people I studied, it's like they had, they were so good at what they did that somebody wrote a book about them. Like, that's fucking crazy. Right? And then you read their books and they're constantly reading biographies, studying great work that came before them. And so the Bloomberg idea was like, he, his business is fundamentally, he's like, I want to sell you like a $27,000 a year subscription or whatever it is. Uh, my business, his business collects a bunch of unique information and he made like a bunch of atomic pieces of content, started a media company. As a way to get his brand. And so 90% of the people that read his media will never buy a subscription, but his media is spread around everywhere. Just like there's a ton of people that are going to read your Hampton blog. I, you know, obviously I think you should do a podcast if you do fucking short form, whatever. It's like, that's going to be spread out like that. And then, you know, 1%, 5% of those are going to convert to members. And like, the more members you have, the more data you have, the more data you have, the more members you have, and just keeps going. So to answer your question, I just hit episode 300. I've read over 300 biographies of entrepreneurs so far. Uh, I have, that's over 100,000 pages. What I realized is like over time I'd input all my highlights into this app called Readwise. And so everything you see externally are just, uh, they're essentially, uh, highlights that I, like the one I, I, I posted yesterday, we were talking about Bloomberg and I was like, oh fuck, let me go and, uh, read back through my highlights on Bloomberg. And I found one where he said that like, you know, if you, you should try to love what you do because you love what you do, you do a lot. And then, you know, that compounds everything. And I put that out and like immediately these hit and then people discover the podcast and they start listening.

And so me and you and Bloomberg are kind of running the same idea, but in, you know, different, uh, different industries or different, like, dude, I use up until like, uh, so 2 years ago, up until 2 years ago, I was reading a ton. And then I, uh, so I like to listen to books. I like to listen. I'll listen. I have one that I'm listening to and one that I read at night and I like to listen while I'm on walks. And there's this one narrator who I love. Have you ever listened to Titan or Vanderbilt's book Tycoon? He, the narrator is awesome. And so I was like, I love this narrator. He's so good. So I went and found books just by that narrator and I started scrolling through and I'm like, oh my God, this guy's done 1,500 books or something like that that he's narrated. And it's like How to Win Friends and Influence and like all these like businessy self-helpy books. And then I go and looked at his LinkedIn and I'm like, huh, he's reading all these books. Why isn't he more successful? And I'm like, I'm like, huh, that doesn't work. So I got angry. So now I, now I read mostly for fun. And if I don't like something, I brush it off, I put it away. And so I quit reading nonfiction books. Now I strictly read biographies or history.

So your friend Ryan Holiday has a great post where he shared like his top 25 biography recommendations and his, the intro to that post is excellent because he's like, listen, you go to the most successful people in the world, look at their bookshelves. They read a lot of shit. They all read biographies. All of them without exception. He's like some of the most high value reading you can do. You notice that as you read through the biographies, like they're all doing this. Now, here's the thing. This actually clicked for me the other day. You know Eric Jorgensen, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

He helped Naval write The Thing.

When's the last time you read it?

I read it all the time. I refer, I use it like a textbook. So like when I think about like equity and how much to pay people, I go and read the sections that he talks about. So I have it. If you just Google how to get rich free PDF, there's like a website that has it. So I've bought many copies and I have a bunch of his biographies, but I'll just like refer to that all the constantly. I'm like, all right, what did he say about this? And he gives like pretty practical advice, like on company credit cards, like how do you issue your company credit cards and like office space. And so I refer back to it constantly.

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

We, uh, so you and I are both UFC fans. Yes. And I was asking you, I was like, what should we talk about? And I was like, I want to talk about the difference between the people who are pretty good and absolute killers. Yeah. And you were like, oh, that's just like in UFC. That's kind of the same way. But I, cause I'm fascinated with like, I listened to yours, uh, I think his name is Sam Bronfman, the guy who started Seagram's, which eventually turned into like all these other things. And then I listened to—

What a fucking savage.

He's a savage, you know, like he almost reminded me of myself, not in the savage sense, but he did a few funny things. He, he was like a hermit and he like didn't go anywhere unless his wife went with him. And I'm the same way. I'm like, I don't go out unless my wife comes with me because I have like some social anxiety a little bit. And like, but when it came to business, he was like pretty brash and like told people exactly what he thought. Except like when it came to social situations, he was like super not confrontational. If I go to the grocery store and I don't see what I'm looking for, I leave. I don't ask. You know what I mean? I'm like, I'm like, dude, I can't, I just don't even want to ask for help because it bothers me. But anyway, I listened to him and then I listened to Napoleon. That one was really good.

Oh dude, look at this book. Sorry. Sam Altman said the best book he's read in the last few years is this one. It's really hard to find. It's first published in 1955.

Is that the Concise History one? I can't see it.

No, no, no. I'm about, I'm going to do this in like 2, 2, probably 2 episodes. It's called The Mind of Napoleon. It's Napoleon's own fucking words. And that's cool. Yeah. So, cause you're saying everybody's obsessed with Sam Altman right now because of ChatGPT. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but Napoleon's—

well, Napoleon had this amazing saying. I forget if I heard it from you or Ben Wilson, but it was something like, you, he was talking to someone. He goes, you and I are not the same. I am born of a people of conquerors or something like that. Like he had this, like, uh, like this, he felt like he was just like, I'm here to conquer, get out of my way. And he had that at a young age. And I thought that was really insightful.

Um, there is something that you picked up on where people, it's fascinating how like, uh, you'll listen to founders or you read a bunch of biographies and you realize like the most successful people in the world, you're like, oh, I don't, I don't want their life. And that's the way I feel.

Like, for sure.

Out of like, I, I, exactly. First of all, you said something that was really smart too. It's like people diss like manifestation or visualization and they think it's like, like willy poo poo nonsense. Okay. That's fine. I can just tell you it pops up in the books over and over and over again. I told you yesterday, I'm reading this fucking insane biography of Tiger Woods. This dude is like 8 years old, listening to motivational tapes, writing it out. And on his wall, it's like, I am powerful. I will achieve my goals like over and over and over again. And you see this from. Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Estée Lauder, Bob Noyce, founder of Intel, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have you read The Education? I want to send you, I was going to ask you for your address to send you this book, but I was like, he might've already read it. Did you ever read The Education of a Bodybuilder?

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

It, the first 113 pages is, it functions as a, as a autobiography of Arnold when he's 30. And like the visualization thing, seeing things and like he said, he's like, he would lay in bed at night. And just picture himself on the stage holding the trophy of the Mr. Universe or whatever in his hand. Everybody's like essentially like bowing down to him. He's a conqueror to use like that example. What I find is that a lot of the people that, um, like even Felix Dennis, man, uh, I think his, the advice he gave was wise. Like that guy had a hole in his heart that could never fill. He spent $100 million in a decade, $10 million a year on cocaine, alcohol, and prostitutes.

Yeah.

You know, like That's a fucking crazy story in that book. And he, what I love about autobiographies of entrepreneurs, usually they write them towards end of their life. They don't hide shit. They're like, I was fucked up. I was a bad father. I cheated on my wife. I, whatever, you know? So the tie this into like the UFC thing and the, like the conquering is that quote.

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

So I want to read this quote that you and I were discussing where I think Joe Rogan is obviously like the world, the world's leading expert on, you know, MMA, like the stuff I wish I could talk to that guy. Just, I hope I get that. I hope I get the chance just to ask him. I wouldn't, I just want to talk about MMA and all the shifts in his brain. And I was very curious what was going to happen with this Jon Jones, Cyril Gane fight.

Right. So for those who don't know, Jon Jones is this very controversial character at age like 22, 23. He was like the first UFC fighter sponsored by Nike. He was the golden boy. He was the champion when he was 20 or something, and he's just a killer, never lost. But he, you know, has hit his girlfriend before. He's gotten arrested for drinking and driving. He's a mess. He's a killer on and off the field.

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

And he stopped them. And he, yeah.

You saw that? Could you imagine if those two guys, there was two small guys, like young kids are like spray painting and vandalizing shit. And Jon is just walking around like, gimme the can, gimme the can, gimme the can. I'm like, dude, if you know who that is, you'll give him the can. I'm like, could you already?

Jon Jones is like 6'2", probably. Well, now he weighs 260 pounds. I mean, he's like one of the scarier people you could ever see. And he's athletic. The guy's a freak. He's a freak. But he comes off. This is why this is interesting. He tries to come off like a nice guy a lot of times in interviews, and when you listen to him talk, you think, or at least I think, this is learned behavior, and you are actually a little more sociopathy than you are not, and you will kill someone easily and sleep like a baby at night.

And is he by himself?

100%. He's got a giant audience. We should actually talk about podcasting if you're interested in that. He, he, a lot of people don't share numbers. He had said, don't let me forget the thread on Bill Gates, by the way. He had said the latest episode, this is like 2 years ago. Uh, that got published, he got 19 million downloads on. And then he said, oh wait, then he said, oh wait, uh, it turns out some of them were double counted. So in any case, cut it in half, it's 9. He's got an audience of probably 10 million people that listen to him.

That would be one of the biggest episodes of the year for most every podcast. You know, the big dogs get a million or 1.5 per episode, but rarely. You know, Joe Rogan, if he interviewed like Bernie, when he interviewed Bernie Sanders or someone like that, that maybe got 5 or 8 or something like that.

So Joe, Joe's audience and Joe has more data than anybody else does. And all the Spotify exclusives has more data than anybody else does. He said, uh, remember when they tried to cancel him? This is also the magic of podcasting, man. Uh, which I know we don't like, we, we have to be careful here because we talk about it forever. Um, the problem is, is like you have people that don't, if you listen to Joe or you listen, like I listen to you and fucking. Sean, forever. I know even before we met, I like, I know who you guys are. I know Manifest Cowboy. I know the fucking terminology. We have an idea of who you are. Like the personality before you meet them, right? That's the magic of podcasting. It's like, we're not creating content. We're creating relationships at scale, which is very fucking powerful. And still people, most people don't, they underestimate how powerful this is. And so what happens is like you have, you know, people saying Joe Rogan's racist, you know, they cut the clip and then, you know, he's anti-vax, everything else. And so they try to cancel him and then somebody's been listening to him for fucking 10 years and listens to him 10 hours a week. It's like, you're not going to tell me anything about Joe that I don't know. And so what happens is he said his audience added 2 million people. I think we went from 12 million subscribers to 14 million subscribers on Spotify. Those are the numbers I've heard. Yeah. And it speaks to like this, he's still the biggest by far because even like the top, you know, humans and everybody else, like you're 1.5 without YouTube and everything else. So there's still just crazy how big and successful Joe's show is.

But what about Bill? Back to Bill.

That's insane, right?

It's insane. And then, so this extreme, Jon Jones, the serial game thing, when you hear about how he thinks about his fucking competitors, it's not just enough that he needs to win. He's like, I have to fucking destroy you. So there's this spooky fucking, um, this spooky story that's in one of Bill Gates' biographies. I've read two of them. And, uh, Bill would be able to tell you like, in the software industry. He's like, I know the CEO of every single software company. I know what their revenue was. I know what their, where their product is right now. I know everything about them. And so they all, they have a bunch of like frenemies. He's like, I want to destroy you, but he would talk to you. And a lot of them were getting customers at these early days of like these, uh, these software, uh, conventions, which is very like very new. And so this guy Philippe Kahn that he was trying to fucking destroy, he literally wants to put you out of business because he told his employees like, if I, if we lose a $50,000 contract, That's not $50,000. That's $100,000 because we lost $50,000 and our fucking enemy got $50,000. So you just cost me $100,000. He was like that psychotic about it. And so Philippe goes over, sees Bill sitting by himself in like a foldable chair, just looking at something. Philippe walks up to him and he goes to say hi to Bill and he realizes what Bill's looking at. He's looking at a picture of Philippe Kahn. He's in public in a fucking corner of a convention center staring at a fucking picture of his enemy. Like the, what Joe said about John, 1,000 years ago, we lived in a zero-sum. If you want to build wealth, what'd you do? Like you took their land or took their resources from somebody else. Yes. Yeah. So 1,000 years ago, that personality type, Bill Gates would have been, he would have been a Napoleon. He would have been leading an army. It just so happens that this same personality type that is, that exists today has existed forever, will exist forever in the future, can run companies and build wealth. And when you, when you study the personalities of these people, it's like, they're all like that. Thank God we are living in a free market economy or else there'd be, they'd be pillaging and raping and doing everything else.

Well, that's why my favorite era of American history is like 1890. So that's 30 or 20 years after the Civil War. So America is kind of getting back to it up until like 1920, because in 1920, Um, like the Sherman Act, which was the anti-monopoly act, uh, started coming about, and then the SEC was invented. And so between like 1890 and 1920, America was really the Wild West where we had some technology, you know, we had cars, we had, uh, I think phones were coming about, telegraph, so we could— railroads, railroads, we could— and the stock market existed, so we could like make wealth, but there was a few things that you could do. So for example, Andrew Carnegie and, um, uh, who's his partner? Frick.

Like Henry Clay Frick.

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

No, because they also own the politicians. Yeah.

And it was wild. And then like there was a time where JP Morgan loaned the US government money. And then there was a time, a lot of people don't know this, but JFK, John F. Kennedy, the president, his father, Joe Kennedy, was like the 7th richest man in America at one point. He got rich from insider trading. Then after he was already rich, he created, or he was the first head of the SEC that made insider trading illegal. Like it was like hardcore crony capitalism. That's one of the reasons why I like reading about John Rockefeller is because of all the things he did, he was dishonest once or twice, but for the most part, he was a ruthless competitor and he didn't lie and he was honest other than one big time he lied. But besides that, he was pretty straight.

And how crazy was it that his employees, like, he never, we never heard him raise his voice and he never said an unkind word to us. Now his competitors, different story. He's completely ruthless with them, but inside of his, you're not going to find anybody that worked inside of Standard Oil. And then obviously they hid all the things they owned. This is actually an idea I stole from Rockefeller.

By the way, his competitors, he wasn't really, I mean, he was ruthless, but he would go to them. He goes, hey, I'd like to buy you. This is a very fair price. Come and join me and I'll make you rich, of which many did and they got rich. And he said, if you don't join me, I'm going to destroy you. So let me know if you, and so to me, that's like, he's like, look, we can work together or I'm going to end you. You can pick, but he wasn't like necessarily like rude about it.

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

No, here's the thing. We, I don't know if we were recording. I like how you guys just jump right in, by the way. So I don't, I think most of our discussion was caught on the recording, but, um, I am very glad that I have a wife and two kids. Um, up and down, like here's, here's my thing. It's like the thing that I don't like and it's very present in a lot of these books is like, if you're an adult, it's your job to figure it out and like not let people take advantage of you. Right? So if like John D. Rockefeller gives you a bad price and for your business, you accept it, that's on you. What I'm in, you hear this on the podcast, like I'm induced into a state of rage is when people fuck with kids. I can't stand that. And so up and down my family tree, like I was the first person to graduate high school in my family, much less college. I'm the first male in my 3 generations not to go to jail. Right. And so like up and down both sides of my family tree, I just see a lot of like terrible parenting. And this is not necessarily my parents. They did the best they can consider both sets of their parents were shitty people. But like I saw drug abuse, I saw sexual abuse, I saw people going to jail, cocaine, all this crazy shit. Right. And so I was like, if I'm going to have kids, I'm not going to be a shit father. And I think the fact that I have a kid and a wife that like we get along really well, it saves me from not, I think if I didn't have that, I would literally work from the time my eyes open in the morning till the time they close. And I would just fucking like, I think the scary part is like, I, and I'm not trying to compare myself to, you know, you can't compare myself to Rockefeller, but like I have a little bit of that in me too. And I think I hear from a ton of people that listen, they're like, I think like that too. The whole thing is like learning from their experience. Like, hey, but they get to their life, they're not necessarily happy. You know, like, so I don't want that. Um, I don't want to destroy everything around me because I, I chased professional success. But I think men in general, you know, type A aggressive men, like that's what successful people. Super successful people are crazy. Like they're not normal humans. And it's probably 1 to 5% of the population that are borderline sociopathic. You know, I'm not saying murder people. That's, that's a little bit extreme, but like they're willing to do whatever they can if you get in their way.

And so I, I'm, I've been lucky that as we've, it's, it's funny that as we've, I've gotten more popular for like content and business shit, a lot of people in different fields who I previously looked up to. Like for example, a Lance Armstrong or someone like that, they'll like message me and I'll get an opportunity to hang out with them. And this isn't about Lance, but this is, I've been lucky that it's been a bunch of different people and I'll go and hang out with them a couple of times. And then I think, I don't want to be around you ever again. Like, and so like, I don't enjoy being around them. And so I've had a bunch of people who, if you told me when I was 12 that these people want to talk to me, I'd be like, that is sick. Now I just, I'm just like, I don't like being around you. It's actually not enjoyable being around some of these people. Um, because it feels like, well, I don't know exactly how it feels like, like it feels like we, we're in a pissing match when we're, when we're with each other. Um, and I simply don't enjoy it. And so now I have, I have a rule in my household, which is no new friends. Um, so I default whenever I talk to someone, I default to, I'm not going to be friends. Until it's like, all right, maybe after a while we can cross the threshold. But by default it's, I don't trust you and I'm not gonna let you in. Whereas before it was like, oh, anyone who wants to holler at me, yeah, I'm in. And then I go and hang out with some of these ballers and these killers and I think, oh, this is a very unenjoyable hang. You know, there's a bunch of people who maybe Ben might know who we're talking about, but there's like a couple people that are like some of the most famous and successful people in the world and we've been lucky to hang out with them and then we'll go hang out with them after the pod. And I'm like, oh, this is just miserable. I don't want to be around you at all. And so my point being is, to what you said about the most successful people being crazy, not only are they crazy, I don't want to be around them. It's not fun. They're not fun to be around. And so you really see that there's a price to pay, which is you are in the 1 percentile or 99 percentile of these other traits, which usually, not always, means you're going to be lacking in a handful of other traits. And sometimes that's like, whatever the traits are of you wanting to be near someone, I guess, like physically and hanging out with someone.

That's my thing. Everybody's like, okay, uh, like, are you doing all this? Are you gonna— do you want to run like the next Apple? Like, what are you doing this for? And I'm like, no, like out of the 300 people that I've studied, the person that I want to be the most like is the closest person that I've studied and read about that has come to mastering life is this guy named Ed Thorpe, right? And so it's up—

who's he?

This is a fucking crazy story. So it's episode 222. And the crazy thing is like, usually the episode title is just the book I read, right? This says my personal blueprint, right? And because what he did is like, first of all, he's a, Ed Thorp is one of, he was the guy that made the first quantitative hedge fund, right? The reason I liked him is because what I think you were talking about earlier, like you have varied interests, right? Where you need a balance because I've also heard you speak enough where I'm like, okay, he's clearly Type A and driven. And like, if you didn't have your wife or you didn't have these other things, I could also see you going, not sociopathic, but like, you know, no limit to the kind of empire that you want to build. You have a chip on your shoulders. It's like all of them. I do too. So I see that. Ed Thorp, essentially, like what he did is like he made a ton of money as a quantitative investor. Right. But once he had more money, like he didn't need to worry about money anymore. He refused to trade time to make more money because he understood. He's like, more money's not gonna make me happy, but my time is limited. He was a good father. He was a good husband. He was, he followed his own intellectual interests. Like he, he had fun. He, there, uh, Tim Ferriss just interviewed him and I would highly recommend going to YouTube and just type in Tim Ferriss, Ed Thorp, and look at that guy's picture and tell me how old you think he is. I've done this a bunch. I did it with my wife. I go, how old do you think he is? She's like, I don't know, 65. He's fucking 90. Because he learned when he was really young that physical fitness was really important. And so he gave me the best heuristic for health. He goes, I view every hour in the gym as one less day I'll spend in the hospital at the end of my life. And the guy's still doing like pull-ups. He looks fucking fantastic, right? He's like, I think he might be like 92. And so this whole balance of like your friend Ryan Holiday, actually, I learned this from his content was like what it means to be a completed human. We've known that forever. We just get distracted. It's like, you want work that has meaning, you want good relationships, you want to have fun, and you want to make sure that your body's healthy and you should feel good. That's it. There isn't anything else. I love what you just said because the same thing, when you have a successful podcast, you get hit up on all kinds of fucking crazy experiences, which is actually, you know, a huge benefit. But it's like, man, I'm not going to build 1,000 relationships that are like an inch deep. I just talked to the same people over and over and over and over again. It's like you have a limited amount of people you can actually be friends with. And yet we're all connected. So we're like, we're hugely distracted. So I was like, okay, I'm not smart as a Thorpe. He's way smarter than me. So I'll just fucking copy his blueprint. I'll write that down. I'll be a good father. I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of my health. I'll have work that I'm really fucking obsessed with, but I put guardrails on, right? And like, I'm not going to keep trading money or time, which I'm going to run out of for more money when I'm not even spending the money I have.

I want to, um, I want to ask you some more questions about history, but a story really quick. I, I have a friend who's 40, low 40s, worth a billion dollars, um, has a publicly traded company, and he was telling me the story about how he had this phrase called "it's never enough." And he was telling me a story about how he went to one guy's home who was worth $50 million, and the guy was complaining about how he lives in this fancy neighborhood and he can't His home is, his $6 million home is less good than, or is worse than the other people in the neighborhood. Then he's like, I went to another guy who's worth like half a billion and he was saying like, yeah, but you know what? I don't have a superyacht. And then there was another guy who had like 1 or 2 billion and this guy was complaining. He's like, can't get a sports team though. It's not enough. And so, yeah, I don't want to be around people.

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

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

It doesn't have to be that way though. I had the advantage because like, this is the crazy thing about podcasts you just said, like you never know who's listening. So I got invited to have a 2-hour lunch with Sam Zell, right? And that's fucking crazy. It came inbound. Sam had listened to the podcast I made on his autobiography and he's like, I want to meet that guy.

So Sam Zell, Sam Zell's a real estate guy. He's got a great book called, uh, Am I Being Loud Enough?

Or Am I Being Subtle?

Or Am I Being Subtle Enough? Yeah, Am I Being Subtle Enough? He's, uh, he's probably close to 90 now.

He's kind of—

he's kind of got this blue-collar-ish vibe about him, but he's worth probably $5 or $10 billion, something like that. He owned, uh, uh, all these real estate things. He created the REIT, I think. Then he like owned Schwinn bicycles. He owned the LA Times, I think, or the Tribune, something like that. He, so he's like a tycoon.

He, so you're, and you'd fucking love him. So he's 81 years old. He sold his, his real estate company for $38 billion to BlackRock or Blackstone. I don't fucking know. You know, they're all named the same. And so, you know, who the fuck, how, how often do you get to meet somebody that sells their company for $40 billion? And I couldn't believe this was going to happen. I thought it was like, oh, like this isn't really going to happen. Then I was like, oh, maybe it's going to be like a lunch I'm invited to. And it's like, Like 20 people there. It's like, no, he sat eye to eye for 2 fucking hours. And he's not like that. You would, the reason I, I got back after that lunch and I told my wife, I go, I want that. I want that. I want to be 81 years old, completely still unbelievably curious about the world around him, still doing deals. Doesn't give a fuck. He's not one of these like media trade guys, right?

He only wears blue jeans.

And so I like renting. Yeah.

He's like, don't own a bunch of shit. Just rent it when you need it. Like, and you're like, because if you own it, then you got to take care of it. This is advice from fucking the guy that, you know, obviously owned assets. He was buying, he's still buying a ton of businesses. The day before I saw him, he's like, he's dude, he was 81. He just, his eyes lit up. He's like, I just spent $300 million buying 75% of this company. He makes $50 million a year or some shit. Like he's just loves the deal. He's like, I'm going to be doing deals till I die just because he likes the game. He's like, he treats it like a game, but he's like, there's only one true luxury in life. He goes, try to get the private jet money.

Really? What was it like meeting Charlie Munger?

So that was fucking crazy too. And again, because like Andrew and his partner Chris, it was fascinating because I heard your podcast where you guys had met Chris and spent time with him. And I got to have the few hours before we had dinner with Charlie Munger. I had like a super long lunch one-on-one with Chris. And that dude is fascinating. I wonder if he'd ever come on your podcast.

I'm going to hang out with him tonight. I'm going to be with him tonight.

Okay. Yeah. Like you should, I know he's more private. He's another guy where I think he knows, like one of the things I loved about Chris, not only is he wicked smart, but one of the things I thought was so cool is like he showed me his calendar when we had lunch. He's like, look at my calendar. It's like every day at 3 o'clock. I'm picking my, I think it's his son, his son up from school. Like he's not going to be, you know, he's like obviously rich and successful, will continue to be more rich and more successful as he carries on. But he's not doing it at the detriment of being a shitty dad, which is like, I admire a lot. I fucking hate shitty dads.

So what was Munger like? He was present?

So Munger was, he has this line where he's like, oh, I didn't succeed in life because of intelligence. I succeeded because of a long attention span. Definitely has a long attention span, but that dude is way smarter than me.

Like if anybody's even, even at 98 or what, how old is he?

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

What was his house like?

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

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

No, he's very authentic. He, if you read Munger and talk about Munger, he's like, hey, don't have a lot of silly needs in your life. His whole thing is like, I truly believe that he just wanted to show what he could do with his brain so he could make a ton of money with his mind because he's really smart. He like wears like You know, he loves—

you wear flannel in your, in your picture, I think, like flannel from Amazon.

So the Costco, like his, one of his favorite entrepreneurs is Jim Sinegal, who I love a lot too. And one of his favorite companies, Jim Sinegal, or it's Costco because of that Costco could have made more money, but passed the benefit of their group buying onto the customer. And so Charlie is who he says he is. He's like, he's not, doesn't have a fancy watch, doesn't have fancy clothes. He just buys books as far as I can tell and talks to interesting people and makes a ton of money, but he's not in it for the money. He just wanted, he's in it. He says, he's like, I didn't want the Ferraris. I wanted the independence.

Who all that you've, so besides Ed Thorp, who all have you, who have you listened to or spoken about that you think is like in your top 5 people of like, they will conquer the world if given the chance? Like they are, they are the, the, the top, they are the 1% of the 1%.

I mean, I think the selection here is that every single person is in the top, you know, 0.0001%, because you're only the only to get on Founders, you have to level up some work before somebody wrote a book about it. What I would say is like, I just got done reading James Dyson's autobiography for the fourth time. And it is my number one book recommendation by far for entrepreneurs. And he's written two autobiographies. The second one's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm done with the first one because the first one he writes after 14 years of struggle. Like what I admire so much about this guy is like, he's not necessarily like a conqueror in the sense like he's going to go around. I don't think he'd be like a Napoleon in other times, but what I loved is like my favorite entrepreneurs are very adamant about what they want to do in life and how they want to run their business. It's not formulaic. They're not going around asking people advice. Like, what do you think I should do? What does my product look like? What is How should I run the business? Like, no, I have a very set mindset of like how I want to build the product, how I want to build my business, how I want to, uh, to like spend my time.

You know what I call that? I call that they bend reality to their, to their will. You know, they kick their dent in the universe. That's what I always call that. I'm like, they know what they want and they bent reality to fit what they wanted.

Read that dude. You can read his autobiography in a weekend. It'll fucking blow your mind because it's like, why is this guy not quitting? Well, what is, what is happening here? He's borrowing, he's got 2 mortgages on every single house. He's got, he's crying at the end of the night, never thinking he's going to be successful and he just won't quit. And what happens is like, you fast forward now, James Dyson is 75 years old. He owns 100% of Dyson company. He's like, you know, that company's probably worth $20 billion. It makes supposedly, you know, a couple billion a year for profit for his family. That like they take out of the company. What I love is, um, he, the company he owned before Dyson Vacuums, it was this thing called a ballbarrow, which looks like a wheelbarrow with a ball at the front. And he goes and rents, uh, does a photo shoot for the ballbarrow at this like massive estate that has been in England for like 300 years. 25 years later, he buys it. He's like, this is my shit now.

Like, dude, I've talked to a lot of people who love that book. One thing that One thing, so I remember like when I've just got started in my career, I was like firmly in the field of like, I'm going to pull myself up from my bootstraps and I'm going to make this into existence. And then I remember when we were selling our company and everything got done, and that was the first time in my life where I thought luck is so important. And even though I think I'm a badass and that I would, and I think that I could will myself to a very I think I can will myself to a really nice amount of success, but in order to have the uber success, which we'll describe as like liquid hundreds of millions of dollars, there's lots of people who are these types of killers who do have these attributes, but one or two things both in their control and out of their control went wrong or right, and that can absolutely change things. Like it could be like, you know, John Rockefeller didn't know that a car was going to be invented. Or like with Zuckerberg, like he would've kicked ass no matter what, but it just so happened that like the phone came out and that like has helped a ton. Or, you know, someone like, you know, I'm sure we've seen a lot of fortunes get created during a pandemic. Like luck is real. Like when we sold our company and that was my first big win, the CEO Brian got into a nearly fatal accident afterwards and I'm like, Dude, if that happened like 4 weeks prior, I don't know if this would've gone through. And I still think I'll be very successful, but imagine if I was selling my company for a billion or $2 billion and the CEO of the buyer got killed or quit. Do you think that with these guys, luck is real?

Of course. You said something great on the Acquired podcast. You're like, I've met a lot of these guys, it's like they're 20 times richer, but they're not 20 times smarter.

Yeah.

And a lot of Rockefeller is a great example, right? Like, so the best way to describe is like moderate level success. Like, you know, you could probably get to tens of millions of dollars in net worth. That's like playing poker, right? It's like, that's a skill set you can get. But like, to like Jeff Bezos, like the funniest thing I had dinner last night with two founders. So it's like, you guys know that Jeff Bezos's private jet has a private jet. Like he takes off and there's another one like that level of shit. Like there's so many things that got to break the ideas. Like. He knew he was going to do everything.

Why does he have a second private jet?

I'd love to ask him. I don't know. Like, so you know how this is like people track private jets now? Some YouTuber made a video and they noticed that every time Jeff's plane, maybe it's like the people he doesn't want on his plane. I don't fucking know. But like, there's a jet that follows his other jet around and like, it's somebody put all this together from public information. So that level of success, like he knew, okay, the internet's growing. We, the Everything Store was a code name in the hedge fund that he for Amazon. They were going to incubate it in the hedge fund. He was working for David Shaw, a billionaire hedge fund guy in New York. And so he knew it was like, we could sell books. And then he also knew he could sell other things, but likely, but he didn't know like he could invent AWS. Like there was no, like all that stuff that happens. Rockefeller is a great example.

Bezos, when he pitched the first investors, he goes, I think this could make $100 million a year if we're lucky.

Yeah. He, he, it took him 50 meetings with venture capitalists to get his first million dollars. And he said the most common question he was asked is, what is the internet? He's a fucking savage. He is the closest to me. Bezos reminds me so much of Rockefeller. Like if you read Bezos's shareholder letters are excellent because he's telling you what he's just like the Arnold books that I recommended earlier. Arnold says, this is my blueprint. This is what I'm going to do. He calls a shot and then he goes and does it. Bezos does the same thing, but the Rockefeller 20 times richer, but not 20 times smarter thing. I think it's obviously you're talking about randomness.

You're talking about luck.

Rockefeller. Was gonna be successful no matter what. Like the, the business he was in, as you know, it's like he was, they were wholesaling like produce and other stuff, right? They were just traders. And one thing that he did that I think is really smart is like he's work, he's like 19 years old working for two founders. He's, he's just an employee. He goes back and reads all of their books, goes back and studies their entire company history, memorizes all the finances, everything, and then knew more about the business than the founders did. Like that kind of personality is gonna win wherever he's gonna go. Now, he could have stayed in that business and made millions of dollars. Is he going to build the, arguably the most successful company of all time if it wasn't for the random discovery of oil? No, like he didn't control the fact that he was in the right. What I always say in the podcast is like, you find these people that the right, right person, right set of skills at the right place at the right time. If you're missing any of those, you're not going to build, you know, a trillion dollar company or, you know, $200 billion or $200 billion net worth. You need things to break for you that are outside of your control.

What do you think you're going to do? Next, like where, you know, where, what's your blueprint for 10 years?

Okay. So this is where I start talking reckless because I am probably the most optimistic person in terms of like how good of a business podcasting can be. And I start talking crazy. And then I have some friends that have built giant businesses on the back of podcasts. I was at dinner with them last week and they literally pulled me to the side and they're like, Shut the fuck up. Stop telling people all this shit.

So what's an example of a great business built on the back of a podcast?

They're buying podcast ads. Yes.

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

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know that happened. I knew about Onnit. I knew about Joe. I knew he owned like 30%, rumored to be owned 30% of the company. But think about it. Like, Joe has a ton of ad slots, just that one ad slot that he randomly put in. He probably added just on that ad slot, I don't know, $75 million, like depending on what the actual purchase price was. Joe, so this idea is like, I started talking shit where like, people are like, everybody knows because of MrBeast thing. They're like, oh yeah, there's going to be, I could see why there's going to be like some billionaire YouTubers, right? Like that, I think that is obvious now given where MrBeast, highly likely that dude, unless he dies, he's going to hit that. My point is, it's like, that's the deep relationship people have with podcasters is not comparable to the relationship they have with YouTubers. It's not at all comparable. And this is not at all new. What, like, what anything that— What do you mean?

People are deeply, are more, uh, they like podcasters more? Like there's more affinity?

It's, so do you know Blake Robbins from, uh, he's at Benchmark?

No.

He has this, okay, so, um, he'd be actually interested, somebody interested in talking. He's the one that gave me the spectrum idea. He's, uh, helped incubate Uh, what's the, what's the, uh, professional Call of Duty team? 100 Thieves or 40 Thieves?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know.

I know you mean they went from zero to like 80 million in revenue. I think like 18 months or some shit like this. So Nadeshot was, uh, developed an audience on, you know, Twitch streaming. And so, so Blake has this spectrum and this comes to you like, uh, there's people out there that have heard you and, uh, Sean talk way more. Than they've heard their best friend's voice.

There's a ton of— Yeah, because when they, when they put the headphones in, it's just us and them. And it's usually for 50 or an hour, minutes, uh, you know, 60 minutes at a time. Whereas a YouTube video, it's, uh, maybe 8.

Yeah, it's crazy, right?

Okay. So think about that. Like they're not flying in from Dubai to watch like a TikTok dancer. They're not flying in. And your podcast is technically a business. You have all this other stuff you could do. It's like, how many brands do people identify with so much that they'll fly across the world? I just did this. I'm introverted as fuck, right?

Yeah. You seem like it.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Yeah. But on one-on-one, but with groups, I hate it. So Shane Parrish from Knowledge Project, Varner Street was in Miami. He's like, dude. Let's do a public meetup. I'm like, oh, fuck. And I agreed just because he did it.

How many people came?

Uh, like 70, like I think around like 70 people came.

It's awkward, right?

It's not awkward. Uh, I, I don't think I'd do it again, but like, this is the thing, like, I, the only thing I did to promote it, Shane was supposed to send it out to his newsletter, never did. Thanks, Shane. But, um, I just made like this one minute. I, I was like, like 5 days before the event or something. I uploaded to my podcast feed. I was like, hey, you happen to be in Miami area, we're going to do this. Here's where we're going to be. And like, I'm like, all right, there's no, like, my audience is in like, you know, California, New York. There's like, Miami's not like the spot for it. People flew down from New York, Washington, D.C., drove for hours. And I'm like, what are you in town for? Like this. I'm like, why? Like, what are you talking about? And so it's this deep level relationship. So to answer your question, like, My 10-year plan is just like, I'm going to be making podcasts till I fucking die. I love doing it. It's the best job in the world. I think Sean tweeted out something that he's like, podcasting is the best job in the world. It's like, you get to be curious to learn all the time. And then you package up what you learn and you send it out to the world and all this good benefit comes back to you, you know, relationships, investment opportunities, businesses you can launch, whatever case is. And so I'm just going to run the same playbook that like Rockefeller did. It's like right now you scale with ads. People pay a very high dollar amount because your audience is valuable.

Yeah. And thank you for, uh, for promoting Hampton, uh, on your pod.

That was more than my first car, but I did it for free.

I appreciate it. Hey, I, I look, hopefully you get more, hopefully you get, uh, more than enough value.

No, that's, that's, that's a perfect example. I did it. You wouldn't, you didn't have to ask me to do that because I got so much value from you. The weird thing that you probably experienced too, that this is what people do. The conversation you have with podcasters, you can't, if you're not on this side, you don't understand. A listener does not understand the shit that like why every single person you talk to that's a podcaster has successful podcasts is like, I'm never fucking not gonna quit. Like I'm never not gonna do this. This thing is, it's like magic. Um, and so when, when I was like, dude, I think Hampton, first of all, is a great idea because, um, entrepreneurs have to be around other entrepreneurs. Like we do not think like anybody else. You go to, you're going to have, you said you're going to have a family. Once you start having kids, you go to these birthday parties and then you're back into, you're outside of your bubble and now you're in like random distribution of people. And every time I'm like, where's the, where's the entrepreneur in the room? And if it's not an entrepreneur, I got to leave. Like you have to be around them. Paul Graham has that great line where he's like, ambitious people are starved to be around other ambitious people. If you put them together, they bloom like dying plants with water. Which is exactly what you're doing with Hampton. The funny thing is like, oh, thanks for doing that. I was like, no, no, thank you for making your fucking podcast. I sit every day, I get messages like, thank you for doing it. I was like, dude, if you didn't listen, like I get to read books for a living. I need to be thanking you. So that's the power of podcast. So the answer to your question is like, I'm going to vertically integrate.

What's that mean?

What product are you going to create? By next year at this time, like you're not going to be, no one's going to be able to buy an ad on Founders. Right. Um, so, and this is the crazy thing about having a podcast. So like you have all, you hit on it. You're like, uh, super successful people read all the time. Um, they also listen to business podcasts all the time and you're able to build relationships with them where like, uh, I just met like, give me an example. When I talked to Chris and Andrew, I was like, you guys can advertise for as long as you want, but eventually like what you, I think ideally is like find a business. You guys buy businesses for a living. You hire managers for a living, like we'll partner up on distribution as opposed to like just doing an ad. Uh, you have people like Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best, like literally saying, hey, uh, whether we have to buy a company, we scale it, or we incubate a company, like basically he's like, we need to found, we need to find founder's version of TIGIS, right? And what does that mean? This is something that I think is public now. So I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying this.

So I, I don't know the prices. I know he, he says this publicly. He put $20 million into his company. He's got a giant fund too. My point is like, I don't know the valuations. I'm sure if I asked Patrick, he would tell me, but you know, it's none of my business. My point is that like, okay, Michael Elnick, who's a co-founder of TIGAS, the CEO and a fucking savage. Like he is, he is like the guys we study, right? I was, we, we talk, I was talking to him one time and he was just telling me like, oh, like what do you do to like decompress? Like you're in a, like he's building an incredibly valuable company and he's got a, like, and he's completely dedicated to it. And him and his brother both ran track at Brown. So like they blow off stress by like running like Phil Knight did in Nike. And then you ask him, he's like, oh, so like how much do you work? He's like, oh no, I take time off. Like I take Saturday mornings off. And it's like, that's it. Oh, Saturday mornings. So he's on it. I love his intensity. But he said, he's just like one at one podcast, they only advertised, they had their first few customers from like, you know, word of mouth or their network. But, you know, the first probably $50 to $60 million of revenue, whatever it is, like Patrick's podcast, because of who's in his audience, helped them scale. And as a result, like, then there's just a relation. There's a million things you could do. So in Patrick's case, he's running a fund. Like you can do equity. I'm not an investor. You said the other day when you were talking to, I can't remember who you were interviewing, like you don't like investing in people's companies. Like you want to like build your own shit. Yeah.

Investing doesn't. Entirely give me a dopamine rush. Like I'm in the game for adventure and I'm searching like a little bit of a rush and I find it to be very, it's so boring. You give someone money and you don't hear from them for 6 years.

I'm the same way. I'm like, I'm not interested. I get so much deal flow. Like, hey, do you want to angel invest? I'm like, no, like why? I would just like do my own shit. And people say I'm stupid on doing that. And they have to understand it's like, I'm not also running my life to maximize for most dollars made. Like that doesn't make any, like we talked about learning is not just memorizing information, it's changing behavior. How many fucking times you get to these super rich people that do things they don't like for money and then get money and they wonder why they're not happy anymore. All that matters is how you spend your time.

So what's your, what's going to be your tigas though? What's going to be your product?

I don't know what that, see, that's the thing is like, I was having a conversation with two founders about this last night. The good thing is, is like, we have some ideas, uh, obviously like we'll share that when time comes, but like I have all these really smart, successful people that like the podcast that want to help. You know, like Andrew and Chris Atinyi, I just met with their EIR. I think they have more than one, but I just had a conversation with their EIR. Patrick's trying to help me. The guy that connected me with Sam Zell, he's got like $20 billion of assets under management. He's just like, well, we can fucking buy a company. We can do whatever you want. You know, he also has investments in some companies that scaled up podcasting. So he understands the power and he just likes the product. So the point being is like, that's where I'm going, but I'm not doing it for money. I'm doing it because I'm completely obsessed with podcasting. I think it's a miracle. Like when I say I start talking shit about podcasts, I'm like, Podcasting's fucking, uh, it's to me, it's like the printing press for the spoken word. It's like as big a revolution as Gutenberg's fucking printing press. And it's just like, it's on-demand audio that you can educate yourself anytime you want all over the world. That's fucking crazy. They didn't exist when you and I were kids. It didn't exist. I had to fucking walk. I remember like being obsessed with talk radio and just having to listen to whatever was on the 3 or 4 dials at the time it was on. And then they go from that to like streaming it in the browser. I remember when that happened, I was a fucking grown man. I was like, oh, this is amazing. And then when my friend Eric's like, oh no, you can listen to Joe's podcast anytime you want. I'm like, what the fuck did you just say? What the fuck did you just say? That's crazy. And then think about that. Like if somebody like this is, um, a young kid. So me and you both know Michael Seacan.

Who's Michael Seacan? From our future. Oh, oh, yeah, dude. He's in my phone as Michael Future, and I never referred to him as Seacan, his last name. Never. I was like, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Dude, he's at my house. He's at my house like twice a week and I just call him Michael Future. I like, it's crazy.

I love how arrogant he is.

Dude, I had a guy at my wedding and I didn't even, I barely even knew how to say his, I didn't even know his last name. I just, I just called him Siever Russia.

I love Michael's confidence. And my point being is like, imagine being, you know, 20, 20. Because he would cold DM both me and you and he's really good at it. He sent me a DM. He's like, hey, I love your podcast. I took an idea that I got from your podcast, made a video about it, and it got 10 million views. Can we talk? I go, you did what?

What the fuck? Are you talking about? That's an impossible message not to— dude, I always tell him, he's at my house all the time and like, I'm not old. I'm 33, but he's 23. I mean, he, whatever he's first just in college.

He'll come. Yeah. Young.

And he'll come over and me and Sarah will be like, Michael, just tell me what's, what are the young kids doing nowadays? And he'll literally just sit there for 2 hours and just tell Sarah and I like all these phrases and words. And I'm just, I'll just listen. I don't even say a thing. I just say, just talk. Just tell me like what's up with young people. And he's like, well, just tell me. And I'll ask him about his dating life. He just talked. And so I always try to, this sounds always weird whenever I say this. I always try to surround myself with young, like younger people. And I'm like, just tell me, I just want to listen. Just tell me what's going on. And he always does that to me.

He's like, you, you tweeted at him one time. He says something like, oh, what are you going to be doing in 10 years? I'm going to be landing my helicopter. On your lawn or something. But like, I love his confidence because like you—

one time he said, uh, he goes, got some really bad news today. Just got back from the chiropractor. They said that the chip on my shoulder is permanent.

He actually gave me a really good book recommendation. She texted me yesterday that I never had found. It's like all these like, um, I've—

which one was it?

The ones that, um, I'm obsessed with the history of the American West and like all that personality type that's like, oh no, fuck the East Coast. I'm going to go. Across and do this crazy journey.

It was the one written by Philip Anschutz or Anschutz, the guy who owns the biggest ticketing company in the world or something. It's called like AWE, whatever it is. It's like one that everyone knows. I think they own Ticketmaster, I think. Something like that, whatever, multi—

He said they own the Lakers and the Coachella. He says, I don't know if that's true, but it's called How Where the West Begins.

Yeah, and they own Coachella. Anyway, this guy, Philip, A lot of people don't know this. It only has 10 reviews on Amazon. Amazon, this 80-year-old, $20 billion guy. He has a book about the West.

Then that's why a lot of people were like amongst my entrepreneurial friends, they watched the Billy McFarland Fyre Festival documentary and they were like, yeah, he did the wrong things, but it almost worked. And the reason why like a lot of my entrepreneurial friends were like, were like, oh, forgiving of him was it's like, yeah, but I've been there. I've faked it until I made it type of vibe. And like, 'cause I remember I did this for my conferences too. I would kind of fib. I would tell these 15 speakers individually, the other 14 had already confirmed, which they hadn't. And luckily I got 'em all to confirm and it worked out. So it wasn't, and it didn't end up being a lie. But there's like so many examples where I promised something that wasn't real, where I'm like, oh shit, I hope I can deliver on these things. You know what I mean? That happens a lot.

The point I was making with Michael though is imagine being his age, right? And being able to listen to every single episode of My First Million. Every single episode of Founders or How to Take Over the World. We got to give Ben a shout out because fucking, I think what he's doing is incredible. And like, perfect example is like, dude, You should just make as many episodes as possible. Cause like you have, you have Sam Parr saying your shit is really good. Right. Which is fucking incredible. And you have MrBeast, literally the biggest creator on the fucking internet saying only listen to one podcast. So I hope that like lights a fire under Ben as well, but like just the ability, like I would kill, I would have fucking killed for, that's why I think podcasting is a miracle. I don't want to do anything else. Let's say I never launched any businesses to answer your 10-year plan, which I don't see how that's even possible. Cause there's a ton of entrepreneurs I know that like want to partner on these things. But even if I just made podcasts and I just continue to grow the audience and I just made money on ad revenue, like whatever, I fucking, that's, that's plenty fine for me. That's the way I like to live my life. Do you ever read, do you ever hear of Chuck Yeager?

Chuck, is that the guy who broke the sound barrier?

Yes. So the fucking crazy thing is the miracle books is like, you never know, like when you're going to read some random sentence that you never fucking—

Everyone loves that guy's book. All business people love his book.

So I didn't know who the fuck he was. I kept noticing this, this old guy on Twitter in a, in a pilot suit talking hella shit, like unfiltered. And I fucking love these people that like really talk who they are. They're authentic. And I read his book. It turns out he fucking, it sold like 5 million copies the first year it came out in the '80s. Like it's one of the most successful autobiographies of all time.

Well, he was famous back then when he did that. I think he broke the sound barrier. Is that right? Or? So he broke two or something.

He was the first pilot to break the sound barrier. And I think he was the first pilot to become ace in a day in World War II. He's like, I love killing Nazis. He says, he's like, one of my favorite things to do is kill Nazis. And so, yeah, he would, there's a great line in his book where, um, he's like from this, like, this is what I also love is like great can come from anywhere. He lived in like this rural, um, what's that area in West Virginia? It's like Appalachian where there's like a mountain. So he lived in like the Appalachians completely like isolated, right? And so he describes the way he describes in his book about killing all these Nazis. He shot down 5 to become an ace in a day. You have to shoot down 5 enemy planes. And he goes, the Nazis came up into the skies and they met a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw. It's the way he described himself. But he gave me another blueprint. Let me see if I can get the quote exactly right. This is the magic of having Readwise too, because I can just think of something and pull it up immediately. It's like a giant search engine for everything I've read. And he gave me this idea where it's like, it's how you and I should avoid what you just described. You get around all these rich guys. They never, it's never enough. They don't seem to be enjoying life, which is what's the point of being rich at that point. They, it seems to be surprising to them that they're not enjoying life because they don't actually like what they do day to day, but they make a ton of money. So why the fuck, how the fuck could you take one third of your life is going to be spent working, right? You hate what you do. You think, how is it possible that you think you're going to get to the end of your life and like your life? It's impossible. And so he says, he goes, I wasn't a deep, sophisticated person, but I lived by a basic principle. I did only what I enjoy. And here's the part. I wouldn't let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren't interesting to me. And so it took me years.

Isn't that funny how that's like business people say it, pilots say it, it doesn't matter. Like people. A lot of people who I talk to, they ask me what my pod is, if it's all about business. I'm like, not really, because like, I don't give a shit if you're an artist, as long as you're like kicking ass and you've like defined what success is and you've achieved it. I think that's dope.

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

He's my fucking watch.

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

That's the best book I've read in probably 3 years. Endurance.

You're a big fan of his. I love Ariel Hawane.

You're a big fan of his. How much of your life is spent thinking about, you're a huge fan. You buy all the shit. You listen to stuff. Less than 0.2% of your life, right? I wish people understood how few people are thinking about them, and therefore you wouldn't chase prestige because prestige doesn't— all that matters is like the people around you. Do they, do they think you're a good person? Do they approve of what you're doing? And then your work, all that really matters is like your own opinion, right? Ben texted me the other day about an idea for his podcast, and I was like, dude, because he's like, he added music. Ben, do you care if I say this? Okay. So Ben added music. He's like, what do you think of it? And I was like, I don't love it and I don't hate it. I don't care about it at all. I thought your episode was fantastic. It was excellent. I shared it with friends, but I was like, he's like, well, the reviews are mixed. So you go, I saw the, I went to the tweets. It's like, some people are like, this is great. Some people are like, this is bad. Exactly. Fucking exactly. All that matters is what you like. If you like the music and they don't, then let them go find another fucking podcast to listen to.

Dude, his music though on that first, on his, on How to Take Over the World, that's the best intro song in podcasting. That intro song has helped make his podcast popular.

The UFC, like that, going back to the UFC thing that connected us too, like go watch, like I know you have, but like everybody out there needs to go talk about Manifest Cowboy. Conor McGregor is, he is literally in the documentary. The fact that he was, had somebody film him when he was flat broke living in his mom's he owed money to every single fucking agency in Ireland. And he's like, I'm going to be the fucking world champion one day. He's like literally manifesting this shit. Remember when he got the double belts and he's like, Joe's interviewing him. He's like, I saw this in my mind. He goes, oh, look at that. He's like, I dream. He's like, I literally saw it and I fucking made it real.

Yeah. That's why people like him.

That documentary is fucking incredible. It's because he called his shot. It's like this.

He just ruins it by doing it. He ruins it by doing all the other dumb stuff though. But it certainly, He's, he's, he's a, I have, I have a love-hate relationship with them where it's like, you've got all this amazing stuff. I admire you so much. And I also can't stand some of this other behavior. You know what I mean?

That's what he said.

I'm glad you fucking did that. I'm happy you came on here. You're, um, you're very fascinating to me. I've listened to dozens of your episodes. Um, I'm very eager to see what you become. I think it's cool. I didn't know that you're doing it for 6 years. I know that I've listened to like episode like number 10 as well as like 300. So I guess I should have done the math, but like congratulations on your success. It seems like you're kicking ass. It seems like you're in the groove and like, it's really cool to see someone Like it's really fun to see someone, um, like right when it's happening. And that's like kind of the cool thing about podcasting and like Twitter and all this stuff is like you can catch stuff in the middle, not before and not after, but as it's happening. That's where you are right now. And I appreciate you doing this. Where, um, what do you, what do you promote? Just Founders? I call it Founders Pod. It's a Founders Podcast. Founders. Twitter, you're Founders. Uh, you're always tweeting good shit.

Hey, Spotify, if you're listening, I'm, I'm, I'm easy to contact. You just DM me on Twitter.

We can talk. Thanks. Yeah. I appreciate you inviting me on. That was fucking super cool of you.

I appreciate you doing this. And, uh, yeah, it means a lot. And, uh, yeah, it was awesome. That's a pod.

That's the pod.