Founders

#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. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#128 Henry Leland (Cadillac)

What I learned from reading Master of Precision: Henry Leland by Ottilie Leland and Minnie Dubbs Millbrook. ---- [0:17] Henry Leland laid the foundation for the future of American industry. He had established manufacturing procedures never previously so effectively employed and took a position of leadership. In the next decades would be comparable in statute with, although quite different from, William Durant, Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan.  [0:40] It should be pointed out that Leland's contribution to the development of the motor car was the establishment of high standards of manufacturing.  [2:33] Henry Leland always got deep satisfaction out of anything which was made right. He had—in high degree—the pride of craftsmanship that had marked the master workman down the centuries.  [3:07] He developed the Cadillac, the self-starter, The Lincoln car, held up high standards of performance for the industry, and established the first notable school of automotive mechanics.  [4:05] A lesson Henry Leland learned from his Father: He bequeathed a singularly trustful disposition to his son, who could never believe that other men were not inherently as good and honorable as he himself. He was several times to pay a stiff penalty for this faith in human nature.  [4:56] A lesson Henry Leland learned from his Mother: “There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Hunt for the right way and then go ahead.” This simple admonition was to become a creed that would govern all of his actions as he rose in industry.  [6:10] He lives through the beginning of two industries in his life: Manufacturing in general and the automobile industry in specific.  [7:24] Henry Leland was not sure he wanted to become an apprentice machinist. The hours were long—10 hour days, 6 days a week—and most factories did not pay high wages. Moreover, farming was still the traditional American operation, which offered a possibility of independence and did not shut a man indoors with noisy machinery.  [9:06] Henry was already discovering the education that could be mined from books. At first, the fond of reading, he had been attracted by cheap adventure novels, which he borrowed from the local library. One night a stranger there, seeing what he was taking out exclaimed, “Surely don't read that trash!” Henry replied, “What better use can I make of my time than to read?” The stranger answered, “It makes a lot of difference what you read,” and then suggested some better books. The episode was a revelation to young Leland and he was soon reading volumes that acquainted him with American genius in literature, government and invention.  [9:55] Abraham Lincoln was his idol. Lincoln Motor Company—which Henry founds when he is in his 70s— is named after Abraham Lincoln. If we want to continue the conversation that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were having [about who is history’s greatest person] in The Billionaire and The Mechanic—Jobs said Gandhi. Ellison said Napoleon. Leland’s answer would be Abraham Lincoln.  [12:05] Even if he experienced a financial penalty, Henry Leland wanted to do the honorable thing.  [12:44] Henry wanted to work where he could render the greatest service to his country [during The Civil War]. He had learned that the U.S. Armory needed expert mechanics, and he had determined to help with war production. The particular lesson he learned in the Armory was the value of order and neatness in a work shop. Everything was clean and systematic, a state of affairs not common in early factories.  [14:37] Precision was his god. His personal work was outstanding.  [14:56] The discipline and subordination of factory life ran counter to American individualism.  [16:31] A nervous breakdown drove him from the shop to the far for rest.  [16:48] His mind, independent and teaming with ideas, made it difficult for him to work with others. He longed for a business in which he might put his theories to work but he had no money, a family to support, and his father and mother were in need of aid.  [20:00] The manufacture of the hair clippers [which he invented and brought to market against the opposition of his bosses] was spirited and rose to an output as much as 300 daily. For this I received a ‘Thank you’ and 50 cents a day more in my pay envelope. That was on of the times I thought I ought to quit making other men rich and go to work for myself.  [20:41] Henry Leland was good at sales by not trying to be good at sales. He wanted to educate people. He was gifted at selling because he gave the customer useful advice.  [22:26] As usual there was little money left over for saving. And yet Henry Leland was more hopeful of going into business for himself than ever before. He had brought his skill and experience to the service of the ambitious industrialists of the west and they had shown him in return the financial method that had put them in business. Each had organized a company by selling stock. “Eureka,” said Henry Leland to himself, “I have found it,” for he had great experience and he was sure he could raise a little money. His dream of an independent business might come true after all.  [23:40] Henry Leland had a lifetime of experience before he starts his first company. He was 47 years old. He had been working in factories since he was a teenager.  [25:03] Leland was a missionary for precision. He held people to high standards.  [26:07] Horace Dodge trained directly under Leland for two years before starting a machine shop of his own.  [27:45] The building up of a business, which expands rapidly and must be financed primarily from its own earnings, is often a discouraging process.  [27:56] How Henry Leland advertised the services of his foundry: We appeal for business only to those who want the best. We do not attempt to compete with the average foundry on price. We believe no other foundry can successfully compete with us on quality.  [29:57] “There always was and there always will be conflict between Good and Good Enough. In opening up a new business one can count on meeting resistance to a high standard of workmanship. It is easy to get cooperation for mediocre work, but one must sweat blood for a chance to produce a superior product.” —Henry Leland  [35:10] Henry Leland founds Cadillac when he is almost 60 years old: Henry Leland now embarked on the great adventure of his life; he would play an important role in the organization of Detroit’s first successful automobile company.  [35:27] Cadillac was making $2 million per year in profit when Billy Durant buys Cadillac for $4.5 million.  [37:21] Other men had built cars for many reasons—for the fascination of creation, for the profits in it—but Henry Leland agreed to build a car because he did not want to see a pet engine unappreciated and unused.  [38:53] Henry Leland was an expert in a field where experts were still uncommon.  [41:13] We buy the best parts we can find. I have always contended price should be considered last by a manufacturer in selecting materials for his product.  [45:10] His theory was that the one essential ingredient of success was mastery of one’s self as well as one’s job.  [47:57] A story: If you do the right thing people will remember.  [52:10] Henry Leland is 77 years old when he starts Lincoln Motor Company  [54:21] Henry Leland did not believe in quitting: It was manifestly impossible for the Lelands, men of tender heart and unswerving integrity, to take a cold, dispassionate view of the financial straits of the Lincoln Company. Many automobile companies had had money troubles; some had undergone a variety of reorganizations, combinations and other stratagems to keep alive and their directors and management had not been considered dishonest or insensible of their trust even though investors may have lost a portion or all of their equity. But such a course was unthinkable for the Lelands; as long as there was breath in their bodies they would oppose it. They had invested everything they owned in the company.  [1:01:05] Henry Ford and Henry Leland were like oil and water: We see a difference in management culture. Leland led from the front. Ford beat you down from above.  [1:02:27] How Ford management described the Lincoln organization: The whole organization is unusually harmonious and uniformly competent.  [1:05:40] A letter from Henry Leland to Henry Ford: I cannot but feel certain that you intended to keep those pledges when you made them to me personally and, while I cannot understand the long delay on your part, I still hope and trust that you will not shake my life long faith in humanity.  ---- 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

#127 Larry Ellison (Oracle)

What I learned from reading The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson ---- [1:06]  You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison.  [1:45] That was the way Ellison’s mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire.  [3:01] I asked Ellison how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid. What he thought was going to happen to him. “You mean did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No. This is all kind of surreal. I don’t even believe it. When I look around I say this must be something out of a dream.”  [3:57] Ellison is the Charles Foster Kane of the technological age. He is bright, brash, optimistic, and immensely appealing, yet somehow incomplete.  [4:31] He worked in the computer industry for several years but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts.  [6:08] The stockholder who benefited the most from Oracle’s performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle always holding onto enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged.  [7:57] To him there was now power greater than the human mind.  [8:23] What Larry reminds me of is a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. There were very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin’s life when people found his conversations more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to—that led him being able to raise money for his business. It helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way.  [8:53] When hiring, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid, steady workers.  [10:52] If he hadn’t made me rich, I’d probably hate him because he is obnoxious. He is not nice to people.  [12:39] He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audiences with his colorful speeches. He was known for his healthy ego and often seemed deeply insecure. Many people learned to accept Ellison’s contradictory nature.  [14:01] In 1970 sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year.  [15:55] There is a book called The HP Way. I did a podcast on it (Founders #29)  [16:20] The Oracle Way was simply to win. How that goal was achieved was secondary.  [17:18] Ellison’s early life left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child, and continuing into his days in the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention.  [18:15] He wasn’t going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life. He was going to leap over them.  [20:13] Larry reads a lot of biographies. One person he admired the most was Winston Churchill. He had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students. Both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even ‘gods have moments of insecurity.’  [22:30] A description of Larry in his mid twenties: Ellison was extremely hard on himself. He had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be and he was not able to attain it.  [25:19] He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity.  [26:44] The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be.  [29:50] For Ellison Oracle was a holy mission.  [30:33] There was a problem. A sheet rock wall stood between the offices and the computer room. Scott said, “Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up?” “I'll show you how.” Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall. Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it.  [32:41] Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race, with Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose?  [35:14] He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it.  [35:47] The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. “How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from Coke once the market has been established?” he once asked rhetorically. “It's very expensive. This market is being established. If we don't run as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and then do it again twice as fast, it’ll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share.”  [36:14] Larry put marketing first and everything else second. Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day.  [39:17] My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else.  [40:46] I was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity. I was completely intolerant of a lack of effort. And I was fairly brutal in the way I expressed myself.  [41:16] Kobe Bryant: I had issues or problems with the people who don’t demand excellence from themselves. I won’t tolerate that.  [42:30] The guy that was in charge of Oracle’s advertising in the early days of the company: My ads attack like a pack of speed crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition that a full moon does on a werewolf.  [44:00] Larry fundamentally believed that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can’t imagine how far fetched those ideas sounded. He would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world. People were taken aback.  [45:32] Larry goes against consensus. Every single on of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that that would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future.  [46:21] There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There is no middle ground.  [48:03] Even when he was feeling his worst Ellison remained an optimist. A man who couldn’t help looking forward. He lived in the future.  [49:34] He was terrified he would fail, confirming his father’s dark predictions about him. There was a note in his voice that you didn’t usually hear with him—just scared, worried.  [56:30] I am very competitive, and sometimes, when somebody does something really great, I get upset because I just feel like that isn’t me. And my reaction to Steve [Jobs] wasn’t competitive at all. I felt what he had done was so wonderful, and I was so proud of him, and I love him so much, it was almost as if I had done it. I didn’t feel the least bit competitive. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it.  [57:38] The only things that are important in our lives are love and work. Not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. Both love and work conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. If we can get reasonably good at both of them, we are in really great shape.  [58:21] He’s got the same problem the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness. To figure out what makes him happy. Human beings are builders. He is going to have to find something he really wants to build. He is going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea.  ---- 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

#126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

What I learned from reading The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie. ---- [0:01] Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs: I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it. I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime. [0:56] Larry’s choice for history’s greatest person could not have been more different from Gandhi (Steve Jobs’s choice): the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.   [3:15] Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model — four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great. [3:47] Larry’s favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything. [6:09] Now the book is technically about the America’s Cup race. But that is not really what it is about. This books gives insights into extreme winners. [7:50] Steve and Larry had found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents. Both considered their adoptive parents their real parents. Both were “OCD,” and both were antiauthoritarian. They shared a disdain for conventional wisdom and felt people too often equated obedience with intelligence. They never graduated from college, and Steve loved to boast that he’d left Reed College after just two weeks while it took others, including Larry and their rival Bill Gates, months or even years to drop out.  [9:09] Steve Jobs: “Why do people buy art when they can make their own art?” Larry thought for a moment and replied, “Well , Steve , not everyone can make his own art. You can. It’s a gift.” [10:46] What he (Steve Jobs) liked was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful and more beautiful. [11:02] If Michael Jordan sold enterprise software he would be Larry Ellison. Larry is addicted to winning. [12:38] An idea I learned from Steve was the further you get away from one the more complexity you are inviting in. [13:20] Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history. He learned more about human nature, management, and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business. [14:52] His adopted Dad said over and over again to Larry, “You are a loser. You are going to amount to nothing in life.” [15:19] Larry treats life like an adventure. [15:26] He envied how Graham’s parents supported him on his adventure, as this was the opposite of his own life. The story of Graham transported Larry from the regimentation of high school to the adventure and freedom of the sea. Here was a boy alone at sea for weeks at a stretch; dealing with storms, circling sharks, and broken masts; visiting exotic locales. Through it all he was his own navigator.That is definitely the way Larry approached his life. [18:04] Why Larry uses competition as a way to test himself: He wanted to see just how much better a sailor he had become. It will be an interesting test. There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn’t be had in business. At Oracle he still wanted to beat the rivals IBM and Microsoft, but business was a marathon without end; there was always another quarter. In sports , the buzzer sounds and time runs out. [18:50] It is not what two groups do a like that matters. It's what they do differently that's liable to count. —Charles Kettering [22:20] Why test yourself: After the laughter died down Larry turned serious. “Why do we do these things? George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it’s there.’ I don’t think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It’s not because it’s there. It’s because we’re there, and we wonder if we can do it.”  [24:11] Larry’s personality: He didn’t like letting them have control. It was the same reason he didn’t have a driver, and it was why he liked to pilot his own planes and why he had been married and divorced three times. He didn’t like being told what he could and couldn’t do. [26:04] With any new thing you do in your life, you are going to have to overcome people telling you that you are an idiot. [28:08] While Ellison demanded absolute loyalty, he did not always return it. The people he liked best were the ones who were doing something for him. The people he hired were all geniuses until the day they resigned—when in Ellison's view— they became idiots or worse. [29:44] What Larry is reading during the dot com bubble collapse: The books on his nightstand included Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir by Ernest Gann, The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith, and William Manchester’s multivolume biography of Winston Churchill. [30:25] Whenever Larry felt remotely close to being at risk of failure he couldn’t stop working.  [30:58] I’m going to read you one of the funniest paragraphs I have ever read. The guy Larry is talking to is insane: In the dot—com heyday he got a call from Farzad Nazem, who used to work at Oracle and was now a top executive at Yahoo.  Nazem told Larry, “Disney wants to merge with us. Why would we ever want to do something like that? What have they got?”  Larry answered his old friend,  “Gee , let me think. They have the most valuable film library in the world, the most valuable TV channels in world, and successful theme parks everywhere. Disney makes tons of money and they’re probably the most beloved brand on the planet.  Now, what have you got? A Web page with news on it and free e-mail.  Has everyone gone crazy ?” [32:38] Oracle has been around for 40 years. How many companies can survive 40+ years? [33:00] One of the key insights I took away from Larry is this idea about game within a game. I'm glad I'm reading these books about Larry Ellison at the same time I watched this 10 part documentary on Michael Jordan (The Last Dance) because I think both Jordan and Ellison figured out something that is fundamental to our nature. I don't think hey were not setting out to try to figure out something fundamental about human nature. They did so in their own process of self discovery. They hack themselves by creating games within games. They understand over a long period of time that your motivations, your dedication, your discipline is going to ebb and flow and they had to find a way to hack themselves. [38:19] There is one sentence that sums up Larry’s personality: “Winning. That is my idea of fun.” [38:38] There are a lot of extreme winners on Larry’s team. That is one of the things I like most about the book. It gives you insights into their mindset, how they prepare for their sport—which I think is applicable to whatever you do for a living. [40:00] Dixon said, “Larry, my advice is that we go out there tomorrow to try to win the race. We will probably get beaten and you should be prepared to lose gracefully.” Larry was stunned by the suggestion. After a long pause, he said that he could be gracious after losing, but wasn't capable of being gracious while he was losing, he had come here to win. [42:00] The Vince Lombardi line Larry loves: Every team in the National Football League has has the talent necessary to win the championship. It's simply a matter of what you're willing to give up. Then Lombardi looked at them and said, I expect you to give up everything, and he left the room. [42:25] Give me human will and the intense desire to win, and it will trump talent every day of the week. [43:05] His lack of interest in marriage was not about fidelity, but had more to do with problems he had with authority. In marriage, he had to live a good part of his life the way the other person wanted him to live it. Larry wanted to live his life his way. This part reminds me of what we learned on the podcast I did on Frank Lloyd Wright. [44:17] His favorite Japanese saying was, “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.”   [44:44] Rafael Nadal asked how Larry had made his life such a success.  Larry launched into a long philosophical musing about how innovation in technology is quite often based on finding errors in conventional wisdom, and when you find an error you have to have the courage take a different approach even when everyone else says you’re wrong.  Then Larry abruptly stopped himself.  “Forget everything I just said. The answer is simple. I never give up.”  [46:09] He was incapable of waving the white flag. [46:24] Kobe Bryant: A young player should not be worried about his legacy. Wake up, identify your weakness and work on that. Go to sleep, wake up, and do that all over again. 20 years from now, you'll look back and see your legacy for yourself. That's life. [46:47] Larry is constantly willing to put himself in uncomfortable situations so he can improve. [49:00] One of Larry’s favorite maxims was: “The brain’s primary purpose is deception, and the primary person to be deceived is the owner.” [49:07] How does his favorite Maxim relate to why he likes sports? Because in sports, you can't deceive yourself. He just said the brain's primary purpose is to deceive yourself—so he needs to hack himself. He needs to have his game within a game, so he is incapable of deceiving himself. Larry liked having opponents, even enemies. “I learn a lot about myself when I compete against somebody. I measure myself by winning and losing. Every shot in basketball is clearly judged by an orange hoop — make or miss. The hoop makes it difficult to deceive yourself.” [49:56] The insight is if we do something really hard we won’t have any competition. [52:26] The athletes Larry knew were obsessed with the game they played. They were like his friend Steve Jobs who worried about the color of the screws inside a computer. [53:12] They reminded Larry of a line from Tombstone: Wyatt Earp asks Doc Holliday,“ What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?” Doc replies, “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” For better and worse, Larry had the same hole, and he tried to fill it by winning. But as soon as he closed in on one of his goals, he immediately set another difficult and distant goal. In that way, he kept moving the finish line just out of reach. [54:31] Back home, standing by the lake where he and Steve had debated things great and small, Larry was certain that decades from now there would be two guys walking somewhere, talking about their icons. Steve would be mentioned.  He would be one of those “misfits, rebels, troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently,” words popularized in Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign. Steve would be remembered as one of those with “no respect for the status quo.” [59:16] Those moments are my most cherished and enduring memories of my time with Steve. The four of us sitting together at Kona, eating papayas and laughing for no reason at all. I'll miss those times. Goodbye, Steve. [1:00:00] Larry’s nightmare: In Larry’s mind, it fed into a culture based on a homogenized egalitarian ethos where everyone was the same, where there are no winners and no losers, and where there are no more heroes. [1:02:21] Larry says something to Russell (the guy running his team). It echoes what Charles Kettering said last week: It is not what two people do the same that matters. It is what they do differently. Larry says, “You already have a job, Russell. You've got to figure out why we're so damn slow, our set another way. Why is New Zealand so fast? What are they doing that we're not? [1:03:08] Don’t give up before you absolutely have to. Stay in problem solving mode: Larry was not happy when he heard that speeches were being written and plans being made for the handover of the Cup, but he ignored it all until he was asked to settle an argument over who was going to give the concession speech during the handover.  “Let me get this straight: people are fighting over who gets to give the concession speech? I don’t give a fuck who gives the concession speech. If we lose, everyone who wants to give a concession speech can give a concession speech. But we haven’t lost yet. Why don’t we focus on winning the next fucking race , rather than concession speeches.” Larry, a licensed commercial pilot with thousands of hours flying jets, likened their situation to a plane in distress. When pilots have a serious emergency, they immediately go into problem solving mode, and they stay in that mode until the problem is solved — or until just before impact.  In that final moment, the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder captures the pilot’s brief concession speech. There are two versions of the speech, one secular, one not: “Oh God ” and “ Oh shit.” Larry had not yet reached his “Oh God” or “Oh shit” moment. Down 8 points to 1, he remained in problem solving mode. [1:06:19] As Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” No one was going to live or die on the basis of these things. But contests were his best teachers. At some point, one person gets measured against another. They find out who wins and who doesn’t, and along the way they learn something about themselves. Larry had learned that he loved the striving, the facing of setbacks, and the trying again.  [1:07:56] It’s hard for me to quit when I’m losing — and it’s hard for me to quit when I’m winning. It’s just hard for me to quit. I’m addicted to competing. ---- 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

#125 Charles Kettering (inventor, engineer, founder)

What I learned from reading Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd ---- [3:06] If you had to summarize Charles Kettering this is the way you would do it: “As symbol of progress and the American way of life—as creator of ideas and builder of industries and employment—as inspirer of men to nobler thoughts and greater accomplishments—as foe of ignorance and discouragement—as friend of learning and optimistic resolve—Charles F. Kettering stands among the great men of all time.” [3:36] He was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. He was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. He developed  the world's first aerial missile. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries. [4:42] This is Ket talking about why it is so important to approach your work with the mindset that you are a professional amateur: We are simply professional amateurs. We are amateurs because we are doing things for the first time. We are professional because we know we are going to have a lot of trouble. The price of progress is trouble. And I don’t think the price is too high. [6:52] There is a quote from Thomas Edison that says “We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.” Ket has that same belief. This is Ket echoing Thomas Edison: “In reality, we have only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given us to dig out and use. We are like the two fellows who started to walk from New York to San Francisco. When they got over into New Jersey, one said: “We must be pretty nearly there. We have been walking a long, long time.” That is just how we are in what we know technically. We have just barely begun. [9:57] I am enthusiastic about being an American because I came from the hills in Ohio. I was a hillbilly.  [10:21] I thought the only thing involved in opportunity was whether I knew how to think with my head and how to do with my hands. [13:37] One lesson from his childhood that stuck with him his whole life is that you need to only worry about things you can control. One of the older men is teaching him this through a story: Besides learning about water power and flour mills, he got from the wise old miller some bits of philosophy which he stored in his young mind. “A lot of people are bound to worry,” the miller once told him. “If you can do something about it, you ought to worry. I would think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t. But if you can’t do anything, then worrying is just like running this mill when there is no grist to grind. All that does is to wear out the mill.” [14:49] He is not interested in rote memorization. He wants to understand the principles behind the thing. He wants to know the why. [18:12] The man from whom he learned most was Hiram Sweet, the wagon maker. But Sweet was more than a wagon maker. He was, as Kettering said long afterward, “an engineer of such keen ability as to be remarkable. You would no more think of running across such a man in a small town than you would of flying without a flying machine.” Hiram Sweet had invented and built a self-computing cash register which was in daily use at the drugstore. He had also made an astronomical clock. “Where did you find out all this?” Kettering asked Sweet. “I work in this wagon shop ten hours a day,” he replied, “from six-thirty in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon; and when I have no wagon work to do I work on Sweet’s head.” Years afterward, when Kettering had become a noted man, he recalled the days spent in Sweet’s wagon shop, “Letting him work on my head . . . I learned more from that old wagon maker than I did in college. The world was so wonderful and he knew so little about it that he hated to sleep.” [20:22] Ket got what he said later was one of the important lessons he learned in college. He learned it from the eminent actor, Joseph Jefferson. Jefferson, together with his company, came to the university town to play his famous part of Rip Van Winkle. One of the men asked him how often he had played the part of Rip Van Winkle.  The great actor told just how many hundreds of times he had played Rip.  “Don’t you get terribly tired doing it so often?” he was asked.  “Yes, I did get tired after a while. But the people wanted Rip. And so I went on playing him. I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t matter how you feel. Your job is to entertain the audience.’ Then I made up my mind that I would try to portray Rip Van Winkle just a little better each time. And that constant effort at improving the part has kept up my interest and enthusiasm.” [23:15] There is a time during Henry Ford’s third attempt at building an automobile manufacturing company. And he comes to see Charlie Sorensen. He's like, “You know what? We're about to run out of money. I guess I'm just not going be able to accomplish this goal.” There's this conversation that takes place between Henry and Charlie and at the end, Ford is fired back up. Ford was like “I felt like quitting at the beginning of the conversation. Now I don't.” A few short years later, he winds up attaining his life goal of building a car so inexpensively that the average person can have it. I think that’s important. There's so many times in Ford’s life story that he wants to quit, that he's disheartened. [26:44] The obstacle of not knowing how never kept him from undertaking anything he thought needed to be done. “It is a fundamental rule with me,” he said once, “that if I want to do something I start, whether I know how or not. . . . As a rule you can find that out by trying.” [28:04] Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. [36:18] Remembering the loyal support she (his wife) gave him during that trying period and afterward, Kettering said of her, “She was a great help in those early struggles, for she never got discouraged.” After she passes away from cancer he says she was the only thing in his life that he never tried to improve. [41:19] How Ket and his partner financed their company: To get even that small endeavor under way Kettering and Deeds had to put in all the money they could scrape up, and they mortgaged everything they had. Deeds put a mortgage on his house and Kettering on a lot that he owned. Both borrowed money on their life insurance policies. They also put up their patents and the contract with Cadillac as collateral for a loan from the bank. Cadillac paid them some money in advance. They sold some preferred stock, too, and raised money in every way possible. [42:09] All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new. [45:29] Kettering admired The Wright Brothers and all they did in overcoming obstacles to successful flight. Those obstacles were psychological as well as physical, for it was commonly believed then that heavier-than-air flight was impossible.  “The Wright Brothers,” Kettering said, “flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.” [46:08] I have always had a rule for myself. Never fly when the birds don’t, because they have had a lot of experience. [49:22] The destruction of a theory is of no consequence for theories are only steppingstones. More great scientific developments have been made by stumbling than by what is thought of as science. In my opinion an ounce of experimentation is worth a pound of theory. [50:57] Ket hates committees: Mrs. Kettering read about Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, she said to her husband, “How wonderful that he did it all alone!”  “It would have been still more wonderful,” Kettering replied, “if he had done it with a committee.” [51:30] We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won’t try the thing. [54:42] New ideas are the hardest things in the world to merchandise. [56:03] So great was his respect for independent thought and initiative in others that it was often difficult for those working on a project to find out just what he himself thought ought to be done in a given circumstance. He was careful not to stamp out a spark of fire in anyone. Instead, he would fan it to a bright glow.  [57:31] He has been an inspiration to me and to the whole organization, particularly in directing our thoughts and our imagination and our activities toward doing a better job technically and the tremendous importance of technological progress. [1:00:07] You have to try things: Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world. [1:00:19] In putting out new things troubles are not the exception. They are the rule. That is why I have said on so many occasions that the price of progress is trouble. [1:03:16] Let the competition think you are crazy. By the time they get it it will be too late: If you will help them keep on thinking that, we’ll not be bothered with competition during the years in which we are working out the bugs and developing a really good locomotive. [1:05:14] It is not what two groups do alike that matters. It’s what they do differently that is liable to count. [1:05:47] There are no places in an industrial situation where anyone can sit and rest. It is a question of change, change, change all the time. You can’t have profit without progress. [1:06:18] We don’t know enough to plan new industries: You can’t plan industries, because you can’t tell whether something is going to be an industry or not when you see it, and the chances are that it grows up right in front of you without ever being recognized as being an industry. Who planned the automobile industry? Nobody thought anything of it at all. It grew in spite of planning. [1:08:22] Because the field of human knowledge is so far from complete, he thinks our schools ought to teach that we know very little about anything. [1:09:04] The greatest thing that most fellows are lacking today is the fool trait of jumping into something and sticking at it until they come out all right. [1:09:54] He seems to have a complete absence of any timidity whatsoever.  [1:10:54] I can conceive of nothing more foolish than to say the world is finished. We are not at the end of our progress but at the beginning.  ---- 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

#124 Larry Ellison and Oracle

What I learned from reading Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds. ---- [0:01] Although much of my time with him coincided with a period of adversity for Oracle, I never once saw Ellison downcast. His unquenchable optimism and almost messianic self belief never faltered. [5:06] The single most important aspect of my personality is my questioning of conventional wisdom. My doubting of experts just because they are experts. My questioning of authority. While that can be very painful in terms of your relationships with your parents and teachers it is enormously useful in life.  [12:19] People — teachers, coaches, bosses — want you to conform to some standard of behavior they deem correct. They measure and reward you on how well you conform — arrive on time, dress appropriately, exhibit a properly deferential attitude — as opposed to how well you do your job. Programming liberated me from all that. [16:34] I had always believed that at the top of these companies there must be some exceptionally capable people who make the entire technology industry work. Now here I was, working near the top of a tech company, and those capable people were nowhere to be found. The senior managers I saw were conformist, bureaucratic, and very reluctant to make decisions.  [23:08] Oracle’s first product reflected Larry Ellison’s desire to do something no one else was doing: The opportunity was huge. We had a chance to build the world’s first commercial relational database. Why? Because nobody else was even trying. The other relational database projects were pure research efforts. If we could build a fast and reliable relational database, we would have it made. I thought that relational was clearly the way to go. It was very cool technology. And I liked the fact it was risky. The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people will try to go there. We would surely lose if we had to face serious competition. But if we were all alone in pursuit of our goal of building the first commercial relational database system, we had a chance to win. [26:03] Larry is a sprinter. Not a grinder: Although he always talked about technology and Oracle with passion and intensity, he didn’t have the methodical relentlessness that made Bill Gates so formidable and feared. By his own admission, Ellison was not an obsessive grinder like Gates: “I am a sprinter. I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again.” Ellison had a reputation for being easily bored by the process of running a business and often took time off, leaving the shop to senior colleagues. [30:55] If you speak out in support of small, unimportant innovations that fly in the face of widely held beliefs—I do it all the time—you are likely to be dismissed as stupid or arrogant, and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, if you defend a really big idea that challenges widely held beliefs, you’re likely to generate a mass of hatred, and you just might pay for it with your life. When Galileo defended Copernicus, he was ridiculed, imprisoned, and then threatened with death unless he recanted. Charles Darwin cautiously postponed publishing On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man for more than twenty years, but that judicious delay did not save him from vicious personal attacks coming from all ranks of contemporary society. [37:09] Ellison on mistakes he made before the near death experience of Oracle: I was interested in the technology. I wasn’t interested in sales or accounting or legal. If I wasn’t interested in something, I simply ignored it. I just wasn’t paying proper attention to my job. I was doing only the things that interested me. It was the same problem I had in school. But this happened in my forties. I wasn’t a kid anymore. [38:40] Surviving Oracle’s near death experience made Larry Ellison stronger. It made him happier: After Oracle’s crisis, looking into the abyss and surviving, I felt emotionally strong enough to take a more realistic look at myself. I was tired of striving to be the person I thought I should be. If I was to have any chance at happiness, I had to understand and accept who I really was.  [42:12] Larry Ellison’s core business philosophy: Larry Ellison says he’s happy only when everyone else thinks he’s wrong. The core of his business philosophy is that you can’t get rich by doing the same thing as everyone else. “In 1977, everyone said I was nuts when I said we were going to build the first commercial relational database. In 1995, everybody said I was nuts when I said that the PC was a ridiculous device — continuously increasing in complexity when it needs to become easier to use and less expensive.” [50:56] Larry’s great story about how duplication of effort costs Oracle a ton of money. [53:13] Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives. —Charlie Munger: One of the worst ideas I can remember was when Ray decided we didn’t do enough selling through partners. The sales force convinced him that the way to fix this was to pay more money to the sales force if the deal went through a partner than if the deal came directly to Oracle. For example , if you sold a million - dollar deal directly, Oracle would get a million dollars and you would get a $ 100,000 commission. But if you sold a million - dollar deal through a partner, Oracle would get $ 600,000 and you would get a $ 120,000 commission. Needless to say, our sales force pushed as many deals as they could through partners that year, so the partners were happy. The sales force got higher commission payments for going through partners, so they were happy. The only loser was Oracle. [57:57] Ellison’s strategy: 1. Pick a fight. 2.Burn the boats: Once I’m finally certain of the right direction, I pick a fight, as I did with Gates. It helps me make my point, and it makes it impossible to do an about—face and go back. Once a course has been plotted, I sail a long way off and burn my boats. It’s win or die. [1:01:20] Larry Ellison on Bill Gates: Bill and I used to be friends, insofar as Bill has friends. Back in the eighties and early nineties , all the people in the PC software industry hated Bill because they feared Bill. But Oracle didn’t compete with Microsoft very much back then , so we got on pretty well. As I got to know Bill, I developed a great respect for the thoroughness of his thinking and his relentless, remorseless pursuit of industry domination. I found spending time with Bill intellectually interesting but emotionally exhausting; he has absolutely no sense of humor. I think he finds humor an utter waste of time — an unnecessary distraction from the business at hand. I don’t have anything like that kind of focus or single mindedness. [1:06:13] Larry Ellison on why Larry Ellison does what Larry Ellison does: My sister told me that whenever I got too close to a goal I’d raise the bar for fear of actually clearing it. We’re endlessly curious about our own limits. The process of self—discovery is one of testing and retesting yourself. I won the Sydney—to—Hobart. Can I win the America’s Cup? I’ll find out. The software business is a more difficult test; it’s a much higher stakes game; there are more people playing this game; it’s a lot more interesting game; and it’s a lot more exciting. If I wasn’t doing this, I’m not sure what else I would be doing with my 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

#123 Albert Champion (Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon)

What I learned from reading The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal by Peter Joffre Nye. ---- [0:01] A brief summary of the life of Albert Champion: Champion had been born in Paris April 2, 1878. By age twelve he was an errand and office boy for a Paris bicycle manufacturer. He became interested in bicycle racing, won the middle-distance championship in France, and went to the United States in 1899 for a series of races. He won the American and world championships, returned to France to study automobile manufacturing, and returned to the United States in 1900. He tried auto racing, almost lost a leg in a racing accident, and then organized the Champion company. His original backers kept the name and moved the company to Toledo at about the same time Champion joined Durant. In Flint, Champion became known as one of the most colorful and flamboyant figures in a town full of them. He lived to see both his new company, later named the AC Spark Plug Division (using his initials), and the company he had left, the Champion Spark Plug Company, become giants in their field. He was a multimillionaire when he died. [2:55] His father dies at 47 years old: One of the turning points in Albert’s life is the early death of his father. He had to become the breadwinner of the family at 12 years old. The experience formed Albert’s character. For the rest of his life, he threw himself into work, forever escaping into the task at hand, keeping busy, always planning new projects, in time building up a business with factories in three countries and offices of his own. [6:19] Albert Champion was a showman who was addicted to self-improvement: He was willing to put in the work necessary for self improvement. Champion practiced rising a unicycle everyday. He learned how to draw onlookers and hold their attention. Champion had discovered the value of self—improvement. He would apply that principle again and again. [9:15] Adolphe Clement is a blueprint for Albert Champion: Clement goes from poor orphan to building a successful bicycle and automobile manufacturing company. [13:46] How do you introduce a brand new product to a society that is resistant to change? You sell to those who would be willing to pay for improvement: Dunlop pneumatics faced a tough sell with a public forever wary about buying a new product —only persuasive evidence would sway the public to accept change. Clément could count on the rabid racing crowd to try anything they thought could give a competitive edge. [15:53] What Albert Champion learns from watching a 750 mile bicycle race—tenacity is more important than talent: A chord struck with Champion that Terront came from nothing, a nobody. Yet through the force of willpower, keeping his wits under extreme physical demands that made Lavel give in, and drawing on the strength of his body, Terront turned into a grand winner. Perhaps Laval had more talent, which he showed as the first to reach Brest. Nevertheless, Terront had greater tenacity — and that difference made him the victor.  [22:17] Attaining glory motivated Albert Champion: Racing was about making money for the dual compelling needs that invigorated him. He gained financial support for his family and the ego endorsement enjoyed by entertainers and politicians. As his ego grew, he needed to impose himself on crowds of strangers and win their love. Each race he won was greeted immediately with audience approval followed by a bouquet of flowers, a victory lap, then a cash award.  [23:49] Lessons Albert Champion learned from his trainer Choppy Warburton: Warburton offered two axioms from his experience about competition that impressed Champion. No lead is too great to overcome, and you can’t win unless you think you can. [25:01] Albert Champion on the benefits from the strenuous training regiment Choppy made him endure: But Choppy was doing something — he was educating me to take punishment, and whenever I began to tire in a race, the grueling training I had would permit me to overcome the fatigue and come out victorious time and time again. No matter what game a man is in, he is only as big as the amount of punishment he is able to take. He educated me on the importance of physical training, for as the old saying goes, you cannot be mentally fit unless you are physically fit. [34:12] Albert Champion’s personality: Champion, quick—tempered as usual , grew disgusted with colleagues he saw riding with caution rather than daring. [36:31] Albert Champion’s plan to raise money so he could start his own company: Champion felt the onus to create his own business to serve America’s mushrooming auto production. He considered forming a company , taking advantage of his name recognition, to import French auto parts, especially spark plugs. To get in the business, he needed capital. To acquire the needed capital, he would have to win frequently in his final season as a pro cyclist. He determined to go all out for one last campaign — not in America, but in France.  The purses were much bigger there, and he could win the money he’d need in order to establish his own business. Albert staked his ambitious future on capturing the title en route to raising the money to create his place in the nascent US auto industry. [43:40] Albert Champion on the importance of continuous learning: He told an interviewer that one of his constant efforts was to manage his time for more and better work. He explained that he always sought to improve everything he did. I remember a salesman one time telling me that he knew the game from A to Z. He stated that nobody could tell him anything about selling. That was to me the best proof possible that he knew nothing about selling because those who really understand merchandising, manufacturing, or anything else that is important in life are those who realize how little they really know about it and how much there is to learn every day. [47:25] Billy Durant prioritized speed. Durant recruits Albert Champion to move to Flint the same day they meet: Durant sounded out Champion before nudging the focus toward recruiting him to Flint. Durant later recalled: If he were quite sure that he could make a plug that would answer our purpose, I suggested that we go to Flint, and if he liked the place and the layout, I would start an experimental plant, and if he could make good, I would give him an interest in the business. (this later makes Albert very, very rich) He had never been to Flint, knew nothing of the Buick, or the plans I had for the future. [55:10] Albert Champion invested heavily in research and development. This is why: I spent a fortune on spark plug experiments at the start. My friends thought I was crazy. I knew I was right. He put prototypes through long and rigorous tests before submitting patent applications. More durable spark plugs would benefit passenger cars. He said: “Keep ahead of the race. That is what brings success. It makes the great racer. It makes the successful businessman. No champion ever arrived resting on the oars.” [56:33] Albert Champion on the similarities of athletic competition and building a business: I have always felt that the education and training I received as a bicycle racer was a great help in business because it is a game in which you train to fight and win. He emphasized that experimenting and learning leads to progress: I always remember what a friend of mine once told me. He was a well—known chemist, an authority in the automobile world. He said that four times during his life he has had to scrap his knowledge of chemistry and begin again at the start. He was not only happy about it. He is ready to do the same thing over and over when he finds it necessary. [1:03:20] The legacy of Albert Champion: His death closed a career as brilliant as that of any Horatio Alger hero, from errand boy in Paris, France, to millionaire automobile accessories manufacturer in America. The spark plug designs, dashboard speedometers, and companies Champion started have stood the test of time. Today the Champion Spark Plug and ACDelco brand names are recognized around the world. More than 200,0000 people a year attend performances at the Boston Center for the Arts, all passing the brass plate celebrating his Albert Champion Company, where he had made his first Champion spark plugs. Approximately 50 million vehicles operating in the United States are currently on the road with ACDelco spark plugs, filters, brakes, and other components. And every April at the Paris Classics bicycle race, another winner’s name is added to Albert Champion’s on the roster of legends. ---- 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

#122 Alfred Sloan (General Motors)

What I learned from reading My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan. ---- [2:40] There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book: Henry talked to me on several occasions about a book by the former chairman of General Motors. He told me he had learned a very important concept from that book, which he wished to use in the growth of Teledyne. . .during a very difficult economic time of recession, General Motors had needed additional funds to finance their growth and had a plan to sell bonds to the general public. The bond sale was a complete failure, and the chairman (Sloan) had written in his book that it had taught him an important lesson. It was that for a corporation to grow and to have a strong financial base, it needed to have, as part of itself, an interest in substantial financially oriented institutions. So General Motors had started GMAC and invested in other financial groups. As a result of his interest in this idea, Henry had decided that at some point, he would seek out financial organizations we could acquire. We began acquiring a number of financial and insurance companies, which was a significant change from our usual aerospace, metals, industrial and consumer company acquisitions. [5:45] Alfred Sloan had a singular focus: General Motors and the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, have been almost the sole interests of my business life. [6:28] Alfred Sloan’s perspective on work: I simply took the view that we should go at the job vigorously and without hampering restrictions. I put no ceiling on progress. [12:22] Billy Durant came up with the idea for General Motors. Alfred Sloan perfected it: Durant’s pioneer work has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. His philosophy was an emerging one in the Model T era and was afterward to be realized not by him but by others, including myself. [19:08] The accumulated intelligence of mankind is what makes us special amongst all other species Everything is built upon the foundation before it: It has been called to my attention that Eli Whitney, long before, had started the development of interchangeable parts in connection with the manufacture of guns, a fact which suggests a line of descent from Whitney to Leland to the automobile industry. [29:20] Alfred Sloan had a great perspective on problems. They are temporary and we can fix them: Economic declines have a way of shaking out the weak ones in business, and we had weaknesses. Some people cannot see beyond a slump, but I have never yielded to economic pessimism and in times of decline have kept in mind the eventual upturn of the business cycle and the long—range dynamics of growth. Confidence and caution formed my attitude in 1920. We could not control the environment, or predict its changes precisely, but we could seek the flexibility to survive fluctuations in business. I mention this because confidence is an important element in business; it may on occasion make the difference between one man’s success and another’s failure. [33:15] Sloan on how difficult Henry Ford was to compete against: With Ford in almost complete possession of the low—price field, it would have been suicidal to compete with him head on. No conceivable amount of capital short of the United States Treasury could have sustained the losses required to take volume away from him at his own game.  [38:40] Alfred Sloan on committees: I have often been taxed, by people who do not know me, with being a committee man—and in a sense I most certainly am—I have never believed that a group as such could manage anything. A group can make policy, but only individuals can administer policy. [44:20] General Motors was able to overtake Ford because they widened a niche: It was that plan, policy , or strategy of 1921—whatever it should be called— which, I believe, more than any other single factor enabled us to move into the rapidly changing market of the twenties with the confidence that we knew what we were doing commercially and were not merely chasing around in search of a lucky star. The most important particular object of that plan of campaign, which followed from its strategic principles, was, as I have said, to develop a larger place for Chevrolet between the Ford car below and the medium—price group above, a case of trying to widen a niche. That was all, in the beginning, despite the completeness of the plan with regard to the whole market. [56:40] Alfred Sloan knew the car market was changing. You didn’t make sales by having the best car. You made sales by being different. David Ogilvy called this idea “a positively good product”: In the past, just about every advertiser has assumed that in order to sell his goods he has to convince consumers that his product is superior to his competitor’s. This may not be necessary. It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is positively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours. If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it. Sales will swing to the marketer who does the best job of creating confidence that his product is positively good. ---- 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

#121 Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan (General Motors)

What I learned from reading Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. ---- [0:01] They were oil and water in all respects. Billy Durant, the high school dropout, was the flamboyant dreamer and gambler, focused on personal relationships and risk. Alfred Sloan, the MIT engineer, was the stern organizer and manager, focused on data, logic, and profit. [4:40] The paradox of this book in two sentences: Sloan’s most constant criticism of Durant was that he acted on instinct and whim rather than facts. Yet the achievements and decisions of Durant the dreamer were what made Sloan the manager’s spectacular career possible. [6:50] Alfred Sloan telling us it is a lot harder to stay successful over a long period of time: “The perpetuation of an unusual success or the maintenance of an unusually high standard of leadership in any industry is sometimes more difficult than the attainment of that success or leadership in the first place.” [10:45] Walter Chrysler left the highest paying job in the entire automobile industry because of Billy Durant’s wasted his time: More than once, Chrysler had been summoned by Durant only to be kept waiting then to discover that the urgent matter that needed to be discussed was nothing that couldn’t have been resolved quickly at the plant level rather than wasting top management’s time and brainpower. [12:52] Sloan believed Billy Durant had no right to be distracted by the financial markets while Durant was supposed to be running General Motors: Sometimes I used to feel as if he were always holding a telephone in his hand. I think there were twenty telephones in his private office and a switchboard. He had private wires to brokers’ offices across the continent. In the same minute, he would buy in San Francisco, sell in Boston. It did not seem to me that the operating head of a corporation had any right to devote himself to the market, even if the stock of the corporation was involved.  [17:13] Billy Durant will remind you that everything is possible: What was it in Billy’s genes and character that had led the high school dropout from rural Michigan to even dream of building an empire that would change the world? [20:30] Billy Durant would tell you to control the things that are important to your business: Billy Durant would never forget the bitter lesson of what he saw as Paterson’s treachery: Always control your own production and, whenever possible, all of the links in the supply chain. [23:05] Unlike Durant, Alfred Sloan had a singular focus. His singular focus was General Motors: By the early 1930s, Alfred Sloan was widely considered to be one of the richest men in the world, but he had no known hobbies and had never sold a single share of General Motors stock. His only known investment of either time or money in anything beyond the domain of General Motors was the purchase of a yacht at the urging of friends and his wife.  [26:37] There are ideas worth billions in a $30 history book: In Henry Singleton’s case that is literally true. Reading Sloan’s book had a multiple billion dollar effect on the outcome of Teledyne. [29:04] Sloan would not tolerate any excuses: Sloan is kinda like Yoda. Do or do not. There is no try. [29:48] A key ideological difference between Alfred Sloan and Billy Durant was how growth should be financed: What Alfred didn’t mention in his letter was that Hyatt’s growth had come from reinvestment of the company’s own profits, rather than the acquisition and stock market strategy mastered by Billy Durant. A divergence of fundamental strategy that would be at the core of the General Motors crisis and showdown of 1920. [31:12] An important lesson from history is that new and important industries can start out looking like toys: In 1899 the automobile industry in America was no more than the strange and wild obsession of a few tinkerers and an amusing diversion for the wealthy investors who backed them. Cars were still widely considered impractical toys and dangerous nuisances by most people.  [34:35] Alfred Sloan admired and copied Henry Leland, founder of Cadillac and Lincoln: Of all the American automobile industry’s unique and colorful characters, the one whom Alfred Sloan most admired and emulated was Henry Leland. Leland was a perfectionist who expected and demanded higher standards than any of his peers. He accepted no excuses and suffered no fools. Sloan devoted more words and detail to what he learned from Leland than he did any other person. [45:55] Alfred Sloan on why vertical integration was so important in the automobile industry: Every piece of the motor car is essential in the sense that the automobile is not complete unless every part is available. Delay in delivery of any part stops the work. A dependable supply of parts might well make the difference between success and failure. [48:08] Henry Ford's ONE idea was different from every other automobile manufacturer: He was determined to concentrate on the low end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive costs down and at the same time feed even more demand for the product. It was a fundamental difference in philosophy. [49:35] Comparing and contrasting Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan’s approach to growth: For him, the thrill was always in the next deal, not in the nuts and bolts of daily operations. In his mind, empires were built by conquest, not through internal growth. And the road to conquest was through other people’s money and other people’s confidence in his genius, rather than the quiet, conservative road of knowing the fundamentals of manufacturing and marketing, as was followed by the likes of Henry Leland and Alfred P. Sloan. [56:05] Why Innovation is so important. We must arm the rebels! The automobile sparked not only the great oil boom it also sparked innovations in petroleum refining and metal alloys that led to further innovation in chemicals. It also spawned the motel industry as well as gasoline retailing. Thanks solely to the demand for gasoline to run the internal combustion engine automobile, crude oil production in the United States soared.The first gasoline pump appeared in 1905. By 1915, Standard Oil had developed the first chain of gasoline service stations. In 1916, the federal government began funding the interstate highway system. Ten years later, motels and road side restaurants were common in every state. Thanks to Henry Ford’s Model T, Billy Durant’s vision of a nation transformed by the automobile had become a reality. [57:47] When most of your revenue comes from one or two major customers you are fragile. Or Why Alfred Sloan sold Hyatt Roller Bearing to Billy Durant: The problem for Alfred and his peers was that, compared with the manufacturers, the suppliers’ pockets were not nearly as deep. Expanding their production capacity meant investment in new plant and equipment, but there was no guarantee that the boom would continue once these commitments were made. Nor was there any guarantee from the manufacturers that they would not shift to a different supplier with lower cost at some point in the future, leaving Supplier A stuck with both excess capacity and the cost of the original expansion. [1:14:23] How Alred Sloan positioned General Motors product line: Sloan developed a product strategy targeted at buyers’ specific aspirations. Its essence was to divide the market into price segments and offer cars with the most appeal and value in each segment. Sloan called it “a car for every purse and purpose.” No General Motors vehicle division or brand would compete against any other in any of the segments; each was to have a distinct identity and appeal to a distinct buyer. [1:15:10] David Ogilvy on positioning your product: Now consider how you want to ‘position’ your product. This curious verb is in great favor among marketing experts, but no two of them agree what it means. My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’ I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later. [1:16:48] Alfred Sloan —like Sam Walton—made it a priority to visit dealers: I made it a practice throughout the 1920s and early thirties to make personal visits to dealers. I went into almost every city in the United States, visiting from five to ten dealers a day. I would meet them in their own places of business, talk with them across their own desks in their closing rooms and ask them for suggestions and criticism concerning their relations with the corporation, the character of the product, the corporation’s policies, the trend of consumer demand, their view of the future, and many other things of interest in the business. I made careful notes of all the points that came up, and when I got back home I studied them. [1:20:46] Billy Durant’s metaphor on the difference between him and Alfred Sloan: But, you see, this infantry captain didn’t have the disadvantage of a West Point education and he didn’t know he couldn’t do it, so he just went ahead and did it anyway. ---- 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

#120 Billy Durant (Creator of General Motors)

What I learned from reading Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin. ---- [0:32] DURANT MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT AUTOMOBILE PIONEER: Of all the colorful men who propelled the United States into the automobile age, Billy Durant was perhaps the most unusual, and from an organizational standpoint in the pioneering era, the most important. Durant had a hand in shaping the beginnings of three of the four major American automobile manufacturing corporations that exist today. [4:16] HIS LIFE STORY HAS A SURPRISING END: The guy founded General Motors, Chrysler, and Frigidaire. Three gigantic, successful companies. How does he die with no money? [6:04] DURANT TRIED TO PROTECT HIS INVESTORS: He had an attitude, not a common among men of big money. He tried to protect the people who invested with him, even if this protection would break him. Finally, it did. And when he was unable to save the dollars of his supporters he plunged from multimillionaire to bankruptcy. [10:29] DURANT WAS SKEPTICAL OF AUTOMOBILES: Durant starts out as an automobile skeptic. He builds the General Motors of horse-drawn transportation and then takes that same playbook and uses it again to do the same thing in the automobile industry once he gets over his skepticism. [17:08] IF SOMETHING IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR BUSINESS YOU NEED TO CONTROL IT: We have seen this over and over and over and over again in these stories throughout the history of entrepreneurship. If something is important to your business, you need to control it. Durant line up a big contract for the buggies only to find that Patterson chanced upon the same buyer and told him that since the product was actually being made at his factory, the buyer could save money by buying directly from him. Durant that from then on they would build all their own vehicles. [19:12] DURANT ON SALES: Assume that the person you are talking to knows as much or more than you do. Do not talk too much. Give the customer time to think. In other words, let the customer sell himself. That system works best when you have a good product. Look for a self - seller. If you cannot find one, make one. [21:48] ON CONTROL. HENRY FORD REALIZED THIS. THE DODGE BROTHERS DID TOO: We started out as assemblers with no advantage over our competitors. We paid about the same prices for everything we purchased. We realized that we were making no progress and would not unless and until we manufactured practically every important part that we used. We proceeded to purchase plants and the control of plants, which made it possible for us to build up the largest carriage company in the United States. [31:36] DURANT WAS AT THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME, WITH THE RIGHT SET OF SKILLS: For the first time, he began to see that the automobile had a future. The stockholders of Buick were so desperate that they were willing to turn over controlling interest to him. And perhaps most important, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company had a large, idle factory.  [39:11] IT WAS HARD TO RAISE MONEY FOR GENERAL MOTORS: I had a long, hot session with our friends in New York yesterday and was pretty nearly used up at the finish. If you think it is an easy matter to get money from New York capitalists to finance a motor car proposition in Michigan, you have another guess coming. Money is hard to get owing to a somewhat unaccountable feeling of uneasiness and a general distrust of the automobile proposition. [44:25] BILLY DURANT’S MASTER PLAN FOR GENERAL MOTORS: Durant's aim was nothing less than to gain control of some of the biggest and best automobile companies in America. But he also wanted to get in on the ground floor with companies just starting. Durant: “They could be purchased by exchanging small amounts of stock, and who could tell what their patents, products, and inventions might bring? The automobile industry was in its infancy, the public was fickle, the only sure road to power and success was to have a wide range of products. I figured if I could acquire a few more companies like the Buick, I would have control of the greatest industry in this country. A great opportunity, no time to lose, I must get busy.” [51:30] DON VALENTINE TEACHES YOU BUSINESS IN TWO MINUTES: There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes --you don't have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason- they run out of money." —Don Valentine [55:10] GENERAL MOTORS RUNS OUT OF MONEY! DURANT IS FORCED OUT: The bankers demanded control of the company. Durant had no choice but to accept. Automotive historians have generally described the terms as exorbitant. And Durant, in his memoirs, fumed: “The $ 15 million loan finally offered had outrageous terms which I was forced to accept. Under the terms, I received $ 12,250,000 cash ( not $ 15 million ), for which I gave $ 21,600,000 of the best securities ever created — the enormous interest of $ 9,350,000. [57:57] DURANT’S STRATEGY FOR CHEVROLET WAS TO FOCUS ON THE LOW PRICED MARKET BECAUSE IT HAD MORE DEMAND THAN SUPPLY : Henry Ford couldn't build enough cars to satisfy the entire demand for a low priced automobile. [1:04:50] THE UNUSUAL HAPPENS, USUALLY. BILLY DURANT IS THE OPPOSITE OF HETTY GREEN OR MARK SPITZNAGEL: In 1920 the boom that had followed the end of WWI came to a rather abrupt halt and the United States slumped into a sharp recession. The price of GM stock began to decline steadily. GM sold 47,000 cars a month. By November monthly sales were down to 12,000. Durant realized GM needed money. [1:10:26] BILLY DURANT’S LIFE SHOULD HAVE HAD A HAPPIER ENDING: All that can be said for certain about Durant’s last days at GM is that his activities in the stock market placed him in an extremely vulnerable situation. Louis Kaufman said in 1927 that had Durant not become involved in the market he would have been worth $500 million and still in charge of GM.  ---- 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

#119 The Dodge Brothers

What I learned from reading The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy by Charles Hyde. ---- This is the story of two small town machinists who became enormously successful automobile manufacturers in the early years of the auto industry [0:01] Early life and first jobs [3:02] Moving to Detroit: Arriving at the right place, at the right time, with the right skill set [6:28] Horace Dodge is a gifted engineer like Henry Royce (Founders #81) was + Inventors and bicycle manufacturers [12:00] How The Dodge Brothers first described their business [16:40] Doing work for Ransom Olds, Founder of Oldsmobile [18:20] Crucial decisions in the early days of the company [23:33] In a gold rush don't dig for gold. Sell pick axes [24:44] The Dodge Brothers almost bankrupted Ford for lack of payment [28:22] The Dodge Brothers got very rich off of Henry Ford [33:28] Why and how the Dodge Brothers built their own car [36:00] Comparing The Dodge Brothers organizational structure with that of Ford and GM [41:00] The Dodge Brothers view on advertising [43:04] How and why they worked so well together [46:13] A bond so tight it could only be separated by death [50:58] Their greatest accomplishment [52:01] ---- 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

#118 Forty Years With Henry Ford

What I learned by reading My Forty Years With Ford by Charles Sorensen. ---- Henry Ford’s greatest achievement and his greatest failure [0:01] Henry Ford had one, single idea [4:15] Henry Ford’s management style [5:46] The paradox of Henry Ford [8:27] Henry Ford’s greatest advisor [11:30] A great story about The Dodge Brothers [16:20] Why and how Henry Ford bought out all of the shareholders of Ford [19:15] Henry Ford would tell you to not divert your attention [27:15] Henry Ford would tell you to not be afraid [28:20] Henry Ford would tell you to be firm in what you want to accomplish but flexible in how you do it [31:45] Why Henry Ford and The Ford Motor Company are worthy of study [36:20] The difference between a pioneer and an expert [39:45] Henry Ford would tell you not to worry about titles [47:40] Henry Ford would tell you to focus on individual contact over collective speeches [49:52] Henry Ford would tell you don't let your team grow stale [50:10] Henry Ford would tell you that you can’t foresee everything. Even things that should be obvious. [50:50] Henry Ford would tell you to never stop learning [51:32] A description of Detroit and the early days of one of the most important industries ever created [55:14] The story of the Model T: Henry ford was groping and fumbling toward a low-cost car. [59:14] ---- 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

#117 : Chung Ju-yung founder of Hyundai (the most inspiring autobiography I've read)

What I learned from reading Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung. --- For a long time I was known as the bulldozer. [0:01] How Chung’s son remembers him: He had a wonderfully positive disposition and a rigorous work ethic. [3:15] Memories of his father + Half century of struggle + Why he is writing this book [9:25] Running away from home. Four times. [12:15] A different level of poverty. [15:40] How struggle shaped his personality + Why he had to run away for the last time [17:15] On his own + Early jobs before the birth of Hyundai [19:24] On simple tasks + The fundamental principle of his life + Hard work paying off [21:15] Getting into the auto repair business + More struggle + More perseverance [25:55] Why you should emulate bedbugs. [31:00] Hyundai Auto Service Center + Hyundai Construction + Disaster strikes again + The Korean War [33:11] His management style + Don’t waste time if you want to be remarkable [39:30] Go where the money is: Hyundai must go abroad to escape poor domestic conditions. [42:15] The beginning of Hyundai Motors + Chung had only one speed: GO! That is not always a good thing. [45:57] Ships or how a great idea starts as a small idea [53:26] Why determination is more important than intelligence [58:10] Find something you love to do and do it until you die. [1:06:39] Don’t covet luxury. [1:08:49] Be diligent. [1:15:40] Positive thinking is the road to happiness. [1:16:48] ---- 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