#143: Founders Podcast, Single-person Billion-dollar Business, Lessons Learned from Athletes, Quentin Tarantino with David Senra 01:17:28

Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chewy Journal Podcast. I'm your host, Camille Yang. My guest today is David Senra. David is a returning guest of my show. He hosts one of my favorite podcasts, Founders, where listeners can learn lessons from both historical and modern figures based on David's selection of a biography.

Last time, we focused on the top lessons previous founders can teach and impact current founders, and the most inspiring stories among more than 200 books David read. This time, we continued our discussion on Founders Podcast, Single-Person Billion-Dollar Business, Lessons Learned from the Athletes, Quentin Tarantino, and many more.

I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome back to the show, David. Thank you very much. I'm pretty sure you were the first person to ever invite me on podcast. So I think your podcast was the first one I've ever done that was not my own. So thanks for having me back. Such an honor. No problem. I know last year, 2022 is a big year for you. You joined Patrick O'Shaughnessy's

new company and you also being invited to so many big name podcasts like Modern Wisdom, Infinite Loop, Not Investment Advice. So can you tell me what's the top three highlights for the past year? Really, I think I just really have one top highlight and that is that

It was obviously by far the biggest year of the podcast ever. The podcast audience has grown substantially, but it's the biggest highlight is just the fact that I put a lot of my life energy and a lot of effort into building founders. I've been doing it for six years for those years full time. I don't think I've taken a day off from doing it since 2018. And so the biggest highlight is that just more people have access to the podcast now, more people are aware of its existence and more people are able to benefit from, you know,

tens of, I don't even know, well over 10,000 hours of just studying the history of entrepreneurship and really trying to figure out like, okay, what are the best ideas that history's greatest founders did? How can we use those in our, how can we use their ideas and their practices in our work? And then what are the mistakes that like we can avoid? We can actually benefit from learning from their experience. So like that is the main, I'm just very, very happy that now so much, so many more people are listening and

And then obviously, I just get to meet a ton of interesting people and a ton of interesting founders and investors. And that's like a form of education in and of itself. Yeah, that's cool. So what made you to make the decision to join Patrick O'Shaughnessy's company? Because as an individual content creator, you already can make some income from paid subscription. But

But what's the benefit of joining that? So this is also the benefit of, I just can't believe how unbelievably generous people are. We see this on the podcast because like, if you think about it, I use Sam Walton as an example, right? He spent five decades in the retail industry, learned an unbelievable amount in 50 years of trying to do, you know, work in the same industry. And yet he is dying of cancer. He knows he's dying. He knows he has a very limited amount of life existence left. And he used cancer

some of that very precious time to document all of his lessons, put them in a book so future generations of entrepreneurs can benefit. And so people do that in present day. So I made a big mistake where I didn't know how to grow a podcast. I didn't know the business model for podcasts. Like I started out as an introvert.

no social media presence. Just, hey, I really love reading. I like entrepreneurship. I like history. I like podcasts. Like, I believe in what I'm doing and maybe I'll like figure out a way to do it full time and to make it a business, right? And so,

when you had a really small audience advertising's not you know because you go and talk to people selling podcast ads and you know you need larger audiences i don't know what it is now i think spotify is changing that and maybe youtube changing that but back then it was you know 25 50 000 people in an audience before you can actually find some kind of like income

Where you could actually like do this full time. Right. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, I don't have that. Let me I could sell subscriptions. And because then you could do the math. It's like the Kevin Kelly thing. It's like you need one thousand true fans. You could probably get, you know, probably get a couple thousand people. And I got I had a couple thousand people paying, you know, for the podcast.

But I, there was so many other people that pulled me aside, people in the podcast industry. And they had listened to the show. They liked the show. And they're like, David, you're just doing this wrong. Like your content's very good. It's differentiated. They would sat down and would show me like my friend, Ben and David from acquired podcasts is one example. I'm actually wearing their sweatshirt right now as we record this. And they sat down and they're like, Hey, like this is how many downloads we have. They, they're essentially said like,

They had a public podcast feed and they had a private subscription only podcast feed. And we were all on Zoom together and they showed me everything. They're like, this is how many downloads we get. Look, for every one person that is willing to pay for a podcast,

there's a hundred that, that want to listen for free. So you're, you're drastically reducing the amount of your, the size of your audience. And then they're like, this is how much we charge for ads. This is some of the people you could advertise with. There's another, my friend, Rob, who I met through the podcast. These are all people that come from the podcast. It's like podcasting is a superpower because of the, like how it helps you build relationships at scale because people hear you speak for so long. They have an understanding of who you are as a person. You know, I always say like one of the podcast superpowers is that it's, it'll,

It allows you just, it's authenticity scaled. And so if you listen to my podcast for a long period of time and then you meet me, you're like, oh, this is like the same person. Of course, because you can't fake authenticity.

being who you are for 400 hours. So anyways, I had, I met another friend of mine. His name's Rob. He's the co-founder of the Andrew Huberman podcast. And he pulled me to the side saying, he's like, man, you're doing this wrong. Same thing. He's like, I can, he's like, I'm willing to spend a lot of time with you. He believed, he's like, it's really valuable what you're doing. More people should listen. He's like, I'm benefiting immensely. Friends of other founder friends of his is benefiting immensely. He's like, this is, this is how we grew our podcast. This is what you should do.

And so this was going on for many, many months. And I just had this... And in the meantime, I had met... Patrick had been unbelievably generous. We were talking right before we recorded that Patrick and his dad, Jim, they're just... Patrick's fund is called Positive Sum, right? True, yeah. And I feel that's the way Jim and Patrick view the world, where it's just like, we can all win together. Like, there's not a limited amount of winning that's going to take place here. And so...

A bunch of people had listened to Founders. My friend Sam Hinckley being very instrumental in this. And they told Patrick about it. Some investor friends of his told him. Some Founder friends told him. And I think he said that after the fifth person's like, dude, you got to listen to this. He's like, all right, fine. I'm going to listen to it. So he starts listening to it. He likes it. He tweets out. He's like, hey, I never find new podcasts to listen to. I feel David's Founders podcast is excellent. You should listen to this. And at that time, the podcast was just a subscription podcast. But even that...

one tweet got me hundreds of new listeners, you know? And so we wound up getting introduced. We ended up becoming friends, talking all the time. We have similar interests. Like he's relentlessly curious. He's really like, he's building, you know, he's what I like about Patrick is that he is an investor that thinks and talks like a founder. And I think that is key because he's not only building this giant fund investment fund and funding or like,

other companies, early stage startups, and not even any kind of startup. But he's also understands and is building very valuable media properties that also, he understands the strategy and how you have super amounts of leverage inherent in podcasting and in capital, putting capital into companies and how those interact and how the education on the podcast can actually influence everything else.

So anyways, we went up just to develop a relationship, no business ties at all. Just, you know, we have similar interests. And that's another thing that the benefit of doing Founders Podcast is like, I think we're near to the point where I get to talk to more founders than anybody else in the world. Just because, you know, if they listen to the podcast, they're going to reach out and you develop relationships with them. So all these things are happening at the same time over the next few months. And I'm like, man,

I want to compete on a level playing field. I feel that I know how much energy I put into my podcast. I don't focus on anything else. I work on it seven days a week. I'm not part-timing it. I'm not half-assing it. Like, I take this deadly seriously. It's fun for me. I enjoy it. But, like, I want it to be excellent. I want to be world-class at it. And, like, part of reading these biographies is what happens is it gives you the permission to be what I call unapologetically extreme.

where most of society may be like, hey, don't do that. Or, you know, hey, chill out. Like, you know, take it, you know, you don't have to push it like you're doing. And then you read these books and like, no, this is, this calls to me. This is what I want to do. That doesn't mean I want to destroy other aspects of my life and just be a workaholic. But I want to say this, I'm taking this, I have a goal. Like I want to be the best in the world or whatever I do. And I'm willing to work a lot and for a long period of time to achieve those goals. Right. And so I was like, well,

If I, if you could just, if anybody, instead of like going into a podcast player, right. If you're a founder, an entrepreneur, somebody that is interested in, in having a unique, uh, like work life, right. A lot of those people are, they read a lot and they listen to a lot more podcasts, right. Educational podcasts. And so my idea is like, if I was a founder and I'm searching the Apple podcast directory or any podcast directory, and there's a show that,

where it's like, this guy has spent six years, maybe 15, I don't know, 10, 20,000 hours, read 300 biographies of history, entrepreneurs, it's over 100,000 pages, he's distilled what he's learned from this crazy project into 400 hours that I can listen to anytime I want. And then, or I can pick this other podcast that like, the guy's doing a part time, you know, maybe it's not as differentiated or whatever the case is, it's, you know, it's like,

If I don't put a paywall up in front of that, if you have a choice and it's the same thing, it's just a pressing a button and we're going to press a button on this, this very extreme founders podcast project or this other one that's like, oh, it's good. But like, you know, it's you're part-timing it, which is fine.

I'm going to get the audience I deserve. All I have to do is make sure that that opportunity, that option is presented. And I think the people that I'm trying to go after, which is the most, some of the most successful people in the world, some of the people that even if they aren't the most successful people in the world yet, they have desires to be excellent in what they do. Then that's the audience that I'm going to grab because I'm,

one thing you learn from reading a bunch of biographies, like you're not unique. Like the way you feel, your aspirations, your triumphs, your tragedies, humans have gone through that. They're going through it now. There's at least, there's probably 15, 20 million people on the planet that are just like me, that have the same thoughts, the same desires, the same interests. And so that led me to be like, okay, well, how can I accelerate access to this? And so I called up Patrick and I was like,

Hey, I'm going to do an ad free version of our ad supported version of founders. I think it should be on your network. And he's like, oh, that's really interesting. It took one phone call. He's all right. Let's do this. Wow. Because it only it only worked because Patrick was a fan of the show. Yeah. And he had listened to it. And then he was, you know, going on invest like the best.

Not only is Patrick, I feel, a world-class interviewer, right? I really do think he's one of the best interviewers that's in podcasting right now, right? We had prehistory in the sense that we have talked independently. He's a world-class interviewer. He also had listened to a bunch of episodes of Founders. And so we were able to trap magic in a bottle because I think that it's episode 292 of Invest Like the Best. If people haven't listened to it, I highly recommend you listen to it.

And that just fed everything else. So once that comes out, Patrick puts his resources behind saying, hey, go listen to David's show. That gave me tens of thousands of more listeners very rapidly. And then from there, it's what you said. It's like, then all these other podcasts, like, oh, if you're on Patrick's show, we come on mine. The best way to grow a podcast is to go on other podcasts. And then the important part is like,

Yeah, the poor and then like Jim, you know, of Infinite Loops, you know, there's a ton of people that have reached out to me. They're like,

I've listened to your episode with Jim and now I love founders. Jim, I'm actually going on his podcast, I think again next month. Oh, cool. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like the main thing. And then from there, just working every day to continue to not only make sure the product stays good, but also to make sure that more people are aware of its existence. I remember you mentioned the one person billion dollar company. I think at Eric's

Jorgensen show, you mentioned that you got this crazy idea, like one person can just like stand alone company to generate some good content and insight that would be valuable to those high level people. I'd like to know more about this idea. Can you elaborate? How did you come up with this idea? As with everything else, I don't even think I've ever had an original idea in my life, right? It's just like the combination of other people's ideas.

And so clearly the optimal size of a company is getting smaller. You can just see that, like go back and look at like the biggest companies in the world, like the 1950s and how many physical people they needed compared to like some of the technology companies of today, you know? And so that trend, you have to ask yourself, like with the proliferation of the internet, software, AI, is that trend going to reverse? And my, no, like it's clearly not going to reverse at all.

And so you already see these like crazy outlier events where, you know, you might have one person. I saw some, I think it's like one person. He owns a bunch of, I can't remember what it's like WordPress plug-in sites or whatever the case is. Like there's an investment site. I think like there's a bunch of them where you already have like one, one person maybe making 20 or $30 million a year. I just saw actually,

there was an independent game developer. I think the game is called like Stardew Valley or something. And I think he's sold so far just as a one person business is like $300 million worth of his game. And so like we're getting closer and closer and closer. And so I think what you'll see first before you see like a one person billion dollar company, you'll see like, you know, maybe like a five person.

or a three person. You could argue that Instagram, when it was sold for a billion dollars, they had, I think 12 people, if I remember correctly. So it's getting closer and closer and closer and closer. An acquisition is different. What I meant is like more of like a business that you don't have to sell the one that like just keeps going and generating money. That Stardew Valley guy, you know, seems to be like, if he keeps on, like could get there. I think there's a couple different, clearly like soft, you're going to, you have to be selling bits, right? Like it's got, it's going to be software, uh,

like a game, I think you're going to have several billionaire podcasters for sure. I would argue that if Joe Rogan stays, like assuming that

Keeps doing what he's doing and you know, hopefully lives a long life Like he'll make well well over a billion dollars from his podcast and everything else like associated that comes from his podcasts like Selling out arenas all the time or if he wants to launch another company or whatever like so you're already it you could just see it and part of like the benefit I have is like I study the beginning of industries for a living and people human nature doesn't change like when there's new things and

there's two things that usually occur together. It's like one, people think you're too late and two, people always say numbers can't possibly get this big. But if you're an industry that's working, that has good economic characteristics, it's like time is a friend to those wonderful businesses and the numbers will get, they'll always get bigger. I remember Naval mentioned that if you have

code or media, you can actually make money while sleeping. Like Peter Levels, we talked about him when we first recorded podcast together. He is a solopreneur and he just keep making AI generated software recently and made a lot of money. He never sold his business, but just for himself he can.

keep producing so many products and services. That's quite amazing. And I heard the amount of money he's making, millions of dollars a year, but he also has some properties that he could sell. I know he was in acquisition talks previously for his job board, Remote OK. He decided to keep it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he

that could be a sale. And he has like a, you know, diversified. He's got a bunch of different products. So like you could sell one or two and then keep expanding the other two and then make a new one. Like my chosen path is different. And it just based on like the personality and who you are. It's just like, I like to give everything to one thing. Like I like to go so much further than anybody else. And I don't like to dilute, you know, myself across multiple different verticals. Some people,

I have friends of mine that's like, I'd be bored out of my mind if I did that. They have to, they want to. That's why it just doesn't make sense. Like you can't adapt somebody else's ideas about how to build a career or work or business. Like you can listen to what they did, learn from their experience, but it's like, you got to put that to who you are. Like, what is your personality? Who like, cause to get really good at something, you have to be able to do it for a long time. And if it's not true to you, if it's not something you like, you're not going to do it for a long time. And so that's why it's like,

you know figuring out like maybe it's hey i'm going to focus on one thing and one thing only maybe it's i'm going to build a portfolio of things and it's just like whatever however whatever seems right to you i would just listen to that charlie munger says follow your natural drift i think that's the perfect way to think about it exactly so how do you stay motivated and engaged in your work since there are so many distractions now so many people want to reach out to you talk to you

I am obsessed. So motivation for me is not an issue. Like I wake up every day with a burning desire to achieve mission success. And if I have said that I'm going to make the world's best podcast on the history of entrepreneurship, then that's an everyday thing. That's a thing that's always on my mind. That's something I'm working to and that's what I like to do. Yeah.

I my passion and obsession with the project today is greater than it was yesterday. And it's greater than it was six months ago. It's greater than it was a year ago. So the distraction element of your question is excellent. That is humans are like it's not natural for human nature to be extremely focused on something. There's just it just it doesn't happen. And so that is the biggest I'm going to quote Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett again.

where, you know, they say, I'm paraphrasing, but it's like, it's extremely hard to build a very valuable business. And then what you'll find is like, once people do it, that business is not usually destroyed from the outside, it's destroyed internally. And it's usually by a loss of focus. It's by, oh, I've made it. So I'm going to, you know, now do less work, or I'm going to, you know, just put my feet up and just coast or where, if you just understand that

But focus, it sounds cliche, but focus is saying no. Steve Jobs used to say focus is saying no to a thousand things. I would argue in today's age of infinite distraction, focus is saying no to 10 million things. And so when people are like, hey, start a fund. No. Hey, a lot of people are like, do you want to co-found a business with me? I'm honored that you didn't ask, but no. Like I found the thing that I want to do.

Now, there's other opportunities that could open up in the future, not like foreclosing every single future opportunity, especially because I know from reading these books, you can't predict what the future opportunities are going to be. The best thing you could do is focus on the job that's in front of you, do the best job you possibly can with that, and it'll unlock opportunities in the future that you can't even fathom. But right now, I feel like, okay, just make the best podcast possible. The business is growing exponentially.

Ad-based podcast is clearly, especially in the Western world, I know it might be different in China, but that's clearly the model. You don't have to innovate on the model. You just have to keep making the best podcast possible and make many people aware of its existence. And so that's really, if you look at how I spend my day when I'm not spending time with my family, not taking care of my health or not having fun, it's working on the podcast, which is reading, making it, and then going on other podcasts

and talking to other founders, which gives me ideas that I can use in the podcast. So it's everything I do, I just treat it as like the world is like just one giant classroom. And so I'll learn from conversations like this. I'll learn from email exchanges. I'll learn from private conversations. I'll learn from books. And I'm just going to take all that information and try to synthesize it into a comprehensive worldview that I can then share with others on the podcast. Yeah.

When you select the book, you're going to make the podcast. Will you take some ideas from your listeners request or you just want to say, okay, I want to read this. I don't care about what others opinions. So will you get this influenced from other people or you have idea what you want to produce for the content?

So you have to, I read based on what am I most excited to read right now? What am I most excited to learn about right now? Now I get a ton of recommendations from listeners. I have like, I have, I have a couple hundred, um, I've bought a couple hundred books just from listeners recommendations that I haven't read yet. So like I have to get, I have to get like a private library, like a bigger studio or something. Cause like I can't,

It's my house is a mess. It's ridiculous in the sense that like I just have books literally everywhere. But it comes down to like I don't think if the most interesting people are the most interested and you can tell when somebody actually cares, especially in audio format. You can actually you can tell like you'll tell like if I'm interested in it or not. I've read a bunch of books.

And I didn't think they were interesting enough or good enough to make them an episode. So I just never talk about them, you know? But no, I think that the best thing is like follow your own energy. Like what are you most excited about? Because then enthusiasm is infectious and that's going to be transmitted through the podcast, you know? And so, and it also can't be fate. So I've had this experience multiple times. I'm like, man, I don't like this book. Like I'm not, I don't want to make a podcast about it. Like I won't get on there and then like,

I'm not a critic. I'm not like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast and shit on this book. The world has enough critics. We need more evangelists. We need more people talking about things that are actually like and enjoy. So yeah, I think the best maximum I have for there is what are you most interested in and just follow your energy. Yeah. And I know you did a lot of...

different books on the same person, like Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill. How do you see this situation? We want to learn more about this person, but there's hundreds of books available. How do you pick up the right material? If I'm interested in somebody, I'll read every book I can find on them. I don't think... And then I reread books too. Again, like...

What I'm trying to do with this for my own personal purposes is like if I'm interested in the way Steve Jobs thinks and I read one book on him, that's not enough. Find every book you can find. And then over time, what happens is like it's almost like I have like a little version of him on my shoulder or any of these people, Charlie Munger, David Ogilvie, Edwin Land. And there's a bunch of these people that I've read over and over again. But what happens is like you get an understanding of how they think.

And you have an idea where it's like, okay, if Steve Jobs was presented with this situation, like right now, he just has a question about staying focused. I can ask him like, okay, if Steve was the one building Founders Podcast, what would he do right now? And he would tell me, he's like, say no to that opportunity.

He's like, just focus on what you're doing. He would tell you, hey, build a podcast for yourself, one that you truly enjoy and that you love because he built his devices for – he was the customer. He's like, I built the iPod for me, the Macintosh for me, the iPhone for me. And if I – he had extremely high standards. If I think it's good, then I know I can sell it to other people and convince them of its greatness. Right?

And so there's a lot of these like little ideas that I'm able to like almost, I feel like reading books is like a cheat code, you know, because you'll get to understand how these people think and then you can take their thinking and apply it to your work over and over and over again. And it just makes my work better. True. I found out there are so many books focused on the American or British entrepreneurs and

So have you thought about to know more like culture diverse entrepreneurs and founders? The reason I ask

Last time when I had a conversation with our mutual friend, Richard Rees, and we talked about Chinese founder, like how Jack Ma get the learnings from the previous Chinese founder. So I said, oh yeah, no one covers the stories of those old generations, the Chinese businessman, like maybe a hundred years ago, like Henry Ford, those kind of people.

period. Yeah, very curious to learn. Maybe we can get some learnings from other founders from different cultures. I'm not sure if you ever thought about this. You definitely can. The most inspiring autobiography I've ever read actually came from Chung Ju Young, who's Korean. Ah, yeah. Last time we mentioned about that. Yeah, it's episode 117. I think it's called Born of This Land, My Life Story by Chung Ju Young. This is a great question because

Fundamentally Founders is a podcast on the history of entrepreneurship. And for the history of entrepreneurship, I mean like the market economy, right? Where you can go back and see how wealthy people accumulated wealth like a thousand years ago, but it was like through land or through inheritance or through war as opposed to modern day entrepreneurship is only a couple hundred years old.

And it's, hey, I'm building a product that is valuable and I'll sell it to you as a way. Like if you want the value, let's exchange the value my product gives you with the money that you send my way. And so when you're looking at the history of entrepreneurship, like one thing that is going to jump out to you is that America is dominated. Like the reason that, you know, 80 or 90 percent of the biographies that I've covered so far

are about America is because that was one of the few places in the world where you basically had this unfettered capitalism. You had this, I don't want to say gold rush. That's not the right way to think about it, but essentially you had a couple hundred years of you could build whatever you want. Now, moving forward, if you were going to start

a history of entrepreneurship podcast, let's say 500 years from now, that mix is going to be much more like distributed throughout the world. You know, you're going to have Chinese founders, Japanese founders. Oh, I did a Sony another. So episode one or two is a Kia Morita, which I'm pretty sure I pronounced his name incorrectly. He's the founder of Sony.

But if you think, okay, 500 years from now, you start a podcast on the history of entrepreneurship, it's going to be South American founders, African founders, European founders. You're going to have a much more broader mix. It just so happens that the kind of entrepreneurship that I'm studying is only a couple hundred years old. And it's really, I mean, the most valuable companies have been built in America by far.

uh over time now that's you know there's different things happening now but as you know like i don't try to cover i try to avoid people that aren't either dead already dead

are at the end of their career because there's so many people that start out and they're successful for 10 or 20 years and something, you know, their company blows up or whatever. Like I'm waiting. I want to see their career when it's over. I don't want to like jump in and make a podcast about, I try to avoid making a podcast by people that are still like in the middle of it right now. Yeah, true. Their stories need to,

stand the test of time of course yeah yeah but are there any current founders you'd like to talk to because you know reading a book is still different from like have a in-person conversations are there any current founders you would like to talk to i would like to talk to them privately jeff bezos for sure that'd be my number one choice jay-z that'd be another one who i'd want to talk to

Ed Thorpe would be interesting because he's still doing interviews and he's 90. It's on Tim Ferriss podcast. Yeah, that was excellent. Who else living would I want to talk to?

I mean, I get to meet interesting founders now, but those are the people... I think those are the people who are like, oh, my top two choices would be Jeff Bezos or Jay-Z. When you talk with founders who are approaching to you, what's the most common questions they ask your advice? It's not necessarily my advice. What's interesting to me is...

Charlie Munger talks about the role he played with Warren Buffett. He's like, it's just extreme. Like when you're doing something difficult, it's extremely valuable to be able to organize your thoughts with somebody else. These conversations, first of all, they start out, it's not like these not counseling sessions. It's like we have similar interests. Some of them have developed into friendships. And then from there, it's just like what they're seeing. Is there anything that they're experiencing in their, in their personal situation, like their unique situation that is something that,

I've maybe seen by reading hundreds of these books. And so they're just really trying to

Being a founder is just like the most bizarre job. It's so hard. It's complex, difficult, painful, but also really fun and can be unbelievably financially rewarding. It's a weird combination of like a bunch of diverse characteristics, I guess. And so I think from there, it's just like wanting to really organize their thoughts with another person that is not inside their company, that doesn't work for them.

And that has no vested interests. Like I'm not trying to make an investment in their companies. Like it's just, hey, we have the same situation. If we can help each other, then let's do so. Just because it's, you know, it's fun. I mean, if you listen to the three-part series I just did on Paul Graham, it's episode 275, 276, and 277.

He talks about that over and over and over again, that founders need to be around other founders. Ambitious people need to be around ambitious people. No one can understand the job unless they've done it. And that's why when you talk to entrepreneurs, like they talk to a ton of other entrepreneurs, which has also helped.

As a side note, help the growth of founders because if one entrepreneur finds it, he's usually in a group of a ton of other entrepreneurs and that's how it spreads. Yeah, true. It reminds me about the article Paul Graham wrote about city and ambition.

So you need to pick up the right city for you. Try your best to get your physical location right. Like me, when I moved to Portugal, one of the reasons so many digital nomads and so many founders there. So we are in the same group. So we can talk about anything related to how to build the business or how to produce content.

That's very important because you are the average of the five people around you. So your habit, your behavior will heavily influenced by your friends. Is it still like that in, it was in Lipson, right? Lisbon, Lisbon. Okay. So is it still like that now? And would you go back? Yeah, I'll go back in March. Now I'm spending more time with my family, but I will go back for another, maybe one or two years because

Because at the moment, the only downside is the housing crisis. So many people move there, especially a lot of American and English people move there. It's cheap, the weather is good, and the entrepreneurship is so good.

But there's such a high demand for housing. That's the only downside. So it's crazy. Same thing happened because I live in Miami right now. And I have for a while, for a long time, like over a decade. More than actually half my life because I grew up here too. But when COVID happened in the United States, South Florida, Florida in general, but South Florida in particular, it's like just stayed open. And like hundreds of thousands of people moved to South Florida. And the housing, literally housing doubled.

The rent prices doubled. Like to buy doubled. It is absolutely crazy. It is like now, you know, leveling out, but it is still way more expensive than it was, you know, even three, four years ago. So I know exactly what you mean. Like you have an influx of a couple hundred thousand people. Prices are going to change. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like a double-edged sword. Everybody can just have one laptop. Like not everybody, a lot of knowledge walker.

we can just have one laptop, maybe some equipment for recording podcasts, then we can move everywhere. What happened in Lisbon now, so many people heard about it's a good thing, so that everybody moved there. So it's the local community because they can't afford those things. Yeah. They're not going to like it. No, exactly. They're not going to like it, unfortunately. But we'll see. But yeah, I do agree with what Paul said. I think

It's really important to as much as you can. I know we all live on online, but you're never going to be replaced like physical interaction with humans and just the energy that you get. And so I like to talk to founders on, you know, the phone on FaceTime or whatever, but it can't be like being in person with them. True. Yeah. Can you share some stories that your podcast has?

have a direct impact on your listeners? Because last time I remember you mentioned one of a listener from Africa and he wrote you something. You were like so emotional. Yeah. So his name, yeah. Well, I shouldn't say his name, but I think he was in Nigeria. But at that time you could listen to like half the episodes of Founders for free and then you had to pay for the other half. And so he sent me a message. He's just like,

I was living in my car. I didn't have any money. I was listening to your episodes over and over and over again. And he goes, he started a company, figured out a way, like I started a company, raise some money. And he's like, now, like I can afford a subscription. And so I immediately was like, no dude, you're getting it for free. Like, that's an incredible story. Like, thank you very much. I don't,

I get way too much credit. It actually makes me uncomfortable. So like I just, uh, had coffee long, long conversation with the guy for like two or three hours. And, um, he had, he had started a search fund. Uh, they wind up buying an enterprise, uh, software company for like $65 million. And he's been like rapidly improving the company over the last few years, improving the product, increasing the sales, reducing the expenses, et cetera, et cetera. So that the,

The company's worth a lot more now. And so we had a great conversation and I walk him back. He's in, he was in town to go to conference. And one of the last things he said to me was like, Hey, I just want you to know, like I credit your podcast with like any success I had. And I was like, I appreciate what you're saying, but you did that. I did not. I don't deserve credit. But even me saying that it's irrelevant how I feel about it. And I legitimately like, thank you. I'm just a dude reading books and recording a podcast for myself. Right.

But it's, it doesn't matter that I don't believe that, you know, it matters that he does. And I've heard like a lot of examples like this, where people that I've got to know, they're like, this is the power of ideas. Ideas don't have price tags on them. So we don't know how to value them, but they're extremely valuable, especially if an idea you find from in a book or a podcast and you apply it to your company. Like in his case, that, that could be a difference of, you know, tens of millions who knows over the lifetime of his career could be

Like, what if that company gets to $400,000, whatever? Like, it's just a great, not $400,000, $400 million. Like, there's just, it's, that's why entrepreneurs have to be learning machines because the more you read, the more you're listening to educational podcasts. Like, you have a way because you're building a company to turn that knowledge into profit. That's why they're so relentless about this. Yeah.

And so there's just an example. Like I was talking to a friend of mine who I met through the podcast. Same thing. This guy's like 20 years old. You know, he's had offers on his companies. He could sell his company for $100 million. He's not going to. And I told him this story I just told you. And he's like, oh, yeah, I feel the same way.

No, like this guy's unbelievably intelligent, driven, hardworking, completely focused. He did that. I didn't do anything like I just made a podcast. I appreciate what they're saying and I'm not trying to diminish it by any means. This is not a negative. But that also.

is extremely motivating for me and inspiring me that, oh my God, like this little weird project that I'm doing just alone, you know, cause I do everything myself. I don't have anybody else working with me. Patrick and Colossus, they help with like ad sales and increasing the reach, but like the actual making of the podcast, cause they're offered like, hey, do you want to use our editors or researchers? And I'm like, no, like I love like the one person, like this is like, it's almost like a handmade product that I'm making, you know?

I love to hear stuff like that. It's super motivating, keeps me pushing. I'm sure I'm going to hear that a lot over my career, but I think the worst thing I could do is take any credit because I don't deserve it. I understand how difficult it is to build

even a business that could pay your bills, right? Much less, like both of those founders are way more financially successful than I am, you know? So like they're way further ahead, quote unquote, than I am. So it'd be ridiculous for me to think that like, it's not them. It's clear like they had the ideas, like I'm gonna seek out extra knowledge to improve my business. They just happen to select my podcast as one of the, I'm sure, many ways that,

like they're learning and applying those lessons to business. But yeah, so those are like, those are the stories that jump out. I got a story for you from China. Because, you know, I also distribute my TV journal podcast in China market, you know, Chinese market. They use a different podcast platform. So the episode I did with you was the most listened one.

That's crazy. And many people leave the comments to me and say, oh, the one you did with David was one of my favorite. And I even use that. I listen to David's podcast to not only just learn the interesting stories about founders, but also learn English from him. So they kind of using your podcast as another language tool. I love that.

I found that, wow, that's interesting. And I also got some feedback, like comments from my readers or listeners. And those times just keep me motivated to do everything I'm currently doing. 100%. It's very rare to be in a business where your customers just send, and listeners, customers, it's not the perfect analogy, but the people that you're building the product for,

just send you nice messages every day. Like every day. Like I just went, we just had a recording issue where it disconnected previously or temporarily. And so I went to DM you back on Twitter because I wasn't sure if we're going to use the same link or not. And in the time we had started talking, like I just opened up my DMs and it's just like,

I like, you know, a bunch of messages in there. I can't like I just glanced at him. It's all like, hey, your show is excellent. Thank you for what you do. It's like people being nice to you. That is rare. Strangers being nice to you on Twitter or on the Internet is a rare thing.

And so that's where it's like, okay, I just want to stay in this nice corner where it's like, I use all of my social platforms just for educational purposes. I don't get on there and say, let's talk about the war. Let's talk about this. It's just like, no, this is stuff I learned from the podcast. Here it is in written form. And that is a more pleasant...

you know, experience of just, it feels good that other people get value for what you do. Yeah, exactly. I know you did a bunch of podcast episodes on the sportsman, like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and one of my favorite footballers, Johan Cruyff. Yeah. So what does a sportsmanship mean to you?

And how do you incorporate that spirit of sportsmanship in your daily life and your career? I think there's actually a lot of takeaways. Because if you think about it, all the three people you just named, they got to the top of their profession. Like, there is millions of people...

Right.

Or they were, I guess, because they're all retired or in some cases deceased, unfortunately. I just think there is one of my favorite things Kobe Bryant ever said is that you should copy the don't copy the what copy the how. And he's like, if you just pay attention to how I play basketball, right, my discipline, my constant improvement, my constant learning, my intense practice schedule, my obsession, right?

uh the fact that i would do it for year year in and year out over and over and over again for decades it's like you could take those same characteristics and apply it to any domain it doesn't have to be basketball and so that maximum like don't copy the what copy the how is really how why i think of i like to to read stories not only about people that that like professional athletes but also

It could be like explorers like Ernest Shackleton. You know, imagine like going to a place where no one else has been in the world or like trying to do something no one else is trying to do. I think there's lessons you can learn from there. People that had to do survive difficult situations and lead other people like Winston Churchill. I've done a bunch of podcasts on him. And so I just think it's all the same thing. We just happen to most of the people listening to founders just are trying to apply it to like building a business and hopefully giving themselves economic freedom.

uh to not only like the financial independence that a lot of entrepreneurs crave but also control over how they spend their time which i think is obviously the more important aspect of that um and so when i look at michael jordan it's like oh he was obsessive practice that book it's episode 212 it's called michael jordan the life um that book changed my life because i like he gets there's a fantastic story in the book where

He's already at the top of his career. He goes to play. He's tired, but he decides, hey, I'm going to play in the 1992 Olympics anyways because these are other people that are like my peers and I want to see what their practice habits were. And he says a line in that book that gives me chills and it's just like he realized he practiced a lot more than they did. And he had like a level of dedication that even at the very top they did not. He says they're deceiving themselves about what the game requires. And I'm like, okay,

I'm going to apply that practice to founders, which in my practice is not only reading the books, it's rereading the past books. Because when you listen to founders, it's not that, you know, I just did an episode on Andrew Carnegie. I don't only talk about Andrew Carnegie. I talk about, oh, his thinking was like this person and like that person. And, oh, we've seen this before and tie it together. The only way you're able to do that is by constantly rereading and reinforcing the lessons for all, for everybody that you studied. And you can only do that by a form of daily practice.

And so I just think that athletes, the lessons you can learn from athletes are a little bit more direct than almost any other person you could study because they're competing in zero-sum game as opposed to business is like a lot more, it's way more complicated. So I just like the fact like Johan said,

you know, he was like five years old and his teacher's like, why are you kicking around the soccer ball all the time or football, whatever you guys call it. I mean, a lot of people, I live in Miami. So a lot of people will call it football too. Cause there's a lot of South Americans here and they're like, it's like, what the hell is soccer? There's so many, um,

Yeah, I know. But like I grew up like so we call it soccer forever. And what's interesting is like so if I say, hey, there's a ton of soccer fields all around Miami, people understand that. If I said, hey, there's a lot of football fields all around Miami, people, Americans might think, oh, like they're playing tackle football. It's like, you know, they think the other game. So anyways, yeah, I will continue to read.

and reread books on athletes because I find their dedication to their craft is universally applicable.

Yeah, true. So I grew up watching football or soccer. So I feel like my driven is also from learning those best footballers, their dedications. Even they are so good, like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. They're so talented, but they still keep practicing every day. And when they lost the game, they never gave up and just came back.

like Argentina just to win their World Cup and Messi like failed

probably four times. And now he finally raised up the championship. So I feel like, wow, I learned more from them than just from maybe people in my industry. I feel like every industry is kind of connected. Once you find the fundamental rule, like first principle, it's all the same. 100%. It's spooky how somebody could be...

building a retail company using the same ideas that somebody built a railroad company, that somebody built a steel company, that somebody built a computer company. It's like, oh, that's the stuff that really excites me where you see these ideas that are useful across industries and across time, frankly. What about the movie industry? I know you are the fan of Quentin Tarantino. Yes. What makes you think his work is so good and what can you learn from him? You know what? I...

I love reading some of my favorite biographies. Now, as you mentioned, our filmmakers, like I've read George Lucas's biography, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola. Tarantino is my favorite filmmaker ever. He has this fantastic interview. He did like a three hour interview on Joe Rogan. That was just absolutely excellent. And you get the insights into how he thinks about his work. And so one thing is like you realize, oh, this guy was obsessed with movies way before he started making them.

Like obsessed. Same with like I was obsessed with podcasts way before I started making them. I love the idea that to be what you realize about like masters at their work, they don't need a lot of moving parts. And so if you think about it, one of my favorite Tarantino films that, you know, I think other people don't like as much as I like in the last few years was The Hateful Eight. And Hateful Eight was one of the maybe the best movie I've seen in years, you know, when it when it came out.

And what's interesting is like how Tarantino takes constraints and then can still tell an amazing story where he can literally make one of the best movies, you know, of the year, you know, of the last few years, whatever it was. And if you think about the Hathaway in particular, it's like there's two scenes in that movie. You have they're in the carriage in the snow, like the horse-drawn carriage. And then they're in the haberdashery.

That's the whole movie. And it's like, how did you make such a compelling, interesting story? And it's like, you know, what is there like eight characters in the movie? It's not like he's using a bunch of explosions and 500,000 or 500 extras and all this other stuff. It's just like, no, two scenes. And I'm going to show you how to make a great movie from that. So I like that. Like he doesn't need much. I like the fact, I don't know what it's called, his storytelling where it's like,

He lets you fill in the blanks, right? Where it's just like, he'll skip ahead in the story. Like think about Pulp Fiction. He'll not only skip ahead, but he'll go backwards. He's not telling you every little thing, but you'll be able to figure it out yourself. Where some movies, like I don't like the writing of some movies because it's like they put it all for you. There's no thinking. It's just like, okay. And you're like, you're staring at it. Yeah, exactly. And so, and then another thing I like about Tarantino, he's just like, he makes the movies for him.

And he says that on the episode with Joe Bergen. He's like, if you don't like my movies, then don't go watch them. But he's like, I don't care. He's like, I want to make the movie I like to make. And he doesn't let people compromise his vision. He tells the story. And he did this. What's remarkable, people say it's like, oh, it's easy for you to say you can not compromise your vision. You're Quentin Tarantino. He's like, I did this when I wasn't Quentin Tarantino. He's like his very first movie, Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Weinstein, who bought the movie,

try to convince him to take out a scene. It's a rather gruesome scene where they're like torturing the guy. And Harvey's like, well, if you keep that scene in,

Less people watch the movie. If you take it out, way more people can watch it. And Tarantino's like, the scene's not going out. Like, this is the movie I wanted to make and it'll find the audience that it deserves. But I'm not backing down on this point. And what I described there is like, he's obsessed with his field. He's unbelievably, like he's able to use constraints to enhance his creativity. And he's building products from like,

from his perspective, his point of view, his authentic, excuse me, perspective and point of view and what he likes. That is very similar to a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs. And another thing I guess is there's a clear lesson that you need to build a differentiated product, right? Your product should not be like everybody else's if you want to actually, one, if you want to be really good at what you do,

but also if you want to collect like differentiated products, you know, are usually more financially successful. And even if you didn't know who Quentin Tarantino was, like you're going to watch Pulp Fiction. You're going to watch Inglourious Bastards. You're going to watch Django Unchained. Oh, this is Quentin.

Quentin Tarantino movie. You can tell. Yes, 100%. And I think that's another key lesson too. Yeah. Did I tell you I met him in person on the premiere of The Hateful Eight? No, you didn't tell me that. That's amazing. Yeah, I hugged him because I dress up as Mia. They only allowed less than 10 audience to enter the premiere.

So since I dress up like Mia, so I got the chance to go in and met him in person. I was so emotional. That's amazing. I know he will come to New Zealand to go to this movie premiere. So I already prepared myself, dressed up, waiting for him. So many people want to go in, but they didn't dress up, so they picked up me. Oh, my God. Just a sad story. No, that's hilarious. That's fantastic.

Another thing about Quentin Tarantino is he watched so many movies. I think at least like thousands of movies when he was a star of the video store. Yeah, he's got an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of his industry, which again is another trait of history-based entrepreneurs. Did you see that he's got a podcast where he talks about cinema history now? Yeah, the video archive. Yeah, I've been listening to a few episodes. Yeah, I love that guy.

Yeah. And he liked to copy or steal others' work, then remixed to form his own identity. As you mentioned, there's no original ideas. Everybody kind of borrow each other. Yes. So I like the way he's being very honest to say, yes, I just copy or I steal them, but I made them like remixed together. That's the key, the remix part. He's not doing a frame for frame copy of...

of a movie. He's like, oh, I like that one scene from a movie. And I like the way this guy does this thing. I like the way she does that. And then what happens is like you collect all these things that are unique to you and you put it through your own mind, your own unique perspective, and then you can create something brand new. But yeah, he said Sergio Leone, which is one of his favorite filmmakers. And he's like, I just took an idea that Sergio was doing for one genre and applied it to a different genre.

He was talking about that. I think they were talking about the idea behind Pulp Fiction. I can't remember the movie that he was referencing. But yeah, that is, I mean, I've talked about this a million times on the podcast. Like Steve Jobs is one of the most famous entrepreneurs. You know, as far as people living today, almost everybody knows who Steve Jobs is. And he would tell you, it's like a lot of these ideas came from Edwin Land. They came from Bob Noyce. They came from Nolan Bushnell. You know, they came from Alexander Graham Bell. They came from Leonardo da Vinci.

and J. Robert Oppenheimer. These are all people that Steve talks about. He's like, no, I studied them. I thought they had a good idea and I took that idea and used it in my own work. Everybody does that. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. And you also mentioned that Dan Harlan influenced you to do the podcast.

Oh, and the Kevin Rose also. Yep. So Dan Carlin, hardcore history, which I feel is the best podcast ever made. Uh, the reason it's a single person podcast has a lot to do with Dan. There's another guy named Bill Burr who does, um, the Monday morning podcast. He's a comedian. And what I like about that podcast is it's very clearly just him. It's like, there's no intro music. There's no, it's just like, it's,

He used to do it just once a week, now he does it twice a week. But he meets up with you once a week and he tells you about the stuff that happened to him and the stuff that's on his mind. And that's the podcast. And so I saw what Dan was doing. I saw what Bill was doing. And then the Kevin Rose interview with Elon Musk on Foundation Feb. That was probably like a decade ago. That combination of that also is they talk about the importance of reading biographies and learning how to build companies and biographies playing a role in that.

And then I saw this other podcast called Jocko podcast in 2015. And the format for founders came from Jocko because he didn't start out interviewing people. He just read books. He read like autobiographies of people that served in military. And that that's what, and then I, so he would do that for like the first hour. And then the second hour was him, uh, uh,

answering questions from his audience. And I was like, man, and I was learning so much through those, those like book reviews. I was like, I should do this, but for biographies of entrepreneurs. Yeah. So how do you see the role of the founder podcast in supporting the entrepreneurs or promoting the entrepreneurship? Cause you know, as your show growing, it got reached to so many founders. How do you see your responsibility here? So what I see is like, um,

I'm obsessed with Game of Thrones. The show, the books, the lore, all that other stuff. And... Have you read the books or just watching the show? No, no. I've read the books. I've read the novellas. I've read the history books. I've studied the family trees. I read Fire and Blood. Like, I...

I had to chill out for a little bit. I'm like, this is, you're obsessed, David. You need to stop and go like, go do some work. Right. But like anything else, like if I'm spending time on it, I try to pull out ideas and principles I can use in, in like my professional life. But what's interesting is like throughout the series, like there's this one guy named Samwell Tarly who is, he just reads all the time. Right. And so there's multiple, multiple,

There's multiple examples in Game of Thrones where there are people around Sam benefit because he's reading old history books. So it's like, hey, he's trying to sneak on to the other side of the wall. He's like, I know there's like a hidden passage here. And he's telling Gilly, who's this character that he's trying to like provide safe passage to. And she's like, how do you know that? He goes, oh, I read about it in a book.

And then she goes, you know this from staring at a page with squiggly lines on it? And he goes, yes. And she goes, you're like a wizard. Because think about it. Literally, the person that wrote that book has been long dead, and they're still teaching Sam something. Then he learns that dragonglass is the way you kill White Walkers. And he learns the true parentage of his friend John, or all these other historical facts. Essentially, he's developing this base of knowledge that

That very few other people have because very few people are reading these books. And so that's the role I play. Like if I was if I started another company, Founders Podcast didn't exist. I would literally hire somebody to go do exactly what I'm doing. I'd have no I'm dead serious. I would have somebody on staff. I'm like, listen, your job is you have to read these biographies of entrepreneurs and your job is to find ideas that make my company better.

I would literally have like I would have a Samwell Tarly, right? But in the domain of what we're working on and what founders podcast, the role I see is like, well, you don't have to hire somebody.

you don't have to hire like a historian or you know somebody going through the historical record in uh in entrepreneurship for your company because i can do it for you for free and i can put it into these uh a format where you can listen to it whenever you want you can listen to it when your eyes are busy doing something else you can listen to when you're at the gym when you're driving when you're washing dishes when whatever it is and so

the way I look at it is like, okay, there's a lot of good ideas in these books. Very few, arguably no one else is reading the collection of books that I am. Right. Um, and if they are, they don't have a podcast where they share what they're learning. And so therefore it's like, you almost have like your own research and like, uh, research and development, like a department in the domain of, uh,

uh, like the, the historical record of your industry, which is, it doesn't matter if you're building software or you're building, you know, a pizza shop, like you're an entrepreneur, right? There's like, you want your business to be as successful as possible. And these people, this historical record has very valuable information that you should, that your career is going to, is your career going to be better or worse with this information? Clearly it's going to be better.

And so that's the way I think about, like lately, the way I think about my role is like, oh, I'll just be like a Samwell Tarly. And there's throughout the history or throughout the show and the books, people are like, they get valuable information from Sam. They're like, okay, keep reading. Yeah, I'm going to keep reading. That's good. When I look at the history of China and I see in the old dynasty, when people want to become a governor official, they need to pass the test.

The majority part is reading the ancient books. Really? You will get the examination on have you finished reading all those ancient books? And have you finished reading all these histories? That's interesting. So that's like a Chinese tradition. Yeah. So I find this very interesting. There's a Chinese saying goes, if you're reading history, it will make you wise.

So I learned that when I was probably three or four years old. Like every Chinese people learn that from school. So you need to read history, then extract the wisdom from all these ancient books. That's fascinating. I love Charlie Munger quotes Cicero. And he's like, Cicero said that the person who goes through

without like learning from the history goes through life like a baby. So that's the paraphrase. And it's like, oh, it's like now it's me quoting Charlie who's quoting Cicero. But what I was going to say is like, I actually think that there should be founders versions for everything. Like,

Like there should be a founder's version for Chinese history. There should be a founder's version for like one guy is doing this. I think people should be reading books, but one of the listeners, his name is Jordan. He just started a podcast where he just does like short episodes, like 20, 30 minute episodes on interesting people lived interesting lives throughout history. They may not have biographies written on them. So think of like if you, if you read a Wikipedia page that might be like,

let's say 10 000 words you know like it's not a book but it's substantial and then you break down interesting things from that people's life's experience but i think like i think there should be uh somebody just sent me a message say is there is there a founder's version of political leaders no you should do that i know a person that's trying to do a founder's version of health yes you should do that like there's all kinds of interesting like just pick a domain right i think starting and trying to do like another version of founders like it's probably a bad idea um

Because somebody's already doing it and you should try to differentiate your product. But you could use that same idea and apply it to so many different verticals. That'd be fascinating. It could be a founder's version of... It could be individual country histories. It could be world history. It could be... There's just a million different things. Whatever you happen to be naturally interested in and you want to read a lot of books about, that could be a podcast. I see. I also see you got another format for the founder's podcast. Yes.

Can you tell me more about that? Which one's that? At the end of each episode, you started to add some announcement. So I did what I tried to do and actually just stopped doing it a couple of days ago. I had an idea. I was like, how can I do... Why are there no really short daily podcasts?

And so I had this thing called Founders Daily. And the idea was like, could I make a podcast where it's like one or two minutes long every day with like a single idea? Right. And because my whole my opinion on podcasting in general is that we're still at the very beginning of a giant technological revolution. We there's way more things that we don't know about podcasting that we do know about podcasting. And so there needs to be a lot of experimentation.

And so I saw like this gap where it's like, OK, could I do like an interesting, shorter podcast? I did it. I did 70 episodes. People seem to like it. People are willing to pay for it. The problem that I had is I could not tell if it was good or not. And so when I made the announcement that I wasn't going to do it anymore, some people got like like, oh, like not mad, but like they were disappointed.

And they're like, and they're like, you should reconsider. You should do it. And I understand what they were saying. Cause they're like, well, if people like it and people are paying for it, what's the problem? And I was like, but I build things for me. Like I, Stephen King said in his autobiography, which I loved, he's like, he's like, I'm not only the writer, I'm the first reader. And so the way he knows if a book is done is if he finishes it and he reads it and he likes it, then it's done.

And so when I like I'm the first I not only make founders podcast, but I'm the first listener. Like I listen to every single episode in full before it goes out. I have to. That's the way I know. Is this good or not? You know, and with these shorter formats, unfortunately, I couldn't tell. And so even if other people like it, even if other people are willing to buy it, I couldn't continue because I don't have any North Star. And for me, the North Star founders is quality. Is this worth it? I'm asking for an hour of somebody's time.

Is this the product I'm putting out worth the hour I'm asking for? And I think it is. And so therefore I'm enthusiastic and I keep doing it. And now like it's been, you know, obvious that it is shorter format. It wasn't sure. Sometimes I felt like I know I'm only asking for a minute or two, but essentially like what I realized, like maybe there's a reason there's not one or two minute podcasts because they're not good.

are good enough, you know? And so that was like, all right, I'm just going to, so what I did is I transformed that feed into AMA episodes because a lot of people over the years have asked for that. I know that format's valuable because other people do that. And so it's like, okay. And so I just made my first one and that was like me answering questions for like an hour or an hour and a half. And that felt a lot more valuable than,

one minute or two minutes here where it's like, I can't, I can't tell if this is good or not. So yeah. Is that a live session? You answering question from listeners? No, they, they submit them and then like, yeah, they just submit them. And then like, I'll just pick out a bunch of questions and try to answer them. They're very, it's very unscripted though. It's just like, the idea was like, what if you could interview me? Yeah. Right. What if the listeners could interview me to submit questions? And to me that that's not only valuable because I,

A lot of people ask me questions one-on-one, but it's way more valuable if people ask me questions and then we record them and then other people can benefit from the answers. And so I think this will be something I'll be doing for a long time because it's a proven format as opposed to the one-minute episode or two-minute episodes. It's not a proven format and I was unsuccessful at finding my way in there. And I think if I've done, you know, I did 70 of them, 71 of them, I think. I was like, some of them are good, some of them are bad. I didn't like the inconsistencies, so. Yeah.

That's why I switched. I like this trial and error thing because as a content creator, I also try different format for delivering content. And sometimes I listen to my listener or reader's feedback. Sometimes I just feel, okay, that's not reaching my standard. Even you find this good. But to me, I don't have this passion to continue doing that.

So I'm doing what I feel like to do it. You have to be proud. You have to be proud of it. Are you proud of it? And if you're not proud of it, then why are you doing it? And I wasn't proud of it. It's not good enough.

where I am very proud of Founders Podcast. Like very, very proud. I can go out and literally in person tell people about it. I can like, I'm perfectly comfortable promoting it because I think it's valuable. I'm proud of it. I wasn't proud of the other thing. And so therefore the decision is easy. Let's move on to the next experiment, you know?

And so that's the way I thought about it. So what's your new year's plan for your founder's podcast? Just keep doing what you do as always. I think the key is where we started the conversation where it's so rare for humans to not have the natural ability to focus on something in general. And then if they are focused on something, to focus on it for a long period of time. And all the value...

in not only you see this in in uh in wealth like there's a comp like it takes a very long time to usually to get wealthy so there's a compounding effect of wealth but there's also a compounding effect of knowledge and then with podcasts like there's a compounding effect of uh audience growth like they take a lot all things that are very valuable all take a long time to do right and so you

that's why you see most people quit. Like somebody just ran the numbers. It was like, you know, 4 million podcasts in the directory, public podcasts. And I think there's like 200,000 that are still going that in the sense of like the metrics they use was like,

They had made at least 10 episodes and had updated their feed in the last week. Now, so there's some podcasts that don't fit into that, that have made more than 10 episodes that release every two weeks or every month or every six months or whatever. They're still going. But the numbers are not that big. And even when I started, I started in 2016, there was 750,000 total episodes.

Now there's, you know, 4 million. And, you know, there was probably like 100,000 that are still active and going back then or whatever the number is. People quit at everything, no matter what it is, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a weight loss goal, whether it's a fitness plan, whether it's a relationship, whether it's a job, whatever. It's like we're not very focused as a species in general. And so I think the value, the...

The outsized nonlinear value comes from long, finding something works and doing it for a long period of time. So my resolution is do the exact same thing I've been doing. Keep reading more books. Essentially, like the way I think about it is like a great life is just a string of great days. And so I design my days like is today how like if I was going to die tomorrow, like how would I want to spend my time? Right.

And so I try to make sure I enjoy every day. And so for me, that's like reading is very enjoyable to me, making podcasts, having conversations like this on podcast, other podcasts, very enjoyable to me. I'm going to spend time with my kids today. I'll spend time with my wife. I've worked out already, you know, like, and then I'll have some fun.

And that's a good day. That's a great day. And then if I do that, you know, if I, if this is what a typical day looks for me, it looks like for me. And it's, you know, typical in the sense that it might fall the same format, but not typical in the sense that like, you know, I'm not going to record a podcast with you every day, but I might talk to another founder tomorrow or might do something. There's always variability in that, that like kind of format. I can just do that forever. And if I love it, which I do and do it forever, I'm,

then it's foolish to interrupt the compounding, right? Like Charlie Munger, rule number one, never interrupt it. I might be Warren Buffett, never interrupt the compounding. And so right now founders is clearly compounding. It'd be silly for me to do anything else because it's so rare. Paul Graham talks about this in the essays I talked about in the Paul Graham essay episodes of founders. How many people are the billions of people on the planet find love, find work they truly love? And Paul said, it's like a couple hundred thousand.

out of billions. And if I've already found a work that I love, it'd be foolish for two. And he talks about this in essays too. He's like, when you, usually people are distracted from, from doing work they love by prestige or by money. Right. And he's like, you think that you want the prestige and you think that you want the money to get it at the expense of doing something you love. He's like winning at life is doing what you love and then finding a way to get, you know, if you want to build wealth from doing that or whatever it is.

And so my whole thing is just like, I'm just not going to let anybody distract me with promises of wealth and prestige. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and trust that if I put enough value onto the world, a portion of that value will come back to me. Yeah.

That's good. That's very good. Yeah. I noticed that every time you go to the secondhand shop, then you pick up some books. I see the picture you share on Twitter. Yeah. But when your children want to buy a book, how do you cultivate their reading habit? Do you guide them or just let them pick up what they want to read? Whatever they want to read. So my son is only three, so he's not... He's two and a half, actually. He's not reading it. My daughter... Yeah.

Like for Christmas, we got her a bunch of books. What's funny is like she usually, she can read whatever she wants. Like it's up to her. She's liking biographies, which is hilarious. She was like reading the Diary of Anne Frank. Yeah. So she's reading like the Diary of Anne Frank. She's read about, you know, Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, Walt Disney. They have like, you know, kids versions of these, which is really cool. There's some fiction books that she likes. It's interesting.

what I tell her is like, listen, if you spend an hour a day on your fitness and an hour a day reading, you still got 20. Then you sleep for eight hours a night or whatever. It's like you have 14 hours in your day to do whatever else you want to do. You want to play video games, play video games. You want to talk on your phone to your friends or talk on the phone with your friends. Do that. You obviously have to go to school.

But like if people just dedicated themselves to one hour of taking care of their health and one hour of reading, taking care of their mind and their spirit and their soul. Cause that's where I feel like, I feel like especially reading biographies. Like I feel, I feel feed your soul, right? Nourishes you like seriously. Like I, I get energy and excitement and a lot of contentment from doing this. Um,

that's like a very solid foundation to build upon and as long as you don't screw up like you're not doing drugs or heroin or anything else in your spare time like in the other hours like you're gonna have a hard time losing a life um because you're just constantly taking care of yourself you're constantly learning and then you know find work that you love like that's

it life is unbelievably simple and complicated at the same time but like there to have a contented life or to have a good life that you're proud of at the end of your life is like it's very simple it's not so much chasing great things this again quoting charlie munger he's like i just he charlie's like i've just been successfully not stupid for a long time and doing that is just so rare um and so that's the way i think about it it's like well that's the stuff i teach her it's uh

It's a very simple framework and plan, but so few people actually commit to doing it all the time. Yeah. I remember when I was little, I saw my grandparents and my parents, they're all reading. So I kind of want to mimic their behavior. So I cultivated this habit to read since I was four or five years old.

and never interrupt this compound. So I feel like if you are parents, if you set up your own example, not just telling your children to read, but if you read yourself, your children will mimic your behavior and learn from that. Yeah. That's very important. A hundred percent. Yeah. Great. Great time to talk with you again. Thank you very much for having me. Anytime you want to talk

And I would love if next time we talk, if we spend more time, I'm very curious what it's like. Like you bounce between like two very different worlds, right? Like you were in Europe, right?

London and Portugal, and then now you're back in China. And then I know you just said a few months from now, you're leaving again. Yeah, I can't live in China. Why? Oh, you said you can't live? I can't live in China because as I mentioned before, the internet issue would be a big problem for me. I need to use VPN to access all the Western websites or

social media too so it's not very convenient for me to live here yeah but you have a very unique perspective in that you're straddling two worlds right so yeah we'll just put that on the on the back burner on the idea for next time and then very quickly

Curious to hear about your work obviously like we talked about I think I don't think we're recording yet but um With like you're working on like building the community for OSV and infinite loops and everything else like I think it's very fascinating Thank you so much. Yeah, as always. Oh anytime. Thank you very much for the invitation as always. I